A group of psychoanalysts led the Seminario de Sociopsicoanálisis to broaden their clinical perspective gained through working with patients in the setting of a private practice. In this paper we describe participatory action research initiated by a community. We started by interviewing impoverished and economically disadvantaged children, first from a miner's village and later on from a center for children living in the streets. A study on Attachment and Social Character of mothers and children as well as the systematic appraisal of the unconscious motivations in the individual's responses to the Social Interpretative Questionnaire are presented. We strive to bring the findings of our social character studies back to the communities themselves. Our purpose is to support or foster possibilities for initiating participatory community-based action projects, aimed at transforming the quality of life and to confront the difficulties and obstacles that emerge on the path to change; furthermore we hope that our research will help to stimulate the development of childcare health policies.
Erich Fromms Einstellung gegenüber den abstrakten Wissenschaften wie der Ma-thematik erscheint uneinheitlich: einerseits hat er bekannt, abstraktes Denken falle ihm schwer, andererseits hat er Vertretern abstrakter naturwissenschaftlicher Theo-rien wie Einstein und Heisenberg eine revolutionäre Haltung attestiert. Tatsächlich lässt sich Fromms Kreativitätsbegriff auch für die Mathematik fruchtbar machen. Fromm fordert auf, die Dinge in ihrem >So-Sein< wahrzunehmen und darauf kritisch zu >antworten<, ein Verhalten, das die Bereitschaft zur Abstraktion mit einschließt. Der didaktisch bedeutsame >Siehe-Beweis< in der Mathematik ist damit ein Muster-fall dieses Frommschen Ansatzes. Zu Fromms ganzheitlichem Anspruch gehört seine von ihm auch gelebte Forderung an den Menschen, sich Konflikten zu stellen und so seinen Charakter zu entwickeln. Dies verweist auf einen speziellen Grund-zug mathematischen Denkens, nämlich das Bestreben in der Mathematik, sich über Normen hinwegzusetzen, wie es die Entdeckung der nichteuklidischen Geometrien im 19. Jahrhundert zeigt. Dieser prometheische Geist der Mathematik, der von Pädagogen oft übersehen wird, steht damit dem Frommschen Kreativitätsbegriff sehr nahe.
The History of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) in Latin America
(2009)
Sonia Gojman traces many contemporary innovations in psychoanalytic technique to Fromm's explicit humanistic approach to psychoanalysis. As Gojman notes, Fromm emphasized the need to know the patient from within (from >center to center<). This requires from the analyst an openness to use his own experience as a vehicle for understanding the patient. Fromm legitimized the patient's observer role in the analytic process, and he supported efforts to abandon a mythical neutrality in favor of adopting a role as an observant participant who affirms not only unconscious truths but also steps toward health. Gojman notes that these changes in technique--a term Fromm was reluctant to use since the stance he advocated was not simply a matter of the head but of the heart--are consistent with contemporary intersubjective approaches and with some of the positions advanced by Casement, Gill, and Mitchell, among others. Gojman also points out that in Fromm's discussion of technique in the Cuernavaca seminars, he repeatedly emphasized the analyst's unconventional attitude, his aliveness, his honesty, a profound interest in patients and their well-being. According to Fromm, these were all key ingredients to diminish the patient's resistance within the psychoanalytic process and increase the patient's confidence in the analyst. Gojman courageously looks into the realities of psychoanalytic institutes, where analysands are exposed to their therapist as teachers and colleagues in a variety of situations. This leaves training analysts in an extremely difficult position, >surrounded by analysands and former analysands as junior colleagues, creating situations of high-risk professional communication in groups ridden by all kinds of secrets and nonusable information.< Gojman proposes that rather than treat issues such as prestige and power in psychoanalytic institutes as nonexistent or useless sources of information, that the process be analyzed from the perspectives of the analyst and the analysand, each with different positions in the group structure. Needless to say, this effort is demanding for analyst and analysand alike, but may come as a relief >acknowledging our real participation and not struggling to conceal it.<
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(1997)