TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - Identification and >Traumatic Aloneness<: Reply to Commentaries by Berman and Bonomi JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 07 (1997), pp. 315-318. Y1 - 1997 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - Listening three frost poems JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 08 (1998), pp. 207-216. Y1 - 1998 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - On intimacy between men JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 09 (1999), pp. 001-029. N2 - In this essay, I argue that it is in the very process of establishing a personal relationship to psychoanalytic theory and to the profession that one becomes a psychoanalyst. If our identities as psychoanalysts are established through our relationships to the psychoanalytic community, and to the values and ideals established by this society and embodied in its theories and practices, then psychoanalysis itself functions as the Third to analysts’ dyadic relationships with their patients. Although contemporary psychoanalysis emphasizes the subjective, the intersubjective, and the unique relational matrix, the view presented here of the psychoanalytic relationship as always existing within the context of the psychoanalytic community and its history provides a context that allows us to place some (relatively objective) constraints on what we mean by psychoanalysis, and these restrictions are imposed not only by the individuals directly involved (subjectively) but by a wider set of forces, including not only contemporary influences, but the voices of history and tradition as well. Idiosyncratic, personal, and subjective factors (the romantic vision of psychoanalysis) must be continually counterbalanced by more general, objective, and impersonal considerations (a classicist vision), and, among the analyst's many professional responsibilities, one is to manage the polar tension between these forces. The analyst's only hope in managing this tension comes from the very fact that he or she can rely on the sustaining background of professional allegiances to theory and community, psychoanalytic values and beliefs. The exploration of a clinical vignette from the perspective of three different supervisors illustrates how the theoretical and the technical form a complex system of mutual influence with the personal, the subjective, and the intersubjective and how, in the teaching and practice of psychoanalysis, these factors need to be considered together as functioning in complex and often elusive ways. Y1 - 1999 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - On the Desymbolization of Psychoanalytic Metaphors of Gender: Commentary on Velleda C. Ceccoli's >Beyond Milk and the Good Breast: Reconfiguring the Maternal Function in Psychoanalytic Dyads< JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 09 (1999), pp. 069-072. Y1 - 1999 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - Plea for a measure of analytic objectivity. Commentary on Gerhardt and Stinson JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 09 (1999), pp. 441-443. Y1 - 1999 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - Reflections on White Racism JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 10 (2000), pp. 231-245. N2 - An essential principle of psychoanalytic practice is the maintenance of strict confidentiality, and yet the presentation and publication of psychoanalytic case histories necessitate considerable public disclosure of the lives of our patients. Inasmuch as psychoanalysis is a particularly frequent, intensive, and lengthy process, a report of the unfolding of an analysis necessarily entails considerable revelation concerning patients, their inner worlds, and their life circumstances. This use of confidential material raises innumerable ethical concerns, and psychoanalysis, with its unique emphasis on unconscious mental processes, also adds to the complexity of ethical considerations by demanding that we take unconscious factors into account. When we speak, for example, of >informed consent< as an ethical principle, we as psychoanalytic clinicians must grapple with the problem of whether to take a patient's manifest acquiescence at face value. This article explores such ethical considerations along with other ethical and clinical complications in the presentation of analytic material for professional purposes. Y1 - 2000 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - The embodied mind: Toward a relational perspective JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 13 (2003), pp. 259-273. N2 - This article examines the clinical and theoretical contributions of Stephen A. Mitchell. Relating his work to aspects of his character, it demonstrates a unifying theme in his life and work. Mitchell employed his methodological strategy both in navigating clinical stalemates and in his momentous theoretical breakthroughs. In working out theoretical entanglements, Mitchell first laid out before his readers two contrasting approaches to a problem and then showed how, by examining the problem from a different level of abstraction, one can find a third alternative reconciling the tension between the first two. Similarly, when dealing with therapeutic impasses, Mitchell learned to tolerate, sustain, and identify the entrapped states in which he found himself until he could free his imagination and gradually discover some third avenue along which to proceed. These methodological approaches were central to Mitchell's development of relational psychoanalysis. Y1 - 2003 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - The intersubjective approach. Commentary on michael tansey's >psychoanalytic expertise< (pd 2[3], 1992) JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 13 (2003), pp. 623-631. Y1 - 2003 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - Unconscious plans and unconscious conflict. Reply to commentary JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Vol. 15 (2005), pp. 433-446. N2 - In this commentary on Arnold Rothstein's >Compromise Formation Theory: An Intersubjective Dimension,< I address some of the limitations of compromise formation theory in addressing issues of intersubjectivity. Namely, compromise formation theory does not address intersubjectivity as a principal motivation it takes up mutual regulation but not mutual recognition or other aspects of intersubjectivity it does not place the intersubjective matrix at the center of clinical psychoanalytic understanding and it does not sufficiently examine clinical concerns regarding the patient's conflicts regarding intersubjective contact with the analyst. I then discuss Rothstein's clinical vignette in an effort to provide an alternative understanding of the therapeutic action of Rothstein's clinical interventions. Drawing on the work of the late Lloyd Silverman, I present an intersubjective explanation that highlights the analyst's compassionate understanding of the patient's conflicts and acceptance of the pleasure in the patient's impulses, achieved through the analyst's own personal and subjective struggles. Y1 - 2005 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis A1 - Fosshage, James L. T1 - Psychoanalysis and the urban poor JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 09 (1999), pp. 721-724. N2 - Psycho-Analysis may be said to have been born with the twentieth century for the publication in which it emerged before the world as something new – my Interpretation of Dreams – bears the date >1900< [Freud, 1924, p. 191]. Y1 - 1999 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - Free Association and Changing Models of Mind JF - The Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 18 (1990), pp. 439-459. Y1 - 1990 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - >Crunches,< >(K)nots,< and Double Binds – When What Isn't Happening Is the Most Important Thing: Commentary on Paper by Barbara Pizer JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 01 (1991), pp. 029-051. N2 - This article highlights the analysis of the patient's experience of the analyst's subjectivity in the psychoanalytic situation. Just as psychoanalytic theory has focused on the mother exclusively as the object of the infant's needs while ignoring the subjectivity of the mother, so, too, psychoanalysis has considered the analyst only as an object while neglecting the subjectivity of the analyst as the analyst is experienced by the patient. The analyst's subjectivity is an important element in the analytic situation, and the patient's experience of the analyst's subjectivity needs to be made conscious. Patients seek to connect to their analysts, to know them, to probe beneath their professional facade, and to reach their psychic centers much in the same way that children seek to connect to and penetrate their parents’ inner worlds. The exploration of the patient's experience of the analyst's subjectivity represents one underemphasized aspect of the analysis of transference, and it is an essential aspect of a detailed and thorough explication and articulation of the therapeutic relationship. The paper explores controversies regarding the analyst's self-disclosure and countertransference. Y1 - 1991 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - A relational model of inquiry and truth: The place of psychoanalysis in human conversation JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 02 (1992), pp. 181-190. Y1 - 1992 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - American Tensions: Commentary on Papers by Neil Altman and Rachael Peltz JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 02 (1992), pp. 475-507. N2 - This paper elaborates a >relational-perspectivist< view of interpretation as a complex intersubjective process that develops conjointly between patient and analyst. Interpretation is the principal process by which analysts position and reposition themselves interpersonally in relation to their patients, and in this sense interpretations contain aspects of the analyst's subjectivity that are made available for use by the patient. Inasmuch as the analyst has captured aspects of the patient's psychic life in a particular interpretation and insofar as the interpretation also expresses aspects of the analyst's subjectivity, interpretation is best thought of as the quintessential container and purveyor of intersubjectivity between patient and analyst. The paper defines two dimensions of the analytic process, symmetry-asymmetry, referring to the similarity or dissimilarity of the patient's and analyst's roles and functions in the analytic process, and mutuality-lack of mutuality, referring to how reciprocal the interaction and the experience of the interaction are. These two dimensions are used to examine the nature of the psychoanalytic process. Clinical illustrations are provided as points of departure for discussion. Y1 - 1992 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - Deconstructing difference: Gender, splitting, and transitional space JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 05 (1995), pp. 195-237. N2 - An important critique has been developing that questions the ways in which psychoanalytic theories have conceptualized gender and sexuality. Contemporary (postmodern) feminist theories and the work of gay and lesbian theorists have challenged the traditional psychoanalytic view of gender as formed primarily through fixed, unitary identifications. This paper reviews the classical concept of the primal scene and the Kleinian concept of the combined parent figure and recontextualizes these ideas within contemporary relational theory. The revised metaphor of an internalized primal scene challenges traditional notions of a unitary gender identity and lends support to the postmodern critique of the notion of a core or unified identity. This paper develops the idea that we need both a notion of gender identity and a notion of gender multiplicity more broadly, we need an emphasis on people both as unified, stable, cohesive subjects and as multiple, fragmented, and different from moment to moment. In line with the postmodern emphasis on deconstructing dichotomies, the paper emphasizes the deconstruction, or rather the psychoanalysis, of such polarized concepts as male-female, masculine – feminine, heterosexual – homosexual, father – mother, genital – pregenital, oedipal – preoedipal, identity – multiplicity, paranoid-schizoid-depressive position, drive theory – relational theory, and even patient – analyst. Y1 - 1995 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - Defense analysis in self psychology: A developmental view JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 05 (1995), pp. 249-255. Y1 - 1995 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - From ghosts to ancestors the psychoanalytic vision of Hans Loewald JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 06 (1996), pp. 591-597. Y1 - 1996 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - Book review. A meeting of minds: Mutuality in psychoanalysis. JF - Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Vol. 33 (1997), pp. 656-669. Y1 - 1997 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - Is It Okay to Breathe? Asserting Subjectivity in the Therapeutic Relationship JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 07 (1997), pp. 885-896. Y1 - 1997 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis A1 - Todorova, A. T1 - Publications of Stephen A. Mitchell. JF - Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Vol. 39 (2003), pp. 361-366. Y1 - 2003 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Aron, Lewis T1 - The Tree of Knowledge: Good and Evil. Conflicting Interpretations JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Vol. 15 (No. 5, 2005), pp. 681–707. Y1 - 2005 ER -