Psychoanalysis, science, and art: aesthetics in the making of a psychoanalyst.

PubMed

Frayze-Pereira, João A

2007-04-01

This paper critically examines the relationship of psychoanalysis to science and art. Its point of departure is Michael Rustin's theorizing. Specifically, in considering the possibility of a psychoanalyst's having an aesthetic orientation, the author analyses: 1) the difficulty of there being any connection between psychoanalysis and science because science's necessarily presupposed subject-object dichotomy is incompatible with transference, which, beginning with Freud, is basic to psychoanalysis; 2) the complex relationship between psychoanalysis and aesthetics using Maurice Merleau-Ponty's philosophical perspective as well as Luigi Pareyson's theory of aesthetics; 3) the Kantian foundations of the psychoanalytic notion of art as the 'containing form of subjective experience'; 4) intersubjectivity, without which clinical practice would not be possible, especially considering matters of identity, difference, the body, and of sensory experience such as 'expressive form'; 5) the relationship of psychoanalysis and art, keeping in mind their possible convergence and divergence as well as some psychoanalysts' conceptual commitment to classicism and the need for contact with art in a psychoanalyst's mind set.

The Berlin tradition in Chicago: Franz Alexander and the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Schmidt, Erika S

2010-01-01

Freud considered Franz Alexander, the first graduate of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute and an assistant in the Berlin Polyclinic, to be "one of our strongest hopes for the future." Alexander went on to become the first director of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis in 1932 and modeled some of the Chicago Institute's mission on his Berlin experiences. He was also a researcher in psychosomatic medicine, a prolific writer about psychoanalysis and prominent in psychoanalytic organizations. As he proposed modifications in psychoanalytic technique, he became a controversial figure, especially in the elaboration of his ideas about brief therapy and the corrective emotional experience. This paper puts Alexander's achievements in historical context, draws connections between the Berlin and Chicago Institutes and suggests that, despite his quarrels with traditional psychoanalysis, Alexander's legacy may be in his attitude towards psychoanalysis, characterized by a commitment to scientific study, a willingness to experiment, and a conviction about the role of psychoanalysis within the larger culture.

Treatment resistance and psychodynamic psychiatry: concepts psychiatry needs from psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Plakun, Eric

2012-06-01

Over the last 30 years psychiatry and psychoanalysis have moved in substantially divergent directions. Psychiatry has become rich in methodology but conceptually limited, with a drift toward biological reductionism. Psychoanalysis has remained relatively limited in methodology, but conceptually rich. The rich methodology of psychiatry has led to major contributions in discovering gene by environment interactions, the importance of early adversity, and to recognition of the serious problem posed by treatment resistance. However, psychiatry's biologically reductionistic conceptual focus interferes with the development of a nuanced clinical perspective based on emerging knowledge that might help more treatment resistant patients become treatment responders. This article argues that recognition of the problem of treatment resistance in psychiatry creates a need for it to reconnect with the conceptual richness of psychoanalysis in order to improve patient care. Psychodynamic psychiatry is defined as the relevant intersection of psychiatry and psychoanalysis where this reconnection can occur. I will suggest selected aspects of psychoanalysis that are especially relevant to psychiatry in improving outcomes in work with treatment resistant patients.

Obesity and Psychoanalysis.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rand, Colleen S.; Stunkard, Albert J.

This report describes a collaborative study undertaken by 72 psychoanalysts in an effort to (1) collect systematic data about obese patients in psychoanalysis and (2) assess the effect of psychoanalysis in the treatment of obesity. A total of 84 obese and 63 normal weight patients was studied. Each analyst completed a detailed questionnaire on his…

Circumcising the Void: (de)contextualising in Complex Lacanian Psychoanalysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

de Grave, Dieter

In contemporary psychoanalysis, the true origin of the science seems to be put aside to get it in vogue with the rest of the scientific framework and psychoanalytical thinking. Although this is a defendable position from which to approach psychoanalysis, it robs it of its core. In this paper, we take the hard-core themes of psychoanalysis such as death and sex, to heart and show how they can be linked to the other sciences, such as the theory of complexity, without censoring or rephrasing the concepts or the language itself.

Therapy and ideology: psychoanalysis and its vicissitudes in pre-state Israel (including some hitherto unpublished letters by Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein).

PubMed

Rolnik, Eran J

2010-12-01

Few chapters in the historiography of psychoanalysis are as densely packed with trans-cultural, ideological, institutional, and moral issues as the coming of psychoanalysis to Jewish Palestine--a geopolitical space which bears some of the deepest scars of twentieth-century European, and in particular German, history. From the historical as well as the critical perspective, this article reconstructs the intricate connections between migration, separation and loss, continuity and new beginning which resonate in the formative years of psychoanalysis in pre-state Israel.

A Fearsome Trap: The Will to Know, the Obligation to Confess, and the Freudian Subject of Desire

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ambrosio, John

2010-01-01

The author examines the relation between Michel Foucault's corpus and Freudian psychoanalysis. He argues that Foucault had a complex and changing relationship to psychoanalysis for two primary reasons: his own psychopathology, personal experience, and expressed desire, and due to an ineluctable contradiction at the heart of psychoanalysis itself.…

Factors Affecting the Understanding and Use of Psychoanalysis in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Taiwan.

PubMed

Busiol, Diego

2015-06-01

The majority of Western psychotherapies are known and practiced in Hong Kong, while psychoanalysis still has little resonance. A recent study finds that psychoanalysis is perceived neither as ineffective nor as necessarily in conflict with Hong Kong Chinese values. Nevertheless, Hong Kong Chinese culture influences how psychoanalysis is received and understood, when compared to Mainland China and Taiwan. It is argued that a better reception in the latter two was possible because of different social and historical backgrounds, different clinical backgrounds of those who receive training, and the more active role of Western psychoanalysts. © 2015 by the American Psychoanalytic Association.

'Freud's speculations in ethnology': A reflection on anthropology's encounter with psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Rivera, Patrick S

2017-06-01

In the early 20th century, many analysts - Freud and Ernest Jones in particular - were confident that cultural anthropologists would demonstrate the universal nature of the Oedipus complex and other unconscious phenomena. Collaboration between the two disciplines, however, was undermined by a series of controversies surrounding the relationship between psychology and culture. This paper re-examines the three episodes that framed anthropology's early encounter with psychoanalysis, emphasizing the important works and their critical reception. Freud's Totem and Taboo began the interdisciplinary dialogue, but it was Bronislaw Malinowski's embrace of psychoanalysis - a development anticipated through a close reading of his personal diaries - that marked a turning point in relations between the two disciplines. Malinowski argued that an avuncular (rather than an Oedipal) complex existed in the Trobriand Islands. Ernest Jones' critical dismissal of this theory alienated Malinowski from psychoanalysis and ended ethnographers' serious exploration of Freudian thought. A subsequent ethnographic movement, 'culture and personality,' was erroneously seen by many anthropologists as a product of Freudian theory. When 'culture and personality' was abandoned, anthropologists believed that psychoanalysis had been discredited as well - a narrative that still informs the historiography of the discipline and its rejection of psychoanalytical theory. Copyright © 2017 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

The aim of psychoanalysis in theory and in practice.

PubMed

Steiner, J

1996-12-01

The aims of psychoanalysis are reviewed in terms of theories of mental function and structure. The theory of mental conflict remains the central theory of classical psychoanalysis but has been deepened and supplemented by newer theories. In particular the theory of projective identification has radically altered our view of mental structure and function and has allowed us to reformulate the aims of psychoanalysis in terms of the re-acquisition and re-integration of projected parts of the self. The central role of mourning in this process is discussed, and some of the obstacles to progress are reviewed. It is suggested that oedipal resentments may play a central role in the creation of impasse.

Psychoanalysis--on its way down a dead-end street? A concerned commentary.

PubMed

Zepf, Siegfried

2010-01-01

The author discusses the problems when psychoanalysis not only neglects socio-critical issues, diversifies its concepts and sets about to define their common ground with the help of brain research findings and/or of infant observation, but also ignores the implications of attempts to legitimate its scientific status by verifying the outcome of its treatments via nomological and/or qualitative study designs. It is argued that if we reduce psychoanalysis to a mere psychotherapeutic measure we displace the factors essential to neurotic disorders into the blind spot of our field of vision, thus rendering psychoanalysis to be a pseudoscience based on appearances alone. Conceptual clarity, it is argued, cannot be gained from the findings of infant observation or those of brain research. Neither can psychoanalytic treatments be investigated in these manners as long as our current understanding of technical concepts remains highly contradictory. In the author's view present-day psychoanalysis gambles Freud's inheritance away and with it, probably, its own future.

PSYCHOANALYSIS IN CHINA: AN ESSAY ON THE RECENT LITERATURE IN ENGLISH.

PubMed

Scharff, David E

2016-10-01

Using extensive quotation, the author reviews the introduction and current state of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy in China from the vantage point of recent publications in English. Psychoanalysis was briefly introduced to China before the Communist era, then forbidden, and has experienced an accelerated reintroduction since the late 1980s. The author briefly summarizes the cultural and historical background of China relevant to the introduction of psychoanalysis, the traumatic history of China, and the deep structure of thought and philosophical differences from Western culture that challenge a simple imposition of psychoanalytic ideas and practice, and some psychological effects of rapid cultural change throughout China. Training programs in China, the general enthusiasm for analysis among the Chinese, and a number of notable contributions by Western and Chinese authors are discussed. Also surveyed are the use of distance technology for training and treatment, the personal experience of Chinese senior and junior colleagues, and ongoing challenges to the continuing growth of psychoanalysis and analytic psychotherapy in China. © 2016 The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Inc.

The Neuropsychoanalytic Approach: Using Neuroscience as the Basic Science of Psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Johnson, Brian; Flores Mosri, Daniela

2016-01-01

Neuroscience was the basic science behind Freud's psychoanalytic theory and technique. He worked as a neurologist for 20 years before being aware that a new approach to understand complex diseases, namely the hysterias, was needed. Solms coined the term neuropsychoanalysis to affirm that neuroscience still belongs in psychoanalysis. The neuropsychoanalytic field has continued Freud's original ideas as stated in 1895. Developments in psychoanalysis that have been created or revised by the neuropsychoanalysis movement include pain/relatedness/opioids, drive, structural model, dreams, cathexis, and dynamic unconscious. Neuroscience has contributed to the development of new psychoanalytic theory, such as Bazan's (2011) description of anxiety driven by unconscious intentions or "phantoms." Results of adopting the "dual aspect monism" approach of idiographic psychoanalytic clinical observation combined with nomothetic investigation of related human phenomena include clarification and revision of theory, restoration of the scientific base of psychoanalysis, and improvement of clinical treatments. By imbricating psychoanalytic thinking with neuroscience, psychoanalysts are also positioned to make contributions to neuroscience research. Freud's original Project for a Scientific Psychology/Psychology for Neurologists can be carried forward in a way that moves psychoanalysis into the twenty-first century as a core contemporary science (Kandel, 1999). Neuroscience as the basic science of psychoanalysis both improves the field, and enhances its scientific and cultural status.

[Psychoanalysis is a precious thread, fragile but precious": Vittorio Benussi and the Inventory of psychoanalysis (1926-1927)].

PubMed

Trizzino, Antonino

2008-01-01

The lessons of psychoanalysis held by Vittorio Benussi in Padua between 1926 and 1927 reveal the other aspect of his interests: that which regards psychoanalysis and its method. These unpublished lessons, which we are printing here for the first time, are preserved in the historical Archives of Italian psychology of the Università di Milano-Bicocca. I have assigned to them the title of Inventario di psicanalisi (Inventory of Psychoanalysis) for their character, unprecedented in the Italy of the 1920s, of a first record of the lexical and theoretical world of psychoanalysis. Since they were not intended for publication, the lessons were written without the urgency of ordering facts and interpretations, and without resorting to the rhetoric of linguistic conventions. A reading of them makes evident how the Benussian attempt to integrate experimental psychology and analytic method is still unresolved. In these pages everything is shown in an incipient stage, in a contracted and intricate prose; while things are complicated by the hermetism of the style, the terminological oscillations, the theoretical density; and yet, these unpublished notes should be read like a palimpsest in which each word has been written, erased, and rewritten, in a work that remains unique in twentieth-century European psychology.

The Neuropsychoanalytic Approach: Using Neuroscience as the Basic Science of Psychoanalysis

PubMed Central

Johnson, Brian; Flores Mosri, Daniela

2016-01-01

Neuroscience was the basic science behind Freud's psychoanalytic theory and technique. He worked as a neurologist for 20 years before being aware that a new approach to understand complex diseases, namely the hysterias, was needed. Solms coined the term neuropsychoanalysis to affirm that neuroscience still belongs in psychoanalysis. The neuropsychoanalytic field has continued Freud's original ideas as stated in 1895. Developments in psychoanalysis that have been created or revised by the neuropsychoanalysis movement include pain/relatedness/opioids, drive, structural model, dreams, cathexis, and dynamic unconscious. Neuroscience has contributed to the development of new psychoanalytic theory, such as Bazan's (2011) description of anxiety driven by unconscious intentions or “phantoms.” Results of adopting the “dual aspect monism” approach of idiographic psychoanalytic clinical observation combined with nomothetic investigation of related human phenomena include clarification and revision of theory, restoration of the scientific base of psychoanalysis, and improvement of clinical treatments. By imbricating psychoanalytic thinking with neuroscience, psychoanalysts are also positioned to make contributions to neuroscience research. Freud's original Project for a Scientific Psychology/Psychology for Neurologists can be carried forward in a way that moves psychoanalysis into the twenty-first century as a core contemporary science (Kandel, 1999). Neuroscience as the basic science of psychoanalysis both improves the field, and enhances its scientific and cultural status. PMID:27790160

A cost-utility analysis of psychoanalysis versus psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

PubMed

Berghout, Caspar C; Zevalkink, Jolien; Hakkaart-van Roijen, Leona

2010-01-01

Despite the considerable and growing body of research about the clinical effectiveness of long-term psychoanalytic treatment, relatively little attention has been paid to economic evaluations, particularly with reference to the broader range of societal effects. In this cost-utility study, we examined the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of psychoanalysis versus psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Incremental costs and effects were estimated by means of cross-sectional measurements in a cohort design (psychoanalysis, n = 78; psychoanalytic psychotherapy, n = 104). Quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) were estimated for each treatment strategy using the SF-6D. Total costs were calculated from a societal perspective (treatment costs plus other societal costs) and discounted at 4 percent. Psychoanalysis was more costly than psychoanalytic psychotherapy, but also more effective from a health-related quality of life perspective. The ICER--that is, the extra costs to gain one additional QALY by delivering psychoanalysis instead of psychoanalytic psychotherapy--was estimated at 52,384 euros per QALY gained. Our findings show that the cost-utility ratio of psychoanalysis relative to psychoanalytic psychotherapy is within an acceptable range. More research is needed to find out whether cost-utility ratios vary with different types of patients. We also encourage cost-utility analyses comparing psychoanalytic treatment to other forms of (long-term) treatment.

Linking neuroscience and psychoanalysis from a developmental perspective: why and how?

PubMed

Ouss-Ryngaert, Lisa; Golse, Bernard

2010-12-01

This paper aims to develop the rational to support why and how we should link neuroscience and psychoanalysis. Many of these points are derived from child development and child psychiatry. Neuroscience investigates developmental questions in a different way than psychoanalysis, while psychoanalysis itself has shifted towards new developmental paradigms. The rapprochement between neuroscience and psychoanalysis allows a new understanding of some concepts, including embodiment of mind, consciousness and attachment. The "double reading" paradigm allows a better understanding of symptomatic configurations. Linking neuroscience and psychoanalysis may improve treatments and result in new experimental neuroscientific paradigms involving changing the research object, changing the state of the research object, and investigating the structural changes in the brain following psychotherapy. The last aim is to create an epistemology of the articulation between the theoretical frameworks through phenomenology, "complementarism" and neuropsychoanalysis. We argue that it is necessary for clinicians to be aware of the advancements in each field. This is not only an epistemological question; we assume that new findings in neuroscience will change the way psychoanalysts think and approach treatment of their patients. We hope the present research will contribute to change the way that neuroscientists think and will provide new options to their set of experimental paradigms. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Dream interpretation, affect, and the theory of neuronal group selection: Freud, Winnicott, Bion, and Modell.

PubMed

Shields, Walker

2006-12-01

The author uses a dream specimen as interpreted during psychoanalysis to illustrate Modell's hypothesis that Edelman's theory of neuronal group selection (TNGS) may provide a valuable neurobiological model for Freud's dynamic unconscious, imaginative processes in the mind, the retranscription of memory in psychoanalysis, and intersubjective processes in the analytic relationship. He draws parallels between the interpretation of the dream material with keen attention to affect-laden meanings in the evolving analytic relationship in the domain of psychoanalysis and the principles of Edelman's TNGS in the domain of neurobiology. The author notes how this correlation may underscore the importance of dream interpretation in psychoanalysis. He also suggests areas for further investigation in both realms based on study of their interplay.

The place of psychoanalysis in the history of the Jews.

PubMed

Zaretsky, Eli

2006-01-01

Situating psychoanalysis in the context of Jewish history, this paper takes up Freud's famous 1930 question: what is left in Judaism after one has abandoned faith in God, the Hebrew language and nationalism, and his answer: a great deal, perhaps the very essence, but an essence that we do not know. On the one hand, it argues that "not knowing" connects psychoanalysis to Judaism's ancestral preoccupation with God, a preoccupation different from that of the more philosophical Greek, Latin and Christian traditions of theology. On the other hand, "not knowing" connects psychoanalysis to a post-Enlightenment conception of the person (i.e. of personal life), as opposed to the more abstract notion of the subject associated with Kant.

One hundred years after Sigmund Freud's lectures in America: towards an integration of psychoanalytic theories and techniques within psychiatry.

PubMed

Hoffman, Leon

2010-12-01

The impact of Sigmund Freud's lectures in America in 1909 is discussed. Some of the roots of psychoanalysis and their contemporary relevance are addressed: neurological ideas, the discussions of the sexologists, and the degeneration theories at the turn of the twentieth century. Factors which led to the dominance of psychoanalysis in psychiatry included, in particular, its arguments against the hopelessness of degeneracy theories;yet,by isolating itself from mainstream academic psychiatry and psychology,organized psychoanalysis itself contributed to its own subsequent marginalization. In order to re-integrate itself with mainstream psychiatry, psychoanalysis needs to appreciate the importance of systematic demonstrations of the therapeutic power of psychodynamic/psychoanalytic concepts and techniques when caring for individuals.

The partnership of psychoanalysis and psychiatry in the treatment of psychosis and borderline states: its evolution in North America.

PubMed

Lothane, Zvi

2011-01-01

The history of psychiatry is about two hundred years old and that of psychoanalysis more than a hundred, with an important anniversary of the latter in 2011. Freud renewed and humanized psychiatry by enriching its static descriptive method with the new dynamic and interpretive discoveries of psychoanalysis. Freud's innovations, while developed in Europe, were integrated into psychiatry briefly by the Swiss School but mainly in the United States. After many years of fruitful collaboration psychiatry and psychoanalysis seemed to part company in the U.S. in the last few decades. However, the tradition of combining psychiatric care with dynamic principles is still considered valid in the treatment of psychoses and severe personality disorders.

The complex nature of exposure to early childhood trauma in the psychoanalysis of a child.

PubMed

Chertoff, Judith M

2009-12-01

When an intense transference relationship evolves during psychoanalysis, sensory and emotional experiences associated with trauma can arise spontaneously. Detailed clinical process material is presented from the psychoanalysis of a six-year-old boy whose severe trauma at age two and a half contributed to his conflicts about aggression and gender identity, impeding his development. A series of analytic sessions during which he spontaneously enacted fantasies, feelings, and defenses associated with the trauma in the immediacy of the transference relationship are used to illustrate how psychoanalysis provided him the safety to rework this overwhelming experience and its aftermath, thereby restoring progressive development. It is hypothesized that while work with trauma was only one feature in an otherwise complex treatment, psychoanalysis provided a sophisticated form of reexposure to developmentally primitive emotions, images, and fantasies that this child had not consciously connected with the trauma. Associated early childhood conflicts pertaining to aggression, separation, and gender identity, warded off with rigid defenses, had become intertwined with the trauma and its aftermath, rendering them otherwise inaccessible.

Toward an epistemology of clinical psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Ahumada, J L

1997-01-01

Epistemology emerges from the study of the ways knowledge is gained in the different fields of scientific endeavor. Current polemics on the nature of psychoanalytic knowledge involve counterposed misconceptions of the nature of mind. On one side clinical psychoanalysis is under siege from philosophical "hard science" stalwarts who, upholding as the unitary model of scientific knowledge of Galilean model of science built around the "well-behaved" variables of mechanics and cosmology, argue clinical psychoanalysis does not meet empirical criteria for the validation of its claims. On the other side, its empirical character is renounced by hermeneuticists who, agreeing with "hard science" advocates on what science is, dismiss the animal nature of human beings and hold that clinical psychoanalysis is not an empirical science but a "human" interpretive one. Taking Adolf Grünbaum's critique as its referent, this paper examines how, by ignoring the differences between "exact" and observational science, the "hard science" demand for well-behaved variables misconstrues the nature of events in the realm of mind. Criteria for an epistemology fit for the facts of clinical psychoanalysis as an empirical, observational science of mind are then proposed.

Further evidence for the case against neuropsychoanalysis: How Yovell, Solms, and Fotopoulou's response to our critique confirms the irrelevance and harmfulness to psychoanalysis of the contemporary neuroscientific trend.

PubMed

Blass, Rachel B; Carmeli, Zvi

2015-12-01

In their paper "The case for neuropsychoanalysis" Yovell, Solms, and Fotopoulou (2015) respond to our critique of neuropsychoanalysis (Blass & Carmeli, 2007), setting forth evidence and arguments which, they claim, demonstrate why neuroscience is relevant and important for psychoanalysis and hence why dialogue between the fields is necessary. In the present paper we carefully examine their evidence and arguments and demonstrate how and why their claim is completely mistaken. In fact, Yovell, Solms, and Fotopoulou's paper only confirms our position on the irrelevance and harmfulness to psychoanalysis of the contemporary neuroscientific trend. We show how this trend perverts the essential nature of psychoanalysis and of how it is practiced. The clinical impact and its detrimental nature is highlighted by discussion of clinical material presented by Yovell et al (2015). In the light of this we argue that the debate over neuropsychoanalysis should be of interest to all psychoanalysts, not only those concerned with biology or interdisciplinary dialogue. Copyright © 2016 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

[The "return of the repressed": the role of sexuality in the reception of psychoanalysis in Chilean medical circles, 1910-1940].

PubMed

Honorato, Mariano Ruperthuz

2015-12-01

This article discusses the reception of psychoanalysis in Chilean medical circles from the decade of 1910 onwards. The findings make it possible to reconstruct how Freudianism was initially rejected by the incipient local psychiatric milieu, accusing it of being pansexualist. In the 1930s, this situation changed, and a reassessment of psychoanalysis was made at a local level, describing it precisely as a branch of knowledge specialized in sexuality. The highlighting of the "sublimation" mechanism, esteemed for its ability to transmute the danger of the "id" into culturally accepted products, is a milestone that marked this "return of the repressed" of the sexual factor of psychoanalysis in Chile. The possible social, political and economic variables that influenced this phenomenon are duly discussed.

Popularise and/or be damned: psychoanalysis and film at the crossroads in 1925.

PubMed

Ries, P

1995-08-01

Geheimnisse einer Seele'--the only film in which film producers and psychoanalysts have openly collaborated to bring psychoanalysis into the public domain--was an immediate success with the general public and reviewers and is still considered a milestone in the early history of the cinema. By contrast it caused disagreement within the psychoanalytic community, which put personal and professional relationships to a test, which Freud came to feel that 'our Circle has not passed well', and which has left the film as a millstone round the neck of psychoanalysis and its practitioners. By drawing on new documentary material and placing the 'Film Affair' in its wider context, the author aims to highlight the significance and complexity of this episode as an important event in the early history of psychoanalysis.

The Early History of Psychoanalysis in San Francisco.

PubMed

Benveniste, Daniel

2006-01-01

The early history of psychoanalysis in San Francisco begins in 1918 and ends in 1953. During those 35 years the San Francisco Bay Area witnessed the awakening of interest in psychoanalysis, the arrival of the European émigré analysts and the emergence of individuals and groups engaging in extraordinarily creative work and doing so in an ecumenical spirit and with a social commitment. This article provides an overview of this illustrious history and the people who participated in it.

Dante, psychoanalysis, and the (erotic) meaning of meaning.

PubMed

Hatcher, E R

1990-01-01

The author observes a resemblance between (1) the "polysemous" technique of imputing meaning to reality practiced in medieval biblical studies and in Dante's writing and (2) the technique of interpretation in contemporary psychoanalysis. She explores the roots of this resemblance in the development of intellectual history and provides examples of polysemous meanings in Dante's Divine Comedy, which is in part an autobiographical journey of self-reflection and self-realization (like psychoanalysis). She then suggests some implications of this resemblance for contemporary psychiatry.

Experiential psychoanalysis and the engagement of selves: Ferenczi's vision and the psychoanalytic present.

PubMed

Miller, I S

1991-01-01

Recent interest in the life and work of Sandor Ferenczi reconsiders his pivotal role within the development of clinical psychoanalysis (Nemes, 1988; Thompson, 1988). Ferenczi's contributions have been linked to therapeutic orientations that include Rogerian humanistic psychology; Kohutian self psychology; the object relational approach of D. W. Winnicott; and interpersonal psychoanalysis (Katz, 1988; Lum, 1988; Rachman, 1988). Among his analysands were such divergent psychoanalytic pioneers as Ernest Jones, Melanie Klein, Michael Balint, Sandor Rado, and Clara Thompson.

The canary in the mind: on the fate of dreams in psychoanalysis and in contemporary culture.

PubMed

Lippmann, Paul

2006-06-01

Dreams have been central in the birth and evolution of psychoanalysis. This paper explores the remarkable story of the relationship between dreams and psychoanalysis as a modern version of the long history of dreams in most healing traditions. But psychoanalysis seems to have turned away from dreams as central inspiration in a way parallel to the general culture's turn away from dreams and the reality of inner life. Yet modern postindustrial culture is transfixed by a version of "dream life" in ways just beginning to be understood (e.g., in the transformation of ancient interest in the inner screen to the external screen). Working with dreams in psychoanalytic psychotherapy was a creative and revolutionary act for our forebears. It is even more so today, in ways that are discussed in this paper.

Psychoanalysis in Crisis: The Danger of Ideology.

PubMed

Richards, Arnold

2015-06-01

Psychoanalysis is in crisis. Its prestige with the public has plummeted, as well as its economic viability and even its population. There are fewer analytic candidates and fewer patients, less insurance coverage, less presence in departments of psychiatry, and less prestige among the traditional academic disciplines. Analysts are getting older, and there are fewer and fewer young ones to replace us. A once-fascinated public now distrusts analysts as unscientific, deluded, authoritarian, reactionary, arrogant, sexist, and/or passé. This paper examines some causes of this decline within psychoanalysis itself as well as possibilities for reform. The status of psychoanalysis as a science is in question, although Freud considered it as an empirical science, and modified his theories to fit new facts. In reality, however, transmission of psychoanalytic knowledge in the training analyst system has led to its perpetuation as an ideology, rather than a science, and to the formation of oligarchies in the structure of psychoanalytic organizations and some institutes. Psychoanalysis is nothing if not an exploratory endeavor, and it thrives in an open environment. Psychoanalytic theory becomes ideology when exploration, testing, and challenge are suppressed. There are many analysts for whom psychoanalysis is neither ideology or theology, but an intellectually stimulating and emotionally rewarding human and humane endeavor, where convention is enlivened by creative challenge, and innovation is disciplined by tradition. In that form, it is too valuable to lose. It is time for us to step back and reclaim our citizenship in the larger intellectual world of curiosity, creativity, and freedom.

Psychoanalysis and social cognitive neuroscience: a new framework for a dialogue.

PubMed

Georgieff, Nicolas

2011-12-01

The fields of psychoanalysis and neuroscience use different methods of description, analysis and comprehension of reality, and because each is based on a different methodology, each approach constructs a different representation of reality. Thus, psychoanalysis could contribute to a general psychology involving neuroscience to the extent that a "psychoanalytical psychology" (the theory of mental functioning that is extrapolated from psychoanalytical practice) defines natural objects of study (mind functions) for a multidisciplinary approach. However, the so called "naturalisation" of psychoanalytical concepts (metapsychology) does not imply the reduction of these concepts to biology; rather, it suggests a search for compatibility between psychoanalytical concepts and neuroscientific description. Such compatibility would mean the search for common objects that could be described from either a psychoanalytic or a neuroscientific point of view. We suggest that inter-subjectivity, empathy or "co-thinking" processes, from early development to the psychoanalytic relationship or the interaction between the patient and the analyst, could be such a common object for cognitive social neuroscience and psychoanalysis. Together, neuroscience and psychoanalysis could then contribute to a multidisciplinary approach of psychic inter- or co-activity. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[From inside to outside? Blind alleys in the discussion of psychoanalysis and society].

PubMed

Reiche, R

1995-03-01

The attempt first instituted by Freud to use the instruments of psychoanalysis to improve understanding not only of the individual but also of society as a whole has a long tradition, particularly in Germany. Reviewing the last thirty years of discourse on the range of the applicability of psychoanalysis in this context, the author comes to the conclusion that the fruits of this discussion are negligible. Reiche distinguishes five major lines of discourse to illustrate this failure to establish the relevance of a psychoanalytic approach to illuminating the "out-side" world: the first is one of assimilation and desiccation, reference here being to psychoanalytic culture critique; the second a pathological reaction of collective grieving bound up with the Critical Theory; the third the aggressive rebuffs levelled at psychoanalytic insights by systems theory; the fourth a line of devaluation and usurpation as represented by post-structuralism and deconstructionism. In the fifth and final strand of psychoanalytic application discourse discernible in the theory of communicative action, the author discerns a tentative new rapprochement between sociology and psychoanalysis. The author's final conclusion is that psychoanalysis is suitable for the perspective on the inside world, while the outside world is beyond the scope of psychoanalytic theory.

Historical Collections in Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mylenki, Mary

1982-01-01

Describes historical collections of major psychoanalytic libraries--American Psychiatric Association, Boston Psychoanalytic Society, Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, Insititue of Living, Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society, Menninger Foundation, New York State Psychiatric Institute, Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic…

Hypnotherapy: A Combined Approach Using Psychotherapy and Behavior Modification.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goldberg, Bruce

1987-01-01

Discusses use of hypnosis in traditional psychoanalysis, compares use of hypnosis in behavior modification therapy versus psychoanalysis, and presents a hypno-behavioral model which combines both approaches using hypnosis as the medium. (Author/NB)

Sexual addiction: insights from psychoanalysis and functional neuroimaging

PubMed Central

Estellon, Vincent; Mouras, Harold

2012-01-01

Sexual motivation is a fundamental behavior in human. For a long time, this behavior has been somehow ignored from psychological and neuroscientific research. In this article – reflecting the collaboration of a clinical psychologist and a neuroscientist – we show that in the current period, sexual affiliation is one of the most promising affiliation context to articulate a debate, a dialog and convergence points between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Recent data on healthy sexual behavior and its compulsive variant are discussed under the prism of neuroscience and psychoanalysis. PMID:24693342

An Italian peculiarity? Psychoanalysis, modernization and the sociology of consumption in 1960s Italy.

PubMed

Pasqualini, Mauro

2017-11-01

Psychoanalysis experienced a remarkable boom in 1960s Italy. One of the areas where psychoanalytic theory disseminated was the world of marketing and the sociology of consumption. Based on the case of the sociologist Francesco Alberoni, we can examine the impact of the theories of Melanie Klein for understanding the behavior of consumers. Similarly, Alberoni's work shows the concerns and uncertainties on the social modernization of Italy, and also raises questions on the specificities of the growing importance of psychoanalysis in Italy in the 1960s.

Lenin, sexuality and psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Chemouni, Jacquy

2004-01-01

While Trotsky's relatively favourable adherence to Freudian ideas is well documented, little is known about Lenin's attitude toward psychoanalysis. The author's extensive research shows that, far from being the follower of Freudian ideas depicted by some historians, the father of the October Revolution rejected psychoanalytic theory and, in particular, the perspective he considered "idealistic" and the importance attributed to sexuality. Lenin's prudish personality, the influence of his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya and their ideology resulted in the exclusion of psychoanalysis from the construction of the New Man that Marxism was planning to undertake in Russia.

On psychobiology in psychoanalysis - salivary cortisol and secretory IgA as psychoanalytic process parameters

PubMed Central

Euler, Sebastian; Schimpf, Heinrich; Hennig, Jürgen; Brosig, Burkhard

2005-01-01

This study investigates the psychobiological impact of psychoanalysis in its four-hour setting. During a period of five weeks, 20 subsequent hours of psychoanalysis were evaluated, involving two patients and their analysts. Before and after each session, saliva samples were taken and analysed for cortisol (sCortisol) and secretory immunoglobuline A (sIgA). Four time-series (n=80 observations) resulted and were evaluated by "Pooled Time Series Analysis" (PTSA) for significant level changes and setting-mediated rhythms. Over all sessions, sCortisol levels were reduced and sIgA secretion augmented parallel to the analytic work. In one analytic dyad a significant rhythm within the four-hour setting was observed with an increase of sCortisol in sessions 2 and 3 of the week. Psychoanalysis may, therefore, have some psychobiological impact on patients and analysts alike and may modulate immunological and endocrinological processes. PMID:19742067

[Psychoanalysis and Psychiatrie-Enquete: expert interviews and document analysis].

PubMed

Söhner, Felicitas Petra; Fangerau, Heiner; Becker, Thomas

2017-12-01

Background The purpose of this paper is to analyse the perception of the role of psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts in the coming about of the Psychiatrie-Enquete in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). Methods We performed a qualitative content analysis of expert interviews with persons involved in the Enquete (or witnessing the events as mental health professionals active at the time), a selective literature review and an analysis of documents on the Enquete process. Results Expert interviews, relevant literature and documents point to a role of psychoanalysis in the Enquete process. Psychoanalysts were considered to have been effective in the run-up to the Enquete and the work of the commission. Conclusion Psychoanalysis and a small number of psychoanalysts were perceived as being relevant in the overall process of the Psychiatrie-Enquete in West Germany. Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

Magical arts: the poetics of play.

PubMed

Jacobus, Mary

2005-01-01

The paper argues that links between play and magic in British Object Relations point to the persistence of aesthetic concerns within psychoanalysis. Magical thinking is present in British Object Relations psychoanalysis from its beginnings in Klein's play technique and early aesthetic writings, surfacing elsewhere in Susan Isaac's educational experiments and her theories of metaphor. Marion Milner's clinical account of the overlapping areas of illusion and symbol-formation in a boy's war-games link the primitive rituals of Frazer's "The Golden Bough" with her patient's creativity. In Winnicott's concept of the transitional object, the theory of play achieves its apotheosis as a diffusive theory of culture or "private madness," and as a paradigm for psychoanalysis itself. Tracing the non-positivistic, mystical, and poetical elements in British Object Relations underlines the extent to which aesthetics is not just entangled with psychoanalysis, but constitutive of it in its mid-twentieth century manifestations.

The origins and destinies of the idea of thirdness in contemporary psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Coelho Junior, Nelson Ernesto

2016-08-01

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. Copyright © 2015 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Freud's Jewish identity and psychoanalysis as a science.

PubMed

Richards, Arnold D

2014-12-01

Ludwik Fleck, the Polish philosopher of science, maintained that scientific discovery is influenced by social, political, historical, psychological, and personal factors. The determinants of Freud's Jewish identity are examined from this Fleckian perspective, as is the impact of that complex identity on his creation of psychoanalysis as a science. Three strands contributing to his Jewish identity are identified and explored: his commitment to the ideal of Bildung, the anti-Semitism of the times, and his "godlessness." Finally, the question is addressed of what it means that psychoanalysis was founded by a Jew. For Freud, psychoanalysis was a kind of liberation philosophy, an attempt to break free of his ethnic and religious inheritance. Yet it represented at the same time his ineradicable relationship with that inheritance. It encapsulated both the ambivalence of his Jewish identity and the creativity of his efforts to resolve it. © 2014 by the American Psychoanalytic Association.

The bridge between two worlds: psychoanalysis and fMRI.

PubMed

Marini, Stefano; Di Tizio, Laura; Dezi, Sira; Armuzzi, Silvia; Pelaccia, Simona; Valchera, Alessandro; Sepede, Gianna; Girinelli, Gabriella; De Berardis, Domenico; Martinotti, Giovanni; Gambi, Francesco; Di Giannantonio, Massimo

2016-02-01

In recent years, a connection between psychoanalysis and neuroscience has been sought. The meeting point between these two branches is represented by neuropsychoanalysis. The goal of the relationship between psychoanalysis and neuroscience is to test psychoanalytic hypotheses in the human brain, using a scientific method. A literature search was conducted on May 2015. PubMed and Scopus databases were used to find studies for the inclusion in the systematic review. Common results of the studies investigated are represented by a reduction, a modulation, or a normalization of the activation patterns found after the psychoanalytic therapy. New findings in the possible and useful relationship between psychoanalysis and neuroscience could change the modalities of relating to patients for psychoanalysts and the way in which neuroscientists plan their research. Researchers should keep in mind that in any scientific research that has to do with people, neuroscience and a scientific method cannot avoid subjective interpretation.

The body as constitutive element phenomenology and psychoanalysis on our view of ourselves and others.

PubMed

Monjaraz Fuentes, Paulina; Rojas Hernández, María Del Carmen; Santasilia, Stefano; Monjaraz Fuentes, Fernanda

2017-12-01

The aim of this manuscript is to highlight that from the phenomenology and psychoanalysis point of view, the meaning of the notion of the body is different from the medical biologicist discourse. In psychoanalysis, the body is an erogenized body. It is constituted as an object for another self. Similarly, in phenomenology, the body is an own body in first instance. It is the body of a self, rather than a living body and a material body. Both positions enable us to understand how this conceptualization of the body is essential in any human field. Especially in the clinic, the position of the subject before the other will lead to a specific form of intervention. From this understanding of the human body, both phenomenology and psychoanalysis confirm that the biologicist understanding of the body, presumed by all psychological and medical practices, is insufficient.

Critique and cure: a dream of uniting psychoanalysis and philosophy.

PubMed

Webster, Jamieson

2013-06-01

Critical theory, whose aim was to historicize philosophy through integrating it with the social sciences, turned to psychoanalysis to find its way through an accounting of philosophy after the Second World War. Over 50 years after this initial project, the rift between philosophy and psychoanalysis has never been greater. If Jacques Lacan could be considered one of the few psychoanalysts to maintain and foster links to philosophical thought in the latter half of the 20th century, his work has sadly remained marginal in the clinical field throughout America and Europe. Both critical theory and Lacan remain skeptical of the direction taken by psychoanalysis after Freud. Reflecting on the history of these two disciplines, as well as through an examination of Theodor Adorno's posthumously published dream journal, critique and cure emerge as two dialectically intertwined themes that gain momentum in the dream of the unification of the philosophical and psychoanalytic projects.

Partners in treatment: relational psychoanalysis and harm reduction therapy.

PubMed

Rothschild, Debra

2010-02-01

A relational psychoanalytic harm reduction orientation to the treatment of substance misusers is presented and illustrated with a clinical example. Both harm reduction therapy and relational psychoanalysis rely on a two-person model in which the therapist and client are collaborators in the treatment. In both, substance use is seen in the context of the user's internal psychodynamics and external environment, and there is an emphasis on treating the person as a whole individual whose substance use is one aspect of life, rather than focusing on the substance use itself as was often done in the past. Historically, psychoanalysis and substance abuse treatment were so different from each other that their paths rarely crossed. The introduction of harm reduction therapy to substance abuse and the relational orientation in psychoanalysis have brought the fields closer together such that the valuable contributions that each can make to the other can now be appreciated. (c) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The dual impact of Freud's death and Freud's death instinct theory on the history of psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Bergmann, Martin S

2011-10-01

Since I have ranged over a rather large territory in this presentation I will summarize my main points. I claim that the very way Freud created psychoanalysis made it impossible for it to continue to grow and develop as a unified movement after his death. Unlike other sciences, psychoanalysis had no way of differentiating its basic findings from what is yet to be discovered. I then reintroduced my differentiation between heretics, modifiers, and extenders, claiming that after Freud’s death there was less opportunity for heretics and more space for modifiers. I assigned a crucial role to the fact that Anna Freud did not succeed in expelling the Kleinians. In the second part of the paper I presented the view of those who made use of Freud’s death instinct theory and those who opposed it. Many analysts preferred to ignore dealing with it rather than state their opposition. My presentation was biased in favor of those who chose to work with the death instinct as a clinical reality,highlighting Ferenczi’s construction. I made the claim, so far as I know never made before, that Freud’s death instinct theory had a traumatic impact on the psychoanalytic movement because it greatly limited the belief in the curative power of our therapeutic work. After his announcement of the dual-instinct theory Freud withdrew his interest in psychoanalysis as a method of cure. By doing so he inflicted a narcissistic wound on psychoanalysis. I believe that the creativity of psychoanalysis will improve if we face this difficult chapter in our history.

[Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic oriented psychotherapy: differences and similarities].

PubMed

Rössler-Schülein, Hemma; Löffler-Stastka, Henriette

2013-01-01

Psychoanalysis as well as Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy derived from Psychoanalysis are efficient methods offered by the Austrian health care system in the treatment for anxiety, depression, personality disorders, neurotic and somatoform disorders. In both methods similar basic treatment techniques are applied. Therefore differentiation between both treatment options often is made pragmatically by the frequency of sessions or the use of the couch and seems to be vague in the light of empirical studies. This overview focuses a potential differentiation-the objective and subjective dimensions of the indication process. Concerning the latter it is to investigate, if reflective functioning and ego-integration can be enhanced in the patient during the interaction process between patient and psychoanalyst. Empirical data underline the necessity to investigate to which extent externalizing defence processes are used and to integrate such factors into the decision and indication process. Differing treatment aims display another possibility to differentiate psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy aims for example more at circumscribed problem-foci, the capability for self-reflexion is one of the most prominent treatment effects in psychoanalysis that results in on-going symptom reduction and resilience. The most prominent differentiation lies in the utilization of technical neutrality. Within Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy neutrality has sometimes to be suspended in order to stop severe acting out. Empirical evidence is given concerning the differentiation between psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, that treatment efficacy is not correlated with the duration of the treatment, but with the frequency of sessions. Results give support to the assumption that the dosage of specific and appropriate psychoanalytic techniques facilitates sustained therapeutic change.

Instinct as interactive structure: Freud's psychoanalysis in historical and metatheoretical perspective.

PubMed

Jovanović, Gordana

2005-01-01

When Freud began formulating the basic postulates of psychoanalytic theory the concept of instinct was in widespread use. There are very different models of conceptualizing instincts in psychoanalysis: reflex arc, representation, interaction, subject and finally a regressive structure. Freud revised the traditional concept of instinct and his models formed a peculiar metatheoretical history of psychoanalysis. Defining human nature by reference to its determining instinctive essence and commitment to the ideal of natural science led Freud to a naturalistic fallacy. Yet at the same time the hermeneutics of instinct theory reveal a socio-historical meaning of naturalism.

Psychoanalysis and the community mental health movement.

PubMed

Croghan, L M

1975-01-01

Psychoanalysis and CMHM were once enemies. Psychoanalysis has made noteworthy advances toward the CMHM idea both in technique changes and in community involvement. It is possible that CMHM may finally reject all psychoanalytic contribution and face its future without a theory. If that takes place, the CMHM some day in its future may turn a corner and find itself face to face with the lonely, individual man, conscious of his past and fearful of the unexplained anxiety within him. It is then that the CMHM will find itself once again studying the works of Herbert Marcuse, Erik Erikson, Sigmund Freud, and the psychoanalytic world.

Martin Bergmann: The Last 21 Years.

PubMed

Feiner, Kenneth

2015-06-01

Martin Bergmann has contributed to our understanding of psychoanalysis for more than sixty years. A review of his contributions to psychoanalysis was completed in 1994, when Bergmann was 83 years old. Consideration of his remarkable productivity in the last twenty years clearly demonstrates the need to update this review. In these years, he extended his writing on the history of psychoanalysis, added to his contributions to an understanding of love, advanced ideas about psychoanalytic technique, and wrote two books on Shakespeare, as well as doing work in anthropology, sociology, literature, history, and religious studies. This paper reviews that work.

Dr Jekels' health resort in Bystra near Bielsko: the first treatment centre which adopted psychoanalysis in Poland.

PubMed

Dembińska, Edyta; Rutkowski, Krzysztof

2017-08-29

The paper sets out to present the history of a health resort and hydrotherapy centre in Bystra near Bielsko from 1898 to 1912. At that time Dr Ludwik Jekels, one of the Polish psychoanalysis forerunners, was the owner of the centre. Initially, Dr Jekels was very enthusiastic about climatic treatment and hydrotherapy, until 1905 when he got interested in psychoanalysis. Shortly afterwards he became its staunch supporter and adopted it as a curative procedure in his health resort. That was the first documented case of psychoanalysis use in Poland. This paper presents the development of the therapeutic centre in Bystra and the characteristic of typical patients receiving treatment there. It also briefly reports on medical histories of the conditions of patients who received psychoanalytic treatment. The paper also focuses on another significant area of Dr Jekels'contact with Sigmund Freud ranging from an accidental meeting in Vienna around 1898, through the summer of 1910 when Jekels looked after Freud's daughters in his spa, to 1912 which saw Jekels'receiving psychoanalytic treatment from Freud. It also presents a detailed analysis of hypotheses why Jekels decided to sell the health resort and move to Vienna. Finally, the significance of Jekels'currently underrated therapeutic work for the development of the Polish psychoanalysis is reiterated.

Why did Sigmund Freud refuse to see Pierre Janet? Origins of psychoanalysis: Janet, Freud or both?

PubMed

Fitzgerald, Michael

2017-09-01

Pierre Janet and Joseph Breuer were the true originators of psychoanalysis. Freud greatly elaborated on their findings. Freud initially admitted these facts but denied them in later life. Janet discovered the concept transference before Freud.

Problems of Value Measurement for a Theory of Induction and Decisions

DTIC Science & Technology

1956-01-01

interest in actions and goals: add to these operations research, social psychology, consumer research, psychoanalysis , law, to 53 54 THIRD BERKELEY...anthropology, psychoanalysis , psy- chology, ethics, industrial relations, consumer research [3]. We have no method of evalu- ating the results obtained

The ecological dimension of psychoanalysis and the concept of inner sustainability.

PubMed

Ley, Wolfgang

2008-12-01

An "ecological-cum-psychoanalytic" perspective elucidates the innate kinship between modern, critical ecological thinking and the assumptions on the nature of the human animal underlying Freudian psychoanalysis. "Critical ecology" engages with the issues posed by a meaningful, "sustainable" design for the relationship between nature and culture; psychoanalysis investigates and engages therapeutically with human self-relations in the field of tension existing between the culture-imprinted and culture-productive "ego," on the one hand, and the independent, naturally established motivational sides of the psyche subsumed by Freud under the term "id" on the other. Against an ecological-cum-psychoanalytic backdrop, modern developments in object relations theory and self psychology can be understood in a way that places them in a conceptual framework corresponding to Freud's central concern with the balance or integration-successful or unsuccessful-of the motivational (interactional) strivings of "internal nature" and the requirements posed by human "self-production" via culture. Psychoanalysis and critical ecology, it is argued, stand to profit from one another.

Privatization and Psychoanalysis: The Impact of Neo-liberalism on Freud's Tool of Social Justice.

PubMed

Graybow, Scott; Eighmey, Jennifer; Fader, Sharon

2015-01-01

The paper outlines the historical links between psychoanalysis, social progressivism and the political Left. It then details the process by which those links were undone such that today psychoanalysis and mental health services in general are alienated from their radical roots. The paper posits this process of alienation is continued today via the neo-liberal phenomenon of privatization, which has profound implications for clients seeking mental health treatment especially those of minority status or who are economically oppressed. Today, access to effective mental health treatment is linked to one's economic status, and people of all class backgrounds seem less likely to receive mental health interventions that promote awareness of the oppressive political and economic forces they face. The paper includes two clinical vignettes illustrating the inequalities that are inherent to the privatized mental healthcare system. The paper calls for a return to the ideals and practices of the progressive psychoanalysis that defined the inter-war era of the last century.

[On the way to the secret of Freudian psychoanalysis. From Emmy von N. to "Totem and taboo"].

PubMed

Rand, N; Torok, M

1993-09-01

The authors approach the work of Sigmund Freud by regarding the theory and history of psychoanalysis in terms of a feature that they have in common, namely secrecy. This proclivity towards secrecy, which stands in contradiction to the psychoanalytic principle of total frankness and demystification, is illustrated by a number of examples-the suggestion made by Jones to Ferenczi and Freud in 1911 for the "formation of a secret committee to supervise the development of psychoanalysis"; the censorship practised by Jones in connection with the use of the Freud Archives; and the case history of Emmy von N., where Freud assumes the role of depositary for the memories communicated by his patient under hypnosis and observes strict secrecy about them. The authors give a particularly detailed account of the evidence of the "secret of psychoanalysis" to be traced in Totem and Taboo, which they elucidate with the aid of a reading of Shakespeare's Tempest.

Letter from Stockholm.

PubMed

Johansson, Per Magnus

2015-04-01

Some of the ideas of Sigmund Freud were preceded in a literary form by the Swedish writer August Strindberg in the late 19th century. Psychoanalysis itself was introduced in Sweden about a decade into the 20th century by two rivalling pioneers, the doctors Emanuel af Geijerstam and Poul Bjerre. After a slow start, the Danish-Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society and the Finnish-Swedish Psychoanalytical Society were formed in 1934 in Stockholm. The same year, Ericastiftelsen [The Erica Foundation], a psychotherapeutic clinic for children, was founded by Hanna Bratt. Five years later, in 1939, also in Stockholm, the organization that was to become St. Lukasstiftelsen [The Saint Luke's Foundation] was founded. It has been, and still is, an association that has trained psychodynamic psychotherapists, with a focus on existential, religious and philosophical questions. Today, St. Luke's tries to be up-dated from an academic standpoint. During the Second World War, several important psychoanalysts came to Sweden, for example René de Monchy, Lajos and Edith Székely, and Stefi Pedersen. Ola Andersson's doctoral dissertation ("Studies in the Prehistory of Psychoanalysis", 1962) and the historian Gunnar Brandell's essay ("Freud, a Man of His Century", 1961) have had an international impact. In the last two decades, an authorized and carefully edited translation of Freud's collected works has been published by Natur och Kultur, and the history of psychoanalysis in Sweden has been written at the University of Gothenburg. As a result of a recent interest in the work of Jacques Lacan, and French psychoanalysis, philosophy and literature, the journal Psykoanalytisk Tid/Skrift was founded in 2002, in Gothenburg. Since 2011 the journal is called Arche. The largest organized group of psychoanalysts in Sweden today is the Swedish Psychoanalytical Association (SPAF), which has around 225 members. Since 2008, it no longer has the right to license psychotherapists, a situation which reflects the position of psychoanalysis outside the mainstream of psychiatric health services and academic psychology. Despite the criticism of Freud's thinking from biologically and cognitively oriented theoretical standpoints, the interest in psychoanalysis endures. Copyright © 2015 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

[Is it still the "royal way"? The dream as a junction of neurobiology and psychoanalysis].

PubMed

Simon, Mária

2011-01-01

Some decades ago the dream seemed to be randomly generated by brain stem mechanisms in the cortical and subcortical neuronal networks. However, most recent empirical data, studies on brain lesions and functional neuroimaging results have refuted this theory. Several data support that motivation pathways, memory systems, especially implicit, emotional memory play an important role in dream formation. This essay reviews how the results of neurobiology and cognitive psychology can be fitted into the theoretical frameworks and clinical practice of the psychoanalysis. The main aim is to demonstrate that results of neurobiology and empirical observations of psychoanalysis are complementary rather than contradictory.

Ethical Presence in the Psychoanalytic Encounter and the Role of Apology.

PubMed

Weiss, Micha

2018-03-01

This paper discusses aspects of ethical presence in psychoanalysis, and the possible use of apology in the therapeutic process. The author roughly delineates two periods in the history of psychoanalysis regarding the ethical dimension-the early classical period which is influenced by Freud's ethics of honesty, which gradually evolves towards the more recent intersubjectively-influenced period, necessitating the assimilation of an ethics of relationships. It is suggested that explicit theorizing of the ethical dimension into psychoanalysis offers added value to its effectiveness, and a framework is presented for combining relational, intersubjectively informed ethical dialogue, with contributions of classical technique, enriching the therapeutic potential of psychoanalytic work.

The edge of chaos: A nonlinear view of psychoanalytic technique.

PubMed

Galatzer-Levy, Robert M

2016-04-01

The field of nonlinear dynamics (or chaos theory) provides ways to expand concepts of psychoanalytic process that have implications for the technique of psychoanalysis. This paper describes how concepts of "the edge of chaos," emergence, attractors, and coupled oscillators can help shape analytic technique resulting in an approach to doing analysis which is at the same time freer and more firmly based in an enlarged understanding of the ways in which psychoanalysis works than some current recommendation about technique. Illustrations from a lengthy analysis of an analysand with obsessive-compulsive disorder show this approach in action. Copyright © 2016 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Luella Cole, Sidney Pressey, and Educational Psychoanalysis, 1921-1931

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Petrina, Stephen

2004-01-01

In addition to contemporary boundaries and identities of educational psychology is the historiography of progressive education. Historians have too readily played into the hands of practitioners, accepting antagonisms between Freud and Thorndike, psychoanalysis and behaviorism, liberty and discipline. In its final analysis, this article embraces…

Pichon Rivière's psychoanalytic contributions: Some comparisons with object relations and modern developments in psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Scharff, David E; Losso, Roberto; Setton, Lea

2017-02-01

Enrique Pichon Rivière's work, fundamental to Latin American and European psychoanalytic development, is largely unknown in English-language psychoanalysis. Pichon's central contribution, the link (el vinculo), describes relational bonds in all dimensions. People are born into, live in, and relate through links. Psychic structure is built of links that then influence external interaction. Links, expressed in mind, body and external action, continuously join internal and external worlds. Links have two axes: vertical axis links connect generations through unconscious transgenerational transmission; horizontal axis links connect persons to life partners, family, community and society. For Pichon, treatment constitutes a spiral process through which interpretation disrupts existent structures, promoting new emergent organizations at successively deeper levels. Psychic and link structures evolve over time unless repetitive cycles stunt growth. For Pichon, transference is constituted in the here-and-now-with-me because of the analytic link. Pichon also undertook family and group psychoanalysis where individuals become spokespersons for unconscious links and family secrets. He developed operative groups that apply psychoanalysis to both analytic and non-analytic tasks. After describing Pichon's major contributions, the paper compares Pichon Rivière's ideas with those of Klein, Fairbairn, Bion, Winnicott and Bowlby, and contemporary writers including Ogden, Kaës, and Ferro whose works echo Pichon Rivière's thought. Copyright © 2016 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

A historical perspective on the collaboration between psychoanalysis and neuroscience.

PubMed

Sauvagnat, François; Wiss, Matthias; Clément, Sandra

2010-12-01

The aim of this article is to present and discuss the connections between psychoanalysis and neuroscience from a historical viewpoint. We start by examining how Sigmund Freud can be viewed as a pioneer in the interaction between these two fields. Freud was himself a neurologist and had maintained an interest in biology as he developed the key concepts of psychoanalysis. His ideas regarding psychosomatics are described. We will also explore how the concept of drive is essential to the connection between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Then, we describe several key actors and historical events and characters at the interface of these two fields, namely Sándor Radó Lawrence S. Kubie and Mc Culloch, the debates that took place during the Macy conferences, as well as the positions of Jacques Lacan, George L. Engel, and Eric Kandel. Finally, we present a synthesis of the main fields in which the connections between psychoanalysis and neuroscience are already fruitful, and those where they should be developed: the classification of mental diseases, the link between the scientific and psychic dimensions, therapeutics, the organization of the body, intersubjectivity, the subjective division and ambivalence, as well as transferential effects like such as the placebo and nocebo effects. In the conclusion, we advocate several strategic alliances and underscore the complementarity between rigorous scientific experimentation and the individualized psychoanalytic approach. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Treatment manuals and the advancement of psychoanalytic knowledge: The Treatment Manual of the Tavistock Adult Depression Study.

PubMed

Taylor, David

2015-06-01

This paper has two aims: first, it seeks to understand the absence of treatment manuals in psychoanalysis. Secondly, it summarizes the treatment manual of the Tavistock Adult Depression Study, which describes the form of psychoanalytic psychotherapy whose effectiveness has been evaluated both in the Tavistock Adult Depression Study (TADS); and in the German Die Langzeittherapie bei chronischen Depressionen (LAC) Studie. Throughout the history of psychoanalysis, opinions about treatment manuals, empirical research and their antecedents have been deeply divided. After tracing the often polarized unfolding of these matters, the paper proposes that emotional and cognitive difficulties as well as scientific ones underpin their persistence. It is suggested that greater familiarity with them may lead to better combinations of outcome research and psychoanalysis: for example, the Tavistock manual seeks to match one account of the objects, aims, values, spirit and methods of psychoanalysis (as well as of connected forms of psychoanalytic psychotherapy); and also to meet what is required of treatment manuals by random allocation controlled trials. It has been a crucial element in the above studies of the outcome of long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapies with chronically depressed patients. After describing the Tavistock Manual, the paper concludes suggesting that, if appropriately constructed, treatment manuals can make a contribution to the advancement of specifically psychoanalytic knowledge. Copyright © 2015 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Interfaces. Linguistics and Psychoanalysis Newsletter, No. 6.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Di Pietro, Robert, Ed.

This newsletter reports on phenomena at the intersection of linguistics and psychoanalysis and psychiatry. This issue consists of the following articles: (1) an editorial entitled "Idioms, How We Love/Have You!", on the possible reasons behind the use of idioms; (2) "The Last Renaissance (Language in a Drug Rehabilitation Community)," by Harold…

Why did Freud do it? A puzzling episode in the history of psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Zitrin, Arthur

2012-12-01

This article is about the Freud-Frink-Brill relationship, certain events in the history of psychoanalysis in the United States in the years 1919 to 1925, and some speculative explanations for these events. It is not a critique of psychoanalytic theory or practice.

Psychoanalytic education in the twenty-first century: a syllabus for all seasons.

PubMed

Jacobs, Carl

2011-10-01

I am suggesting that psychoanalytic training facilities restructure their curriculum to include opposing views, in an effort to avoid the inevitable disintegration of the field at large. Without a sense of requirement for any particular viewpoint, I have suggested the model of class modules, usually based around three differing positions, be applied in as many classes as possible. This method enhances the very nature of psychoanalysis while it extends the educational provenance of each separate institute, and specifically each teacher of psychoanalysis. In so doing, candidates across the board will feel and think in a more collegial manner, and may find that learning psychoanalysis is to learn something new and exciting.

Psychoanalysis in modern mental health practice.

PubMed

Yakeley, Jessica

2018-05-01

Like any discipline, psychoanalysis has evolved considerably since its inception by Freud over a century ago, and a multitude of different psychoanalytic traditions and schools of theory and practice now exist. However, some of Freud's original ideas, such as the dynamic unconscious, a developmental approach, defence mechanisms, and transference and countertransference remain essential tenets of psychoanalytic thinking to this day. This Review outlines several areas within modern mental health practice in which contemporary adaptations and applications of these psychoanalytic concepts might offer helpful insights and improvements in patient care and management, and concludes with an overview of evidence-based psychoanalytically informed treatments and the links between psychoanalysis, attachment research, and neuroscience. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

On Whether to Convert from a Rhetorical to a Psychoanalytic Pedagogy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kraemer, Don J.

2010-01-01

Like psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic pedagogy is a particular way of paying attention, a way of paying attention that deflects attention away from other pedagogies' means and goals. Looking for what psychoanalysis deems the "root cause" of writing problems--intrapsychic conflict--foregrounds that kind of conflict, relegating to the background other…

At the Intersection between the Subject and the Political: A Contribution to an Ongoing Discussion

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pais, Alexandre

2016-01-01

The issue of subjectivity has recently occasioned a lively discussion in this journal opposing socioculturalism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. By confronting Luis Radford's cultural theory with Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis, Tony Brown sought to show the limitations of socioculturalism. This article takes advantage of that discussion to develop a…

Freudian Notion of Psychoanalysis: Its Implications in Contemporary Teaching Practices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Awan, Muhammad Afzal

2017-01-01

The author has engaged in a critical review of Frued's notion of psychoanalysis and its vitality in teaching. Illustrating from Freud's own assertions and through the interpretations of the later critics, the author has pointed out certain noticeable pitfalls and, or incapacities of contemporary teaching practices. The forces of aggression and sex…

The first interview: Anxieties and research on initiating psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Reith, Bernard

2015-06-01

A qualitative clinical study of preliminary interviews by the Working Party on Initiating Psychoanalysis (WPIP) of the European Psychoanalytic Federation suggests that the unconscious dynamics in first interviews are extraordinarily powerful and that they give rise to deep unconscious anxieties in both patient and analyst, with the corresponding defences against them. Furthermore, the group dynamics observed in the clinical workshops and in the research team doing the study suggest that both the anxieties and the defences are conveyed to these groups in the form of unelaborated 'session residues' provoking renewed anxieties and defences in them. These findings contribute to our understanding of what goes on in first interviews, but also raise interesting questions about the psychoanalytic research process in psychoanalysis and how confrontation with the unknown is dealt with in that context. Rather than as a means to avoid anxiety, method in clinical research can be seen as a way to help the research group to contain its reactions and to tolerate them until the group finds its way to further elaboration. These points are illustrated with a clinical case drawn from the study. Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

MEDITATIVE PSYCHOANALYSIS.

PubMed

Rubin, Jeffrey B

2016-03-01

Psychoanalysis and meditation not only compensate for the other's blind spots, but also, when practiced together, can provide a richer experience than either discipline pursued alone. After considering the way meditation cultivates heightened attentiveness, refines sensory clarity, lessens self-criticism, and increases affect tolerance, thereby deepening psychoanalytic listening, I'll examine how psychoanalytic perspectives on unconscious communication and meaning illuminate and transform the nearsightedness of meditation, aiding therapists and clients in understanding troubling thoughts, feelings, and behavior. This helps therapists deepen their capacity to help those people with whom they work. The paper also attempts to illuminate how the therapeutic relationship, conceived of in a freer and more empathic way--as the vehicle for both validating a person's experience and providing opportunities for new forms of relatedness and self-transformation--provides a crucible in which old and dysfunctional ways of caring for oneself and relating to other people emerge and new patterns of self-care and intimacy can be established. In the concluding section, I will delineate meditative psychoanalysis, my own integration of meditation and psychoanalysis. Clinical material will illustrate my theoretical reflections.

Psychoanalysis as poetry.

PubMed

Vivona, Jeanine M

2013-12-01

Like psychoanalysis, poetry is possible because of the nature of verbal language, particularly its potentials to evoke the sensations of lived experience. These potentials are vestiges of the personal relational context in which language is learned, without which there would be no poetry and no psychoanalysis. Such a view of language infuses psychoanalytic writings on poetry, yet has not been fully elaborated. To further that elaboration, a poem by Billy Collins is presented to illustrate the sensorial and imagistic potentials of words, after which the interpersonal processes of language development are explored in an attempt to elucidate the original nature of words as imbued with personal meaning, embodied resonance, and emotion. This view of language and the verbal form allows a fuller understanding of the therapeutic processes of speech and conversation at the heart of psychoanalysis, including the relational potentials of speech between present individuals, which are beyond the reach of poetry. In one sense, the work of the analyst is to create language that mobilizes the experiential, memorial, and relational potentials of words, and in so doing to make a poet out of the patient so that she too can create such language.

The translational metaphor in psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Kirshner, Lewis

2015-02-01

The translational metaphor in psychoanalysis refers to the traditional method of interpreting or restating the meaning of verbal and behavioral acts of a patient in other, presumably more accurate terms that specify the forces and conflicts underlying symptoms. The analyst translates the clinical phenomenology to explain its true meaning and origin. This model of analytic process has been challenged from different vantage points by authors presenting alternative conceptions of therapeutic action. Although the temptation to find and make interpretations of clinical material is difficult to resist, behaving in this way places the analyst in the position of a teacher or diagnostician, seeking a specific etiology, which has not proven fruitful. Despite its historical appeal, I argue that the translational model is a misleading and anachronistic version of what actually occurs in psychoanalysis. I emphasize instead the capacity of analysis to promote the emergence of new forms of representation, or figuration, from the unconscious, using the work of Lacan, Laplanche, and Modell to exemplify this reformulation, and provide clinical illustrations of how it looks in practice. Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Ferenczi and Groddeck: simpatico. Roots of a paradigm shift in psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Poster, Mark F

2009-09-01

Sigmund Freud introduced Sandor Ferenczi to Georg Groddeck in 1917. The warm personal friendship that these two men shared for the rest of their lives was a breeding ground for many of their respective theoretical and clinical contributions. 1923 was a schismatic year in the history of psychoanalysis. Freud's appropriation of Groddeck's Das Es and its adaptation to Heinroth's tri-partite model (Freud, 1923; Poster, 1997) marked the beginning of Ego psychology. Almost simultaneously there appeared Groddeck's Book of the It (Groddeck, 1923), together with Rank and Ferenczi's The Development of Psychoanalysis (Rank and Ferenczi, 1924), and Ferenczi's Thalassa (Ferenczi, 1924). These three seminal publications set the stage for a paradigm shift (Hoffer, 2008; Rudnytsky, 2002). They were the forerunner of later developments in object relations, self-psychology, interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis. Taken together, the contributions of Groddeck and Ferenczi and Rank reinvigorated psychoanalysis, Freud's baby, with "the constructive aspect" that Groddeck told Freud had been lost in Freud's re-definition of Das Es (Groddeck, 1977, p. 13). Each of these pioneers stimulated the thinking of the others. Always an independent thinker, Groddeck was welcomed into the psychoanalytic circle by both Freud and Ferenczi. Suffering under the "crushing paternal(ism)" of Freud, Ferenczi was supported by Groddeck to carry out his own clinical experiments. Preoccupied with his own legacy and intolerant of dissent, Freud was able to maintain cordial contact with these two creative spirits and allow them to modify his own ideas.

What Is Protest? Feminism, Psychoanalysis and Methods of Social Change

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hansen, Marie

2016-01-01

Despite the fact that feminism has recognised psychoanalysis to be a theory with direct application to the understanding of sexism for over 50 years, the application of psychoanalytic thinking to feminist activism has yet to be significantly realised. Using the work of Julia Kristeva, sexism is described as a symptom of an intolerable situation…

Between Psychoanalysis and Pedagogy: Scenes of Rapprochement and Alienation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Britzman, Deborah P.

2013-01-01

With the question of what is between psychoanalysis and pedagogy, this essay presents a psychoanalytic frame for thinking about the study of uncertainty in teaching and learning from the vantage of the education of the author and her notion of "difficult knowledge." I review my body of research through these dilemmas to picture a theory of…

Disavowed Knowledge: Psychoanalysis, Education and Teaching. Studies in Curriculum Theory Series

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taubman, Peter Maas

2011-01-01

This is the first and only book to detail the history of the century-long relationship between education and psychoanalysis. Relying on primary and secondary sources, it provides not only a historical context but also a psychoanalytically informed analysis. In considering what it means to think about teaching from a psychoanalytic perspective and…

Re-Writing the Subject: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Creative Writing and Composition Pedagogy.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harris, Judith

2001-01-01

Suggests that the teaching of both composition and creative writing would benefit from focusing less exclusively on the writing process and products and more on the writing subject. Claims that focusing on the writing subject through the lens of psychoanalysis provides several potential benefits. Concludes psychoanalysis can be a filtrate for the…

[Dynamic psychology and psychoanalysis in Giovanni Jervis' thought].

PubMed

Dazzi, Nino

2012-01-01

As against the background of an unconditioned reception of Darwinian theory and its developments, mainly in the field of ethology, a reflection deploys itself on complex theoretical themes, such as identity, consciousness and motivation. This leads Jervis to deal not only and not as much with psychoanalysis, as with a broader theoretical framework, labelled as "dynamic psychology". Contributions from different fields of contemporary psychological knowledge, particularly from cognitive sciences, personality and social psychology and developmental observations converge into this new framework. A proposal is made that is characterized by a peculiar critical sensitivity and is open to future developments. It is in this new light that Jervis was able to carry out a retrospective recognition of the century of Psychoanalysis.

Caravaggio four centuries later: psychoanalytic portraits of ambivalence and ambiguity.

PubMed

Szajnberg, Nathan M

2013-04-01

Rome celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of Michelangelo Marisi da Caravaggio's death with an historical exhibition of his brief lifetime's work. Yet psychoanalysis has not studied this work extensively, despite the artist's compelling portrayal of a full range of human affects, including ambivalence. Psychoanalysis has studied artistic pioneers such as da Vinci (Freud 1910) and Michelangelo (Freud 1914), Giotto's use of blue sky as psychologically innovative (Blatt 1994), and Magritte's play with external reality (Spitz 1994). What can we learn about Caravaggio's work-including innovative contributions such as visual representation of expressed emotions, particularly negative emotions, including ambivalence, and remarkably candid, even critical, self-representations-and how can this late-sixteenth-century artist teach us about the development of the concept of mind underlying psychoanalysis?

Is Psychoanalysis a Folk Psychology?

PubMed Central

Arminjon, Mathieu

2013-01-01

Even as the neuro-psychoanalytic field has matured, from a naturalist point of view, the epistemological status of Freudian interpretations still remains problematic at a naturalist point of view. As a result of the resurgence of hermeneutics, the claim has been made that psychoanalysis is an extension of folk psychology. For these “extensionists,” asking psychoanalysis to prove its interpretations would be as absurd as demanding the proofs of the scientific accuracy of folk psychology. I propose to show how Dennett’s theory of the intentional stance allows us to defend an extensionist position while sparing us certain hermeneutic difficulties. In conclusion, I will consider how Shevrin et al. (1996) experiments could turn extensionist conceptual considerations into experimentally testable issues. PMID:23525879

Psychoanalysis on the couch: can neuroscience provide the answers?

PubMed

Mechelli, Andrea

2010-12-01

Over a century after Freud's attempt to establish psychoanalysis as a natural science, there is renewed interest in the integration of psychoanalytic and neuroscientific findings within a single theoretical and experimental framework. However, it is important that any intellectual exchange is not motivated only by declining confidence in psychoanalytic theory and practice or awareness of the rising fortunes of the brain sciences. The present paper considers three possible ways in which psychoanalysis and neuroscience might be integrated. These include the investigation of the neurological organisation of psychoanalytically defined phenomena; the evaluation of psychoanalytic theories based on their neurobiological evidence; and the use of neuroimaging techniques to assess the progress and outcome of psychoanalytic treatment. The author argues that these exercises are unlikely to provide psychoanalysis with the "unlimited opportunities for overcoming its uncertainties and doubts" that some have anticipated. For instance, the argument that mapping psychoanalytically defined phenomena in the brain may provide biological validity to these phenomena should be considered an expression of logical confusion; the evaluation of psychoanalytic theories based on their biological evidence is critically dependent on speculative interpretation of what the theories predict at neuronal level; and the supposedly objective evaluation of the progress and outcome of psychoanalytic treatment on the basis of neurobiological data relies on the subjective reports of the patient and analyst. In light of this conclusion, there are a number of outstanding questions which remain to be addressed, including whether psychoanalysis should adhere to scientific canons and whether this would necessarily require an experimental methodology. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The "Matchbox School" (1927-1932): Anna Freud and the Idea of a "Psychoanalytically Informed Education"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Midgley, Nick

2008-01-01

Of all the applications of psychoanalysis to various fields, perhaps none has been as important--or as fraught--as the application of psychoanalytic insights to education. This paper re-constructs some of the early debates around psychoanalysis and pedagogy that Anna Freud engaged with during the 1920s in Vienna, when the whole question of what…

The Hofgeismar lectures: a contemporary overview of Horneyan psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Ingram, D H

2001-06-01

Part I of this paper describes Karen Horney's theory of neurosis. In the 1930s, Horney repudiated Freud's view of female developmental psychology. She argued that cultural factors rather than anatomy or innate biological drives were the primary determinants not only of female development but of personality, as well. When genetic and environmental circumstances together lead to basic anxiety early in life, she believed a deep inner conflict emerges in the individual leading to the need for elaborating layers of rigidified protective defenses. She called this the neurotic process. This process can result in discrete symptoms of mental disorder as well as the more generalized problems of alienation from the person's real self and reliance on neurotic solutions. In Part II, the practical application of Horney's theory to clinical work is demonstrated in a case presentation of a notably timid and perfectionistic man. Part III points up elaborations of Horney's theories by later workers of her school, the American Institute for Psychoanalysis, and provides a history of her school within the broader context of American psychoanalysis. The author's emphasis on postmodern and narrativist elements of Horneyan psychoanalysis are illuminated, as well.

On teaching psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Ogden, Thomas H

2006-08-01

Teaching psychoanalysis is no less an art than is the practice of psychoanalysis. As is true of the analytic experience, teaching psychoanalysis involves an effort to create clearances in which fresh forms of thinking and dreaming may emerge, with regard to both psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice. Drawing on his experience of leading two ongoing psychoanalytic seminars, each in its 25th year, the author offers observations concerning (1) teaching analytic texts by reading them aloud, line by line, in the seminar setting, with a focus on how the writer is thinking/writing and on how the reader is altered by the experience of reading; (2) treating clinical case presentations as experiences in collective dreaming in which the seminar members make use of their own waking dreaming to assist the presenter in dreaming aspects of his experience with the patient that the analytic pair has not previously been able to dream; (3) reading poetry and fiction as a way of enhancing the capacity of the seminar members to be aware of and alive to the effects created by the patient's and the analyst's use of language; and (4) learning to overcome what one thought one knew about conducting analytic work, i.e. learning to forget what one has learned.

Beyond illusion: Psychoanalysis and the question of religious truth.

PubMed

Blass, Rachel B

2004-06-01

In this paper the author critically examines the nature of the positive, reconciliatory attitude towards religion that has become increasingly prevalent within psychoanalytic thinking and writing over the past 20 years. She shows how this positive attitude rests on a change in the nature of the prototype of religion and its reassignment to the realm of illusion, thus making irrelevant an issue most central both to psychoanalysis and to traditional Judeo-Christian belief--the passionate search for truth. The author demonstrates how the concern with truth, and specifically with the truth of religious claims, lies at the basis of the opposition between psychoanalysis and religion but, paradoxically, also provides the common ground for dialogue between the two. She argues that, as Freud developed his ideas regarding the origin of conviction in religious claims in his Moses and monotheism (1939), the nature of this common ground was expanded and the dialogue became potentially more meaningful. The author concludes that meaningful dialogue emerges through recognition of fundamental differences rather than through harmonisation within a realm of illusion. In this light, the present study may also be seen as an attempt to recognise fundamental differences that have been evolving within psychoanalysis itself.

GEORG GRODDECK: "THE PINCH OF PEPPER" OF PSYCHOANALYSIS(.).

PubMed

Poster, Mark F; Hristeva, Galina; Giefer, Michael

2016-06-01

The life and works of Georg Groddeck are reviewed and placed in historical context as a physician and a pioneer of psychoanalysis, psychosomatic medicine, and an epistolary style of writing. His Das Es concept stimulated Freud to construct his tripartite model of the mind. Groddeck, however, used Das Es to facilitate receptivity to unconscious communication with his patients. His "maternal turn" transformed his treatment approach from an authoritarian position to a dialectical process. Groddeck was a generative influence on the development of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, Erich Fromm, and Karen Horney. He was also the mid-wife of the late-life burst of creativity of his friend and patient Sándor Ferenczi. Together, Groddeck and Ferenczi provided the impetus for a paradigm shift in psychoanalysis that emphasized the maternal transference, child-like creativity, and a dialogue of the unconscious that foreshadowed contemporary interest in intersubjectivity and field theory. They were progenitors of the relational turn and tradition in psychoanalysis. Growing interest in interpsychic communication and field theory is bringing about a convergence of theorizing among pluralistic psychoanalytic schools that date back to 1923 when Freud appropriated Groddeck's Das Es and radically altered its meaning and use.

[Psychoanalysis in the advanced vocational training of social workers, Berlin 1930-1933 (Verein Jugendheim)].

PubMed

Schröter, Michael

2005-01-01

The Verein Jugendheim in Berlin-Charlottenburg was a holding organisation of welfare institutions and of training facilities for members of the caring professions. In 1928 it founded a Soziales Institute that offered various courses for advanced vocational training. In those courses depth psychology - mainly represented by the Adlerians, least by the Jungians and increasingly by the Freudians - had a prominent place. The role of the Freudian school was supported by the fact that two staff members of the Jugendheim (Hildegard Buder-Schenck, Ursula Graf [Laessig]) started their analytic training at that time. The main teachers of psychoanalysis at the Institute were Siegfried Bernfeld, Edith Jacobson and Steffi Bornstein; notes take by a student at one of Jacobson's seminars are documented in this paper. In general, in the psychoanalytic courses there seems to have been a shift from academic teaching of theory to case oriented supervision. The presence of psychoanalysis in the training program of the Jugendheim indicates the beginning of an institutional rapprochement between pedagogy or social work and psychoanalysis in Berlin, analogous to earlier developments in Vienna. The rise of the Nazis put a stop to this promising, yet hitherto completely unknown, chapter of history.

Disclosures and refutations: clinical psychoanalysis as a logic of enquiry.

PubMed

Ahumada, J L

1997-12-01

The author argues that the empirical status of psychoanalysis has been distorted by the controversy surrounding Aristotelian and Galilean-Newtonian schemes of science, whose core ideas, respectively, are scientific concepts or forms and scientific laws. Bound by the Euclidian axiomatic tradition, Newtonian-style 'laws' do not obtain in the social sciences, and in biology they apply only at near-molecular levels, not at the level of mind. Continuing the traditional Aristotelian reliance on 'exemplars', neither Freud's nor Darwin's work fits the deductivist, infallibilistic scientific criteria used by philosophers such as Tarski, Popper or Grünbaum. Rebutting the charge that the workings of psychoanalysis are not explicit enough, this paper unfolds the logic of enquiry it utilises. In contrast to Newtonian inductivism, Popper's method of conjectures and refutations and Lakatos's method of proofs and refutations, clinical psychoanalysis employs a 'practical logic' of disclosures and refutations, a constantly evolving enquiry of multi-layered and tentative evidence of discordance and analogy. Such epistemic fallibilism, relying on a build-up of ostensive evidences rather than on 'certainties', is illustrated in the text by Moore's famous 'two-hands' argument, is held to fit in with the workings of everyday discernment and, arguably, with Darwinian evolution.

Revisiting Fromm's passions as presaging contemporary views of affect and dissociation.

PubMed

Harrell, Valentina

2002-01-01

Fromm viewed intrapsychic dynamic processes as having their origin in a generalized organic life force that gets transformed into psychic energy called passions. He is acknowledged as one of the most original, creative writers of the mid-20th century whose fertile mind and humanistic sensibilities synthesized the domains of psychoanalysis, social philosophy, and politics. His unyielding belief that the development of the individual psyche is inseparable from its two-way interaction with a lived relational and cultural context presaged the evolution of the relational perspective in psychoanalysis, and his concept of passions foreshadowed contemporary neuroscientific theories of affect and its role in intrapsychic life and self-identity formation. Damasio's theory of emotions is reviewed as a specific example of the current revamping of psychoanalytic theory as bottom-up information processing, that is, the integrating and synthesizing of affective experience and memory (preverbal mentalization) as fueling the creation of a narrative self. Fromm's discussions of dissociation are linked both to Damasio's core self experiences and to Bromberg's conceptualization of psychoanalysis of dissociative experience as a process of "standing in the spaces." And finally, Fromm's descriptions of psychoanalysis as an art are linked to Schon's action-oriented theory of practical knowledge.

[Modernity in dreams and myths].

PubMed

Scopelliti, Paolo

2009-01-01

The very presence of myths in psychoanalysis raises questions about their scientific status: that leads to reconsider the whole issue of Freudian mythology in a non-medical manner, by envisaging it in the more general context of modern myths, both political and artistic. Special attention is then paid to Surrealism, as the only avant-garde movement at the same time focused on psychoanalysis and politics: the role played by dreams in foundering myths is examined in both Surrealism and psychoanalysis. Surrealistic myths, such as Dalí's Grand Paranoïaque Comestible, finally prove to be so non-oedipian as the Nazi Ubermensch myth; nevertheless, their comparison with Freudian mythology points out their common origin, as they all fulfilled the need of the mass society for a modern myth, able to express his deeply renewed self-awareness.

Psychoanalysis and homosexuality: do we need a new theory?

PubMed

Auchincloss, E L; Vaughan, S C

2001-01-01

No need exists, it is argued, for a new psychoanalytic theory of homosexuality. Certainly psychoanalysis should not be expected to generate such a theory using its own methodology alone. The preoccupation with producing such a theory avoids more important questions about psychoanalytic theory building raised by an examination of the long relationship between psychoanalysis and homosexuality. These questions concern the problems related to using psychoanalytic methodology (1) to construct categories (including the categories normal and abnormal), (2) to construct causal theory (the problems include the limitations of psychoanalytic developmental theory and a long-standing confusion between psychoanalytic developmental theory, psychoanalytic genetic reconstruction, and psychodynamics), and (3) to identify "bedrock." Finally, the question is addressed of what might be needed that is new in the psychoanalytic approach to homosexuality.

Cyclones, bi-cycles, and psychoanalysis: the witch-of-us? complex and The Wizard of Oz.

PubMed

Stern, Jeffrey

2003-01-01

Works of applied psychoanalysis normally use psychoanalytic theory to reveal the secret meanings of works of art. An attempt is made to reverse the directionality of such analyses and see whether a work of art, The Wizard of Oz, has something to teach psychoanalysis about adolescent female psychosexual development. The author argues that the popularity and importance of the film is an effect of its symbolic representation of a girl's entry into menarche, and the meaning of this milestone for herself and for her mother. He addresses ideas about feminine castration fears (or what more recently have been called fears of genital injury), issues about menopause, and fantasies--both surprising and violent--around the meanings of menarche for both mother and daughter.

The incommensurability of psychoanalysis and history.

PubMed

Scott, Joan W

2012-01-01

This article argues that, although psychoanalysis and history have different conceptions of time and causality, there can be a productive relationship between them. Psychoanalysis can force historians to question their certainty about facts, narrative, and cause; it introduces disturbing notions about unconscious motivation and the effects of fantasy on the making of history. This was not the case with the movement for psychohistory that began in the 1970s. Then the influence of American ego-psychology on history-writing promoted the idea of compatibility between the two disciplines in ways that undercut the critical possibilities of their interaction. The work of the French historian Michel de Certeau provides theoretical insight into the uses of incommensurability, while that of Lyndal Roper demonstrates both its limits and its value for enriching historical understanding.

Identifying Solution Paths in Cognitive Diagnosis.

DTIC Science & Technology

1985-03-01

the clinical tradi- tion. Psychoanalysis gets its distinctive flavor to a large extent from the various diagnostic techniques pioneered by Freud and...his disciples: free association, dream analysis, and pro- jective tests. These methods are content-oriented, and aim at a detailed description of the...Also, Psychoanalysis shares with Test Psychology the ambition to find out about stable properties of the individual, properties of his mental life

[Contribution of psychoanalysis to geriatric care for institutionalized patients].

PubMed

Charazac, Pierre-Marie

2014-06-01

The contribution of psychoanalysis to geriatric care in nursing home is discussed in three directions: its conception of care, specially on its negative sides; its implication in geriatric units, in their conception and in the analysis of their management of care; the holding of care-givers and nurses by making clear what we call transference and conter-transference and their reflection on their function.

Is Fromm Relevant for Relational Approaches in Psychoanalysis?

PubMed

Cortina, Mauricio

2017-08-01

This paper provides an overview of how Erich Fromm's work influenced contemporary relational and intersubjective approaches. It stresses Fromm's humanistic and existential sensibility, his explanation of how different socioeconomic and cultural contexts mold different character types, and how his center-to-center relatedness in clinical work all contribute to psychic change. The author shows how these dimensions intersect and add to current interests in relational psychoanalysis.

A dangerous movie? Hollywood does psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Ferrell, Donald R; Silverman, Martin A

2014-12-01

After the appearance of David Cronenberg's film A Dangerous Method in 2011, dealing with the relationships of Sigmund Freud, C. G. Jung and Sabina Spielrein, Dr. Donald Ferrell published: A Dangerous Method, A Film Directed by David Cronenberg: An Extended Review (Ferrell 2012) in the Journal of Religion and Health. Upon its publication, Dr. Ferrell's article was nominated for a Gradiva Award by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. On November 1, 2013, the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society held its annual conference at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. Dr. Billie Pivnick, a member at large of the Board of Directors of the APCS and also on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Religion and Health, persuaded the 2013 Conference Program Committee that Cronenberg's film would make an interesting subject for discussion for conference participants. To that end, Dr. Pivnick invited Dr. Ferrell, C. G. Jung Institute of New York, Dr. Steven Reisner, Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, and Dr. Martin Silverman, Training and Supervising Analyst and Supervising Child Analyst at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Education, NYU College of Medicine, Training and Supervising Analyst at the Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New Jersey, and Associate Editor of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly to serve as panel members to discuss: A Dangerous Movie? Hollywood does Psychoanalysis. Presentations on Cronenberg's film and the early history of psychoanalysis were given by Drs. Ferrell and Reisner, followed by a response to their presentations by Dr. Silverman. Dr. Pivnick chaired the session. The articles presented here were given originally at the APCS conference by Dr. Ferrell and Dr. Silverman. Dr. Reisner declined the invitation to submit his presentation for publication. Dr. Silverman's remarks were based not only on the presentation given by Dr. Ferrell at the session on A Dangerous Movie?, but also on his close and careful reading of the extended review of Cronenberg's film Dr. Ferrell published in the Journal of Religion and Health, as well as Dr. Reisner's presentation. It was appropriate for Dr. Silverman to serve in his capacity as discussant since he had earlier published a critical review of A Secret Symmetry. Sabina Spielrein Between Jung and Freud by Aldo Carotenuto (Silverman 1985).

Attachment theory and psychoanalysis: some remarks from an epistemological and from a Freudian viewpoint.

PubMed

Zepf, Siegfried

2006-12-01

The author examines Bowlby's attachment theory and more recent versions of it from an epistemological viewpoint and subjects it to questioning on whether they are in line with central concepts of Freudian psychoanalysis. He argues that Bowlby's basic tenets regarding attachment theory, which later attachment theorists never seriously questioned, do not conform to scientific standards, and that psychoanalytic issues such as the dynamic unconscious, internal conflicts, interaction of drive wishes and the role of defence in establishing substitutive formations are either ignored or not treated in sufficient depth. In the light of this, Fonagy's assertion that psychoanalytic criticism of attachment theory arose from mutual misunderstandings and ought nowadays to be seen as outdated is reversed: psychoanalytic criticism can only be regarded as outdated if either basic tenets of Freudian psychoanalysis, or attachment theory or both are misunderstood.

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC CONTRIBUTIONS OF MELITTA SCHMIDEBERG KLEIN. MORE THAN MELANIE KLEIN'S REBEL DAUGHTER.

PubMed

Cassullo, Gabriele

2016-03-01

Compared to the impact of the work of Melanie Klein on the history of psychoanalysis, the contributions of her daughter, Melitta Schmideberg, passed almost unnoticed. At present, Schmideberg is solely remembered for having harshly attacked her mother at the start of the Controversial Discussions of the British Psycho-Analytical Society and for having coined the fitting expression "stable instability" in order to describe borderline and asocial personality disorders. However, the author discusses how the early groundbreaking discoveries of Klein with regards to primitive anxieties were the result of the joint work and thinking of Melanie and Melitta. Moreover, he argues that the conflict between the two, along with the subsequent polarization of their views, did not facilitate the development of psychoanalysis, neither did it help the analytic community to recognize the value of Melitta's contributions to psychoanalysis.

Doubt in the psychoanalysis of a paedophile.

PubMed

Campbell, Donald

2014-06-01

In this single case study, I will address the question of how incestuous sexual abuse causes doubt of three distinct types: (1) honest doubt that is essential to the pursuit of knowledge; (2) inherent doubt that can result from a trauma that leaves the victim's mind fragmented and confused; and (3) the sadistic imposition of doubt intended to deceive, disorient and attack unbearable knowledge in the victim or another person familiar with the abuse (in this case, the analyst and the victim's later victims). During the course of my psychoanalysis of a paedophile, it became clear that this third form of doubt played an integral role in the patient's sexual abuse of children, a role I will link to the nature and function of paedophilia and to the experience of working psychoanalytically with a paedophile. Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Volition and will in psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Meissner, W W

2009-10-01

To clarify the role and function of the will in psychoanalytic theory and praxis, the use and meaning of the concept of will are traced in the philosophical tradition influencing Freud, in Freud's own view of will, and in the subsequent history of psychoanalysis. Functions of the will relevant to psychoanalysis are described in terms of intellective preference and executive functioning. Operations of will as an executive function of the ego-self are analyzed, emphasizing will as efficient cause of motivated actions. The will functions to decide, choose, and initiate action directed to motivationally determined goals. The conclusion is drawn that will action is determined and directed by motivational influences, and that will decision and choice, while predominantly secondary process in organization, can operate consciously or unconsciously. Expressions of will action in psychopathology and in the analytic process are briefly discussed.

Japanese psychoanalysis and Buddhism: the making of a relationship.

PubMed

Harding, Christopher

2014-06-01

This article explores the making of a relationship between Japanese psychoanalysis and Buddhism, in the life and work of Kosawa Heisaku. Kosawa did not work out the compatibility of psychoanalysis with Buddhism in abstract, theoretical terms; rather, he understood them as two different articulations of the same practical approach to living well. He saw this approach in action in the lives of Freud and Shinran, the latter a thirteenth-century Japanese Buddhist reformer. For Kosawa, both individuals exemplified the 'true religious state of mind', at the achievement of which Kosawa understood psychoanalytic psychotherapy as ideally aiming. This article uses newly available documentary and interview material to examine the historical dynamics both of Kosawa's work in this area and of the broader 'religion-psy dialogue' of which it is an early example. © The Author(s) 2014.

Defenses and morality: Adam Smith, Sigmund Freud, and contemporary psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Gabrinetti, Paul A; Özler, Sule

2014-10-01

In this paper we follow the development and transmission of moral learning from Adam Smith's impartial spectator to Sigmund Freud's superego and then to contemporary psychoanalysis. We argue that defenses are an integral component in the acquisition of any moral system. Elaborating on this argument, we assert that there is a progression from defensive systems that are "closed" to defensive systems that are "open," as defined in a recent work by Novick and Novick. The former system is "static, avoids reality, and is characterized by power dynamics, sadomasochism, and omnipotent defense." The latter, on the other hand, is a system that allows for "joy, creativity, spontaneity, love and it is attuned to reality." Furthermore, while Smith and Freud's systems are more one-person systems of defense, contemporary psychoanalysis has moved to more of a two-person system.

Trauma and Contemporary Forms of Subjectivity: Contributions of Argentine Psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Volnovich, Juan Carlos

2017-04-01

This paper offers arguments to justify the relevance of psychoanalysis-psychoanalyses-in present-day Argentina and reflects on the stance taken by psychoanalysts with different theoretical perspectives in the face of the havoc wreaked by state terror (1976-1983). To this end, the author focuses on the pioneers' traits, the significance of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association in the 1950s and 1960s, and the impact of the departure of the Plataforma Group in 1971. The establishment of the latter opened the way for the development of a psychoanalysis tied to popular movements, sensitive to social conflict, and close to human rights organizations. The author explores both on psychoanalysts' intervention to address the social trauma resulting from the theft of babies during the dictatorship, and on their relationship with Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.

Psychoanalysis Today-A Pseudoscience? A Critique of the Arbitrary Nature of Psychoanalytic Theories and Practice.

PubMed

Zepf, Siegfried

2018-01-01

The article centers on psychoanalysts' indifferent attitude to the mutually exclusivity of theoretical conceptualizations and the ensuing technical rules for treatment. In the author's view this indifference is due to psychoanalysts being business people for whom the exchange value of their service is essentially of greater interest than its utility value, which latter is only of interest as a means of realizing the former. The author argues that, as a consequence of the disparate coexisting conceptualizations being treated as equally valid, psychoanalysis becomes a science without truth, that is, a pseudoscience, and demonstrates that all attempts to appropriate the epithet ornans "scientific" to psychoanalysis by linking its concepts to findings in areas beyond its conceptual field have failed. Finally, he offers a proposal of how the situation might be altered.

Psychoanalysis and its place in the evolutionary chain of academic disciplines.

PubMed

Wagner, James W

2009-10-01

In the long history of liberal learning and higher education, proponents of recent additions to the list of broadly accepted academic disciplines have had to overcome biases on the part of the academic establishment, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, have had to become willing to endure full intellectual access to and criticism of their field. Proponents of academic psychoanalysis face similar challenges today.

["Ladies and gentlemen, the zeitgeist is among us". Wednesday, 6th of May, Hotel Esplanade in Berlin].

PubMed

Lockot, Regine

2011-01-01

In this paper, the celebration of Freud's 70th birthday in Berlin is used as "time slot" to demonstrate the interconnectedness of psychoanalysis in the public sphere and its journalistic reflection. When central figures of public life had to emigrate and in some cases were even killed, this connection between institutionalised psychoanalysis and the political and cultural space was permanently destroyed.

Fuck redux: a review and commentary.

PubMed

Kravis, Nathan

2013-06-01

Leo Stone's "On the Principal Obscene Word of the English Language" (1954) embodies a particular moment in the history of psychoanalysis, one that stands in contrast to our current zeitgeist. In a review that is both admiring and critical, Stone's paper is compared with a recent book by an OED editor on the same topic (Sheidlower 2009). The latter totally neglects Stone, and psychoanalysis in general, and speculations are made regarding this neglect.

[Psychoanalysis and criminology prior to the therapeutic community].

PubMed

Hoffmann, Klaus

2005-01-01

From its very beginning, psychoanalysis dealt with delinquency on a theoretical as well as on a clinical level. This paper deals with pioneer contributions, from Freud to Friedlander and Reiwald in the late 1940's, which stressed traumatic milieus in early childhood and the possibilities to correct this experience in treatment. In terms of clinical practice, they offered casuistic material, but also provided important suggestions for contemporary forensic treatment.

Trauma, dream, and psychic change in psychoanalyses: a dialog between psychoanalysis and the neurosciences.

PubMed

Fischmann, Tamara; Russ, Michael O; Leuzinger-Bohleber, Marianne

2013-01-01

To many psychoanalysts dreams are a central source of knowledge of the unconscious-the specific research object of psychoanalysis. The dialog with the neurosciences, devoted to the testing of hypotheses on human behavior and neurophysiology with objective methods, has added to psychoanalytic conceptualizations on emotion, memory, sleep and dreams, conflict and trauma. To psychoanalysts as well as neuroscientists, the neurological basis of psychic functioning, particularly concerning trauma, is of special interest. In this article, an attempt is made to bridge the gap between psychoanalytic findings and neuroscientific findings on trauma. We then attempt to merge both approaches in one experimental study devoted to the investigation of the neurophysiological changes (fMRI) associated with psychoanalytic treatment in chronically depressed patients. We also report on an attempt to quantify psychoanalysis-induced transformation in the manifest content of dreams. To do so, we used two independent methods. First, dreams reported during the cure of chronic depressed analysands were assessed by the treating psychoanalyst. Second, dreams reported in an experimental context were analyzed by an independent evaluator using a standardized method to quantify changes in dream content (Moser method). Single cases are presented. Preliminary results suggest that psychoanalysis-induced transformation can be assessed in an objective way.

Trauma, dream, and psychic change in psychoanalyses: a dialog between psychoanalysis and the neurosciences

PubMed Central

Fischmann, Tamara; Russ, Michael O.; Leuzinger-Bohleber, Marianne

2013-01-01

To many psychoanalysts dreams are a central source of knowledge of the unconscious—the specific research object of psychoanalysis. The dialog with the neurosciences, devoted to the testing of hypotheses on human behavior and neurophysiology with objective methods, has added to psychoanalytic conceptualizations on emotion, memory, sleep and dreams, conflict and trauma. To psychoanalysts as well as neuroscientists, the neurological basis of psychic functioning, particularly concerning trauma, is of special interest. In this article, an attempt is made to bridge the gap between psychoanalytic findings and neuroscientific findings on trauma. We then attempt to merge both approaches in one experimental study devoted to the investigation of the neurophysiological changes (fMRI) associated with psychoanalytic treatment in chronically depressed patients. We also report on an attempt to quantify psychoanalysis-induced transformation in the manifest content of dreams. To do so, we used two independent methods. First, dreams reported during the cure of chronic depressed analysands were assessed by the treating psychoanalyst. Second, dreams reported in an experimental context were analyzed by an independent evaluator using a standardized method to quantify changes in dream content (Moser method). Single cases are presented. Preliminary results suggest that psychoanalysis-induced transformation can be assessed in an objective way. PMID:24381554

The invasion of reality (or of negotiation): The psychoanalytic ethic and extinction anxiety.

PubMed

Nociforo, Nicola

2017-10-01

Extinction anxiety is the expression used to describe a pervasive and ever more realistic sense of futurelessness. A group emotion characterized by terror of the extinction of the human race, the family, or professional or shared cultural group, it grips the individual with a sense of desperation and impotence through the internal groups present in the mind of every individual. The contribution presented here aims to demonstrate how extinction anxiety has also infected psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic institutions, thereby seriously weakening the ethics of psychoanalysis. The term ethics here should not be confused with morals, but is intended as the happiness that is derived from the capacity to be responsible for one's self and one's own professional identity. The contagion of extinction anxiety has, in fact, accentuated the crisis of psychoanalysts and their faith in psychoanalysis. The author relates a particularly tormented clinical experience in order to show how only the relationship with psychoanalysis and its capacity to interpret the manifestations of the unconscious, enables the recognition of the effects of what he defines as a true invasion of reality, thus restoring to thought the power to establish a deep, transformative, and fecund relationship between internal and external reality. Copyright © 2016 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Out of the consulting room and into the world: hermeneutic dialogue, phronesis, and psychoanalytic theory as practice.

PubMed

Zeddies, T J

2001-09-01

One of the relics of positivism has been an underappreciation of the moral and ethical dimensions of psychoanalytic theory and practice. In a positivist metapsychology, cure and therapeutic gain were often defined instrumentally, with relatively little consideration given to aspects of human experience (e.g., moral, cultural, spiritual) that did not fit within a positivist framework. Conceptual and paradigmatic shifts in psychoanalysis have occurred, in part, because of the inability of the classical model to provide a language that adequately captures deeply felt human values and beliefs. Aided by hermeneutic and postmodern influences, many contemporary psychoanalytic theories are beginning to focus greater attention on the notion that analytic therapy is empowered by a set of ethical convictions, beliefs, and commitments, which are tied to a certain understanding of the good life. Along these lines, the author argues that developing a fresh understanding of the moral and ethical dimensions of psychoanalysis requires elaborating a new ontology of human subjectivity and social life. The author offers a sketch of how this gargantuan task might be started by integrating psychoanalysis within a hermeneutic perspective on dialogue, by suggesting that it would be helpful to view psychoanalysis as promoting Aristotelian practical wisdom or phronesis, and by rethinking psychoanalytic theory and interpretation as a form of practice.

Quo Vadis? The Future of Psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Cortina, Mauricio

2016-12-01

Although contemporary psychoanalysis is split into different schools and traditions, there is growing support for some of the main tenets of contemporary psychodynamic thinking from attachment theory, infant research, developmental psychopathology, new models of motivation, the neuroscience of emotions and emotional regulation, and the discovery of different implicit and explicit memory systems. These tenets, which psychodynamic clinicians of all stripes encounter in their daily work with clients, are the following: (1) that large footprints are left over from infancy and childhood which involved insensitive, intrusive, frightening, or shaming care; (2) the carryover of these relational experiences into adulthood are expressed as unconscious expectations and attributions we make of others (transference and countertransference; (3) defensive processes and emotional regulation and deregulatory patterns develop to cope with these unhealthy relations. Many findings from infant research, attachment theory, and new models of motivation and neuroscience have developed alongside the intersubjective and relational turn in psychoanalysis in the last sixty years. To different degrees this new developmental science has been incorporated into the relational field. This essay is a plea to incorporate this new science in the teaching of psychodynamic psychotherapy in order to create a dialogue among different relational and intersubjective traditions in psychoanalysis that could reduce the splintering and support efforts toward integration.

Motivation: A Key to Leadership.

DTIC Science & Technology

1984-05-24

nature as the anchor point. This point was expanded on in 1932 when Sigmund Freud wrote: I have told you that psychoanalysis began as a therapeutic...Interpretation of Dreams " that what we describe as character is based on the memory-traces of our impressions; and moreover, the impressions which have...extensions of the human state, not interruptions in it. The principal contribution of psychoanalysis to the study of cul- tural problems has been to

Psychoanalysis and analytic psychotherapy in the NHS--a problem for medical ethics.

PubMed Central

Wilkinson, G

1986-01-01

I question the place of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy in the National Health Service (NHS), with reference to published material; and, particularly, in relation to primary care, health economics and medical ethics. I argue that there are pressing clinical, research, economic, and ethical reasons in support of the contention that an urgent review of the extent and impact of psychoanalytic practices in the health service is called for. PMID:3735363

The case against neuropsychoanalysis. On fallacies underlying psychoanalysis' latest scientific trend and its negative impact on psychoanalytic discourse.

PubMed

Blass, Rachel B; Carmeli, Zvi

2007-02-01

The authors offer a critical examination of the claims of the proponents of the growing neuropsychoanalytic trend, that neuroscientific findings are relevant and important for the development and justification of psychoanalytic theory and practice. They bring to light some of the intuitions that have led to the popularity of the neuropsychoanalytic claims and the fallacies that underlie these claims and intuitions. They argue that it is crucial at this time to articulate the case against the neuropsychoanalytic trend because, underlying the debate over the relevance of neuroscience to psychoanalysis, there lies a struggle over the essential nature of psychoanalytic theory and practice. Relying on a biologistic perspective, whereby only what is biological is real, this new trend in effect offers a vision of psychoanalysis that limits the significance of the unique psychoanalytic concern with the understanding of meanings and the role of discourse in discerning and justifying these meanings.

Towards a history of operatic psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Carpenter, Alexander

2010-01-01

This paper examines the history of the trope of psychoanalytic therapy in musical dramas, from Richard Wagner to Kurt Weill, concluding that psychoanalysis and the musical drama are, in some ways, companions and take cues from each other, beginning in the mid-19th century. In Wagner's music dramas, psychoanalytic themes and situations - specifically concerning the meaning and analysis of dreams - are presaged. In early modernist music dramas by Richard Strauss and Arnold Schoenberg (contemporaries of Freud), tacit representations of the drama of hysteria, its aetiology and "treatment" comprise key elements of the plot and resonate with dissonant musical soundscapes. By the middle of the 20th century, Kurt Weill places the relationship between analyst and patient in the foreground of his musical "Lady in the Dark," thereby making manifest what is latent in a century-spanning chain of musical works whose meaning centres, in part, around representations of psychoanalysis.

Inventing Freud.

PubMed

Rudnytsky, Peter L

2008-06-01

Written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Freud's birth, this paper construes Nina Coltart's statement that "if Freud did not exist it would be necessary to invent him," with its implicit comparison of Freud to God, to refer to (a) the things that Freud taught that are incontrovertibly true; (b) the unavoidable subjectivity in all judgments of Freud; and (c) the resemblances between psychoanalysis and religion. This last comparison is likewise seen to have both positive and negative aspects. Freud's ideas have inspired many people, yet he unscientifically arrogated sovereign authority over psychoanalysis. Freud's admirers are reminded of his extreme difficulty in admitting he was wrong and changing his mind when he should have known better, while his detractors are encouraged to consider the evidence supporting many of Freud's core tenets and to recognize that his discovery of psychoanalysis is indeed one of the supreme achievements in human history.

A dream of freedom: the correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Nikolay Y. Ossipov 1921-1929.

PubMed

Hristeva, Galina

2013-06-01

The correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Nikolay Y. Ossipov, a Russian psychoanalyst and emigré from the Bolshevik terror, was published for the first time in Germany in 2009. It reveals various ways in which psychoanalysis was first disseminated in Eastern Europe and sheds light on Ossipov's contribution to psychoanalysis, especially his concept of the ego's "cooperative complexity." Along with viewing the correspondence as a tool capable of liberating creativity and stimulating scientific production-a perspective that may open up a new and promising research field-special focus is placed on Freud's response to Ossipov's efforts to expand psychoanalysis and link it with literature and speculative philosophy. A leitmotif of the letters is the freedom of science and the different reactions of the two men to the threats posed by politics. Freud's warm and compassionate response to the precarious situation and creative efforts of Ossipov, the first analyst in exile, is examined.

Epistemological controversies in the analytic field elucidated by the theological realm.

PubMed

Squverer, Amos

2015-08-01

This article proposes to address certain epistemological controversies in psychoanalysis by elucidating them through the religious field. The theological field serves the author as the repressed, which indicates the latent stakes that continue to do work at the heart of these debates. The goal is to show how debates that take place on the epistemological level bring into confrontation different anthropological concepts and discursive traditions that have their roots in religious discourses. The principal hypothesis of the author is that the dissident theories of psychoanalysis can be understood as a return to a pre-monotheistic theological conception or to an idolatrous practice that aims, primarily, to undo castration. This hypothesis will be used to elucidate the debates with two authors: Adler and Rank. The author shows how these theorists, by leaving analytical ground, connect their theories to pre-monotheistic conceptions and highlight conceptual tools that are characteristic to them. Copyright © 2015 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

[Emotions and affect in psychoanalysisis].

PubMed

Carton, Solange; Widlöcher, Daniel

2012-06-01

The goal of this paper is to give some indications on the concept of affect in psychoanalysis. There is no single theory of affect, and Freud gave successive definitions, which continue to be deepened in contemporary psychoanalysis. We review some steps of Freud works on affect, then we look into some present major questions, such as its relationship to soma, the nature of unconscious affects and the repression of affect, which is particularly developed in the field of psychoanalytic psychosomatic. From Freud's definitions of affect as one of the drive representative and as a limit-concept between the somatic and the psychic, we develop some major theoretical perspectives, which give a central place to soma and drive impulses, and which agree on the major idea that affect is the result of a process. We then note some parallelism between psychoanalysis of affect and psychology and neurosciences of emotion, and underline the gaps and conditions of comparison between these different epistemological approaches.

Interpersonal psychoanalysis' radical façade.

PubMed

Hirsch, Irwin

2002-01-01

The participant-observation model initiated the relational turn, as well as the shift from modernism to postmodernism in psychoanalysis. This two-person, coparticipant conceptualization of the psychoanalytic situation moved psychoanalysis from the realm of alleged objective science toward intersubjectivity and hermeneutics. From this perspective, the analyst as subjective other is constantly engaged affectively with the patient in ways that are very often out of awareness. Analyst and patient both, for better or for worse, are believed to unwittingly influence one another. This description of the analytic dyad has led many to mistakingly conclude that interpersonal psychoanalysts advocate wittinly affective expressiveness, often in the form of deliberate self-disclosure of feelings, as part of a standard analytic stance. Upon closer examination, radical interventions are no more emblematic of interpersonal analysts than they are of analysts from most other traditions, though the interpersonalists have indeed expanded what had theretofore been a rather narrow repertoire of interventions.

Who founded Buddhism? Notes on the psychological effectiveness of religious objects.

PubMed

Black, David M

2017-04-01

Starting with an outline of Buddhist history from a psychoanalytic perspective, this paper uses ideas from philosophy and psychoanalysis to consider the nature of the psychological effectiveness of religious objects. It suggests that the development of the devotional cult of Buddhas 'without form' such as Amitābha, at-first-glance surprising when juxtaposed with the founding vision of Gautama Siddhartha, tells us a great deal about the psychological needs that impel the evolution of religious thinking. Distinguishing religious objects from mythological ones, it argues that 'religious objects' are, more specifically, allegorical objects that can be encountered in the second person; that these may not always be well described as 'illusion'; and that they may in some cases be better understood as providing opportunities for experience that, like the transference in psychoanalysis, may have far-reaching psychological impacts. Copyright © 2016 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Erich Fromm's Involvement With Zen Buddhism: Psychoanalysts and the Spiritual Quest in Subsequent Decades.

PubMed

Roland, Alan

2017-08-01

The first section of this paper covers Erich Fromm's profound involvement with Zen Buddhism, culminating in his co-authoring the book Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis in 1960. It details why this was a groundbreaking endeavor, as it countered the pervasive psychoanalytic denigration of spiritual traditions, practices, and experiences. The second section describes the effect of Fromm's Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis on the author of this paper, as he came to clinical psychology and psychoanalysis from involvement in Indian philosophy. The third section is a case study of a spiritually advanced Hindu woman seen in intensive short-term psychoanalytic therapy in Bombay, describing the interface of the spiritual with psychoanalytic therapy. The fourth section explains what eventually led to a sea change in psychoanalytic attitudes toward spiritual traditions and practices, with a small but significant group of psychoanalysts becoming involved in one or another spiritual practice, and working with patients also so involved.

On neuropsychoanalytic metaphysics.

PubMed

Talvitie, Vesa; Ihanus, Juhani

2011-12-01

Neuropsychoanalysis focuses on the neural counterparts of psychoanalytically interesting phenomena and has left the difference in the metaphysical presuppositions between neuroscience and psychoanalysis unexamined. The authors analyse the logical possibilities concerning the relation between the brain and the mental unconscious in terms of the serial, parallel, epiphenomenalist and Kantian conceptions, and conclude that none of them provides a satisfactory ground for neuropsychoanalysis. As far as psychoanalytic explanations refer to the mental unconscious, they cannot be verified with the help of neuroscience. Neither is it possible to form a picture of how a neuro-viewpoint might be of help for psychoanalytic theorizing. Neuropsychoanalysis has occasionally been seen as a reductionist affair, but the authors suggest that neuropsychoanalysts themselves lean on the hybrid conception, which combines neuroscientific and psychoanalytic viewpoints. The authors state arguments in favour of the interfield conception of neuropsychoanalysis that takes seriously the metaphysical tensions between neuroscience and psychoanalysis. Copyright © 2011 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Language and Vulnerability—A Lacanian Analysis of Respect

PubMed Central

Laufer, Laurie; Santos, Beatriz

2017-01-01

Lacan's original approach to language expands the reaches of psychoanalysis. Not limited to a set of technical instructions that guide “treatments of the soul,” lacanian psychoanalysis can be seen as a theoretical toolbox whose utility is multidisciplinary. This paper contends that, by establishing a connection between (i) the idea that subjects are produced by language and bear the mark of the unconscious; and (ii) an approach to the production of symptoms that acknowledges the importance of their sense, lacanian theories enlighten discussions on the theme of vulnerability. We claim that Lacan's description of psychoanalysis as an apparatus that respects the person and (foremost) their symptoms generates evidence of the existence of a kind of recognition that takes into account the vulnerability of a given subject without assigning them to a fixed position of victim. This perspective enriches contemporary debates on the relationship between identity and vulnerability. PMID:29312102

Understanding Freud's conflicted view of the object-relatedness of sexuality and its implications for contemporary psychoanalysis: A re-examination of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.

PubMed

Blass, Rachel B

2016-06-01

Through a re-examination of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), this paper reveals a fundamental tension in Freud's thinking on the nature of the individual and of his sexuality. In this text Freud portrays the individual and sexuality as inherently object-related and at the same time as inherently independent of such relatedness. The way in which Freud presents these contradictory ideas suggests that he was not merely undecided on object-relatedness and sexuality but rather that the contradiction was integral to this thinking. The paper offers an explanation of the meaning of this contradiction, of why it has been neglected in the analytic literature, and of some implications for contemporary psychoanalysis and its approach to sexuality. Copyright © 2016 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis And Politics: Historicising Subjectivity

PubMed Central

Layton, Lynne

2013-01-01

In this paper, I compare three different views of the relation between subjectivity and modernity: one proposed by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, a second by theorists of institutionalised individualisation, and a third by writers in the Foucaultian tradition of studies of the history of governmentalities. The theorists were chosen because they represent very different understandings of the relation between contemporary history and subjectivity. My purpose is to ground psychoanalytic theory about what humans need in history and so to question what it means to talk ahistorically about what humans need in order to thrive psychologically. Only in so doing can one assess the relation between psychoanalysis and progressive politics. I conclude that while psychoanalysis is a discourse of its time, it can also function as a counter-discourse and can help us understand the effects on subjectivity of a more than thirty year history in the West of repudiating dependency needs and denying interdependence. PMID:23678239

From the EEL to the EGO: psychoanalysis and the remnants of Freud's early scientific practice.

PubMed

Wieser, Martin

2013-01-01

While numerous historiographical works have been written to shed light on Freud's early theoretical education in biology, physiology, and medicine and on the influence of that education on psychoanalysis, this paper approaches Freud's basic comprehension of science and methodology by focusing on his early research practice in physiology and neuranatomy. This practice, taking place in the specific context of Ernst Brücke's physiological laboratory in Vienna, was deeply concerned with problems of visuality and the revelation of hidden organic structures by use of proper preparation techniques and optical instruments. The paper explores the connection between such visualizing practices, shaped by a physiological context as they were, and Freud's later convictions of the scientific status of psychoanalysis and the function of its method as means to unveil the concealed structure of the "psychical apparatus". © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The historiography of psychoanalysis in Brazil: the case of Rio de Janeiro.

PubMed

Facchinetti, Cristiana; De Castro, Rafael Dias

2015-01-01

The objective of this article is to analyze the background of the historiography of psychoanalysis in Rio de Janeiro. Three different phases and approaches are analyzed, based on the viewpoints of different groups of authors. The first group features authors who displayed an early interest in the subject, in the 1920's-1930's. The second refers to psychiatrists/psychoanalysts who worked with mental health institutes and societies between the 1940's and 1970's, while the third perspective comes from the academic/university environment, from the end of the 70's to the present. This distinction was made not only to better define the timeframe of the arrival and dissemination of psychoanalysis in Rio de Janeiro, but also to provide a better understanding of the relation between the specific professional and intellectual interests of each group and the respective historical context.

[From psychotherapy to psychoanalysis: Max Levy-Suhl (1876-1947)].

PubMed

Hermanns, Ludger M; Schröter, Michael; Stroeken, Harry

2014-01-01

From psychotherapy to psychoanalysis: Max Levy-Suhl (1876-1947). Levy-Suhl can be considered one of the great practising psychotherapists in early 20th century Berlin. He was active in various fields, including ophthalmology, forensic adolescent psychiatry and hypnosis. Prominent among his publications were two handbooks of psychotherapeutic methods. His attitude towards psychoanalysis shifted from initial criticism to acceptance. Ca. 1930 he experienced some kind of conversion, resulting in his training at the Berlin Institute and becoming a member of the German Psychoanalytic Society. As a Jew being forced to emigrate in 1933, Levy-Suhl turned to the Netherlands where he had a psychoanalytic children's home in Amersfoort, followed by an analyst's practice in Amsterdam. He survived the German occupation, but apparently as a broken man. After the war he committed suicide.--The paper is complemented by an appendix, containing documents and an extensive bibliography.

The session of the two dreams.

PubMed

Giannoni, Massimo

2009-02-01

Through the discussion of the clinical material the author tries to show how numerous aspects of traditional Jungian analysis are close to several theoretical and clinical developments of Relational Psychoanalysis. A short introduction about relational psychoanalysis is given. The relational aspects of Jungian theory and praxis are underlined. If we refer to these theoretical constructs, it becomes possible to work in an original way and think of the clinical setting as different from the classical Freudian one, without abandoning Jungian tradition.

Psychoanalysis as a belief system: a research program outline.

PubMed

Ben Plotkin, Mariano

2017-11-01

This article lays out an agenda for research on the establishment of psy cultures in Latin America. It begins by analyzing some of the debates on the nature of psychoanalysis, a discipline located between the sciences, philosophy and common sense. It argues that the place of psy cultures needs to be problematized as emerging out of modernity in a cultural space like Latin America, where the very concept of modernity differs greatly from that of central countries.

Letter to Freud: on the plight of psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Mendes, Dinah M

2011-12-01

In the form of a letter, the writer communicates to Freud her appreciation for the incomparable richness and complexity of the psychoanalytic enterprise in its century-long evolution from classical, Freudian origins to new developments in theory and technique. At the same time, concern is expressed about the continuity and survival of psychoanalysis in a cultural milieu that has absorbed its once radical ideas about sexuality and unconscious motivation while resisting its viability as a method of treatment.

A Historical Review of Diachrony and Semantic Dimensions of Trace in Neurosciences and Lacanian Psychoanalysis

PubMed Central

Escobar, Carolina; Ansermet, François; Magistretti, Pierre J.

2017-01-01

Experience leaves a trace in the nervous system through plasticity. However, the exact meaning of the mnesic trace is poorly defined in current literature. This article provides a historical review of the term trace in neuroscience and psychoanalysis literature, to highlight two relevant aspects: the diachronic and the semantic dimensions. There has been a general interest in diachrony, or a form of evolution of the trace, but its indissociable semantic dimension remains partially disregarded. Although frequently implied, the diachronic and semantic dimensions of the trace are rarely clearly articulated. We situate this discussion into the classical opposition of syntax, or rules of inscription of the trace in the nervous system, and semantics, or the content of the trace, which takes into consideration the attempt of the human being to build coherence. A general observation is that the study of the term trace follows trends of the thought of the given epoch. This historical analysis also reveals the decay of the idea that the trace is reliable to the experience. From the articulation between neurosciences and psychoanalysis in a historical perspective, this review shows that the trend is to consider trace as a production of the subject, resulting in a permanent rewriting in an attempt to give meaning to the experience. This trend is becoming increasingly evident in light of recent research in neurosciences and psychoanalysis. PMID:28690553

Extinction Phenomena: A Biologic Perspective on How and Why Psychoanalysis Works

PubMed Central

Brakel, Linda A. W.

2011-01-01

This article presents the view that much of the success of classical psychoanalysis is centrally predicated on its biological potency; focusing not on neuropsychology, but on the biology of conditioning. The argument suggests that features of classic psychoanalytic technique – the couch, meetings several times per week with both parties present, and free association – uniquely facilitate intense transferences of various sorts, and that these in turn constitute the multiple and diverse extinction trials necessary to best approximate extinction. PMID:21927610

An investigation into some implications of a Vygotskian perspective on the origins of mind: psychoanalysis and Vygotskian psychology, Part I.

PubMed

Wilson, A; Weinstein, L

1992-01-01

The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky proposed an analysis of language, thought, and internalization that has direct relevance to the current concerns of psychoanalysts. Striking methodological and conceptual similarities and useful complementarities with psychoanalysis are discovered when one peers beneath the surface of Vygotskian psychology. Our adaptation of Vygostsky's views expands upon Freud's assigned role to language in the topographic model. We suggest that the analysand's speech offers several windows into the history of the individual, through prosody, tropes, word meaning, and word sense. We particularly emphasize Vygotsky's views on the genesis and utilization of word meanings. The acquisition of word meanings will contain key elements of the internal climate present when the word meaning was forged. Bearing this in mind, crucial theoretical questions follow, such as how psychoanalysis is to understand the unconscious fantasies, identifications, anxieties, and defenses associated with the psychodynamics of language acquisition and later language usage. We propose that the clinical situation is an ideal place to test these hypotheses.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry.

PubMed

Eckardt, Marianne Horney

2006-01-01

On the occasion of its 50 anniversary, the members of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry can look back with pride and be aware that this professional society has been true to its original goal and passionate mission. Thanks for this momentous accomplishment goes to its founding fathers and mothers, who were clear in their purpose and whose wisdom is manifest in the Academy's constitution. In the 1930s, the orthodoxy of the American Psychoanalytic Association created a ferment of rebellion in most of its institutes, which led to secessions, sister institutes, and a greater open-mindedness in institutes residing in Chicago, Washington, New Orleans, and Detroit. The quest for a new national forum that would be open to an exchange of new ideas began in 1951 and culminated in the formation of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis in 1956. The spirit of the Academy is highlighted by relating the successful struggle of communication among its members in a dream workshop that existed for six years.

Psychoanalysis and the Challenges of Disciplinary Exportation: Notes from the African "Periphery" on the Method/Theory Distinction.

PubMed

Barratt, Barnaby B

2018-02-01

This paper briefly reports on the current expansion of opportunities for clinical education in psychoanalysis in southern Africa, various regions of Asia, and Iran. It is a preliminary reconsideration of whether the disciplinary export of psychoanalysis is another egregious exercise in neo-colonialism, as contrasted with its possibly liberatory significance. The author argues that much of the discussion around the universality of many theoretical propositions needs to be reformulated. For example, the controversies over the Oedipus complex have typically been articulated in terms of the effects of specific social arrangements, familial structures, and styles of maternal and paternal functioning, rather than in terms of the universal-but with much cultural variation in its implementation-incest taboo. It is argued that dissemination of the psychoanalytic method (and the four coordinates that follow from it) may be desirable, but in ways the export of the hermeneutic assumptions of certain theoretical models is not.

The gap between: being and knowing in Zen Buddhism and psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Cooper, P C

2001-12-01

The author discusses various relationships derived from the image of gap, precipice, and abyss with specific emphasis on interacting dynamics between being and knowing as explicated in the Zen Buddhist teachings of Hui-neng and in the psychoanalytic writings of Wilfred Bion. While of significant value to psychoanalysis, it is argued that symbolic meanings can occlude the actuality of the analysand's or of the spiritual seeker's affective experiencing, particularly concerning the human tendency to concretize experiential states engendered through meditation and/or the psychoanalytic encounter. The author draws from Matte-Blanco's explication of symmetrical and asymmetrical perceptual modalities to discuss the fluid nature of spiritual experiencing, paradoxical coexistence of ultimate and relative realities and reciprocal dynamics and identities between states of experiencing that might otherwise appear opposed. The primacy of experiencing for both disciplines, particularly concerning the experiencing subject's momentary state of consciousness, forms a central theme for both Zen and psychoanalysis. Brief clinical vignettes support and illuminate the author's points.

Psychoanalysis: the sacred and the profane.

PubMed

Frosch, Allan

2014-06-01

Colleagues from a variety of perspectives have written about the propensity to enshrine psychoanalytic theory. The meaning of the word "enshrine" is to cherish as sacred an idea or philosophy and protect it from change. In other words, the way we view psychoanalysis, our theories of mind and technique, become holy writ and we have divided the world of theory into the sacred and the profane. This is the kiss of death for theory, which must constantly evolve and change, but comforting for the analyst who believes he is on the side of the right, the sacred. In this paper I will discuss how our propensity to enshrine theory has had a debilitating effect on the development of psychoanalysis and, in particular, as a treatment for the most vulnerable people who seek our help. I also address the idea that movement away from enshrined positions allows us to construct different versions of reality. In this context, the notion of "action at a distance" is presented along with the attendant idea of psychoanalytic entanglement.

[Hedonism and revolution. The reception of psychoanalysis in the Berlin student movement in the 1960s].

PubMed

Gerhardt, Uta

2014-01-01

The article takes hedonism and revolution as a vantage point to discuss the Kommune 2, an experiment in collective living, the anti-authoritarian kindergardens for the under-fives, and, last but not least, a speech in 1968 that spurred the women's movement in Western Germany. The author's interest is on the materials documenting how the Berlin student movement saw psychoanalysis: One point was that the pleasure principle should replace the reality principle for the sake of humankind, another that the authoritarian character structure has its roots in the denial of sexuality. Kindergarden children supposedly need "de-individualized identification" to develop ego-strength, when boys and girls differ in their superego organization. An important accomplishment was a group analysis conducted without an analyst, an experiment that worked amazingly well in the Kommune 2. In all, these various experiments in emancipation, with psychoanalysis a guide to interpersonal understanding, may be deemed spectacular when their aftereffects on everyday life in Germany have been tremendous.

The birth of psychoanalysis from the spirit of technique.

PubMed

Vassalli, G

2001-02-01

The author aims to demonstrate, through a textual analysis of Freud's work, how the creation of psychoanalysis as a plausible set of understandings of the human mind has a methodological origin that has sometimes been overlooked: in the Greek concept of techne. Freud, an acknowledged pupil of Brentano, was well versed in Aristotelian rhetoric, and selected this instrument of investigation, dependent on language, from the outset of his efforts to describe, understand and treat the world of the unconscious mind. Working in the tradition of techne Freud actually rehabilitated 'guessing' (zu erraten)--although it became a largely overlooked concept in Freud's work--and so sought to place conjectural reason as the definitive form of knowledge for the investigation and treatment of the mind. This explains why the 1895 'Project' could not succeed and why technique became irreplaceable as the via regia in 'The Interpretation of Dreams'. Its model is founded in Aristotelian rhetoric, whose conception of language was first rediscovered by Nietzsche and was used therapeutically by Freud. Freud's view is apparent in his 1923 definition of psychoanalysis which is compared to the current IPA definition, a definition which, the author suggests, gives a misleading prominence to 'theory' and which shows how far a questionable rationality has removed conjectural reason from the field, to its detriment. From this point of view it is argued that the 'precious conjunction' (Freud) between investigation and treatment has been abandoned, and the concept of historical truth and its significance for psychoanalysis obscured.

The homeostatic psyche: Freudian theory and somatic markers.

PubMed

Arminjon, Mathieu; Ansermet, François; Magistretti, Pierre

2010-11-01

After years of reciprocal lack of interest, if not opposition, neuroscience and psychoanalysis are poised for a renewed dialogue. This article discusses some aspects of the Freudian metapsychology and its link with specific biological mechanisms. It highlights in particular how the physiological concept of homeostasis resonates with certain fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. Similarly, the authors underline how the Freud and Damasio theories of brain functioning display remarkable complementarities, especially through their common reference to Meynert and James. Furthermore, the Freudian theory of drives is discussed in the light of current neurobiological evidences of neural plasticity and trace formation and of their relationships with the processes of homeostasis. The ensuing dynamics between traces and homeostasis opens novel avenues to consider inner life in reference to the establishment of fantasies unique to each subject. The lack of determinism, within a context of determinism, implied by plasticity and reconsolidation participates in the emergence of singularity, the creation of uniqueness and the unpredictable future of the subject. There is a gap in determinism inherent to biology itself. Uniqueness and discontinuity: this should today be the focus of the questions raised in neuroscience. Neuroscience needs to establish the new bases of a "discontinuous" biology. Psychoanalysis can offer to neuroscience the possibility to think of discontinuity. Neuroscience and psychoanalysis meet thus in an unexpected way with regard to discontinuity and this is a new point of convergence between them. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Narcissism and Object Relations in Hypochondria.

PubMed

Albarracin, Dolorès

2015-08-01

Hypochondria remains little studied from a theoretical point of view. Whereas psychoanalysts know how difficult it is to handle hypochondriac subjects, the few works studying the relationship between patients and physicians resort to a cognitive-behavioral approach. These latter conclude that the quality of this relationship is more important than the disappearance of the symptoms. The aim of this work is to show how psychoanalysis can conceptualize hypochondria as a disruption of narcissism, leading to an apparent relational deadlock. Considering hypochondria as a narcissistic transference constitutes a useful contribution of psychoanalysis to medicine and psychotherapeutic care.

Beyond Nature and Culture: Fromm's Existentialism.

PubMed

Carveth, Donald L

2017-08-01

Though commonly seen as a member of the so-called "culturistic" school of psychoanalysis that rejected Freudian drive theory and embraced an "oversocialized" conception of human nature, Fromm's qualified essentialism and neo-Marxist existentialism significantly transcend both biological and social determinism (although he succumbs to the latter in regard to his theory of the Oedipus complex). His existential Freudo-Marxism contributes to the integration of psychoanalysis and social science. In place of the authoritarian superego and the pseudo-objective stance of the classical Freudians, Fromm offers conscientious, egalitarian, personalistic, and humane values.

[Neuropsychoanalysis: the science of the unconscious in the 21st century: definition and scientific roots].

PubMed

Németh, Nándor

2011-01-01

The article is the first part of a two-part-study which attempts to introduce a new interdisciplinary trend called neuropsychoanalysis. Neuropsychoanalysis aspires to integrate the knowledge of psychoanalysis, neuroscience, psychology and psychiatry. The article introduces the definition and scientific connections of neuropsychoanalysis, the role of the neuroscientific knowledge of the 19th century in the formation of psychoanalytic thought, then looks over the changes in the history of psychoanalysis and cognitive sciences which resulted in the approximation of the two fields and the birth of neuropsychoanalysis.

Toward a genealogy of culture.

PubMed

Rendon, M

2001-12-01

Using psychoanalytic theory, this paper attempts to trace the natural history of the phenomenon designated as Culture. It postulates that psychoanalysis, a product of the Hegelian philosophical revolution, is still one of the best instruments to understand Culture. It traces the origins of culture as postulated by Freud and the pioneer anthropologists and its course from early and evolved religion through humanism, science, and finally postmodernism. It emphasizes the dialectical concepts in psychoanalysis and reviews summarily those psychoanalysts that, according to the author, have had a major impact on the study of culture: Freud, Horney, and Lacan.

POST-BIONIAN DEVELOPMENTS IN PSYCHOANALYTIC FIELD THEORY: THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF ANTONINO FERRO AND GIUSEPPE CIVITARESE.

PubMed

Katz, S Montana

2017-04-01

The Bi-Personal Field: Experiences in Child Psychoanalysis. By Antonino Ferro. New York: Routledge, 1992 (1999). 232 pp. The Intimate Room: Theory and Technique of the Analytic Field. By Giuseppe Civitarese. New York: Routledge, 2008 (2010). 240 pp. The Necessary Dream: New Theories and Techniques of Interpretation in Psychoanalysis. By Giuseppe Civitarese; translated by Ian Harvey. London: Karnac, 2013 (2014). 246 pp. The Analytic Field and Its Transformations. By Antonino Ferro and Giuseppe Civitarese. London: Karnac, 2015. 224 pp. © 2017 The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Inc.

Freud, psychoanalysis, and the therapeutic effect of agapic love.

PubMed

Koprowski, Eugene J

2014-04-01

Last year, when reading Freud's letters to Jung, I came across a most interesting passage in which Freud claimed that the "talking cure" (i.e., psychoanalysis) was the result of love--not transference, counter-transference, or another neologism of psychiatry. That is, Freud said to Jung, the cure in psychoanalysis is affected by love (McGuire, 1974 ). I meditated on this for a long while: It is interesting that Freud--whose wife was a bat kohen, daughter of a priest/rabbi--and Jung, the son and grandson of Protestant Christian ministers, would have such a soteriological dialog at the beginning of the psychoanalytic era. This remark on love was not just a one-off observation, either. The minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society affirm this line of thinking: "Our cures are cures of love" (Haynal, 1994, p. 24). Clearly, Freud and his contemporaries were talking about agape, the kind of love God has for humanity, not eros, a physical desire for another person. There is much written in contemporary psychiatric literature about fears of boundary crossing in mental health (Gabbard, 1995 ); Jung's documented erotic relationship with medical student and patient, Sabina Spielrein, may be the causa causans of this concern. But, these fears--correct concerns about untoward involvement in sexual relationships with patients--have obscured the real importance of what Freud and Jung were talking about back in the beginning of their movement. More than 100 years later, it may well be time to revisit the early dialogue of the founders of psychoanalysis and hear them in their own words once again.

Interpersonal rivalries, gender and the intellectual and scientific making of psychoanalysis in 1940s Britain.

PubMed

Shapira, Michal

2017-05-01

This article examines the 1940s debates regarding the status and professional orthodoxy of psychoanalysis following Sigmund Freud's death, by exploring the Anna Freud-Melanie Klein Controversial Discussions in the British Psychoanalytical Society. Focusing on the work of now-forgotten analysts Melitta Schmideberg and Edward Glover, and on their relationship with Klein and her supporters, the article reveals how these neglected, yet important, debates were complicated by interpersonal and professional ties, processes of the professionalization, and changing gender norms. Although historians of psychoanalysis have not ignored the jealousies, resentments, and complex relationships between psychoanalysts, these scholars often continue to view these as separate from the processes of creating science. Here, instead, I view the personal and the intellectual in tandem, thus challenging the divide between scientific reason and affect. Rather than imposing a separation between the scientific and the personal, I suggest that we should explore how historical actors negotiated the divide themselves. Indeed, I demonstrate that the study of interpersonal contexts is an invaluable tool for understanding the development of psychological disciplines. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Some key features in the evolution of self psychology and psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Fosshage, James L

2009-04-01

Psychoanalysis, as every science and its application, has continued to evolve over the past century, especially accelerating over the last 30 years. Self psychology has played a constitutive role in that evolution and has continued to change itself. These movements have been supported and augmented by a wide range of emergent research and theory, especially that of cognitive psychology, infant and attachment research, rapid eye movement and dream research, psychotherapy research, and neuroscience. I present schematically some of what I consider to be the key features of the evolution of self psychology and their interconnection with that of psychoanalysis at large, including the revolutionary paradigm changes, the new epistemology, listening/experiencing perspectives, from narcissism to the development of the self, the new organization model of transference, the new organization model of dreams, and the implicit and explicit dimensions of analytic work. I conclude with a focus on the radical ongoing extension of the analyst's participation in the analytic relationship, using, as an example, the co-creation of analytic love, and providing several brief clinical illustrations. The leading edge question guiding my discussion is "How does analytic change occur?"

Anna Freud: the Hampstead War Nurseries and the role of the direct observation of children for psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Midgley, Nick

2007-08-01

The psychoanalytic tradition of direct observation of children has a long history, going back to the early 20th century, when psychoanalysis and the emerging field of 'child studies' came into fruitful contact in Freud's Vienna. As a leading figure in the attempted integration of direct observation with the new psychoanalytic knowledge emerging from the consulting room, Anna Freud played a crucial role in the emergence of this field. But her major contribution to the theory and practice of observing children came during the Second World War, when she founded the Hampstead War Nurseries. The author describes in detail this important period of Anna Freud's career, and discusses the impact it had on later work. He explores the theoretical contribution that Anna Freud made in the post-war years to the debate about the place of direct observation in psychoanalysis, and concludes that Anna Freud's 'double approach' (direct observation plus analytic reconstruction) still has a great deal to offer as a method of both psychoanalytic research and education.

Between Marxism and psychoanalysis: antifascism and antihomosexuality in the Frankfurt School.

PubMed

Halle, R

1995-01-01

In their efforts to utilize individualist psychoanalysis as a tool for understanding mass behavior, the social theorists associated with the Frankfurt School increasingly came to rely on a static, essentializing construction of sexuality which ultimately led to an equation of fascism and homosexuality. Heretofore unexamined in studies of the Frankfurt School, this equation will here serve as the starting point for a fundamental critique of the concept of sexuality developed by this influential circle of Marxist thinkers. While directed at the concept of sexuality, such a critique more importantly opens up the underlying understanding of the social and psychological realms advanced by Critical Theory. Attending to the equation of homosexuality and fascism as the central point of concern, this essay will first trace the introduction of psychoanalysis into Critical Theory through Erich Fromm and then investigate the extent of Fromm's influence on the concept of sexuality propounded by his colleagues, especially Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Finally, it will take up a frequently overlooked essay by Herbert Marcuse which promoted a vision of sexuality radically different from that of his associates.

Psychoanalytic application and psychoanalytic integrity.

PubMed

O'Neill, Sylvia

2005-02-01

In this article, the author offers an analysis of psychoanalytic application, defined as the breaking of new conceptual ground in some field of knowledge whereby the new idea is conceived, and later articulated, with the aid of reference to analogous phenomena in psychoanalysis. It requires apt analogy based on competent understanding of the applied field and of psychoanalysis. Only when the relevant differences between the applied and psychoanalytic fields are grasped can the extent of certain parallels emerge. The thinking by analogy that comprises psychoanalytic application may be intuitive and implicit, but should be susceptible of explicit theoretical elaboration that specifies, precisely, the point(s) of correspondence between psychoanalysis and the applied field in relation to a precise specification of their relevant differences. Applied psychotherapy at the interface of the internal and external worlds (historically rooted in casework) is employed as a model. By analogy with Donnet's concept of the analytic site, the author proposes the concept of the psychodynamic (case)work site, and elaborates it for that applied field in order to elucidate the proposed principles of psychoanalytic application.

[Psychoanalysis and facism: two incompatible approaches. The difficult role of Edoardo Weiss].

PubMed

Accerboni, A M

1988-01-01

Edoardo Weiss, the only direct disciple of Freud in Italy, returned to Trieste, his native town, in 1919 after a long period of psychoanalitical studies in Vienna. An enthusiastic acceptance of Freud's ideas in the cultural, mainly Jewish, circles in Trieste was parallel to a sort of distrust of the Fascist ideology. In 1930 Weiss decided to move to Rome where he hoped to be able to found an Italian psychoanalytical movement. The Catholic Church, Fascist Ideology, philosophical Idealism and scientific Positivism were all factors hampering the spread of psychoanalysis in Italy. In 1932 Weiss founded the Italian Psychoanalytical Society in Rome with a very small number of followers. The relations between Weiss' newborn Society and the dictatorship were going to be quite troublesome. Ernst Jones was drastically accused by Weiss of misrepresenting his entrée with Mussolini. Thanks to Weiss' efforts the Italian society was acknowledged by the I.P.A. Finally, mention will be made of Weiss' forced move to America as a result of the racial laws, and of the consequences for the future of Psychoanalysis in Italy.

Research into witchcraft in psychoanalysis and history.

PubMed

Gerlach, Alf

2011-01-01

Witchcraft and witch-hunting have been a topic for numerous historical and psychoanalytical research projects. But until now, most of these projects have remained rather isolated from one from the other, each in their own context. In this article I shall attempt to set up a dialogue between psychoanalysis and history by way of the example of research into witchcraft. However, I make no claim to covering the different psychoanalytical and historical approaches in full. As a historical 'layman', my interest lies in picking out some of the approaches that seem to me particularly well suited to contribute to reciprocal enhancement.

Can homeopathy learn something from psychoanalysis?

PubMed

Van Hootegem, H

2007-04-01

This paper attempts to demonstrate how some insights from psychoanalysis can be useful in homeopathic treatment. I discuss three concepts: I illustrate these concepts with the case of a 23-year-old woman with chronic fatigue syndrome. (1) The working alliance: comparing medical alliance with a psychodynamic alliance. (2) The dream-function: serious somatic disorders can be the result of a blocked dream function, the restoration of the capacity to dream may lead to the disappearance of these disorders, homeopathy can help in this process. (3) The transgenerational influence: some traumatic, concealed events from the lives of ancestors can influence their descendants.

Emotional Detachment of Partners and the Sanctity of the Relationship with the Analyst as the Most Powerful Curative Factor.

PubMed

Gostečnik, Christian; Slavič, Tanja Repič; Lukek, Saša Poljak; Pate, Tanja; Cvetek, Robert

2017-08-01

The relationship between partners and the analyst is considered the most basic means for healing in contemporary psychoanalytic theories and analyses. It also holds as one of the most fundamental phenomenon's of psychoanalysis, so it comes as no surprise that it has always been deliberated over as an object of great interest as well as immense controversy. This same relationship, mutually co-created by the analyst and each individual and partner in analysis, represents also the core of sanctity and sacred space in contemporary psychoanalysis.

Technology-assisted psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Scharff, Jill Savege

2013-06-01

Teleanalysis-remote psychoanalysis by telephone, voice over internet protocol (VoIP), or videoteleconference (VTC)-has been thought of as a distortion of the frame that cannot support authentic analytic process. Yet it can augment continuity, permit optimum frequency of analytic sessions for in-depth analytic work, and enable outreach to analysands in areas far from specialized psychoanalytic centers. Theoretical arguments against teleanalysis are presented and countered and its advantages and disadvantages discussed. Vignettes of analytic process from teleanalytic sessions are presented, and indications, contraindications, and ethical concerns are addressed. The aim is to provide material from which to judge the authenticity of analytic process supported by technology.

The story of an ambivalent relationship: Sigmund Freud and Eugen Bleuler.

PubMed

Falzeder, Ernst

2007-06-01

This paper examines the short-lived flirtation between psychoanalysis and academia and psychiatry in Europe and the reasons for, and consequences of, the fact that their paths diverged. It is argued that Bleuler's break with the psychoanalytic movement is a crucial and, until now, largely underestimated turning point. Bleuler's separation from the psychoanalytic movement was probably more important for the course it has since taken than those of Adler, Stekel, or even Jung. Bleuler's analysis by correspondence by Freud, and its failure, was of paramount importance for the future relationship between Freud and Bleuler, and for Bleuler's assessment of psychoanalysis.

The Self-Organizing Psyche: Nonlinear and Neurobiological Contributions to Psychoanalysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stein, A. H.

Sigmund Freud attempted to align nineteenth century biology (and the dynamically conservative, continuous, Newtonian mechanics that underlie it) with discontinuous conscious experience. His tactics both set the future course for psychoanalytic development and introduced seemingly intractable complications into its metapsychology. In large part, these arose from what we now recognize were biological errors and dynamical oversimplifications amid his physical assumptions. Their correction, brought about by integrating nonlinear dynamics and neuro-biological research findings with W. Bion's reading of metapsychology, fundamentally supports a psychoanalysis based upon D. W. Winnicott's ideas surrounding play within transitional space.

Framework for a new dialogue between psychoanalysis and neurosciences: is the combined neuro-psychoanalytic approach the missing link?

PubMed Central

Vaslamatzis, Grigoris

2007-01-01

Freud's legacy deriving from his work The project for a scientific psychology (1895) could give a new impetus to the dialogue between psychoanalysis and neurosciences. A rapproachment phase is warrented. Based on the work of psychoanalysts who are themselves neuroscientists (such as Mauro Mancia, Martha Koukkou and Harold Shevrin) or have a long term dialogue with neuroscientists (Arnold Modell), three points of epistemological congruence are described: 1. dualism is no longer a satisfactory solution 2. cautions for the centrality of interpretation (hermeneutics) 3. the self-criticism of neuroscientists PMID:17976245

Theory and practice in psychoanalysis: psychoanalytic praxis. 1969.

PubMed

Bleger, José

2012-08-01

The author systematises and examines the relation between theory and practice in psychoanalysis in three directions: one, eminently epistemological, which is only mentioned because it pertains not only to psychoanalysis but to all the sciences; another, the relation between theory and technique; and the third, the relation between theory and the institutional organisation of psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts. All the problems described, especially the second and third points, together define psychoanalytic praxis. With regard to contradictions between theory and technique, the author points out that psychoanalytic theory is constructed fundamentally on the basis of an approach that is historico-genetic, dynamic and consistent with formal logic, whereas psychoanalytic practice occurs within a transference–countertransference relation, in a situation configured as an analytic field, a ‘here and now’, within a dramatic explanation and in a dialectic process. This triple diagnosis involves naturalistic and phenomenological approaches, the problem of objectivity and the role given to sexuality as a privileged parameter in psychoanalytic theory. In relation to the third direction mentioned above,the author refers briefly to the problem of psychoanalytic organisations, in the sense that they come into conflict with the development of psychoanalytic theory and the deepening of investigation. In reference to the latter, the author emphasises the need to widen the perspective of what constitutes psychoanalytic praxis. He points out that praxis is always replete with contradictions and that it is not a question of ignoring,denying or impeding these contradictions themselves (which would in any case be totally ineffective), but that by taking them into account, scientific development could be managed in a more planned way, less blindly; that is to say, less abandoned to spontaneity.

[On controversies around the Oedipus Complex].

PubMed

Drwiega, Marek

2002-01-01

In the article the author would like to draw the readers' attention to one of the central issues of psychoanalysis, i.e. Oedipus complex. In the development of the psychoanalysis the classical conception of Oedipus complex presented by Freud gave rise to a severe criticism both on the part of some psychoanalysts, especially women such as e.g. Melanie Klein, and on the part of ethnographers such as B. Malinowski. In the paper the author presents the main controversies concerning this interesting discussion. The fact of the matter is that the Oedipus complex is a hotly debated subject, not only from the cultural point of view but also within the psychoanalytical movement.

[René Allendy and the medicine of the imponderables].

PubMed

Hochmann, J

1993-01-01

René Allendy was one of the first French psychoanalysts. He was also a homeopath. A text by him on the "medicine of the imponderables" demonstrates his proximity to esoteric theories. The objective of this article is to illustrate a cultural misunderstanding at the time of the introduction of psychoanalysis in France, when it met up with a Gnostic and Illuminist heritage that was still very much alive. This initial confusion between the Freudian approach, which was in keeping with the thinking of the Lumières, and a certain obscurantism, explains perhaps some of the resistance as well as some of the subsequent deviations of psychoanalysis in France.

Love and/in psychoanalysis: a commentary on Lacan's reading of Plato's Symposium in Seminar VIII: Transference.

PubMed

Fink, Bruce

2015-02-01

What is love and what part does it play in psychoanalysis? Where are the analyst and the analysand situated in relation to the roles defined as those of the "lover" and the "beloved"? Jacques Lacan explores these and other questions in his soon-to-be-published Seminar VIII: Transference by providing an extensive commentary on Plato's most famous dialogue on love, the Symposium. This paper outlines some of the major points about love that grow out of Lacan's reading of the dialogue and examines their relevance to the analytic setting. Can the analyst be characterized as a sort of modern-day Socrates?

"Freud for all:" psychoanalysis and mass culture in Chile, 1920-1950.

PubMed

Ruperthuz Honorato, Mariano

2017-11-01

This article deals with the circulation and early spread of Freudianism in mass culture in Chilean society at the turn of the twentieth century. It documents the first references to Sigmund Freud in the Chilean media, the announcement of Freudian-style self-help classes, the appearance of psychoanalysts as characters in some fantasy novels, and the open lectures on psychoanalysis given by the first juvenile court judge in Santiago, the lawyer Samuel Gajardo Contreras. It explores the expectations projected onto Freudianism by the Chilean elite, and how Freud's theories contributed to a rethinking of childhood, the family and emotional life in Chile from 1920-1950.

Further thoughts on dualism, science, and the use of medication in psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Swoiskin, M H

2001-01-01

In response to Deborah Cabaniss's article, "Beyond Dualism: Psychoanalysis and Medication in the 21st Century," the author further considers the differences between the aims of symptom reduction and psychic integration, the concept of mind-body dualism, and the nature of scientific inquiry as they pertain to the use of medication in psychoanalytic therapies. He warns against the collapsing of concepts, aided by a misapplication of science, with respect to how we listen to, organize, and respond to clinical material. He argues that only when such scrutiny occurs can the important and challenging questions pertaining to the use of medication in psychoanalytic therapies be meaningfully considered.

Psychopathia sexualis: sexuality in old and new psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Breger, Louis

2014-02-01

The different conceptions of sexuality in classical and contemporary psychoanalysis are explored. Freud's misguided theories of sexual or libidinal drives and the Oedipus complex are shown to be defenses against his own traumatic attachment history. The evidence for this is found in a review of his childhood and self-analysis, and further illustrated with the cases reported in the Studies on Hysteria and elsewhere. Modern views of sex turn these old theories on their heads, demonstrating that sexual fantasies and actions are phenomena, unique to each individual, that are themselves in need of explanation. These radically different conceptions of sexuality are illustrated with 3 case histories. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

THE DIALOGICAL SELF IN PSYCHOANALYSIS.

PubMed

Muller, Felipe

2016-10-01

This paper describes the shift that appears to be taking place in contemporary psychoanalysis, as reflected among intersubjective approaches, from a monological conception of the self to a dialogical one. The monological self emphasizes the separation between mind, body, and external world, focusing on the representational and descriptive/referential function of language. In contrast, the dialogical self emphasizes practices, the permeable nature of relationships between subjects, and the constitutive function of language. This paper attempts to explain the growing emphasis on the dialogical self, understood from a theoretical, metatheoretical, and technical point of view, using contemporary intersubjective approaches to illustrate this shift. © 2016 The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Inc.

Psychoanalysis as a Philosophical Revolution: Freud's Divergence From the Philosophy of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.

PubMed

Dean, Jason

2016-08-01

In his classic, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche described a philosophical worldview that has many similarities to Freudian metapsychology. This paper uses Freud's theories to analyze The Birth of Tragedy, discussing the similarities and differences between Nietzsche's philosophy and Freudian metapsychology. The author suggests that while psychoanalysis was born from the spirit of German philosophy, in that it based itself on a similar concept of the unconscious, Freud diverged from his predecessors to create a new worldview, based on the acceptance and integration of unconscious desire. This revolutionary theory provided a new approach to humanity's moral and existential issues.

Constance Pascal's Chagrins d'amour et psychoses (1935): a French psychiatrist's views on psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Gordon, Felicia

2015-03-01

In 1935 Constance Pascal (1877-1937), France's first woman psychiatrist, published Chagrins d'amour et psychoses (The Sorrows of Love and Psychosis). My analysis of her monograph will consider: her major article leading up to Chagrins; Pascal's debts to her predecessors, particularly Morel and Kretschmer; her relationship to the French psychoanalytic movement; her co-option of psychoanalysis as a tool in her own therapeutic work with patients in the state psychiatric system; and her social/cultural interpretations of her woman patients. The literary and philosophic aspects of her work are emphasized as well as her contribution to French psychiatry. © The Author(s) 2014.

The unbearable agony of being: interpreting tormented states of mind in the psychoanalysis of sexually traumatized patients.

PubMed

Diamond, M J

1997-01-01

This article focuses on the clinical importance of the disturbing transference-countertransference matrix in the psychoanalysis of patients whose ego development was decisively influenced by early, traumatic sexual abuse. Dissociative defensive operations and "automatic" identifications are emphasized in accounting for the sadomasochistic and other characteristic features of the "traumatic" transference-countertransference ambiance. Two clinical vignettes depict the analyst's need to take his or her own disturbing experience as an object of analytic examination, while illustrating how "here-and-now" transference cues are used to interpret the patient's efforts to cope with overwhelming, traumatized states of mind.

Freud with Charcot: Freud's discovery and the question of diagnosis.

PubMed

Lepoutre, Thomas; Villa, François

2015-04-01

Although Charcot's seminal role in influencing Freud is widely stated, although Freud's trip to Paris to study with Charcot is well recognized as pivotal in his shift from neurological to psychopathological work, a key fact of the Freudian heuristic remains largely underestimated: namely, that Freud's psychopathological breakthrough, which gave birth to psychoanalysis, cannot be separated from his 'diagnostic preoccupation', which is a crucial and at times the first organizing principle of his earliest writings. The purpose of this article is therefore to reopen the question of diagnosis by following its development along the path leading from Charcot to Freud. The authors demonstrate that Freud's careful attention to diagnostic distinctions follows strictly in the direction of Charcot's 'nosological method'. More importantly, the article intends to identify the precise way in which his ideas operate in Freud's own work, in order to understand how Freud reinvests them to forge his own nosological system. If the authors trace the destiny of Charcot's lessons as they reach Freud's hands, it is the importance granted to mixed neuroses in Freud's psychopathology that allows them to pinpoint the role played by the diagnostic process in the rationality of psychoanalysis. Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Leaping from brain to mind: a critique of mirror neuron explanations of countertransference.

PubMed

Vivona, Jeanine M

2009-06-01

In the current vigorous debate over the value of neuroscience to psychoanalysis, the epistemological status of the links between the data of brain research and the constructs of interest to psychoanalysts has rarely been examined. An inspection of recent discussions of mirror neuron research, particularly regarding countertransference, reveals gaps between psychoanalytic processes and the available brain activation data, and allows the evaluation of evidence for three implicit assumptions frequently made to bridge these gaps: (1) there is a straightforward correspondence between observed brain activity and mental activity; (2) similarity of localized brain activity across individuals signifies a shared interpersonal experience; (3) an automatic brain mechanism enables direct interpersonal sharing of experiences in the absence of inference and language. Examination of mirror neuron research findings reveals that these assumptions are either untested or questionable. Moreover, within neuroscience there are competing interpretations of mirror neuron findings, with diverse implications for psychoanalysis. The present state of mirror neuron research may offer us new hypotheses or metaphors, but does not provide empirical validation of the proposed models. More generally, as we attempt to learn from research findings generated outside psychoanalysis, we must strive to think scientifically, by minding the difference between data and interpretation.

Raymond de Saussure. First president of the European Psychoanalytical Federation.

PubMed

Vermorel, H

1998-02-01

The author reviews the life and career of the Swiss psychoanalyst Raymond de Saussure, who died in 1971. A member of an ancient Protestant family with a distinguished intellectual record in Geneva, Saussure studied medicine and psychiatry before turning to psychoanalysis after a fateful encounter with Sigmund Freud, with whom he subsequently maintained intermittent contacts. His subsequent efforts to establish psychoanalysis as a discipline in its own right separate from psychiatry, especially in the French-speaking countries, are described in detail. We learn of his important role in the promotion of psychoanalysis, the organisation of psychoanalytic training and the publication of psychoanalytic material, including his own substantial theoretical and clinical contributions. He is shown also to have had a wide range of other interests. Particular stress is laid on Saussure's Europeanism, as revealed in his familiarity with Germanic as well as French-language culture, his activities in France in addition to Switzerland, his role as an ambassador for European culture during his New York period, and, most importantly, his commitment to the formation of the European Psychoanalytical Federation, of which he was the first President. The author notes too that Saussure was a man of unfailing courtesy.

A national survey of candidates: II: motivations, obstacles, and ideas on increasing interest in psychoanalytic training.

PubMed

Katz, Debra A; Kaplan, Marcia; Stromberg, Sarah E

2012-10-01

A national survey of candidates was conducted to identify motivations for pursuing psychoanalytic training, obstacles that prevent progression or completion, and candidates' ideas on how best to increase interest among potential trainees. In 2009-2010, 40 percent of candidates on the affiliate member e-mail list completed an anonymous web-based survey. Candidates strongly endorsed contact with a personal psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, or supervisor as the most important influence in discovering psychoanalysis and deciding to pursue training. They identified the total cost of analytic training as the greatest obstacle. This was followed by the cost of personal analysis, loss of income for low-fee cases, time away from family, and difficulty finding cases. To enhance training, local institutes should work to improve institute atmosphere and provide assistance with finding cases; national organizations should increase outreach activities and publicize psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic institutes could recruit future candidates by working to increase personal contact with psychoanalysts, reducing the cost of training, improving institute atmosphere, assisting with case-finding, enhancing outreach activities, and widely publicizing psychoanalysis. Narrative comments from candidates and the implications of these findings regarding engagement of future trainees are discussed.

Theoretical pluralism in psychoanalytic case studies.

PubMed

Willemsen, Jochem; Cornelis, Shana; Geerardyn, Filip M; Desmet, Mattias; Meganck, Reitske; Inslegers, Ruth; Cauwe, Joachim M B D

2015-01-01

The aim of this study is to provide an overview of the scientific activity of different psychoanalytic schools of thought in terms of the content and production of case studies published on ISI Web of Knowledge. Between March 2013 and November 2013, we contacted all case study authors included in the online archive of psychoanalytic and psychodynamic case studies (www.singlecasearchive.com) to inquire about their psychoanalytic orientation during their work with the patient. The response rate for this study was 45%. It appears that the two oldest psychoanalytic schools, Object-relations psychoanalysis and Ego psychology or "Classical psychoanalysis" dominate the literature of published case studies. However, most authors stated that they feel attached to two or more psychoanalytic schools of thought. This confirms that the theoretical pluralism in psychoanalysis stretches to the field of single case studies. The single case studies of each psychoanalytic school are described separately in terms of methodology, patient, therapist, or treatment features. We conclude that published case studies features are fairly similar across different psychoanalytic schools. The results of this study are not representative of all psychoanalytic schools, as some do not publish their work in ISI ranked journals.

Losing a father all over again: the termination of an analysis of an adolescent boy suffering from father loss.

PubMed

Sugarman, Alan

2010-08-01

Criteria for beginning and conducting the termination phase of psychoanalysis have provoked debate and confusion from the early days of psychoanalysis. Gabbard (2009) has recently pointed to the field's tendency to cling to idealized versions of these criteria as a way to deal with disagreements. The situation becomes more complicated for child and adolescent psychoanalysts because their patients are in the midst of a developmental process at the very time they are engaged in a psychoanalytic process. The termination phase of an adolescent male suffering from father loss is presented in depth in order to provide clinical data toward further consideration of the vexing questions surrounding termination in psychoanalysis. His termination is used to examine the relative importance of losing the analyst as a transference object as against a developmental object; the meaning of action during termination; the complicating role of trauma vis-à-vis termination; and the importance of the post-termination phase of analysis. It is suggested that his termination phase demonstrates that a "good enough" termination involves the development of a self-analyzing capacity that continues to evolve and develop after termination.

The Interface between Neuroscience and Neuro-Psychoanalysis: Focus on Brain Connectivity

PubMed Central

Salone, Anatolia; Di Giacinto, Alessandra; Lai, Carlo; De Berardis, Domenico; Iasevoli, Felice; Fornaro, Michele; De Risio, Luisa; Santacroce, Rita; Martinotti, Giovanni; Giannantonio, Massimo Di

2016-01-01

Over the past 20 years, the advent of advanced techniques has significantly enhanced our knowledge on the brain. Yet, our understanding of the physiological and pathological functioning of the mind is still far from being exhaustive. Both the localizationist and the reductionist neuroscientific approaches to psychiatric disorders have proven to be largely unsatisfactory and are outdated. Accruing evidence suggests that psychoanalysis can engage the neurosciences in a productive and mutually enriching dialogue that may further our understanding of psychiatric disorders. In particular, advances in brain connectivity research have provided evidence supporting the convergence of neuroscientific findings and psychoanalysis and helped characterize the circuitry and mechanisms that underlie higher brain functions. In the present paper we discuss how knowledge on brain connectivity can impact neuropsychoanalysis, with a particular focus on schizophrenia. Brain connectivity studies in schizophrenic patients indicate complex alterations in brain functioning and circuitry, with particular emphasis on the role of cortical midline structures (CMS) and the default mode network (DMN). These networks seem to represent neural correlates of psychodynamic concepts central to the understanding of schizophrenia and of core psychopathological alterations of this disorder (i.e., ego disturbances and impaired primary process thinking). PMID:26869904

[From anamnesis to the art of interpretation, or: What is a "genuine" psychoanalyst? Wolfgang Warda, Ludwig Binswanger, Wilhelm Strohmayer and the origins of psychoanalysis in Thuringia].

PubMed

May, Ulrike

2016-01-01

Warda and Strohmayer from Thuringia were among the first German physicians who developed an interest in Freuds theory and therapeutic method around 1900. Their contributions reflect the influence of Otto Binswanger, professor of psychiatry in Jena, a representative of the "psychological direction" in psychiatry which in the beginning was relatively receptive to Freud. The paper discusses their rapprochement to, and detachment from, the Freudian school, including also the work of a third young physician: Ludwig Binswanger, Otto's nephew, who was active in Jena at the same time. It points to certain factors contributing to the increasing rejection Freud met in academic circles which have been underrated to date: (1) the transformation of psychoanalysis into an art of interpretation; (2) the introduction of transference. Both factors which were elaborated by Freud as essentials of his theoretical and practical approach around 1900 and published in 1904/05, undermined the claim of academic medicine to objectivity. The paper describes how psychoanalysis officially abandoned the scientific standards of contemporary medicine at the Weimar congress in 1911, at the same time as Warda and Strohmayer left the Freudian group.

Weaving child psychoanalysis: Past, present, and future.

PubMed

Brinich, Paul M

2013-01-01

Using the metaphor of a fabric woven from many threads, this paper describes nine of the many conceptual strands that have contributed to the development of child psychoanalysis over its first century. It notes the unfortunate isolation (sometimes self-imposed) of child analysis from related fields (including adult analysis) and argues that we must recognize both the strengths and weaknesses of our psychoanalytic tools if we are to collaborate with and profit from the work of nonanalytic colleagues. It closes with the suggestion that the continued weaving of child analysis will require the creation of new looms, structures that are able to support a new generation of child analysts and the continued elaboration of the field.

A self-psychological approach to the study of biography: the interplay of narratives in psychoanalysis and biography.

PubMed

Hershberg, Sandra G

2009-04-01

This chapter is an exploration of the psychoanalytic aspects of biography and the biographical aspects of psychoanalysis. The narratives that emerge from biography and psychoanalytic treatment incorporate elements of empathy, ideology (theory), and transference/countertransference and are co-constructed within an intersubjective field involving the subjectivities of both participants, the biographer and her subject and the analyst and her analysand. I will provide examples that demonstrate the way in which these processes play out in the biographical realm. Correspondingly, I will illustrate the way in which the analyst's biography and analysand's autobiography change in the course of the psychoanalytic treatment. Salient differences between biographical and psychoanalytic endeavors are also discussed.

The secular and the supernatural: madness and psychiatry in the short stories of Muriel Spark.

PubMed

Beveridge, A W

2015-01-01

Edinburgh-born Muriel Spark is one of modern Scotland's greatest writers. Examination of her work reveals that the subjects of madness and psychiatry are recurrent themes in her writing. She herself had a mental breakdown when she was a young woman and she took an interest in the world of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. In her short stories, Spark approaches the subject of madness in a variety of ways: she relates it to the supernatural; to writing fiction; and to religion. She frequently juxtaposes secular and supernatural explanations of mental disturbance. Spark adopts a sceptical and, at times, mocking view of psychiatrists and psychiatric treatment. Both psychoanalysis and pills are seen as problematic.

Beyond pluralism: psychoanalysis and the workings of mind.

PubMed

Pine, Fred

2011-10-01

Subjects that Freud excluded or incompletely explored have been sites of theoretical expansion in over a century of observation: the role of the other, the self, the preoedipal period, action, the countertransference, limits to neutrality/anonymity/abstinence, the loci of the analytic drama, effects beyond interpretation, agency, and basic needs (versus wishes). These developments have led to conflicting theories and sect-like groupings within the field. Group psychological processes underlying this are discussed; and a broad and inclusive view of psychoanalysis is proposed under the heading of the study of the workings of mind. Additionally, substantial integrative proposals are offered with respect to the central tasks of individual development, theories of mind, the relational turn, and aspects of technique.

[A reflection about organizational culture according to psychoanalysis' view].

PubMed

Cardoso, Maria Lúcia Alves Pereira

2008-01-01

This article aims at submitting a reflection on the universal presuppositions of human culture proposed by Freud, as a prop for analyzing presuppositions of organizational culture according to Schein. In an article published in 1984, the latter claims that in order to decipher organizational culture one cannot rely upon the (visible) artifacts or to (perceptible) values, but should take a deeper plunge and identify the basic assumptions underlying organizational culture. Such pressupositions spread into the field of sttudy concerning the individual inner self, within the sphere of Psychoanalysis. We have therefore examined Freud's basic assumptions of human culture in order to ascertain its conformity with the paradigms of organizational culture as proposed by Schein.

The pre-history of health psychology in the United Kingdom: From natural science and psychoanalysis to social science, social cognition and beyond.

PubMed

Murray, Michael

2018-03-01

Health psychology formally came of age in the United Kingdom in the 1980s, but it was prefigured by much discussion about challenges to the dominance of biomedicine in healthcare and debates. This articles focuses on what could be termed the pre-history of health psychology in the UK. This was the period in the earlier 20th century when psychological approaches were dominated by psychoanalysis which was followed by behaviourism and then cognitivism. Review of this pre-history provides the backdrop for the rise of health psychology in the UK and also reveals the tensions between the different theoretical perspectives.

Importing Freud: first-wave psychoanalysis, interwar social sciences, and the interdisciplinary foundations of an American social theory.

PubMed

Gitre, Edward J K

2010-01-01

For all that has been written about Freud, one of the most significant sites for his initial importation into the U.S. remains largely unexamined: namely, within and through the social sciences. During these early years, social scientists were attracted to psychoanalysis for reasons that were not only personal and idiosyncratic, but also intellectual, social, and professional. Focusing on the University of Chicago's Division of Social Sciences and using oral histories, students records, course materials, as well as published sources, this essay explores this varied attraction and its substantive impact upon American social theory vis-à-vis the ideals and ideology of "social adjustment."

Anomalous Experiences, Trauma, and Symbolization Processes at the Frontiers between Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Neurosciences

PubMed Central

Rabeyron, Thomas; Loose, Tianna

2015-01-01

Anomalous or exceptional experiences are uncommon experiences which are usually interpreted as being paranormal by those who report them. These experiences have long remained difficult to explain, but current progress in cognitive neuroscience and psychoanalysis sheds light on the contexts in which they emerge, as well as on their underlying processes. Following a brief description of the different types of anomalous experiences, we underline how they can be better understood at the frontiers between psychoanalysis and cognitive neurosciences. In this regard, three main lines of research are discussed and illustrated, alongside clinical cases which come from a clinical service specializing in anomalous experiences. First, we study the links between anomalous experiences and hallucinatory processes, by showing that anomalous experiences frequently occur as a specific reaction to negative life events, in which case they mainly take the form of non-pathological hallucinations. Next, we propose to analyze these experiences from the perspective of their traumatic aspects and the altered states of consciousness they often imply. Finally, these experiences are considered to be the consequence of a hypersensitivity that can be linked to an increase in psychic permeability. In conclusion, these different processes lead us to consider anomalous experiences as primary forms of symbolization and transformation of the subjective experience, especially during, or after traumatic situations. PMID:26732646

Freud, Bion and Kant: Epistemology and anthropology in The Interpretation of Dreams.

PubMed

Sandford, Stella

2017-02-01

This interdisciplinary article takes a philosophical approach to The Interpretation of Dreams, connecting Freud to one of the few philosophers with whom he sometimes identified - Immanuel Kant. It aims to show that Freud's theory of dreams has more in common with Bion's later thoughts on dreaming than is usually recognized. Distinguishing, via a discussion of Kant, between the conflicting 'epistemological' and 'anthropological' aspects of The Interpretation of Dreams, it shows that one specific contradiction in the book - concerning the relation between dream-work and waking thought - can be understood in terms of the tension between these conflicting aspects. Freud reaches the explicit conclusion that the dream-work and waking thought differ from each other absolutely; but the implicit conclusion of The Interpretation of Dreams is quite the opposite. This article argues that the explicit conclusion is the result of the epistemological aspects of the book; the implicit conclusion, which brings Freud much closer to Bion, the result of the anthropological approach. Bringing philosophy and psychoanalysis together this paper thus argues for an interpretation of The Interpretation of Dreams that is in some ways at odds with the standard view of the book, while also suggesting that aspects of Kant's 'anthropological' works might legitimately be seen as a precursor of psychoanalysis. Copyright © 2016 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Delving into the 'emotional storms': A thematic analysis of psychoanalysts' initial consultation reports.

PubMed

Pérez, Alejandra; Crick, Penelope; Lawrence, Susan

2015-06-01

Psychoanalysts' written reports on initial consultations are a window into the complexities of a crucial aspect of psychoanalytic work. However, systematic research in this area has largely focused on patients' demographic factors or standardized measures. The present study looked at reports of all the consultations taking place at the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis over one calendar year (N = 100). The aim was to explore psychoanalysts' different explicit styles of working and reporting as well as further understanding implicit processes used in thinking and writing about each particular consultation experience. A thematic analysis revealed a set of themes that related to a style of working and thinking about the consultation process as a dyadic experience, where the interaction, affective reactions and contact made between the two are the focus when thinking of making a recommendation for psychoanalysis. The majority of the reports had an open, exploratory quality. The writing of reports appears to give the analyst an opportunity to process the consultation experience and arrive at a more triangular position. Writing reports is a more valuable part of the consultation process than has formally been recognized and acknowledged. The limitations of this study as well as the relevance of these findings for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2015 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

'For Beauty is nothing but the barely endurable onset of Terror': Outline of a general psychoanalytic aesthetics.

PubMed

Leikert, Sebastian

2017-06-01

Even close to 80 years after Freud's words that psychoanalysis "has scarcely anything to say about beauty" (Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, SE 21, p. 82) the question of a specific psychoanalytic aesthetic is still faced with a deficit in theory. Since aesthetics is related to Aisthesis, the Greek word for 'perception', a psychoanalytic aesthetic can solely emerge from a psychoanalysis of perceptive structures. The term 'kinaesthetic semantic' is introduced in order to exemplify via music how perceptive experiences must be structured for them to be experienced as beautiful. The basic mechanisms - repetition of form (rhythm, unification) and seduction (deviation, surprise) - are defined. With the help of these mechanisms an intensive contact between perceiving object and kinetic subject, the physical self, is established. The intensive relatedness is a requirement for the creative process in art and also for psychic growth on the subject's level. The described basic mechanisms of the aesthetic process in music can also be encountered in painting and poetry. By the means of a self-portrait by Bacon it will be examined how, in art, terror and traumatization are represented via targeted disorganization of beauty endowing mechanisms, hence finding an enabling form of confrontation and integration of fended contents. Copyright © 2017 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

[Epistemic and historical elucidation of the borderline personality disorder].

PubMed

Londoño Paredes, Diego Enrique

2015-01-01

The particularities of those that have been considered "hard cases" in the clinical field, and their relationship with personality disorders, are discussed together with their quintessential conceptual and diagnostic model: the borderline personalities. The aim of the study is to historically and epistemologically rebuild their origins within psychiatry and psychoanalysis. From a classical epistemological and historical study, a brief tour is made through the nineteenth century alienism and the postulate of "partial insanity". Next, a passage is spawned through the concepts that emerged from this postulate: "monomania" and "moral insanity", up to mid-century Kraepelin and the "fundamental states" of manic-depressive insanity as pathological constitutional forms or characters, and reaching the twentieth century with characterology and psychopathic personalities. Finally, psychoanalysis is analyzed as the main source of borderline personality disorders arising from the problems encountered in analytical treatments and the development of the notion of "character neurosis". Borderline personality disorders are the result of the conjunction of a number of factors, heirs of the notion of "partial insanity", of the fundamental states of manic-depression insanity, of characterology, of the idea of constitutions and pathological personalities, together with the emerging concerns of psychoanalysis in the early twentieth century. Copyright © 2014 Asociación Colombiana de Psiquiatría. Publicado por Elsevier España. All rights reserved.

The analytic setting today: using the couch or the chair?

PubMed

Wiener, Jan

2015-09-01

This paper re-visits Murray Jackson's 1961 paper in the Journal of Analytical Psychology, 'Chair, couch and countertransference', with the aim of exploring the role of the couch for Jungian analysts in clinical practice today. Within the Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP) and some other London-based societies, there has been an evolution of practice from face-to-face sessions with the patient in the chair, as was Jung's preference, to a mode of practice where patients use the couch with the analyst sitting to the side rather than behind, as has been the tradition in psychoanalysis. Fordham was the founding member of the SAP and it was because of his liaison with psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts that this cultural shift came about. Using clinical examples, the author explores the couch/chair question in terms of her own practice and the internal setting as a structure in her mind. With reference to Bleger's (2013) paper 'Psychoanalysis of the psychoanalytic setting', the author discusses how the analytic setting, including use of the couch or the chair, can act as a silent container for the most primitive aspects of the patient's psyche which will only emerge in analysis when the setting changes or is breached. © 2015, The Society of Analytical Psychology.

Some thoughts on the diffusion of psychoanalysis: the group dimension, ethics and the sense of identity.

PubMed

Namer, Albert

2011-12-01

In this paper the author questions some of the ways in which psychoanalysis is passed on to the wider public, one of which is sometimes evocative of the sales promotion of a consumer product in contemporary society. This methodology does not give sufficiently deep prior thought to the eventual consequences of side effects. The detailed exposition of clinical cases, for example, raises sensitive ethical issues, even when anonymity is preserved. Although it is true that making information about Freud's theories more widely available may indeed encourage people to think about training as psychoanalysts, it is noticeable that this process is sometimes considered to be a form of training in itself. Some participants feel that acquiring a psychoanalytical vocabulary and reading clinical reports form a sufficient basis for practising thereafter as psychotherapists, both in institutional contexts and in private practice. The absence of group work on the part of the organizers might explain why closer study is not made of the methodologies of transmission and the different levels that it involves. This is sometimes due to the absence of a common object, formed within and by the group, and to the emergence of manic defences in the group. Copyright © 2011 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

The hippocampus facilitates integration within a symbolic field.

PubMed

Cornelius, John Thor

2017-10-01

This paper attempts to elaborate a fundamental brain mechanism involved in the creation and maintenance of symbolic fields of thought. It will integrate theories of psychic spaces as explored by Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion with the neuroscientific examinations of those with bilateral hippocampal injury to show how evidence from both disciplines sheds important light on this aspect of mind. Possibly originating as a way of maintaining an oriented, first person psychic map, this capacity allows individuals a dynamic narrative access to a realm of layered elements and their connections. If the proposed hypothesis is correct, the hippocampus facilitates the integration of this symbolic field of mind, where narrative forms of thinking, creativity, memory, and dreaming are intertwined. Without the hippocampus, there is an inability to engage many typical forms of thought itself. Also, noting the ways these individuals are not impaired supports theories about other faculties of mind, providing insight into their possible roles within human thought. The evidence of different systems working in conjunction with the symbolic field provides tantalizing clues about these fundamental mechanisms of brain and mind that are normally seamlessly integrated, and hints at future areas of clinical and laboratory research, both within neuroscience and psychoanalysis. © 2017 The Authors. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Hierarchical Recursive Organization and the Free Energy Principle: From Biological Self-Organization to the Psychoanalytic Mind

PubMed Central

Connolly, Patrick; van Deventer, Vasi

2017-01-01

The present paper argues that a systems theory epistemology (and particularly the notion of hierarchical recursive organization) provides the critical theoretical context within which the significance of Friston's (2010a) Free Energy Principle (FEP) for both evolution and psychoanalysis is best understood. Within this perspective, the FEP occupies a particular level of the hierarchical organization of the organism, which is the level of biological self-organization. This form of biological self-organization is in turn understood as foundational and pervasive to the higher levels of organization of the human organism that are of interest to both neuroscience as well as psychoanalysis. Consequently, central psychoanalytic claims should be restated, in order to be located in their proper place within a hierarchical recursive organization of the (situated) organism. In light of the FEP the realization of the psychoanalytic mind by the brain should be seen in terms of the evolution of different levels of systematic organization where the concepts of psychoanalysis describe a level of hierarchical recursive organization superordinate to that of biological self-organization and the FEP. The implication of this formulation is that while “psychoanalytic” mental processes are fundamentally subject to the FEP, they nonetheless also add their own principles of process over and above that of the FEP. A model found in Grobbelaar (1989) offers a recursive bottom-up description of the self-organization of the psychoanalytic ego as dependent on the organization of language (and affect), which is itself founded upon the tendency toward autopoiesis (self-making) within the organism, which is in turn described as formally similar to the FEP. Meaningful consilience between Grobbelaar's model and the hierarchical recursive description available in Friston's (2010a) theory is described. The paper concludes that the valuable contribution of the FEP to psychoanalysis underscores the necessity of reengagement with the core concepts of psychoanalytic theory, and the usefulness that a systems theory epistemology—particularly hierarchical recursive description—can have for this goal. PMID:29038652

Hierarchical Recursive Organization and the Free Energy Principle: From Biological Self-Organization to the Psychoanalytic Mind.

PubMed

Connolly, Patrick; van Deventer, Vasi

2017-01-01

The present paper argues that a systems theory epistemology (and particularly the notion of hierarchical recursive organization) provides the critical theoretical context within which the significance of Friston's (2010a) Free Energy Principle (FEP) for both evolution and psychoanalysis is best understood. Within this perspective, the FEP occupies a particular level of the hierarchical organization of the organism, which is the level of biological self-organization. This form of biological self-organization is in turn understood as foundational and pervasive to the higher levels of organization of the human organism that are of interest to both neuroscience as well as psychoanalysis. Consequently, central psychoanalytic claims should be restated, in order to be located in their proper place within a hierarchical recursive organization of the (situated) organism. In light of the FEP the realization of the psychoanalytic mind by the brain should be seen in terms of the evolution of different levels of systematic organization where the concepts of psychoanalysis describe a level of hierarchical recursive organization superordinate to that of biological self-organization and the FEP. The implication of this formulation is that while "psychoanalytic" mental processes are fundamentally subject to the FEP, they nonetheless also add their own principles of process over and above that of the FEP. A model found in Grobbelaar (1989) offers a recursive bottom-up description of the self-organization of the psychoanalytic ego as dependent on the organization of language (and affect), which is itself founded upon the tendency toward autopoiesis (self-making) within the organism, which is in turn described as formally similar to the FEP. Meaningful consilience between Grobbelaar's model and the hierarchical recursive description available in Friston's (2010a) theory is described. The paper concludes that the valuable contribution of the FEP to psychoanalysis underscores the necessity of reengagement with the core concepts of psychoanalytic theory, and the usefulness that a systems theory epistemology-particularly hierarchical recursive description-can have for this goal.

"Why do (don't) you ask?" Transference and the desire (not) to know.

PubMed

Friedlander, S R

1991-06-01

One of the criterial distinctions of psychoanalysis is its renunciation of indoctrination through suggestion. In spite of the fact that psychoanalysis is both an organized body of knowledge and a disciplined form of interpersonal influence, it regards an analyst who tells the analysand what to think or do as essentially doing harm by substituting a new form of prejudice and alienation for the preexisting form he is attacking. Even though an analyst regards his knowledge of psychoanalytic theory as adequate at a general level, this "truth" is not an adequate mode of discourse with an individual. Why not? It is a fact that analysands often do not accept an analyst's idea. However, the fundamental problematic of clinical psychoanalysis comes precisely at the point that the analysand would accept the analyst's idea, involving the distinction between a properly psychoanalytic cure and a transference cure. Psychoanalytic theory itself holds that unreflective incorporation of another's idea about oneself comes at the expense of autonomous and spontaneous self-revelation. Despite its resolute pursuit of new truths, the aim of psychoanalysis is less concerned with attaining specific ideas about unrecognized conflicts than it is with achieving a general attitude--that self-understanding requires a capacity to admit dubious and unwanted ideas and feelings that symptoms, dreams, and free associations bring to light. This "psychoanalytic" attitude permits a new type of discourse in which the person recognizes himself or herself through expression, rather than parrotting the analyst's (or others') words, or continuing rigidly to hide the truth of desire for oneself. In the long run, psychoanalysis offers to correct a primary misunderstanding: that one can acquire a comprehensively true image of oneself. As Barratt (1988) emphasizes, this transformation is tantamount to a change in personal epistemology for the analysand and a change in epistemological theory for the culture as a whole. In our culture, most analysts and lay people alike take for granted that the ego is an agent that is to be integrated and strengthened in order to direct one's life. Likewise, the unconscious is commonly regarded as a type of savage alter ego that must be mastered by the ego. According to Lacan's critique, the ego is a snare and a delusion for the patient, however highly commended by society it may be, because its very essence is to furnish the illusion of enduring self-knowledge.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Freud's free clinics: a tale of two continents.

PubMed

Richards, Arnold

2013-12-01

Two important schools of thought began in the nineteenth century in Central Europe: Marxism and psychoanalysis. They had much common but there were significant differences. The Marxist influence on early psychoanalysts played out in one way in Europe and another way in the United States. Freud and his Austro-Marxist colleagues were committed to human welfare and social justice. They established a network of clinics that offered psychoanalysis to patients of limited means. The free clinics movement did not cross the Atlantic. There was a cohort of Marxists in the United States who belonged to the United States Communist Party. They were not publicly socially committed, but this paper will try to show that their Marxism influenced their psychoanalytic theory, practice, and politics.

[Mauro Mancia: the dream between psychoanalysis and neurosciences].

PubMed

Cagli, Vito

2009-01-01

"Dreaming, in any case, remains a mental activity and not a physiological process, even though it springs from this process". This sentence of Mauro Mancia encapsulates the entire significance of his studies on sleeping/dreaming. A totality of observations and reflections grounded in neurophysiology and psychoanalysis which led him to study and to "see" the two faces of a problem that has engaged man's attention since the remotest antiquity. Mancia has thus given us the resources to see the dream-and not only the dream-with the marvelled eye of the artist who seeks and finds a sense in things and at the same time with the cold eye of the scientist who demands of things only their how and wherefore.

Therapeutic hypnosis, psychotherapy, and the digital humanities: the narratives and culturomics of hypnosis, 1800-2008.

PubMed

Rossi, Ernest; Mortimer, Jane; Rossi, Kathryn

2013-04-01

Culturomics is a new scientific discipline of the digital humanities-the use of computer algorithms to search for meaning in large databases of text and media. This new digital discipline is used to explore 200 years of the history of hypnosis and psychotherapy in over five million digitized books from more than 40 university libraries around the world. It graphically compares the frequencies of English words about hypnosis, hypnotherapy, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and their founders from 1800 to 2008. This new perspective explore issues such as: Who were the major innovators in the history of therapeutic hypnosis, psychoanalysis, and psychotherapy? How well does this new digital approach to the humanities correspond to traditional histories of hypnosis and psychotherapy?

[Max Eitingon in Palestine/Eretz Israel (1933-1943)].

PubMed

Liebermann, Guido

2015-01-01

In 1933, after the Nazi takeover in Germany, Eitingon decided to settle in Palestine. His ten Jerusalem years highlight a multifaceted personality that does not quite correspond to his usual image as a "grey eminence" of the international psychoanalytic movement: enthusiastic, vivid, highly involved in various--artistic, scientific, academic, social and pedagogic--acitivities of zionism in Palestine. In contrast, his last years were overshadowed by illness, financial ruin und the tragedies of war. Eitingon played a major role in the establishment of psychoanalysis in Palestine. However, the omnipresence of his name, associated with a purely Berlin psychoanalytic tradition, tends to obscure the important contributions of representatives of the Viennese tradition and the significant achievement of Moshe Wulff who was the real pioneer of psychoanalysis in Israel.

Reflections on the work of Hanna Segal (1918-2011).

PubMed

Steiner, John

2015-02-01

This paper is based on a talk given at the conference to celebrate the Work of Hanna Segal and attempts to summarise her contribution to psychoanalysis. I suggest that in addition to being the important presenter of the work of Melanie Klein, she made major contributions to our understanding of many analytic ideas, for example, symbol formation, the usefulness of the concept of the death instinct and the relation between phantasy and reality. She was a pioneer in the analytic treatment of psychosis and sh wrote important papers on literature and aesthetics. She was a great teacher and emphasised the central role played by the analytic setting in representing the attitude of the analyst. Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Technique and final cause in psychoanalysis: four ways of looking at one moment.

PubMed

Lear, Jonathan

2009-12-01

This paper argues that if one considers just a single clinical moment there may be no principled way to choose among different approaches to psychoanalytic technique. One must in addition take into account what Aristotle called the final cause of psychoanalysis, which this paper argues is freedom. However, freedom is itself an open-ended concept with many aspects that need to be explored and developed from a psychoanalytic perspective. This paper considers one analytic moment from the perspectives of the techniques of Paul Gray, Hans Loewald, the contemporary Kleinians and Jacques Lacan. It argues that, if we are to evaluate these techniques, we must take into account the different conceptions of freedom they are trying to facilitate.

The Logic of Appearance: Dennett, Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis

PubMed Central

Feyaerts, Jasper; Vanheule, Stijn

2017-01-01

In the present essay, we aim to develop and contrast three different positions toward Sellars’ distinction between the manifest and scientific images of man: Dennett’s philosophical reconstruction of neurocognitive science, contemporary phenomenology and psychoanalysis. We will suggest that these respective traditions and the substantial differences between them can be understood in terms of a ‘logic of appearance.’ Related to this are differing ideas about the rights and limits of the first-person perspective, the relation between conscious experience and belief, and the issue of naturalization. In the final part, we will try to specify, on the basis of a detailed reading of the disagreement between Dennett and phenomenology, in what way psychoanalytic theory could respond to these different issues. PMID:28878725

The Relevance of Arieti's Work in the Age of Medication.

PubMed

Balbuena Rivera, Francisco

2016-09-01

This paper looks at the relevance of psychoanalysis as a treatment option for psychotic individuals at a time when psychosis is invariably considered to be a biologically-based brain disease, for which the preferred course of treatment is psychotropic medication. In recent years, the use of psychoanalysis has declined noticeably in favor of evidenced-based biomedical approaches, which rely heavily upon statistical probabilities for ameliorating specific psychotic symptoms. Well-publicized biological approaches have proliferated, often to the detriment of the psychotic individual's general health, emotional recovery, and long-term rehabilitation. Sadly, these approaches may also be a significant factor affecting mortality rates in those suffering with psychosis, known to be about 25 years shorter, on average, than the general population.

Eternal hate and conscience: on the filiation between Freudian psychoanalysis and sixteenth and early seventeenth century Protestant thought.

PubMed

Westerink, Herman

2011-01-01

In his seminar on ethics Jacques Lacan suggests there exists a "filiation or cultural paternity" between Freudian psychoanalysis and a "new direction of thought" that starts with Luther's conceptualization of God's eternal hate of man, and is then futher continued in Calvinism. In this article this thesis is explored. The author argues that there is not only a familiarity between the Protestant doctrines of predestination and Freud's reconstruction of prehistoric events and primal scenes, but also that Lacan's views on conscience formation and his elaborations of the complexity of moral decisions resembles Calvinist thought on civil and spiritual conscience, and the longing for restoration of a lost image of God.

[An enigma named Agostino Gemelli: Catholicism, fascism and psychoanalysis in Italy during the inter-war period].

PubMed

Pasqualini, Mauro

2016-01-01

The Franciscan friar Agostino Gemelli has been the subject of much research and debate. This is due to his important political profile and, above all, to the role he played in mediating between the Catholic world and fascism in Italy during the inter-war period. Gemelli was also a central figure in Italian psychology, especially during the 1930s and 1940s. This article is structured to focus in particular on the way that his connections with political and ecclesiastic powers allowed him to become increasingly significant within Italian psychology. Using the example of Gemelli's relationship with psychoanalysis, this study highlights the tension between his relatively open-minded stance and his links to authoritarian, dogmatic ideologies and institutions.

Psychoanalysis, religion and enculturation: reflections through the life of mother Teresa.

PubMed

Mahmood, Kaif

2015-04-01

This paper explores the question of whether psychoanalysis can help those who adhere to a worldview that is non-psychoanalytic or even anti-psychoanalytic. It answers this question by comparing the psychoanalytic understanding of suffering with that of the Catholic faith, through the latter's idea of the 'dark night of the soul'. The life of Mother Teresa is taken as an illustration of the dark night and how it may be responded to by the faithful. Similarities and differences between the two approaches are pointed out. Finally, it is suggested that psychoanalytic perspectives may enrich the inner lives of those living by a religious worldview, without necessarily diluting that worldview. Further, religious counsellors too may benefit from an understanding of psychoanalytic perspectives.

The child as a traumatic self-component in Ferenczi's later psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Bókay, Antal

2015-03-01

In the Ferenczi renaissance of the last few decades it has become more and more important to elaborate and reconstruct the general shape, the "Weltanschauung", of his psychoanalysis. The construct of his "psychoanalytic anthropology" is based on the relational nature of individual existence. Relationality pervades the life narrative through the concept and role of the trauma and is crucial to the understanding of Ferenczi's self-concept. He understood the human individual as essentially fragmented in a "preprimal" way, in which the split self contains the child, as an active, always present infantile component. Through powerful allegories like the "Orpha" or the "wise baby," Ferenczi suggested an essentially post-modern idea of self that can be connected and differentiated from Winnicott's True and False Self.

Self Psychology and the Empathic Environment.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Detrick, Douglas

1981-01-01

Maintains that concepts such as self-object mirroring are bridging humanistic psychology and psychoanalysis. Information is presented on the self-psychology of Chicago psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut. (Author/DB)

Coincidences in analysis: Sigmund Freud and the strange case of Dr Forsyth and Herr von Vorsicht.

PubMed

Pierri, Maria

2010-08-01

Freud's interest in thought transference opens the possibility for psychoanalytic research on the primary preverbal language and the maternal function, which the emphasis on verbal and paternal communication had hidden in the background of the setting. The author advances a new interpretation of coincidences in analysis and of the psychopathology of everyday life of the setting. Starting from a strange coincidence, new hypotheses are submitted following additional readings of the unpublished manuscript of the 'Forsyth case', recovered by the author, in regard to a significant moment of transformation, both in Freud and in psychoanalysis, at the end of the war. This phase corresponds first to a change of language, from German to English, as well as to the foundation of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis by Ernest Jones. In particular, the roots of the metapsychological turn of the 1920s are explored, together with the opening of private and productive thoughts in the area of 'telepathy' that joined Freud, Ferenczi, and Anna Freud in a true 'dialogue of unconsciouses'. The free association between A Child Is Being Beaten, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and the clinical experience with 'Herr B.' is outlined in order to understand Freud's heroic self-analysis at the time when he was treating his daughter Anna and grieving the death of his beloved Sophie. Copyright © 2010 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

[Self-reflection, interpersonal behavior and psychoanalytic ethics].

PubMed

Bürgy, M

1997-05-01

In the middle ages, ethical practice included a metaphysical theory of value. In comparison with that, self-reflection and interpersonality should be described as principles of more individual ethics and proceeding from philosophy to psychoanalysis in modern times. Drawing a borderline between human philosophy and metaphysies, Kant defined his so-called categorial imperative as a basic phenomenon of human reciprocity. Ethical relationship to another person, however, requires realization of one's own self, i.e. self-reflection. Hegel's subsequent association of intersubjectivity and selfreflection supplied the basis for Sarte's constitution of consciousness: Existence as existing for the good of the fellow-being. Self-reflection, basing on the sight of one's own self by the other person, leads to Sartre's concept of existential psychoanalysis and to his understanding of ethics. His concept illustrates the decline of significance of philosophy for the analysis of human relationship. Habermas describes self-reflection and interpersonality as fundamental principles of the psychoanalytic therapy and its ethical demands. With the historical concept of the super-ego, Freud established therapeutical one-sidedness and abstinence from ethics; however, as therapeutical interrelationship continued to intensity, ethics of depth psychology also began to develop. This ethical demand was not expressly formulated within the context of psychoanalysis, with the exception of jung and his epigones. Nevertheless, psychoanalytic interaction implies the development of self-reflection, which definitely represents a step forward in the sense of "ethical enlightenment" represented by Kant.

Toward an ethics of psychoanalysis: a critical reading of Lacan's ethics.

PubMed

Kirshner, Lewis A

2012-12-01

Lacan's seminar The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959-1960) pursues, from a Freudian perspective, a fundamental philosophical question classically addressed by Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics: How is human life best lived and fulfilled? Is there is an ethic of this type intrinsic to psychoanalysis? Lacan placed the problem of desire at the center of his Ethics. His notorious self-authorized freedom from convention and probable crossing of limits (see Roudinesco 1993) may have led mainstream analysts to ignore his admonition: "At every moment we need to know what our effective relationship is to the desire to do good, to the desire to cure" (Lacan 1959-1960, p. 219). This means that the analyst's desire, as well as the patient's, is always in play in his attempt to sustain an ethical position. An examination of Lacan's seminar highlights this link, but also points to a number of unresolved issues. The patient's desire is a complex matter, readily entangled in neurotic compromise, defense, and transference, and the analyst's commitment to it is also problematic because of the inevitable co-presence of his own desire. Lacan suggested that more emphasis be placed in training on the desire of the analyst, but beyond that a proposal is advanced for the institutionalization of a "third" as reviewer and interlocutor in routine analytic practice. Analysis may not be a discipline that can be limited to a dyadic treatment relationship.

Some thoughts on psychoanalysis and ethics.

PubMed

Szpilka, Jaime

2002-10-01

The author attempts to establish a framework for understanding the contribution of psychoanalysis to ethics through examining the work of certain philosophers, especially Kant. After reviewing the development of Freudian thought and going beyond the 'psychoanalysis and/or psychiatry?' question, he asserts that the space of the psychoanalytical cure revolves around an ethical problem. Thus, the limits of analysis should be determined by the subject's capacity for developing a structure of belief in the unconscious, with the concomitant capacity to go beyond equivocation in respect of an ethical conflict that underlies all cases where psychical suffering is manifested. Indeed, only human beings are called upon to deal with an ethical paradox-equally a logical one-which could be stated thus: there is Good in Evil and Evil in Good. This ethical paradox is the consequence of human subjection to the constituent laws of the Oedipus complex, which distances the human being, in his/her dealings with Evil and with Good, from any naturalist stance. In respect of the cure, then, we must take into account that Evil does not proceed from any particular drive-based characteristic, but is rather the expression of specific subjection to an unconscious Other, towards which it directs its affects. Finally, the author proposes a principle that emerges from the preceding discussion: let us not impute to or place in the Other our own subjective splitting or pain at existing.

Elements of analytic style: Bion's clinical seminars.

PubMed

Ogden, Thomas H

2007-10-01

The author finds that the idea of analytic style better describes significant aspects of the way he practices psychoanalysis than does the notion of analytic technique. The latter is comprised to a large extent of principles of practice developed by previous generations of analysts. By contrast, the concept of analytic style, though it presupposes the analyst's thorough knowledge of analytic theory and technique, emphasizes (1) the analyst's use of his unique personality as reflected in his individual ways of thinking, listening, and speaking, his own particular use of metaphor, humor, irony, and so on; (2) the analyst's drawing on his personal experience, for example, as an analyst, an analysand, a parent, a child, a spouse, a teacher, and a student; (3) the analyst's capacity to think in a way that draws on, but is independent of, the ideas of his colleagues, his teachers, his analyst, and his analytic ancestors; and (4) the responsibility of the analyst to invent psychoanalysis freshly for each patient. Close readings of three of Bion's 'Clinical seminars' are presented in order to articulate some of the elements of Bion's analytic style. Bion's style is not presented as a model for others to emulate or, worse yet, imitate; rather, it is described in an effort to help the reader consider from a different vantage point (provided by the concept of analytic style) the way in which he, the reader, practices psychoanalysis.

Between the frontier and the network: notes for a metapsychology of freedom.

PubMed

Abadi, Sonia

2003-04-01

The author examines the paradigm of the frontier and encounters the establishment of the paradigm of the network, a tendency that currently runs through diverse fields of thought. The network is not proposed as a globalising structure that would neutralise what is different, but as integration based on preservation of what is plural and its transformations. The author moves between these two paradigms in psychoanalytic metapsychology and clinical practice. The concept of frontier is intrinsic to the entire theory: repression, which separates the unconscious from the preconscious, the barrier against stimuli, the delimitation of spaces and agencies. But psychoanalysis is also a precursor of the paradigm of the network, with its concepts of unconscious, free association and evenly suspended attention. She points out that it is psychoanalysis that, in the area of scientific thought, subverts the radical split between subjects and their objects of observation, through the concepts of transference and countertransference, thus inaugurating a revolutionary theory of knowledge. This perspective can later be seen as a forerunner of changes in other disciplines. This text legitimises the contribution of psychoanalysis to thinking and knowledge, as well as the potential of a therapeutic method that provides the tools for crossing frontiers, unknotting and weaving networks, operating in the face of risks of pathological consolidations, thus holding to its unavoidable commitment to freedom.

On remembering: the notion of memory without recollection.

PubMed

Botella, César

2014-10-01

The author begins by attempting to evaluate the notions of memory and remembering, taking into account their evolution in Freud's work and the current debates on their relative importance in conducting an analytic treatment. This leads the author to develop an extension of the theory which none the less remains Freudian, by introducing a series of notions (the main ones being the work of figurability, regredience, state of session, negative of trauma, and memory without recollection), and arguing in favour of a principle of convergence-coherence governing mental life. His thesis is the following: analytic practice contains a dimension of an archaeological order, as Freud described it, as well as - thanks to the contribution of contemporary practice denouncing its insufficiency - the complementary need for the analyst to work in a particular way in the session - that is to say, one that involves what he calls a regredience of his or her thought processes, allowing him or her to gain access to early psychic zones beyond the zone of represented memories. This is what he calls transformational psychoanalysis, complementary to archeological psychoanalysis. The author's theoretical and practical developments are backed up by a personal schema of mental functioning, an extension of Freud's schema in 1900, and the detailed description of an analytic treatment, in particular, the central session which played a crucial role in the success of this analysis. Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

A history of homosexuality and organized psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Drescher, Jack

2008-01-01

Today the Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry welcomes its gay and lesbian members. Yet at the time of its 1956 founding, organized psychoanalytic attitudes toward homosexuality could be reasonably characterized as hostile. First there was a transition from Freud's early views of homosexuality as immature to later neofreudian theories that pathologized same-sex attractions and behavior. Following the 1973 decision of the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the DSM, homosexuality is now more commonly regarded as a normal variant of human sexuality. The history of psychoanalytic attitudes toward homosexuality reinforces the impression that psychoanalytic theories cannot be divorced from the political, cultural, and personal contexts in which they are formulated. This history also shows that analysts can take positions that either facilitate or obstruct tolerance and acceptance.

Freud's psychoanalysis of Edith Banfield Jackson, 1930-1936.

PubMed

Lynn, David J

2003-01-01

This paper is a historical study of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis of Edith Banfield Jackson. It relies on primary sources, including unpublished correspondence, to describe her background, the analysis itself, and her subsequent life. This analysis, which began in 1930, had both clinical and training purposes. Freud's actual methods are contrasted with his published recommendations in terms of anonymity, neutrality, and confidentiality. During this analysis, Sigmund Freud took on a number of roles in Edith Jackson's life, including teacher, commentator, social intermediary, recipient of her translation services, and recipient of her philanthropic donations. These roles are described in detail. The implications of Freud's actual methods in this case are fully discussed. Since Freud did not describe the methods he used in this case, they cannot be replicated, and, for clinical purposes, they are lost to history.

Freud's metapsychological speculations.

PubMed

Fulgencio, Leopoldo

2005-02-01

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.

Psychoanalysis of the older patient.

PubMed

Simburg, E J

1985-01-01

A small informal poll of local colleagues revealed that despite their interest in the subject, many had doubts about the possibility of analyzing persons aged sixty or over successfully. Their specific questions are collated and are offered as a sample of the questions in the minds of many analysts everywhere. Selected material from the ongoing analysis of a sixty-four-year-old patient is presented that bears on some of the questions raised. In addition, changes in the patient are noted. These are discussed in terms of changes in function, which are equated with structural change. The major thrust of the paper is that development continues throughout the life course, and that the criteria for analyzability remain constant. The chronological age of the adult by itself is not an indicator of eligibility or of suitability for psychoanalysis.

The indissociable unity of psyche and soma: a view from the Paris Psychosomatic School.

PubMed

Aisenstein, Marilia

2006-06-01

Depending on whether or not psyche/soma is seen as singular or dual, one may construct different systems explaining man and the world, life and death. In the author's view, the discoveries of psychoanalysis offer a perfectly cogent and unique solution to the famous mind/body problem. In transferring the duality psyche/soma on to the duality of drives, psychoanalysis places the origin of the thought process in the body. In Beyond the pleasure principle, Freud discusses the drastic effect of a painful somatic illness on the distribution and modalities of the libido. He provides a starting point for the Paris Psychosomatic School's psychoanalytical approach to patients afflicted with somatic illnesses. To illustrate the technical implications of this theory the author relates two clinical cases.

Wilhelm Reich's self-censorship after his arrest as an enemy alien: the chilling effect of an illegal imprisonment.

PubMed

Bennett, Philip W

2014-04-01

After discussing Wilhelm Reich's place in psychoanalysis, the article explores his arrest as an 'enemy alien' in December 1941. Reich's emotional responses to his imprisonment (which was illegal and which lasted nearly a month) are explored. A number of scholars have suggested that many European radical psychoanalysts refrained from sharing their former political ideas once they emigrated to the United States. Following a brief discussion of this pattern of 'silencing,' it is argued that Reich's withholding certain documents from publication was due to a self-imposed censorship, motivated in part by the fear of further governmental interference with his life and work. This fear, however, did not extend to his discussion of his newly developed theory of orgone energy. Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

PARRHESIA, PHAEDRA, AND THE POLIS: ANTICIPATING PSYCHOANALYTIC FREE ASSOCIATION AS DEMOCRATIC PRACTICE.

PubMed

Gentile, Jill

2015-07-01

This essay explores the mostly unexamined analogy of psychoanalytic free association to democratic free speech. The author turns back to a time when free speech was a matter of considerable discussion: the classical period of the Athenian constitution and its experiment with parrhesia. Ordinarily translated into English as "free speech," parrhesia is startlingly relevant to psychoanalysis. The Athenian stage-in particular, Hippolytus (Euripides, 5th century BCE)-illustrates this point. Euripides's tragic tale anticipates Freud's inquiries, exploring the fundamental link between free speech and female embodiment. The author suggests that psychoanalysis should claim its own conception of a polis as a mediated and ethical space between private and public spheres, between body and mind, and between speaking and listening communities. © 2015 The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Inc.

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE ARTS: THE SLIPPERY GROUND OF APPLIED ANALYSIS.

PubMed

Abella, Adela

2016-01-01

The ways in which today's psychoanalysts approach art closely follow the avenues opened by Freud a hundred years ago. Drawing mainly on Freud's studies on Jensen's Gradiva (1907) and on Leonardo da Vinci (1910a), the author examines the main paradigms he used in discussing artistic activity, including his doubts and hesitations. Present-day approaches to art are then examined via a discussion of the advantages and pitfalls of psychobiography, of the case study, and of textual approaches. The author makes a case for the type of interdisciplinary dialogue in which the goal is to establish a cross-fertilization between psychoanalysis and other fields of knowledge while striving to avoid hypersaturation of a work of art in order to foster expansion of the mind. © 2016 The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Inc.

Implications for therapeutic judging (TJ) of a psychoanalytical approach to the judicial role - Reflections on Robert Burt's contribution.

PubMed

Sourdin, Tania; Cornes, Richard

Robert Burt in, "The Yale School of Law and Psychoanalysis, from 1963 Onward", in this issue, explains and laments a decline in influence of psychoanalytic ideas in legal thinking. He notes "the fundamental similarity that both litigation and psychotherapy involve recollections of past events", buttressing his argument with eight parallels between the two. In this article we take up Burt's theme, first noting the relationship between therapeutic jurisprudence and psychoanalytic concepts before presenting an outline for a psychoanalytical understanding of the judicial role. We then consider the litigation process from the linked perspectives of therapeutic jurisprudence and psychoanalysis before closing with a reflection on the eight parallels elaborated by Burt. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

On the subject of homosexuality: What Freud said.

PubMed

Flanders, Sara; Ladame, Francois; Carlsberg, Anders; Heymanns, Petra; Naziri, Despina; Panitz, Denny

2016-06-01

The article explores Freud's writing on homosexuality, from his early hypotheses, expressed in his letters to Fleiss to his last observations in The Outline of Psychoanalysis, published in 1940 after his death. We trace the continuities as well as changes in his thinking, and have organized the paper conceptually, under the headings: 1) Bisexuality 2) Narcissism and Object choice, 3) On Normality and Pathology, and 4) The Quantitative factor and Aggression. We show that Freud was the first to confirm the existence of homosexualities, that he offers no black and white solution to the question of normality and pathology, although he contributes to the understanding of the vehemence that surrounds the subject, and that, in the considerable body of work, he has offered a rich and varied foundation for further thinking on the subject. Copyright © 2016 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Burial and resurgence of projective identification in French psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Widlöcher, Daniel

2014-08-01

Curiously enough, the concept of projective identification was ignored, and even rejected in France for at least two decades after the publication of the founding texts of Melanie Klein and Herbert Rosenfeld. This rejection was due to a critique from child psychoanalysts close to Anna Freud and also from the teaching of Lacan: the first took the real mother-child relation extensively into account, while the latter only saw the internal object as a signifier. The fact that during this period the countertransference was a concept reduced to its negative content no doubt explains this deliberate ignorance. With the dissemination of a broader and more positive conception of the countertransference, a renewal of interest could be observed in the 1980s with references to empathic listening and to the effects of thought-induction. Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

[Neurobiología y psicoanálisis].

PubMed

Rosler, J Roberto

2002-01-01

There would be a conceptual bridge between Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences that would allow the translation of psychoanalytic concepts into neural mechanisms and vice-versa. Different Freudian postulates, such as that different types of anxiety would emerge from various cerebral interactions, the motivational regulatory functions of the impulse, the conscious emotion as the perception of something basically unconscious, the mechanism of repression in the traumatic memory, the existence of a system associated with the unconscious affective processes and regulated by the principle of pleasure - displeasure, the emotional representation as a basis of the more primitive cerebral structures, and the Oedipo complex, among others, are finding their biological ratification in different laboratory studies. This conceptual bridge would not only be a "Psychoanalysis-Neurobiological mechanisms" translator, but would also, through the integrated conceptualization of the psychoanalytical neurobiological aspects of emotion, generate relevant therapeutic models.

Medical semiotics; its influence on art, psychoanalysis and Sherlock Holmes.

PubMed

Moore-McCann, Brenda

2016-11-01

Semiotics is the analysis and interpretation of signs and the basis of medicine since antiquity. It is suggested that the growth of technology has led to the virtual eclipse of the clinical examination with consequent loss of skill, empathy and patient trust. This paper views the value of medical semiotics through the method of the 19th century Italian doctor, Giovanni Morelli, which has had a significant but little recognised impact on the early development of psychoanalysis, the detective novel and art connoisseurship. Semiotics and, specifically, the linguistic semiotics of Ferdinand Saussure have been influential in the fields of the visual arts, literature and the social sciences since the 20th century. With its roots in the medical treatises of antiquity, medical semiotics should again be brought to the forefront of medical practice. © The Author(s) 2014.

What psychoanalysis, culture and society mean to me.

PubMed

Layton, Lynne

2007-01-01

The paper reviews some ways that the social and psychic have been understood in psychoanalysis and argues that a model for understanding the relation between the psychic and the social must account both for the ways that we internalize oppressive norms as well as the ways we resist them. The author proposes that we build our identities in relation to other identities circulating in our culture and that cultural hierarchies of sexism, racism, classism push us to split off part of what it means to be human, thereby creating painful individual and relational repetition compulsions. These "normative unconscious processes" replicate the unjust social norms that cause psychic pain in the first place. The paper concludes with thoughts about contemporary US culture, in which the government has abdicated responsibility toward its most vulnerable citizens and has thus rendered vulnerability and dependence shameful states.

Existential analysis and psychoanalysis: specific differences and personal relationship between Ludwig Binswanger and Sigmund Freud.

PubMed

Bühler, Karl-Ernst

2004-01-01

The concise curriculum vitae of the founder of existential analysis is followed by an exact comparison of the polarity (homo natura versus homo cultura) between Binswanger and Freud. Then the five stages in the development of (Existential Daseinsanalysis Analysis) are described: the stage of learning, of practice, of criticism, of the alternative to psychoanalysis, and of reconciliation. The criticism is aimed especially at Freud's naturalism and at the concept of drive. These concepts are opposed by ontoanalytic doctrines derived from Heidegger's ontoanalysis. The differences are further exemplified by the comparison of the existentialanalytical and the psychoanalytical view of the unconscious. A presentation of the treatment of a "hysterical phobia," which is first explained in psychoanalytic terms and later in existentialanalytic terminology (mainly concerning the world-projects) makes the difference between the two schools of thought explicit.

Psychiatry, authoritarianism, and revolution: the politics of mental illness during military dictatorships in Argentina, 1966-1983.

PubMed

Ramos, Marco A

2013-01-01

From 1966 to 1983, Argentina underwent a period of political radicalization as fascist regimes used terror to control its citizens and leftist guerrillas resorted to violence to spark revolution. During this politically volatile period, psychiatry transformed from an apolitical clinical specialty into an ideological tool used for both leftist resistance and military oppression. The largest psychiatric organization at the time, the Federación Argentina de Psiquiatras (FAP), became the center for a new politically committed brand of psychiatry in Argentina that united psychoanalysis and community psychiatry with Marxist theory. Though the military targeted and eventually dismantled the FAP and its leftist brand of psychoanalysis and community psychiatry, sectors of the government also paradoxically appropriated and reframed community-based psychiatric perspectives to pathologize leftist subversion and advance their own conservative ideology.

The relevance of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit to the process of contemporary psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Chessick, Richard D

2008-01-01

Do changes in psychoanalytic technique represent progress in knowledge or are they for the most part a sideways movement in tune with the particular changes in the socioeconomic milieu of the day? Hegel raised the question in the area of philosophy when discussing the stages in the development of self-consciousness. For him this was an inevitable development toward a greater and greater self-understanding, going through various phases until Absolute Spirit (Mind) became completely cognizant of itself. This metaphysical conception was the cornerstone of Hegel's thought as first presented in his chaotic masterpiece, Phenomenology of Spirit. In this article I will examine his philosophical vision as expressed in that masterpiece, compare it with that of Freud, and discuss aspects of it that are pertinent to the practice of contemporary psychoanalysis.

On Psychic Determinism.

PubMed

Brown, Robin Gordon

2017-06-01

A confusion persists in the psychoanalytic literature regarding the concept of psychic determinism. Two authors are cited in whose works the concept is identified as foundational to psychoanalysis, in the one case as a "fundamental hypothesis" (Charles Brenner) and in the other as an "underlying presupposition" or assumption (Linda A.W. Brakel). Both claims are based on a conflation of the concept Freud had in mind with a philosophical doctrine going by the same name but meaning something quite different. The philosophical doctrine has no place in psychoanalysis at all, and Freud's concept does not play a foundational role there. In a second section a restricted concept of psychic determinism is critically examined. A third section deals with the impact of that restricted concept on clinical theory and contemporary controversies about clinical practice. Finally, some possible reasons for this confusion are suggested.

This art of psychoanalysis. Dreaming undreamt dreams and interrupted cries.

PubMed

Ogden, Thomas H

2004-08-01

It is the art of psychoanalysis in the making, a process inventing itself as it goes, that is the subject of this paper. The author articulates succinctly how he conceives of psychoanalysis, and offers a detailed clinical illustration. He suggests that each analysand unconsciously (and ambivalently) is seeking help in dreaming his 'night terrors' (his undreamt and undreamable dreams) and his 'nightmares' (his dreams that are interrupted when the pain of the emotional experience being dreamt exceeds his capacity for dreaming). Undreamable dreams are understood as manifestations of psychotic and psychically foreclosed aspects of the personality; interrupted dreams are viewed as reflections of neurotic and other non-psychotic parts of the personality. The analyst's task is to generate conditions that may allow the analysand--with the analyst's participation--to dream the patient's previously undreamable and interrupted dreams. A significant part of the analyst's participation in the patient's dreaming takes the form of the analyst's reverie experience. In the course of this conjoint work of dreaming in the analytic setting, the analyst may get to know the analysand sufficiently well for the analyst to be able to say something that is true to what is occurring at an unconscious level in the analytic relationship. The analyst's use of language contributes significantly to the possibility that the patient will be able to make use of what the analyst has said for purposes of dreaming his own experience, thereby dreaming himself more fully into existence.

Freud's 'thought-transference', repression, and the future of psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Farrell, D

1983-01-01

Psychoanalysts since Freud have largely neglected his important, paradigmatic ideas on the possibility of 'thought-transference' (telepathy) as an influence in mental life. A chance recording of two dreams which proved to coincide in some detail with distant reality events again suggests evidence in favour of the telepathy hypothesis. On interpretation, one of these dreams reveals even greater correspondence with the reality event and shows the mechanism of transformation of the repressed wish from latent dream content into manifest dream, utilizing a number of elements of the dream instigator, an apparently telepathically received day residue. Working with this material proceeded against very strong resistance, most evident in repeated forgetting of one or another bit of the clinical data. This has been the fate of ideas pertaining to the occult since Freud's first formulations, as is documented here by references to the early history of psychoanalysis. The issue now and for the future is whether psychoanalysis will continue to ignore the crucial question of validity in regard to the telepathy hypothesis. The psychoanalytic method is uniquely qualified to investigate so-called parapsychological phenomena and has the same obligation to do so as with other mental events. We need to examine the evidence in spite of the threat posed to our conventional understanding of the limits of the mind by the very act of acknowledging the question. If we can overcome our resistance to undertaking this task, we may find that, once again, Freud pointed the way towards discovery of a new paradigm in science.

Agents of the Father's law in a society of brothers: A philosophic and psychoanalytic perspective on legitimate use of violence.

PubMed

Even-Tzur, Efrat; Hadar, Uri

This paper explores subjective processes of "Agents of Law" - individuals who the state grants the authority to use violence - and the dissonance stemming from the contradictory demands posed on them as legitimate users of violence despite the societal taboo against violence. A conceptual model will be offered based on two theoretical legs, Lacanian psychoanalysis and political theories of legitimacy. Specifically, psychoanalytic ideas would serve to examine unconscious processes, subject position and various identifications related to the question of "self-legitimacy" of Agents of Law. A central link between psychoanalysis and political thought is found in the image of the father and in the triad ruler-God-Father, which calls for an oedipal analysis. A psychoanalytic reading of two philosophical schools that elaborated on the question of legitimacy will be presented, and yield two analytic poles of a model for the understanding of possible subject positions of agents of Law: identification with a "Living Father" vs. identification with a "Dead Father". The psychoanalytic reading will shed light on the limitations of the philosophical perspectives in reflecting on the various (im)possible psychological positions of agents of Law. Finally, then, it will be shown how psychoanalysis helps finding words to characterize different nuances in the coping of agents of Law with the contradictory demands posed on them in an age in which God is dead, the father was murdered and the king was beheaded. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The internal/external issue what is an outer object? Another person as object and as separate other in object relations models.

PubMed

Zachrisson, Anders

2013-01-01

The question of what we mean by the term outer object has its roots in the epistemological foundation of psychoanalysis. From the very beginning, Freud's view was Kantian, and psychoanalysis has kept that stance, as it seems. The author reviews the internal/external issue in Freud's thinking and in the central object relations theories (Klein, Winnicott, and Bion). On this background he proposes a simple model to differentiate the concept of object along one central dimension: internal object, external object, and actual person. The main arguments are: (1) there is no direct, unmediated perception of the actual person--the experience of the other is always affected by the perceiver's subjectivity; (2) in intense transference reactions and projections, the perception of the person is dominated by the qualities of an inner object--and the other person "becomes" an external object for the perceiver; (3) when this distortion is less dominating, the other person to a higher degree remains a separate other--a person in his or her own right. Clinical material illustrates these phenomena, and a graphical picture of the model is presented. Finally with the model as background, the author comments on a selection of phenomena and concepts such as unobjectionable transference, "the third position," mourning and loneliness. The way that the internal colours and distorts the external is of course a central preoccupation of psychoanalysis generally. (Spillius et al., 2011, p. 326)

In all questions, my interest is not in the individual people but in the analytic movement as a whole. It will be hard enough here in Europe in the times to come to keep it going. After all, we are just a handful of people who really have that in mind.

PubMed

Steiner, Riccardo

2011-06-01

The paper tries to deal with the difficult and at times contradictory decisions that the then leaders of the IPA, S. Freud, A. Freud, E. Jones etc. had to adopt as whether or not to clearly inform the readers of Die Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse and the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, the official scientific periodicals of the IPA, of the tragic events concerning first the German Psychoanalytic Society and then the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and the newborn Italian Psychoanalytic Society and other European psychoanalytic societies during the years 1933-1945. Because of the anti-Jewish persecution by the Nazi and fascist regimes the IPA had to face the extremely difficult task of helping its Continental Jewish members to emigrate to the USA, Great Britain and other countries in order to save their lives and to allow psychoanalysis to survive, with enormous radical consequences for the scientific and sociocultural future developments of the discipline.The following notes are dedicated to those non-Aryans and Aryans who could not find a proper rescue and whose graves became the wind which scattered the ashes of their bodies with the smoke coming out of the chimneys of the Nazi gas chambers. Copyright © 2011 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Critical notes on the neuro-evolutionary archaeology of affective systems.

PubMed

Barratt, Barnaby B

2015-04-01

If progress is to be made in resolving the debate over the relevance of neuroscientific findings to psychoanalysis, a clearer distinction must be established between a narrow definition of psychoanalysis as "praxis" (the science of lived experience and its conflicts or contradictions) and a definition that focuses on metapsychology as objectivistic theory-building. The investigations of Jaak Panksepp on the "neuro-archaeology" of affective systems are reviewed as an example of how findings in neuroscience cannot be legitimately extrapolated to offer conclusions about the domain of lived experience. In this context, Freud's shifting standpoint is reviewed and, following the writings of Jean Laplanche, the significance of Freud's distinction between "drives" or libidinality, as acquired through experience, and "instincts," which are purely biological, is emphasized. It is argued that there is an unavoidable component of myth-making in any consideration of the connection between neural circuitry and the domain of psychic representations. Freud's need for a notion of drive or energy, which is required to understand the findings of free-associative method, is admittedly mythematic, but it implies a major challenge to extant philosophical doctrines of the "mind/body" question (emergentism, double-aspect monism, and neutral monism). Thus, whereas psychoanalysis as praxis is, in Freud's words, "free to follow its own requirements," the claims of metapsychology are not so unrestrained. Further debate is required on the irrelevance of a revised objectivistic theory of the "mental apparatus" to the venture of healing the fracturing of our lived experience.

Winnicott and Derrida: development of logic-of-play.

PubMed

Bitan, Shachaf

2012-02-01

In this essay I develop the logic of play from the writings of the British psychoanalyst Donald W. Winnicott and the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. The logic of play serves as both a conceptual framework for theoretical clinical thinking and a space of experiencing in which the therapeutic situation is located and to which it aspires. I argue that both Winnicott and Derrida proposed a playful turn in Western thinking by their attitude towards oppositions, viewing them not as complementary or contradictory, but as 'peacefully-coexisting'. Derrida criticizes the dichotomous structure of Western thought, proposing playful movement as an alternative that does not constitute itself as a mastering construction. I will show that Winnicott, too, proposes playful logic through which he thinks and acts in the therapeutic situation. The therapeutic encounter is understood as a playful space in which analyst and analysand continuously coexist, instead of facing each other as exclusionary oppositions. I therefore propose the logic of play as the basis for the therapeutic encounter. The playful turn, then, is crucial for the thought and praxis expressed by the concept of two-person psychology. I suggest the term playful psychoanalysis to characterize the present perspective of psychoanalysis in the light of the playful turn. I will first present Derrida's playful thought, go on to Winnicott's playful revolutionism, and conclude with an analysis of Winicott's clinical material in the light of the logic of play. Copyright © 2012 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

THE PAST IS IN THE PRESENT: READING THE WORK OF EDNA O'SHAUGHNESSY.

PubMed

Zeavin, Lynne

2016-01-01

Inquiries in Psychoanalysis: Collected Papers of Edna O'Shaughnessy. By Edna O'Shaughnessy; edited by Richard Rusbridger. London/New York: Routledge, 2014. 342 pp. © 2016 The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Inc.

Psychotherapy for Suicidal Clients.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lester, David

1994-01-01

Reviews various systems of psychotherapy for suitability for suicidal clients. Discusses psychoanalysis, cognitive therapy, primal therapy, transactional analysis, Gestalt therapy, reality therapy, person-centered therapy, existential analysis, and Jungian analysis in light of available treatment options. Includes 36 citations. (Author/CRR)

BETWEEN PSYCHOANALYSIS AND TESTIMONIAL SPACE: THE ANALYST AS A WITNESS.

PubMed

Gondar, Jô

2017-04-01

The aim of this article is to think of the place of the witness as a third place that the analyst, in the clinical space of trauma, is able to sustain. According to Ferenczi, in traumatic dreams a third is already being summoned. It is not the witness of the realm of law, nor the place of the father or the symbolic law. This is a third space that can be called potential, interstitial space, indeterminate and formless, where something that at first would be incommunicable circulates and gradually takes shape. This space allows and supports the literalness of a testimonial narrative, its hesitations, paradoxes and silences. More than a trauma theory, the notion of a potential space would be the great contribution of psychoanalysis to the treatment of trauma survivors, establishing the difference between the task of a psychoanalyst and the one of a truth commission.

Borderline histories: psychoanalysis inside and out.

PubMed

Lunbeck, Elizabeth

2006-03-01

Sociologists and historians have long favored externalist over internalist accounts of practices in the clinical disciplines. This has been particularly true in the case of the so-called new patient or borderline personality, which a range of commentators have located in culturally resonant narratives of decline. I argue here that these narratives, while pleasing, do not hold up as history; most problematic is their assumption that the appearance of the borderline portends the emergence of altogether novel forms of modal personhood. Internalist accounts of the category's consolidation are equally problematic in asserting a coherence and a stable referent that repeatedly proves elusive. In the end, I suggest that a complex account of disciplinary practice that attends to knowledge production in the clinical encounter supports the conclusion that the new patient was new to psychoanalysis. Whether or not he was altogether new cannot be established, undermining the critics' certitude and prophecies of decline.

Psychoanalysis and the nuclear threat

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Levine, H.B.; Jacobs, D.; Rubin, L.J.

1988-01-01

{ital Psychoanalysis and the Nuclear Threat} provides coverage of the dynamic and clinical considerations that follow from life in the nuclear age. Of special clinical interest are chapters dealing with the developmental consequences of the nuclear threat in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and those exploring the technical issues raised by the occurrence in analytic and psychotherapeutic hours of material related to the nuclear threat. Additional chapters bring a psychoanalytic perspective to bear on such issues as the need to have enemies, silence as the real crime, love, work, and survival in the nuclear age, the relationship of the nuclear threatmore » to issues of mourning and melancholia, apocalyptic fantasies, the paranoid process, considerations of the possible impact of gender on the nuclear threat, and the application of psychoanalytic thinking to nuclear arms strategy. Finally, the volume includes the first case report in the English language---albeit a brief psychotherapy---involving the treatment of a Hiroshima survivor.« less

"In the same way a poem contains the alphabet": the significance of translation in William I. Grossman's Freud.

PubMed

Reed, Gail S

2009-02-01

William I. Grossman's contributions to psychoanalysis have been insufficiently appreciated, perhaps because his writing is concentrated and his meaning consequently difficult to unpack. One of his most important contributions is a remarkable description of the systematic way Freud imagined, thought, and theorized, beginning long before he created psychoanalysis. This way of thinking exemplifies Freud's theories even as it organizes his thinking. It is flexible, expandable, hierarchical, and recursive. Grossman's reading provides a window into Freud's texts that yields exciting new insights, including the idea that a transformative version of translation, a perception of the way Freud thinks creatively, may help psychoanalysts of different cultures and systems of thought communicate across boundaries. André Green's concept of the pathological negative is used as an example of how Grossman's Freud can facilitate a crossing of cultural and theoretical boundaries.

Anxious laughter: Mauron's Renversement and Gogol's Overcoat.

PubMed

Bown, Alfie

2017-06-01

Inside and outside of psychoanalysis, laughter has often been thought of as relating to anxiety, with the usual line being that laughter can be a response to anxiety or a way of dealing with it. This article argues that laughter cannot be said to eradicate or 'deal with' anxiety and that laughter is always unsettling precisely because it contains anxiety and indicates its continuing threat. The article discusses Freud and Lacan on anxiety, as well as Charles Mauron, an understudied writer whose Psychocritique du Genre Comique was the only sustained study of psychoanalysis and comedy until very recently. I argue here that Mauron's idea of renversement holds a key to understanding the relationship between laughter and anxiety. Rather than using a collection of isolated examples to illustrate individual points, in the second half of the article I provide a more sustained discussion of these ideas in relation to Nicolai Gogol's short story "The Overcoat."

Psychoanalysis traumatized: the legacy of the Holocaust.

PubMed

Prince, Robert

2009-09-01

Psychoanalysis is a survivor of the Holocaust. It was founded and flourished in central European centers that would be destroyed by the Nazis. A core group of refugees who lived through persecution and exile were instrumental in rebuilding their movement on alien shores. They had no opportunity to mourn the loss of their culture or their leader, Freud, whose death was overshadowed by the cataclysmic upheaval around them. Though its trauma has been dissociated, it is represented in psychoanalytic ideas and enacted in institutions within the context of delayed or incomplete mourning. For example, authoritarianism in psychoanalytic institutions will be explored as a reliving of the trauma of both fascism and exile, and not merely typical group psychology. Further evidence of the impact of dissociated trauma includes the astonishing scotoma for actual events in treatment of Holocaust survivors; the extreme privileging of infantile fantasy over reality, and attention to childhood neurosis at the expense of adult catastrophic events.

Fear and decision-making in narcissistic personality disorder-a link between psychoanalysis and neuroscience.

PubMed

Ronningstam, Elsa; Baskin-Sommers, Arielle R

2013-06-01

Linking psychoanalytic studies with neuroscience has proven increasingly productive for identifying and understanding personality functioning. This article focuses on pathological narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), with the aim of exploring two clinically relevant aspects of narcissistic functioning also recognized in psychoanalysis: fear and decision-making. Evidence from neuroscientific studies of related conditions, such as psychopathy, suggests links between affective and cognitive functioning that can influence the sense of self-agency and narcissistic self-regulation. Attention can play a crucial role in moderating fear and self-regulatory deficits, and the interaction between experience and emotion can be central for decision-making. In this review we will explore fear as a motivating factor in narcissistic personality functioning, and the impact fear may have on decision-making in people with pathological narcissism and NPD. Understanding the processes and neurological underpinnings of fear and decision-making can potentially influence both the diagnosis and treatment of NPD.

The sanctuary of empathy and the invitation of engagement: psychic retreat, Kafka's "A Hunger Artist," and the psychoanalytic process.

PubMed

Karbelnig, Alan Michael

2014-12-01

As part of a broader scholarly and political effort to unify clinical psychoanalysis, the author argues that psychoanalysts' presence, engagement, and framing constitute the three overarching features of their work. Additionally, patients' propensity to turn inward, alternatively known as psychic retreat or narcissistic withdrawal, provides a similarly unifying way to view psychoanalytic patients. Narrowing the investigation to a phenomenological one, the author tapers the exploration further by studying the psychoanalytic process as it unfolds in real time. After addressing the problems of diffusion in professional identity and psychoanalytic theory that have plagued psychoanalysis from the start, the author presents three case examples into which he integrates Kafka's short story "A Hunger Artist." These vehicles are utilized to demonstrate how such nomenclature provides the basis for a more cohesive understanding of how psychoanalysts work.

On the vicissitudes of combining individual and group psychotherapy.

PubMed

Schermer, Victor L

2009-01-01

Abstract Reviewing a series of articles in this special issue on combined treatment incorporating individual and group therapy, and in one instance couples therapy and a relationship group, the author provides a synoptic history of combined treatment, noting that the relational perspectives of psychoanalysis and systems theories of groups now provide conceptual frameworks for combined therapies. Taking up each article in turn, he considers that combined treatment poses particular problems while having certain advantages. He discusses the theoretical emphases and biases of each article, whether relational psychology, classical psychoanalysis, object relations theory, or self-psychology. He considers the roles of transference and countertransference, patient-therapist enactments, empathic attunement, "surrogate therapy" by the group members, and ethics in determining outcomes. In addition, the author notes how so-called difficult or regressed patients impact upon and are affected by the use of combined therapy modalities.

The lure of the symptom in psychoanalytic treatment.

PubMed

Ogden, Thomas H; Gabbard, Glen O

2010-06-01

Psychoanalysis, which at its core is a search for truth, stands in a subversive position vis-à-vis the contemporary therapeutic culture that places a premium on symptomatic "cure." Nevertheless, analysts are vulnerable to succumbing to the internal and external pressures for the achievement of symptomatic improvement. In this communication we trace the evolution of Freud's thinking about the relationship between the aims of psychoanalysis and the alleviation of symptoms. We note that analysts today may recapitulate Freud's early struggles in their pursuit of symptom removal. We present an account of a clinical consultation in which the analytic pair were ensnared in an impasse that involved the analyst's preoccupation with the intransigence of one of the patient's symptoms. We suggest alternative ways of working with these clinical issues and offer some thoughts on how our own work as analysts and consultants to colleagues has been influenced by our understanding of what frequently occurs when the analyst becomes symptom-focused.

Treatment of Psychosomatic Disorders

PubMed Central

Wittkower, E. D.

1964-01-01

Goals, potentialities and limitations of treatment of psychosomatic disorders are reviewed. Removal of a disturbing psychosomatic symptom may be all that can be accomplished. The bulk of patients suffering from psychosomatic disorders should be treated by physicians other than psychiatrists. Difficulties arise, owing to differences in approach, when treatment is carried out by a general physician as well as a psychiatrist. In appraising the prospects of treatment, the age on examination, intelligence, duration of illness, degree of insight, nature of illness, environmental stress and personality structure of the patients should be considered. Psychiatric measures which have been employed include: electroconvulsive therapy, psychotropic drugs, hypnosis, drug abreaction, group therapy, supportive psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis provides the best understanding of the psychodynamics of psychosomatic illness but is, for a variety of reasons, applicable only to a small number of patients. Alternations and removal of disturbing symptoms can be accomplished by the other therapeutic means. PMID:14146853

A conceptual model of transference and its psychotherapeutic application.

PubMed

Corradi, Richard B

2006-01-01

The tendency to repeat formative human relationships in later life, a universal developmental characteristic, is referred to as transference when it occurs in the doctor-patient relationship. Its systematic therapeutic application in psychiatry has historically been associated with classical psychoanalysis. As psychoanalysis has lost its cachet, and as drug treatment has replaced psychotherapy as psychiatry's major treatment modality, the therapeutic potential of transference risks being neglected. This is to the great detriment of psychiatric patients. Knowledge of the power of transference and expertise in its clinical use in psychotherapy should be the most powerful tool in the psychiatric therapeutic armamentarium. This article discusses a concept of transference that the author has found effective, both in clinical practice and in teaching about transference to psychiatric residents. The article delineates a psychology of transference, discusses its universal applicability to the whole of the psychotherapeutic process, and utilizes case material to illustrate principles of its application.

What Psychoanalysis, Culture And Society Mean To Me

PubMed Central

Layton, Lynne

2007-01-01

The paper reviews some ways that the social and psychic have been understood in psychoanalysis and argues that a model for understanding the relation between the psychic and the social must account both for the ways that we internalize oppressive norms as well as the ways we resist them. The author proposes that we build our identities in relation to other identities circulating in our culture and that cultural hierarchies of sexism, racism, classism push us to split off part of what it means to be human, thereby creating painful individual and relational repetition compulsions. These “normative unconscious processes” replicate the unjust social norms that cause psychic pain in the first place. The paper concludes with thoughts about contemporary US culture, in which the government has abdicated responsibility toward its most vulnerable citizens and has thus rendered vulnerability and dependence shameful states. PMID:22058628

Minding the ecological body: neuropsychoanalysis and ecopsychoanalysis.

PubMed

Dodds, Joseph

2013-01-01

Neuropsychoanalysis explores experimentally and theoretically the philosophically ancient discussion of the relation of mind and body, and seems well placed to overcome the problem of a "mindless" neuroscience and a "brainless" psychology and psychotherapy, especially when combined with a greater awareness that the body itself, not only the brain, provides the material substrate for the emergent phenomenon we call mind. However, the mind-brain-body is itself situated within a complex ecological world, interacting with other mind-brain-bodies and the "non-human environment." This occurs both synchronically and diachronically as the organism and its environment (living and non-living) interact in highly complex often non-linear ways. Psychoanalysis can do much to help unmask the anxieties, deficits, conflicts, phantasies, and defenses crucial in understanding the human dimension of the ecological crisis. Yet, psychoanalysis still largely remains not only a "psychology without biology," which neuropsychoanalysis seeks to remedy, but also a "psychology without ecology." Ecopsychoanalysis (Dodds, 2011b; Dodds and Jordan, 2012) is a new transdisciplinary approach drawing on a range of fields such as psychoanalysis, psychology, ecology, philosophy, science, complexity theory, esthetics, and the humanities. It attempts to play with what each approach has to offer in the sense of a heterogeneous assemblage of ideas and processes, mirroring the interlocking complexity, chaos, and turbulence of nature itself. By emphasizing the way the mind-brain-body studied by neuropsychoanalysis is embedded in wider social and ecological networks, ecopsychoanalysis can help open up the relevance of neuropsychoanalysis to wider fields of study, including those who are concerned with what Wilson (2003) called "the future of life."

The rooting of the mind in the body: new links between attachment theory and psychoanalytic thought.

PubMed

Fonagy, Peter; Target, Mary

2007-01-01

The relationship between psychoanalysis and attachment theory is complex indeed. A brief review of the psychoanalytic literature as it concerns attachment theory and research, and of the attachment literature as it pertains to psychoanalytic ideas, demonstrates an increasing interest in attachment theory within psychoanalysis. Some of the difficulties that attachment theory faces in relation to psychoanalytic ideas are traced to its links to the now dated cognitive science of the 1960s and 1970s. Today, however, a second-generation cognitive neuroscience seeks neurobiologically plausible accounts in which links with brain and body are seen as shaping mind and consciousness, which increasingly are seen as "embodied", as emerging from or serving the needs of a physical being located in a specific time, place, and social context. This idea has also been at the core of much psychoanalytic thinking, which has historically affirmed the rootedness of symbolic thought in sensory, emotional, and enacted experience with objects. Now neurobiological advances supporting the concept of embodied cognition offer an opportunity to forge powerful links between the hitherto separate domains of attachment theory and psychoanalysis. Speculations about the nature of language are presented that emphasize the origin of internal working models (and of representations in general) in early sensorimotor and emotional experiences with a caregiver. It is argued that language and symbolic thought may be phylogenetically and ontogenetically embodied, built on a foundation of gestures and actions, and are thus profoundly influenced by the experience of early physical interaction with the primary object. Finally, the clinical and research implications of these ideas are discussed.

Feminist Film Theory and Criticism.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mayne, Judith

1985-01-01

Discusses Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," and the ideas about feminist film theory and psychoanalysis as a critical tool which it raises. Suggests contradiction is the central issue in feminist film theory. Explores definitions of women's cinema. (SA)

Epistemological and Treatment Implications of Nonlinear Dynamics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stein, A. H.

The treatment implications of understanding mind as solely epiphenomenal to nonlinearly founded neurobiology are discussed. G. Klimovsky's epistemological understanding of psychoanalysis as a science is rejected and treatment approaches integrating W. R. Bion's and D. W. Winnicott's work are supported.

Hamlet in Freud's Thoughts: Reinterpretations in the Psychoanalytic Literature.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Diaz de Chumaceiro, Cora L.

1998-01-01

Presents a selection of interpretations in the psychoanalytic literature of "Hamlet," by William Shakespeare, beginning with an extensive look at the role this literature played in Sigmund Freud's mind at the origins of psychoanalysis. Also examines later interpretations. (SR)

Interpersonal Fields of Play

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alcock, Sophie Jane

2017-01-01

Ethnographic methods are used to investigate infant--toddlers relationships in an early childhood setting. The metaphorical and emotionally based concepts of holding [Winnicott, D. W. (1960). "The theory of the parent-infant relationship." "International Journal of Psychoanalysis," 41, 585-595.] and container: contained [Bion,…

Counseling and Psychoanalysis: Advancing the Value of Diversity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hansen, James T.

2010-01-01

Arguably, the defining feature of the counseling profession is an appreciation for human diversity. Early counseling movements emphasized individual diversity, while multiculturalism and social justice highlighted cultural diversity. The author maintains that contemporary psychoanalytic thought can supply a needed intraindividual diversity…

The psychic envelopes in psychoanalytic theories of infancy

PubMed Central

Mellier, Denis

2014-01-01

This paper aims to review the topic of psychic envelopes and to sketch the main outlines of this concept in infancy. We first explore the origins of the concept in Freud's “protective shield” and then its development in adult psychoanalysis before going on to see how this fits in infancy with post-Bionian psychoanalysis and development. Four central notions guide this review: (1) Freud's “protective shield” describes a barrier to protect the psychic apparatus against potentially overflowing trauma. It is a core notion which highlights a serious clinical challenge for patients for whom the shield is damaged or faulty: the risk of confusion of borders between the internal/external world, conscious/unconscious, mind/body, or self-conservation/sexuality. (2) Anzieu's “Skin-Ego” is defined by the different senses of the body. The different layers of experienced sensation, of this body-ego, go on to form the psychic envelope. This theory contributes to our understanding of how early trauma, due to the failures of maternal care, can continue to have an impact in adult life. (3) Bick's “psychic skin” establishes the concept in relation to infancy. The mother's containing functions allow a first psychic skin to develop, which then defines an infant's psychic space and affords the infant a degree of self-containment. Houzel then conceptualized this process as a stabilization of drive forces. (4) Stern's “narrative envelope” derives from the intersection between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. It gives us another way to conceptualize the development of pre-verbal communication. It may also pave the way for a finer distinction of different types of envelopes. Ultimately, in this review we find that psychic envelopes in infancy can be viewed from four different perspectives (economic, topographical, dynamic, and genetic) and recommend further investigation. PMID:25076924

The influence of Cervantes on the future creator of psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Grinberg, L; Rodríguez, J F

1984-01-01

Our work is intended to recreate the origins of the 'future creator of psychoanalysis'. Cervantes had a decisive influence on Freud. Don Quixote occupied a central place during a period which we consider to be crucial in the creation of psychoanalysis; we refer to the summer of 1883 during which Freud confessed to Martha that he had become more interested in this book than in brain anatomy. In this work, Cervantes delves in-depth into problems which he had set out in The Colloquy of the Dogs, read by Freud in his adolescence when he was learning Spanish and which confronted some of the great psychoanalytic themes such as reality-fantasy, language, instinct and reason, traumatic situations, 'family romance', etc. These themes appear in a psychoanalytically structured dialogue in which one of the dogs, Berganza, tells his life story (in the form of catharsis) to the other dog, Cipión, with whom Freud identified himself. Basically, it is the psychotherapeutic model that Freud used with his own hysterical patients. Another dialogue which was essential for Freud was that of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, due to the following major reasons (as well as others): For the clear discrimination between reality and fantasy as well as their interplay. Because madness is presented as a complex phenomenon, but intelligible in terms of human motives. For the penetrating description of the transition in Don Quixote from mania to depression. Because at that moment of his life, Freud himself was living through a personal conflict between his dreams of carrying out some scientific feat and the demands of attending to his mundane necessities.

Review of Cold War Freud, Psychiatry in Communist Europe, and Psiquiatría, Psicoánalisis y Cultura Comunista: Batallas Ideológicas en la Guerra Fria [Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Communist Culture: Ideological Battles in the Cold War].

PubMed

Innamorati, Marco

2017-08-01

Reviews the books, Cold War Freud by D. Herzog (2016), Psychiatry in Communist Europe edited by M. Savelli and S. Marks (2015), and Psiquiatría, Psicoánalisis y Cultura Comunista: Batallas Ideológicas en la Guerra Fria [Psychiatry, psychoanalysis and communist culture: Ideological battles in the Cold War] by H. Vezzetti. On the whole, the three books show how the Cold War influenced, in various ways, psychiatric and psychotherapeutic cultures. Beyond the Iron Curtain, as one can perceive from the book edited by Savelli and Marks (2015), politics explicitly set the agenda for the psychological sciences, using them even to invent ad hoc nosologies, useful for purposes related to power. In the United States, on the other hand, as Herzog (2016) pinpoints, the political situation affected the same field, even if indirectly, as in the Christianization of a discipline-psychoanalysis-the creator of which proudly declared himself an atheist Jew. In other Western countries, the relationship between psychiatry and power could bring about paradoxical results. From Vezzetti's (2016) book, one can ascertain that psychiatric culture might assume an overtly opposing stance toward political power. Vezzetti scans the case of Argentina, and partly of France, but they were not isolated cases. In Italy, for example, a movement of radical psychiatrists understood their role as a necessary opposition to political power, having as an aim the "liberation" of patients locked up in the psychiatric hospitals (Foot, 2015). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Minding the Ecological Body: Neuropsychoanalysis and Ecopsychoanalysis

PubMed Central

Dodds, Joseph

2013-01-01

Neuropsychoanalysis explores experimentally and theoretically the philosophically ancient discussion of the relation of mind and body, and seems well placed to overcome the problem of a “mindless” neuroscience and a “brainless” psychology and psychotherapy, especially when combined with a greater awareness that the body itself, not only the brain, provides the material substrate for the emergent phenomenon we call mind. However, the mind-brain-body is itself situated within a complex ecological world, interacting with other mind-brain-bodies and the “non-human environment.” This occurs both synchronically and diachronically as the organism and its environment (living and non-living) interact in highly complex often non-linear ways. Psychoanalysis can do much to help unmask the anxieties, deficits, conflicts, phantasies, and defenses crucial in understanding the human dimension of the ecological crisis. Yet, psychoanalysis still largely remains not only a “psychology without biology,” which neuropsychoanalysis seeks to remedy, but also a “psychology without ecology.” Ecopsychoanalysis (Dodds, 2011b; Dodds and Jordan, 2012) is a new transdisciplinary approach drawing on a range of fields such as psychoanalysis, psychology, ecology, philosophy, science, complexity theory, esthetics, and the humanities. It attempts to play with what each approach has to offer in the sense of a heterogeneous assemblage of ideas and processes, mirroring the interlocking complexity, chaos, and turbulence of nature itself. By emphasizing the way the mind-brain-body studied by neuropsychoanalysis is embedded in wider social and ecological networks, ecopsychoanalysis can help open up the relevance of neuropsychoanalysis to wider fields of study, including those who are concerned with what Wilson (2003) called “the future of life.” PMID:23533027

Capitalism, psychiatry, and schizophrenia: a critical introduction to Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus.

PubMed

Roberts, Marc

2007-04-01

Published in 1972, Anti-Oedipus was the first of a number of collaborative works between the French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, and the French psychoanalyst and political activist, Felix Guattari. As the first of a two-volume body of work that bears the subtitle, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Anti-Oedipus is, to say the least, an unconventional work that should be understood, in part, as a product of its time--created as it was among the political and revolutionary fervour engendered by the events of 'May 1968'. However, this paper will suggest that Anti-Oedipus--as a critique of psychoanalysis and the Oedipus complex, as well as being a study of the relationship between capitalism and schizophrenia--should also be understood in a less 'time-bound' fashion. In particular, the paper will examine Deleuze and Guattari's formulation of a concept of 'desire' and its employment in relation to subjectivity, time, capitalism, representation, and the radical 'therapeutic' practice that they refer to as 'schizoanalysis'. Moreover, nearly 40 years after the events of May 1968 and against possible doubts concerning the contemporary relevance of psychoanalysis, it will be suggested that psychoanalysis and the Oedipus complex are to be understood as symptomatic of a wider 'malaise' that can be discerned within psychiatry, psychotherapy, and contemporary capitalist society itself, and that it is this that forms the broader target of the book's critique. Accordingly, by providing an accessible and critical introduction to Anti-Oedipus, the paper also hopes to stimulate further discussion and research regarding both the critique and the contribution that the work can make to contemporary psychiatry, psychotherapy, and mental health nursing generally.

Dream Symbol or Dream Process?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Himelstein, Philip

1984-01-01

Discusses the relationship of the symbolic content of dreams to the theory of the dream in psychoanalysis and Gestalt therapy. Points out that the utility of the dream depends upon the techniques of the therapist and not on the validity of the underlying theory of the dream. (LLL)

Behavior Therapy versus Psychoanalysis: Therapeutic and Social Implications.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wolpe, Joseph

1981-01-01

That psychoanalytic theory has not been displaced by the behavioral theory of neurosis is remarkable in view of the persuasive evidence that exists for the efficacy of behavior therapy. One reason for this seems to be the persistence of widespread misperceptions of behavior therapy. (Author)

Institutional Racist Melancholia: A Structural Understanding of Grief and Power in Schooling

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vaught, Sabina E.

2012-01-01

In this article, Sabina Vaught undertakes the theoretical and analytical project of conceptually integrating "Whiteness as property", a key structural framework of Critical Race Theory (CRT), and "melancholia", a framework originally emerging from psychoanalysis. Specifically, Vaught engages "Whiteness as property" as…

Knowledge: Genuine and Bogus

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bunge, Mario

2011-01-01

Pseudoscience is error, substantive or methodological, parading as science. Obvious examples are parapsychology, "intelligent design," and homeopathy. Psychoanalysis and pop evolutionary psychology are less obvious, yet no less flawed in both method and doctrine. The fact that science can be faked to the point of deceiving science lovers suggests…

Social Psychoanalytic Disability Studies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goodley, Dan

2011-01-01

This paper explores connections and tensions between psychoanalysis and disability studies. The first part of the paper considers contemporaneous engagements with the psyche by a number of disability studies writers. These scholars have remained accountable to a politicised disability studies but have pushed for critical encounters with the…

[Severe depression : psychoanalysis].

PubMed

Bouvet de la Maisonneuve, O

2009-12-01

The indication for psychoanalysis in severe depression is not clear. And yet, demands for this type of intervention are increasing, despite the absence of any form of consensus on the subject. Freud considered depression as a failure of analytical efforts and, based on this observation, revised his theory, in particular to include the notions of narcissism and the death drive. Many analysts have been reluctant to follow his teachings on this last point and provide depressed patients with analytical-type therapies aimed at restoring narcissism. Melanie Klein pushed Freud's ideas about depression even further and brought such therapies back to the heart of analytical practice. Jacques Lacan took the debate to another level by proposing an overhaul of the principles on which analysis has been based. Today, while following certain precautionary rules, true psychoanalyses can be proposed to patients with severe depression, whether of the bipolar, recurring or even neurotic type that can reach this level of severity. Copyright 2009 L'Encéphale. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.. All rights reserved.

Re-reading "Little Hans": Freud's case study and the question of competing paradigms in psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Midgley, Nicholas

2006-01-01

Psychoanalysts have long recognized the complex interaction between clinical data and formal psychoanalytic theories. While clinical data are often used to provide "evidence" for psychoanalytic paradigms, the theoretical model used by the analyst also structures what can and cannot be seen in the data. This delicate interaction between theory and clinical data can be seen in the history of interpretations of Freud's "Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy" ("Little Hans"). Freud's himself revised his reading of the case in 1926, after which a number of psychoanalysts--including Melanie Klein, Jacques Lacan, and John Bowlby--reinterpreted the case in the light of their particular models of the mind. These analysts each found "evidence" for their theoretical model within this classic case study, and in doing so they illuminated aspects of the case that had previously been obscured, while also revealing a great deal about the shifting preoccupations of psychoanalysis as a field.

Melanie Klein in Buenos Aires: beginnings and developments.

PubMed

Etchegoyen, R Horacio; Zysman, Samuel

2005-06-01

In the first decades of the 20th century, Freud was known and quoted in Latin America by an elite of enlightened minds. In the 1940s a convergence took place in Buenos Aires of European exiles with local pioneers, and thus the Argentine Psychoanalytical Association was founded in 1942. Since then psychoanalysis has grown steadily and has spread into hospitals and universities, influencing culture at large. The socioeconomic situation of that time permitted this phenomenon to develop, to the astonishment of observers. In this paper the authors study the strong influence of Kleinian thought during the first 30 years of this development. The original works of local thinkers constitute the intellectual capital that sustains the idea of an 'Argentine psychoanalytic school'. During the 1970s, both society and psychoanalysis endured deep and complex changes. Lacan's teachings gained support and Klein's influence began to decline. At present the Buenos Aires Kleinians keep working, while their relationship with Lacanians and other schools is calmer. Respectful discussions became thus possible, oriented to strictly scientific differences.

The history of nosology and the rise of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

PubMed Central

Shorter, Edward

2015-01-01

The current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-5 arose from a tradition filled with haphazard science and politically driven choices. The nosology of modern psychiatry began with the German classifiers of the late 19th century, especially Emil Kraepelin. Psychoanalysis then blotted out the classificatory vision for the next half-century, and most of this European psychopathological science failed to cross the Atlantic. The DSM series was a homegrown American product, beginning with Medical 203 in 1945, then guided by psychoanalytic insights through DSM-I in 1952 and DSM-II in 1968. In 1980, DSM-III represented a massive “turning of the page” in nosology, and it had the effect of steering psychoanalysis toward the exit in psychiatry and the beginning of a reconciliation of psychiatry with the rest of medicine. With the advent of DSM-5, however, questions are starting to be asked about whether this massive venture is on the right track. PMID:25987864

A psychoanalytic understanding of the desire for knowledge as reflected in Freud's Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood.

PubMed

Blass, Rachel B

2006-10-01

The author offers an understanding of the psychoanalytic notion of the desire for knowledge and the possibility of attaining it as it fi nds expression in Freud's Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood. This understanding has not been explicitly articulated by Freud but may be considered integral to psychoanalysis' Weltanschauung as shaped by Freud's legacy. It emerges through an attempt to explain basic shifts, contradictions, inconsistencies and tensions that become apparent from a close reading of the text of Leonardo. Articulating this implicit understanding of knowledge provides the grounds for a stance on epistemology that is integral to psychoanalysis and relevant to contemporary psychoanalytic concerns on this topic. This epistemology focuses on the necessary involvement of passion, rather than detachment, in the search for knowledge and views the psychoanalytic aim of self-knowledge as a derivative, and most immediate expression, of a broader and more basic human drive to know.

The father of ethology and the foster mother of ducks: Konrad Lorenz as expert on motherhood.

PubMed

Vicedo, Marga

2009-06-01

Konrad Lorenz's popularity in the United States has to be understood in the context of social concern about the mother-infant dyad after World War II. Child analysts David Levy, René Spitz, Margarethe Ribble, Therese Benedek, and John Bowlby argued that many psychopathologies were caused by a disruption in the mother-infant bond. Lorenz extended his work on imprinting to humans and argued that maternal care was also instinctual. The conjunction of psychoanalysis and ethology helped shore up the view that the mother-child dyad rests on an instinctual basis and is the cradle of personality formation. Amidst the Cold War emphasis on rebuilding an emotionally sound society, these views received widespread attention. Thus Lorenz built on the social relevance of psychoanalysis, while analysts gained legitimacy by drawing on the scientific authority of biology. Lorenz's work was central in a rising discourse that blamed the mother for emotional degeneration and helped him recast his eugenic fears in a socially acceptable way.

The history of nosology and the rise of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

PubMed

Shorter, Edward

2015-03-01

The current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-5 arose from a tradition filled with haphazard science and politically driven choices. The nosology of modern psychiatry began with the German classifiers of the late 19th century, especially Emil Kraepelin. Psychoanalysis then blotted out the classificatory vision for the next half-century, and most of this European psychopathological science failed to cross the Atlantic. The DSM series was a homegrown American product, beginning with Medical 203 in 1945, then guided by psychoanalytic insights through DSM-I in 1952 and DSM-II in 1968. In 1980, DSM-III represented a massive "turning of the page" in nosology, and it had the effect of steering psychoanalysis toward the exit in psychiatry and the beginning of a reconciliation of psychiatry with the rest of medicine. With the advent of DSM-5, however, questions are starting to be asked about whether this massive venture is on the right track.

From archaic narcissism to empathy for the self: the evolution of new capacities in psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Gehrie, Mark J

2011-04-01

The concept of the selfobject was central to Heinz Kohut's psychology of the self. With an eye to studying the development of narcissism and its implications for the growth of new psychic structure, this concept is reviewed and reassessed. Post-Kohutian complexities regarding its definition and use extend our consideration of the development of narcissism beyond archaic configurations toward further evolution of the self and the nature of mature narcissism. The hypothesis is offered that developing narcissism and the growth of self-regulation impact the acquisition of new structure and new capacities through the emergence of newly potentiated aspects of the self. The implications of these emergent qualities of the self are examined in the context of our understanding of self-esteem regulation, the state of the self, and the goals of psychoanalysis. A clinical example illustrates how technique and process in an analysis may be organized around the development of such new capacities.

Privacy and disclosure in psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Kantrowitz, Judy L

2009-08-01

The tension between privacy and disclosure in psychoanalysis operates in various ways in analyst, supervisee, and supervisor. Analysts need to maintain the privacy of their patients by keeping their material confidential; they also need to know and share their own internal conscious conflicts to be able to discover unconscious conflicts and their characterological ramifications. Clinical writing is one vehicle for the exploration, discovery, and communication of transference-countertransference issues and other conflicts stimulated by clinical work, but it does not provide the perspective that comes from sharing with another person. Telling a trusted colleague what we think and feel in relation to our patients and ourselves enables us to see our blind spots, as well as providing perspective and affect containment in our work. Mutuality in peer supervision tends to reduce the transference. The special problems of privacy and disclosure in psychoanalytic training are addressed, as are the ways the analyst's belief in maintaining privacy may affect the analytic process and therapeutic relationship.

Fear and decision-making in narcissistic personality disorder—a link between psychoanalysis and neuroscience

PubMed Central

Ronningstam, Elsa; Baskin-Sommers, Arielle R.

2013-01-01

Linking psychoanalytic studies with neuroscience has proven increasingly productive for identifying and understanding personality functioning. This article focuses on pathological narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), with the aim of exploring two clinically relevant aspects of narcissistic functioning also recognized in psychoanalysis: fear and decision-making. Evidence from neuroscientific studies of related conditions, such as psychopathy, suggests links between affective and cognitive functioning that can influence the sense of self-agency and narcissistic self-regulation. Attention can play a crucial role in moderating fear and self-regulatory deficits, and the interaction between experience and emotion can be central for decision-making. In this review we will explore fear as a motivating factor in narcissistic personality functioning, and the impact fear may have on decision-making in people with pathological narcissism and NPD. Understanding the processes and neurological underpinnings of fear and decision-making can potentially influence both the diagnosis and treatment of NPD. PMID:24174893

Psychoanalysis and bioethics: a Lacanian approach to bioethical discourse.

PubMed

Zwart, Hub

2016-12-01

This article aims to develop a Lacanian approach to bioethics. Point of departure is the fact that both psychoanalysis and bioethics are practices of language, combining diagnostics with therapy. Subsequently, I will point out how Lacanian linguistics may help us to elucidate the dynamics of both psychoanalytical and bioethical discourse, using the movie One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sophocles' tragedy Antigone as key examples. Next, I will explain the 'topology' of the bioethical landscape with the help of Lacan's three dimensions: the imaginary, the symbolical and the real. This will culminate in an assessment of the dynamics of bioethical discourse with the help of Lacan's theorem of the four discourses. Bioethics, I will argue, is not a homogeneous discourse. Rather, four modalities of bioethical discourse can be distinguished, all of them displaying specific weaknesses and strengths, opportunities and threats. This will be elucidated with the help of two case studies, namely the debates on human reproductive technologies and on the use of animals as biomedical research models.

Paediatrics and psychoanalysis--Miss Anna Freud.

PubMed Central

1983-01-01

Miss Anna Freud died during the winter at the age of 86. She had been a pioneer in the understanding of children through psychoanalysis and a great champion of the rights of children. Her life began in Vienna as the youngest child of Sigmund Freud, and her early work with children was in Austria. In 1938, because of the Nazi régime and even though she was nursing her father during his terminal illness, she had to escape with him to London. Her work with homeless children and with those in residential nurseries in London during the second world war is well known, as is her work on child development and psychopathology in the postwar years. But one less well known aspect of her life that was of immense importance to a few fortunate British paediatricians was the 'paediatric group' that she ran for over a quarter of a century and which Dr Christine Cooper recalled at the memorial meeting in London earlier this year. PMID:6344806

Informed consent as a prescription calling for debate between analysts and researchers.

PubMed

Rodríguez Quiroga de Pereira, Andrea; Messina, Verónica María; Sansalone, Paula Andrea

2012-08-01

This article is a review of the international scientific literature on informed consent and its use in some of the constituent organizations of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). Because psychoanalysis comprises a theory based on practice, the dearth of clinical material for study, training and research purposes is a serious problem for analysts. Supervisions, presentations at scientific societies and congresses, publications and teaching material involve patients to an extent that goes beyond the work done in their sessions. Should consent be requested in these cases? This contribution addresses controversial and long-standing issues such as informed consent and confidentiality, audio recording of treatments, knowledge production, the ambivalence of participating subjects over time and the perspective of analysts and patients respectively. The authors consider the various alternative approaches available for the handling of these ethical dilemmas without losing sight of the patient's dignity and personal rights, while also taking account of the position of the analyst. Copyright © 2012 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Dreaming the other's past: why remembering may still be relevant to psychoanalytic therapy, at least in some traditions.

PubMed

Habermas, Tilmann

2014-10-01

Against the background of a reconstruction of the reasons for the vanishing role of remembering in the history of psychoanalysis, Botella's (2014, Int J Psychoanal, 95) arguments regarding the therapeutic significance of reconstruction and remembering and of the therapist's role are discussed. The difference between intellectual reconstruction and actual emotional remembering are underlined, the term regredience is compared to competing concepts such as equally suspended attention, countertransference and reverie. It is argued that to conceptualize the use of countertransferential associations for reconstructing past traumatic events is difficult with a monadic conception of the unconscious and problematic both in terms of truth claims and in terms of achieving a shared creative atmosphere in which therapist and patient participate alike. It is concluded that historical truth may be important for traumatic experiences, and that biographical reconstruction and change in the subjective life story help to make sense of neurotic patterns and integrate diachronic identity. Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Theories of the Alcoholic Personality.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cox, W. Miles

Several theories of the alcoholic personality have been devised to determine the relationship between the clusters of personality characteristics of alcoholics and their abuse of alcohol. The oldest and probably best known theory is the dependency theory, formulated in the tradition of classical psychoanalysis, which associates the alcoholic's…

Psychology, the Population Explosion, and the Question of Freedom and Dignity.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Platzek, Donna Brown

This paper examines the question of why women want children from several disciplinary viewpoints including psychoanalysis; role learning; and economic, political, and religious aspects. Basically, however, childbearing motivations can be divided into four categories: altruistic, fatalistic, narcissistic, and instrumental. Children can fulfill a…

The Failed Social Legacy of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gold, Jerry

2002-01-01

Reviews the unique contributions of Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm in synthesizing a psychoanalytic outlook with concern for political, economic, and social issues. Discusses some of the reasons why succeeding generations of interpersonal psychoanalysts have lost touch with these issues. Concludes with suggestions about how contemporary…

A Psychoanalytic Approach to Fieldwork

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ramvi, Ellen

2012-01-01

This article focuses on what both psychoanalysis and anthropology have in common: the emphasis on the researcher's own experience. An ethnographic fieldwork will be used to illustrate how a psychoanalytical approach unfolds the material when studying conditions for learning from experience among teachers in two Norwegian junior high schools, and…

Academetron, Automaton, Phantom: Uncanny Digital Pedagogies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bayne, Sian

2010-01-01

This paper explores the possibility of an uncanny digital pedagogy. Drawing on theories of the uncanny from psychoanalysis, cultural studies and educational philosophy, it considers how being online defamiliarises teaching, asking us to question and consider anew established academic practices and conventions. It touches on recent thinking on…

’ISM’ Analysis: A Necessity for Effective Strategic Communication

DTIC Science & Technology

2008-09-01

210). In psychology, for example, Sigmund Freud rejected the idea of the formation of worldviews in psychoanalysis and argued that only...scientific knowledge” was worthy of sustained endeavor. It seems Freud did not realize he was arguing for a specific point of view, namely scientism or old

Denial: A Bibliography.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pedrini, D. T.; Pedrini, Bonnie C.

Denial was a mechanism that Sigmund Freud worked with in his clinical practice and in his formulation of personality. He considered denial, e.g., in his papers on Repression (1915) and on Fetishism (1927) in Collected Papers, Volumes IV and V respectively (London: Hogarth and The Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1925 and 1950 respectively). It would…

"Buried Alive": The Psychoanalysis of Racial Absence in Preparedness/Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chakrabarty, Namita

2012-01-01

Based on extracts from an ethnography produced during the ESRC 2009-10 research project, ""Preparedness Pedagogies" and Race: An Interdisciplinary Approach," this article explores the racialized culture of civil defence in the UK whilst also critiquing the world of higher education. The ethnographic artefacts of interviews,…

[Freud in the journals of the German speaking exile].

PubMed

May, Ulrike

2006-01-01

Freud and psychoanalysis figure frequently in exile journals. This paper documents two letters to the editor written by Alexander Freud who denied that his brother Sigmund had been a zionist, and the recollections of the sculptor Königsberger who had made a bust of Freud in 1920.

Limping or Flying? Psychoanalysis, Afrocentrism, and "Song of Solomon."

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tidey, Ashley

2000-01-01

Explores the possibility of seeing in Toni Morrison's novel, "Song of Solomon," the co-existence of two narratives of subjectivity. Examines the extent to which the application of a Western and non-Western narrative of subject formation yields conflicting interpretations of the novel and, in particular, the novel's ending. (SC)

Moral Psychology for the Twenty-First Century

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haidt, Jonathan

2013-01-01

Lawrence Kohlberg slayed the two dragons of twentieth-century psychology--behaviorism and psychoanalysis. His victory was a part of the larger cognitive revolution that shaped the world in which all of us study psychology and education today. But the cognitive revolution itself was modified by later waves of change, particularly an "affective…

An Introduction to the Psychedelic Psychotherapy of Salvador Roquet

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Villoldo, Alberto

1977-01-01

Psychosynthesis as developed by Salvador Roquet presents a new method combining Freudian, Frommian, and transpersonal therapies. Its immediate result is to obtain results expected from long-term psychoanalysis in an abbreviated period of time. It also helps the individual take responsibility for his own development. (Author/RK)

Reconciling Feminism and Psychoanalysis: The Patient as Therapist to the Therapist.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kanefield, Linda

Although incompatible differences appear to exist between psychoanalytic therapy, which involves a hierarchical relationship, and feminism, which stresses egalitarian values, some versions of psychoanalytic theory are able to maintain their hierarchy within a context consistent with feminist values. Freud touched on the importance of the…

Freud, Adler, Jung: From Womb to Tomb.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pedrini, D. T.; Pedrini, Bonnie C.

This paper briefly introduces outlines of psychoanalysis (Freud), individual psychology (Adler), and analytical psychology (Jung). Freud focused on problems of adults as they related to childhood; Adler on problems of adults as they related to adulthood; and Jung on problems of adults as they related to middle and later years. Jungian analytical…

Annotated Psychodynamic Bibliography for Residents in Psychiatry

PubMed Central

CALIGOR, EVE

1996-01-01

The author provides an annotated bibliography to introduce psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis to residents in psychiatry. The emphasis of the selection is on relevance to practice. The entries are grouped by topic, levels of difficulty are noted, and readings are identified as being of either current or historic relevance. PMID:22700303

The Alchemy of Mathematical Experience: A Psychoanalysis of Student Writings.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Early, Robert E.

1992-01-01

Shares a psychological look at student images of mathematical learning and problem solving through students' writings about mathematical experiences. The analysis is done from a Jungian psychoanalytic orientation with the goal of assisting students develop a deeper perspective from which to view their mathematics experience. (MDH)

Psychology in Mexico

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ruiz, Eleonora Rubio

2011-01-01

The first formal psychology course taught in Mexico was in 1896 at Mexico's National University; today, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM in Spanish). The modern psychology from Europe and the US in the late 19th century were the primary influences of Mexican psychology, as well as psychoanalysis and both clinical and experimental…

The Psychoanalysis of Infantile Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Houzel, Didier

2004-01-01

Starting from Frances Tustin's description of failure of the containing function in autistic children due to a splitting between the masculine and feminine aspects of the containing object, the author suggests that the first stage in the psychoanalytic treatment of an autistic child consists in restoring that function by working through what he…

"Wo Es War": Psychoanalysis, Marxism, and Subjectivity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cho, Daniel

2007-01-01

Subjectivity, for Descartes, emerged when he doubted the veracity of his knowledge. Instead of truth, he counted this knowledge to be inherited myth. Cartesian subjectivity has been helpful for forming a critical education predicated on doubting ideology and hegemony. But Marx indicates a very different kind of knowledge in his analysis of…

Mathematics Pedagogical Change: Rethinking Identity and Reflective Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walshaw, Margaret

2010-01-01

This article deals with issues that are central to changed mathematics pedagogical practice. It engages general debates about teaching reflexivity and within that, more specific debates in relation to identity. It uses theoretical concepts derived from Lacanian psychoanalysis as a way of understanding what structures a teacher's narrative about…

Conceptual Resources for Questioning "Child as Educator"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burman, Erica

2013-01-01

This paper critically evaluates the ways we look to children to educate us and explores how we might depart from that dynamic, exploring how a range of conceptual frameworks from historical and cultural studies and psychoanalysis might contribute to understanding the problematic of childhood, its problems and its limitations. While "child as…

E-Learning, Time and Unconscious Thinking

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mathew, David

2014-01-01

This article views the temporal dimensions of e-learning through a psychoanalytic lens, and asks the reader to consider links between online learning and psychoanalysis. It argues that time and its associated philosophical puzzles impinge on both psychoanalytic theory and on e-learning at two specific points. The first is in the distinction…

Discursive Positioning and Emotion in School Mathematics Practices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Evans, Jeff; Morgan, Candia; Tsatsaroni, Anna

2006-01-01

Our approach to emotion in school mathematics draws on social semiotics, pedagogic discourse theory and psychoanalysis. Emotions are considered as socially organised and shaped by power relations; we portray emotion as a charge (of energy) attached to ideas or signifiers. We analyse transcripts from a small group solving problems in mathematics…

Play Therapy: Facilitative Use of Child's Play in Elementary School Counseling.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Landreth, Garry L.

1987-01-01

Reviews five major developments in play therapy: psychoanalysis, release therapy, relationship therapy, nondirective therapy, and play therapy in school settings. Suggests ways school counselors can use play therapy. Describes play therapy facilities, location selection, and play materials. Lists objectives of play therapy and how teachers can aid…

Symbolising the Real of Mathematics Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pais, Alexandre

2015-01-01

This text, occasioned by a critical reading of Tony Brown's new book "Mathematics Education and Subjectivity," aims at contributing to the building of a sociopolitical approach to mathematics education based on Lacanian psychoanalysis and Slavoj Žižek's philosophy. Brown has been bringing into the field of mathematics education the work…

The Uses of Writing in Psychotherapy.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brand, Alice Glarden

1979-01-01

The author traces the development of writing as a therapeutic tool, from its roots in Freudian psychoanalysis and bibliotherapy to current practices in the humanistic psychologies, where poetry therapy, correspondence, and diary-keeping are used as adjuncts to conventional therapies and as vehicles for self-awareness and self-help. (SJL)

Freud's "On Narcissism: An Introduction"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crockatt, Philip

2006-01-01

The author reviews Freud's (1914) seminal paper "On narcissism: an introduction". Freud's paper is briefly set in the historical context of the evolution of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theories, and Freud's metapsychology up to the publication of his Narcissism paper is outlined. A detailed and comprehensive description of the content of the…

Humanistic-Cognitive Applications to Teaching and Learning: Theoretical-Philosophical Bases.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hamachek, Don E.

Humanistic psychology has emerged as a third force alternative to behaviorism and psychoanalysis. It offers a new orientation to psychology, one that incorporates basic existential ideas related to personal choice, freedom, and responsibility, and which also includes central phenomenological themes related to perceptions, personal meanings, and…

A Discussion of Art Therapy as a Science.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gantt, Linda M.

1998-01-01

Examines four factors that may cause art therapists to reject the scientific method. Gives an overview of historical developments in science to provide a background for a discussion of each factor. Includes material from anthropology, psychoanalysis, and alternative health care. Offers suggestions for training art therapists in scientific…

Looking for Skinner and Finding Freud

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Overskeid, Geir

2007-01-01

Sigmund Freud and B. F. Skinner are often seen as psychology's polar opposites. It seems this view is fallacious. Indeed, Freud and Skinner had many things in common, including basic assumptions shaped by positivism and determinism. More important, Skinner took a clear interest in psychoanalysis and wanted to be analyzed but was turned down. His…

[At the Grundlsee. Alfons Paquet's note on his visit to Sigmund Freud in September 1930].

PubMed

Koenen, Gerd

2014-01-01

1930. This hitherto unknown account by A. Paquet, a writer from Frankfurt and at that time secretary of the Goethe-Prize, revolves around Freud's self-description as a "conscious Jew" who nevertheless eschewed categorization, as well as around psychoanalysis as an invidious, though necessary form of creative destruction.

Perspectives on Moreno, Psychodrama, and Creativity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blatner, Adam

2005-01-01

An essential element in successful psychotherapy involves helping clients become more creative in their approach to their problems. While Otto Rank, one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis, loosely alluded to this as a fitting goal, it was the inventor of psychodrama, Jacob L. Moreno, MD (1889-1974), who made this an explicit objective of the…

A Comparison of Some Portions of the Developmental Theories of Daniel N. Stern and Margaret S. Mahler.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peters, Donn W.

This paper discusses Daniel N. Stern's (1985) work, "The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology," with respect to its implications for theory on infant psychosocial development. The paper focuses on two areas: the reconceptualization of psychoanalytic developmental psychology, and the…

What Is the Use of Theory? A Psychoanalytic Discussion

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Britzman, Deborah P.

2012-01-01

Freud asking whether psychoanalysis could be taught in the university, and then whether it could be learned, provides an occasion for asking about the emotional uses of theory. The paper draws from literature, clinical writing and pedagogy to build a psychoanalytic discussion of teaching and learning that takes seriously phantasies of knowledge…

For the Love of Rhetoric, with Continual Reference to Kenny and Dolly

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gunn, Joshua

2008-01-01

Few contemporary scholars have explicitly discussed the relationship between love and rhetoric. This essay draws on the insights of Lacanian psychoanalysis to argue that rhetoricians have been reluctant to theorize love for two reasons: first, it is already implied in the widely accepted concept of identification; and second, any explicit…

Inclusion and Diversity from Hegelylacan Point of View: Do We Desire Our Desire for Change?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baldino, Roberto Ribeiro; Cabral, Tania Cristina B.

2006-01-01

This paper discusses the problem of social exclusion, reported to be intrinsically connected to mathematical teaching from the perspective of Hegel's philosophy and Lacan's psychoanalysis. It provides a characterization of mathematics from a language viewpoint discusses the perennial demand for more mathematical achieving from the perspective of…

Explorations in Knowing: Thinking Psychosocially about Legitimacy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chappell, Anne; Ernest, Paul; Ludhra, Geeta; Mendick, Heather

2014-01-01

In this paper, we look at what engaging with psychoanalysis, through psychosocial accounts of subjectivity, has contributed to our struggles for legitimacy and security within our ways of knowing. The psychosocial, with its insistence on the unconscious and the irrational, features as both a source of security and of insecurity. We use three…

Literacy of the Other: The Inner Life of Literacy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tarc, Aparna Mishra

2015-01-01

My paper situates literacy in the pre-symbolic implications of the maternal relation. Turning to child psychoanalysis, particularly Melanie Klein's theories of infancy and symbolization, my paper discusses the role the child's inner life plays in her engagements with literacy. Citing cases of second language learning, I pose literacy as…

Deleuze and the Queer Ethics of an Empirical Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moran, Paul Andrew

2013-01-01

Axiomatic and problematic approaches to ontology are discussed, at first in relation to the work of Badiou and Deleuze in mathematics. This discussion is then broadened focussing on problematics in Deleuze and Guattari's critiques of capitalism and psychoanalysis which results in an analysis of the implications of this discussion for education.…

The Psychotherapy Process with Adolescents: A First Pilot Study and Preliminary Comparisons between Different Therapeutic Modalities Using the "Adolescent Psychotherapy Q-Set"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bychkova, Tetyana; Hillman, Saul; Midgley, Nick; Schneider, Celeste

2011-01-01

An innovative methodology is presented for describing the therapeutic processes involved in five types of adolescent treatments: psychoanalysis, psychodynamic psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioural therapy, mentalisation-based treatment and interpersonal psychotherapy. Using the "Adolescent Psychotherapy Q-Set" (APQ), 18 experienced clinicians…

The Li(f)e of the Self: Missing Persons and Auto/Archeological Excavations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burdick, Jake

2014-01-01

This article describes and enacts a process of autobiographical inquiry, auto/archeology, which seeks to address problematic confluences of memory and identity in reconstructing one's historical narrative. Drawing on curriculum theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis, the author describes a process of excavation in which understandings of a prior…

Teaching Abjection: A Response to the War on Terror

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cho, Daniel

2005-01-01

In this paper, the author discusses pedagogy and strategy within the current climate set by the "War on Terror". Deploying Lacanian psychoanalysis in a critique of standardized knowledge, the author develops a theory of "abject pedagogy" that seeks to subvert the current "regimes of truth" while providing educators with a viable pedagogy during…

Rendering Visible: Painting and Sexuate Subjectivity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Daley, Linda

2015-01-01

In this essay, I examine Luce Irigaray's aesthetic of sexual difference, which she develops by extrapolating from Paul Klee's idea that the role of painting is to render the non-visible rather than represent the visible. This idea is the premise of her analyses of phenomenology and psychoanalysis and their respective contributions to understanding…

Connecting Bourdieu, Winnicott, and Honneth: Understanding the Experiences of Non-Traditional Learners through an Interdisciplinary Lens

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

West, Linden; Fleming, Ted; Finnegan, Fergal

2013-01-01

This paper connects Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, dispositions and capital with a psychosocial analysis of how Winnicott's psychoanalysis and Honneth's recognition theory can be of importance in understanding how and why non-traditional students remain in higher education. Understanding power relations in an interdisciplinary way makes…

The (Im)possibility of the Project: Radford Address

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Green, Bill

2010-01-01

In this address, the author engages both with the possibility "and" the impossibility of the educational project--and suggests something of what it means to say this. His presentation is specifically addressed to the theme of the (im)possibility of the educational project. He draws from philosophy, literature, psychoanalysis and history,…

Applications of Phenomenology in Transpersonal, Person-Centered, and Existential Counseling.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Souza, Katherine Zimmer; Do, Vinh The

This article explains that the phenomenological approach in counseling began as a movement to counterbalance the influence of psychoanalysis in psychotherapy and counseling. Phenomenology is defined as the study of the world as we immediately experience it, pre-reflectively rather than as we conceptualize, categorize, or reflect on it. Through…

Violence: innate or acquired? A survey and some opinions.

PubMed

Bacciagaluppi, Marco

2004-01-01

Freud's psychoanalysis and Lorenz's ethology consider human aggressiveness to be innate. According to recent archaeological excavations and evolutionary studies, human groups in the Upper Paleolithic and Early Neolithic were peaceful and cooperative. This culture was replaced ten thousand years ago by a predatory hierarchical structure, which is here viewed as a cultural variant.

Exposed: Phallic Protections, Shame and Damaged Parental Objects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cregeen, Simon

2009-01-01

Using ideas derived from Dana Birksted-Breen ("Phallus, penis and mental space," "International Journal of Psycho-Analysis," 77: 649-57, 1996), this article explores the clinical experience with "Tommy," a young boy who suffered multiple traumas and neglect. Birksted-Breen describes a phallic state of mind, which, amongst other things, serves to…

Horses for Courses: Exploring the Limits of Leadership Development through Equine-Assisted Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kelly, Simon

2014-01-01

This article draws on insights taken from Lacanian psychoanalysis to rethink and resituate notions of the self and subjectivity within the theory and practice of experiential leadership development. Adopting an autoethnographic approach, it describes the author's own experience as a participant in a program of equine-assisted learning or…

Psychiatric gadfly: in search of Reginald Ellery.

PubMed

Kaplan, Robert M

2012-02-01

To explore the life and contributions of Reginald Spencer Ellery (1897-1955), one of the most eminent psychiatrists in Australia between the wars. Ellery pioneered malariotherapy and psychoanalysis, mixed with leading intellectuals, including Max Harris, John and Sunday Reed, was a member of the Communist Party, wrote poetry and published widely on a wide range of topics. Ellery was talented, innovative, driven and highly energetic, managing a range of activities aside from his work without difficulty. While his writing talent was questioned by some, there is no doubting his influence on painters such as Albert Tucker and Sidney Nolan and his standing in the intellectual life of Melbourne. Ellery was uncompromising in his public stand on issues such as communism and psychoanalysis, but by the end of his life he was deeply disillusioned. Ellery's autobiography, The Cow Jumped Over the Moon, confirms the impression of a restless and creative mind reluctant to be constrained by conventional orthodoxy, the most eminent Australian psychiatrist of his time. His diverse achievements and talent, now largely forgotten, deserve recognition from a profession that is rapidly losing its links with the historical past.

Mourning and psychosis: a psychoanalytic perspective.

PubMed

Tizón, Jorge L

2010-12-01

The author attempts to develop some of the basic models and concepts relating to mourning processes in psychotic patients on the assumption that situations of loss and mourning are key moments for psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and therapeutic approaches in general. Secondly, he reminds us that 'mourning processes in psychotics' are not always 'psychotic mourning processes', that is to say, that they do not necessarily occur within, or give rise to, a psychotic clinical picture. These ideas are illustrated by a number of sessions and vignettes concerning two psychotic patients in psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic treatment. In theoretical terms, it seems vitally important in this context to combine a relationship-based approach within a framework of special psychoanalytic psychopathology with an updated view of processes of mourning and affective loss. A fundamental requirement at clinical level is to determine the role to be played by psychoanalytically based treatments in combined, integrated or global therapies when working with psychotic patients. For this purpose, the paper ends by outlining a set of principles and objectives for such treatments. Copyright © 2010 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Fresh old news from Ferenczi about the function of dreams: the dream as a Kur, as a treatment and as a Gyógyászat.

PubMed

Canesin Dal Molin, Eugênio

2012-10-01

This article discusses a text on the function of dreams and their relation to trauma. Ferenczi intended to present this material as a talk at the 12th International Congress of Psychoanalysis, which was to take place in Interlaken, Switzerland the same year that he wrote it (1931). The entire conference, however, was postponed, and parts of this communication's content appeared in other texts in which Ferenczi rethinks the concept of trauma and its clinical significance. In the present article the author makes use of the Freud/Ferenczi correspondence to contextualize Freud's Hungarian follower's originality regarding his theorizations about different aspects of the function of dreams. In the 1931 speech, as well as in this article, Ferenczi used a patient's dream work as a clinical example of a process in which traumatic experiences and unmastered sensory impressions can be repeated to achieve a better working-through for the dreamer. The process Ferenczi describes resembles an effort of self-treatment, of self-Kur. Copyright © 2012 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

One perspective on the Freud-Klein controversies 1941-45.

PubMed

Schafer, R

1994-04-01

Comments on the complex relations obtaining between, on the one hand, tradition, innovations and existential perspective and, on the other, presuppositions about method, evidence and truth are prefaced by a review of the helpful and hindering attitudes and conduct of the three parties to these controversial discussions, the third group being the indigenous ('independent') British group. This group directed the process into productive channels against great odds. The subsequent history of psychoanalysis shows, in addition to increased organisational stability and tolerance in times of crisis, an evolving enrichment and refinement of theory and practice in all three groups. Those following Melanie Klein have developed further their own kind of ego-psychological emphasis, while those following Anna Freud and 'the Viennese' around her have developed a more inclusive theoretical and clinical perspective, one that makes more salient the influence of the very first years of life and early infantile aggression as well as accepting a broadening of the idea of transference to include child analysis. This history supports the view that pluralism in psychoanalysis has been of much benefit.

Hypnosis and suggestion in a century of psychotherapy: an epistemological assessment.

PubMed

Chertok, L

1984-04-01

From 1882 to 1982, a century of psychotherapy passed. Its inception was marked by the rehabilitation of hypnosis in the work of Charcot at the Salepêtrière, and in the Nancy School (Liébeault and Bernheim). The young Freud became acquainted with this work in the course of his visits to France at this same period. It was thus that he was put on the track leading to the discovery of psychoanalysis. With the concept of transference, Freud thought he was reabsorbing suggestion and placing affect under the control of cognition. But today it is realized that suggestion (direct and indirect) is ever-present in psychoanalysis, as in other psychotherapies, which indeed do not cease to proliferate. This common element might be an important constituent of the curative process. Under these circumstances, it seems highly desirable that suggestion and hypnosis, those "crossroad" concepts which still remain so mysterious, become the subject of basic research, notwithstanding the prejudices that are still very much alive. The results of such research would prove beneficial to psychotherapy, as well as to the other human sciences.

Frontline: the liberal arts of psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Fradenburg, Aranye

2011-01-01

In terms of process, psychoanalysis is more closely related to the disciplines of the arts and humanities than those of the sciences, however much the latter have contributed to our knowledge of the mind and our discussions of technique. Will we, accordingly, assert our support for liberal arts education, at a time when it is under unprecedented attack? Neuroscience has made remarkable strides in establishing the importance of artistic and humanist training to the plasticity and connectedness of mental functioning. But these discoveries have sadly done nothing to protect the academic disciplines of the arts and humanities from budget cuts and closings. It is as if contemporary boosters of technical and scientific education had no interest in, or knew nothing about, the new knowledge of the brain that scientists are actually producing. Will psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, for the sake of the arts and the sciences, support liberal arts education, or will we distance ourselves from it, and thus abandon the well-being of the very minds we will later be trying to tend in our offices? Is it not our responsibility to speak for the importance of thriving, since surviving depends on it?

Validation of psychoanalytic theories: towards a conceptualization of references.

PubMed

Zachrisson, Anders; Zachrisson, Henrik Daae

2005-10-01

The authors discuss criteria for the validation of psychoanalytic theories and develop a heuristic and normative model of the references needed for this. Their core question in this paper is: can psychoanalytic theories be validated exclusively from within psychoanalytic theory (internal validation), or are references to sources of knowledge other than psychoanalysis also necessary (external validation)? They discuss aspects of the classic truth criteria correspondence and coherence, both from the point of view of contemporary psychoanalysis and of contemporary philosophy of science. The authors present arguments for both external and internal validation. Internal validation has to deal with the problems of subjectivity of observations and circularity of reasoning, external validation with the problem of relevance. They recommend a critical attitude towards psychoanalytic theories, which, by carefully scrutinizing weak points and invalidating observations in the theories, reduces the risk of wishful thinking. The authors conclude by sketching a heuristic model of validation. This model combines correspondence and coherence with internal and external validation into a four-leaf model for references for the process of validating psychoanalytic theories.

Analytical practice: do the new technologies have an impact?

PubMed

Favero, Davide; Candellieri, Stefano

2017-06-01

Through commentary on four clinical vignettes, this article focuses on the anthropological transformations taking place in contemporary society, underlining their differences from the anthropologies of reference of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis. Hybridization between man and machine and the speeding up and alteration of communications which the new technologies promote are now crucial issues facing psychoanalysis. Social media and a 24/7 internet connection have produced deep changes in the way people live and perceive relationships. Analytical practice is not exempt from such issues, which can be particularly insidious, often subtle and difficult to recognize, or even underestimated or ignored by psychoanalysts outright, in order to preserve the illusion of a complete understanding of what unfolds in the analytical space. The authors suggest that such transformations, by (partially) rendering inadequate the theoretical and technical corpus on which the various depth psychologies are founded, require personal engagement on the part of psychoanalysts in the search for new strategies to treat their patients, with the consequent abandonment of the 'certainties' offered by sclerotic models of clinical procedure. © 2017, The Society of Analytical Psychology.

[Religious experiences and psychotherapeutic methods].

PubMed

Dührssen, A

1978-01-01

Special similarities between religious practices and psychotherapeutic methods are described: Magic practices are related to psychotherapeutic methods, based on suggestion. Mystic contemplation or the training of relaxation in religious cults is close to all relaxation-methods in psychotherapy. Religious cults with ascetic practices cause halluzinatoric reactions. We find many psychotherapeutic methods, which try to make use of the effects of artificial deprivation. Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic treatment seems to be close to the jewish religion. Old talmudian wisdom asks the jew to make his best efforts in order to organize his own life well (man for himself). On the other hand the jewish religion asks all members of the religious group to be strictly obedient to the accepted laws and orders of God, otherwise the allience with God wil be lost. The patient in psychoanalysis is expected to do his best for his own wellbeing. On the other hand he is asked to accept special rules and laws of the therapy in order to keep the "working-allience" with his analyst. The psychoanalytic working-allience has some similarities with the allience with God which is important for the devoted jew.

[Sigmund Freud and the "Zeitschrift für Hypnotismus"].

PubMed

Tanner, Terence A

2005-01-01

While Freud was always ready to acknowledge the debt that psychoanalysis owed to hypnotism, his engagement in its study and medical application is often seen by historians as little more than a passing phase on the way to psychoanalysis proper. This paper attempts to redress the balance by exploring Freud's association with the most influential German-language journal devoted to hypnotism, the Zeitschrift für Hypnotismus. Freud not only contributed a paper to this periodical but also served on its editorial board for the first three years of its existence. There also appeared in the journal one review and six abstracts of his work. After a condensed bibliographical account of the journal, a summary is given of Freud's intellectual and professional contacts and exchanges with three of the key individuals associated with it: August Forel, Jonas Grossmann and Oskar Vogt. Finally clarification is given of the publication history of the "Dora" case history and the chronology of its rejection for publication by Korbinian Brodmann, editor of the journal when it became the Journal für Psychologie und Neurologie.

Freedom in the free world: The extimate becomes the law.

PubMed

Aristodemou, Maria

My article takes Robert Burt's piece as a starting point to highlight how a lacanian analysis of law differs from the one Robert Burt (rightly) rejected and from the alternative psychotherapeutic scenario Burt develops. I focus on what I consider to be the novel characteristics of a lacanian analysis, particularly its insistence on the castration of the human subject by language, a castration that problematizes our understanding of "freedom" and "free speech", and, in turn, on Law's own castration. The gradual peeling away of the claims made on behalf of the subject by ego psychologists, enables us to arrive at what a lacanian analysis would ideally uncover, that is the subject's extimate core. I illustrate this with the film The Act of Killing, a documentary which displays not only the extimate core at the heart of the subject but the extimate as the Law itself. The encounter between law and psychoanalysis, I conclude, far from leading to mutual understanding, leads to the dissolution of the analysand's pretenses, and, in turn, to the withdrawal of psychoanalysis from the scene altogether. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Linking psychoanalysis with neuroscience: the concept of ego.

PubMed

Rizzolatti, Giacomo; Semi, Antonio Alberto; Fabbri-Destro, Maddalena

2014-03-01

Through his whole life Marc Jeannerod was fascinated by Freud's thinking. His interest in Freud is witnessed by several of his writings in which he expresses interest in building a bridge between psychoanalysis and cognitive neuroscience. Following Jeannerod's ideas we discuss here a fundamental point of Freud's construction, the concept of ego, from a neurophysiological point of view. We maintain that, in order both to act coherently and to have a basic, first person, understanding of the behavior of others, it is necessary to posit the existence of a neurophysiological "motor" ego similar to the "rider" of the Freudian metaphor. We review then a series of neurophysiological findings showing that the systems underlying the organization of action and conscious perception are both mediated by a cortical motor network formed by parieto-frontal circuits. In conclusion, we show that the activity of this network has strong similarities to that postulated by Freud for the conscious part of ego. We also propose that the default-mode network might represent that part of ego that is mostly involved in unconscious processes. © 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Utopic ideas of cure and joint exploration in psychoanalytic supervision.

PubMed

Werbart, Andrzej

2007-12-01

The idea of the decisive and complete cure is deeply rooted in our unconscious and in the sacral roots of symbolic healing. Double sets of private theories of cure can frequently be found among patients in psychoanalysis and their analysts. The utopian cure involves a profound transformation of the personality by way of deep regression. The idea of an attainable and more limited cure includes new ways of managing old problems. The actual ongoing treatment is then seen as the 'next-best solution'. The utopian fantasy of creating 'the new person' by means of 'proper' psychoanalysis or analytic training has far-reaching consequences for psychoanalytic education and supervision. Our awareness of the inevitable temptation in the 'utopian state of mind' can help us to trace and focus on utopic elements in the supervisory process. Exploration of utopic ideas of all the three parties involved can itself be a fruitful and stimulating way of working in supervision. An important aim of psychoanalytic supervision is to promote a distinct state of mind that can counterbalance utopic ideas and counteract the phenomenon of a 'false analytic self'.

Psychoanalysis as a lifeline: a clinical study of a transference perversion.

PubMed

Baker, R

1994-08-01

Case material from the analysis of a fetishistic cross-dresser is reported. The evolution of a transference perversion and treatment impasse, in the form of the recalcitrant symptom of anal flatulence, is described. The patient's contrasting needs to cling perversely and addictively to the analyst, on the one hand, and to provoke an acting out of the countertransference, on the other, are placed in the context of his dread of rejection and potentially suicidal reaction. The author argues in favour of offering psychoanalysis as a lifeline, but with the condition that the psychoanalytic setting and boundaries are maintained and that gratifications are denied. Limited but precise interpretive psychoanalytic work in the transference was maintained. The relatively good outcome is explained in terms of the provision of safety, survival of the analyst and avoidance of countertransference acting out, which, in the author's view, represents an implicit and mutative transference interpretation, the specific factor in bringing about psychic change. This enabled the patient to recognise and accept the analyst as a 'new' object and, as a consequence, to question and reject his idealisation of the anal universe that he inhabited.

Theory of drives and emotions - from Sigmund Freud to Jaak Panksepp.

PubMed

Żechowski, Cezary

2017-12-30

The article discusses the development of psychoanalytic theory in the direction of broadening the reflection on their own based on data derived from empirical studies other than clinical case study. Particularly noteworthy is the convergence that followed between neuroscience and psychoanalysis and the rise of the so-called neuropsychoanalysis. Consequently, this led to eject empirical hypotheses and begin research on defense mechanisms, self, memory, dreams, empathy, dynamic unconscious and emotional-motivational processes (theory of drives). Currently neuropsychoanalysis constituted itself as a discipline contained in itself three separate areas: the psychodynamic neuroscience, clinical neuropsychoanalysis and theory building. The article introduces the theory of Jaak Panksepp emotional systems as an example of anintegrated neurobiology of affect, behavioral biology, evolutionary psychology and psychoanalysis. The theory of emotional systems includes the description of the SEEKING system representing basic motivational system of the organism. Apart from a new perspective on the theory of drives described by Sigmund Freud, it offers the possibility to take into account the emotional and motivational systems within the understanding of mental disorders such as depression, addiction and psychosis, which is the core of psychoanalytic thinking.

Harnessing psychoanalytical methods for a phenomenological neuroscience

PubMed Central

Cusumano, Emma P.; Raz, Amir

2014-01-01

Psychoanalysis proffers a wealth of phenomenological tools to advance the study of consciousness. Techniques for elucidating the structures of subjective life are sorely lacking in the cognitive sciences; as such, experiential reporting techniques must rise to meet both complex theories of brain function and increasingly sophisticated neuroimaging technologies. Analysis may offer valuable methods for bridging the gap between first-person and third-person accounts of the mind. Using both systematic observational approaches alongside unstructured narrative interactions, psychoanalysts help patients articulate their experience and bring unconscious mental contents into awareness. Similar to seasoned meditators or phenomenologists, individuals who have undergone analysis are experts in discerning and describing their subjective experience, thus making them ideal candidates for neurophenomenology. Moreover, analytic techniques may provide a means of guiding untrained experimental participants to greater awareness of their mental continuum, as well as gathering subjective reports about fundamental yet elusive aspects of experience including selfhood, temporality, and inter-subjectivity. Mining psychoanalysis for its methodological innovations provides a fresh turn for the neuropsychoanalysis movement and cognitive science as a whole – showcasing the integrity of analysis alongside the irreducibility of human experience. PMID:24808869

Psychiatry and fads: why is this field different from all other fields?

PubMed

Shorter, Edward

2013-10-01

Fads in psychiatry are little more than bad ideas with short half-lives. They have arisen because of the great discontinuities that have swept psychiatry unlike other specialties in the 20th century: the transition in the 1920s from asylum-based biological psychiatry to psychoanalysis, and the transition in the 1960s from psychoanalysis to a biological model based on psychopharmacology. In no other medical specialty has the knowledge base been scrapped and rebuilt, and then again scrapped and rebuilt. In these great transitions, when psychiatry each time has had to reconstruct from scratch, bad ideas have crept in with good. Psychiatry, in its heavy use of consensus conferences, is often unable to employ science as a means of discarding fads, which, once installed, are often difficult to remove. Each of the great paradigms of psychiatry in the last hundred years has given rise to fads, and psychopharmacology is no exception, with faddish uses of neurotransmitter doctrine claiming centre stage. Only when psychiatry becomes firmly linked to the neurosciences will its subjugation to the turbulence of faddism be moderated.

Towards psychoanalytic contribution to linguistic metaphor theory.

PubMed

Caspi, Tair

2017-07-05

This paper lays out a formulation of the psychoanalytical contribution to linguistic metaphor theory. The author's main argument is that psychoanalysis can help enrich and shed light on linguistic metaphor theories, since these have focused on the cognitive aspect, to the exclusion of the role played by affect. Based on the tight link between metaphor and symbol - both configurations of figurative language - the author shall apply ideas sourced from some of the key psychoanalytic symbolization theories, focusing in particular on Klein, Winnicott, and Ogden. The course of exploration will serve to trace the unconscious emotional aspects that participate in the metaphor's mechanism, just as they participate in the symbol's workings. The study leads to the main conclusion that the intersubjective transitional space is of substantial importance to metaphor's constitution, particularly in regard to novel metaphors. Expanding the understanding of metaphor's modus operandi has important implications in conceptual clarification and for an in-depth analytical work, and is of immense significance when it comes to analytical work with patients who suffer impairment of their metaphoric ability. Copyright © 2017 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Roger Bastide: the social construction on the border of disciplines. Mental illness as a field of study.

PubMed

Nunes, Everardo Duarte

2015-05-01

The paper explores the contributions of Roger Bastide (1898-1974) to the field of insanity and mental illness, revisiting his work in social psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychology and, sociology of mental disorder. It highlights the interdisciplinary nature that marks Bastide's works, that also include religion, art, literature. The paper presents biographical data and highlights the importance of Bastide to the field of sociology of health/illness. The analysis situates Bastide's work at the time of its development, comparing it with the development of the sociology of mental illness today.The paper explores the contributions of Roger Bastide (1898-1974) to the field of insanity and mental illness, revisiting his work in social psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychology and, sociology of mental disorder. It highlights the interdisciplinary nature that marks Bastide's works, that also include religion, art, literature. The paper presents biographical data and highlights the importance of Bastide to the field of sociology of health/illness. The analysis situates Bastide's work at the time of its development, comparing it with the development of the sociology of mental illness today.

Jung's twin brother. Otto Gross and Carl Gustav Jung. With an hitherto unpublished letter by C. G. Jung.

PubMed

Heuer, G

2001-10-01

This paper is a preliminary communication of several years of research into the life and work of the Austrian psychoanalyst and anarchist Otto Gross (1877-1920). Although he played a pivotal role in the birth of modernity, acting as a significant influence upon psychiatry, psychoanalysis, ethics, sociology and literature, he has remained virtually unknown to this day. Following a biographical sketch and an overview of his main theoretical contributions, the impact of Gross' life and work on the development of analytical theory and practice is described. His relationship with some of the key figures in psychoanalysis is presented, with particular emphasis on his connections to Jung. The paper concludes with an account of relevant contemporary interest in his work: the founding of the International Otto Gross Society, the first edition of The Collected Works of Otto Gross on the Internet, and the 1st and 2nd International Otto Gross Congresses which took place in Berlin in 1999 and at the Burghölzli Clinic, Zürich, in October 2000.

Roy Porter Student Essay Prize WinnerPsychiatry Limited: Hyperactivity and the Evolution of American Psychiatry, 1957–1980

PubMed Central

Smith, Matthew

2008-01-01

Summary Hyperactivity is the most commonly diagnosed childhood psychiatric disorder in north America. Most physicians believe that the disorder is a neurological dysfunction which is best treated with stimulants, such as ritalin. Accounts of the history of hyperactivity written by physicians, psychologists and even historians suggest that the disorder was always conceived as such. This paper argues that, on the contrary, the notion that hyperactivity was a neurological condition only emerged after vigorous debate during the 1960s between three competing fields within American psychiatry: specifically psychoanalysis, social psychiatry and biological psychiatry. Biological psychiatry won the debate, not because its approach to hyperactivity was more scientifically valid, but rather because its explanations and methods fit the prevailing social context more readily than that of its rivals. American psychiatry's refusal to draw pluralistic conclusions about hyperactivity undermined the development of a deeper understanding of the disorder. The history of hyperactivity provides an ideal lens through which to view the evolution of psychiatry from a field dominated by Freudian psychoanalysis to one rooted in the neurosciences.

Sigmund Freud's evolution from neurology to psychiatry: evidence from his La Salpêtrière library.

PubMed

Bogousslavsky, Julien

2011-10-04

To analyze the parallel between the scientific evolution of Sigmund Freud and his French library during and after his stay with Jean-Martin Charcot at La Salpêtrière in 1885-1886. Systematic review of all identified volumes of Freud's personal library, and comparison with his life data and publications. The largest part of Freud's 125 French medical books up to 1900 (of 3,725 books overall) are devoted to hysteria and hypnotism, published mainly between 1885 and 1895. Over one-third (50) of the neurology (94) and alienism (22) books have Charcot or one of his direct pupils (Janet, Féré, Babinski, Gilles de la Tourette, Richer, Pitres, Sollier, Raymond, Marie, Binet, Ball, Bourneville, Blocq, Berbez, Guinon, and Souques) as author. During that period, Freud evolved from the clinical-anatomic method (after mainly experimental histologic studies) to theoretical neurology (using hysteria and aphasia models) and psychology, a process which subsequently led to the birth of psychoanalysis. The library of Freud gives an interesting account on his own evolving thinking, which led him to leave neurology for psychology and psychoanalysis.

Pierre Janet, Sigmund Freud and Charcot's psychological and psychiatric legacy.

PubMed

Pérez-Rincón, Héctor

2011-01-01

A key moment in the history of psychiatry occurred during Charcot's time at La Salpêtriere. Though his studies on hysteria and hypnotism, the founder of neurology inspired the work of two of his alumni: a Viennese Nervenartz and a French philosopher interested in the dissociation of personality. Even though neither of them was originally an alienist, their respective work allowed the field of neurosis--then belonging to internal medicine--to pass to psychiatry. The parallel lives of these frères enemis, both of whom were treated differently by fame, developed inside a very complex cultural and scientific milieu. Therefore, it is necessary to consider them together with other physicians, some of whom are much less well-known nowadays, who one way or another carried Charcot's influence into psychiatry, psychology and psychotherapy. The fates of the Dioscuri have been reversed--the fame and success of Freudian psychoanalysis ran parallel to Janet's oblivion and his long 'purgatory', but now the 'renaissance' of his work coincides with the decline of psychoanalysis as a theoretical explanation for mental pathology. Copyright © 2011 S. Karger AG, Basel.

The therapeutic alliance: a psychoanalytic perspective.

PubMed

Freebury, D R

1989-11-01

Psychoanalysis has long distinguished between the transference neurosis and that part of the communication between therapist and patient which depends upon a relatively intact part of the patient's ego. It has been proposed that it is this capacity of the patient that sustains the difficult work of dealing with communications which are the consequence of transference, and which often threaten the viability of the treatment. This quality has been referred to variously as the unobjectionable positive transference, rational transference, mature transference, therapeutic alliance and working alliance. The ever broadening scope of Psychoanalysis, along with our greater knowledge of early childhood development, has enhanced our understanding of the many influences affecting the treatment alliances. Newer views of the transference, which stress the significance of the therapists' contributions to the therapeutic dyad, make it clear that the therapeutic alliance can no longer be explained as some simple, reality based, conflict free, motivating force. It involves, rather, a complex interaction of several factors, to each of which one must add the therapists' reciprocal reactions. Psychotherapy outcome research will need to take all of these factors into consideration.

Psychoanalysis of maturescence (definition, metapsychology, and clinical practice).

PubMed

Montero, Mag Guillermo Julio

2015-12-01

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. Copyright © 2015 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis and spirituality-catastrophic change and becoming "o".

PubMed

Nachmani, Gilead

2009-01-01

This article considers the relationship between post-Kleinian psychoanalysis and spiritual experience in the healing process of a physically ill man undergoing medical care for an unknown disorder. He entered psychoanalytic psychotherapy after two years of being ill and after numerous medical interventions had failed. The psychotherapy involved certain religious experiences in the patient and the analyst that attuned them to one another. It also involved his fighting with doctors, family, and analyst. The fights were considered a transcendence of his troubling life, a mustering of courage and strength to live with illness and loss, and his use of a godlike fantasy figure, which could also be considered as a vivid good internal object. The therapeutic work was punctuated by numerous instances of catastrophic change, hope, and disappointment and by his not knowing about why his body acted as it has and why important people treated him as they had. He learned to know, in the sense that Bion used the term, to live with adversity, and return to as normal a life as is possible. The psychotherapy is a work in progress.

The dream between neuroscience and psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Mancia, M

2004-07-01

The dream is tackled sometimes from the neurobiological viewpoint, sometimes from the neuropsychological angle, or from the positions of experimental and psychoanalytical psychology. Interest in dreams started with psychoanalysis in 1900, and 53 years later the discovery of REM sleep by Aserinski and Kleitman, and subsequent psychophysiological findings took the dream into the realm of biology. The dichotomous model of REM and non-REM sleep is described, as a basis for thought-like activity (non-REM sleep) and dreaming (REM sleep). This led to Hobson and McCarley's theory of activation-synthesis, suggesting that the mind while dreaming is simply the brain self-activated in REM sleep. Psychophysiological research has shown that people dream in all phases of sleep, from falling asleep to waking, but that the characteristics of the dreams may differ in the different phases. Bio-imaging studies indicate that during REM sleep there is activation of the pons, the amygdala bilaterally, and the anterior cingulate cortex, and disactivation of the posterior cingulate cortex and the prefrontal cortex. The images suggest there is a neuroanatomical frame within which dreams can be generated and then forgotten. Psychoanalysis studies the dream from a completely different angle. Freud believed it was the expression of hallucinatory satisfaction of repressed desires. Today it is interpreted as the expression of a representation of the transference in the hic et nunc of the session. At the same time it also has symbol-generating functions which provide an outlet by which affective experiences and fantasies and defences stored as parts of an unrepressed unconscious in the implicit memory can be represented in pictorial terms, then thought and rendered verbally. From the psychoanalytical point of view, the dream transcends neurobiological knowledge, and looks like a process of internal activation that is only apparently chaotic, but is actually rich in meanings, arising from the person's affective and emotional history.

The closing phase of the psychoanalytic treatment of adults and the goals of psychoanalysis 'The search for truth about one's self'.

PubMed

Grinberg, L

1980-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to pose doubts and queries about the nature and objectives regarding our work. I am not contributing specific replies to these questions, but rather some ideas so that we may rethink what we are doing and why we are doing it. In the first place, I state the doubts which I have regarding the classical criteria and goals as being the expression of the essence of psychoanalysis. Perhaps we do not realize that we 'saturate' the development of the psychoanalytic relationship with the aprioristic idea of 'leading' our patients to achieve the therapeutic goals we have already fixed for them from the very beginning. We should question if these 'therapeutic objectives' correspond to what should be our 'psychoanalytic point of view', with its search for the truth about oneself regarding our goals. Psychoanalysis is a science with specific and singular characteristics which should not be confused or, indeed equated with medical science or any other natural science. In the second place, I would like to draw attention to the fact that when considering these criteria, the accent has been almost exclusively put on the personality of the analysand. I believe that it is important to take into account also that which concerns the personality of the analyst with his neurotic and/or psychotic remnant and the role which his counter-transference or his projective counter-identification plays and which can disturb his creative work. But I wish to stress, especially, the importance contained in the analyst-analysand interaction in order to understand better the vicissitudes of all which happens in the closing phase of analysis. The achievement of insight is one of the most important goals of psychoanalysis. The concept of insight is related to that knowledge which stems from the experiences of deep change and mental growth helping the patient to get near to 'being his own truth', with the need to accept the corresponding responsibility. It is important to differentiate this authentic insight, so close to the getting near to the truth, from all other types of intellectual knowledge or 'pseudo-insight' which tend towards the opposite, that is, the avoidance of the truth. Finally, I discuss the disadvantages caused, in my opinion, from bearing in mind too much the idea of 'termination' during the carrying out of our task within the analytic situation in the closing phase of analysis. The predominance of the aprioristic thought that the analysis is 'on the point of' or 'should' end would obstruct the ability to detect what is authentically new in the material and what is most feared by the patient, such as getting closer to the search for truth about himself.

Psychoanalysis of Jack London's "The Call of the Wild" and "White Fang"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Hongyan

2015-01-01

"The Call of the Wild" and "White Fang" both are masterpieces of Jack London. The protagonists Buck and White Fang are the incarnation of Jack himself to some extent for the two novels reveal a great deal of the writer. This essay aims at psychoanalyzing Jack London's creative process, the Oedipus complex and the confliction…

Why Didn't I Know This before? Psychoanalysis, Social Studies Education, and "The Shock Doctrine"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Garrett, H. James

2012-01-01

In this essay, the author employs psychoanalytic inquiry (Britzman, 1998; Felman, 1992; Lacan, 1988) to think about the relationships between pedagogy, trauma, and crisis in the contexts of social studies and teacher education. The paper explores a potential space in social studies education that can acknowledge the psychic consequences of…

Psychologizing and the Anti-Psychologist: Dewey, Lacan, and Contemporary Art Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thomas, Beth A.

2012-01-01

Art education throughout the 20th and into the 21st century has drawn on both psychology and psychoanalysis to support approaches to teaching and learning in the arts. This article examines the concept of "psychologizing" as it appears in the writing of psychologist/philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952) and psychiatrist/psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan…

A Psychoanalyst in the Classroom: On the Human Condition in Education. Transforming Subjects: Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Studies in Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Britzman, Deborah P.

2015-01-01

"A Psychoanalyst in the Classroom" provides rich descriptions of the surprising ways individuals handle matters of love and hate when dealing with reading and writing in the classroom. With wit and sharp observations, Deborah P. Britzman advocates for a generous recognition of the vulnerabilities, creativity, and responsibilities of…

Factors Influencing Combat Stress Reactions and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: A Literature Review

DTIC Science & Technology

1988-04-01

Killing"), can lead to feelings of helplessness and mourning . A soldier not only might mourn the loss of his "buddy," but also feels remorse (guilt of...Kolb, L.C. (1983). Return of the repressed: Delayed stress 27 reaction to war. Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis , 11, 531-545

Unruly Affect in the Kindergarten Classroom: A Critical Analysis of Social-Emotional Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stearns, Clio

2018-01-01

This article offers a critique of social-emotional learning programs through the lens of psychoanalytic theory and with a particular focus on the theoretical contributions of Kleinian psychoanalysis. In particular, the article draws on concepts of affective positions to show that social-emotional learning is mired in a paranoid-schizoid mentality…

Transpersonal Psychology: Exploring the Frontiers in Human Resource Development.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brown, Michael H.

Important insights about how to develop human potential are being discovered these days in a field called transpersonal psychology. This new field is called the fourth force in psychology because like psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and humanistic psychology before it, it is on the cutting edge of what it means to be fully human. It seeks to develop…

Susan Isaacs and the Malting House School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Graham, Philip

2008-01-01

It is well known that psychoanalysis has over the years had a significant impact on the education of children with mental health problems. Its contribution to the theory and practice of mainstream education is less well documented. This paper gives an account of the five-year (1924-1929) history of the Malting House School in Cambridge. The school…

Hard Science, Thin Air and Unexpected Guests: A Pluralistic Model of Rationality, Knowledge and Conjecture in Child Psychotherapy Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Desmarais, Sarah

2007-01-01

Psychoanalysis and child psychotherapy have traditionally sought to describe their relationship to science in a variety of ways. As a consequence, different strands of the research programme are underpinned by divergent methodological and epistemic assumptions. The perceived incommensurability of these positions sometimes hinders the development…

The Autistic Dialogic Style: A Case of Asperger's Syndrome

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fonseca, Vera Regina J. R. M.

2009-01-01

In a former study (Fonseca and Bussab, 2006, "Self, other and dialogical space in autistic states", "International Journal of Psycho-Analysis", 87:1-16), the author hypothesised that in autistic disorders there is a distortion in the construction of what she defined as dialogic space. Such a space, in which self and other define each other…

Explaining the Mathematical Creativity of a Young Boy: An Interdisciplinary Venture between Mathematics Education and Psychoanalysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Krummheuer, Götz; Leuzinger-Bohleber, Marianne; Müller-Kirchof, Marion; Münz, Melanie; Vogel, Rose

2013-01-01

First results of the project "Mathematical Creativity of Children at Risk" (MaKreKi) will be presented. The project is conducted in the interdisciplinary research center "Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk" (IDeA [http://www.idea-frankfurt.eu; accessed 7 June 2013]). Combining a…

Thanatos and Civilization: Lacan, Marcuse, and the Death Drive

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cho, Daniel

2006-01-01

During the 1950s and 1960s two thinkers, Herbert Marcuse and Jacques Lacan, were conducting a "return to Freud" for very similar reasons. If the differences between them are often advertised, their affinities are less so. In this article, I examine how their "return to Freud" and fidelity to psychoanalysis serves as a common ground to read each in…

A Therapeutic Approach to Teaching Poetry: Individual Development, Psychology, and Social Reparation. Psychoanalysis, Education and Social Transformation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Williams, Todd O.

2012-01-01

A Therapeutic Approach to Teaching Poetry develops a poetry pedagogy that offers significant benefits to students by helping them to achieve a sense of renewal (a deeper awareness of self and potentials) and reparation (a realistic, but positive and proactive worldview). Todd O. Williams offers a thorough examination of the therapeutic potential…

From neurotic guilt to existential guilt as grief: the road to interiority, agency, and compassion through mourning. Part II.

PubMed

Kavaler-Adler, Susan

2006-12-01

This study is a continuation of an article that was published in the previous issue of The American Journal of Psychoanalysis (Volume 66, Number 3, September 2006). The case of Helen is illustrated in terms of the analysand's developmental mourning, countertransference, interiority, antilibidinal ego, and transformation of aggression into self-agency.

Free Association in Sex Education: Understanding Sexuality as the Flow of Thought in Conversation and Curriculum

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Casemore, Brian

2010-01-01

This paper draws on the theory and method of free association in psychoanalysis to frame an investigation of the content, structure, and function of the thinking expressed in conversations about sexuality and sexual health. The investigation emerges from an ongoing three-year study of the way adolescents, teachers, and peer sex educators negotiate…

[Identity and psychoanalysis: particularity and universality of the Jewish question according to Freud].

PubMed

Chemouni, J

1998-11-01

Although he was an atheist, Freud always affirmed his Jewish identity - without religious practice, but within a community commitment. He was proud of his Jewish origin and this helped him to face his hostile scientific environment and to develop his ideas despite the majority against him. What exactly is the role of his Jewish identity in his heritage?

Psychoanalysis and Transformation of Heroes in Mohsin Hamid's Novels "Moth Smoke" and "The Reluctant Fundamentalist"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Awan, Abdul Ghafoor; Andleeb, Shaista; Yasin, Farhat

2016-01-01

Mohsin Hamid is an exponent of postcolonial characterization and possesses a specific touch of today's hero in local Asian context. His pen is fluent on social fiction portraying Indo-Pak culture. Few writers could rise to the height of fame right with only a couple of preliminary works. Hamid secured it through his first novel "Moth…

In the Beginning Was the Other: Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Its Implications for Educational Research Method

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hyldgaard, Kirsten

2009-01-01

In much of educational philosophy and sciences the fundamental concepts are the subject conceived of as conscious and constituting and the learning process conceived of as a matter of cognition. This article asks what the effect would be on educational research method and educational theory in general if the fundamental concept were the subject in…

The French model of psychoanalytic training: Ethical conflicts.

PubMed

François-Poncet, Claire-Marine

2009-12-01

Research on psychoanalytical education within the IPA may be clarified by reflecting on the ethic behind each of the three main models (Eitingonian, French and Uruguayan). In fact, the ethic underpinning psychoanalytical education, whatever the model, is confronted by irreducible conflicts between transmitting psychoanalysis by means of analytical experience or by means of academic teaching. Transmission by experience is essentially based on the ethic of psychoanalytic practice, which is difficult to regulate through institutional standards, whereas the academic aspect can be evaluated by objective and public criteria. The importance of both aspects and their relative weight in the training process depend on the conception of psychoanalysis underlying each model. This paper will look primarily at the French training model, the essentially analytical aspects of which favour the transmission of the very ethical foundations of psychoanalytic practice itself: the application of the method both as a working tool and as a tool of evaluation. It presupposes expanding the observation and analysis of transference beyond the framework of treatment to that of supervision. From this analysis, the paper will attempt to demonstrate how the French model proposes dealing with the inevitable conflicts between transmission by means of analysis and training by means of apprenticeship.

The function of language in parent-infant psychotherapy.

PubMed

Salomonsson, Björn

2017-12-01

Parent-infant psychotherapy, a rather new field in psychoanalysis, raises questions of how to conceptualize the clinical process. Previous publications have used semiotic concepts to account for the therapist's non-verbal communication and investigated the countertransference, including what the baby might grasp of its variations. The present paper focuses on another argument for using verbal interventions to a baby in therapy; they present him with a symbolic order that differs from that of the parent. The qualitative difference between the parent's and the analyst's address is conceptualized by Dolto's term parler vrai. The therapeutic leverage is not the analytic interventions' lexical content but their message that words can be used to expose conflicts. Thereby, one can transform warded-off desires into demands that can be negotiated with one's objects. The reasons why this address catches the baby's attention are discussed. A prerequisite for such attention is that the infant brain is prewired for perceiving words as a special communicative mode. Relevant neuroscientific research is reviewed in regard to this question. The presentation relies on concepts by Dolto, Lacan and Winnicott and findings from neuroscience and developmental psychology. It also briefly discusses Chomsky's linguistic concepts in relation to these therapies. Copyright © 2017 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Temporality and the torments of time.

PubMed

Hinton, Ladson

2015-06-01

Immersion in time gives birth to consciousness, as well as conflict and torment. When human beings developed a sense of future, they also gained the ability to anticipate threats from nature or their fellow beings. They thereby created cultures that are bastions of survival, as well as places of poetry, art and religion where they could band together and reflect upon their common plight. The practice of psychoanalysis is in many ways a temporal process, a process of remembering, for owning and elaborating a past that gives us substance, thereby providing a basis for reflective consciousness. Stimulated by Freud's early writings, Lacan, Laplanche and their successors in particular have focussed extensively on time and psychoanalysis, and their views are a central point of this discussion. A substantial case study is offered that provides concrete examples of these perspectives. A multi-faceted view of temporality emerges, one that is more syncopated than linear or teleological. In conclusion, I will briefly discuss recent findings in the neuroscience of memory and 'time travel' that underpin contemporary psychoanalytic ideas in surprising ways. It is important to remember that acceptance of the contradictory nature of temporal experience can open space for increased freedom and playfulness. © 2015, The Society of Analytical Psychology.

Treatment preparatory to psychoanalysis: a reconsideration after twenty-five years.

PubMed

Bernstein, Stephen B

2010-02-01

The author's initial article on treatment preparatory to psychoanalysis (1983) challenged the long-held belief that a therapy with the same analyst would contaminate a subsequent analytic transference. The current article reconsiders the original process of transition from therapy to analysis and describes methods that can further its effectiveness. Although specific noninterpretive interventions to enhance preparation for analysis are rarely written about, they are discussed among colleagues and in supervision. Levy (1987) has described a bias against the description of strategic or tactical choices in analysis. It is increasingly clear that some patients' fear of exposing shameful defectiveness underlies their resistance to entering analysis, as does the originally described fear of an uncontrolled regression. It is useful to delay interpretation until shame sensitivity can be assessed and modulated. In the past there was pressure to keep the preparatory therapy brief so that the analyst would not become too well known to the patient. Less concern about strict anonymity allows more time for the patient's resistances to abate before the recommendation is made. Methods are described and clinical illustrations show how a deepening process can be fostered, how indications of readiness for the transition can be assessed, and when and how the recommendation can be made.

The presence of Spinoza in the exchanges between Sigmund Freud and Romain Rolland.

PubMed

Vermorel, Henri

2009-12-01

Although Freud recognized his profound affinity with Spinoza, we seldom find explicit and direct references to the philosopher in his works. The correspondence between Romain Rolland, the 'Christian without a church', and Freud, the 'atheist Jew', is full of Spinozian reminiscences that nourish their works of this period and are underpinned by their mutual transference. The Future of an Illusion is written according to a Spinozian blueprint and aims at replacing religion, qualified as superstition, by psychoanalysis. A quotation from Heine, 'brother in unbelief', is a direct reference to Spinoza. Concurring with Freud's critiques of dogmas and churches, Rolland proposes an analysis of the 'oceanic feeling' as a basis of the religious sentiment. Freud replies with Civilization and Its Discontents. In 1936, on the occasion of Rolland's 70th birthday, Freud sends him an open letter, A disturbance of memory on the Acropolis, where the strange feeling that he has experienced in front of the Parthenon refers inter alia to his double culture: Jewish and German. In the light of this correspondence, the creation of psychoanalysis turns out to be a quest for the sacred that has disappeared in modernity; Freud, though, was able to find it inside man's unconscious.

Melanie Klein's letters addressed to Marcelle Spira (1955-1960).

PubMed

Quinodoz, Jean-Michel

2009-12-01

Between 1955 and 1960, Melanie Klein wrote some 45 hitherto unpublished letters to Marcelle Spira, the Swiss psychoanalyst living at that time in Geneva. In 2006, after Spira's death, these letters were deposited with the Raymond de Saussure Psychoanalysis Centre in Geneva. They are the only known letters that Klein addressed to her psychoanalyst colleagues. Several topics are mentioned in them: (1) the meetings between the two women in Geneva and London; (2) Spira's contribution to Boulanger's translation into French of The Psychoanalysis of Children, which Klein herself carefully revised; (3) the papers that Klein was at that time working on, including Envy and Gratitude; (4) Spira's own work; (5) the difficulties that Spira, a Kleinian psychoanalyst who trained in Buenos Aires, was encountering in her attempt to be admitted to the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society; and (6) a few items of personal and family news. In addition to the invaluable historical information that these letters provide, they offer us a very moving epistolary self-portrait of Melanie Klein, enabling us to discover her personality in the final years of her life - she died in September 1960, just two months after writing her last letter to Spira.

The need for true controversies in psychoanalysis: the debates on Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan in the Rio de la Plata.

PubMed

Bernardi, Ricardo

2002-08-01

Controversies are part of the process of scientific knowing. In psychoanalysis, the diversity of theoretical, technical and epistemological positions makes the debate particularly necessary and by the same token difficult. In this paper, the author examines the function of controversies and the obstacles to their development, taking as examples the debates held in the Río de la Plata (Buenos Aires and Montevideo) during the nineteen seventies, when the dominant Kleinian ideas came into contact with Lacanian thought. The author examines different examples of argumentative discourses, using concepts taken from the theory of argumentation. The major difficulties encountered did not hinge on characteristics pertaining to psychoanalytic theories (i.e. the lack of commensurability between them), but on the defensive strategies aimed at keeping each theory's premises safe from the opposing party's arguments. A true debate implies the construction of a shared argumentative field that makes it possible to lay out the different positions and see some interaction between them and is guided by the search for the best argument. When this occurs, controversies promote the discipline's development, even when they fail to reach any consensus.

Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, the first child psychoanalyst: legacy and dilemmas.

PubMed

Plastow, Michael

2011-06-01

Despite being the first psychoanalyst of children, Hermine Hug-Hellmuth's history and writings remain relatively unknown. This paper endeavours to examine the way in which the history of the psychoanalysis of children is marked by the history of its protagonists. In particular, Hug-Hellmuth's treatment of children is divided between an educational approach and a more properly psychoanalytical aspect. Her theory and practice heavily influenced the directions taken after her, in particular by Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, even if this influence is essentially unacknowledged by these authors. Hug-Hellmuth's contribution to the psychoanalysis of children and consequently to child psychiatry are considerable and include technical innovation with the introduction of play into the treatment of children, the elaboration of the place of the analyst in regard to the child and notably the establishment of the place of the parents in regard to the treatment of the child. It is proposed that the very duality of her approach is what allowed her to be able to distinguish the place of the parent from that of the analyst. Nonetheless, her insistence on the place of education within the treatment and its effects on later theorists continue to raise dilemmas today.

Archetypes as action patterns.

PubMed

Hogenson, George B

2009-06-01

The discovery of mirror neurons by researchers at the University of Parma promises to radically alter our understanding of fundamental cognitive and affective states. This paper explores the relationship of mirror neurons to Jung's theory of archetypes and proposes that archetypes may be viewed as elementary action patterns. The paper begins with a review of a proposed interpretation of the fainting spells of S. Freud in his relationship with Jung as an example of an action pattern that also defines an archetypal image. The challenge that mirror neurons present to traditional views in analytical psychology and psychoanalysis, however, is that they operate without recourse to a cognitive processing element. This is a position that is gaining increasing acceptance in other fields as well. The paper therefore reviews the most recent claims made by the Boston Process of Change Study Group as well as conclusions drawn from dynamic systems views of development and theoretical robotics to underline the conclusion that unconscious agency is not a requirement for coherent action. It concludes with the suggestion that this entire body of research may lead to the conclusion that the dynamic unconscious is an unnecessary hypothesis in psychoanalysis and analytical psychology.

On knowing the unconscious: lessons from the epistemology of geometry and space.

PubMed

Brakel, L A

1994-02-01

Concepts involving unconscious processes and contents are central to any understanding of psychoanalysis. Indeed, the dynamic unconscious is familiar as a necessary assumption of the psychoanalytic method. Using the manner of knowing the geometry of space, including non-ordinary sized space, this paper attempts to demonstrate by analogy the possibility of knowing (and knowing the nature of) unconscious mentation-that of which by definition we cannot be aware; and yet that which constitutes a basic assumption of psychoanalysis. As an assumption of the psychoanalytic method, no amount of data from within the psychoanalytic method can ever provide evidence for the existence of the unconscious, nor for knowing its nature; hence the need for this sort of illustration by analogy. Along the way, three claims are made: (1) Freudian 'secondary process' operating during everyday adult, normal, logical thought can be considered a modernised version of the Kantian categories. (2) Use of models facilitates a generation of outside-the-Kantian-categories possibilities, and also provides a conserving function, as outside-the-categories possibilities can be assimilated. (3) Transformations are different from translations; knowledge of transformations can provide non-trivial knowledge about various substrates, otherwise difficult to know.

The use of dreams in the clinical context: convergencies and divergencies: an interdisciplinary proposal.

PubMed

Fischbein, Susana Vinocur

2011-04-01

This paper aims to define some unexpected convergences and foreseeable divergences regarding the conceptualization of dreams and their use as a research tool, specifically in clinical practice with non-neurotic patients. It includes a concise review of different lines of thought on the vicissitudes of dreams throughout the history of psychoanalysis: from their initial conception up to their use to examine transference and relational aspects in the context of a psychoanalytic process. The idea of the merely evacuative function of dreams from patients in certain diagnostic categories is discussed and compared with that of their potential communicative value. Lastly, the essay sets forth an interdisciplinary semiotic-pragmatic approach to the function of dreams and their clinical and technical use in the context of the intersubjective dynamic field. Based on the hypothesis that dreams related in the session are communicative signs, this proposal argues their significance as a symbolic matrix that generates processes of psychic semiosis. To do so, it combines certain lines of psychoanalytic thought with ideas coming from C. S. Peirce's analytic semiotics. Clinical material is included to illustrate this viewpoint. Copyright © 2011 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Feminism and family therapy.

PubMed

Goldner, V

1985-03-01

Feminism has had a profound effect on contemporary culture and on thinking in most academic fields, including psychoanalysis. Interestingly, until very recently it had made virtually no impact on the theory and practice of family therapy. This paper proposes an explanation for this peculiar phenomenon and argues that family therapy has been considerably handicapped by its insularity from the feminist critique. Utilizing feminist scholarship in psychoanalysis, history, and sociology, the paper analyzes the structural contradictions in family life that family therapists have essentially ignored and then outlines their clinical implications. Key points in the discussion include the argument that systems theory is an inadequate explanatory matrix from which to build a theory of the family, that the archetypal "family case" of the overinvolved mother and peripheral father is best understood, not as a clinical problem, but as the product of a historical process two hundred years in the making, and that power relations between men and women in families function in terms of paradoxical, incongruous hierarchies that reflect the complex interpenetration between the structure of family relations and the world of work. This conceptual model then provides the basis for an analysis and critique of sexual politics as they emerge in the prototypical clinical situation.

Beyond Clinical Case Studies in Psychoanalysis: A Review of Psychoanalytic Empirical Single Case Studies Published in ISI-Ranked Journals.

PubMed

Meganck, Reitske; Inslegers, Ruth; Krivzov, Juri; Notaerts, Liza

2017-01-01

Single case studies are at the origin of both theory development and research in the field of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. While clinical case studies are the hallmark of psychoanalytic theory and practice, their scientific value has been strongly criticized. To address problems with the subjective bias of retrospective therapist reports and uncontrollability of clinical case studies, systematic approaches to investigate psychotherapy process and outcome at the level of the single case have been developed. Such empirical case studies are also able to bridge the famous gap between academic research and clinical practice as they provide clinically relevant insights into how psychotherapy works. This study presents a review of psychoanalytic empirical case studies published in ISI-ranked journals and maps the characteristics of the study, therapist, patient en therapies that are investigated. Empirical case studies increased in quantity and quality (amount of information and systematization) over time. While future studies could pay more attention to providing contextual information on therapist characteristics and informed consent considerations, the available literature provides a basis to conduct meta-studies of single cases and as such contribute to knowledge aggregation.

[Hans von Hattingberg between psychoanalysis and National Socialism].

PubMed

Keifenheim, Katharina Eva

2011-01-01

Hans von Hattingberg (1879-1944) worked as a neurologist and psychoanalyst in Munich and Berlin from about 1910 to 1944. He was a prolific writer, but met with increasing disapproval from Freud and his circle. An advocate of the union of different psychotherapeutic schools, he was initially a marginal figure in the professional field. With Hitler's rise to power his career prospered: He was offered the position of a lecturer for psychotherapy and became head of the research department at the "Göring Institute". He came to prominence with his writings on the "Neue deutsche Seelenheilkunde" despite the fact that this was never his preferred topic. The main themes of his publications were marriage, love and female emancipation. Those works contain only little of the standard Nazi ideology of the time. Not only was Hattingberg never a member of the NSDAP (the ruling party), but in some respects he could conceivably be considered a member of the resistance. The article outlines the most important stages of Hattingberg's life and focuses on the question of how he positioned himself after 1933, when it became vital for him to reconcile psychoanalysis and National Socialism.

Modes of therapeutic action.

PubMed

Jones, E E

1997-12-01

The dialectic in psychoanalysis between theories about the mutative effects of interpretation and psychological knowledge and those concerning the effects of interpersonal interaction constitutes an important tension for approaches to psychoanalytic technique. This essay briefly summarises the thinking around these alternative conceptualisations of therapeutic action, and introduces a new empirically derived model, that of 'repetitive interaction structure', which attempts to bridge therapeutic action by insight and by relationship. Interaction structure is a way of formulating those aspects of the analytic process that have come to be termed intersubjectivity, transference-countertransference enactments and role responsiveness. The concept operationalises important aspects of interpersonal interaction, and can help specify the two-person patterns that emerge in an analysis. Patient and analyst interact in repetitive ways; these patterns of interaction, which are slow to change, probably reflect the psychological structure of both patient and analyst, whether psychic structure is conceptualised in terms of object-representations or compromise formations and impulse-defence configurations. Therapeutic action is located in the experience, recognition and understanding by patient and analyst of these repetitive interactions. Interaction structures stress the importance of the intrapsychic as a basis for what becomes manifest in the interactive field. Clinical illustrations from a psychoanalysis are provided, and research on repetitive interaction structures is described.

Beyond Clinical Case Studies in Psychoanalysis: A Review of Psychoanalytic Empirical Single Case Studies Published in ISI-Ranked Journals

PubMed Central

Meganck, Reitske; Inslegers, Ruth; Krivzov, Juri; Notaerts, Liza

2017-01-01

Single case studies are at the origin of both theory development and research in the field of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. While clinical case studies are the hallmark of psychoanalytic theory and practice, their scientific value has been strongly criticized. To address problems with the subjective bias of retrospective therapist reports and uncontrollability of clinical case studies, systematic approaches to investigate psychotherapy process and outcome at the level of the single case have been developed. Such empirical case studies are also able to bridge the famous gap between academic research and clinical practice as they provide clinically relevant insights into how psychotherapy works. This study presents a review of psychoanalytic empirical case studies published in ISI-ranked journals and maps the characteristics of the study, therapist, patient en therapies that are investigated. Empirical case studies increased in quantity and quality (amount of information and systematization) over time. While future studies could pay more attention to providing contextual information on therapist characteristics and informed consent considerations, the available literature provides a basis to conduct meta-studies of single cases and as such contribute to knowledge aggregation. PMID:29046660

Theoretical pluralism in psychoanalytic case studies

PubMed Central

Willemsen, Jochem; Cornelis, Shana; Geerardyn, Filip M.; Desmet, Mattias; Meganck, Reitske; Inslegers, Ruth; Cauwe, Joachim M. B. D.

2015-01-01

The aim of this study is to provide an overview of the scientific activity of different psychoanalytic schools of thought in terms of the content and production of case studies published on ISI Web of Knowledge. Between March 2013 and November 2013, we contacted all case study authors included in the online archive of psychoanalytic and psychodynamic case studies (www.singlecasearchive.com) to inquire about their psychoanalytic orientation during their work with the patient. The response rate for this study was 45%. It appears that the two oldest psychoanalytic schools, Object-relations psychoanalysis and Ego psychology or “Classical psychoanalysis” dominate the literature of published case studies. However, most authors stated that they feel attached to two or more psychoanalytic schools of thought. This confirms that the theoretical pluralism in psychoanalysis stretches to the field of single case studies. The single case studies of each psychoanalytic school are described separately in terms of methodology, patient, therapist, or treatment features. We conclude that published case studies features are fairly similar across different psychoanalytic schools. The results of this study are not representative of all psychoanalytic schools, as some do not publish their work in ISI ranked journals. PMID:26483725

Narcissistic configurations: violence and its absence in treatment.

PubMed

Perelberg, Rosine Jozef

2004-10-01

'On narcissism: An introduction' constitutes a turning point in psychoanalysis. Although narcissism is a concept which has not been explicitly referred to by many important thinkers for decades, it could be said that there is no paper written in psychoanalysis since Freud that does not implicitly take into account the modifications in thinking that the work brought about. In this paper, the author contrasts two types of narcissistic configurations: in the first, the intolerance of the other is dealt with by expulsion and violence; in the second, by withdrawal. The author contrasts patients who express manifest violent behaviour with patients for whom the violent behaviour is absent but who, nevertheless, present similar background histories, which might have led to a prediction of violence. They are also profoundly different in terms of what they provoke in the countertransference. In addition, this paper argues that the treatment of narcissistic personalities has allowed in recent years the understanding of a modality of depression. Following Green, the author argues that, instead of a fruitless debate that involves evolutionary issues around the concept of narcissism, it is necessary to distinguish the narcissistic aspect in any analytic relationship, to identify the narcissistic transference in different types of psychopathologies.

Collaborating with the unconscious other. The analysand's capacity for creative thinking.

PubMed

Rather, L

2001-06-01

The analysand's capacity for making use of psychoanalytic treatment has been a subject of importance since the beginning of psychoanalysis. The author addresses an aspect of the difficulty encountered by analysands in achieving a psychic state that allows the creative use of free association, dreams, parapraxes and other spontaneous phenomena occurring during the course of treatment. He suggests that a very specific state of mind is essential to both the psychoanalytic process and the creative process. Using theoretical concepts derived from Freud, Klein and Bion, he develops the idea of an internal object relationship, 'the collaboration with the unconscious other', which forms the basis for both creative thinking and the psychoanalytic function of the personality. Creative thinking is distinguished from artistic endeavour and discussed as a universal potential, on which growth in psychoanalysis depends. The term 'unconscious other' is meant to signify the subjective experience of a foreign presence within oneself from which both spontaneous creative inspiration and involuntary psychic phenomena are felt to emanate. The author presents clinical material to suggest that paranoid-schizoid and depressive anxieties form obstacles to collaborating with the unconscious other, and must be worked through in order to achieve an analytic process.

[Psychoanalysis of self injury].

PubMed

Plassmann, R

1995-08-02

Psychoanalytic aspects of diseases with self-inflicted mutilation (factitious diseases and Munchhausen syndrome) have been investigated increasingly within the last years in the setting of long term ambulatory and hospital treatments. The author describes in this report how these disease states may also be interpreted as equivalents of remembrance and can be understood as inadequate attempts for self assistance. He outlines possibilities for psychotherapy arising in view of this background.

The Influence of the Internet on Active Social Involvement and the Formation and Development of Identities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rimskii, Vladimir

2010-01-01

Problems of identity are being studied not only in psychology and psychoanalysis but also in sociology and philosophy. Conceptions of identity differ a great deal among different writers. In sociology the term has been the object of study and a means of analysis of social groups, social behavior, and various social processes and phenomena. For the…

Ordinary People and Extra-Ordinary Protections: A Post-Kleinian Approach to the Treatment of Primitive Mental States. The New Library of Psychoanalysis 40.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mitrani, Judith L.

Many people come to analysis appearing quite ordinary on the surface. However, once below that surface, there often appear extraordinary protections created to keep at bay any awareness of deeply traumatic happenings occurring at some point in life. This book investigates the development and function of these protections, allowing the reader to…

"A Long-Legged Fly upon the Stream": Poetry, Memory and the Unconscious

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bayley, Nicholas

2016-01-01

In this paper I introduce some concepts from psychoanalysis, a poem, a clinical vignette and a personal anecdote. I am asking what light the knowledge of unconscious processes can throw on the memorisation of poems and therefore what use to the individual can be derived from learning poems by heart. A version of the paper was first given at the…

I Don't Feel Safe When You're Gone: Transference Manifestations in a Kindergarten Class.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Heineman, Toni Vaughn

Although children who live in environments of violence and poverty are frequently the subjects of psychoanalysis, much less attention is given to the fears and anxieties of children from more fortunate families. In the case of one San Francisco Bay Area school, the two head teachers in the kindergarten class were going to be absent for two…

Transformations in dreaming and characters in the psychoanalytic field.

PubMed

Ferro, Antonino

2009-04-01

Having reviewed certain similarities and differences between the various psychoanalytic models (historical reconstruction/development of the container and of the mind's metabolic and transformational function; the significance to be attributed to dream-type material; reality gradients of narrations; tolerability of truth/lies as polar opposites; and the form in which characters are understood in a psychoanalytic session), the author uses clinical material to demonstrate his conception of a session as a virtual reality in which the central operation is transformation in dreaming (de-construction, de-concretization, and re-dreaming), accompanied in particular by the development of this attitude in both patient and analyst as an antidote to the operations of transformation in hallucinosis that bear witness to the failure of the functions of meaning generation. The theoretical roots of this model are traced in the concept of the field and its developments as a constantly expanding oneiric holographic field; in the developments of Bion's ideas (waking dream thought and its derivatives, and the patient as signaller of the movements of the field); and in the contributions of narratology (narrative transformations and the transformations of characters and screenplays). Stress is also laid on the transition from a psychoanalysis directed predominantly towards contents to a psychoanalysis that emphasizes the development of the instruments for dreaming, feeling, and thinking. An extensive case history and a session reported in its entirety are presented so as to convey a living impression of the ongoing process, in the consulting room, of the unsaturated co-construction of an emotional reality in the throes of continuous transformation. The author also describes the technical implications of this model in terms of forms of interpretation, the countertransference, reveries, and, in particular, how the analyst listens to the patient's communications. The paper ends with an exploration of the concepts of grasping (in the sense of clinging to the known) and casting (in relation to what is as yet undefined but seeking representation and transformation) as a further oscillation of the minds of the analyst and the patient in addition to those familiar from classical psychoanalysis.

Dual coding: a cognitive model for psychoanalytic research.

PubMed

Bucci, W

1985-01-01

Four theories of mental representation derived from current experimental work in cognitive psychology have been discussed in relation to psychoanalytic theory. These are: verbal mediation theory, in which language determines or mediates thought; perceptual dominance theory, in which imagistic structures are dominant; common code or propositional models, in which all information, perceptual or linguistic, is represented in an abstract, amodal code; and dual coding, in which nonverbal and verbal information are each encoded, in symbolic form, in separate systems specialized for such representation, and connected by a complex system of referential relations. The weight of current empirical evidence supports the dual code theory. However, psychoanalysis has implicitly accepted a mixed model-perceptual dominance theory applying to unconscious representation, and verbal mediation characterizing mature conscious waking thought. The characterization of psychoanalysis, by Schafer, Spence, and others, as a domain in which reality is constructed rather than discovered, reflects the application of this incomplete mixed model. The representations of experience in the patient's mind are seen as without structure of their own, needing to be organized by words, thus vulnerable to distortion or dissolution by the language of the analyst or the patient himself. In these terms, hypothesis testing becomes a meaningless pursuit; the propositions of the theory are no longer falsifiable; the analyst is always more or less "right." This paper suggests that the integrated dual code formulation provides a more coherent theoretical framework for psychoanalysis than the mixed model, with important implications for theory and technique. In terms of dual coding, the problem is not that the nonverbal representations are vulnerable to distortion by words, but that the words that pass back and forth between analyst and patient will not affect the nonverbal schemata at all. Using the dual code formulation, and applying an investigative methodology derived from experimental cognitive psychology, a new approach to the verification of interpretations is possible. Some constructions of a patient's story may be seen as more accurate than others, by virtue of their linkage to stored perceptual representations in long-term memory. We can demonstrate that such linking has occurred in functional or operational terms--through evaluating the representation of imagistic content in the patient's speech.

A Complex Adaptive Systems Approach to the Future Operational Environment

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-05-22

structuralism and functionalism.23 Sigmund Freud merged these fields with a mix of science and interpretation. His psychoanalysis principle introduced the...University Press, 2006). 24For an in-depth comparison of various personality theories and Sigmund Freud in particular see Salvatore R. Maddi, Personality...the conscious and unconscious are established at an early age. With the rise of experimental processes, behaviorists pushed Freud out of from primacy

Recognition-Primed Decisions, Ethical Intuition and Borrowing Experience

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-04-30

32 Sigmund Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis. 33 Kornblum, W...employees as well as to shape their behavior and actions. Setting command climate involves a process that Sigmund Freud32 termed Socialization...According to Freud , socialization is the primary source of moral development and people develop morally when one’s internal desires are overcome by

Telemedicine for Improved Delivery of Psychosocial Treatments for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-06-01

patients. Ad- vanced technology (e.g., computers, smart phones, virtual reality ), including videoconfer- ence (VC) technology, may further enhance ac...Ther- apy (Passik et al., 2004), hypnosis (Simpson et al., 2002), psychoanalysis (Kaplan, 1997), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (Todder...Telecare, 9, 37–38. doi:10.1258/135763303322196286 *Simpson, S., Morrow, E., Jones, M., Ferguson, J., & Brebner, E. (2002). Video- hypnosis —The provi- sion

Simulating the Mind

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dietrich, Dietmar; Fodor, Georg; Zucker, Gerhard; Bruckner, Dietmar

The approach to developing models described within the following chapters breaks with some of the previously used approaches in Artificial Intelligence. This is the first attempt to use methods from psychoanalysis organized in a strictly topdown design method in order to take an important step towards the creation of intelligent systems. Hence, the vision and the research hypothesis are described in the beginning and will hopefully prove to have sufficient grounds for this approach.

The United States Army Comprehensive Soldier Fitness: A Critical Look

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-03-01

Psychoanalysis Professor Stephen Soldz, stated “ the problems identified with CSF are legion. It is time for the Army to step back from uncritically...Frederick J. Gellert Department of Command, Leadership and Management Project Adviser This manuscript is submitted in partial fulfillment of the ...organization and at every level within the Army, MRTs serve as the principal advisor to the leadership regarding CSF and as a resource for Soldiers

The third in mind.

PubMed

Widlöcher, Daniel

2004-01-01

Various aspects of the occult as they relate to psychoanalysis are discussed in this article. Drawing on both Freud's writings and Granoff and Rey's (1983) work on the occult in Freudian thought, the author considers the concept of co-thinking and its manifestations in clinical work. The psychoanalytic third is viewed in the context of the occult element known as thought transference, or thought transmission, and is also considered as it bears on psychoanalytic supervision.

The management of a sexually charged clinical problem: social structural and psychoanalytic functionalist approaches in a therapeutic community.

PubMed

James, O W

1986-03-01

An event in a therapeutic community is examined from the perspectives of the structuralism of Durkheim and the functionalism of psychoanalysis. Although these two approaches might appear theoretically contradictory, analysis of the evidence shows them to be clinically complementary. The role of social structure in therapeutic communities requires deliberate conceptualization if such communities are to be demonstrably therapeutic.

AN ANALYST'S UNCERTAINTY AND FEAR.

PubMed

Chused, Judith Fingert

2016-10-01

The motivations for choosing psychoanalysis as a profession are many and differ depending on the psychology of the analyst. However, common to most psychoanalysts is the desire to forge a helpful relationship with the individuals with whom they work therapeutically. This article presents an example of what happens when an analyst is confronted by a patient for whom being in a relationship and being helped are intolerable. © 2016 The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Inc.

Living in the Fragments of Dreams: Analysis of the Dual-Narrative Structure in Kenneth MacMillan's "Winter Dreams" from Narratological and Psychoanalytical Perspectives

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kodera, Ryota

2012-01-01

This essay investigates the ways dance narratives are constructed and aims to reconfirm the significance of dance narratives in the creation of meanings within dance practices. It draws on key concepts in narratology and psychoanalysis. These two critical perspectives are applied to the analysis of the narrative in Kenneth MacMillan's 1991 one-act…

[Sketches of Swiss psychiatry in the generation after Eugen Bleuler and Sigmund Freud. With personal recollections].

PubMed

Weber, Kaspar

2009-01-01

Focussing on the leading staff of the psychiatric universitiy clinic of Waldau/Bern, the author sketches the reception of psychoanalysis in Switzerland around 1940. It ranged from outright rejection (Ernst Grünthal) via various forms of skepticism based on superficial (Jakob Klaesi) or thorough familiarity with Freud's writings (Jakob Wyrsch, Arnold Weber) to the discipleship of an analysand of Freud (Ernst Blum).

Psychoanalysis and the neurosciences: a topical debate on dreams.

PubMed

Mancia, M

1999-12-01

The author begins by pointing out that, whereas Freud first turned his attention to dreams in 1895, they became an object of neuroscientific interest only in the 1950s, after the discovery of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep and the observation that a subject woken in an REM phase could remember and narrate them. He discusses the various brain structures found by the neuroscientists to be implicated in dreaming and the associated hypotheses about their involvement in the processes of remembering dreams, their spatial construction and semantic organisation, and the dreamer's emotional participation in and narration of dreams. Attention is drawn to recent psychophysiological research findings indicating that dreaming occurs in all sleep phases and not only in REM episodes. The cognitivist contribution is also discussed. The author goes on to demonstrate the difference between the neuroscientific and psychoanalytic approaches to dreams. Whereas the neuroscientists are interested in the structures involved in dream production and in dream organisation and narratability, psychoanalysis concentrates on the meaning of dreams and on placing them in the context of the analytic relationship in accordance with the affective history of the dreamer and the transference. The brain structures and functions of interest to the neurosciences, while constituting the physical and biological substrate of these aspects, are stated to be irrelevant to their psychoanalytic understanding.

Silicon in 'pure gold'? Theoretical contributions and observations on teleanalysis by videoconference.

PubMed

Gutiérrez, Lucio

2017-08-01

Ideas about psychoanalysis via videoconference-videoconference teleanalysis (VT)-are presented with the general understanding that these settings produce a twofold split between various degrees of recognition/negativisation of the absence of the other, on one hand, and the expectation of physical co-presence, on the other. This split has been put forward as dismantling the here, now, with me pre-reflexive unity of the analytic experience. This article suggests that both members of the analytic dyad will seek to reappropriate the experience through a forced ego integration that interferes with accessing states of unintegration in the analytic treatment and produces subtle alterations to symbolisation work. The effort to overcome this condition is illustrated with clinical vignettes and therapists' comments about feelings of inauthenticity and discontent when trying to sustain evenly-suspended attention, as well as in the perception of a form of flattening of the alive nature of speech. However, this is not a constant for all VT, and mutual understanding can be an important mitigating feature. The focus of the discussion should be on the capacity of the analytic dyad to overcome such a split and not on a direct extrapolation of the perceptual limitations of VT to possible effects on transference / countertransference. Copyright © 2016 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Dreaming woman: Image, place, and the aesthetics of exile.

PubMed

Greenspan, Rachel

2017-08-01

Looking closely at an Argentine dream interpretation column published in a popular women's magazine from 1948 to 1951, this article examines the role of the dream image in shaping psychoanalytic discourse on femininity and national identity. The column, 'Psychoanalysis Will Help You,' emerged during Juan Domingo Perón's first presidency, featuring verbal interpretations written under the pen name 'Richard Rest,' as well as surreal photomontages by Grete Stern, a German-born, Bauhaus-trained photographer living in exile since 1936. While the column's Jungian text encourages readers' adaptation to the external reality of their social situation, Stern's droll images emphasize the disjuncture between subject and environment, exposing tensions between the experience of exile and the Peronist mission to consolidate an Argentine national identity. Experimenting formally with European avant-garde techniques, Stern presents femininity and nation as conflictive imaginary configurations. This theme resurfaces at the 2013 Venice Biennale, where Nicola Costantino's multimedia installation Eva - Argentina: A Contemporary Metaphor was exhibited alongside Carl Jung's Red Book. Formal contrasts between Stern's use of photomontage, Costantino's projection technique, and Jung's theory of mandala symbolism indicate the divergent ways in which their artwork posits the therapeutic function of the dream image, as well as the role of aesthetic production in psychoanalytic care. Copyright © 2017 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

On authenticity: the question of truth in construction and autobiography.

PubMed

Collins, Sara

2011-12-01

Freud was occupied with the question of truth and its verification throughout his work. He looked to archaeology for an evidence model to support his ideas on reconstruction. He also referred to literature regarding truth in reconstruction, where he saw shifts between historical fact and invention, and detected such swings in his own case histories. In his late work Freud pondered over the impossibility of truth in reconstruction by juxtaposing truth with 'probability'. Developments on the role of fantasy and myth in reconstruction and contemporary debates over objectivity have increasingly highlighted the question of 'truth' in psychoanalysis. I will argue that 'authenticity' is a helpful concept in furthering the discussion over truth in reconstruction. Authenticity denotes that which is genuine, trustworthy and emotionally accurate in a reconstruction, as observed within the immediacy of the analyst/patient interaction. As authenticity signifies genuineness in a contemporary context its origins are verifiable through the analyst's own observations of the analytic process itself. Therefore, authenticity is about the likelihood and approximation of historical truth rather than its certainty. In that respect it links with Freud's musings over 'probability'. Developments on writing 'truths' in autobiography mirror those in reconstruction, and lend corroborative support from another source. Copyright © 2011 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

'Speaking Kleinian': Susan Isaacs as Ursula Wise and the Inter-War Popularisation of Psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Shapira, Michal

2017-10-01

How did the complex concepts of psychoanalysis become popular in early twentieth-century Britain? This article examines the contribution of educator and psychoanalyst Susan Isaacs (1885-1948) to this process, as well as her role as a female expert in the intellectual and medical history of this period. Isaacs was one of the most influential British psychologists of the inter-war era, yet historical research on her work is still limited. The article focuses on her writing as 'Ursula Wise', answering the questions of parents and nursery nurses in the popular journal Nursery World, from 1929 to 1936. Researched in depth for the first time, Isaacs' important magazine columns reveal that her writing was instrumental in disseminating the work of psychoanalyst Melanie Klein in Britain. Moreover, Isaacs' powerful rebuttals to behaviourist, disciplinarian parenting methods helped shift the focus of caregivers to the child's perspective, encouraging them to acknowledge children as independent subjects and future democratic citizens. Like other early psychoanalysts, Isaacs was not an elitist; she was in fact committed to disseminating her ideas as broadly as possible. Isaacs taught British parents and child caregivers to 'speak Kleinian', translating Klein's intellectual ideas into ordinary language and thus enabling their swift integration into popular discourse.

Freud's dreams of reason: the Kantian structure of psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Tauber, Alfred I

2009-10-01

Freud (and later commentators) have failed to explain how the origins of psychoanalytical theory began with a positivist investment without recognizing a dual epistemological commitment: simply, Freud engaged positivism because he believed it generally equated with empiricism, which he valued, and he rejected "philosophy," and, more specifically, Kantianism, because of the associated transcendental qualities of its epistemology. But this simple dismissal belies a deep investment in Kant's formulation of human reason, in which rationality escapes natural cause and thereby bestows humans with cognitive and moral autonomy. Freud also segregated human rationality: he divided the mind between (1) an unconscious grounded in the biological and thus subject to its own laws, and (2) a faculty of autonomous reason, lodged in consciousness and free of natural forces to become the repository of interpretation and free will. Psychoanalysis thus rests upon a basic Kantian construction, whereby reason, through the aid of analytic techniques, provides a detached scrutiny of the natural world, i.e. the unconscious mental domain. Further, sovereign reason becomes the instrument of self-knowing in the pursuit of human perfection. Herein lies the philosophical foundation of psychoanalytic theory, a beguiling paradox in which natural cause and autonomous reason - determinism and freedom - are conjoined despite their apparent logical exclusion.

False memories, negative affects, and psychic reality: the role of extra-clinical data in psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Good, Michael I; Dayand, Max; Rowell, Eve

2005-12-01

Psychoanalysis as a treatment originated in the idea that neurosis is related to the ways in which individual psychic reality departs from actuality. Psychic reality includes memories, beliefs and their associated affects and fantasies connected with an individual's experience of the inner and outer world. The psychoanalytic determination of what meaningful memories or beliefs are inaccurate, distorted or false ordinarily relies upon principles of intra-clinical validation. By itself, however, intra-clinical validation is subject to limitations and pitfalls that conviction alone about what is actual cannot circumvent. Despite this fact, there are remarkably few analytic case reports demonstrating false or significantly distorted memories through the use of data obtained from outside the consulting room. This paucity of reports may be related, at least in part, to the belief that the use of extra-clinical data is essentially unanalytic or supports resistance. Based on the views that (a) psychic reality cannot be regarded as exclusively subjective or objective but is inherently both; and that (b) a goal of analysis is to achieve a different, acceptable and more accurate view of reality, the authors report a clinical case involving a confirmably false pivotal memory and its associated negative affects. They discuss theoretical and technical considerations in utilizing extra-clinical data during the treatment process.

Paul Tillich and psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Hart, Curtis W

2011-09-01

Paul Tillich (1886-1965) was one of the leading theologians of the twentieth century. Tillich was born in Germany and received his education and first academic appointments there. Tillich left Germany in 1933 to teach at Union Theological Seminary after having been dismissed from his university position by the National Socialist government for his radical views and political associations. In the United States, he became a highly successful lecturer, preacher, and public intellectual who reached numbers of persons who had departed or who had doubts regarding traditional religious belief and practice. Tillich underwent a series of traumatic losses in the early decades of his life that powerfully shaped his subsequent contributions to religious and cultural discourse. This essay outlines this pattern of loss and speculates about its impact upon his theological work. It lifts up Tillich's perspective of living and working "on the boundary" of disciplines, eras, and cultures, most particularly where psychoanalytic ideas contributed to his "theology of culture." It also stresses Tillich's role in initiating the ongoing dialogue between religion and psychiatry and psychoanalysis. The essay concludes with a summary critique of Tillich's work along with an affirmation of his considerable legacy. This essay was originally a presentation for the Richardson Research Seminar in the History of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College.

An assessment of the existence and influence of psychoanalytic jurisprudence in the United States.

PubMed

Caudill, David S

In light of the ongoing controversy over the value of psychoanalysis generally, this article summarizes the standards for scientific expertise in law and concludes that the future of psychoanalytic jurisprudence does not lie in the courtroom. After a brief survey of the history of psychoanalytic jurisprudence in legal contexts and institutions, I identify a revival of psychoanalytic jurisprudence, including (i) its association, primarily as a social theory, with Critical Legal Studies (in the US context), and (ii) the influence of Jacques Lacan in the legal academy. The unifying themes in this critical methodology include the construction of the subject through the language and rituals of the law, the failure of mainstream jurisprudence to be sufficiently critical of the legal status quo, and the repression or denial of injustices in legal history. Paralleling that revival, I note that a field of scholarship employing traditional Freudian conceptions is also currently engaging interdisciplinary legal studies, intervening in law reform efforts (particularly in criminal law), and criticizing the background assumptions and conventions in contemporary judicial opinions. I conclude that psychoanalysis is both threatening to mainstream legal culture and a rich source of insights for contemporary studies of legal processes and institutions. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

'For our garden of remembrance is somewhere else': Narratives of separation through the eyes of Freud's patients.

PubMed

Mahalel, Anat Tzur

2017-12-01

This article presents a unique collection of narratives of separation - unique because the separation here is from psychoanalysis and from Freud as analyst. These narratives were published as part of memoirs written about Freud by three of his patients. Their narratives of separation give us an innovative point of view on the psychoanalytic process, in particular with respect to the importance they place on the termination phase of the analysis at a time when Freud himself had not given it much consideration. The three autobiographical texts are Abram Kardiner's memoir (1977); the memoir of Sergei Pankejeff, known as the Wolf Man (Gardiner, ); and 'Tribute to Freud', by the poet H.D. (). These three distinguished narratives are discussed here as works of translation, as understood by Walter Benjamin (1968 [1955]), Paul Ricoeur (2006 [2004]), and Jean Laplanche (1999 [1992]). They express translation under three aspects: reconstruction of the past (the work of memory), interpreting the conscious residues of the transference (the work of mourning), and, as a deferred action, deciphering the enigmatic messages received from Freud as the parental figure. This representation of the analysand's writing suggests that the separation from analysis is an endless work of translation within the endless process of deciphering the unconscious. Copyright © 2017 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Cats on the Couch: The Experimental Production of Animal Neurosis.

PubMed

Winter, Alison

2016-03-01

Argument In the 1940s-50s, one of the most central questions in psychological research related to the nature of neurosis. In the final years of the Second World War and the following decade, neurosis became one of the most prominent psychiatric disorders, afflicting a high proportion of military casualties and veterans. The condition became central to the concerns of several psychological fields, from psychoanalysis to Pavlovian psychology. This paper reconstructs the efforts of Chicago psychiatrist Jules Masserman to study neurosis in the laboratory during the 1940s and 1950s. Masserman used Pavlovian techniques in a bid to subject this central psychoanalytic subject to disciplined scientific experimentation. More generally, his project was an effort to bolster the legitimacy of psychoanalysis as a human science by articulating a convergence of psychoanalytic categories across multiple species. Masserman sought to orchestrate a convergence of psychological knowledge between fields that were often taken to be irreconcilable. A central focus of this paper is the role of moving images in this project, not only as a means of recording experimental data but also as a rhetorical device. The paper argues that for Masserman film played an important role in enabling scientific observers (and then subsequent viewers) to see agency and emotion in the animals they observed.

After pluralism: towards a new, integrated psychoanalytic paradigm.

PubMed

Jiménez, Juan Pablo

2006-12-01

After a restatement of the isolationism of psychoanalysis from allied disciplines, and an examination of some of the reasons for the diversity of schools of thought and the fragmentation of psychoanalytic knowledge, the author suggests the need to adopt principles of correspondence or external coherence along with those of hermeneutic coherence to validate psychoanalytic hypotheses. Recent developments in neurocognitive science have come to the aid of psychoanalysis in this period of crisis, resulting in the proposition of integrating both areas to form a new paradigm for the construction of the theory of the mind. This emerging paradigm tries to integrate clinical knowledge with neurocognitive science, findings from studies on the process and outcome of psychotherapy, research into the early mother-infant relationship, and developmental psychopathology. The author examines theoretical- technical models based on the concept of drives and of relationships in the light of interdisciplinary findings. He concludes that the relational model has a broad empirical base, except when the concept of drives is discredited. Interdisciplinary findings have led to the positing of the replacement of the Freudian model of drives with a model of motivational systems centred on affective processes. He draws certain conclusions which have a bearing on the technique of psychoanalytic treatment. These arise from the adoption of the new integrated paradigm.

Affect and the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Andrade, Victor Manoel

2005-06-01

In connection with controversial IJP articles by Stern et al. and Fonagy on the interpretation of the repressed and the recovery of past memories, the author maintains that the affect that is inherent in positive transference is at the heart of therapeutic action. Points of view put forward in the controversy (based on neurobiological knowledge) are related to Freudian metapsychology, as well as to their precursors whose scope was necessarily limited by a lack of access to more recent scientific discoveries. The author demonstrates metapsychological elements of therapeutic action inherent in the intersubjective relationship, especially identification, manifested in introjection and empathy. He describes cognitive development as spontaneously blossoming from the affective nucleus, and he explains the neuroscientific bases of this step forward. The classic (interpretative) psychoanalytic method makes up the cognitive superstructure necessary for the organisation of the mind that has sprung from the affective substructure. As a primary factor in psychic change, interpretation is limited in effectiveness to pathologies arising from the verbal phase, related to explicit memories, with no effect in the pre-verbal phase where implicit memories are to be found. Interpretation--the method used to the exclusion of all others for a century--is only partial; when used in isolation it does not meet the demands of modern broad-spectrum psychoanalysis, as the clinical material presented illustrates.

On the centenary of Charcot: hysteria, suggestibility and hypnosis.

PubMed

Chertok, L

1984-06-01

In studying hysteria by means of hypnosis, Charcot placed emphasis on the psychological aetiology of the neuroses. Among his pupils, Freud alone grasped this epistemological turning-point, from which he made his great discoveries. But hysteria and hypnosis still remain today largely unknown. We have not yet elucidated the 'mysterious leap' between the psychological and the somatic for the former, and between the relational and the instrumental for the latter. While psychoanalysts have constantly concerned themselves with hysteria, they have shown a lack of interest in hypnosis after Freud abandoned its practice. According to Freud, thanks to transference, affect would be controlled by cognition, a viewpoint eminently suited to satisfy his rationalistic outlook. Affect, however, remains an unknown realm. The affective relationship has, at all events, acquired an ever-increasing importance in psychoanalysis during the last few years, with the emphasis on the early mother-child relationship. The 'affective locus' remains the basic, as well as the most obscure, element in the hypno-suggestive relationship. The behaviourist approach, which quantifies the 'vertical' dimension in depth, is a limited one. The study of the 'horizontal' dimension of subjective experience represents a new line of research, which may make it possible to distinguish different forms of hypnosis. The understanding of hypno-suggestion may throw light on psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and the human sciences in general.

Kant's philosophy and its relationship with the thought of Bion and Money-Kyrle.

PubMed

Mancia, M; Longhin, L

2000-12-01

The authors assess the significance of the rediscovery of Kant's philosophy of mind, which in their view offers valuable insights into the basis of conscious and unconscious mental life, protomental structures and the organisation of the internal world. They draw attention to the importance of distinguishing between brain culture, as represented by the neurosciences in particular, and mind culture. The process of internalisation begun by Kant is stated to have been continued by present-day psychoanalysis, whose theories furnish some additional categories of the intellect. The ideas of Bion and Money-Kyrle are considered in the light of Kantian philosophy. The authors show how Kant's revolutionary shift from enquiring into things to enquiring into our mode of knowing them implied that the objects of experience were determined by the transcendental functions of the mind, seen as a priori elements. Space and time as pure intuitions, together with the categories of the intellect organised by the 'I think', were held by Kant to make knowledge possible. Noting that the unconscious is not to be equated with the Kantian noumenon, the authors contend that Kant's epistemology can help psychoanalysis today to reflect on the epistemic status of its own referent, the conscious and unconscious mind, as well as of its procedures and predicates.

Enrique Pichon Rivière's conception of reality in psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Arbiser, Samuel

2017-02-01

The author places the subject of his paper in the context of the original views of a school of Argentinian psychoanalysts that differed from traditional conceptions of man and his relationship with the sociocultural context - that is, with reality. These were the analysts who followed Enrique Pichon Rivière and further developed his ideas - namely, Madeleine and Willy Baranger, José Bleger, and David Liberman. The author begins his exposition with a discussion of Pichon Rivière and culture. He then offers an outline of Pichon Rivière's particular conception of man, followed by a section on the Internal Group as the nexus between the psyche and reality. Further sections address the idea of reality in the analytic situation as a dynamic field and the operative definition of the transference; the distinction between perceptual reality and the reading of reality, with a consideration of the notion of 'critical judgement'; and lastly the issue of health and illness in terms of adaptation to reality. In addition, on the basis of a quotation from Antonio Damasio, the author draws a parallel between these psychoanalytic thinkers' 'psychosocial' approach to man and the findings of contemporary neuroscience as presented by one of its paradigmatic protagonists. Copyright © 2017 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

‘Speaking Kleinian’: Susan Isaacs as Ursula Wise and the Inter-War Popularisation of Psychoanalysis

PubMed Central

Shapira, Michal

2017-01-01

How did the complex concepts of psychoanalysis become popular in early twentieth-century Britain? This article examines the contribution of educator and psychoanalyst Susan Isaacs (1885–1948) to this process, as well as her role as a female expert in the intellectual and medical history of this period. Isaacs was one of the most influential British psychologists of the inter-war era, yet historical research on her work is still limited. The article focuses on her writing as ‘Ursula Wise’, answering the questions of parents and nursery nurses in the popular journal Nursery World, from 1929 to 1936. Researched in depth for the first time, Isaacs’ important magazine columns reveal that her writing was instrumental in disseminating the work of psychoanalyst Melanie Klein in Britain. Moreover, Isaacs’ powerful rebuttals to behaviourist, disciplinarian parenting methods helped shift the focus of caregivers to the child’s perspective, encouraging them to acknowledge children as independent subjects and future democratic citizens. Like other early psychoanalysts, Isaacs was not an elitist; she was in fact committed to disseminating her ideas as broadly as possible. Isaacs taught British parents and child caregivers to ‘speak Kleinian’, translating Klein’s intellectual ideas into ordinary language and thus enabling their swift integration into popular discourse. PMID:28901872

The Receding Animal: Theorizing Anxiety and Attachment in Psychoanalysis from Freud to Imre Hermann.

PubMed

Marinelli, Lydia; Mayer, Andreas

2016-03-01

Argument Animals played an important role in the formation of psychoanalysis as a theoretical and therapeutic enterprise. They are at the core of texts such as Freud's famous case histories of Little Hans, the Rat Man, or the Wolf Man. The infantile anxiety triggered by animals provided the essential link between the psychology of individual neuroses and the ambivalent status of the "totem" animal in so-called primitive societies in Freud's attempt to construct an anthropological basis for the Oedipus complex in Totem and Taboo. In the following, we attempt to track the status of animals as objects of indirect observation as they appear in Freud's classical texts, and in later revisionist accounts such as Otto Rank's Trauma of Birth and Imre Hermann's work on the clinging instinct. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Freudian conception of patients' animal phobias is substantially revised within Hermann's original psychoanalytic theory of instincts which draws heavily upon ethological observations of primates. Although such a reformulation remains grounded in the idea of "archaic" animal models for human development, it allows to a certain extent to empiricize the speculative elements of Freud's later instinct theory (notably the death instinct) and to come to a more embodied account of psychoanalytic practice.

Forerunner of the Science of Psychoanalysis? An Essay on the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition.

PubMed

Simms, Norman

2015-01-01

The inquisitions in Spain and Portugual were state organs, rather than church-run enterprises; their purpose to modernize disparate jurisdictions during the final stages of Reconquista (return of Moorish areas to Christian administration) to ensure security and loyalty. So many Jews converted (under duress or willingly for strategic reasons) and inter-married with middle-class and aristocratic families, that their sincerity and loyalty was suspected, This meant going beyond traditional monitoring of ritual acts and social behaviour; there was a need to look below the surface, to interpret ambiguity, and to break codes of duplicity. Inquisitors developed techniques of a form of psychoanalysis before the discoveries of Freud: methods of questioning to bring out repressed beliefs and motivations, unriddling equivocational performance and speech-acts, and integrating fragments of information from family members, business associates and neighbours collected over many years. Torture, more threatened than actual, and lengthy incarceration punctuated by periods of exile and re-arrest after years quiet, provoked desperate confessions and specious denunciations, all of which had to be subject to intense scrutiny and analysis. The assumption was modern: a person's self was no longer equivalent to their words and actions; instead, a deep dark and traumatized inner self to be revealed.

Delusional development in child autism at the onset of puberty: vicissitudes of psychic dimensionality between disintegration and development.

PubMed

Bisagni, Francesco

2012-06-01

Although the psychogenetic hypotheses on child autism have been superseded, psychoanalysis can still reflect on the relational exchange and its sensory aspects in concomitance with the mental development of these patients. Without making generalizations as regards the pathogenesis, but considering the specific features of each autistic child, it may be possible to achieve an integration of those islands of competence that make up these patients' limited personal heritage. Such integration may be reached through the analysis of representational, emotional and relational transformations. The first part of this article describes the case of an autistic child in treatment from the age of four on a four-times-weekly basis who, during puberty, developed severe formal thought disorders together with delusional and hallucinatory formations. The second part develops some post-Jungian theoretical contributions, such as the concept of self as nothingness and the idea of the unsaturated archetype, so as to evaluate the function of some a-priori concepts in support of the analyst's position. These concepts are considered in relation to Bion's model of transformation, and to the formulations on dimensional awareness, especially on the shift from a two-dimensionality to three-dimensionality view, as well as to the rhythm of the object's presence and absence. Copyright © 2012 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

[Sigmund Freud and cocaine].

PubMed

Lebzeltern, G

1983-11-11

The basic tenet proposed by J. V. Scheidt states that the narcotic drug, cocaine played a role in the development of psychoanalysis which has been underestimated up to the present day. It is a fact that Freud himself took cocaine (in small doses) for about two years, and that he began his dream interpretation approximately ten years later. Scheidt believes that a long, unconscious conflict related to the cocaine-induced states of euphoria (ten years later) suddenly led to the beginnings of dream interpretation. The question to be answered now is: Why did this happen precisely in 1895? The foundations of psychoanalysis had already been laid, the application of the new method to the treatment of nervous disorders (heart complaints, train phobias, etc.) was certainly obvious. During this self-analysis it became necessary, first of all, to come to terms with the self-reproaches-which lay on the surface and were more accessible to consciousness-related to Freud's cocaine period (Fleischl-Marxow becomes addicted to cocaine, the most terrible night ever experienced, death of this friend, Freud's warning came too late). It was only when Freud has come to terms with this phase of his life that the road to the deepest part, the discovery of the Oedipus complex in the fall of 1897, was cleared.

The Discourse System Project

DTIC Science & Technology

1989-11-01

9) Are you interested in dreams in art or poetry, or psychoanalysis or dreams , or what? -o- (10) U: Give me theories about dream (ie where do they... dream ? Give a multidisciplinary historical account. You might want to include theories and explanations from religion, psychology. neurosciencc, and...computer science. You paper should be approximately thirty pages. 0: May I help you? -o- (1) U: Yes, what do you know about dreams ? -0- (2) 0: Well, do you

Adrian Stokes and the portrait of Melanie Klein.

PubMed

Sayers, Janet

2015-08-01

This paper focuses on the offer by the art writer Adrian Stokes to commission and pay for a portrait of the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein by the artist William Coldstream. It details some of the precursors of this offer in Stokes's preceding involvement first with Klein and then with Coldstream; her response to this offer; and its outcome and aftermath in Stokes's subsequent writing about Klein and Coldstream. Copyright © 2015 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

[Facilitated and real trauma in the psychoanalysis of children of Holocaust survivors].

PubMed

Kogan, I

1990-06-01

The author investigates the effect of retraumatization on the children of Holocaust survivors who have appropriated their parents' trauma through unconscious identification. The author proposes that the working through of the real trauma results in a mitigation of the transmitted trauma in the psychic reality and mobilizes the work of mourning that facilitates the mastery of the real as well as the transmitted trauma. Two case examples are cited as illustration.

Some reflections on madness and culture in the post-war world.

PubMed

Scull, Andrew

2014-12-01

This article examines the treatment of madness as a theme in drama, opera and films, concentrating its attention for the most part on the period between World War II and the 1980s. These were the years in which psychoanalysis dominated psychiatry in the USA, and so Freud's influence in the broader culture forms the central though not the sole focus of the analysis. © The Author(s) 2014.

Traumaculture and Telepathetic Cyber Fiction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Drinkall, Jacquelene

This paper explores the interactive CD-ROM No Other Symptoms: Time Travelling with Rosalind Brodsky, usingtelepathetic socio-psychological, psychoanalytic and narrative theories. The CD-ROMexists as a contemporary artwork and published interactive hardcover book authored by painter and new-media visual artist Suzanne Treister. The artwork incorporates Treister's paintings, writing, photoshop, animation, video and audio work with narrative structures taken from world history, the history of psychoanalysis, futurist science and science fiction, family history and biography.

Artiss Sympsoium 2016: Understanding the Patients’ Experiences: Beyond Diagnostic Labels

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-10-11

theory, sociology, theology, philosophy, anthropology, and history. When we studied Sigmund Freud and the invention of psychoanalysis, we also were...people talking about traumatic experiences will re-experience them in the context of the therapy. Freud called that remembering, repeating, and work...Here is a quote from a guy whose name begins with F but it is not Freud , it is Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” I will

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the Casual Link to Crime: A Looming National Tragedy

DTIC Science & Technology

2008-04-01

Edited by Mardi J. Horowitz. New York and London: New York University Press. 1999, 19. Sigmund Freud . Introduction to Psycho-Analysis and the...placed. Horowitz, Freud , and Smith all discuss the draconian measures used by nearly all parties to the conflict in returning cowards and malingerers...stop the torturous process- -even return to the fighting.40 Binneveld and Freud both note that this type of “punishment” oriented treatment fell into

[Salzburg 1908. Karl Abraham caught between Freud and Jung].

PubMed

van Schoonheten, Anna Bentinck

2010-01-01

The first psychoanalytic congress in Salzburg has often been described as a great success with one blemish: a conflict between Jung and Abraham, mainly caused by the rivalry in Abraham's behaviour. A new study of the material, and taking Abraham's perspective, provides a different view. Abraham, still a beginner in psychoanalysis, got in the way of Freud and Jung who at that time had a deep theoretical disagreement. In the end they both blamed Abraham.

The Influence of Learning Strategies in the Acquisition, Retention, and Transfer of a Visual Tracking Task

DTIC Science & Technology

1979-08-01

Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Neurology X. N. Y.: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977. Craik , F. I. M., & Lockhart , R. S. Levels of processing : A framework for...Morris, C. D., & Stein, B. S. Some general constraints oil learning and memory research. In F. I. M. Craik & L. S. Cermak (Eds.), Levels of processing ... Craik & Lockhart , 1972; Craik & Tulving, 1975). Although the dependent measures differ, the conclusions drawn remain similar. Strategy usage has a

[Hermeneutics and relativism].

PubMed

Miegge, Mario

2012-01-01

Giovanni Jervis left us. There is only one way to cope with the irremediable separation: to give voice to what he said and wrote, by keeping open among us questions he asked, because they are also ours. In this dialogue with Giacomo Marramao let me begin with certain passages of the essay Psychoanalysis as a Critical Exercise that Jervis published in 1989. In the second part of the intervention I will try to explain why, in my opinion, hermeneutics cannot be equated with "relativism".

On integrating Jungian and other theories.

PubMed

Sedgwick, David

2015-09-01

This paper consists of reflections on some of the processes, subtleties, and 'eros' involved in attempting to integrate Jungian and other analytic perspectives. Assimilation of other theoretical viewpoints has a long history in analytical psychology, beginning when Jung met Freud. Since its inception, the Journal of Analytical Psychology has provided a forum for theoretical syntheses and comparative psychoanalysis. Such attempts at synthesizing other theories represent analytical psychology itself trying to individuate. © 2015, The Society of Analytical Psychology.

Psychoanalysis and the brain - why did freud abandon neuroscience?

PubMed

Northoff, Georg

2012-01-01

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, was initially a neuroscientist but abandoned neuroscience completely after he made a last attempt to link both in his writing, "Project of a Scientific Psychology," in 1895. The reasons for his subsequent disregard of the brain remain unclear though. I here argue that one central reason may be that the approach to the brain during his time was simply not appealing to Freud. More specifically, Freud was interested in revealing the psychological predispositions of psychodynamic processes. However, he was not so much focused on the actual psychological functions themselves which though were the prime focus of the neuroscience at his time and also in current Cognitive Neuroscience. Instead, he probably would have been more interested in the brain's resting state and its constitution of a spatiotemporal structure. I here assume that the resting state activity constitutes a statistically based virtual structure extending and linking the different discrete points in time and space within the brain. That in turn may serve as template, schemata, or grid for all subsequent neural processing during stimulus-induced activity. As such the resting state' spatiotemporal structure may serve as the neural predisposition of what Freud described as "psychological structure." Hence, Freud and also current neuropsychoanalysis may want to focus more on neural predispositions, the necessary non-sufficient conditions, rather than the neural correlates, i.e., sufficient, conditions of psychodynamic processes.

On 'the fear of death' as the primary anxiety: how and why Klein differs from Freud.

PubMed

Blass, Rachel B

2014-08-01

It is well known that Melanie Klein held the view that 'fear of death' is the primary source of anxiety and that her position is explicitly opposed to that of Sigmund Freud, who maintained that that fear cannot in any way or form be a source of anxiety. In a previous article on Freud's Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (Blass, 2013), the author argued that, counter to what is commonly portrayed in the literature, Freud's considerations for rejecting the fear of death as a source of anxiety were based on relational and experiential factors that are usually associated with Kleinian psychoanalysis. In light of this affinity of Freud with Klein a question arises as to the actual source of their differences in this context. The present paper offers an answer to this question. The author first presents some of her earlier findings on what led Freud to reject the fear of death as a source of anxiety and then turns to investigate Klein's considerations for accepting it. This takes us beyond her explicit statements on this matter and sheds new light on the relationship of her views regarding death and anxiety and those of Freud. In turn this deepens the understanding of the relationship of Freud and Klein's conceptualizations of the psyche and its internal object relations, pointing to both surprising common ground and foundational differences. Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Anna Freud and the Holocaust: mourning and survival guilt.

PubMed

Hartman, John J

2014-12-01

This article explores the period of Anna Freud's life after she was informed of the deaths of her aunts in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Understanding of this period may be enhanced by consideration of the role of the Holocaust in her complicated mourning process. A series of her dreams is re-examined from the point of view of survivor guilt and the complicated mourning of her father in the context of the Holocaust. It is argued that unconscious reproaches against her father led to an identification with him that included his 'decision' to leave his sisters in Vienna. Survivor guilt in relation to her aunts' murders is seen as one of the complicating factors in the mourning process. In addition the article discusses the possible role of this period, particularly her work with child concentration camp survivors, in her post-war writing. The noted duality in her work between innovation and conservatism is explored in terms of an outcome of the mourning process of this period. It is argued that her views on mourning, trauma, attachment, and the widening scope of indications for psychoanalysis were influenced by the outcome of her mourning process. Finally, an irony is noted in the fact that her attitude about altruism never changed despite the role of the altruism of others in her rescue from the Nazis. Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Off the beaten track: Freud, sound and music. Statement of a problem and some historico-critical notes.

PubMed

Baralea, Francesco; Minazzi, Vera

2008-10-01

The authors note that the element of sound and music has no place in the model of mental functioning bequeathed to us by Freud, which is dominated by the visual and the representational. They consider the reasons for this exclusion and its consequences, and ask whether the simple biographical explanation offered by Freud himself is acceptable. This contribution reconstructs the historical and cultural background to that exclusion, cites some relevant emblematic passages, and discusses Freud's position on music and on the aesthetic experience in general. Particular attention is devoted to the relationship between Freud and Lipps, which is important both for the originality of Lipps's thinking in the turn-of-the-century debate and for his ideas on the musical aspects of the foundations of psychic life, at which Freud 'stopped', as he himself wrote. Moreover, the shade of Lipps accompanied Freud throughout his scientific career from 1898 to 1938. Like all foundations, that of psychoanalysis was shaped by a system of inclusions and exclusions. The exclusion of the element of sound and music is understandable in view of the cultural background to the development of the concepts of the representational unconscious and infantile sexuality. While the consequences have been far reaching, the knowledge accumulated since that exclusion enables us to resume, albeit on a different basis, the composition of the 'unfinished symphony' of the relationship between psychoanalysis and music.

How does our brain constitute defense mechanisms? First-person neuroscience and psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Northoff, Georg; Bermpohl, Felix; Schoeneich, Frank; Boeker, Heinz

2007-01-01

Current progress in the cognitive and affective neurosciences is constantly influencing the development of psychoanalytic theory and practice. However, despite the emerging dialogue between neuroscience and psychoanalysis, the neuronal processes underlying psychoanalytic constructs such as defense mechanisms remain unclear. One of the main problems in investigating the psychodynamic-neuronal relationship consists in systematically linking the individual contents of first-person subjective experience to third-person observation of neuronal states. We therefore introduced an appropriate methodological strategy, 'first-person neuroscience', which aims at developing methods for systematically linking first- and third-person data. The utility of first-person neuroscience can be demonstrated by the example of the defense mechanism of sensorimotor regression as paradigmatically observed in catatonia. Combined psychodynamic and imaging studies suggest that sensorimotor regression might be associated with dysfunction in the neural network including the orbitofrontal, the medial prefrontal and the premotor cortices. In general sensorimotor regression and other defense mechanisms are psychoanalytic constructs that are hypothesized to be complex emotional-cognitive constellations. In this paper we suggest that specific functional mechanisms which integrate neuronal activity across several brain regions (i.e. neuronal integration) are the physiological substrates of defense mechanisms. We conclude that first-person neuroscience could be an appropriate methodological strategy for opening the door to a better understanding of the neuronal processes of defense mechanisms and their modulation in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Copyright 2007 S. Karger AG, Basel.

The ego according to Klein: return to Freud and beyond.

PubMed

Blass, Rachel B

2012-02-01

This paper explores fundamental dimensions of Melanie Klein's concept of the ego through a detailed study of the writings of Klein and her early colleagues (Paula Heimann, Susan Isaacs and Joan Riviere). The study examines three central issues: (a) the basic theoretical framework for Klein's conceptualization of the ego, and specifically how her conceptualization builds on Freud's structural and dual instinct models; (b) the processes involved in the development of the ego and its capacities (including the development from id to ego and from ego to superego); and (c) the view of the ego as an object of phantasy. Through this examination, the study demonstrates that Klein's conceptualization of the ego is firmly grounded both in Freud's formulations about the ego and in his theoretical and metapsychological approach to thinking about the ego. This counters the prevalent view that Klein was only focused on clinical understandings, unconcerned with theory and fuzzy in her abstract thinking. More specifically, it counters the view that Klein did not really have a concept of the ego in any well-structured sense of the term (Britton, 2003; Hinshelwood, 1994; Segal, 2001). The study considers the sources of these misconceived views. Finally, it argues that discarding such views allows us to appreciate better the richness of Klein's thinking, her theoretical affinities to Freud, and the role of theory in the development and justification of psychoanalysis. Copyright © 2011 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

[Towards the Files. Psychoanalysis and its publishing house strategies].

PubMed

Windgätter, Christof

2009-09-01

The following case study deals with the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, founded 1919 in Vienna by a group around Sigmund Freud and shut down in 1938 by the Gestapo. During that time the Verlag published the titles of the contemporary psychoanalytic movement, including the first psychoanalytic dictionary, the Almanach as a yearbook, the four authoritative journals, as well as the first complete edition of Freud's writings. A single publishing house became thus responsible for the appearance of an entire theory--a unique situation without historical comparison. My thesis here is that the Verlag initiated certain strategies of publicising (e.g. centralising the movement, enforcing the company's name, labelling its activities) that were, prior to arguments and contents, constitutive for the development of psychoanalysis as well as its implementation within the field of science. Consequently, these strategies cannot be found through interpretations of psychoanalytical texts, but in the genuine files and in view of the material products (books, journals, blurbs, advertisements etc.) that were passed down from the Verlag. As an opening step, this essay explores several of those Viennese files, showing that the Verlag not only struggled with monetary and personal problems but rather and foremost launched branding, marketing and public relation campaigns as key concepts to make sciences and its particular knowledge acceptable. As a result the Verlag changed from a commercial and distributive institution to an epistemic medium.

Trying to enter the long black branches: some technical extensions of the work of Frances Tustin for the analysis of autistic states in adults.

PubMed

Mitrani, Judith L

2011-02-01

The author suggests a number of technical extensions/clinical applications of Frances Tustin's work with autistic children, which are applicable to the psychoanalysis of neurotic, borderline and psychotic adults. These are especially relevant to those individuals in whom early uncontained happenings (Bion) have been silently encapsulated through the use of secretive autosensual maneuvers related to autistic objects and shapes. Although such encapsulations may constitute obstacles to emotional and intellectual development, are consequential in both the relational and vocational spheres for many analysands and present unending challenges for their analysts, the author demonstrates ways in which it may be possible to detect and to modify these in a transference-centered analysis. A detailed process of differential diagnosis between autistic states and neurotic/narcissistic (object-related) states in adults is outlined, along with several clinical demonstrations of the handling of a variety of elemental terrors, including the 'dread of dissolution.' The idiosyncratic and perverse use of the analytic setting and of the analyst and issues of the analysand's motivations are considered and illustrated. A new model related to 'objects in the periphery' is introduced as an alternative to the more classical Kleinian models regarding certain responses and/or non-responses to transference interpretation. Issues a propos the countertransference are also taken up throughout. Copyright © 2011 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Silvano Arieti's novel The Parnas: a scene from the Holocaust.

PubMed

Meghnagi, David

2014-12-01

Silvano Arieti was an Italian psychoanalyst who undertook psychoanalysis of schizophrenic patients in the 1960s and 1970s. He left Italy in 1939 at the age of twenty-four following the Race Laws of 1938, and moved to New York until his death in 1981. A training analyst and author of several psychoanalytic and academic books, Arieti kept his research open in a wide variety of directions, giving equal weight to the internal world--as it seen from the psychoanalytic viewpoint--and to the organic functioning of the brain, as viewed from the perspective of the neurosciences. Arieti's interpretation of schizophrenia helped to overcome the dichotomies between the classical psychoanalytic approach, neurobiological research, and research into cognition, and opened up new paths for an interdisciplinary understanding of mental functioning and creative processes. This paper examines Arieti's book The Parnas (1979); this is a partly-fictionalised account of a pre-eminent figure (Parnas in Hebrew means "head") in the Jewish community in Pisa, Giuseppe Pardo Roques, in the 1930s and early 1940s, who experienced mental illness and was killed in the Nazi extermination of Jews. The paper examines Arieti?s reflections on what he sees as the 'insights' provided by mental illness, which are considered through the figure of Giuseppe Pardo Roques, and in the context of the trauma of the Shoah in Italy. Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Bion and the sublime: the origins of an aesthetic paradigm.

PubMed

Civitarese, Giuseppe

2014-12-01

In constructing his theory Bion drew on a number of symbolic matrices: psychoanalysis, philosophy, mathematics, literature, aesthetics. The least investigated of these is the last. True, we know that Bion cites many authors of the Romantic period, such as Coleridge, Keats, Blake and Wordsworth, as well as others who were held in high esteem in the Romantic period, such as Milton. However, less is known about the influence exerted on him by the aesthetics of the sublime, which while chronologically preceding Romanticism is in fact one of its components. My working hypothesis is that tracing a number of Bion's concepts back to this secret model can serve several purposes: firstly, it contributes to the study of the sources, and, secondly, it makes these concepts appear much less occasional and idiosyncratic than we might believe, being as they are mostly those less immediately understandable but not less important (O, negative capability, nameless dread, the infinite, the language of achievement, unison etc.). Finally, connecting these notions to a matrix, that is, disclosing the meaning of elements that are not simply juxtaposed but dynamically interrelated, in my view significantly increases not only their theoretical intelligibility but also their usefulness in clinical practice. In conclusion, one could legitimately argue that Bion gradually subsumed all the other paradigms he drew on within the aesthetic paradigm. Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Contacting a 19 month-old mute autistic girl: a clinical narrative.

PubMed

Busch de Ahumada, Luisa C; Ahumada, Jorge L

2015-02-01

Conveying that psychoanalysis offers rich opportunities for the very early treatment of autistic spectrum disorders, this clinical communication unfolds the clinical process of a 19-month-old 'shell-type' encapsulated mute autistic girl. It details how, in a four-weekly-sessions schedule, infant Lila evolved within two years from being emotionally out-of-contact to the affective aliveness of oedipal involvement. Following Frances Tustin's emphasis on the analyst's 'quality of attention' and Justin Call's advice that in baby-mother interaction the infant is the initiator and the mother is the follower, it is described how the analyst must, amid excruciating non-response, even-mindedly sustain her attention in order to meet the child half-way at those infrequent points where flickers of initiative on her side are adumbrated. This helps attain evanescent 'moments of contact' which coalesce later into 'moments of sharing', eventually leading to acknowledgment of the analyst's humanness and a receptiveness for to-and-fro communication. Thus the 'primal dialogue' (Spitz) is reawakened and, by experiencing herself in the mirror of the analyst, the child's sense of I-ness is reinstated. As evinced by the literature, the mainstream stance rests on systematic early interpretation of the transference, which has in our view strongly deterred progress in the psychoanalytic treatment of autistic spectrum disorders. Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Hans Loewald, psychoanalysis, and the project of autonomy.

PubMed

Whitebook, Joel

2008-12-01

For some time psychoanalysts have tended to view Freud's cultural writings--concerning modernity, secularism, science, and religion--disparagingly, seeing them as the unscientific speculations of a misguided genius. But the questions Freud explored in those works are pressing topics that deserve serious attention. Just as fascism provided the historical context in which the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School developed a psychoanalytic social theory in the 1930s and 1940s, so the rise of fundamentalism demands a similar effort today. The "project of autonomy" conceptualized by the psychoanalyst-philosopher Castoriadis can be used to situate psychoanalysis in its broader historical context, as part of the emancipatory movement of modernity, and to elucidate fundamentalism as an attempt to turn back that project and reinstate the values of premodern traditional societies. Because the widespread aversion to secularism today is in no small degree the responsibility of secularists themselves--Freud's relatively crude and simplistic disregard of some of the deepest yearnings of humankind is a case in point--it is time to formulate, using the work of Hans Loewald, a more sensitive and sophisticated psychoanalytic view of religion. Yet psychoanalytic secularists must avoid overcompensating for past mistakes by giving too much ground to antisecularists. The legitimate desire to do justice to religion must not trump the need to advance the project of autonomy as a first priority.

Minding the gap between positivism and hermeneutics in psychoanalytic research.

PubMed

Luyten, Patrick; Blatt, Sidney J; Corveleyn, Jozef

2006-01-01

Two quite different cultures are to be found within psychoanalysis, one more clinical in orientation, more focused on meaning and interpretation, and relying primarily on the traditional case study method, the other more research-oriented, focused on cause-and-effect relationships, and relying primarily on methods borrowed from the natural and social sciences. The history of this divide is reviewed and arguments, pro and con, about the potential contributions of specific types of empirical investigation are discussed. Increasingly, it seems, criticisms concerning the scientific status of psychoanalysis are being responded to by empirical research. This has contributed to a growing recognition within the scientific community of the credibility of aspects of psychoanalytic theories and of the effectiveness of psychodynamic treatment. However, some segments of the psychoanalytic community are concerned that this increase in the quantity and quality of empirical research on psychoanalytic concepts risks creating an empirical one-sidedness, while other segments are concerned that not engaging in systematic empirical research can lead to intellectual isolation, fragmentation, stagnation, and orthodoxy. To counter this polarizing tendency, a recommendation is made for methodological pluralism. Adopting this stance could contribute to an enriched understanding of the clinical process and to the development of new research methodologies to investigate complex psychodynamic hypotheses, thus bridging the gap between the two psychoanalytic cultures, as well as the gap between research and clinical practice.

Commentary on Adele Tutter's "Design as dream and self-representation: Philip Johnson and the Glass House of Atreus".

PubMed

Danze, Elizabeth A; Sonnenberg, Stephen M

2012-06-01

In this discussion of Adele Tutter's "Design as Dream and Self-Representation: Philip Johnson and the Glass House of Atreus" (JAPA 59/3), the architect Elizabeth Danze and the psychoanalyst Stephen Sonnenberg highlight what they see as the most important of Tutter's contributions as regards an understanding of Johnson's work. They then discuss those contributions as they illuminate the study of the relationship of architecture and design, on the one hand, and psychoanalysis on the other.

What's so different about Lacan's approach to psychoanalysis?

PubMed

Fink, Bruce

2011-12-01

Clinical work based on Lacanian principles is rarely compared in the psychoanalytic literature with that based on other principles. The author attempts to highlight a few important theoretical differences regarding language, desire, affect, and time between a Lacanian approach and certain others that lead to differences in focus and technique, related, for example, to interpretation, scansion, and countertransference. Lacanian techniques are illustrated with brief clinical vignettes. In the interest of confidentiality, identifying information and certain circumstances have been changed or omitted in the material presented.

Freud: darkness and vision.

PubMed

Breger, Louis

2012-06-01

Freud's creation of psychoanalysis is the starting place for a great many forms of contemporary psychodynamic psychotherapy, despite the fact that his work is very much a mixture of brilliant insights and misconceptions. Here, I will attempt to describe both the valuable contributions and the wrong turns, and to show how both can be understood in terms of the traumas he suffered as a child, as well as his particular adaptations to them. A review of his treatment of a number of patients will illustrate this discussion.

THE ONEIRIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF GEORGES PEREC.

PubMed

Schwartz, Henry P

2016-01-01

Georges Perec's book La Boutique Obscure (1973; translated into English in 2012) serves as the basis for this paper. The book is a collection of dreams that its author dreamed from May 1968 to August 1972. The present author treats these dreams as chapters in a bizarre autobiography, elaborating Perec's life through a discussion of those dreams and using them as a starting point with which to discuss his views of dream interpretation and the role of dreams in psychoanalysis. © 2016 The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Inc.

Happiness: origins, forms, and technical relevance.

PubMed

Akhtar, Salman

2010-09-01

By critically reviewing Freud's views on happiness, and also those of Helene Deutsch, Bertram Lewin, Melanie Klein, and Heinz Kohut, the author evolves a complex and multilayered perspective on the phenomenon. He categorizes happiness into four related and occasionally overlapping varieties: pleasure-based happiness (elation), assertion-based happiness (joy), merger-based happiness (ecstasy), and fulfillment-based happiness (contentment). After entering some caveats and drawing from his clinical experience, the author then demonstrates the relevance of these ideas to the conduct of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

[Psychoanalysis in Buchenwald. Conversations between Bruno Bettelheim, Dr. Brief and Ernst Federn].

PubMed

Federn, E

1988-01-01

Ernst Federn met in the concentration camp Buchenwald Bruno Bettelheim and the Chechoslovakian psychoanalyst Dr. Brief. They discussed the application of psychoanalytic knowledge to the situation in the camp, particularly the defense mechanism of "identification with the aggressor". Of the three, Bettelheim was released after one year, Dr. Brief died in Ausschwitz and Ernst Federn was liberated by the U.S.A. Army. How he could use his psychoanalytic knowledge to survive but also to help fellow prisoners is demonstrated.

The influence of historical events on psychoanalysis: a case history.

PubMed

Hinze, E

1986-01-01

Parts of the analysis of a patient are described, whose childhood had been overshadowed by serious traumatic experiences (death of father, flight). The interaction between these events which was dictated by recent history and the inner psychic world of the patient is investigated and consequences for the transference, countertransference and psychoanalytic technique are discussed. Special problems can arise when patient and analyst as members of the German post-war generation are equally confronted by the Nazi past during the analytical process.