TY - JOUR A1 - Ávila, Alejandro T1 - The intersubjective: A core concept for psychoanalysis JF - International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 25 (No. 3, 2016), pp. 186-190. N2 - The history of psychoanalysis has developed along two main routes: metapsychological (drive theory) and relational. So-called >relational psychoanalysis< derives from the convergence of several traditions – interpersonal and sociocultural (Sullivan, Fromm), object relations theory (Fairbairn), self psychology (Kohut), and intersubjective systems theory (Stolorow, Atwood, Orange) – enriched along many decades by a variety of strong contributions from Ferenczi to independent thinkers such as Bion, Winnicott, Bowlby, Pichon Rivière, W. and M. Baranger, J. Sandler, Ogden, and Bollas, among many others. Facing its main controversies in terms of theory, present psychoanalysis evolves between heuristic versus hermeneutic, intrapsychic versus intersubjective, fantasy versus trauma, conflict versus deficit, and drives versus motivational systems. Controversies in technique have also evolved from a neutrality and abstinence model to an optimal provision and frustration model experienced in mutuality but ethically balanced. This paper displays the main concepts of the relational perspective, in which intersubjectivity is both a constitutive frame for human beings and the essential way for change. Developments from infant research and neuroscience – and the deep social and cultural changes facing twenty-first century societies – promote a new scene for today's psychoanalysis in convergence with these relational proposals. Y1 - 2016 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ávila, Alejandro A1 - Domínguez, Rosa T1 - Dreams and change processes in an ex-prostitute under relational psychoanalytic psychotherapy: Ferenczian and relational views JF - International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Abingdon (Routledge - Taylor and Francis) Vol. 23 (No. 1, 2014), pp. 23-29 N2 - This paper explores the change processes that took place in a woman, an ex-prostitute, in the context of psychotherapeutic treatment over a period of over three years. The treatment took place within a relational psychotherapeutic setting influenced by the ideas formulated by Sándor Ferenczi regarding trauma, as well as by his intense involvement with and commitment to his patients, as expressed in his Clinical Diary of 1932 (Ferenczi, 1988). Zoe, the current patient, was a woman born in Latin America who emigrated to Spain at the age of 28 and became trapped, for nearly a decade, in a mesh of prostitution networks. She eventually entered regular psychotherapeutic treatment at the age of 39. Her change process is an example of the mutual influence between the factors of resilience that characterized her and the opportunity for co-creation that the treatment signifies. The marks of the intense traumatic burden of Zoe's history and the rays of sunlight and hope that she is currently experiencing become intermingled in the dreams evoked and brought to the treatment setting. Zoe's capacity for resilience and the potential for founding self-object relations, ethically implied, that therapists can offer construct a scenario that brings back to life the essence of Ferenczi from 1932. Y1 - 2014 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ávila Espada, Alejandro T1 - One hundred years of psychotherapy and fifty years of clinical practice: Reflections of a psychotherapist and questions for psychoanalysis (https://doi.org/10.1080/0803706X.2023.2183864) JF - International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 32 (No. 3, 2023), pp. 203-211. N2 - Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy have evolved deeply over the past half century. This paper shows some the changes I have witnessed in them, and the challenges we face in this change of era, at the edge of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Some the challenges are examined: knowing how to transmit in our daily practice the essential relationality of the human being; the relational essence of the process of change through psychotherapy; and a review of our contribution to our institutions being genuinely relational, that is, that we take more care of the space that the Other can inhabit than of preserving our own. We need hope: the hope to change and (again) be people, in connection with others, regaining confidence and being able to be ourself (to be ourselves with others). That is the meaning of our activity, what it is to be a psychoanalyst/psychotherapist today. Y1 - 2023 ER -