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2. The origins and destinies of the idea of thirdness in contemporary psychoanalysis.
- Author
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Coelho Junior, Nelson Ernesto
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYSIS , *INTERSUBJECTIVITY , *PSYCHOLOGY , *COUNTERTRANSFERENCE (Psychology) - Abstract
The central aim that animates this paper is to present and discuss the idea of thirdness or analytic third in psychoanalysis, from its origins to the concepts formulated by André Green and Thomas Ogden. The contributions of Winnicott, Reik and the Baranger couple are discussed, as are their influences to contemporary psychoanalysis. In order to promote the clarification and to distinguish different psychoanalytic conceptions of the third, ten figures referring to the meaning of thirdness that appear in different theories are presented, without necessarily their being mutually exclusive. As a final consideration, the article seeks to reorder in four dimensions the ten figures originally presented, emphasizing the central elements in Ogden and Green's constructions. These dimensions are at the same time conceptual and clinical, insofar as they create possibilities of operating the idea of thirdness in the transference/ countertransference dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2016
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
3. The dual aspect of fantasy: Flight from reality or imaginative realm? Considerations and hypotheses from clinical psychoanalysis.
- Author
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Colombi, Laura
- Subjects
- *
FANTASY (Psychology) , *MIND & reality , *WITHDRAWAL (Psychology) , *DISSOCIATIVE disorders , *OBJECT relations , *ILLUSION (Philosophy) , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
This paper discusses the view that fantasizing, understood as a flight into fantasy, belongs to a type of mental functioning distinct from imaginative fantasy. From this the idea emerges, proposed by Winnicott, that withdrawal into fantasy assumes a dissociative quality, which is formed early on as a defensive solution following the loss of hope in object relations. Such a defence becomes the foundation for a dangerous enclave in which the individual ends up enclosing himself, experiencing an illusory self-sufficiency. In this perspective, the author maintains that the flight into fantasy must be understood as a risk factor for the draining of the self or for a crystallization into psychopathological structures, becoming an automatic activity of 'non-thought' that substitutes for the working-through processes necessary for the development of the mind. The paper investigates this psychopathological dynamic, which was already present in Breuer and Freud's writings, examining subsequent contributions of various authors. Clinical material (of both children and adults) illustrates how the flight into fantasy may take the form of an anti-relational realm of the mind, compromising the operations necessary to the integration of psychic life. There is also a discussion of which therapeutic tools may help the patient to gradually abandon the withdrawal in favour of an authentically nourishing relational nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2010
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
4. Winnicott’s foundation for the basic concepts of Freud’s metapsychology?
- Author
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Girard, Martine
- Subjects
- *
MOTHER-infant relationship , *METAPSYCHOLOGY , *EGO (Psychology) , *PSYCHOLOGY , *PSYCHOANALYSIS - Abstract
In a recent paper, Fulgencio shows how Winnicott rejected the basic speculative concepts of Freud’s metapsychology – Trieb, psychical apparatus and libido – and replaced them with non-speculative concepts that promoted a factual theorization. In this paper, the author examines some of Winnicott’s concepts and attempts to demonstrate how, rather than replacing Freud’s concepts, he provides a factual foundation for the metapsychology in the double dependence of the infant in care. Freud never actually disregards the necessity of early mothering but he takes it for granted. By differentiating between ego needs and id needs, ego-relatedness and id-relatedness, object-mother and environment-mother, Winnicott attempts to theorize what Freud takes for granted: the function of the holding environment as a framework for id-experiences and the function of object-presenting as a condition of reality-testing. Furthermore, by differentiating between pure male and pure female elements, he is also able to construct a highly speculative theorization in order to distinguish two basic principles: doing and being. Although the death drive is clearly rejected, this rejection follows from his theorization of double dependence. Consequently, the author suggests that Winnicott did not discard metapsychological concepts but theorized the conditions for using both these and the intrapsychic topography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2010
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
5. The analytic situation as a dynamic field.
- Author
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Baranger, Madeleine and Baranger, Willy
- Subjects
- *
COUNTERTRANSFERENCE (Psychology) , *TRANSFERENCE (Psychology) , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOTHERAPIST-patient relations , *INSIGHT , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
This paper discusses the consequences of the importance that recent 3 papers assign to the countertransference. When the latter acquires a theoretical and technical value equal to that of the transference, the analytic situation is configured as a dynamic bi-personal field, and the phenomena occurring in it need to be formulated in bi-personal terms. First, the field of the analytic situation is described, in its spatial, temporal and functional structure, and its triangular character (the present–absent third party in the bi-personal field) is underlined. Then, the ambiguity of this field is emphasized, with special weight given to its bodily aspect (the bodily experiences of the analyst and the patient being particularly revealing of the unconscious situation in the field). The different dynamic structures or lines of orientation of the field are examined: the analytic contract, the configuration of the manifest material, the unconscious configuration – the unconscious bi-personal phantasy manifesting itself in an interpretable point of urgency – that produces the structure of the field and its modifications. The authors describe the characteristics of this unconscious couple phantasy: its mobility and lack of definition, the importance of the phenomena of projective and introjective identification in its structuring. The authors go on to study the functioning of this field, which oscillates between mobilisation and stagnation, integration and splitting. Special reference is made to the concept of the split off unconscious ‘bastion’ as an extremely important technical problem. The analyst’s work is described as allowing oneself to be partially involved in the transference–countertransference micro-neurosis or micro-psychosis, and interpretation as a means of simultaneous recovery of parts of the analyst and the patient involved in the field. Finally, the authors describe the bi-personal aspect of the act of insight that we experience in the analytic process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2008
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6. Repression and splitting: Towards a method of conceptual comparison.
- Author
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Hinshelwood, R. D.
- Subjects
- *
REPRESSION (Psychology) , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *EGO (Psychology) , *HUMAN behavior , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
An attempt is made to compare two psychoanalytic concepts which by ‘belonging’ to different psychoanalytic groups have come to be defined and used differently. The paper is also an inquiry into the possibility of a comparative psychoanalytic method. The two concepts are ‘repression’ and ‘splitting of the ego’ and an examination is made of the semantic similarities and differences. Some clinical material is offered that adds indicative clinical evidence to test the semantic comparison. The aim is to answer the question: Are the terms simply alternative ones for similar clinical phenomena? The paper offers one method which could provide an answer. It represents a general method for clarifying and maybe reconciling the differing points of view of competing psychoanalytic schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2008
- Full Text
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7. 'Yes, we have bananas!'.
- Author
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ANA MARIA ANDRADE AZEVEDO, ANA MARIA STUCCHI VANNUCCHI, and ESTER HADASSA SANDLER
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PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PREJUDICES , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
This paper takes as its starting point identifying markers of Latin American psychoanalysis. The authors see this theme as a compromise between two diverging approaches. On one hand, the conference at which the content was presented provided the opportunity for Latin American psychoanalytical thinking to be discussed and, as a reward to the best papers, to be published. On the other, both the conference and the reward are more indicative of the observers biases than of the objects peculiarities. The authors consider that the conference mistakenly focused on the search for minor differences (secondary identi? cations) instead of looking for invariances (identities). Considering that uncertainty, pluralism and complexity are issues relevant to the whole of psychoanalysis in its current stage of development as a scienti? c discipline, the authors think that treating these elements as identifying markers of Latin American psychoanalysis is evidence of prejudice brought about by a colonisercolonised relationship. To develop their argument, the authors discuss a paper on editorial criteria by Tuckett as a clinical case, and use an episode of Brazilian history as further illustration. They address issues such as conformity to cultural patterns; the search for certainties and proofs; the domination of some groups over others; and editorial powermore speci? cally, its in? uence on the acceptance or rejection of scienti? c ideas. These issues have distracted attention away from the fundamentals of psychoanalysis by introducing other, extraneous aims. Publication plays a key role in feeding a possibly vicious circle wherein only a small proportion of scienti? c contributions manages to reach a wide audienceexactly those contributions that conform to established patterns. The act of publication turns that portion into of? cial knowledge, while unpublished ideas become increasingly excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005
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8. On psychoanalytic writing.
- Author
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THOMAS H. OGDEN
- Subjects
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PSYCHOANALYSIS , *LITERARY form , *PSYCHOLOGY ,WRITING - Abstract
Analytic writing constitutes a literary genre of its own. It involves the linking of an analytic idea (developed in a scholarly manner) with an analytic experience created in the medium of language. What makes this literary genre so demanding is that experience--including analytic experience--does not come to us in words. This fact generates a paradox that lies at the core of analytic writing: analytic experience (which cannot be said or written) must be transformed into 'fi ction' (an imaginative rendering of experience in words) in order to convey to the reader something of what is true to the emotional experience that the analyst had with the patient. The author discusses a clinical passage from one of his recently published papers in an effort to demonstrate some of the conscious and unconscious thinking that goes into his writing. He then looks closely at the way the language works in a successful piece of theoretical analytic writing. The paper concludes with a discussion of a number of facets of the author's experience with analytic writing including the psychological 'state of writing', which is at once a meditation and a wrestling match with language; experimenting with the form (structure) of an analytic essay; and the question of originality in analytic writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005
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9. Does anything go? Towards a framework for the more transparent assessment of psychoanalytic competence.
- Author
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DAVID TUCKETT
- Subjects
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PSYCHOANALYSIS , *OCCUPATIONAL training , *PSYCHOLOGY , *PATHOLOGICAL psychology - Abstract
It has been difficult to know what does and does not constitute competent psychoanalytic work and so equally difficult to assess when it is being practised and when it is not. This makes difficult any form of disciplined evaluation of the outcome of training, which has a series of problematic outcomes for psychoanalytic practice, psychoanalytic institutions and the relationship to allied disciplines and professions. In this paper, the author considers how far it might be possible to devise a framework for assessment of training programmes within a disciplined psychoanalytic pluralism. The aspiration is to develop a transparent framework, based on an empirically supported demonstration of analytic capacity. The framework needs to be sensitive and subtle, and to be able to withstand challenge. It needs to take cognisance of the twin facts that there is more than one way to practise psychoanalysis and that it is necessary to avoid 'anything goes'. Drawing on an ongoing project undertaken by European IPA institutes, the author describes some of the problems colleagues have been experiencing in European institutes, because they have not had available transparent criteria for assessment. He outlines a preliminary form of a proposed method for making more transparent and supportable assessment. The author intends for this paper to inspire hope, enquiry and debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005
- Full Text
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10. 'This is not psychoanalysis': On the stony way of the Danish Psychoanalytical Society.
- Author
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GUDRUN BODIN
- Subjects
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PSYCHOANALYSIS , *CORPORATE headquarters , *PATHOLOGICAL psychology , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
When Freud founded the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), he wanted a network of local groups responsible for psychoanalytic training. The groups would function as 'headquarters whose business it would be to declare: "All this nonsense is nothing to do with analysis; this is not psychoanalysis".' Today, with psychoanalytic pluralism, Tuckett (in press) has asked 'Does anything go?' He has pointed out that the psychoanalytic community has been increasingly willing to accept within its ranks apparently very varied approaches to theory and practice, and that this increasing diversity has many negative consequences for psychoanalytic institutions and especially for training schemas. The aim of this paper is to give an example of psychoanalysis that 'did not go', and how that led to a shaky start for the new Danish Psychoanalytical Society, with confusing boundary relations between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and no training institute. Beginning with the written psychoanalytical contribution of the three founders of the Danish Society, the paper will try to identify factors that contributed to the 'shaky start'. The paper will also examine how stones were removed from the path, thus paving the way for the members of the Society to discover 'competent psychoanalysis'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2004
- Full Text
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11. Imre Hermann's Freudian theory of attachment.
- Author
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Tomas Geyskens
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PATHOLOGICAL psychology , *ATTACHMENT behavior , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
In this paper the author addresses some problems concerning the relation between attachment theory and psychoanalysis and sketches the outline of a Freudian theory of attachment, based on the ideas ofthe Hungarian psychoanalyst Imre Hermann. First, he elucidates the fundamental divergence behind the insults and misunderstandings that have dominated the debate between attachment theory and Freudian psychoanalysis: they differ radically in their conceptions of temporality and of the relation between psychopathology and human nature. Second, the author presents Hermann's work on 'Clinging--Going-in-search' (1976) as a theoretical model in which the findings of attachment theory can be integrated in a theory of psychopathology that is radically dimensional and that preserves the methodology of Freudian psychoanalysis. In the third part of the paper, the author discusses the question of whether Hermann's 'clinging instinct' is a primary instinct in the Freudian sense, and whether it is an interesting alternative for Freud's 'death instinct', as Hermann claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2003
- Full Text
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12. Psychoanalysis of maturescence (definition, metapsychology, and clinical practice).
- Author
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Montero, Mag Guillermo Julio
- Subjects
- *
METAPSYCHOLOGY , *MEDICAL care & religion , *CLIMACTERIC , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PHYSICIAN practice patterns , *NEW words , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
Translations of summary This article offers an entirely new way of addressing middle age or mid-life. It uses the neologism maturescence to denote this process's metapsychological feature, and it proposes a meta-psychology of maturescence in order to allow a 'direct understanding of maturescence' instead of the 'indirect understanding of maturescence', which psychoanalytic literature generally alludes to. The paper examines somatic processes specific to male and female climacterics and is focused on to the tension between the soma and the body. It examines the drive increase that Freud posed in climacterics and the somatic climacteric imbalance that begets specific drive activity demanding psychic work, with very different pathways depending on the individual's specific working-through activity. It discusses what happens to the individual when he/she is no longer able to procreate and begins to age; why this process is equivalent for individuals who had children and for others who could not or did not. This somatic event provides a universal constant from which it is possible to understand any individual variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
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13. Commentary on 'Transformations in hallucinosis and the receptivity of the analyst' by Civitarese.
- Author
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Sandler, Paulo Cesar
- Subjects
- *
HALLUCINATIONS , *PSYCHOANALYSTS , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *DREAMS , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
The article offers the author's insights on the paper entitled, "Transformations in hallucinosis and the receptivity of the analyst," by G. Civitarese. Topics discussed by the author include Civitarese's interest to the works of psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion, the use by Civitarese to the terms "psychic transformations" and "transformations in hallucinosis," and the difference and kinship between dreams and hallucinations.
- Published
- 2015
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14. Transformations in hallucinosis and the receptivity of the analyst.
- Author
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Civitarese, Giuseppe
- Subjects
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HALLUCINATIONS , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *DREAMS , *LOGICAL fallacies , *THEORY of knowledge , *PSYCHOANALYSTS , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
Bion describes transformation in hallucinosis ( TH) as a psychic defence present in elusive psychotic scenarios in which there is a total adherence to concrete reality: as the hallucinatory activity which physiologically infiltrates perception and allows us to know reality, setting it off against a background of familiarity; and then, surprisingly, as the ideal state of mind towards which the analyst has to move in order to intuit the facts of the analysis. When hallucinosis is followed by 'awakening', the analyst gains understanding from the experience and goes through a transformation that will inevitably be transmitted to the analytic field and to the patient. In this paper I illustrate Bion's concept and underline its eminently intersubjective nature. Then I differentiate it from two other technical devices: reverie, which unlike hallucinosis does not imply the persistence of a feeling of the real, and Ferro's transformation in dreaming, i.e. purposeful listening to everything that is said in the analysis as if it were the telling of a dream. Finally, I try to demonstrate the practical utility of the concept of transformation in hallucinosis in order to read the complex dynamics of a clinical vignette. Though not well known (only two references in English in the PEP archive), TH proves to be remarkably versatile and productive for thinking about psychoanalytic theory, technique and clinical work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2015
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15. Bion's discovery of alpha function: Thinking under fire on the battlefield and in the consulting room.
- Author
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Brown, Lawrence J.
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYSIS , *EMOTIONAL trauma , *WORLD War I , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
This paper has traced Bion's discovery of alpha function and its subsequent elaboration. His traumatic experiences as a young tank commander in World War I (overlaid on, and intertwined with, childhood conflicts) gave him firsthand exposure to very painful emotions that tested his capacity to manage. Later, in the 1950s, after his analysis with Melanie Klein and marriage to Francesca Bion, he undertook the analysis of psychotic patients and learned how they disassembled their ability to know reality as a defense against unbearable emotional truths in their lives. This led Bion to identify an aspect of dreaming that was necessary in order for reality experience to be given personal meaning so that one may learn from experience. Simultaneous with working out this new theory of dreaming, Bion also revisited his World War I experiences that had remained undigested and all these elements coalesced into a selected fact - his discovery of alpha function. In subsequent writings, Bion explored the constituent factors of alpha function, including the container/contained relationship, the PS↔D balance, reverie, tolerated doubt and other factors which I have termed the 'Constellation for Thinking'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2012
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16. Shadows, ghosts and chimaeras: On some early modes of handling psycho-genetic heritage.
- Author
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Durban, Joshua
- Subjects
- *
BEHAVIOR genetics , *CHIMERISM , *GENETICS , *SUBCONSCIOUSNESS , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
This paper describes three early developmental modes of handling the individual's psycho-genetic heritage. The first one, which characterizes normal development, is called living with the shadow of one's heritage. The shadow (of history, of life and death) is a natural counterpart of the self. The second mode, which accounts for more disturbed patients, is called living under the shadows of heritage. This type is characterized by an unconscious phantasy of the person being haunted by persecutory and vindictive ghosts instead of benign ancestors. The third mode, which might be encountered in severely disturbed patients, is being the shadow. This mode, called Chimerism, describes a confused organism which may turn against itself as parts of it are experienced as alien. On the unconscious level this signifies a heritage which cannot be experienced or mentalized as such. Rather, it is a complete chaos with moments where the hardly existent self is experienced as a bizarre object made up of non-combining, welded parts. These three modes will be examined with the help of material drawn from two analyses: of an autistic boy and of an adult patient who was persecuted by an unspeakable, horrific ancestral past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2011
- Full Text
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17. The Œdipus complex, crystallizer of the debate between psychoanalysis and anthropology1.
- Author
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Smadja, Eric
- Subjects
- *
OEDIPUS complex , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *ANTHROPOLOGY , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
The way that anthropologists understand the Oedipus complex, in particular, is a good example of how they understand psychoanalysis in general. Indeed, it has crystallized a set of reactions marked by ignorance, misunderstanding, distortion and screening out and at the same time has provoked suspicion among anthropologists as to psychoanalysis, according to the preconceptions of the various schools of thought and authors implied, and this from the very first contacts up to nowadays. In what way did the psychoanalysts contribute to this and what representation did they, in turn, elaborate of anthropology? The purpose of this paper is to expose the epistemological and historical conditions of the emergence of this debate, and then to develop it by following chronology up to the 1950s and 1960s, while differentiating three major cultural areas, Great Britain, the USA and France, in order to get a clearer picture. From that point on, we will try to diversify our inquiry and to formulate some interpretative hypotheses. In particular, we think that a traumatic event may have inaugurated and organized the history of the relationship between the two disciplines, producing a situation of acculturation with multiple impacts, if we identify them with two cultures coming into contact: what is at stake here is Totem and Taboo in which Freud carries through the first major psychoanalytical approach of the interpretation of ethnographic facts, that leads him to transplant the universality of the Oedipus complex to the very root of the first social institutions and to pinpoint the presence of unconscious processes in their genesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2011
- Full Text
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18. Reflections on the clinical implications of symbolism.
- Author
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da Rocha Barros, Elias M. and da Rocha Barros, Elizabeth L.
- Subjects
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SYMBOLISM (Psychology) , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *THOUGHT & thinking , *SIGNS & symbols , *PATHOLOGICAL psychology , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
We start by stressing the idea that the process itself of constructing the symbol in its different components and its vicissitudes is centrally important to contemporary psychoanalysis as symbols are essential for thinking and for storing emotional experiences in our memory and for conveying our affects to others and to ourselves. Our implicit idea is that internal attacks are not directed only at the internal objects, but also include attacks on the structure or forms of the mental representations before and while they become constituted in symbols. It is by this means that destructive impulses invade the processes of symbolic construction. Symbols can lose their plasticity and thus silence the emotions and therefore cut off the patient from their meanings. Our clinical material allows us to increase our understanding of how the formal qualities of symbols operate in mental life, and how they can interfere in the capacity to work through emotional experiences. Finally, our reflections based on the analysis of a patient with difficulty in relating with the meanings of the symbols he produced will highlight the importance of the analyst's reverie along the process of formulating an interpretation. This paper is also part of a development in the study of the process of reverie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2011
- Full Text
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19. Reading Susan Isaacs: Toward a radically revised theory of thinking.
- Author
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Ogden, Thomas H.
- Subjects
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FANTASY (Psychology) , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *THOUGHT & thinking , *SUBCONSCIOUSNESS , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
The author views paper, The nature and function of phantasy , as making an important contribution to the development of a radically revised psychoanalytic theory of thinking. Perhaps Isaacs's most important contribution is the notion that phantasy is the process that creates meaning, and that phantasy is the form in which all meanings - including feelings, defense 'mechanisms,' impulses, bodily experiences, and so on - exist in unconscious mental life. The author discusses both explicit formulations offered by Isaacs as well as his own extensions of her ideas. The latter include (1) the idea that phantasying generates not only unconscious psychic content, but also constitutes the entirety of unconscious thinking; (2) the notion that transference is a form of phantasying that serves as a way of thinking for the first time (in relation to the analyst) emotional events that occurred in the past, but were too disturbing to be experienced at the time they occurred and (3) a principal aim and function of phantasy is that of fulfilling the human need to get to know and understand the truth of one's experience. The author concludes by discussing the relationship between Isaacs's concept of phantasy and Bion's concepts of alpha function and the human need for the truth, as well as the differences between Fairbairn's and Isaacs's conceptions of the nature of unconscious internal object relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2011
- Full Text
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20. 'A father is being beaten': Constructions in the analysis of some male patients.
- Author
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Perelberg, Rosine Jozef
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY of fathers , *ABUSIVE behavior , *FANTASY (Psychology) , *OEDIPUS complex , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
I will suggest that the phantasy of 'a father is being beaten' and its transformations emerges for certain male patients as a result of the work of analysis and becomes a potential appropriation of the (symbolic) father. The symbolic beating of the father takes place at the threshold between an anal-sadistic organization and the oedipal situation. The phantasy of the 'father being beaten' does not necessarily mean that it is the father who is explicitly being beaten. It is a construction derived from the free associations and dreams, in the analytic encounter, reached through the work of interpretation. Detailed material of sessions of the five times a week analysis of one of my patients will be presented. This will be contrasted with material from four other analyses of male patients where the 'father being beaten' phantasy was not achieved. The common feature in all these other configurations is a foreclosure in the relationship to the father and a lack of an internalization of the paternal function as a symbolic capacity. It is my suggestion that this absence of the father in its symbolic function is then sexualized in a fusion between life and death drives. A final contrasting example is derived from Karl Abraham's classic paper detailing the analysis of a patient where one can interpret a dream as expressing 'a father is being beaten' phantasy; however the dream's repetitive nature and its links with a current dream in the analysis points out to a lack of differentiation between the sexes and an anal-sadistic organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2011
- Full Text
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21. The life instinct.
- Author
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Abel-Hirsch, Nicola
- Subjects
- *
INSTINCT (Behavior) , *LIFE , *RESPONSE inhibition , *SEXUAL instinct , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
In psychoanalytic writing an oversimplified interpretation of Freud's concept of the life and death instincts sometimes colours the presentation. Roughly, there is an implication that the life instinct is 'good' and the death instinct 'bad'. Freud however is clear that: 'Neither of these instincts is any less essential than the other; the phenomena of life arise from the concurrent or mutually opposing action of both'(1933b, p. 209). In this paper I look in detail at the characteristics of the life instinct as conceptualized by Freud, and draw on Bion's work 'on linking' to elaborate Freud's view that binding is the life instinct's key characteristic. I suggest that there are pathological forms of both the life and death instinct if defused (separated off) from the other, and I explore a pathological variation of the life instinct in which binding is without the negation, rest, limit or end provided by the 'opposing action' of the death instinct. I consider an instance of the kind that any analyst might meet clinically, in which an inhibited patient experiences severe anxiety that life-giving connections threaten to proliferate indiscriminately and to an overwhelming intensity and size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2010
- Full Text
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22. Dante’s Comedy: Precursors of psychoanalytic technique and psyche.
- Author
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Szajnberg, Nathan Moses
- Subjects
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COMEDY , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
This paper uses a literary approach to explore what common ground exists in both psychoanalytic technique and views of the psyche, of ‘person’. While Western literature has developed various views of psyche and person over centuries, there have been crystallizing, seminal portraits, for instance Shakespeare’s perspective on what is human, some of which have endured to the present. By using Dante’s Commedia, particularly the Inferno, a 14th century poem that both integrates and revises previous models of psyche and personhood, we can examine what features of psyche, and ‘techniques’ in soul-healing psychoanalysts have inherited culturally. Discovering basic features of technique and model of psyche we share as psychoanalysts permits us to explore why we have differences in variations on technique and models of inner life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2010
- Full Text
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23. Affirming ‘That’s not psycho-analysis!’ On the value of the politically incorrect act of attempting to define the limits of our field.
- Author
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Blass, Rachel B.
- Subjects
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PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY , *HUMAN biology , *SOCIAL sciences - Abstract
This paper is concerned with the value of the act of defining the field of psychoanalysis. It examines the reasons why adopting and especially giving voice to a definition that excludes approaches considered by some analysts to be analytic is commonly regarded as unacceptable within psychoanalytic discourse. It then explains the value and advantages of putting forth exclusive definitions. The author argues that clarifying the pros and cons of such acts of definition contributes to the understanding of the nature of psychoanalysis and the possibility of dialogue between opposing understandings of it. It may also contribute to greater freedom of thought and expression which is essential to the development of psychoanalytic theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2010
- Full Text
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24. Trauma theory in Sándor Ferenczi’s writings of 1931 and 1932.
- Author
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Gutiérrez Peláez, Miguel
- Subjects
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PSYCHOANALYSIS , *TRAUMATIC psychoses , *PSYCHOLOGY , *PUBLISHING - Abstract
The author states that it is Ferenczi ’s writings of 1931 and 1932 that exhibit the most conspicuous departures from Freud ’s ideas and at the same time contain Ferenczi ’s most original contributions. The texts concerned – Confusion of tongues between adults and the child ( Ferenczi, 1932a ), the Clinical Diary ( Dupont, 1985 ), and some of the Notes and fragments ( Ferenczi, 1930–32 ), all of which were published posthumously – present valuable and original theories on trauma which are significant not only in historical terms but also because the ideas concerned are relevant to our conception of clinical psychoanalysis today. The aim of this paper is to give an account of Ferenczi ’s trauma theory as it emerges from his writings of 1931–32 and to specify the points on which he differs from Freud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2009
- Full Text
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25. The reality of the other: Dreaming of the analyst.
- Author
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Ferruta, Anna
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY , *DREAMS , *PSYCHOANALYSTS - Abstract
The author discusses the obstacles to symbolization encountered when the analyst appears in the first dream of an analysis: the reality of the other is represented through the seeming recognition of the person of the analyst, who is portrayed in undisguised form. The interpretation of this first dream gives rise to reflections on the meaning of the other’s reality in analysis: precisely this realistic representation indicates that the function of the other in the construction of the psychic world has been abolished. An analogous phenomenon is observed in the countertransference, as the analyst’s mental processes are occluded by an exclusively self-generated interpretation of the patient’s psychic world. For the analyst too, the reality of the other proves not to play a significant part in the construction of her interpretation. A ‘turning-point’ dream after five years bears witness to the power of the transforming function performed by the other throughout the analysis, by way of the representation of characters who stand for the necessary presence of a third party in the construction of a personal psychic reality. The author examines the mutual denial of the other’s otherness, as expressed by the vicissitudes of the transference and countertransference between analyst and patient, otherness being experienced as a disturbance of self-sufficient narcissistic functioning. The paper ends with an analysis of the transformations that took place in the analytic relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2009
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
26. ‘Reverberation time’ , dreaming and the capacity to dream.
- Author
-
Birksted-Breen, Dana
- Subjects
- *
DREAMS , *SUBCONSCIOUSNESS , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY , *PSYCHIC ability - Abstract
In this paper the author suggests that understanding the roots of the subjective sense of time can throw light on the disturbances in psychic time which are found in particular in the more severe pathologies. She introduces the argument that the roots of the development of the sense of time rest on a primitive sense of time she calls ‘reverberation time’. By this notion she refers to the particular quality of the earliest ‘back and forth’ internalized exchange with the mother in which the auditory dimension plays a significant part. Referring to a wide range of literature and clinical examples, the author thus suggests that the subjective sense of time is created by the reverberation between mother and infant. Disturbances in this area will be reflected in the pathological ‘arresting’ of time which is observed in the different pathologies and, in particular, around the negotiation of the depressive position and the oedipal situation. Extending this argument, the author goes on to suggest that it is the internalization of this experience of ‘reverberation’ which lies at the heart of the experience of dreaming; she considers that dreaming understood as an internal dialogue points both to its roots in the relationship to the maternal object and to its fundamental role in psychic life. The author concludes that ‘reverberation time’ is also the building block of a psychoanalysis, leading to ‘unfreezing’ psychic time and enabling the reconnection of ‘here and now’ with ‘there and then’ in a flexible way which promotes open possibilities, and that this takes place via the analyst’s reverie, or time of reverberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2009
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
27. Life and death in Freudian metapsychology: A reappraisal of the second instinctual dualism.
- Author
-
Caropreso, Fátima and Simanke, Richard Theisen
- Subjects
- *
DUALISM , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY , *PLEASURE principle (Psychology) , *METAPSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
In this paper we re-examine the second instinctual dualism hypothesis introduced by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle . We suggest that the life instinct hypothesis as something opposed to the death instinct does not seem to fit into this theory easily. On the other hand, death instinct turns out to be an internal necessity of Freudian metapsychological theory from the beginning of Freud ’s metapsychological writing. We shall argue, based on the ideas formulated in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and in later metapsychological texts, that Freud could not wholly justify the existence of an opposition and a symmetry between the two classes of instincts. Even though up to his last works Freud held on to this instinctual dualism, again and again his arguments lead to the idea that the life instincts should be regarded, ultimately, as death instincts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2008
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
28. The destruction of time in pathological narcissism.
- Author
-
Kernberg, Otto F.
- Subjects
- *
NARCISSISM , *PATHOLOGICAL psychology , *PATHOLOGY , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
This paper describes the characteristics of subjective time (in contrast to objective time), with particular reference to a specific form of pathological experience and relation to the passage of time in patients with narcissistic personality undergoing psychoanalytic treatment. The clinical manifestations and technical approach to this pathology of time experience are outlined in the context of illustrative clinical vignettes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2008
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
29. Employing multiple theories and evoking new ideas: The use of clinical material.
- Author
-
Kantrowitz, Judy L.
- Subjects
- *
NARCISSISTIC injuries , *PATIENTS , *EMOTIONAL trauma , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
In this paper, I wish to illustrate how working with a patient who had a certain kind of narcissistic difficulty led me to develop particular clinical strategies to facilitate the development of a sturdier sense of self, greater affect tolerance and modulation, the diminution of harshness of her superego, and the ownership of projected parts of herself, and to decrease paranoid ideation. I call upon concepts from various theoretical schools of psychoanalysis to make sense of the dynamic intricacies of the patient’s psychological organization as they revealed themselves in the analytic process. These conceptualizations of the patient’s difficulties and of clinical interventions to address them result in a hybrid theory of both theory and technique. What transpired in the clinical work also led me to propose an additional way to understand this kind of patient’s difficulties with accepting interpretations or any view that differed from the patient’s subjectivity. I am proposing that ‘otherness’ itself, rather than only specific conflictual aspects of the self, is disowned. It is the analyst’s empathic stance toward all that is repudiated – the specific disowned aspects of the self and ‘otherness’ itself – along with empathy for the patient’s conscious state that will enable reinternalization and ultimately healing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2008
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
30. The use of the past and the present in the clinical setting: Pasts and presents.
- Author
-
Puget, Janine
- Subjects
- *
LATIN American literature , *SUBJECTIVITY , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *TRANSFERENCE (Psychology) , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
The author provides a brief summary of Latin American literature concerning temporality. She shows that a common theme throughout all these papers is that the analytical relationship is considered to be bipersonal and symmetrical, thus demonstrating a concern for establishing the basis by which social subjectivity can be reconsidered. This literature displaces the idea of linear time from its central position and introduces other measures of time. The analytical relationship takes place not only in the past but also in a newly created present. This is the ongoing present, of what is happening now, instantaneous and without a prior history attached to it. This leads the author to suggest that there is a present to one's history and a history to one's present. She then analyses the consequences of this proposition by examining some clinical material where she attempts to pinpoint those instances in which the analyst may have reacted defensively, tending to position himself in the analysand's past instead of being able to take action in the present. Clinical material from the IJP is used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2006
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
31. Pentheus rather than Oedipus: On perversion, survival and analytic presencing.
- Author
-
OFRA ESHEL
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PARAPHILIAS , *PSYCHOLOGY , *SEXUAL dysfunction - Abstract
Following an introductory review of the main developments in the psychoanalytic thinking on perversion, the author focuses on her own understanding of perversion and its treatment, based on the psychoanalytic treatment of patients with severe sexual perversions. This paper uses the term 'autotomy' (borrowed from the fi eld of biology) to describe perversion formation as an 'autotomous' defence solution involving massive dissociative splitting in the service of psychic survival within a violent, traumatic early childhood situation; thus, a compulsively enacted 'desire for ritualised trauma' ensues. The specifi c nature of the perverse scenario embodies the specifi c experiential core quality of the traumatic situation. It is an actual repetition in the present of the imprint of a past destructive experience which is pre-arranged and stage-managed; it thus encounters haunting scenes of dread or psychic annihilation while, at the same time, controlling, sanitising and [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
32. In the shadow of a controversy: Freud and Ferenczi 1925-33.
- Author
-
ANDRÉ E. HAYNAL
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYSIS , *HOMOSEXUALITY , *PSYCHOLOGY , *THEORY (Philosophy) - Abstract
In recent literature, Freud's relation with pioneers of psychoanalysis has been reevaluated. This paper describes the evolution of the relation between Freud and Ferenczi during their most controversial period--1925-33. The consequences of this evolution on psychoanalytic theory and practice are shown. The links between events of the protagonists' lives, their refl ections about them, and the resulting theoretical elaboration (e.g. on homosexuality, female sexuality, problems of separation) are also taken into account. This work is essentially based on their recently published correspondence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
33. Analytical space and work in Russia: Some remarks on past and present.
- Author
-
IGOR M. KADYROV
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY , *PSYCHOTHERAPY , *PSYCHIATRISTS - Abstract
In this paper, the author outlines the historical-cultural picture in the former USSR and post-Soviet Russia. He looks at some facets of psychoanalysis in Russia in the years immediately before and after the October Revolution as well as in its recent history, exploring the implicit question of how the wider social context, and specifi cally totalitarian and post-totalitarian reality, has infl uenced psychoanalytic work and analytic space in this country. With the help of Sebek's concept of the totalitarian object and Britton's formulations about the triangular space, the author attempts to understand the interaction of external and internal space and to give an introduction to the problem of establishing the analytic setting as well as fi nding some new possibilities of enlarging the space for new psychoanalysts in Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
34. Freud's metapsychological speculations.
- Author
-
LEOPOLDO FULGENCIO
- Subjects
- *
METAPSYCHOLOGY , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *OCCULTISM , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
In this paper, the author seeks to analyse the nature and function of metapsychological theory in Freudian psychoanalysis. He shows that Freudian psychoanalytic theory is composed of an empirical part--the psychology of clinical facts--and a speculative part--metapsychology. Freud considers this latter part as being a speculative superstructure of value that is only heuristic, capable of being supplanted by other superstructures of the same type. The author sustains the idea that this metapsychology is the fruit of speculative method, whose foundations were elaborated by philosophers and epistemologists before Freud, including Immanuel Kant and Ernst Mach. He concludes with considerations regarding the future of metapsychological theorisation, presenting criticisms of Freudian metapsychology offered by both philosophers and psychoanalysts, and pointing to the perspective opened by Donald W. Winnicott of a psychoanalysis without metapsychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
35. What is the function of faith and trust in psychoanalysis?
- Author
-
CLAUDIO NERI
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYSIS , *FAITH , *PSYCHOLOGY , *PATHOLOGICAL psychology - Abstract
Unlike other concepts such as 'illusion', 'capacity to tolerate frustration' and 'libidinal investment', the concept of faith has not yet found a well-defined position in psychoanalytic theory. Bion focused on faith and placed it in an unusual context: scientific work. Through the Act of Faith a researcher can give some consistency to certain ideas, hunches or intuitions that may appear during observation, though he cannot represent them by existing theory. Through the Act of Faith an analyst can 'see', 'hear' and 'feel' those mental phenomena, the reality of which leaves no practising psychoanalysts in doubt, even if they cannot represent them by current formulations. In this paper, the author aims to expand Bion's proposals into the clinical and therapeutic fields. In the first part, the author examines how faith and trust overlap, and how they depart from each other, and he gives an example. Faith possesses an igniting and driving force which trust doesn't possess to the same extent. In the second part, the author looks at F as a psychic function of the analyst, which aids him in supporting a depressed and hopeless patient while waiting for the return of the patient's desire to live. In the final part, he focuses on F from the patient's point of view and studies the transformations of F that may occur during an analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
36. Transformations of early infantile experiences: A 6-month-old in psychoanalysis.
- Author
-
JOHAN NORMAN
- Subjects
- *
MOTHER-infant relationship , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY , *PATHOLOGICAL psychology - Abstract
The aim of the paper is to study the theoretical and technical tools for psychoanalysis adapted to an infantile analysand's requirements. The author presents the case of a 6-month-old boy with his mother in psychoanalytical sessions four times a week; the analysis was terminated after six weeks. After the fi rst two sessions the disturbances between the infant and the mother disappeared from everyday life but continued with increasing intensity as an emotional storm in the sessions during three weeks up to a 12-day break. During and after the break everyday life continued without disturbances. After the break the emotional storm continued in the sessions but abated and was replaced by playing. The infant's creation of a 'fort-da' game with his pacifi er indicated a transformation of the mental functioning. The analysis could then be terminated. The study of the process indicates good reasons to adapt psychoanalytical concepts to the prerequisite of the infantile personality and to use the concepts of 'unconscious', 'infantile repression', 'substitute formation', 'return of the infantile repressed', 'infantile transference', 'splitting', 'xKy', 'reverie' and 'containment' as some of the theoretical tools for understanding the infantile personality in a clinical psychoanalytical setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2004
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
37. Sándor, Gizella, Elma: A biographical journey.
- Author
-
Emanuel Berman
- Subjects
- *
INTERPERSONAL relations , *PSYCHOLOGY , *MAN-woman relationships , *PSYCHOANALYSIS - Abstract
In recent years, particularly with the publication of the Freud-Ferenczi correspondence, it has become clear that the rich theoretical dialogue between Freud and Ferenczi, a dialogue that may be seen as constitutive for psychoanalytic discourse in recent decades, was intensely intertwined with their complex personal relationship. Two women--Gizella Pálos, who eventually became Ferenczi's wife, and her daughter Elma, who was both Ferenczi's and Freud's analysand, and with whom Ferenczi fell in love--played a crucial role in shaping the Freud-Ferenczi relationship. Their own voices, however, have so far been barely heard. This paper is a preliminary report of a biographical research project which aims to complete the puzzle, by getting to know better Gizella, Elma and their family, with the help of numerous original sources, many of them unpublished till now. The emerging picture tends to confirm Ferenczi's initial view of Elma as a person of depth and integrity, rather than Freud's view of her as fundamentally disturbed; countertransference-love, it is suggested, may have facilitated fuller perception rather than clouding it. The question of the impact of Elma's 'confusion of tongues' with Ferenczi and with Freud on her subsequent life is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2004
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
38. Accessing the multitude within: A psychoanalytic perspective on the transformation of masculinity at mid-life.
- Author
-
Michael J. Diamond
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYTIC counseling , *MASCULINE identity , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
This paper reflects upon the essential components of male identity that commonly are reworked in middle age. The author argues that healthy masculine gender identity involves an ongoing, plastic process of destabilization and reconstruction at various pivotal developmental stages, particularly during middle adulthood. In essence, a man''s mature transformation of his sense of masculinity results when finite concepts of gender identity are superseded by an awareness of the complexity of one''s multiple, early and diverse gender identifications. A clinical case provides insight into how psychoanalytic treatment can contribute to a new experience of masculinity. The case illustrates how a maturing man, meeting an altered sense of identity in mid-life, relies less on gender splitting and more on reuniting previously antithetical intrapsychic elements. Why this more pluralistic, polythreaded masculinity frequently must wait until mid-life is further clarified. Specific importance is attached to the early development of male gender identity as it is founded on the boy''s unique struggles in separating from his mother. The foundation for male gender identity formation is reconsidered as the author questions the ''dis-identification'' model while explicating how the boy''s striving for narcissistic completion shapes the gendered masculine ego ideal. Classically termed ''phallicism'' is understood both to facilitate and obstruct a man''s adult development, while the concept of ''genitality'' is augmented by the postclassical notion of ''interiority''. At mid-life, ''phallic'' ego ideals (resting on omnipotence, desires for narcissistic completion and gender splitting) are transformed into more realistic, ''genital'' ego ideals (synthesizing autonomy and connection). The achievement of a mature, less sharply gendered ''masculine'' ego ideal (revitalizing the foreclosed dimensions of both the early maternal and paternal imagos) occurs as the balance of forces shifts in the direction of true genitality rather than defensive phallicism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2004
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
39. Words that touch.
- Author
-
Danielle Quinodoz
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYSIS , *INTERPERSONAL communication , *PSYCHOLOGY , *HEALTH - Abstract
In this paper the author examines her own use of language as a psychoanalyst and asks: what is the best way to help analysands to find the words to express not only what they are thinking but also what they are feeling and experiencing? In common with other psychoanalysts, the author has observed that each of us simultaneously utilises both advanced psychic mechanisms that are accessible to symbolism and more archaic ones, which are less so. However, she draws a distinction between people who are able to tolerate the perception of their own heterogeneity, even if it is sometimes a source of suffering, and those whom she terms 'heterogeneous patients'. Patients in the latter category, whose lack of internal cohesion causes them anxiety, are afraid of losing their sense of identity. The author asks how we can understand their language and how we should speak to them. She uses several clinical examples to demonstrate that 'heterogeneous patients' need to be touched with a language that does not confine itself to imparting thoughts verbally but also conveys feelings and the sensations that accompany those feelings. It is also an 'incarnated' language because the words pronounced by the analyst can awaken, or reawaken, bodily fantasies in the patient. These words may enable him to find an emotional meaning in forgotten sensory or bodily experiences, which may then become a starting point for his work of thinking and of symbolisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2003
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
40. The capacity to be an analyst: A contribution from attachment research to the study of candidate selection.
- Author
-
Janice Halpern
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY , *MEDICAL care , *HEALTH - Abstract
In this paper the author discusses how the study of candidate selection, once a topic of vibrant research, has unfortunately languished. Certain qualities were thought to characterize the successful candidate. However, they were never successfully operationalized nor empirically tested. Possibly because of this lack of empirical data, selectors today have difficulty articulating their criteria and are relying on intuition. In order to provide a more rational basis for contemporary selection, the author looks to the attachment literature. This makes sense because attachment theory shares some basic assumptions of contemporary psychoanalysis. The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) is a research tool that predicts the ability of a parent to convey attachment security. It is scored by attending to how a person speaks about his early attachment experiences. The AAI appears to tap into similar qualities to those selection researchers have sought in their candidates. Further, the scoring method of the AAI appears to be similar to the last attempt by selection researchers to operationalize them. Given these similarities, the author recommends an empirical study using the AAI to operationalize these qualities in analytic candidates. The study would test their importance for success in the training program, thus offering selectors some empirical grounding for their choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2003
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
41. Recent theoretical convergences in psychoanalysis and their epistemological importance.
- Author
-
Paulo Duarte Guimarães Filho
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYSIS , *COUNTERTRANSFERENCE (Psychology) , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
In this paper, the author starts by examining the recent occurrence of an increasing receptivity and critical exchange between different schools of psychoanalytical thought. Among its consequences have been convergences in the understanding of countertransference, especially through the hypotheses of projective identification and countertransferential enactment. The prevalence of these hypotheses points towards the fact that the community of analysts is bringing about an informal and convergent clinical research conducted by a wide and heterogeneous range of its members. The importance and epistemological relevance of this kind of 'informal clinical research' for the construction of psychoanalytical knowledge is emphasised. This process in psychoanalysis is compared with the evolution of knowledge in other scientific areas, highlighting their similarities and their differences. The author shows how Freud's 'mystic writing-pad'model can be expanded to represent the object of psychoanalytical investigation and to bring a better understanding of the reason why the hypotheses of projective identification and countertransferential enactment occupy such a central position in psychoanalysis. In addition, consideration is given to how this kind of research can help in the difficult task of finding criteria for the evaluation of different psychoanalytical concepts. Finally, the author demonstrates how, using this approach, some of the important divergences in contemporary psychoanalysis can be viewed from a new perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2003
42. The idea of a moral psychology: The impact of psychoanalysis on philosophy in Britain.
- Author
-
Jonathan Lear
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY , *BRITISH philosophy - Abstract
In this paper the author addresses the question of the significance of psychoanalysis for moral psychology via a more specific question: the impact of psychoanalysis on British philosophy in the twentieth century. He argues that there has been no influence of any real significance, and offers intellectual reasons why not. However, he also argues that there has recently emerged the possibility for a future engagement between psychoanalysis and philosophy, and he offers a history of the emergence of this possibility. In particular, the author discusses how the emerging interest within philosophy to work out a satisfying approach to naturalist moral psychology leads it to a concern with internal mental structure and, most importantly, to transformations of intrapsychic structures. He believes that this will lead philosophy to take a greater interest in psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2003
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
43. The Adult Attachment Interview and psychoanalytic outcome studies .
- Author
-
Siri Erika Gullestad
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY , *PSYCHIATRISTS , *PSYCHOTHERAPY - Abstract
During the last two decades, the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) has attracted growing interest from psychoanalysts concerned with empirical research. The paper discusses the application of Crittenden's Dynamic-Maturational AAI method for assessing the outcome of psychoanalysis. The aim is to demonstrate, through a case presentation, how therapeutic change can be expressed in the AAI. The pre- and post-treatment interviews of one patient, having completed a four-times-a-week psychoanalysis, are presented. It is demonstrated that the detailed discourse analysis of the AAI, based on transcribed tape-recorded interviews, focuses subtle formal elements of language and speech reflecting dominant patterns of affect regulation and object relating. The AAI text analysis provides possibility for coding procedural memory as conveyed by the handling of the relationship to the interviewer, incorporating the dynamic relationship between researcher and subject and thus complying with a methodological prerequisite regarded by many psychoanalysts as necessary for capturing data that are relevant to psychoanalysis. On this background, the method emerges as promising for psychoanalytic outcome studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2003
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
44. What's true and whose idea was it? .
- Author
-
Thomas H. Ogden
- Subjects
- *
TRUTH , *COMPREHENSION , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
In this paper, the author explores the idea that psychoanalysis at its core involves an effort on the part of patient and analyst to articulate what is true to an emotional experience in a form that is utilizable by the analytic pair for purposes of psychological change. Building upon the work of Bion, what is true to human emotional experience is seen as independent of the analyst's formulation of it. In this sense, we, as psychoanalysts, are not inventors of emotional truths, but participant observers and scribes. And yet, in the very act of thinking and giving verbally symbolic 'shape' to what we intuit to be true to an emotional experience, we alter that truth. This understanding of what is true underlies the analytic conception of the therapeutic action of interpretation: in interpreting, the analyst verbally symbolizes what he feels is true to the patient's unconscious experience and, in so doing, alters what is true and contributes to the creation of a potentially new experience with which the analytic pair may do psychological work. These ideas are illustrated in a detailed discussion of an analytic session. The analyst makes use of his reverie experiencefor which both and neither of the members of the analytic pair may claim authorshipin his effort to arrive at tentative understandings of what is true to the patient's unconscious emotional experience at several junctures in the session. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2003
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
45. The 'mad scientists': Psychoanalysis, dream and virtual reality .
- Author
-
Marie Leclaire
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYSIS , *COMPUTER simulation , *PSYCHOLOGY , *ILLUSION (Philosophy) - Abstract
The author explores the concept of reality-testing as a means of assessing the relationship with reality that prevails in dream and in virtual reality. Based on a model developed by Jean Laplanche, she compares these activities in detail in order to determine their respective independence from the function of reality-testing. By carefully examining the concept of hallucination in the writings of Freud and Daniel Dennett, the author seeks to pinpoint the specific modalities of interaction between perceptions, ideas, wishes and actions that converge in the 'belief' and in the 'sense of reality'. The paper's main thesis consists of the distinction that it draws between immediacy-testing and reality-testing, with the further argument that this distinction not only dissipates the conceptual vagueness that generally surrounds the latter of the two concepts but also that it promotes a more precise analysis of the function of reality in dream and in virtual reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2003
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
46. On not being able to dream .
- Author
-
Thomas H. Ogden
- Subjects
- *
SUBCONSCIOUSNESS , *PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOSES , *PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
In this paper, the author explores the phenomenon of not being able to dream (as opposed to not being able to remember one's dreams) from three different vantage points. First, from the point of view of psychoanalytic theory, he discusses Bion's idea that the work of dreaming creates the conscious and unconscious mind (and not the other way around). A person who cannot dream is unable to generate differentiable conscious and unconscious experience and, consequently, lives in a psychic state in which he is unable to differentiate waking from sleeping, dreaming from perceiving. The author then approaches the problem of the inability to dream from the perspective achieved by a literary work. He discusses a Borges fiction that creates, in a singularly artful way, the experience of not being able to dream. Finally, the author utilises the vantage point of a detailed account of a clinical experience to explore what it means not to be able to dream. He describes an initial state characterised by the patient's proliferation of unutilisable 'psychic noise' which, over a period of years, led to the analyst's experiencing 'reverie-deprivation' and brief periods of countertransference psychosis. Two analytic sessions are presented and discussed in which psychological work was done that contributed to an enhanced capacity on the part of both patient and analyst for genuine dreaming - both in sleep and in analytic reverie states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2003
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
47. Commentary.
- Author
-
Scarfone, Dominique
- Subjects
- *
PSYCHOANALYSIS , *PSYCHOLOGY ,EDITORIALS - Abstract
The author comments on the suggestion that a work of translation intervenes - and should actually be fostered - between psychoanalytic theories, models and idioms by Gail Reed in a paper presented at the International Psychoanalytical Association's Congress in Berlin, Germany, in 2007. The author believes that the suggestion is right in more than one way, provided the many levels at which translation occurs and the many meanings this notion conveys are considered.
- Published
- 2008
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
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