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Koncepcja religii w pismach Ericha Fromma [The Concept of Religion in the Writings of Erich Fromm]
(1994)
Alien3
(1994)
Edvard Munch: A Life in Art
(1994)
Can the Impossible Profession Help the Impossible Patient – Is Freud Relevant in the South Bronx?
(1994)
Review Malcolm Bowie: Lacan
(1994)
Since the middle of this century, countertransference theory has steadily evolved to a point where we now find abundant references in our literature involving extremely useful self-disclosive examinations of a broad spectrum of potentially disruptive countertransference responses. Our collective attitude of openness and even excitement at the potential usefulness of such responses in deepening our understanding of our patients, ourselves, and the nature of our work has been profoundly beneficial. And yet despite our advances from the early days of psychoanalysis when powerful countertransference was viewed strictly as an impediment, an atmosphere of disapproval and dread continues to pervade the phenomenon of erotic countertransference, which in turn contributes ironically to the alarming incidence of sexual abuse of patients by therapists of every orientation and level of experience. The roots of our collective intolerance are explored, beginning with Breuer's treatment of Anna O and Jung's entanglement with Sabina Spielrein. Case material is presented involving erotic countertransference, and a position is taken regarding future directions that are vital to our profession.
This paper proposes a conceptual and clinical integration of contemporary psychoanalytic theories that emphasize the repetitive dimension of the transference (the repeated relationship) and those that stress the developmental or selfobject dimension (the needed relationship). Such an integration is accomplished by enlarging our conception of the communicative matrix that includes transference, projective identification, and countertransference. It is suggested that patients actively seek to enlist the therapist both in old pathogenic interactional scenarios and in new therapeutically needed relational configurations. Thus, contrary to recent criticisms of the developmental paradigm, the therapist does not have to look outside the transference-countertransference matrix for a model of the developmentally needed relationship: the patient communicates it through a creative, proactive form of projective identification. The work of Racker, Sandier, Winnicott, Bollas, and various self psychologists is reviewed and found to support this reconceptualization. The paper then examines the theory of analytic cure in the light of this integrated perspective. It is suggested that the most compelling theories take into account the analyst's >embeddedness< in the transference – countertransference while recognizing the importance of the analyst's >mastering the countertransference< as the basis for providing a new developmental experience. The therapeutic models of Racker, Bollas, and Newman are described as exemplary in this regard.
Whenever the subject is explicitly addressed, all analysts agree that empathic perception is an attitude one takes toward making observations, not a privileged means of perception. Furthermore, analysts seem to agree that observations made with an empathic intention are interpretations like any other observations. Empathy is not a conduit to the patient's inner life. But despite these points of consensus, it often seems to be implied in the psychoanalytic literature, usually unintentionally, that empathy is a privileged means of knowing another person. This undercurrent is sometimes present even in the work of theorists who simultaneously state their opposition to this very point of view. In this paper, after presenting an example from the literature of this kind of contradiction, I, basing my argument in hermeneutics, offer the view that all observation, inside and outside psychoanalysis, is interpretation. Then, turning to the three papers of the symposium individually, I take the perspective that in one way or another they all portray empathic perception as a privileged means of observation. These portrayals are examples of the unconscious politics of theory.
This paper examines the effect patient transferences have on the analyst and on the analyst's stance in treatment. The paper suggests that certain features of what are commonly considered central to a >classical< psychoanalytic stance may derive from not fully understood dynamics of the transference situation and may be neither necessary nor useful aspects of technique. A comprehensive, developmental conception of transference as a general human endowment is proposed as a way of viewing the impact of transference in the treatment situation. The adaptive function of adolescent regression and adolescent developmental transference is examined as a paradigm for all transferences, both in and outside treatment. In this >adaptive< perspective, transference is understood not simply as a misconstrual of a new relationship on the basis of old struggles. Rather, transference is seen as an effort to bring to bear as much of one's own most vital interests, as they have been shaped developmentally, and to compel the object to provide what one deeply hopes to have gratified. This perspective provides a basis for understanding the powerful influence that the urgent transferences of patients have on therapists, who are not immune to some degree of enactment in response. Analysts may try, through a stereotyped treatment approach, to avoid the impact of the transference and the powerful vortex of feelings generated by it. Maintaining an adaptive view of transference, however, may enable the analyst to use his or her >countertransference< response to further the analytic work.
This paper addresses some assumptions underlying psychoanalytic theories. It uses Rorty's concepts of philosophy and poetry to capture distinctions: the former a search for universal truths and the latter an emphasis on meanings in discourse. Freud's embeddedness in 19th-century positivism organized his metatheorical assumptions, while some object relational theorists are inclined toward a con-structivist point of view. For many theoreticians these two vantage points overlap others insist on a sundering of the two. I maintain that polarizing these two positions is not useful. Both philosophical stances ask different kinds of questions and both types of questions are important for a general as well as clinical theory of psychoanalysis.
The Oedipus Complex: Some Observations and Questions Regarding Its Validity and Universal Existence
(1994)
The Crucial and Difficult Role of the Psychotherapist in the Treatment of the HIV-Positive Patient
(1994)
Shame colors other feelings and perceptions about the self. From reflections about his own personal experiences and observations regarding a particular manic-depressive patient, the author discusses the evolution of his current clinical and theoretical understanding of shame. The framework of analytic self psychology is offered as a particularly useful perspective from which to consider shame, with its emphasis on the concept of selfobject to account both for shame's development (through selfobject misattunement and unresponsive-ness) and for its amelioration (through empathic mirroring, idealization, and twinning). A developmental sequence for shame is advanced reflecting limitations in selfobject responsiveness, and problems are noted in the ability of current self psychology theory to fully account for the alleviation of shame. The self plays its part in the construction of those selfobjects needed to ease shame, representing the >one-and-a-half-person psychology< of the paper's subtitle. Finally, the important role of countertransference shame is considered through a clinical example of therapist disclosure of his own shame to his patient, utilized in order to repair an interrupted kinship selfobject transference.
Psychoanalysis and Women's Experiences of >Coming Out<: The Necessity of Becoming a >Bee Charmer<
(1994)
My thesis is that the rule of abstinence, which is currently taught in technique seminars and defended as integral to developing a psychoanalytic process, in fact, interferes with psychoanalysis and should be replaced with the concept of optimal provision. The rule did not accomplish Freud's original aim for it, which was to be the motivating force impelling the patient to work analytically. Not only is it unnecessary, but it has been detrimental: skewing, disrupting, and prolonging analysis. In addition, much is not analyzed that could have been except for the rule of abstinence, which essentially closes off whole areas from analysis. Despite the emphasis on deprivation or non-gratification, there is much provision and gratification in traditional analysis, as well as in all theoretical models of analysis. I demonstrate that unintended gratifications or provisions are supplied in even the most classical analysis. I review the literature and show that we are talking about degrees of provision, gratification, or both all the time. Logically, then, we should determine what is the optimal provision, that is, that which facilitates and does not obstruct the analysis. Much clinical material is presented to illustrate provisions that facilitate the analysis and seeming-provisions that obstruct. We should abandon the rule of abstinence and should replace it with the concept of optimal provision.
The Masked Superhero
(1994)
Considering intersubjective psychoanalysis on its own terms response to Cooper's further remarks
(1994)
Hans Loewald (1980) once made the distinction between ghosts and ancestors, the former always wanting to return to the land of the living, the latter being able to rest in peace and live forth through their progeny in the present generation. Extending this metaphor, Stephen Mitchell (1991) has noted that the intellectual integrity and vitality of psychoanalysis depends on our shifting our view of Freud from an unburied ghost who haunts us to an honored ancestor. I argue that perhaps nowhere is Freud's enduring presence greater than in psychoanalytic perspectives on religion, and it is often as an unburied ghost. Ongoing change in psychoanalytic theory, however, affords respectful amendment to his work in a way that allows Freud to be a dearly honored ancestor from whom we are all psychoanalytic descendents. Three developments in psychoanalytic theory have special implication for the analysis of religious experience. These areas of change pertain to contemporary understanding of illusion, narrative, and social constructivism. I offer in conclusion seven points for further consideration.
An interpretive strategy, based on current infant research, is described that facilitates engagement with emotionally constricted patients who appear to form little attachment to their analysts. Relevant research is reviewed and clinical material is presented to illustrate the presence of highly restrictive early modes of self- and mutual regulation organized in childhood and minimally transformed through later experience. These nonverbal presymbolic forms of relating constitute adult versions of the early interaction structures that protected the infant from trauma and continue to be used by patients to avoid retraumatization. How these configurations appear in the transference and can be reorganized in the analytic relationship is also detailed.
Clinton and the Empty Self
(1994)
The analyst's countertransference feelings of love, particularly sexual love, have been subject to minimal examination in the literature. In this era of expanding psychoanalytical models, it appears that some theories of therapeutic action lend themselves more to addressing such themes than do others. There is always considerable overlap among psychoanalytic models, although there are nonetheless some clear differences in the way countertransference affect is experienced, filtered, and utilized.
The problem of the Alien: emotional mastery or emotional fascism in contemporary film production
(1994)
Empathy has come to occupy a central place in much discourse on psychoanalytic theory and practice. Since empathy is fundamental to how data are obtained and interpreted within psychoanalysis, it is essential to understand its relationship to the assumptions underlying any psychoanalytic epistemology. This paper examines some of the epistemological issues involved in Kohut's view of empathy as a mode of inquiry. The Kohutian view of empathy is contrasted with the understanding of empathy employed by Harry Stack Sullivan and the epistemology of American pragmatism. The epistemology inherent in empathy as a mode of inquiry is then clarified in relation to hermeneutics, phenomenology, structuralism, and deconstruction. The paper concludes with a case example to illustrate the clinical implications of the particular meaning of empathy as a mode of inquiry.
The discussant finds himself in essential agreement with the author's proposed revision of psychoanalytic theory and practice to allow for the importance of the concept of provisions and to lessen the privileged position of abstinence. The discussant's aim is to place the author's innovative concept within the older as well as the newer canons of psychoanalysis by synoptically reviewing some of the constraints that earlier Zeitgeists have imposed on it. Further, the discussant attempts to place the author's theory in the perspective of other, hitherto undiscussed, but nevertheless vital aspects of psychoanalytic practice, e.g., its being like an improvisational passion play in which patient and analyst must >know their roles< (supporting the rule of abstinence) but is also a humanistic enterprise for which the analyst, like a parent, must continually remain aware of the necessity for humanistic provisions, to say nothing of common, decent courtesy.
Previous clinical literature has indicated some ways in which crises in the life of an analyst, such as pregnancy, illness, or death of a loved one, can affect and alter the analytic space. In this paper, the effects on treatment of my second-trimester pregnancy difficulties and consequent pregnancy loss are explored. My experiences indicated that the experiences and reactions generated by this life crisis often provided the field in which the >knottiest< analytic issues between patient and analyst were confronted. To demonstrate this point, clinical material at three different periods over a three-year time span is presented. Two patients with negative reactions to my loss are discussed in detail. The early impact of my pregnancy difficulty on two other patients, for whom the crisis provided a new focal point in their treatment, is also discussed. Issues of self-disclosure are interwoven throughout.
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.