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>Now, Look here...<
(2009)
>Schauen Sie, hier...<
(2009)
A Crucial Encounter
(2009)
There are patients whose outstanding feature is a particular difficulty in >communicating with themselves.< According to Bion, who reconceptualized Freud's theory, all of us have in our inner world the potential for both producing and blocking alpha-transformations. When they are blocked, beta-elements are formed, which are unable to generate thought. Our capacity to think and to think >ourselves< depends exclusively on alpha-elements. Patients suffering from problems derived from a compensated >structural mental void< are unable to think. Following Bion, the >non-edited< would, generally speaking, be one of the facts that condition the formation of beta-elements. The production of beta-elements transforms these personalities into >functional illiterates.< To what extent can we ignore the >novelties< that these patients present us with through the production of beta-elements and >bizarre objects<? I wonder whether the concepts of >repetition< and >re-edition,< as they are currently used in the clinical process, are not actually casting a shadow over our minds, thus thwarting our ability to assess the total dimension of this >functional illiterate< condition. The analyst's mind can be the first link in a patient's chain of unthinkable thoughts: (1) repetition; (2) embryonic thoughts; (3) the non-edited; (4) structural mental void; (5) functional illiterate; and (6) mental abortions.
This short paper concentrates on three powerful ideas introduced by three important theorists, namely, Merton’s interpretation of anomie in America, Fromm’s critical aesthetics regarding man’s consciousness in relation to nature, and finally Du Bois’ concept of the >racial wage< (Lemert, 2004, pp. 218-240). Those theories are then applied to the Japanese phenomenon of the <compensated date< and the Thai >sex industry<.
Awakening the Patient
(2009)
Begeisterung und Stärkung
(2009)
Begrüßung
(2009)
Begrüßung
(2009)
Bildung als Wohnkunst: Bildung als Orientierungspunkt in einer sich entgrenzenden Gesellschaft
(2009)
The author compares the life and work of two pioneers and major sources of inspiration to the contemporary psychoanalytic debate: W.R. Bion (1897–1979) and H.S. Sullivan (1892–1949). Both their life and their work show similarities that allow the author to illuminate and constructively compare the one with the other. The author proposes his work as a useful exercise in the field of >comparative psychoanalysis,< an important key for the reconstruction of the history of our field and for a more scientifically coherent articulation of its theories.
Die Existenz der positiven Wirkmechanismen von Heimtieren auf Menschen scheint plausibel, ebenso die Existenz von biophiler Emotionen und Verhaltensweisen, auch wenn die Biophilie-Hypothese weder bewiesen noch widerlegt werden kann. Besonderes Augenmerk sollte den Konsequenzen dieser Phänomene gewidmet werden. Wie können Heimtiere zu therapeutischen Zwecken genutzt werden, ohne dass sie dabei Schaden nehmen? Wie kann man Menschen dazu motivieren, Heim- und Nutztiere artgerecht zu halten? Wie kann man nachhaltige Einstellungen und Verhaltensweisen gegenüber der Umwelt fördern? Diese anwendungsorientierten und zum Teil essentiellen Fragen, bei denen Biophilie ein nützliches Instrument sein kann, sind relevanter als die Frage nach genetischer Determinierung.
Breakthrough
(2009)
Bion's investigation focused on the clinically observable field of psychoanalysis and a description of its rules of transformations. Analytic observation has as its objective the discovery of connections and objects not previously observed, and therefore it necessitates breaking pre-existing meaning configurations. The discovery of a new meaning requires not only integration, but also a shift toward disintegration. Rupturing the protection of common sense, rationality, and consensus entails >a catastrophic impact with the true experience of the self,< and it is therefore obstructed by the individual and by the group, who consider it dangerous for their own survival. And not wrongfully so. We cannot know in advance, Bion affirms, if that impact will involve a break-up, a breakdown or a breakthrough – a disturbing perspective that is replete with consequences for theory and technique.
Defence against shock, feelings of guilt, and shame about German atrocities during National Socialism (NS) have dominated the public discourse in Germany for decades. Mitscherlich and Mitscherlich have talked about the inability to mourn due to the involvement of most German families in Nazi terror. The research projects >Childhood in War< at the University of Munich and >War Children and their Flight< at the Hamburg DPG Institute are studying the long-term implications of a childhood during World War II and the Nazi period. In most cases, the personal development of the >war children< was affected – in the case of psychoanalysts, their psychoanalytic socialisation and current professional practice as well. The transgenerational transmission forms an NS introject in the personality. Due to their parents’ lack of empathy, war children are unconsciously looking for a containment of their unbearable feelings in their childhood. Psychoanalysis (including training analysis) becomes a stage where the analysee's childhood loneliness, the taboo-forming, the inhibition to ask and the protection of the parents, as well as feelings of guilt and embarrassment in the family, not talking about matters, and silence, occur once more in transference.
Conceptualization of hostile psychopathy and sadism: Drive theory and object relations perspectives
(2009)
A distinct formulation of hostile psychopathy is presented, based on analytic clinical experience with psychopathic youth and adults. Two psychodynamic conceptualizations of aggression are presented – one connoting a basic destructive drive, the other portraying aggression as a means of ensuring gratification and countering frustration. Following Meloy's (1988 Meloy, J. R. 1988. The psychopathic mind: Origins, dynamics, and treatment, Northvale, NJ: Aronson. [Google Scholar]) analysis of psychopathy as a combination of a deficient object relational capacity to bond and high levels of instinctual aggression, hostile psychopathy in general, and sadism specifically, are conceptualized from these two perspectives. Sadism, which features re-enacted events of violence, is posited as a distinct manifestation of hostile psychopathy with ritualized features attributable to object relations disturbances. Other variants of hostile psychopathy are analyzed as derivatives of more direct aggressive instinctual expressions that are not relational in their intent or function, in which destructiveness is an end in itself. Hostile psychopathy is presented as entailing elements of an instinctual propensity toward aggressive discharge. In addition, a more elaborate motif is posited in which the pain and suffering of others is the key factor in sadism. In the latter facet, there is an actual enjoyment of the others’ suffering, and unresolved relationships are re-enacted with a reparative intent. A psychosexual developmental hypothesis is suggested, in which drive-based aggressive discharge is linked to the oral sadistic stage, while sadistic relational dynamics are posited to reflect the power-control battles of the anal sadistic stage. As a limitation, it is noted that the sociopolitical aspects of psychopathy are not addressed in this clinical analysis. Moreover, since the data presented are oriented toward the intrapsychic (in contrast to social) aspects of psychopathy, the countertransference aspects of relationships that psychopaths tend to engender are not addressed specifically.
The concept of countertransference has a long history in psychoanalysis. This paper sketches the phenomenon referred to by countertransference and the development of the concept, from being signs of disturbance in the analyst to an important road to knowledge about the patient's inner life. The complexity of the questions discussed today – how to understand the concepts of neutrality, abstinence, and empathy; the relative subjective mutuality and symmetry of the analytic situation; the analyst's enactments and self-disclosure of feelings – reflects the complexity of the contemporary view of the patient–analyst relationship. In conclusion, the author presents a model illustrating the disturbing and informative aspects of countertransference together with the conceptual relationship between countertransference on the one hand and empathy and projective identification on the other. Finally, by differentiating between intuitive and irrational levels of functioning, an integrated model for countertransference is presented, synthesising the essence of the concept as it is used today.
Creatividad y Salud Mental
(2009)
El presente trabajo presenta una propuesta en la que se contempla el acto terapéutico como un acto de creatividad en el cual el lenguaje permite expresar el inconsciente. Se plantea que el trabajo psíquico tiene tres componentes: el trabajo del sueño, el trabajo del duelo y el trabajo de la creación que puede analizarse en fases que parten desde el origen del acto creativo hasta el momento en que se expone la obra al público.
Den Patienten wach machen
(2009)
Der unbekannte EINE und die bekannten Götzen. Erich Fromms religiöse Begründung der biophilen Ethik,
(2009)
Die >direkte< Begegnung
(2009)
Direct Meeting
(2009)
Directness in Therapy
(2009)
Direktheit in der Therapie
(2009)
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.
Action and interaction, and emotion and thought as the inner wellsprings of action, play a central role in the lives of individuals, families, and society, spanning the continuum between everyday life and disorder. Until now, the narrative tradition has been the main methodology for portraying and formulating human action and interaction, and little has been written about the dramatic approach to life, disorder, and therapy. Since the essence of drama is action, dialogue, character, and emotion, it is time to give drama its due. The author proposes a methodological concept – dramatology – analogous to narratology, to highlight the dramatic method of investigating action and interaction in life, disorder, and therapy. Breuer and Freud presented both aspects of dramatology: dramatization in dream and fantasy, and dramatization in act, focusing on the person. This approach was elaborated by psychoanalysts with an interpersonal orientation, focusing on the person and speech as action. Dramatology is applied to exploring ongoing patient–therapist interactions as reality and as transference. Analyzing unconscious and latent dramatization in dream, fantasy, and enactment with free association is enhanced by utilizing clarification and confrontation, focusing on the manifest and mutually observable expressive form and style of actions and enactments, defenses and resistances, and the discharge and meaning of emotions. Dramatology puts forward a new paradigm for psychiatry, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis.
Editorial: Psychoanalysis and forensics – identifications with the oppressor and with the oppressed
(2009)
Eine entscheidende Begegnung
(2009)
Erich Fromm's work is unique due to his holistic visión of man. His main interest was to overeóme the traditional dualism between individual vs. society and to develop a fundamental concept that integrates the dialectical relationship of both. As a result, this was his characterological concept o/social character on the one side, and the concept o/mental health on the other side. In his clinical work hefocused his interests identifying the foundations which determines man's mental health and the ensuing pathology when man is unable to develop it. His bio-psycho-social visión of man, therefore, led to an integrative concept of mental health which exceeded traditional medical definitions of his time. Fromm's fundamental view is his comprehension of the particular human situation in the world, what he callea human condition.
El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar algunas de las consecuencias de la globalización en la educación y salud mental de los individuos desde una perspectiva socio psicoanalítica, tomando como referencia los aportes teóricos y empíricos de Erich Fromm. El presente trabajo invita al análisis de las orientaciones de carácter que desarrolla aquel que logra >adaptarse< al mundo globalizado, el alejamiento del desarrollo de características biofílicas, la propensión a la destructividad y las consecuencias que esto tiene en las relaciones humanas y en el porvenir.
Elation and Fortification
(2009)
En busca del ser vivo del lenguaje: la literatura en las palabras y las cosas de Michel Foucault
(2009)
En el siguiente trabajo se realizó una investigación de las historias de vida de cinco mujeres que habían sufrido algún tipo de violencia sexual en su infancia o vida de pareja. La finalidad del trabajo fue encontrar la correlación que existe entre las madres que hay sufrido violencia y su hijos que se encuentran inmersos en la historia familiar como el síntoma de un entorno patológico. En el marco teórico se revisó temas de relevancia como; familia, familia disfuncional, violencia, consecuencias de la violación entre otros. Se presenta la metodología del trabajo para poder pasar a las cinco historias de vida con las que se realizó el análisis para así poder llegar a las conclusiones y discusión del presente estudio.
Primarily, the bachelor thesis deals with the position of man in modern capitalistic society from Erich Fromm’s point of view. The analysis is gradually based on parts concerning human nature, the human character, social character, man’s relation to power, symbiotic relationships, authoritarianism, roots and development of capitalism, capitalism of the 19th century, capitalism of the 20th century and its impacts on human beings’ lives. Furthermore, I focused on the explanation of Fromm’s concept of the having mode and being mode. The final part is devoted to the productive orientation and the art of being. The work should help with better understanding the problematic position of man in our modern society. The next aim is to familiarize reader with unconscious processes taking part in the unconsciousness of the majority of people living in capitalism. The bachelor thesis has also ambition to restore and support humanistic branch of thinking within human studies.
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.
a) To analyze some relevant contributions of marxist inspiration authors to the work and alienation theme. Concretely, we have analyzed contributions from Paul Lafargue, Agnes Heller, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, André Gorz and Jon Elster. b) To elaborate a proposal for the development of a materialistic and compatible with ethical values theory of alienation. c) To scan the contribution of this proposal to the theoretical and empirical analysis of suffering in social links, and specially in work. This thesis contains three parts. One deals with the analysis of the theoretical contributions made from some marxists traditions to the work alienated question. Another deals with a theoretical development of that theory and its links with human suffering. And the last one deals with an empirical analysis of nineteen interviews made to workers from an automobile industry multinational enterprise. The followings are the fundamental conclusions of the theoretical and empirical analysis: a) The analyzed authors do not usually bring us a materialistic approach to alienation, and when they do it, they circumscribe the theory to the ethical values arena. b) There is an inevitable suffering in social life that should not be confounded with an inevitable alienation. c) Alienation, understood as lose of control among our controllable links, creates surplus coercions and sufferings. d) Conditions for the abolishment of surplus suffering are established where we recover control among our links. e) Work is a fundamental activity for the construction of our subjectivity and for the configuration of our social links. f) The way we produce and produce ourselves in work highly conditions the kind and intensity of our sufferings. Thereby, work is a fundamental arena in the strategy of avoiding avoidables sufferings.
Esse artigo objetivou discutir sobre a dificuldade de implementar novas teorias, dentro do processo de modificação das normas brasileiras de contabilidade aplicadas ao setor público (NBCASP). Para tanto, refletiu criticamente sobre o estudo de Francalanza (1997), transpassando a discussão para a realidade contábil brasileira. Simultaneamente, buscou-se em Erich Fromm (1983) o processo e os sintomas da liberdade de pensamento e o papel efetivo da dúvida para contribuir com elementos que possibilitassem uma discussão mais profunda acerca da evolução da contabilidade pública, inserindo o debate da educação contábil, como fonte precípua para uma modificação científica. Utilizou-se do método de raciocínio dedutivo, associando a técnica de documentação indireta e de questionário estruturado. Nesta perspectiva foram discutidos alguns elementos vivenciados pelo Grupo Assessor constituído pelo CFC, para a elaboração das NBCASP, depois de 62 anos sem pronunciamento específico sobre este assunto para a classe contábil brasileira. Concluiu-se que as principais dificuldades na implementação de novas teorias no setor público brasileiro estão associadas com mudanças de atitudes, tendo em vista a forte ligação dos profissionais contábeis com aspectos jurídicos, que nem sempre espelham os constructos basilares da Ciência Contábil.
This text was written for a panel with the ambitious title >With Bion to the future.< Can we tell something about the future? Can we apply this to the future of psychoanalysis? And are some of Bion's concepts of any help to such questions? Bion, following Freud, tells us that the caesura between present and future is not so great. The shadow of the future is present. So how can we read this shadow with Bion as a companion? We may see the future as consisting of many probable evolutions – like an infinite number of virtual lines, growth curves or probability lines only one of which is becoming real. Which lines will develop; which seeds will grow? And is our mind equipped to have an idea of this?
That persons who are objects of violence and traumatisation become offenders themselves is a typical feature of ill-fated cycles of violence in countries torn by fierce political, ethnic, and religious conflicts. Some refugees and migrants with this background present a challenge to forensic psychotherapy when they continue such patterns of physical force and criminal behaviour in a host country like Germany, and are found to be either not responsible or of diminished responsibility for their criminal acts by reason of mental disorders or addictions. Their offences create a critical legal situation for them, since they are threatened with deportation. At the same time, their clinical condition is critical, for they were possibly subjected to traumatic experiences by authorities in their past; their cooperation in the treatment can seriously affect their legal status. Finding a way out of these complications has to take these special factors into account. Our paper focuses on the case study of a refugee from North Africa, illustrating a model of cooperation in forensic inpatient treatment, special trauma therapy (narrative exposure therapy), and expert testimony.
Both parts of the therapeutic dyad are searching for ways of relating between them that are more flexible and that open up new possibilities for thought and feeling. When therapy succeeds, patients transcend old transference expectations and fears in a meeting with another subject, a meeting with qualities of something essentially new. Here, it is hypothesized that the patient in the transference unconsciously searches for a transformational meeting with another person. Through the interaction that is a result of this search, the patient moves between twoness and thirdness, and thereby enhances his or her mentalizing capacity. A transcript (of recorded material) from an intensive psychoanalytic therapy with a female patient in her early twenties is presented, analyzed, and discussed, focusing on how she made progress in her relational search during a session.
Freud y Buda coquetean
(2009)
Freud encouraged the analyst to use his unconscious >as an instrument of the analysis,< but did not elaborate on how this should be done. This recommendation opened the door to a consideration of unconscious communication between the analyst and patient as an intersubjective exchange. Both Wilfred Bion and Erik Erikson emphasised the importance of the analyst's intuition, and the author compares and contrasts these two approaches. Erikson advocated a more cautious attitude regarding the analyst's subjectivity, while Bion promoted a broader application of the analyst's various private reactions to the analysand. A brief vignette from the analysis of a five-year-old boy is offered to illustrate the importance of the analyst's reveries, the mutual process of containment and transformation between analyst and patient, and the co-creation of an analytic narrative.
From Couch to Chair
(2009)
Geld und Selbstwerterleben
(2009)
The four-year group therapy of 16 sex offenders in prison was videotaped, and 21 sessions were carefully transcribed and analysed by means of conversation analysis and analysis of metaphor and narration. These qualitative methods are apt for verbal data and can be combined with psychoanalytic thinking in a productive way. New forms of process analysis can be developed. The results presented here are selected to relate to the topic of how the imprisoned group therapy participants constructed >gender< by ways of speaking about themselves, women, and their victims, young girls. The results show that it would be a mistake to think of these ways of speaking as if they could be ignored in favour of >deeper< motives, lying >behind< the words. Our results show how unconscious constructions of gender are not beyond language, but in language. >Doing gender< is a conversational practice.