Search

A Fresh Look at Psychoanalytic Technique, Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis by Fred Busch At a book talk at the University of Chicago's Seminary Co-op Bookstore a few years ago, an eager student asked Professor Jonathan Lear, "Why does psychoanalysis take so long?" In conclusion, Busch's latest volume offers an inspired elaboration of Freud's clinical legacy, and demonstrates the ongoing applicability and richness of Freud's later theorizing. Busch has done a yeoman's work for Freud's contemporary reputation, illustrating his substantial, ongoing relevance to clinical praxis, and Mark Solms is also committed to this project, albeit from a different perspective. While Solms's many contributions integrating neuroscience and psychoanalysis are beyond the scope of this review, his reformulation of the structural model in "The Conscious Id" (2013) is directly relevant to Busch's argument in I A Fresh Look i . [Extracted from the article]

The papers collected in this series were originally presented at the 83rd Oral History Workshop during the American Psychoanalytic Association's meetings in February of 2021. The topic of the workshop, "The Social Voices of Psychoanalysts: The 1960s and 1970s", was chosen because over the last several years, members of the psychoanalytic community had been debating the question of the role of psychoanalysts in a deeply divided political, social and cultural environment governed by an individual that many, both analysts and non-analysts, viewed as a dangerous and unstable leader. John Martin-Joy presented Erik Erikson's "Reflections on the Dissent of Contemporary Youth" (1970), and Daniel H. Jacobs reviewed Andrew Peto's "On Crowd Violence: The Role of Archaic Superego and Body Image" (1975). Their papers were discussed by Nancy Chodorow drawing on her experiences as member of this generation as well as her training in both sociology and psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance of Spielrein's 'destruction thesis', as presented in her seminal paper, "Destruction as a Cause of Coming Into Being" (1994/1912), which includes: the element of a destructive component residing within sexuality; the resulting conflict arising between two fundamental biological drives; that of self-preservation and species-preservation, and the psychological consequences of the aforementioned conflict and its potential for paving the way for personal transformation in choosing between 'sex vs survival', is discussed with reference to sexuality, personal identity, notions of loss, and psychotherapy. Although Freud and Jung, as discussed here as well, were initially reluctant in accepting the biological considerations Spielrein was proposing for psychoanalysis, both overcame that reluctance, and her contributions to Freud's death instinct, Jung's concept of the anima, an understanding of transference and counter-transference, have come to be acknowledged and thus she is considered to be an early pioneer in the development of psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes the existence of a series of developments in Bion's later writings that were obliquely indebted to his utilization of mystical texts and esoteric techniques, which it is proposed he deployed as resources for revitalizing traditional psychoanalytic theory and practice. To support this hypothesis, evidence is adduced to support the contention that Bion was covertly inspired by Jungian ideas, which he utilized as a catalyst for developing his own theoretical and clinical innovations. In this context Jung is identified as a contemporary avatar of esoteric ideas and practices transposed into a psychoanalytic register. It is further proposed that certain elements in Bion's later writings effectively constitute a defacto 'esoteric matrix' developed out of a bricolage of mystical and esoteric texts, which he utilized as tools to augment and enhance his own lines of thinking. By way of conclusion, some tentative comparisons are made between elements of Late Antique theurgy and their corresponding analogues encountered within late Bionian psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prejudice could be defined as an irrational sense of superiority, an ironic expression of an unconscious feeling of inferiority that claims paradoxically that one human identity is worthier than another. Implicit prejudice would suggest the unconscious nature of a bias within an individual, whereas complicit prejudice would suggest a shared bias within a family, or group, or even a whole society. The two (implicit and complicit) are intimately connected, of course, and how they influence each other can be explored. The cultural disease called prejudice has been with us forever and there is no cure in sight. Psychoanalysis itself is not immune to it, and "physician heal thyself" must be considered, even as the psychoanalyst puts pen to paper. Prejudice is an expression of hatred that the science of psychoanalysis tries to study on the most granular level, so that each individual human ego can understand, possess, and embrace its barbaric animal nature without disowning, and attacking in the other, what it dares not see in itself and call its own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on American Psychoanalytic Association presentations with Ann Adelman and Stephanie Brody on psychoanalysis during Covid, the author explores the disruption to our everyday, taken-for-granted being-in-the-world of others, now supplanted by a new virtual world of presence that is nested within larger societal dislocations. With the stark foregrounding of the visual and auditory, and deprived of other sensory, bodily dimensions, comes an uncanny aura that signals shocks to our existential grounding. Exploring the uncanny similarities of our new virtual world with Hitchcock's Rear Window , Sartre's "look of the other", Lacan and Zizek on anamorphic distortions, and our omnipresent visual immersion in societal violence and fragmentation, this paper weaves connections to our contemporary existential challenges. We are penetrated by anxieties of isolation, loss, threat, and death—and we long to find our way back home within a brave, new world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text "Sabina Spielrein: to Love, to Die, to be Reborn" discussed the life and work of Sabina Spielrein (1885-1942), a Russian–Jewish early pioneer of psychoanalysis and pediatrician, an original clinician and scholar, who is still mostly remembered for her connection to Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, and not for her groundbreaking contributions to the development of Freudian theory and practice. It also provides a context to the 1913 publication of Spielrein's "Traum von 'Pater Freudenreich'" in the IPA journal Internationale Zeitschrift für ärtzliche Psychoanalyse. Sabina Spielrein analyzes the dreams of Lene, a patient sent to her by Sigmund Freud. Lene's experience as a professional opera singer lends to Spielrein's analysis, referencing works by Mozart and Wagner as well as memories of past father figures and identifying Freud himself as the archetypal dream character of "Father Freudenreich." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychoanalysis teaches that the goal of mourning is for the bereaved eventually to be able to accept the death of a loved one. It may therefore come as a surprise that what religious Jews call Mourner's Kaddish makes no reference whatsoever to death, the deceased, or the bereaved. Instead of having anything to do with the mourning process, this ancient prayer requires the bereaved to utter nothing but words of exaggerated praise for the "great name" of the "Holy One." Psychoanalytically speaking, mourning is displaced because Yahweh needs narcissistic supplies. An "inability to mourn" plagues the history of the Jews–down to the present day. Well into the twentieth century this sort of thinking was maintained in American Reform Judaism's editions of the Union Prayerbook, which encourages congregants to believe in an afterlife of the spiritual soul, which is, again a denial of the finality of death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wilfred Bion briefly discussed Chinese writing some dozen times, attributing to it various counter-intuitive features. A review of these passages suggests they were part of Bion's larger effort to evoke the challenges of bridging communication gaps with patients, where Bion held that the very means of communication itself was at issue. Chinese also helped evoke a sense of mystery in listeners who, like Bion, knew no Chinese. The main source of Bion's Sinology, an influential 1908 essay by Ernest Fenollosa, was broadly discredited by the 1950's, yet Bion propounded it in five countries through the 1970's. Psychoanalysis, not linguistics, was his subject as he used a mystifying intellectual fantasy (of a Chinese cognitive Other) to discuss incomprehension—a state of unknowing common to clinical impasse and to a philosophical mindset. That Bion induced (deliberately or not) a receptively confused mental state in listeners as he discussed written Chinese, is consistent with discerning observations of Bion's presentations by Leo Rangel and Donald Meltzer. Bion's claims about Chinese are largely false; more interestingly, they are largely incoherent, yet he used them again and again. That they have evaded critical scrutiny these fifty years may be due to the same effects they produced in performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leon Wurmser (1931–2020) produced an extensive body of work covering a wide range of theory and psychoanalytic practice. Yet, little has been written on him, perhaps because he is not easily subsumed in traditional academic categories. This essay studies one of the most challenging aspects of Wurmser's oeuvre, namely his polyglot invocation of culture as a means for the deeper expression of psychoanalytic understanding. I explore the logic to Wurmser's exposition of literature, philosophy, and other arts, arguing it goes beyond commonplaces about relationships between psychoanalysis and culture. In fact, Wurmser presents a call to the psychoanalytic world, and, indirectly, lay reader, that multi-lingual "torches" are more than embellishments, but necessary spurs to attentiveness and attunement. Making this case invites the integration of Wurmser into further discussion of the place of humanistic learning in psychoanalytically informed introspection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I am interested in meaning and how to determine and interpret it in both cultural anthropology and clinical psychoanalysis. In this essay I explore differences and similarities between the project of ascertaining meaning in the two different practices, using the semiotic scheme provided by Charles Morris. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The life and career of Bernard Paris, the foremost scholar of Third Force Psychology and its applications to literary study, are reviewed. Paris is praised for the openness with which he writes about his personal struggles and for the depth of his insights into literature. In his autobiographical writings, Paris shows how his reading of Karen Horney, in conjunction with his experience of psychotherapy, allowed him to replace his allegiance to George Eliot's self-effacing Religion of Humanity with a sounder value system. The utility of Paris's focus on the tension between rhetoric and mimesis in literary works, as well as his use of the concepts of the implied author and the authorial personality, is underscored. The legitimacy of analyzing the childhoods of literary characters and of considering the author as a historical person is defended as an enhancement of Paris's synchronic approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correspondence with Fliess initiates in Freud an evolutionary process, equivalent to that which will produce, when it is invented, the psychoanalytic situation. The first letters set up the themes that will be the subject of Freud's self-analysis, particularly in the dream of "Irma's injection." These letters finally evoke the circumstances of the break between Freud and Fliess and the unconscious causes of their disagreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Somewhere behind the dramatic power that gathers around psychological themes in Shakespeare's plays traceable to a mother's role in a child's experience is the lived mother–child bond of Mary Arden Shakespeare and her oldest son. I will construct a model of Mary's contribution that I think is consistent with what we know of the circumstances of her life, with what we have learned from psychoanalysis about mother–child bonds, and with the shape of Shakespeare's artistic development as I understand it. Mary Arden Shakespeare, born to a strong Catholic family, was pregnant and gave birth to William after the deaths in infancy of two daughters, as the most deadly plague of the 16th century made its way toward Stratford, and as Catholic beliefs and ritual traditions were forcefully set aside by Queen Elizabeth's protestant reformation. The crisis circumstances of Shakespeare's earliest maternal experience, the later prolonged crisis of his father's disgrace, and the plausible impacts of these crises on the mother-child bond, suggest a range of infantile and childhood experience consistent with, and reimagined in, the development of Shakespeare's drama. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]