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One psychoanalysis or two?
(2016)
Departing from the debate between Julia Kristeva and Daniel Stern that produced a predictably intense polemic, the author tries to conceptualize the very different models of psychoanalysis that emerge. On the basis of the irreducibility between natural sciences and social sciences, these models are shown. They are situated in a historical context, paying attention to the epistemological debates that have accompanied psychoanalysis for many years. Differences are exemplified through the exploration of Kristeva's and Stern's perspectives about the functions of the mother figure. The debate between Stern and Kristeva took place in the context of the 2010 IFPS Forum.
The vicissitudes of an analytic psychotherapy process with a 6-year-old girl who had suffered since birth from severe epileptic seizures, with consequent general impairment of her development, are exposed and discussed. It is proposed that an oneiric vertex be adopted to better understand the full interplay between the patient's traumatic experience and the sessions’ flow. The therapist's ability to use his reverie in order to learn the patient's language behind the words – to resonate with his patient – is proposed as a key aspect in the process of transforming the traumatic experience of uncontainable threatening emotions. Using more than words, the analytic process unfolds gradually both through the analyst's availability to engage in a deep internal working-through of the experience of being with the patient, and from his capacity to learn from the patient's experience.
Emma Eckstein's circumcision trauma has been powerfully suppressed, denied, and dissociated from the history of the origins of psychoanalysis. Even though Freud did not categorize it as a trauma, he was deeply impacted by it in the period when he provided psychoanalysis with his foundation. Despite Freud's intellectual erasure of the trauma that Emma experienced, her >cut< never ceased to unconsciously break through Freud's fantasies and discourse, haunting the psychoanalytic building as a veritable ghost. Sándor Ferenczi became the recipient of what Freud could not consider in his own mind, and his revision of the >Bausteine< (building blocks) of psychoanalysis featured an attempt to heal the split embedded in the foundation of psychoanalysis.
Reflecting in the present paper on the legitimacy of a work to collect together the ideas, concepts, and terms of Sándor Ferenczi, the author will explore, through a series of questions and answers, the following points: why it is so clear-cut that Ferenczi should be included in the company of those great psychoanalytic authors who might be deemed entitled to such a study; whether Ferenczi possessed his own language, and if this was the case, when and how he acquired it; what we mean when we refer to Ferenczi’s idiomatic language, and how we can profitably identify this language and bring it into focus; how, in practice, such a text should be organized; what its audience and function would be; and how it would be used by readers and students of Ferenczi.
Recalling his own participation in a daily group seminar with Rosenfeld and taking this experience as his starting point, the Author describes and discusses the later Rosenfeld’s approach to working with severely disturbed narcissistic patients. Through a detailed analysis of a supervision of a session with a psychotic patient, this paper essentially highlights how important it is to construct a (cognitive and affective) basic common ground in order to subsequently proceed to interpretations of transference. In particular, the paper brings to light those elements allowing the creation of that basic cognitive-affective ground that is necessary to profitably (in a manner useful to the patient) connect the relational events narrated and acted by the patient with the hic et nunc of analytic interaction.
This paper explores paranoid and depressive trends in a patient who was abused as a child. It discusses how each parent affected the patient's way of coping with life's challenges. In this context, paranoia is described as a set of defenses against the father's shocking intrusions, while the mother's impact shows itself in the patient's depressive tendencies.
This paper presents the four-year forensic outpatient treatment of a male patient in his mid-30s who was diagnosed with a schizoaffective disorder and had previously been held on unlimited detention due to several assaults. At the beginning, several coercive measures had to be taken. Over time, both the therapeutic alliance and the patient's psychic structure improved remarkably. The patient explained at the end of therapy that, despite being forced into treatment, he also felt recognized and held while he had been in deep distress. Several explanations of how coercion and the therapeutic process may correlate are discussed: essentially, the complex and dialectical relationships between inner and outer reality, therapeutic space, and social structures are reflected. Cautiously but consistently introducing outer reality as well as validating the patient's realistic perceptions contributed to strengthening his ego functions.
This paper presents the results of an inquiry into the relationship between changes in a patient's associations and manifest and latent contents of repetitive dreams, and his progress in the psychoanalytic process. The patient's repetitive dreams were studied for a whole year by way of a categorical analysis of 43 dreams and associations, and the four quarters of the treatment were compared. After analyzing the information on all the repetitive dreams, therapeutic progress was identified in the fourth and last quarter of the treatment. This research shows that repetitive dreams are a useful tool to assess patients’ achievements in the psychoanalytic process.
My relationship to the IFP in the context of the original construction of our identity as a journal
(2016)
The author presents the context within which the editorial approach of the International Forum of Psychoanalysis was originally constructed, and the identity of its editorial board established, most of whose phases he was personally able to participate in. Particularly important was the role of the founding editor, Jan Stensson, in establishing not only the network sustaining the journal, its aims, and its working routines, but also the analytic methodology of reciprocal and careful listening, which makes our work as members of the editorial board a highly worthwhile professional experience. This is the legacy that the author further developed in his work with Jan Stensson's successor, Christer Sjödin (2007–2014), and that he shares with the new coeditor-in-chief, Grigoris Maniadakis.
Following the tracks of the pioneers of the psychoanalysis of schizophrenia, who discovered the singularity of transference in such cases and, during the wars, among traumatized soldiers, we came to the conclusion that trauma and psychosis belong to the same field of destruction of the symbolic order, that is, an area of death, where time stops, where there is no other, except for a ruthless agency that erases truth and trust. In that field, patient and analyst are co-researchers, exploring and challenging the possible existence of a reliable other as a positive outcome. Such an event >happens in a few sessions< – as described by the late Martin Cooperman, psychoanalyst at the Austen Riggs Center and veteran of the Pacific wars – >but it takes many years to get there.< We will give examples of some critical sessions, when time starts to flow again. They take place at the crossroad of the patient's and of the analyst's story with the catastrophes of History.
In this paper, the author attempts to shed some light on Herbert Rosenfeld’s thought and his way of working when was in Italy during 1978–1985. In particular, the author would like to show, in a sketchy way, the evolution of his thought, with specific regard for the new way in which he looked at clinical practice at that time. In the author’s opinion, the Rosenfeld that he and his group met and got to know in Italy was able to open new horizons in clinical practice, implicitly questioning some of his own or his circle’s previous viewpoints.
In connection with a conference in memory of Herbert Rosenfeld in 2014 in his home town of Nuremberg, from which he had to flee in 1935, the author did some research on the work of this outstanding, later British, psychoanalyst in Germany. The first results are presented here. How the first links came about remains unclear, but a few of his articles were published in German from 1955, and in the 1970s he held occasional seminars in Munich. His contacts with colleagues from the German Psychoanalytic Association (DPV) at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s (until his death in 1986), especially through a supervision group he led, seem, however, to have been the most influential ones. Rosenfeld transmitted a particularly >experience-near< approach to the patient, which also acknowledged and took seriously (self) destructive elements in the transference and countertransference. Over the following years and decades, a number of colleagues wished to deepen this approach. How this line was further developed is illustrated by outlining Gottfried Appy’s clinical description of an intrusive speechlessness. Rosenfeld’s ideas on the pernicious effect of idealizing destructive elements are especially stressed, as they contributed to thinking about the entanglements with Nazi Germany and in addition are still useful in analytic practice, out of which they were developed.
The teaching of psychoanalysis encompasses a wide array of educational stages, from undergraduate students to psychoanalytic candidates and lifelong training for professionals. Papers published in psychoanalytic journals play a fundamental role in teaching tasks. The historical separation of psychoanalytic practice from the research community and the university probably relates to the relative lack of empirical investigation and the contested status of research in general within the psychoanalytic community. In addition, there is not enough debate among different schools and orientations, making it very unlikely that creative solutions to theoretical and practical discussions will be found. Related to this, there seems to be a worrying deficit of recent references in psychoanalytic papers compared with general psychiatric journals or medical publications. This reflects a dangerous attitude of not paying attention to contemporary writers within our own field. Reasons behind this might be fear of confrontation with other colleagues, loyalty to our own dogmas and clinical practices, a system of training that promotes continuity, and even organizational structures that sustain this state of things. A renewed attention to research in psychoanalysis (conceptual, empirical, clinical-observational, etc.) and establishing ties to academic environments in the fields of natural and human sciences might improve this situation and offer a path towards collective theoretical and clinical development.
Today, there are two ways of conceiving psychoanalysis, a classical one focused on the search for truth within the internal world of the patient, and a contemporary one perceiving the patient–therapist relationship as the axis of exploration. Rorty's criterion, which divides disciplines into either truth-based or solidarity-based, may be applied to this dichotomy. These conflicting positions come from two different historical periods: the Enlightenment and the contemporary world. They inhabit a sterile environment without theoretical discussion or comparison. The Renaissance relocated man at the centre of creation and urged him to seek encounters with others as well as with the truth concealed in nature. Possibly, these elements of truth and solidarity, initially designed as complementary, integrative, and nonconflicting, can be found in the work of some psychoanalysts, specifically in Otto Kernberg's proposals. Kernberg makes a creative integration of object relations theory, especially in its Kleinian approach, and ego psychology. In addition, Kernberg's consideration of affects as key elements of the human's internal world reflects a third psychoanalytical >way,< exposing the centrality of relational experiences from the earliest stages of life, alongside constitutional drive forces that link us to our biological make-up and determine much of our inner world and behaviour.
Extreme trauma in a polluted area: Bonds and relational transformations in an Italian community
(2016)
In the community of Casale Monferrato, exposure to asbestos has led to an extremely traumatic situation that has encompassed cancer and death and affected a variety of social and environmental aspects of both individuals and the community. When an entire community is severely traumatized, psychoanalytic group therapy seems to be the most suitable therapeutic setting: it allows for the historization of the event and the creation of multiple narratives of somatopsychic suffering, producing a transformative effect on nonmentalized emotional aggregates. Making reference to clinical material, I will show how the possibility of sharing, with other minds, the meaning of the trauma also brought into the field each participant's vital aspects, possibly not very intense in each individual but consistently present in the functioning of the mind of the group. I will also illustrate how this led to the development of a new and more mature psychic asset, with which painful and deadly experiences connected to the trauma could be faced.
The good results obtained with the long-term psychoanalysis of neurotic and personality disorder patients on a outpatient basis have not been paralleled by good results for severe psychotic patients treated on an inpatient basis. However, psychoanalytic thinking and training personnel in this remains an essential tool in institutions, both for the maintenance of a therapeutic milieu and for understanding and improving the work of the therapeutic teams. On the other hand, psychoanalytically oriented group psychotherapy is a basic therapeutic tool in short-term and long-term hospitalization units for psychiatric patients. The well-known experiences of therapeutic communities, today unduly neglected, are an example of its efficacy. We have reported our experience with several controlled group programs that have been underway since 1975 in Bilbao, Barcelona, and Geneva for patients with severe psychiatric disorders in short-term and long-term inpatient and outpatient clinics. The results have been positive from both a clinical and an organizational point of view. A special ward atmosphere develops which is unlike that seen in other units run using different approaches.
This article draws on the early work of Erich Fromm. In Escape from Freedom Fromm (1969 [1941]) directly addressed the psychological mechanisms of escape modern individuals employ to protect themselves from feelings of ontological insecurity and existential estrangement. The article builds on Fromm’s analysis by discussing the significance of his escape mechanisms for understanding the dynamic psychological attractions of identifying with entitative groups. Fromm’s work will be discussed in relation to Hogg’s recent work on uncertainty-identity theory. The aim of the article is to examine the advantages of combining Fromm’s psychoanalytic analysis with Hogg’s uncertainty-identity theory and to highlight the potential this approach has for understanding why groups engage in violent and destructive behaviour.
This article retraces the long winding path followed by important documents on and by Freud and Ferenczi, first crossing the European continent in the flames of war and other horrors, and later being hosted by several cities. Eventually, after Judith Dupont's gift of her Paris archives to the Freud Museum in London in 2013, the collection of papers donated by Enid Balint to the custody of this author and kept for two decades in Geneva was finally deposited in the Archives of the British Psychoanalytical Society, also in London. Some other details and anecdotes of this long trip are also evoked.
In this article, I analyze controversial humor and argue that the concept of disobedience is of central importance when evaluating, for instance, harsh or potentially hurtful jokes. Following social critic Erich Fromm (1900– 1980) I claim that disobedience is a dialectic concept: that is, it includes the possibilities both to affirm and to reject. This observation connects humor to other values, and pivotal is how humor is related to the question of what it means to be a human being. Through this insight, I argue that controversial humor may shock and be offensive, or it can be amusing and even have a cathartic effect. In the end, in evaluating humor it is necessary to analyze the values behind humor, that is, what humor obeys and what it disobeys.
In this article we argue that freedom of speech should be understood as a social freedom. In the public discussion after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, it has often been understood as an absolute right to say anything – to offend, to make a fool of others and of oneself, and to express any opinion regardless of the consequences. We challenge this view and propose that advocating freedom of speech without understanding its social foundations is misleading and counterproductive. Based on the critical social theories of Erich Fromm, Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth, we show that there is an alternative tradition in which freedom is fundamentally rooted in social relations and therefore requires respect for others. We argue that interpreting freedom of speech as a social freedom avoids some of the problems apparent in current discussions. In addition, our position has significant practical consequences on how humour and insults should be understood.
This article is the third in a series of four articles scheduled for publication in this journal. In the first article (Kapustin, 2015a) I proposed a description of a new so-called existential criterion of normal and abnormal personality that is implicitly present in the works of Erich Fromm. According to this criterion, normal and abnormal personalities are determined, first, by special features of the content of their position regarding existential dichotomies that are natural to human beings and, second, by particular aspects of the formation of this position. Such dichotomies, entitatively existent in all human life, are inherent, two-alternative contradictions. The position of a normal personality in its content orients a person toward a contradictious predetermination of life in the form of existential dichotomies and necessitates a search for compromise in resolving these dichotomies. This position is created on a rational basis with the person’s active participation. The position of an abnormal personality in its content subjectively denies a contradictious predetermination of life in the form of existential dichotomies and orients a person toward a consistent, noncompetitive, and, as a consequence, one-sided way of life that doesn’t include self-determination. This position is imposed by other people on an irrational basis. Abnormality of personality interpreted like that is one of the most important factors influencing the development of various kinds of psychological problems and mental disorders – primarily, neurosis. In the second article (Kapustin, 2015b) I showed that this criterion is also implicitly present in the personality theories of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler, although in more specific cases. In the current work I prove that this criterion is also present in the personality theories of Carl Jung and Carl Rogers, where it is implicitly stated in a more specific way. In the final article I will show that this criterion is also implicitly present in the personality theory of Viktor Frankl.
The present paper uses the conceptual framework first introduced by Erich Fromm in Escape from Freedom (1941) to draw parallels between how Germans came to embrace authoritarianism and totalitarianism in the 20th Century and how Americans have come to entertain authoritarian remedies in the 21st Century. Erich Fromm’s (1941) seminal conceptualization of negative and positive freedom are relevant today to understand the expansion of the internet and calls for privacy protections and privacy rights. A vicious cycle of negative freedom chasing has emerged in post-Great Recession and post-war America. Alternatively, valuing positive freedom can offer a real and long term solution to external threats to both individual freedom and social order (Fromm, 1941). A global social movement revolving around “privacy rights” has emerged in the 21st Century. It is rapidly becoming a lightning rod for past social movements in the 20th Century.
In its broadest sense, hegemony is defined as a set of agreed ideologies practiced by prominent regimes and governments which influences people’s minds. One of the practices which can be observed in most societies is the exclusion and rejection of homosexuals of their fundamental rights as humans. As such, the issue will be magnified in this paper through a satirical play written by Larry Kramer, entitled >The Normal Heart<. Parallel with the dominant hegemony, the homosexual characters in the play are mistreated and isolated within their own society. To retaliate, these characters consider themselves as victims and intend to counter the situation by masochism. However, the attempt seems to backfire and reify the preexisting hegemony. As such, this paper explores >The Normal Heart< in light of Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony as well as Erich Fromm’s masochism. To further specify, the paper examines the homosexual characters – their victimization and their fight against the dominant ideologies and how it all leads to their estrangement within the society.
Low-tech is an important, but at the same time largely underestimated movement of contemporary architecture. The first part of this paper attempts to discuss the characteristics of this phenomenon in the context of the grand ideas of Modernism and demonstrate how important it is to define it. The existing definitions of low-tech presented in the second part of the article bear a significant downside as they only focus on the physical aspects of this movement, i.e. materials and methods of construction. The third part of the paper suggests an alternative definition which allows extending research to include a psychological perspective onto the movement and incorporates the motivation of the creators and users of low-tech architecture. Based on the case study of Paulina Wojciechowska’s work and the newly proposed definition combined with a model based on the psychological theory developed by Erich Fromm, the paper attempts to introduce a narrative that reveals more about low-tech than even the most detailed description of physical materials and methods of construction.
To resurrect and revalorize the tradition of the early Frankfurt School, whose of Marxist-Hegelian dialectical approach to understanding the societal conditions of its emergence -- post WWI Germany, the rise of fascism, New Deal politics, the defeat of fascism and the subsequent rise of consumer society – remains relevant to studying present circumstances, stressing the cultural dimension of capitalism, the proliferation of alienation, ideology and mass media, and, finally, the nature of the society-character/subjectivity nexus.
Sabina Spielrein's life events became known to posterity through a private correspondence with Freud and Jung, and through her diaries. Based on a misinterpretation of the documents, a myth, a fiction, was created about an alleged sexual affair with Jung and a case of misconduct during treatment. Another myth was that her relationship with Jung was a cause of the historic break-up between Freud and Jung. The biographical facts described by the author in a number of publications show that her treatment ended when she left the hospital to become Jung's student in the medical school, a situation with its own ethical rules. Furthermore, the alleged >scandal< was no public matter: it turned out to be no more than a personal quarrel. Before, during, and after that turbulent episode, Spielrein and Jung maintained a long and tender friendship and correspondence that included sharing creative ideas that enriched psychoanalysis. In these exchanges, a special role was played by the myth of Siegfried and other themes in Wagner's operas.
The aim of this paper is to explore certain aspects of reading as a psychic activity, focussing on editorial reading of psychoanalytic texts. The author puts stress on container–contained aspects of the reader–text–author relationship. The efficiency (or failure) of a text as container is more or less to be sought in its form and its >readability.< Concerning psychoanalytic texts, the editorial reader has to function as a container for the author's primitive and/or Oedipal anxieties, a process necessary for the evaluation and/or the potential transformation of a text; moreover, the psychoanalytic journal as a whole, through the linking processes it establishes between readers and authors, in the psychoanalytic community, can be regarded as the third object of a commensal container–contained relationship.
Madness is a crucial theme in the Beasts’ literature and life. This article distinguishes between individual and social madness and shows their influence on the Beats, using the ideas of Erich Fromm, Michel Foucault and many others and also using the Beats’ own works and ideas. The focus is of course more on Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac. The Beats did not adjust themselves to society because they believed that American society was so irrational and mad that it brutally suppressed their individuality, repressed their natural desires, and forced them to consider themselves mad just because of lack of adjustment. As opposed to those who regard lack of adjustment as the cause of individual madness, there are others who enunciate that the individual is not to blame but society which is inattentive to individuals’ potentialities and does not adjust itself to their needs and aspirations.
The neoliberal character rests on the credo—>There is no alternative.< There is no alternative to deregulation, free trade, individual entrepreneurship, and competition. This is believed by economists and intellectuals as the only way for humanity to be liberated from the feudal past. It is argued that this new economic liberalism reclaims the lost humanity of man. It is therefore through neoliberal perspectives that freedom and human creativity are realized. There is no other way but to engross oneself in this economic mainstream as transnational companies, through the help of IMF and the WB, continuously occupy the social sphere. Economically, as individuals adapt to this capitalist mainstream, they assimilate their environment in accordance to the character matrix predominantly enforced by neoliberal apologists. Consequently, human potentialities are being absorbed into a system controlled by the very socio-economic apparatuses of modern society. Human reason becomes its very instrument as it is refashioned into a reified system of thinking. Human consciousness is captured in a single dimensional space propagated by this liberal economy. Individual growth, creativity, spontaneity, and productivity are all incorporated and hobbled in order to transmit the structures of neoliberal paradigm.
Margaret Widdemer's >The Watcher< tells about how the watcher has wonderful love to her beloved. The purpose of this study is to analyze the intrinsic elements of the poem and the kind of love in the poem. The author uses psychological approach to prove that the love in this poem is between mother and her children based on Erich Fromm's theory of love. The author uses library research in her study for collecting the data. The author obtained the data and information related to the object from the books and internet source. The result of this study shows that the poem talks about the love of mother to her children. It can be categorized into motherly love.
The authors present a materialist analysis of the effects of neoliberalism in education. Specifically, they contend that neoliberalism is a form of cultural invasion that begets necrophilia. Neoliberalism is necrophilous in promoting a cultural desire to fix fluid systems and processes. Such desire manufactures both individuals known and culturally felt experiences of alienation which are, it is argued, symptomatic of an imperialist nostalgia that permeates educational policy and practice. The authors point to >unschooling in schools< as a mechanism for resisting the necrophilous tendencies of contemporary formations of education.
This article examines the sociology, psychological thinker and analyzer of Erich Fromm’s work of to have or to be and its relevance to the ICT implementation policy in education. Many previous researches that have been conducted by many researchers in regard with ICT implementation policy whether in developed or underdeveloped countries, western to east, they put the blame on teachers’ capacity with any kinds of pitfalls, ranging from lack of confidence to lack of skill of ICT use. Whilst in larger scale of society capacity; central and local education authorities, and school as well to be blamed by researchers as lack of support from them, whether in form of facilities, motivation, professional development until lack of partnership and policy support. Therefore, this conceptual paper tries to see this phenomenon from other angle of Erich Fromm’s analysis of >To Have or To Be?<
In his 1918 paper >Lines of advance in psychoanalytic therapy,< Freud suggested that psychoanalysis should reach out to the masses on a larger scale. >We need to alloy the pure gold of analysis with the copper of direct suggestion,< he noted. Time has proven this assertion to be true. As Freud had anticipated, the psychoanalytic technique has left doctors’ offices to enter a number of different areas: from hospital and state mental health centers to clinics, social work organizations, and nongovernmental health institutions. Moreover, some authors, following the paths established by Freud, have conceptually enriched psychoanalytic theory and eventually achieved a voice of their own. Hence, one might wonder whether today, in the early twenty-first century, >pure gold< psychoanalysis exists, whether there is a psychoanalyst who, with uncontaminated theories, is conceptually pure gold, the owner of the truth. This paper tries to find the common denominator of current theories of psychoanalysis through the analysis of the different meanings of psychoanalysis today. To do this, it has taken as a model the metaphor of a short story written by Raymond Carver entitled >What we talk about when we talk about love.< In that story, the partners in two marriages talk about the different meanings of the word >love.< Some years later, Gordon Lish, Carver's editor, admitted that he had retouched Carver’s original text to help its publication. This controversy allows us to consider unorthodox practices carried out by Freud that sometimes have been silenced in the pursuit of maintaining >the pure gold of psychoanalytic practice.<
My father, Herbert Rosenfeld
(2016)
This is the modified version of the powerpoint that Angela Rosenfeld, the elder daughter of Herbert Rosenfeld (1910–1986) – one of Melanie Klein's most important collaborators – presented in Nuremberg, his native town, on October 5, 2014, upon the invitation of the German Psychoanalytic Society (DPG). In it, Angela Rosenfeld reconstructs not only her father's main life events, but also her personal relationship to him and the family climate in which she grew up. The traumas brought about by Hitler's rise to power in 1933 are partly still reflected in the holes and/or open questions that the author herself became aware of while writing and presenting the paper – and which profoundly touched and moved her audience.
Based on our clinical experience with anorexia, we propose to distinguish two paradoxical aspects of this disorder. On the one hand, anorexia may serve as a shield and support to open up a space for subjectivity, promoting a separation from the mother. Eros is responsible for this defense of subjectivity and of the assumption of one's own wish. But the anorexic individual may, on the other hand, be subjected to the death drive and to the voice of a sadistic and ferocious superego that demands immediate obedience. The death drive, present in different combinations with Eros, is an obstacle to the work of the psychoanalyst.
Debussy attempted to conceal the stresses of his early life: his father leaving to fight in the Franco-Prussian War, his younger siblings being sent to live with an aunt, and Debussy remaining alone with his mother. His early-discovered musical talent provided him with a sense of continuity throughout his life. However, he felt his training at the Paris Conservatoire to be restrictive and rebelled against it in the musical style he developed. Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande gave him an opportunity to creatively depict these thwarted passions and his aversion to restriction.
>What is in the mind of the author?< >What is in the mind of the reviewer?< >What is in the mind of the reader?< >What is in mind of the teacher?< >What is in the in the mind of the publisher?< These themes were discussed in a panel: >“The psychoanalytical journal, writing and evaluation of psychoanalytical papers,< at the XVIII International Forum of the IFPS, held in Kaunas (Lithuania), in September 2014.
The field of social work is currently wrestling with a number of divergent theories and concepts as it seeks to discover ways of thinking about social issues, client worlds, and best practices. Yet many of those eclectically gathered theories are not aligned logically or philosophically. This has led to a disjointed, ad hoc, and disunited theoretical basis within the field that has, arguably, weakened its collective effectiveness, reputation, and impact. Erich Fromm (1900-1980), a German-born psychoanalyst and philosopher, offers a number of theoretical ideas, stances, and directions that may improve social work’s theoretical underpinnings and perhaps even provide some foundational elements useful for the creation of a unified theory of human functioning in the world. This article explores Fromm’s body of work with the intention of applying a selection of his ideas to social work theory, policy, and practice. Remedies to resolve the bifurcation of psyche-based and society-based theories are discussed. Following this is a presentation of Fromm’s concept of >social character< as well as implications for social work practice.
Psychoanalysis cannot distance itself from culture and its transformations. It cannot ignore cultural ideals, which each individual uniquely appropriates to produce identifications, find his place within the human community, express his desires, and manifest the suffering occasioned by each difficult experience. This article will try to demonstrate this necessity of taking culture into account by drawing on Lacan's approach, which is based on the lessons of Freud. The author emphasizes the fact that every culture has its >discontents,< which stem from the incompleteness at the very heart of human experience, and that our cultural constructions are therefore constantly being reworked. By doing so, she aims to cast a different perspective on the relationship between the psyche and culture, and bring out the inherent complexity of the now fashionable notion of the >decline of the father,< which is systematically used to explain the new symptoms and ills of modern society. By detecting this decline, by searching for the visible signs of this deficit, do we not instead end up creating them ourselves?
Extreme and complex traumatization represents a severe problem in today's world. Many traumatized individuals and their families live in difficult conditions in refugee camps, in shelters, and in exile. Treatment and rehabilitation approaches thus need to take social and cultural conditions into consideration. This paper will discuss how psychoanalytic therapy may be helpful for severely traumatized patients, as well as the mechanisms of change in the therapeutic process. It focuses on how traumatic experiences are actualized in the transference and bring the analyst into a situation where enactments inevitably occur. It will be shown how these processes may lead to a symbolization of nonsymbolized reminiscences of traumatic experiences. Psychoanalytic therapy with patient with complicated loss experiences will be analyzed, and some conclusions based on this and others researched therapies will be discussed. The advantages of working with trauma-related material in the transference will be considered.
The author analyzes the temporal dimension of depression by making reference to one of the clinical cases he treated and re-examining a clinical case analyzed by Edith Jacobson. According to the result of his observations, the developmental psychodynamics of a depressive state normally appears to take place in two distinct phases: a first narcissistic loss, which gives rise to an integrative conflict and to the formation of a certain identificatory structure, is later followed by a second narcissistic loss, which leads to the real depressive state. The two phases present a specific, intrinsic connection constituted by the implication of the same identificatory element of the self, recognition of which can favour a clinical work that more closely adheres to the deep dynamics of depression.
Psychoanalytic supervision in the new millennium. On pressing needs and impressing possibilities
(2016)
Having now completed its first century, psychoanalytic supervision has been and continues to be regarded as the cornerstone of psychoanalytic education; it is the primary means by which (1) psychoanalytic ideology becomes translated into practical product, and (2) budding analytic practitioners develop and grow in their therapeutic skills and professional identity. The supreme significance of supervision in contributing to the >making< of the competent psychoanalytic practitioner now seems a widely accepted given, even axiomatic. But as its second century gets underway, what have we learned from psychoanalytic supervision's first 100 years? What are its most pressing needs and, in turn, impressing possibilities at this time? And what needs to most change if psychoanalytic supervision is to most profitably advance in the years and decades ahead? In this paper, I would like to consider those questions, giving focus to five needs that seem to most require attention now: (1) making the practice of psychoanalytic treatment an increasingly competency-based, concretized learning affair; (2) enhancing the efficacy of supervisors through competency-based practice and training in psychoanalytic supervision; (3) more effectively incorporating existing technology and emerging technological advances into supervision and using them to enhance the psychoanalytic learning process; (4) better attending to matters of difference and diversity, and striving to seamlessly integrate them into the conceptualization and conduct of the psychoanalytic supervision experience; and (5) vigorously researching the psychoanalytic supervision process and working to establish an evidence base for supervisory practice.
Psychoanalysis as a natural science: Reconsidering Freud's >scientistic self-misunderstanding<
(2016)
This paper centres on Habermas's judgement that when Freud assesses psychoanalysis as a natural science, this constitutes a scientific self-misunderstanding. The author discusses Brenner's conviction that Freud's view is not a misunderstanding but is true for psychoanalysis and rejects his conclusion. In the author's view, Freud's assessment of psychoanalysis must be seen as a misunderstanding whose basis lies in its subject. Unconscious figures assert themselves under the repetition compulsion in the same manner as natural laws, each of which asserts itself beyond individual consciousness. It was the discovery of the unconscious that led Freud to conceive of psychoanalysis as a natural science and it seems that this conception is rooted in the structural identity between unconscious and natural processes. Freud's misunderstanding of pseudo-nature as nature seems to be indebted to his energy concept. As it is impossible to deduce psychic energies and their distribution by means of the psychoanalytic method, this being dependent on language, the author recommends replacing the economic metapsychological viewpoint by an affective one. The author goes on further to discuss the object of psychoanalytic investigation, the psychoanalytic method used to acquire knowledge, and the function held by metapsychology.
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.