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This paper investigates hopes and fears connected with work as an analytic psychotherapist, in a sample of trainees attending the Italian Training School for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (SPP). Candidates were asked to complete a questionnaire with open-ended questions. In the first analysis, we found trainees to be interested in learning an effective therapeutic method to treat patients. Their wish was for a serious, demanding, but nonjudgmental training, which could support the development of both a thoughtful way of using their thinking process and a rigorous clinical method, while respecting their individuality and personality. We asked our candidates whether theoretical concepts and issues related to the analytic method effectively helped them transform difficulties in perspectives. Theoretical tendencies and authors considered to be useful in modern clinical areas such as Internet addiction disorders, Hikikomori (severe social and relational retirement in adolescence), children's school problems, and problems connected with dimensions of parenthood (e.g. LGBT parenting) were explored. A sense of inadequacy when first dealing with difficult clinical situations, and fears about the realistic difficulties of psychotherapy as a trade, today, in Italy, were found. Considerations on the psychoanalytic educational program and on the importance of workgroups were proposed.
The article analyzes the philosophy of Erich Fromm, the human heart, goodness and evil inclinations, sadism, the problems of freedom of worship, human destructiveness, various forms of aggression, contradictory necrophilia and biophilia. In the philosophy of Erich Fromm, the heart of the human soul is shown by the desire for destructive desires and the uplifting desires – love for humanity and freedom. Our goal is to analyze the souls of human minds based on the works of the intellectuals. From the Erich Fromm heart concept, the robotic personality and the character of the stranger are disclosed.
The article analyzes the philosophy of Erich Fromm, the human heart, goodness and evil inclinations, sadism, the problems of freedom of worship, human destructiveness, various forms of aggression, contradictory necrophilia and biophilia. In the philosophy of Erich Fromm, the heart of the human soul is shown by the desire for destructive desires and the uplifting desires - love for humanity and freedom. Our goal is to analyze the souls of human minds based on the works of the intellectuals. From the Erich Fromm heart concept, the robotic personality and the character of the stranger are disclosed.
On the Death Throes of Education: Erich Fromm's Marxism and a Rallying Cry for a Healthy University
(2020)
Hate may be regarded as a complex affective-cognitive emotion and attitude alloyed with aggression. Hate and aggression have both neurobiological and environmental determinants. Hate may be overt or covert, externalized or internalized, and/or somatized. Persistent recurrent painful and traumatic experiences generate and exacerbate hate and aggression. An amalgam of hate and love is evident in the ambivalence of all self and object relationships and in conscious and unconscious fantasy. In the mature personality, there is a preponderance of love over hate. There may be justified hatred of sociopathic individuals and groups.
This article presents a clinical description of the solitary aspect of alcoholism and an original psychopathological theorization of alcoholic isolation. Our aim is to better understand this vulnerability of alcoholic patients and their secret sufferings. Solitary intoxication, whether or not in the presence of another or in a group, facilitates the avoidance of a reality experienced as too painful. This isolation would result from an early feeling of insecurity, close to that experienced in psychosis. A prototypical clinical case aims to explain how the problematic nature of this isolation can be identified and then elaborated, within a psychotherapeutic setting >that gives confidence< and starts from the >offer of speech.< We emphasize how the alcoholic individual can revisit the capacity to be alone in the presence of the other, which is a necessary condition for mentalizing a nonpathological solitude.
Given the current juncture in history, humanity is faced with the herculean task of adapting to a tumultuous present and a glimmer future. Should climate projections be accurate, there is little time to waste. This work makes the claim that we are not only in a political gridlock but also in an academic one. Researching climate philosophy from its inception, the concluding view is that no major progress, outside of a standardized descriptive analysis, has been achieved. Thus, the work evaluates an array of climate philosophers e.g. Stephen Gardiner, James Garvey, Peter Singer, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, etc., with specific emphasis on the economic philosopher John Broome, suggesting that their recommendations and assessments fall short of being totalizing in scope and therefore of producing viable theories that, if practically sought after, can achieve social sustainability. To fix the problem of a lack of social and strategic trajectory, I offer up Erich Fromm's humanistic philosophy as a suggestive model. In doing so, the argument is made that this can aid in reorienting our external/empirical obsession by shifting our focus toward our ‘interiority – our internal worlds and psyches –, since a necessary condition in achieving sustainability is changing our mindset. By focusing on the human psyche, its structure and needs, can our behavior finally shift in a way that compliments scientific recommendations and ecological demands. Hence, Fromm lends the climate philosophy discussion an ontological framework from which to better direct and more readily navigate toward less socially precarious and more ethical inclined waters.
This study aims to explore the meaning of love and love orientation of Catholic widows based on Erich Fromm’s theory. The research model used qualitative research with descriptive phenomenology, based on interviews among four widow members of St Peter Paulus church. This interview data was analysed using thematic analysis techniques. The results showed the participants interpreted love as an effort to give what they have. Participant’s love orientation tends to be stronger towards children and God. Meanwhile, other orientations were also found namely grandchildren, nieces, neighbours, deceased spouses, friends and themselves. Productive love is experienced primarily in relationships with children, God, and people in their extended social spheres. Relationships with partners and themselves become the least dominant relationships in the life of a widow and less interpreted with productive love. Based on the results of this study it is advisable to the church to add a counselling for their member who has loss their partner (spouse) so that they regain a sense of self-worth.
In the present time of increasing global stress and threats from outside reality, there arise >new fears< of destruction, of annihilation, and of loss of existence. As a consequence, psychoanalysis is faced with new challenges. It is expanding its range to face the fears that arise from these global threats. This requires special attention to analysts’ personal transference and their resistance against it to enable them to be used as a container for the fears of their patients.
Erich Fromm (1900–1980) was a Marxist psychoanalyst, philosopher, and socialist humanist. This article asks: How can Fromm’s critical theory of communication be used and updated to provide a critical perspective in the age of digital and communicative capitalism? In order to provide an answer, this article discusses elements from Fromm’s work that allow us to better understand the human communication process. The focus is on communication (the second section), ideology (the third section), and technology (the fourth section). Fromm’s approach can inform a critical theory of communication in multiple respects: His notion of the social character allows to underpin such a theory with foundations from critical psychology. Fromm’s distinction between the authoritarian and the humanistic character can be used for discerning among authoritarian and humanistic communication. Fromm’s work can also inform ideology critique: the ideology of having shapes life, thought, language, and social action in capitalism. In capitalism, technology (including computing) is fetishized and the logic of quantification shapes social relations. Fromm’s quest for humanist technology and participatory computing can inform contemporary debates about digital capitalism and its alternatives.
Research on national collective narcissism, the belief and resentment that a nation's exceptionality is not sufficiently recognized by others, provides a theoretical framework for understanding the psychological motivations behind the support for right-wing populism. It bridges the findings regarding the economic and sociocultural conditions implicated in the rise of right-wing populism and the findings regarding leadership processes necessary for it to find its political expression. The conditions are interpreted as producing violations to established expectations regarding selfimportance via the gradual repeal of the traditional criteria by which members of hegemonic groups evaluated their self-worth. Populist leaders propagate a social identity organized around the collective narcissistic resentment, enhance it, and propose external explanations for frustration of self and in-group-importance. This garners them a committed followership. Research on collective narcissism indicates that distress resulting from violated expectations regarding self-importance stands behind collective narcissism and its narrow vision of >true< national identity (the people), rejection and hostility toward stigmatized in-group members and out-groups as well as the association between collective narcissism and conspiratorial thinking.
Collective narcissism is a belief that one’s own group (the in-group) is exceptional but not sufficiently recognized by others. It is the form of “in-group love” robustly associated with “out-group hate.” In contrast to private collective selfesteem (or in-group satisfaction, a belief that the in-group is of high value), it predicts prejudice, retaliatory intergroup aggression, and rejoicing in the suffering of other people. The pervasive association between collective narcissism and intergroup hostility is driven by a biased perception of the in-group as constantly threatened and out-groups as hostile and threatening. Collective narcissism is associated with hypersensitivity to provocation and the belief that only hostile revenge is a desirable and rewarding response. It arises when the traditional group-based hierarchies are challenged and empowers extremists as well as populist politicians. Instead of alleviating the sense of threat to one’s self-importance, it refuels it. The association between collective narcissism and intergroup hostility is weakened by experiences that fortify emotional resilience (e.g., positive identification with a community).
The history of migrations to Brazil is the history of the country itself, since the original inhabitants of the territory - the natives - were almost completely exterminated by the Portuguese. In Brazil, any child of school age learns that our land is mestizo and welcoming, and that its population is the result of the mixture of Portuguese, Italians, Spanish, Germans and Japanese, among other peoples. Curiously, the majority immigrant group that formed the country usually does not appear on that list: the Africans. In that case, immigration was forced, originating one of the main traumas that still mark the Brazilian culture and society. This trauma were not left in the past: it was not overcome and it continues to be updated – according to the logic of traumatic functioning, that of the compulsion to repetition - present in the entire structure of social relations in the country. In this paper I intend to deal with the peculiarity of Brazilian racism, articulating the memory of the slavery regime to psychoanalytic concepts – such as repression, narcissism of minor differences, splitting of the ego, and disavowal – capable of denouncing silent segregation that the black population suffer in the country.
Ron Rash’s >Serena< (2008) is about the clash between northern industrialists who cut timber in southern Appalachia and conservationists who want the area converted into a national park. Set during the Depression, it also addresses our own times of unchecked greed and environmental holocaust. This article relates the situation of internal colonialism, which turns the region into a sacrifice zone, with the theme of the wasteland. The latter is related in the novel not only to T. S. Eliot’s poem but also to other works that Rash acknowledges as influences, including >Moby-Dick<, >The Great Gatsby< and Christopher Marlowe’s tragedies about the will to power. Characterized by what Erich Fromm calls the exploitative orientation, Serena Pemberton wields hard power and embodies the rapaciousness of economy, in contrast to a local female character, who stands for ecology and soft power.
The article deals with some of the most common fears that can manifest in young training analysands during clinical practice. Viewed using a theatrical metaphor, the psychoanalytic situation that develops is conceived as a representation of the conflicts and deep suffering that the patient wishes the therapist to understand and alleviate. The two can be seen as actors who bring to the stage a scene involving both deeply, and which requires the right balance between illusion and reality to be therapeutically effective. The analytic theatre evokes characters that desire to be brought to the stage, and gives life to a drama that demands to be represented through the characters themselves, as happens in the play Six characters in search of an author by Pirandello (1925). Therefore, analysts need to take on a role that they are implicitly required to perform and that can at times be perceived as rather uncomfortable, while in other instances it can be rewarding. Sometimes they are the main character, while in other situations they are the audience; they may be a travel companion or a persecutor.
By integrating data from general psychology and perinatal clinical psychology with neuroscience and psychoanalysis, the author discusses the relations between memory and consciousness, the aim being a unitary definition of the concept of unconscious. Nobody has a brain that can be the same as any other person's: the biology of memory lies in neural networks that have been constructed in the brain of that specific person by their experience. From the fetal stage, each brain progressively learns its own individual functions during its relational neuropsychic development. The author underlines how the continuous emotional biological work of the brain, together with a person's entire relational life, produces the construction of the whole functional and individual mindbrain. The whole construction is memory and this is unconscious; indeed it may be the true unconscious. From the continuous silent work of the mindbrain of a person, some forms of conscious level may emerge in his individual's subjectivity: some functioning of mindbrain makes what an individual person can consciously remember. The unconscious is only what appears in some form in an analyst's consciousness, at some specific moment in his relationship with a patient, and which the analyst translates into some form of his verbal interpretation.
This paper discusses a philosophical approach to dream interpretation based on the daseinsanalytic concept of Alice Holzhey, a concept that uses psychoanalytic thinking in the light of existential philosophy. Based on this concept, I consider the generally acknowledged finding that moods play a highly important role for our dreaming in an existential-philosophical view. Martin Heidegger claims that moods confront us with our own being, especially the fundamental >philosophical< mood that he calls Angst. Angst refers to the uncanny experience of being confronted with unfathomable conditions of the human existence. It is a consternating experience beyond every understanding. Assuming that in dreams, as in moods, we are concerned with issues of emotional significance concerning our own being, I claim Angst to be the essential factor for our dreaming. Usually, however, it remains hidden in some other mood, for example in the mood of fear. What makes dreams interesting, puzzling, amazing or terrifying, is their hinting at Angst. With three examples I hope to make clear my thesis that all dreams focus on certain fundamental issues concerning a person’s own existence, meaning issues determined by Angst.
The paper first discusses two documentaries by Donna Read, >Signs Out of Time< (2004) and >Goddess Remembered< (1989), that focus on the pacific tradition of the female centered settlements on the territories of modern Eastern Europe in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. Read depicts significant findings of a world-renowned archeologist Marija Gimbutas who claims that a peaceful image of Old Europe embodied in the omnipotent Great Mother changed radically towards the end of the third millennium when violent Indo-European nomads came from Russia and shattered the matriarchal utopia of equality and natural harmony. These tribes introduced the principles of hierarchy and violent male-rule. Read’s and Gimbutas’ findings are further developed and examined in the studies by Riana Eisler and Erich Fromm who also claim that conspicuous material aggrandizement of patriarchal culture severely damaged a blissful matriarchal bond between man and nature. These theoretical insights are applied to Williamson’s compre hension of nature vs. nurture issue in >Mary and the Seal< (1997). In portraying a tender relationship between Mary and the seal, as well as its tragic and totally unnecessary shooting, contemporary patriarchal culture is brought to a trial. The mere existence of the bond between Mary and the seal, an embodiment of an idyllic matriarchal unity between man and nature, testifies to the prevalent need for the return to its substantial but long-forgotten values. The theoretical insights of Graves, Althusser, Freire, Fiske and Miller will also be used in the interpretation of the story.
Background: This is the last in a series of four articles scheduled for publication in this journal. In the first article (Kapustin, 2015a), I proposed a new >existential criterion< for the 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 their position regarding existential dichotomies, and, second, by particular aspects of the formation of this position. Such dichotomies, entitatively existent in human life, are inherent, two-alternative contradictions. In the other articles (Kapustin, 2015b, 2016a), I showed that this criterion is also implicitly present in the four famous personality theories of Freud, Adler, Jung, and Rogers. Objectives: To provide evidence that this criterion is present in the personality theory of Viktor Frankl and to present a comparative analysis of all six theories of personality. Results. The existential criterion for the normal and abnormal personality based on the works of Fromm is also implicitly present in theoretical conceptualizations of personality, predisposed and non-predisposed to developing various psychological problems and to mental disorders, by Freud, Adler, Jung, Rogers, and Frankl, although in more particular forms, related to more specific existential dichotomies, characterizing the nature of human life. Conclusion: The fact that the existential criterion is present in these six theories of personality, developed within totally different approaches to psychology and psychotherapy, is evidence of a high degree of its theoretical justification and of the possibility of their integration.
In an era of environmental crises, geopolitical stresses, corporate misbehavior, and inequalities of wealth and power, a new moral vision for our world is vital. Klaus M. Leisinger, one of the world’s leading ethicists and experts in ethical business management offers an essential text for our times. This is a volume akin to Machiavelli’s The Prince, as it is a guidebook for leadership, but unlike Machiavelli, Leisinger teaches the leader how to find true purpose and value through leadership. Drawing upon his vast knowledge of philosophy and experience in global business, Leisinger offers an invaluable, persuasive, inspiring, and utterly practical guide for business with purpose in the 21st century. The timing is perfect. Leading CEOs in the U.S. Business Roundtable have finally acknowledged the social responsibility of the corporation. They will find no better roadmap to fulfilling that responsibility than Klaus Leisinger’s powerful text.
We know that there are significant differences between generations of our patients in certain aspects related to the differences in historical and socioeconomic circumstances of their development. New informational technologies – smartphones and mobile Internet – are taking the role of an ever-present auxiliary ego for the generations born in the twenty-first century. This development is influenced by the characteristics of these technologies and by changes in parenting patterns. Psychoanalytic literature tends to focus on only the negative influences of these factors on the development of personality, identity, and interpersonal relationships. Probably this reflects our own fears about the invasion of new technologies into our lives and limits our understanding of the possible positive potential of these technologies for the younger generations. We still need to gain a better understanding of what it brings to our analytic work, and our transference–countertransference relationships with adolescent patients.
The author addresses contemporary clinical practice, where we encounter individuals, seemingly incapable of getting in touch with their own existential dimension, who communicate their detachment, at times even total, from their feelings and fears, wilfully committed as they are to avoid experiencing the inevitable angst that may accompany them through life. This dissociation from the angst-producing emotion is revealed to the clinician through either detachment or a simple action. This feeling that generates both detachment and its opposite, perhaps a hypomanic reaction, proves to be >absent,< and is not perceived by the patient. In this way, angst can be avoided and indeed seems >absent,< but what is experienced is the complete range of raw emotions connected to it, such as fear, terror, panic, detachment, apathy, and anhedonia. The author sets out to clarify the terms >fear,< >anxiety,< and >angst< as they have been historically used in philosophy, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and psychology. Ultimately, she explains her reason for her choice of the word >angst< instead of >anxiety< in her distinct and explicit handling of this subject matter.
After the method of infant observation, as developed by Esther Bick, and its significance for psychoanalytic training have been outlined, the method is critically assessed. The suggestion is then made that infant observation should be supplemented by video-analytic infant observation. Finally, thoughts on modifications of the process of infant observation are presented.
There exists a German-Jewish cultural discourse from the early 20th century that stands in dynamic tension between spiritual and material, sacred and secular, beyond the usual static dichotomies. Several key Jewish thinkers have sought to recover spiritual meaning, in direct interaction with the profane. Under different ways they developed a process of simultaneous secularization and sacralization, in a sort of >dialectic< combination of both. The first common characteristic of these authors is their deep attachment to the German romantic culture, with its ambivalence towards modernity, and its desperate attempt at re-enchanting the world through a return to past spiritual forms. This article will demonstrate these relationships through the work of young Erich Fromm.
The present paper addresses Baruch Spinoza’s radical affirmation of individual identity emergent from within the psychosocial tensions of group membership. Focusing upon psychological experience beginning with a lived history of fearful Inquisitional persecution, and continuing from conformity to rebellion within the constraints of the Amsterdam Jewish synagogue, we trace the psychological recognition of individual identity in Spinoza’s understanding of the self-determined, immanent acts of daily life. Spinoza’s multiple names are depicted as markers, corresponding to membership in mutually exclusive social groups, each constraining freedom of thought and action.
This article presents a research on the reception of Erich Fromm’s ideas in Bulgaria. The criticism of Fromm’s ideas is presented and an attempt is made to evaluate it according to its context – ideological, psychological and philosophical. The author aims at explaining the theoretical and substantive side of the criticism.
The author discusses some aspects of the impact of our changing society on the latency phase, while presenting a clinical case. At this age, children need a reliable environment, protecting them from sexual and aggressive overstimulation, as an essential condition for the work of latency to be carried out. As some authors point out, if post-Oedipal repression is hindered, children may be pushed towards an early, highly disruptive adolescence process. Strong and untimely anxieties may arise, requiring particular defensive and adaptive strategies. According to the author’s experience, concerns about death may be observed, these not usually being expected at the latency age. In some children, these seem to promote an early process of intellectualization. The patient described here was a violent, self-harming child from a disturbed family. As soon as his psychic state improved with psychotherapy, he expressed anxiety about mortality as a general human condition and was able to reason on the concept of infinity at a quite abstract level. The significance of this observation is discussed from a developmental point of view.
This paper was inspired by the documentary >The Act of Killing<, directed by an American-born, British filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer and released in 2012. Provoked and appalled by what is described as one of the worst mass murders in the 20th century, the movie director focuses not so much on the crime itself but the perpetrators of the crimes and the ensuing consequences. A part from the need to bring to open and discuss this part of Indonesian history, as well as the consequences of the communist and subsequent anti-communist political rules, this paper deals, on the one hand, with the question and the essence of human nature capable of such monstrosity and on the other, with the role that art must take in understanding and healing of the open wounds in any nation’s history as well as individual perpetrators of the crimes. For this purpose, the ideological framework of Erich Fromm as given in his study >Anatomy of Human Destructiveness< and also philosophical ideas of Hanna Arendt, specifically concerning the nature of evil itself were used as theoretical framework.
The purpose of this study was to analyze problems related to the mechanism whereby students can accept corporal punishment during extracurricular sports activities with reference to the books Escape from Freedom and Man for Himself that were central to Erich Frommʼs authority theory. Specifically, the author focused on the concepts of >authoritarian character<, >authoritarian ethics< and >authoritarian conscience< Fromm pointed out that anxiety prompted Germanyʼs citizens to give up their freedom in order to obey authoritarian powers such as Hitler and the Nazis. Students taking part in extracurricular sports activities were considered from the viewpoint of Frommʼs authority theory. It was revealed that students comply with a leaderʼs authority in order to relieve anxiety, and have positive thoughts about corporal punishment. Furthermore, it was found that such acceptance of corporal punishment succeeded in eliminating conspicuous suffering, but not in removing any underlying conflicts. Fromm pointed that fear of anxiety was relieved by spontaneous activity. To achieve spontaneous activity by students, it was suggested that some form of measure that does not create the type of partnership that occurred between Germanyʼs citizens and Hitler would be desirable for any relationship between the leader of extracurricular sports activities and the students.
In recent years, the influence of Cohen’s Religion of Reason on Erich Fromm’s con¬cept of Judaism began to appear in the research literature. The current study broadens the scope of Cohen’s influence to include Fromm’s concept of history, as well as his social criticism. In this paper I would like to suggest, that Cohen’s criticism of >historical consciousness’<in the early 20th century, can be compared to Fromm’s criticism of >intelligence< and >progress< in the mid- 20th century. Cohen’s distinction between >reason< (Vernunft) and >consciousness< (Bewusstsein) is echoed in Fromm’s distinction between >reason< and >intelligence<. For Cohen and Fromm, >reason< is an eternal universal and moral compass for evaluating history and progress. Both Cohen’s >consciousness< and Fromm’s >intelligence<, without >reason< as an ethical component, are perceived as a threat to the capability of the individual to achieve self-fulfillment, as well as to the progress of humanity.
There are shared humanistic tendencies in Erich Fromm’s views and the ideas of Eastern Orthodoxy. The comparative method of this paper focuses on similarities between Fromm’s humanistic psychoanalysis and Orthodox Christianity, while noting differences between them. In his works Fromm mentioned religious approaches, but he mostly referred to Protestantism (as a development from teachings of Martin Luther and John Calvin) and more rarely to Catholicism. Both streams have differences with Eastern Orthodoxy which is traditional for Russia. The individualism common to the western protestant model is contrasted with the community spirit, which is common to Russian culture and to the view of life of Russian Orthodoxy in particular. First, Fromm wrote about overcoming negative modes of life (such as estrangement or alienation) inherent to the first model, through adopting the second model. Second, humanistic views should be marked in ideas of Erich Fromm and Eastern Orthodoxy. The ideas of Erich Fromm and Eastern Orthodoxy are both based on a perception of a human being as a distinct whole personality, who should perceive as basic the values of self-development, love, creative self-realization, freedom, and responsibility. Also, free and whole personality cannot be formed without being a part of community of other persons, which is a very important point for both.
In this paper, we will analyze the dynamic and relational drivers behind the choice to embark on a therapy via Skype. The fear of relationships could be the origin of this choice. Can Skype be a means by which the patient’s difficulties manifest themselves? We suggest that this is possible, and we will use the case of Matilde to show it. Matilde uses relationships to see herself, as she is unable to do this alone. She tries to find herself through others and the virtual world. She prefers to skip a session because the therapist’s webcam is not working rather than having the session without them seeing each other. Can we speculate that Matilde feels lost when she is in contact with herself without an other’s mediation? What are her fears? In this case, has Skype helped or slowed down the process? How would her borderline emptiness manifest itself in a traditional session? And what does it mean to live in the virtual world for a patient who tries to find herself through others? We will try to answer all of these questions, thinking about the functionality that technology has for some patients, for the therapist, and for the therapeutic process.
In the light of Philipp Sarasin's work in Darwin und Foucault: Genealogie und Geschichte im Zeitalter der Biologie, the article delineates a genealogically articulated naturally produced culture and a cultured nature and discusses the genealogical implications of a carnal, becoming self in a world that could rightly be justified >as an aesthetical phenomenon.< The article demonstrates the historicity and processual materiality as a conceptual platform for a combination of the notions of experienced carnality and a socially constructed body, demonstrating such a historically embedded carnal body as a binding agent for the >social constructivist< and >biologist< approaches in sciences. Thus, the article builds a framework for the articulation of senseful, processual materiality on the backdrop of a nature-culture continuum via genealogy, suggesting the necessity for change of tone in the communication of human and life sciences via the understanding of a culturally endowed biology.
This article explores the >lack of meaning< in contemporary society as a consequence of Western dualist thought paradigms and ontologies, via Gilles Deleuze’s concept of >reactivenihilism< following the colloquial murder of God. The article then explores processual and new materialist approaches in the understanding of the lived and carnal self, arguing for immanent and senseful materiality as an ethical platform for religious, environmental, and societal solidarity for tomorrow. For the theoretical justification of the processual approach in understanding the enfleshed self, the article employs John Dupré’s processual approach in the philosophy of biology, as well as Astrida Neimani’s critical posthumanism, and contextualizes these considerations with Erich Fromm’s ethical distinction of being and having.
The authors present their design for a clinical teaching exercise to study transformation in psychoanalysis. They chose a completed analysis from which to select the sessions retrospectively so that the clinical review exercise would not influence ongoing analytic process. The co-authors selected three tranches of clinical material, a few years apart, to be presented by the analyst. They studied the material with colleagues in the impressionistic manner of traditional clinical review, and then subjected it to more systematic examination, using a modified application of the Three-Level Model (3-LM) for assessing change. Their prediction was that the use of the 3-LM model could amplify the clinical impressions of the individual analyst and provide a way of being more specific about the changes, if any, that had occurred, and arrive at which theories best explained those changes.
The authors describe a simple recurrent writing task called the >Two Page Paper Exercise,< designed to enhance candidates’ learning of analytic theory and technique. They set this task in the context of other analytic institutes’ writing programs and show that this exercise is unique. Their educational philosophy is that, as candidates confront multiple perspectives in contemporary psychoanalysis, this writing task develops their ability to conceptualize, reflect on their learning, integrate affect and cognition, and express their ideas to others in written form and in discussion with peers. The candidate group develops cohesion that reduces writing anxiety. As individuals they develop a writing habit that supports the eventual duty to develop the field of psychoanalysis through publishing. The authors present raw data from candidates’ writing for readers to make their own assessment of the usefulness of the task as a measure of candidates’ integration of learning, development of analytic sensibility and synthetic capacity, and communication of experience and ideas to others.
Abstract: In this paper, I discuss Fromm’s theories of individual and social change within the therapeutic context. I don’t know of any psychoanalyst who was able to integrate so-ciological thinking with clinical practice and conceptualization the way Fromm did in the early part of the century. On the surface, these two approaches seem incompatible – at least in their methodologies – yet they complemented each other, as Erich Fromm (1929a; 1944a) and Rainer Funk (2018) have demonstrated so clearly. My presentation today is an exercise in microanalysis rather than a broad theoretical discussion about psychic and social change. I want to show how Fromm’s theoretical framework and clinical experience have shaped my own work. First, I explore Fromm’s originality and discuss ways in which he has been personally marginalized and intellectually isolated as a pseudo-psychoanalyst. Then, I examine the overlap of psychoanalytic approaches as they related to the concept of social Third. Finally, I present fragments of a case to show how Fromm’s theoretical and clinical ideas have influenced my own work.
In the present historical context, migratory flows have acquired a particular political and social relevance by showing a deep imbalance in the globalized world. Those who migrate to wealthy countries due to wars or extreme poverty do not have an identity that can be homogenized; they are aliens, strangers carrying destabilizing life experiences. The meeting between the new idea-content represented by the Stranger and the receiving group-container can therefore have catastrophic consequences. The author’s reflection aims to focus on the significance of the figure of the Stranger and on the condition that might support an integration process, starting from an analogy between the collective dynamics of the social environment and the individual psychical ones as experienced in the psychoanalytic setting.
In this study we collocate adolescence within a broader and more present-day scenario than has been the case in psychological and psychoanalytic literature in recent years. Our analysis of this evolutionary passage and its malaise includes contextual and other aspects that condition its real development. We consider the features of contemporary Western society and naturally place them within an increasingly planetary vision of the subject, given that the culture pervading the Western world, although complex, appears to be sufficiently uniform with some specific aspects. We propose a contemporary interpretation of the developmental process of the second decade of life and the forms of malaise it can produce. In this respect, two adolescent conditions are emblematic: self-closure and anorexiform eating disorders. These conditions express paradigmatically some characteristics of subjective adolescent malaise.
The author proposes viewing mania as a form of defense against the state of depression resulting from >narcissistic overidentification with the depressive object< (i.e., the object in relation to which the depressive state developed), rather than as a periodic rebellion against such an internalized object. An account of the analytic psychotherapy of a clinical case of bipolar depression serves to illustrate this point of view, linked to the author’s specific conception of the dynamics of depression.
Psychotherapists currently find themselves considering the extent to which sociopolitical and economic issues in a globalized world can affect the evolutionary nature of the psychic organizations sustaining the individual. It seems we are mostly witnessing a weakening of the psychic structures that contain and maintain a sufficient and constant level of integration and unity of sense within the individual–world relationship. Patients frequently come into analysis with invalidating states of anxiety, panic attacks, and the explosion of sudden psychotic crises, accompanied by experiences of depersonalization and derealization. What I would like to examine in depth relates to the influence of the trans-subjective in us as psychotherapists, committed to dealing with psychic disorders that involve us as persons emotionally and intellectually present in our times, with a sense of awareness and responsibility. The quality of the treatment depends, among other things, on the effective elaboration of fullness and emptiness that one generates in the resonance emerging from the process of transference and countertransference. The word, the presence, and the absence, physically and mentally, of the psychoanalyst and the patient are recognized as those activators of potential transformation which are an appropriate form of medicine at an analyst’s disposal during the process of changing a pathogenic state.
Supervisors who wish to meet their supervisees’ needs to grow as clinicians will encounter two paradoxical knowledge-related needs of supervisees. On one pole of this paradox is their need to assimilate new knowledge into their existing clinical knowledge; on the other pole is their need for acknowledgement, validation, and formulation of their unique experiential and unarticulated knowledge. Meeting this need helps the supervisees to balance regressive states and painful gaps between their own and their supervisors’ knowledge, which might put the supervisory relationship at risk.
Therapists’ quest for constructing meaning systems of their patients’ experiences progresses in cycles. These cycles consist of: (1) efforts to achieve closures, propelled by the depressive position with its concomitant judgments, resolutions, and decisiveness, and (2) efforts to dissolve closures, propelled by the schizo-paranoid position, searching anxiously and excitedly for new ways to construct meaning. By struggling to facilitate their supervisees’ cycles of achieving and dissolving closures, supervisors help them to grow as clinicians. Supervisees usually welcome the supervisors’ help in constructing meaning systems and achieving closures. They become wary, however, when their supervisors suggest that they dismantle these systems and dissolve their closures because these suggestions undermine their self-assurance as well as their sense of morality, both nourished by the depressive position. Several approaches are suggested for supervisors to facilitate their supervisees’ efforts to dissolve closures.
The author summarizes the problems inherent in nomological approaches examining the efficacy of psychoanalysis as a form of treatment. He argues that nomologically oriented research operates with assumptions lacking empirical foundation and, moreover, that studies of this type merely give the impression of the effectiveness of psychoanalytic therapies while overlooking the specificity of the psychoanalytic method. He suggests that research into psychoanalytic treatments should not be subjected to a nomological conception of science, and that structural analysis of treatment courses should be examined and systematized within the frame of psychoanalytic treatment theory relative to their outcome. Given this approach, and provided that the theory of treatment is based on conceptual common ground, such studies would enable a prognostic conclusion that psychoanalytic treatments are successful, providing that the sequences generalized in the treatment theory do actually take place in treatments that take patients’ individuality into account.
Acts of terrorism seem to never run out of Indonesia, from independence to the present day. Including the ideals of the establishment of an >Islamic State< that gave rise to a new wave of terrorism. The JAD group affiliated with ISIS clearly states that the Indonesian republic is thogut, so it is haram to be obedient to it, and they commit an act of terror some time ago. ISIS cleverly uses religious propositions to recruit new members. The verses of the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet became his legitimacy. The concept of Hijra, Necrophilia and millenarism became the main doctrine of the ISIS. ISIS uses this narrative to facilitate and call for action in Indonesia. Suicide bombing, police station attack carried out by sympathizers, either JAD members or lone wolf. ISIS also utilizes social media well, this facilitates the idea of necrophilia, millenarism of ISIS is practiced by its sympathizers. Through qualitative and text analysis and the idea approach, necrophilia from Erich Fromm and millenarism from Norman Cohn, and other narrative this research is intended to make counter narrative of ISIS, so that the emergence is the concept of biophilia and optimism against the times and build a better future.
The subject of the analysis is the category of the inclusion as a process that does not only apply to people with special developmental or life needs, but also to social sciences, which as a result of the positivist research paradigm have divided and separated from each other. Meanwhile, human upbringing requires the inclusion of biophilic orientation towards life in all social sciences, whose achievements should be considered and applied to improve educational processes. The Author borrows inspiration from the typology of human attitudes of Erich Fromm, because it makes readers aware of the negative effects of necrophilia in interpersonal relationships. The Author analyses Fromm’s approach against the background of selected ideas of Polish pedagogical views.