@article{Frommer, author = {Frommer, Martin Stephen}, title = {What Can Institutes Do-: Commentary on Paper by Randall Lehmann Sorenson}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Vol. 15 (2005), pp. 479-498.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Vol. 15 (2005), pp. 479-498.}, abstract = {Our mortality - the fact that we will die and that we know it - defines the human condition, although this knowledge is often defensively maintained psychically as a theoretical, intellectual proposition. This paper explores one route by which such knowledge is transformed into felt experience: I suggest that how we mourn - what occurs psychically as we live the pain of loss - strongly influences our relationship to our own deaths. Because the psychic labor involved in making mortality real has compelling individual and social consequences, I position the role of the psychoanalyst as well as intersubjective aspects of the psychoanalytic process as central to helping patients grapple with their own mortality.}, language = {en} } @article{Frommer, author = {Frommer, Martin Stephen}, title = {What's American About American Psychoanalysis?}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Vol. 15 (2005), pp. 549-577.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Vol. 15 (2005), pp. 549-577.}, abstract = {The author makes use of Glennon's and Cole's discussions to elaborate the relationship between our conceptions of self and the ways in which we understand the experience of loss. In discussing the intrapsychic self, the self as it is constituted through the process of relating and the existential self, he argues that when we make room for multiplicity and the complex, dynamic interplay of diverse self states and modes of experiencing, these different conceptions of self both enhance and complement our experience of loss.}, language = {en} } @article{Frommer, author = {Frommer, Martin Stephen}, title = {Commentary on >deconstructing difference: Gender, splitting, and transitional space<}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 04 (1994), pp. 215-233.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 04 (1994), pp. 215-233.}, abstract = {Psychoanalytic treatment approaches that advocate a neutral stance in working with male homosexual patients are critically reviewed. While neutrality improves upon those more blatantly judgmental, directive-suggestive models of treatment, the neutral stance is felt to be problematic and insufficient in working with homosexual patients. Internalized homophobia is understood to be an unavoidable consequence of the developmental experience for homosexual individuals in a homophobic culture. Repressed and encapsulated feelings of shame and guilt, tied to early self-experiences of gender nonconformity and homoerotic feeling, may interfere with the adult homosexual man's ability to form sexually intimate and loving relationships. Little, if any, attention has been given to the analyst's role in helping homosexual patients achieve a positive sense of self within their sexual orientation. Analysts who adopt a surface neutrality toward their patients' homosexuality are often guided by hidden countertransference, which prevents them from adopting an affirmative stance toward the patient's homosexuality and negotiating transference material in a helpful manner. An affirmative stance that emotionally communicates to the patient the analyst's belief that homosexuality is a natural developmental end point for some individuals is viewed as the correct application of psychoanalytic technique with homosexual patients. Clinical material is offered to illustrate this approach.}, language = {en} } @article{Frommer, author = {Frommer, Martin Stephen}, title = {Commentary on >father and daughter: Identification with difference - a contribution to gender heterodoxy}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 04 (1994), pp. 247-252.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 04 (1994), pp. 247-252.}, language = {en} } @article{Frommer, author = {Frommer, Martin Stephen}, title = {The >We< in You and Me: Reply to Commentary}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 12 (2002), pp. 675-686.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 12 (2002), pp. 675-686.}, abstract = {In this commentary I examine homoerotic countertransference within the context of the analyst's erotic countertransference experience. Discussing male analysts' difficulties receiving and experiencing homoerotic feelings as a function of their dominant erotic desires (along gender lines), I propose both cognitive and affective explanations to illuminate their defenses. I suggest that Sherman's erotic countertransference is best understood when viewed as a product of both induced feelings emanating from his patient's dissociated sexual abuse and also his anxiety and shame in response to particular relational configurations with his patient that arouse him. Finally, I point to the site of the transgressive as integral to the construction of erotic desire and suggest shifts that need to occur in the erotic subjectivity of this dyad so that the treatment can move forward.}, language = {en} } @article{Frommer, author = {Frommer, Martin Stephen}, title = {Theoretical metaphors in psychoanalysis a constructivist. Commentary on John Lindon's >gratification and provision in psychoanalysis<}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Vol. 15 (2005), pp. 033-045.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Vol. 15 (2005), pp. 033-045.}, abstract = {This author examines the concept of forgiveness as a psychological construct. He argues that it is an error to conceive of the capacity to forgive in exclusively intrapsychic terms, pointing to the mutual influence of psychic and interpersonal experience in the struggle to forgive. He suggests that we can meaningfully consider the psychic challenges involved in any instance of forgiving only when we can fully understand the relational context in which the wrongdoing has taken place. The author then considers the concept of forgiveness when applied to hate crimes in general and Matthew Shepard's murder in particular, exploring some psychic alternatives to forgiveness that may be useful in thinking about the human struggle to resolve the mental anguish and desire for revenge that can threaten to undo us. He argues against an agenda-based approach to psychotherapeutic treatment that is biased toward encouraging forgiveness and seeing it as an indispensable component of psychological health. If forgiveness is to function as a viable psychological construct with real healing potential in human relationships, psychoanalysts must work to free it from its moralistic and religious moorings.}, language = {en} }