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Vorwort
(2005)
缪丽尔•斯帕克善于创造文学神话,小说《布罗迪小姐的青春》即为一例。在小说中,主人公布罗迪小姐也试图创造自己的神话。本文力图以埃里希•弗罗姆关于人道主义社会的理论解析布罗迪神话的兴衰沉浮,同时指出史诗《失乐园》的>预定性<影响在本小说中的体现。由此,缪丽尔•斯帕克对人类生存困境的洞察力及其作品中折射出的人道主义光芒得以表达。论文第一、二章分别定位于小说中两个主要人物:布罗迪小姐和桑迪。前者是神话的制造者,而后者促成了神话的覆灭。这两章内在机制相同,展现的是人在追求自由与自我实现的过程中极力摆脱生存困境与不可抗因素的努力。情节在怀有相同意念却又是两相制约的行为人中展开,布罗迪的神话也历经了辉煌后的衰落。第一章以人类的生存状况为背景,着眼于人的生存二分律>此岸<与>彼岸<的距离和命运中的不可抗因素,运用弗罗姆关于人的需要及性格倾向的理论分析了布罗迪神话生成的缘由。为摆脱因被自然孤立所造成的离间状态,人在与他人的联系中寻求归属感,权威与附属关系由此而生。布罗迪小姐属剥削型倾向,以玛丽为典型的多数布罗迪帮成员则属接受型,这使得布罗迪小姐的弄权更加恣意妄为,魔幻般的影响延伸到布帮之外的两位男教员。同时,她乖戾的对传统教学的反叛也生发出撒旦般的双重性格特征。第二章以弗罗姆关于合理信仰与不合理信仰,权威主义良心与人道主义良心的理论为基础,剖析了桑迪在寻求自我实现的过程中通过信仰与良心的转变对布罗迪小姐成功的反向制约。这一反作用与布罗迪小姐本身固有的致命弱点的合力促成了布罗迪神话的幻灭。与此同时,桑迪对善与良知的渴望又使得亚当与夏娃的形象浮现读者眼前。第三章是顿悟,揭示桑迪由来已久,并一直持续到她皈依天主教之后的迷惘的根由,也印证了第二章中引用的弗罗姆关于权威内在化的理论。这其中有缪丽尔•斯帕克自身经历的影子,同样值得关注的是弥漫于小说中的天主教氛围,桑迪的皈依可视为是因恶而向善的例证。以弗罗姆人道主义的立场,人有充分潜能,在理智的引导下可以打破权威枷锁,赋予自身存在之意义。这又一次体现出《失乐园》结尾所传达的讯息:乐园既失,一个新的世界有待创造。
艾米丽.•狄金森(1830-1886)的长期隐居生活使她成为那个时代乃至世界文学史上最孤独,也是最神秘的人。究竟狄金森为何隐居?这个问题一直困扰着人们。本文尝试运用弗洛姆的逃避机制(mechanism of escape),从心理学的角度来重新审视解读她的隐居人生,从而揭示她隐居生活的精神本质。弗罗姆在他的著作《逃离自由》中指出:个人化过程的一个方面,是日益的孤独。与世界分离的状态,会令人产生恐惧感。为了避免孤独和恐惧,人必须逃离。弗罗姆称之为逃避现实的心理机构。他提出很多逃避的方法并认为其中唯一积极的方法就是自发地进行创造地工作,在创造中获得自由。审视狄金森寂寞的一生,不难发现她正是经历了这样的心理历程。她在自我个性发展的过程中受到种种压抑而孤独,因为孤独而隐居进诗歌的世界,在诗歌中创造自己的精神世界,由此狄金森获得了精神上的自由和圆满,实现了她的人生价值一追求真与美,追求妇女平等、追求信仰自由、追求爱情自由、追求诗歌创作的自由、追求生命的永恒和不朽。狄金森在诗歌中创造了丰富的世界,在精神上完成了由孤独到自由的转变,实现了自我价值的升华。论文首先从分析狄金森寂寞的原因入手,意在阐述她的寂寞是由于追求自我个性的发展而受到现实社会的种种压抑。接着探讨她由孤独而逃离的心理历程,从而说明她的逃离是积极主动的自我选择,是为了获得精神上的自由。论文重点探讨狄金森在诗歌中获得了自由,实现了自我价值及人生追求。她在诗歌中自由地抒发自己的所思所想,阐述自己独特的人生观,宗教观,爱情观,创作观及生死观,追求自己独特的创作风格,在现实中无法求得的一切在精神的世界中得到了自由与圆满。
本文以俄罗斯白银时代著名作家扎米亚京的反乌托邦长篇小说《我们》为研究对象,对《我们》中未来社会的构成、运转、道德伦理等以及这个社会的生存悖论进行分析研究,进而揭示扎米亚京对人类社会的一些超意识形态的思考和预见。 首先从小说的文本出发,着重分析大一统王国的社会构成和机构构成,与《1984》和《美妙的新世界》进行简单对比,并从生产、分配、政治制度和法律四个方面来分析大一统王国的社会运转,由此看出大一统王国的一些基本的表面特征,如:消灭了阶级差别、平均配给制、全民直选等,和表象下所透露出的独裁与极权本质,从中总结出王国的伦理道德和价值尺度。 第二部分主要运用俄罗斯著名哲学家别尔嘉耶夫的人格主义的哲学思想和美国著名学者弗罗姆在《逃避自由》一书中的观点进行分析,先证明大一统王国是一个>客体化<的世界,然后逐一分析王国的四点伦理道德和价值尺度——1、否定自由;2、否定个体;3、绝对理性;4、绝对平等,以及这四点伦理道德中包含的自身无法克服的悖论,这是王国所有号码的悲剧的根源。 第三部分主要分析扎米亚京在小说中所表现出的一些个人思想与超越意识形态的思考和预言:1、普世的弥赛亚,一种打着>自由<、>幸福<、>国家安全<等旗号的强制拯救;2、人的异化,人被训练成机器;3、极权与个人崇拜;4、熵与反熵,包含扎米亚京反对思想僵化和革命无限论的思想。这些思考由于意识形态的狭隘与时代大环境造成的短视被视为>异端<,造成扎米亚京个人的悲
During the first twenty years that Freud spent creating his theory, he assumed that most of the functions responsible for creating mental-thought structures were organized according to two different forms or principles of thought. He called these forms >primary process< and >secondary process<. The >secondary process< is identified with rational thinking and the ego, and it is easy to follow the changes that this concept underwent in the works of Freud that followed. The concept of >primary process<, on the other hand, disappeared from his later works with no explanation. This article traces the changes that the >primary process< underwent in Freud's thinking and examines the connection between his analytical technique and his research method. A close study of the changes that the >primary process< underwent reveals that Freud's developmental thought process included concepts whose directional changes may be termed >regressive<.
佛洛姆雖然沒有提出系統的教育理論,但其理論以人的全面發展、充分誕生為目標,以建立人本主義的社會主義社會為理想,冀望人人覺悟異化的實相,努力克服非理性的熱情與性格,發展生產性格,以解決生存的矛盾,而能夠健全的生活,實具有教育理論的內涵。本文所嘗試為其建立的教育理論,奠基於其人性論、異化論與歷史唯物論,既重視人本身人性力量的發揮,也重視社會整體結構對人發展的影響,有別於先前對其教育理論探討者之忽視社會結構的分析。其人性論承繼馬克思的人性論,以自由而有意識的活動的社會存有為人的本質,同時又根據其心理分析實踐的反思,以內在於人生存處境的矛盾為人的本質。人要獲得自由,必須擴大對自己無意識的覺察,從無意識的壓抑中解放出來。在最深的無意識中,人可以覺察到普遍的人性,而體驗到與所有人類為一體。一般人無法意識到如此深的無意識,但如能意識到其性格結構、社會性格、社會無意識、社會的意識形態等,則能覺察到諸種壓抑其自由發展的內、外在障礙。資本主義社會的生產方式,促使人發展非生產性的市場性格、接受性格等異化的性格,又發展出產業與人工頭腦時代的宗教,來強化這些性格。人由這些非生產性格發展出貪婪、自戀、亂倫固著、威權性格、破壞性等非理性熱情,又屈從於匿名權威,成為自動機器人,遂不得自由發展。人由生產性的工作、工作社群、產業民主、健全消費、全民參與式民主、集體藝術、人本主義的宗教與教育,可以發展生產性格結構,發展生產性的愛與理性的力量,以克服與自我、他人、自然異化的生存矛盾,而達到與世界合一的真我,真正得到自由的發展。生產性格者能夠帶動產生更多的生產性格者,一個社會若有許多生產性格者,就能逐漸轉變社會盛行的價值與觀念,進而逐漸轉變社會性格與社會的生產方式。佛洛姆以生產性的愛為基礎的認識論,和格物致知的修養功夫相似,必須格除私欲,克服自戀等非理性熱情,以無我的愛與世界關聯,心清淨無染,才能看清世界。在這個基礎上,才能發展愛與理性的能力,及其他的人性潛能。故學為聖人,放下自我,從自我的牢籠中脫離出來,乃人得以自由發展的重要關鍵。以「存有」情態學習人類導師與人本宗教的教誨,知行合一的實踐博愛,能夠克服自戀,發展生產性格。能相當程度的發展生產性格,解決生存矛盾之後,才能健全的生活,發展各種人性潛能。生產性格的教育者與領導人「作之君、作之親、作之師」,將家庭、學校、公司等小團體,建立成以愛生性為導向的學習社會,可以促進所有成員生產性格的發展。這種學習社會可以漸次擴大,而將整個社會、國家建立成以愛生性為導向的團體。經由教育者的愛與人格典範、童蒙養正、教勞結合、內在自我實現動機的啟發、落實所教內容、對受教者的信心,可以幫助人發展生產性格,克服異化。教育學的理論與實踐,應更重視整體社會結構與歷史對人的影響,應更重視德育對人整體發展的影響,避免將自私、異化的人視為常態,而應以幫助人發展成生產性格者為目標去進行研究與實踐。
The existence of man is distinguished by its split state: man stands in the middle of life yet still has an awareness of his own death. He has to compensate whatever is missing in him naturally at the societal level, created as culture, and at the individual level through creativity. Rank investigated the human 'creative drive', the anthropological aspiration to express oneself in creative works, and to overcome the fear of death with its help. Freud admired poets and artists, whose achievements he could not psychoanalytically access, but he considered science superior to the harmless and na ve arts. There are two anthropological radicals: premature birth and the consciousness of death. Freud's massive fear of death made it difficult for him to acknowledge the problem of death appropriately. In Rank's concept, the development of human creativity contributes towards the fear of death being alleviated so that the knowledge of death can be integrated into life; creativity belongs to the fundamental opportunities of man that may enable him to find a way through neurosis. Failure is as much a part of life as is creativity: those who do not experience and accept life in its tragic dimension are denied creativity. Only a creative person who accepts his partial failure finds the strength to continue to be creative without his imperfect work leading to the ritual repetition of the same thing again and again, that is, getting stuck in recidivism.
Vorwort
(2005)
This author posits that, perhaps because of its religious implications, psychoanalysis has historically avoided speaking of forgiveness, although playwrights have often depicted forgiveness as a psychological mechanism that can help resolve cycles of anger and revenge. The Laramie Project (Kaufman et al., 2001), a play about how a U.S. town deals with a murder and its aftermath, provides an example of the way in which forgiveness offers an exit from vengeance. The play points to both the positive and the negative roles that religious ideas play in human actions. At the same time, however, the play itself avoids some of the painful processes that enable human beings to locate forgiveness. This paper draws on psychoanalytic literature, social commentary, and plays by Aeschylus and Shakespeare to demonstrate how the mechanisms of forgiveness operate. In conclusion, it suggests that although enabling the psychological processes of forgiveness can be extremely difficult, ignoring these processes may be life-threatening.
In their commentaries, Sandage and Frommer each describe ways in which forgiveness may be intrinsic to the therapeutic process. But their papers also point to one of the great difficulties of promoting forgiveness as the goal in either theater or therapy, which is that the need to control the healing process can actually impede that process. This reply examines how that need may have undermined the writing of The Laramie Project, and it suggests that, in order to help audiences and clients find true forgiveness, playwrights and analysts may need to relinquish their own righteousness.
Psychoanalytic Bias Against the Elderly Patient: Hiding Our Fears Under Developmental Millstone's.
(2005)
The aim of this article was presentation the Fromm’s concept of person, person, who is involved to dichotomy of human subsistence. Person live, sometime it lived according to nature, there was part, however, in course of evolution, mental authorities have spread out at it. Person gaining consciousness, it has broken attachment of junction it with nature same. Fear has appeared and sense of alienation. Person has become free, but same very solitary. In purpose of killing existential solitude, person resorts to rate interpersonal. Correct, according to Fromm’s conception, rate is love, however the most often chosen rate is authoritarism, destruction and mechanical conformism. Dichotomies of person incline for choice among life or death, existence or property. Correct orientation, inherent restless being, is existence and life, other postures are secondary in accordance with they and if they are in balance, it lives according to nature person.
Fragmenten Fromm
(2005)
This paper suggests that the interplay between transference and countertransference is considered to be a valuable channel of communication. The author puts an emphasis on the containing function of the analyst. The patient strives for an experience of an object (analyst) that tolerates and copes with the patient's projections. There are some moments when analysts feel themselves to be invaded, controlled or abused by their patient's products. As Bion has postulated, this situation takes the form of a sojourn in the analyst's psyche. Clinical vignettes are given to provide support for the ways in which the analyst contains and elaborates the projections of the patients in his or her own mind and the therapeutic role that these processes have.
It seems it would be helpful for all impasses to be >recollected in tranquility.< In the thick of impasses, however, when we are experiencing pressure, defensiveness, vulnerability, and the responsibility to come up with a quick solution, it can be nearly impossible to think clearly. Time may take us to a place of greater calm and fresh awareness. But it may also provide an illusory calm, leaving us stuck circling in old familiar grooves, grooves rimmed by our own unconscious vulnerabilities and limitations. At such times, we may operate in a perceived state of calm, but with a set of powerful, yet ineffective, unseen or outgrown, concretized beliefs and perceptions, creating a perception of calmness. Some of these may even silence or damage the cooperative or struggling patient, who remains or dares to return (out of a longing to connect or make things >right<). I wondered whether what Dr. Pizer's patient said at the end of Rebecca's second therapy with him was true (that she no longer needed a hug from him, finding it more mature to proceed without one), or if this was merely what she felt she should say in order to leave a key relationship she valued – also in peace and tranquillity.
The central thesis of this paper is that grand theories of development are alive and well and should be paramount to those interested in behavioral intervention. Why? Because how we think about development affects how we approach treatment. Here I discuss the central concepts of a new theory of development – dynamic systems theory – to highlight the way in which a theory can dramatically alter views of what intervention is all about. Rather than focusing on one root of maladaptive behavior such as biological predispositions, environmental causes, or motivational states, dynamic systems theory presents a flexible, time-dependent, and emergent view of behavioral change. I illustrate this new view with a case study on how infants develop the motivation to reach for objects. This example highlights the complex day-by-day and week-by-week emergence of new skills. Although such complexity presents daunting challenges for intervention, it also offers hope by emphasizing that there are multiple pathways toward change.
《赫索格》是美国作家索尔•贝娄的代表作。这部小说主要反映了现代社会中人道主义的危机,真实地表现了美国中产阶级知识分子在现代社会中的苦闷与迷茫,追寻和探索。美籍德国社会学家埃利希•弗洛姆的理论涉及到现代自由,现代人的生存等问题。本文试用弗洛姆的自由理论和爱的理论来分析赫索格矛盾的内心世界:赫索格对积极自由的渴望与他对消极自由的逃避;两性之间的爱与战争;赫索格对于生与死的思考。对赫索格矛盾的内心世界所进行的分析,对于我们全面理解小说的主题具有一定的意义。同时,存在于赫索格身上的矛盾具有着普遍的意义。赫索格的精神危机本质上是一种时代病,正如贝娄曾经说过的那样:>不可避免的个人混乱,也就是社会悲剧的写照。<通过对小说主人公矛盾的内心世界的解读,忙碌在现代社会中的人们得以倾听来自自己心底的声音。
Frommovo pojmovanje religije
(2005)
The author considers a relational perspective of mourning and suggests an elaboration and extension of Freud's theory of mourning with a sharper focus on the dialectic of holding on and letting go of the formative lost object relationship. Sussillo argues that Freud's early (1917) theoretical tilt toward the relinquishment of affective ties with the dead, later expanded and culminated in a deeper relational sensibility, was shaped by his developing theories and personal losses. Her position is that the analyst can help facilitate the adult patient's affective experience of felt continuity with the absent object, lost in adolescence, that ultimately allows the separation and the transformation of the primitive bond. Sussillo's perspective represents a synthesis of relational theories in a broad sense – also informed by attachment theory, contemporary bereavement research, infant research, and developmental theory. This thesis is illustrated by a clinical example that highlights the therapeutic action.
In. Replying to the discussions of Gilbert Cole and Stefanie Solow Glennon, I focus on several issues raised, including the continuing intrapsychic relationship with a dead parent who may have been destructive to the patient the analyst's facilitating role in enabling the patient to connect with, and construct the future of, the lost relationship the potential meaning of an enactment with a bereaved patient and some thoughts on the dyad's needs to work creatively postloss in multiple affective time zones.
The Use of Metaphors in the Service of the Therapeutic Alliance and Therapeutic Communication
(2005)
Arthur H. Feiner, 1922-2005.
(2005)
Theory and change. Commentary on Morris Eagle's >enactments, transference, and symptomatic cure<
(2005)
The author posits that Pizer's use of both narrative and lyrical style is not typical in psychoanalysis, whose scholarly tradition tends to favor a denser, more academic style of writing. The ways in which psychoanalysts read these two forms of writing are mirrors of one another. Both kinds of reading are forms of discipline both forms of writing are necessary in psychoanalysis. The author also writes that Pizer's >nonanalytic third< does not have to be a >good< thing like a poem it can be almost anything important to the analyst. The nonanalytic third is a soulful metaphor that can be used to create alternatives to rigid experience. Because rigidity in psychoanalytic relatedness is usually the result of problematic unconscious involvements between analyst and patient, the nonanalytic third can be significant in the negotiation of enactments.
우리는 외부 권력으로부터의 자유, 즉 소극적 자유의 신장에 매혹되어, 자유와 그것의 전통적인 적들에게 대항해 얻은 승리의 의미를 훼손할 수 있는 내적인 억압, 강제, 두려움이 있다는 사실을 알지 못하고 있다. 그 결과 우리는 자유의 문제란 오로지 근대사의 과정에서 얻은 소극적 자유를 훨씬 더 많이 얻는 문제라고 생각하기 쉽다. 그리고 그런 자유를 부정하는 힘들에 대항해서 자유를 지키는 것이 필요한 전부라고 믿는 경향이 있다. 우리는 이제까지 쟁취한 자유 모두가 최대의 힘으로 지켜져야 하지만, 자유의 문제는 양적인 문제일 뿐만 아니라 질적인 문제이기도 하다는 것을 잊고 있다. 그리고 우리는 전통적인 자유를 지키고 늘려가야 할 뿐만 아니라 새로운 종류의 자유, 즉 우리 자신의 개인적인 자아를 실현하고 이 자아와 삶을 믿을 수 있게 해주는 자유도 획득해야만 한다는 것을 잊고 있다. 따라서 나는 소극적 자유의 실현뿐만 아니라 적극적 자유(개인적 자아실현)의 실현을 위해, 프롬(Fromm, E.)이 분석한 자유로부터의 도피심리와 사회현상을 살펴보고, 프롬이 말한 >적극적 자유<의 의미는 무엇이며, 또한 적극적 자유의 개념은 문제점이 없는지 살펴보고자 한다. 이를 위해 벌린(I. Berlin)의 >자유의 두 개념<에 대해서도 살펴보고자 한다. 또한 현대인들이 왜 그렇게 신흥종교에 매료(자유로부터의 도피 수단)되는지를 분석한 앨빈 토플러(Albin Toffler)의 생각도 살펴보고자 한다. 나는 이러한 일련의 작업이 보다 나은 자유 민주주의 시민을 형성하는데 많은 도움을 주리라 생각한다.
Editorial
(2005)
Psychoanalysis is questioned in the public debate and in the managed care system. The Swedish experience of negotiating with representatives of the public welfare system clarifies how important it is to have a wide network. The author argues that there is great risk that psychoanalysis will sink back into the private sphere if psychoanalysts cannot accept a third party to support the treatment situation. Were this to be our future, the choice of becoming a psychoanalyst would be more a choice of vocation than a choice of a profession. This line of thought related to the first medical revolution is the introduction of scientific medicine within a socio-economic context in which the main part of medical care is organized in a private setting. Sigmund Freud's consulting room was firmly situated within the private sphere. Although through his entire life he struggled to get psychoanalysis officially recognized, and thereby strived to place it within the public sphere, the original concept of psychoanalytical treatment was related to the family as a unit of production. Within this unit, Freud invented the analytical setting. The second medical revolution is the introduction of a general social security system of welfare including the main part of medical-health care. In Sweden, as in many Western welfare societies, psychoanalysis was included in public insurance systems. The third medical revolution is the introduction of methods for assessment and accountability, with the consequence that the main part of the medical health sector is organized by managed care methods. These methods question whether or not psychoanalysis should be included in public welfare systems.
Editorial
(2005)
This discussion of the paper by Stuart Pizer focuses on the unconscious forces operating within the analyst that can contribute to a therapeutic impasse. The author discusses a period when she unknowingly skirted interpersonal and transferential interpretations as a result of particular stresses in her personal life. It was not until she was taken to task by one of her patients that she realized the extent to which these stresses had led her to back away from the intensity of the therapeutic relationship. This discussion is offered as a cautionary tale, to remind every analyst of the importance of remaining as aware as possible of one's own circumstances, history, dynamics, and limitations and to be forever watchful of oneself.
Book Review : Sophia Richman, >A Wolf in the Attic: The Legacy of a Hidden Child of the Holocaust.<
(2005)
Nonlinear dynamic systems theories offer useful approaches for understanding psychoanalyses: One of the most distinctive and appealing features of psychoanalytic thinking is its focus on mental processes that defy categorization and linear explanation. Analytic therapists tolerate uncertainty, find meaning in apparently disordered communication, and embrace the unexpected twists and turns that emerge from intimate attention to the ordinary complexities of everyday life. These are hallmarks of a psychoanalytic sensibility that spans various theoretical persuasions. Non-linear dynamic systems theory embodies the same sensibilities: It emphasizes such descriptors as pattern, complexity, flux and flow, the interplay of ambiguity and order, stability and instability, and the natural value of uncertainty and generative chaos. Although systems theory may appear esoteric and overly intricate, it can be approached in an intuitive, experience-near way so as to offer a language and an imagery that underlie everyday clinical thinking. Its metaphors and aesthetics can help analysts become more precise, spacious, and immediate about basic assumptions that tend to be taken for granted. In addition to tracing this conceptual path, this paper provides a brief account of the history of nonlinear thinking in psychoanalytic theorizing and offers clinical examples.
We psychoanalysts – as split subjects – are not immune to charismatic leaders who preach violence against selected targets depicted as the cause of all evils. Freud, in Group psychology and the analysis of the ego, alerted us against such leaders, who can manipulate by transforming us into an uncritical mass. This would be the social equivalent of the perverse pact in repressive desublimation between the superego and the id at the expense of the ego: the latter is put to sleep, and the superego exhorts the id to do violence and regress. Socially, these perverse pacts often take place with the superego represented by charismatic leaders who foster identification with themselves, put the egos of their audiences to sleep through manipulation and thus address an amorphous mass that they can direct towards violence and destruction. An event in which such a phenomenon apparently occurred will be discussed to show how urgent it is to revisit psychoanalytic writings on these matters in order to withstand the temptation to be herded by manipulative leaders. This will certainly protect psychoanalysis and allow for its transmission. It is up to us to exercise the critical analysis that psychoanalytic tools equip us for so that we can detect such summons to perverse pacts and denounce them.
Neil Altman and Rachael Peltz have written forceful and important papers on manic defenses and the loss of >social security< in American society. My own experience underscores the value of their project, which I view as a response to changes and differences that have grown over decades and accelerated in recent years. The emergence of the theory of manic defenses leads back to the crises of the 1930s, and psychoanalytically informed cultural critics have recognized similar patterns since the 1970s. I suggest evidence for their views, while also expressing skepticism about their more prescriptive ideas. The crisis they begin to analyze has even deeper roots in the ultimate fears generated in the mid-20th century.
A Psychodynamic (NonOedipal) and Brain Function Hypothesis Regarding a Type of Male Sexual Masochism
(2005)
In October 2004 it was my pleasure to present at a cutting-edge conference entitled The Interplay of Implicit and Explicit Processes in Psychoanalysis. In addition to offering an address (>The Essential Role of the Right Brain in the Implicit Self: Development, Psychopathogenesis, and Psychotherapy<), I also provided a commentary to Steven Knoblauch's excellent paper, >Body Rhythms and the Unconscious: Toward an Expanding of Clinical Attention.< In the following, I briefly summarize these presentations, with the purpose of showing how current advances in developmental and neuropsychoanalysis are being incorporated into the practice of clinical psychoanalysis. This work is part of an ongoing effort to expand regulation theory, an overarching theoretical model of the development, psychopathogenesis, and treatment of the implicit self.
In response to Franco Borgogno's article, the author talks about the dread of falling, a theme that appears in some of the dreams presented in Borgogno's case study and that conceals very primitive anxieties, each resulting from specific object relations constellations. The discussion elaborates the understanding of this dread through various theoretical perspectives as well as through Samuel Beckett's (1946) short story, >The Expelled.<.
In providing the background to a pivotal session, Stuart Pizer reveals his clinical work as an unsupervised neophyte, prior to his own analysis and analytic training. These early therapeutic efforts were flawed, leaving Pizer at times >grimacing with mortification 26 years after the fact.< But they were also extraordinarily helpful to the patient. Schaffer discusses the challenge of supervising similarly talented beginners: how does one teach psychoanalysis without desiccating a treatmen? How does one teach a relational approach, with no >basic model< and few rules, to a beginning analyst infused with an unformulated, yet often passionate, sense of what is >curative<? Pizer recognizes that were he to meet the same patient today, he would not conduct the same treatment. Now trained and analyzed, not to mention more cautious and >worldweary,< Pizer would not do what he did then. But what if he were the supervisor then? Schaffer concludes her discussion by asking Pizer how he, now a seasoned analyst, would supervise his early therapist self.
Stephen Wangh's insightful article, >Revenge and Forgiveness in Laramie, Wyoming< invites a psychoanalytic contribution to interdisciplinary dialogue on violence, revenge, and forgiveness. This author suggests that one strength of Wangh's perspective is his attention to the interplay of systemic and intrapsychic dynamics, which offers a needed corrective to dominant individualistic perspective in psychological and clinical literatures on forgiveness. He notes that Wangh does not clarify a particular definition of forgiveness or an approach to interdisciplinary dialogue. This commentary outlines a linguistic approach to the definition of forgiveness by drawing on three semantic domains of meaning (forensic, therapeutic, and redemptive or sacred). The author suggests some areas of rapprochement between the construct of forgiveness and psychoanalytical theory across each of these semantic domains and briefly illustrates the role of hermeneutics in interdisciplinary dialogue.
Freud's theory of melancholia has lately experienced a renaissance among those interested in the creative potentialities of the psyche. In this essay, I consider the ways in which melancholia can contribute to the actualization of these potentialities by preparing the ground in which inspiration can later take root. I also outline the circumstances in which the melancholy subject's refusal to abandon its lost objects represents an entirely valid response to loss. At the same time, I propose that if the subject is to develop an affirmative and imaginatively supple relationship to its psychic history, it must in the end move from melancholia to meaning production. Insofar as melancholia signals the psyche's inability or stubborn unwillingness to move forward, its powers by necessity remain dormant until the subject is able to exchange its sadness for the versatile meaning-making capacities of the signifier. I moreover argue that it is only when the subject is able to transcend its melancholia enough to begin to desire new objects that it can develop loving and responsible relationships with others – that it can begin to welcome others in their own terms rather than reducing them to its own narcissistic image.
Transferred fictions
(2005)
Neil Altman and Rachael Peltz suggest the relevance of psychoanalytic ideas drawn from the object relations tradition to understanding contemporary American social life. They see the denial of suffering and the projection of hostility in an increasingly individualistic culture as a >manic defense.< While sympathetic to this critique, this commentary raises questions about it. It argues that the object relations perspective is only one of several versions of psychoanalytic thinking. Psychoanalysis is neither value free nor committed to one set of values, but is rather a plural discourse within which moral and social differences can be explored. The paper suggests three ways for advancing the critical program set out by the authors. It recommends that clinical work be used as a valuable source of evidence of the consequences of social organization for personal lives, that arguments based on case descriptions of individual experience can be effective forms of public communication, and that the value of the >containment model< presented by Altman and Peltz needs to be demonstrated in practice as well as in theory, through psychoanalytic work both in and beyond the consulting room.
This paper has two purposes. The first is to elaborate compromise formation theory from an intersubjective perspective. The second is to explore the implications of this vantage point for our understanding of the modes of therapeutic action of psychoanalysis. I pursue the goals of this paper by outlining the essentials of compromise formation theory and by elaborating what I mean by its intersubjective dimension. Then I present and discuss analytic data to demonstrate the value of the theory for understanding aspects of mode of therapeutic action. Finally, I contrast this perspective with competing theoretical points of view.
My response to the discussions is organized from an evolutionary perspective on the development of theory within psychoanalysis. After briefly stating the premises of the paper, I discuss each commentary. I experience Aron's discussion as more evolutionary than Benjamin's or Ellman's. It seems clear that we all have our own agendas. The reader is invited to try them on for size in the spirit of ongoing dialogue that characterizes this journal.
Envy, Shame, and Sadism
(2005)
This case provides a delicate approach to vital purpose, unconscious pattern, and >emotion recollected in tranquillity.< The author defines, the >paradoxical analytic triangle< to which Pizer refers, as a human quality, an unprecedented level of understanding and comprehension, that lets analyst and patient recognize their own dependence on the object. In so doing, they both gain a quality of presence through recovering the projections that they have attributed to the object. Four aspects are considered important steps leading to this human quality within the analytic process: dissociation leading to impasse sensibility opening to countertransference recollection in tranquillity leading to self-reflexivity and the patient's >vital purpose< – the most salient aspect (the lighthouse) of the whole project.