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In this article, I interpret Hezbollah’s birth and role in Lebanon’s sociopolitical life from a group and family psychoanalytic perspective. In particular, I examine whether Hezbollah, as one of Lebanon’s >children,< can be seen as the >designated patient< and >symptom< of its large family, nation-state >incestual< dynamics and complicated separation and individuation process. As a designated patient, Hezbollah performs the double-sided function of gluing its fragmented nation-state together while carrying the weight of being its breaking force. In this logic, Hezbollah’s paradoxical role in the Lebanese nation-state family would be similar to that of a >scapegoat/Messiah,< who carries both the family’s incestual dynamics and internal tensions and its hope for a solid and cohesive nation-state identity. To build a cohesive nation-state identity, Hezbollah’s ideology acts as a prosthesis for Lebanon’s narcissistic fragility, which replenishes the narcissistic hemorrhage of its perforated bodily and psychic envelopes. I also reflect on whether a national mediation process informed by a group psychoanalytic approach could help Lebanon constitute a more functional ego-nation-state and thus renounce the need for a designated patient. Hezbollah would be better capable of giving up its pathological ideological position.
Erich Fromm
(1988)
This descriptive summary of sociological theories is a text, designed primarily for use in undergraduate sociology courses, and presented in 11 Chpts, with an author's Preface. Emphases are on the interplay between theory and methodology and the range of theories of social structure. Chpt (1) What Is Sociological Theory? – defines six different meanings of theory, explains their diverse characteristics, and differentiates between speculative vs grounded and macro vs micro types of theory; also examined are theoretical models and theoretical functions. (2) Theory and Sociological Inquiry – describes the lasting conflict between theory and empiricism, the reciprocal interplay between theory and research, and emphasizes the value of middle-range theories in encouraging research. (3) System Theory – discusses mechanistic, organismic, and structural models of systems theory and their use in research, explaining the contributions of Vilifredo Pareto, Claude Levi-Strauss, Pitirim A. Sorokin, and others; it presents Talcott Parsons's typology of systems, ie, social, cultural, personality, and behavioral. (4) Functionalism – offers historical and critical perspectives on functionalism, and summarizes Robert K. Merton's postulates in functional analysis, eg, of the functional unity of society and of the indispensibility of established patterns. (5) Conflict Theory – identifies the competitive-economic and political power traditions, the theories of Karl Marx, Ralf Dahrendorf, and C. Wright Mills, the contributions of the Frankfurt school to critical theory, and radical positions. (6) Exchange Theory – relates the origins of exchange theory in anthropology, economics, and psychology, and points to the essential roles of James Frazer, Bronislaw Malinowski, Marcel Mauss, and Claude Levi-Strauss; the behavioral approach of George Homans and Peter Blau's structural analysis of social exchange are compared, and norms of justice and reciprocity are illustrated. (7) Theories of Anomie and Alienation – uses classic texts, eg, Emile Durkheim's Suicide and Merton's Social Structure and Anomie to explore the relation between anomie and class structure, and examines theories of alienation of Karl Marx, Erich FROMM, Richard Schact, and others. (8) Symbolic Interactionism – defines interaction in relation to the individual and society, and summarizes the part played by Charles Horton Cooley in focusing theoretical attention on the individual and the primary group; basic notions in George Herbert Mead's social psychology are defined, and interactionist perspectives of Herbert Blumer, Manfred Kuhn, and Erving Goffman are summarized. (9) John H. Morgan – Phenomenological Sociology – characterizes the interpretive function of phenomenology and ethnomethodology, which are focused on the individual social actor's perspective. The original views of Edmund Husserl and Karl Mannheim, later synthesized by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann and others in a sociology of knowledge, are explained. (10) Continuing Debate on Behaviorism, Structuralism and Quantitativism – describes four general categories of theories of the individual's relationship with society, ie, nominalism, interactionism, neo-nominalism, and realism. Also included are attempts to integrate psychological and structural views, eg, by Alex Inkeles; neopositivism, and the reaction against its exclusive use in social analysis, are characterized. (11) Two Macro Theoretical Approaches – traces the origins and development of ecological and evolutionary views of society. The pioneering work of the Chicago school in articulating ecological/environmental views is noted. Within a typology of evolutionary theories, the ideas of Herbert Spencer, Lewis Henry Morgan, Emile Durkheim, Oswald Spengler, Pitirim Sorokin, and others are elaborated. 3 Tables, 6 Figures, Notes. (Copyright 1984, Sociological Abstracts, Inc., all rights reserved.)
This is a review article of the following five recent studies on populism: 1) Ruth Wodak’s The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean (Sage, 2015); 2) Benjamin Moffitt’s The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style and Representation (Stanford University Press, 2016); 3) Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser’s Populism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017); 4) Jan-Werner Müller’s What is Populism? (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); and 5) John B. Judis’ The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics (Columbia Global Reports, 2016). The review argues for a return to early Frankfurt School Critical Theory to address some of the shortcomings of these studies.
Frankfurt School Critical Theory and the Persistence of Authoritarian
Populism in the United States
(2018)
Frankfurt School Critical Theory and the Persistence of Authoritarian Populism in the United States
(2022)
We, as analysts, are constantly confronted with the paradox between the infantile as a phantasmal reconstruction based on the patient's fantasies and recollections, and childhood as a period of maturation and development, where it is impossible to avoid a reference to chronology. Although many authors have indicated that psychoanalytic practice is based on the traumas, conflicts, wishes and fantasies of the child within the adult, what happens when the patient is a child and not an adult? This paper discusses psychoanalysis with children from a structural point of view, asserting that psychoanalysis can only be beneficial to a given child if it considers his potential as a subject, promoting a change of places within the family structure. In other words, if it helps the child to displace himself from the position as an object of parental discourse, facilitating the access to his own desire.
We explore the problematic dynamics in the relationship between societal systems of care and the chronically excluded, with particular reference to severe personality disorder and the >difficult-to-reach< patient. The individual who >refuses< is often met with a violent response: yet his violence must be understood as related to an experience of being violently excluded. We reformulate personality disorder as a disturbance of >groupishness< and suggest, as a paradigm for the problem of refusal, the story of Diogenes the Cynic, who >holed himself up< in a barrel; and of his legendary encounter with Alexander the Great, who tried unsuccessfully to persuade him to >come in from the cold.< We suggest it may be as important to focus on Alexander's violence as on that of Diogenes, and we examine modes of violence deployed by society against the excluded outsider, with particular reference to the hostile attribution of intentionality to the personality disordered individual's acts of violence and self-harm. We conclude by considering both the merits of the democratic therapeutic community model as a response to severe personality disorder and the dangers, inherent in this model among others, in an unconscious identification with Diogenes in his barrel.
Erich Fromm’s biophilia, a theory of personality development incorporating an interaction between existential needs and the socio-economic environment, was a significant element of Fromm’s proposed Analytic Social Psychology. Despite an enduring influence, Fromm’s theory of biophilia has been largely untested in the literature. Fromm argued that biophilia was the optimum way to conceptualise malignant aggression, and that the introduction and reward of cooperation was the best way to increase levels of biophilia, and thereby reduce levels of destructive behaviour in a population. It was the aim of this thesis to investigate whether the introduction and reward of cooperation would increase biophilia, and decrease aggression, in a population. In Studies One to Six, a trait biophilia scale was developed and psychometric validity and reliability established. In Studies Seven to Nine, scale predictive validity in comparison to existing trait measures was investigated in theoretically appropriate areas including online behaviour, positive psychology and pro-environmental behaviour. In Study Ten, a game theory paradigm for introducing and rewarding cooperation was developed, and the relationships among biophilia, cooperation and aggression were investigated. Contrary to Fromm’s theory, a positive association between aggression and cooperation, and negative associations between those and biophilia, were found. In addition, the effects of introducing and rewarding cooperation were investigated, and again contrary to Fromm’s theory, introducing and rewarding cooperation produced an increase in aggression and a reduction in biophilia. These findings may reflect an inherent tension within Fromm’s theory between the use of existential needs, that were argued to be the product of competitive natural selection, and the use of cooperative interventions derived from Marxist theory. It is proposed that the relationships among biophilia, cooperation and aggression may be mediated by frustration. Implications for interventions and future research are discussed.
Treatment for drug-induced depression usually consists of cessation or reduction of the causative agent and psychopharmacologic management. In addition, psychotherapy can be useful as an adjunctive treatment. The author presents case material related to a young woman with an inborn physical illness, who became depressed during the course of interferon treatment for a medical complication, hepatitis virus infection. In addition to the cessation of interferon and pharmacologic management, supportive psychotherapy of a psychodynamic orientation was started in order to address the patient’s low self-esteem and anxiety about her future. During the course of psychotherapy, it was understood that the premature cessation of interferon was, to her, a narcissistic injury. It was also important to explore the meanings of her inborn illness and her guilty feelings. After reviewing various formulations of depression, the author discusses the case material from an integrative perspective, which describes vicious cycles of depression.
The relationship between psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalytic practice is highly complicated. In this paper, the author presents case material from the psychoanalysis of a man with social anxiety. In the process, the analyst came to be perceived as a version of a blank screen. At the same time, the analyst noted a discrepancy between the patient's attitude on and off the couch. Further work revealed that this splitting in his attitude had its root in the patient's relationship with his parents during his childhood. It was crucially important that the analyst did not take his perceived blankness as a technical success but that he understood the patient's reaction contextually, taking his past relationships with his parents into consideration. The author then discusses theoretical issues related to the blank screen concept. Finally, the author discusses the importance of understanding the two aspects of analytic theorizing, that is, the prescriptive and descriptive aspects.
Neutrality is a most important concept, yet a controversial one. Theorists of different analytic schools have defined it in their own terms, leaving behind them a legacy of disparate and often contradictory formulations. In this paper, the author reviews briefly some of these ideas about neutrality. Then, from a contemporary interpersonal/relational perspective, the author takes a new look at the idea of neutrality. The author points out how unacknowledged discrepancies among these ideas get in the way of understanding and so complicate analytic discourse, and argues that useful work with this concept requires that analysts differentiate between two aspects of neutrality, specifically operational neutrality and intentional neutrality. The theoretical discussion is followed by a case vignette illustrating the clinical usefulness of this differentiation.
Interpretation and method
(2007)
Editorial
(1994)
Editorial
(1995)
Editorial
(1995)
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.
This study explores the character of Takezo the ronin in Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa through the psychological perspective of aggression. This research specifically aims to (a) explore Takezo's psychology of aggression as a ronin and (b) the impact of Takezo's aggression on others. The approaches used in this research are the psychology of literacy and the psychology of aggression. The method used is qualitative; it uses data exposure and interpretation. The data source is the novel Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa (translated version in Indonesian). The data used is in the form of text that is relevant to Takezo's psychology of aggression. The data analysis techniques are carried out in five stages, (1) identifying data related to Takezo's psychology of aggression, (2) data classification related to Takezo's psychology of aggression, (3) data presentation related to Takezo's psychology of aggression, and (4) summarizing data related to Takezo's psychology of aggression. The results showed that Takezo's aggressions are represented in the form of thoughts and behaviour. Takezo's aggressive thoughts are wanting to defeat and kill his enemies. Takezo's aggressive behaviour is killing his enemies, who are samurai. Takezo's aggressions cause the impact of physical category, and they are death and disability on the defeated samurai. Besides, in the psychological category, Takezo's aggressions cause fear and hatred in society. It is concluded that Takezo represents ronin, which desires destructive aggression that has a physical and psychological impact on others. [Author's English version]
The aim of this paper is to clarify some important interpersonal dynamics that underpin forensic patients’ presentations within the clinical environment, in a way that is accessible to nurses. The world of forensic mental health nursing is often difficult to describe to those who have not experienced first hand prolonged clinical contact with patients at the therapeutic interface of secure services. Even then, the characteristic, intense emotional phenomena that tend to arise out of interpersonal relationships with patients and colleagues is not easy to articulate. Yet, for those of us who consider our professional identity to be one of >forensic mental health nurse,< it seems important to find a way to put words to what appears to occupy a large component of our working lives. More importantly, if we can develop a way to make sense of the way our work makes us feel and the way we can find ourselves relating to others within our professional roles, we will be in a better position to harness our energy and enthusiasm in the service of supporting forensic patients towards effective care and treatment pathways. Of course, forensic patients are supported through services with or without a framework for articulating emotional and interpersonal experiences. However, this frequently occurs in the context of significant struggle. For patients, this struggle is often characterized by difficulty communicating what their needs are, and for nurses this struggle is often characterized by feeling emotionally overwhelmed by their task of providing containing, therapeutic relationships for patients whose interpersonal needs are not clear to them. This article will use case examples to describe some of the complex interpersonal and emotional challenges faced by forensic nurses, and explain how a psychodynamic framework could support nursing practice in each of the case examples.
The tripod of terrorism
(2017)
Violent attacks against innocent civilians occurring on an everyday and global basis have intensified the discourse on terrorism. However, like pornography, terrorism seems readily recognizable but hard to define. The designation is applied to the destructive acts of religious zealots, mentally unstable individuals, terror-inducing despots, separatist militia, and, at times, even legitimate freedom fighters. Ordinary language fails to define terrorism’s nosological circumference and is itself defiled in the process. While acknowledging this denotational conundrum, this paper will propose that the origins of the current mayhem by the radicalized few reside in three geopolitical realms. These include the long shadow of colonialism, the hypocrisy and violence of certain Western foreign policies, and some fundamental problems in the societies that form the crucible of such rage. As a result, ameliorative strategies need to be directed at (and require the collaboration of) all three parties at the root of this tragic and bloody scenario.
Based on Erich FROMM's analysis of the social character syndromes of modern industrial society, the contribution of the schools to the development and reproduction of these character orientations is discussed. Following a critical review of basic psychoanalytical and anthropological concepts in FROMM's work, character orientations (receptive, narcissistic, >market<, conformist, and necrophilic-destructive) and their relations to society are elaborated. The hidden processes of socialization by which schools perpetuate the psychological orientations conditioned by society are examined. It is found that learning has become a passive consumption process, resulting in increased alienation of students, as evidenced by lack of interest, truancy, and vandalism. Investigation of students' problems with the schools is needed, the solution of which would necessitate a change in the material substructure of character formation.
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 corrective emotional experience. [http://www.psychomedia.it/pm/modther/probpsiter/alexan-2.htm]
(1946)
The dynamics of psychotherapy in the light of learning theory. Journal Club typescript, 12 pp.
(1963)
Resulting from the prevalence of hedonistic egoism within the youth culture and the media targeted to this demographic, this essay offers a brief discussion of hedonistic egoism absent in much of contemporary ethics. Analyzing Fred Feldman’s pure hedonism as discussed in >Pleasure and the Good Life: Concerning the Nature, Varieties, and Plausibility of Hedonism<, hedonistic egoism is defined as an extension of Feldmanian pure hedonism. Discussing the use of hedonistic egoism in modern society by certain societal groups, especially adolescents and young adults, as a means to seek freedom from certain societal authorities such as the law, or at least portions of it, the differences between negative and positive freedom are explored using Erich Fromm’s >Escape from Freedom<. It is then argued that when hedonistic egoism is used by individuals to seek freedom, whether it be negative or positive, certain paradoxes arise. Firstly, negative freedom, if existent, will exist merely psychology while, secondly, so far that pleasure and pain act as new authorities and egoism is present, positive freedom becomes an impossibility.
Preface
(2014)
Human and animal comes into this world without consent and will. But unlike animal, human endowed by The Creator with mind and imagination. This endowment make human should think about his existence in order to make a difference with animal. In this case, Fromm creates a theory to solve the dichotomy between human as human and human as animal, which popular with human needs theory. Erich Fromm postulate five human needs that consist of relatedness, rootedness, transcendence, sense of identity, and a frame of orientation. In this research, the researcher uses human needs theory to analyse the main character in Okky Madasari’s >The Years of the Voiceless< which aims to show Sumarni’s human needs and the way Sumarni fulfils her human needs. This study uses a psychology of literature approach by paying attention to the soul aspects of the main character in the novel. The researcher collects the data in the form of narratives and dialogues related to research objectives. The results of this study indicates that Sumarni has all human needs that formulated by Erich Fromm, those are relatedness, rootedness, transcendence, sense of identity, and a frame of orientation. In the next stage, Sumarni succed to fulfill her human needs by submission, dominating, and love for relatedness; wholeness and fixation for rootedness; creativeness for transcendence; adjustment to a group and individuality for a sense of identity; rational goals for a frame of orientation.
Through the use of Paulo Freire’s >Pedagogy of the Oppressed<, bell hooks >Teaching to Transgress<, and Erich Fromm’s >Marx’s Concept of Man<, amongst other works, this analysis will attempt to analyze the subject/object, public/private, and the masculine/feminine dichotomies that arise in nineteenth-century England. Using Charles Dickens’ >Hard Times< as a basis for this discourse analysis, I will explore the following: Patriarchy and capitalism as interconnected systems of domination that (re)produce and purposefully instill Marx’s concept of false consciousness and alienation in an attempt to train, as Victorian economist Andrew Ure explains in his >Philosophy of Manufactures<, >human beings to renounce their desultory habits of work and to identity themselves with the unvarying regulatory of the complex automaton< (Ure 15). Works Cited Ure, Andrew. The Philosophy of Manufactures; or, An Exposition of the Scientific, Moral, and Commercial Economy of the Factory System of Great Britain. London: C. Knight, 1835. Google Books. Google, 28 June 2007. Web. 2 Apr. 2015.
This paper explores the rôle that Fromm-Reichmann's parents' adult-onset severe familial deafness may have played in the development of Fromm-Reichmann's career choice and of her charismatic style. She, too, became deaf. Her final paper, >Loneliness< is perhaps her most emotionally evocative work. Perhaps her own increasingly severe experience of loneliness motivated her writing on this theme. Just as she expected self-honesty from her Chestnut Lodge colleagues, this paper demonstrates that she held herself to this same standard. The author urges the deaf community to seek out the newly deaf and to encourage their learning to sign, thus ameliorating the newly deaf individual's loneliness.
Alienation and Socialism
(1965)
[First page] Critical Theory as a philosophical orientation has provided a radical stimulus to a contemporary generation of thinkers by combining the Hegelian and Marxian dialectical methods with Marx's critique of ideology. This has given rise to a distinctively powerful lens of social analysis for the project of emancipation in the multifarious issues of power struggle, ideology, language, discourse, technology, instrumental reason, aesthetic industry, etc. in social, economic, political, and cultural spheres of contemporary society. The revolutionary insights of Hegel and Marx in Critical Theory however, do not imply a closed system of thought among its practitioners; in fact, at times, it has been discordant, however vibrant. In this collection of correspondence, for instance, Marcuse disagrees with Dunayevskaya on the latter's interpretation and application of Hegel's dialectics and absolute idea/mind, while Fromm accused Marcuse of callousness towards moral qualities in political figures similar to that of Lenin (xviii), and Marcuse likewise attacked Fromm on his Freudian revisionism and liberalism regarding interpretations on Freudian psychoanalysis versus Marxist social analysis.
References to the disagreements between the Frankfurt School's intellectual leaders Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno with Herbert Marcuse (xvii), on the one hand, and with Erich Fromm (xix), on the other hand, were also alluded to. Nonetheless, by and through persistent critical dialogue and exchange-truly a real practice of dialectics-the critical theorists in different perspectives of the Marxist-Humanist, Hegelian-Marxist, and Socialist Humanist standpoints, have preserved and has brought to greater heights. ...
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.
more universal psychological dynamics. If creative writing is interesting in itself, its failure can be fascinating. It is not unusual for some successful authors to find themselves unable to write. They suffer what is commonly known has >writer’s block,< a term coined by the psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler in his seminal study of blocked writers in the 1940s and 50s. This paper illustrates how the psychoanalytic study of >writer’s block< can go way beyond Bergler’s theorization. A writer who cannot write is also someone experiencing inner conflict, a self not living up to its expectations, a person that has lost the ability to play. Freudian, ego psychology, and object relations theory are some of the theoretical lenses used to look at >writer’s block,< and to show how this circumscribed phenomenon can shed light on more common struggles and muddles. A brief narration of the author’s experience of writer’s block is presented as an illustration of the parallels between psychoanalysis and writing, especially regarding the importance and use of reverie.
In recent years, identity-based movements have increasingly been criticized by outsiders for espousing a >culture of outrage< both in terms of their academic expressions and activist mobilizations. In the present study, I examine this charge from within the struggle by advancing a self-reflexive socio-psychological investigation into certain emotional responses, attitudes, and practices that have, in significant ways, come to define this type of political agitation. Specifically, I focus my analysis on anti-racist feminism given my personal ties and investment in this movement. Following Wendy Brown, I investigate whether anti-racist feminism suffers from the Nietzschean affliction of ressentiment, and if so, what can be done to reorient the movement towards a more affirmative and humanist future. I address this latter objective through the work of Erich Fromm who I argue provides us with insights that are especially pertinent to our current problem, and which, when developed further with the aid of anti-racist interventions, can offer a fruitful means to moving forward.
Traumatic social violence provokes adaptive transubjective phenomena of banalization, familiarity and obviousness, which can be understood as a 'defence through ambiguity' that leads to an 'adaptation to whatsoever'. In a state of ambiguity there is numbing of critical thinking and of the alarm mechanisms. During the psychoanalytic process with survivors of social violence (torture, etc.) we can find a secret refusal of the external alienating situation in the intrapsychic representation of an 'object to be saved', an object of concern. In this paper, Ferenczi's concept of 'identification with the aggressor' (introjection of the culpability of the abuser on the child's subjectivity) is compared with this clinical experience. We try to understand and challenge through comprehension and insight the subjective consequences of traumatic social violence, in the three spaces of subjectivity (intra-, inter-, trans-) considering psychic dynamics in relation to reality contexts.
Following both Bion's and Aulagnier's thought, this paper seeks to examine two functions of psychotic syntax within the nonpsychotic personality. The first function is the creation of a split between voice and meaning in the mother–infant relationship, a split whose aim is to disengage contact with contents that cannot be metabolized and that are associated with the mother's denied death wish toward her infant. The second function pertains to the use of psychotic syntax as a way of denying separateness and annihilating the >speaking I.< Both functions will be exemplified by clinical case studies. In conclusion, psychotic language will be discussed as a >hybrid language< generated by an incestuous relationship between the mother's and the infant's language.
Assuming that psychic reality and social phenomena are two sides of the same social totality, this article attempts to discuss the building up of the concept of superego in the Freudian text emphasizing its social roots and the function it performs as the representative of the symbolic law. Critical turning points in the development of the concept are presented and possible theoretical consequences of Freud's argument in >Civilization and its Discontents< are questioned when considered against the background of our present society determined by globalization and consumption. The author concludes by suggesting that the contemporary superego may represent an erractic reaction against the conditions prevalent in the social realm. Thus it appears to
The paper attempts to explore the patient–analyst contribution to the analytic process – focusing mainly on the contribution of the analysand – and how their mutual influence might affect the outcome, sometimes beyond the analyst’s capabilities. This is approached through exploration of the co-creation of an intersubjective analytic field by the analytic dyad, in which the analytic phenomena occur, somehow in both participants, but in an asymmetrical way. Their co-creation of the analytic third in this space includes conflictual as well as healthy elements of themselves. The analyst’s professional self and the analysand’s healthy ego parts form an unconscious alliance directed towards a common cause, the progress of analysis, which unavoidably affects both. Clinical material and vignettes from three cases are presented. In these, becomes apparent that the patient can temporarily take over the analytic situation, permitting continuation of the analytic progress. It is argued that, through the above process, a patient can often help and support the analytic process, surpassing the weaknesses and defects that their analyst might have. Influences on patients’ developing mentalization.
Fromm, Marx, and Humanism
(2015)
Fromm's early work connecting Marx and Freud as part of the Frankfurt School has gotten inordinate attention, while his later work interpreting Marx as a humanist, democratic, and anti-totalitarian thinker has received short shrift in recent decades. This paper will examine works like Marx's Concept of Man (1961a) and Socialist Humanism (1965a) in terms of their context, their impact, and the controversies they stirred up with Cold War liberals like Sidney Hook and the young Richard Bernstein. Fromm's differences with Marcuse over humanism are also explored. In addition, this paper discusses Fromm's correspondence with the Marxist feminist and humanist Raya Dunayevskaya and his connections with Eastern European dissident Marxists. Fromm's persistent dialogue with Marx during the last two decades of his life had a wide impact on the 1960s generation and beyond. At a time when the crisis of capitalism has led to a new interest in Marx, this after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it also speaks to us today.
Preface
(2000)
Biblical Job
(1991)
Editorial
(1993)