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- 1995 (306) (remove)
The distinction between the having mode and the being mode seems to be the basis of E. FROMM's clinical approach, which finds its main application in the center-to-center relatedness between analyst and patient. Analysts can understand a patient because they experience what the patient experiences. The dialog is based on reciprocally communicated emotional and conceptual responses and reactions; both identities come into play. The psychoanalytic session can save itself from the having mode by addressing the patient's living memory, which represents the past relived in the present, according to the being mode. Case material from a psychoanalytic session with a 31-yarr-old woman is included. (German and Spanish abstracts.)
And Fromm Where...
(1995)
Bereavement and Neurosis
(1995)
Between Marxism and Psychoanalysis – Antifascism and Antihomosexuality in the Frankfurt-School
(1995)
In their efforts to utilize individualist psychoanalysis as a tool for understanding mass behavior, the social theorists of the Frankfurt School increasingly came to rely on a static, essentializing construction of sexuality which ultimately led to an equation of fascism and homosexuality. This equation here serves as the starting point for a fundamental critique of the concept of sexuality developed by this circle of Marxist thinkers. Such a critique opens up the underlying understanding of the social and psychological realms advanced by Critical Theory. Attending to the equation of homosexuality and fascism as the central point of concern, this essay traces the introduction of psychoanalysis into Critical Theory through Erich FROMM and investigates the extent of FROMM's influence on the concept of sexuality propounded by his colleagues, especially M. Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno. H. Marcuse's (1936) essay, >On Hedonism<, is highlighted.
Clinical Notes on Masochism
(1995)
Commitment to Peace
(1995)
Dreams reported in psychoanalysis may reflect not only the transference of the patient, but also the countertransference, counterresistance, and counteranxiety of the psychoanalyst. Because of the communicative capacity of dreams, the analyst may use the patient's dreams as supervision. Objective signs are described that may indicate countertransference interference in the analyst's dream interpretation. Through a process of reciprocal, interactive dream interpretation, the dream's meaning about the transference – countertransference matrix can be clarified. Usually, there is an intermediate stage in working on a dream, during which the dream meaning is enacted in the dream-interpretation process. Clinical examples include the >Lovely Dream< reported by Freud, along with examples from the casebook of Gill and Hoffman (1982) and from the author's own practice.
Containing and Responding
(1995)
Mutuality – sine qua non. An attempt to continue analyzing unilaterally. Emotionality disappeared analysis insipid. Relationship – distant. Once mutuality has been attempted, one sided analysis then is no longer possible – not productive. Now the question: must every case be mutual- – and to what extent- [Dupont, 1988, p. 213].
An unstated assumption in the important discussion What Does the Analyst Know? (Symposium, 1992, 1993) is that the questions of what is truth, of what it means to know, of what constitutes effective understandings of human experience have been resolved in the natural sciences, particularly physics. What is problematic about certain aspects of the discussion is an invidious acceptance of the validity of a positivist definition of physical science, an acceptance that places psychoanalysis as an inferior discipline to physics, as a discipline for which one must make excuses. Missing from the debate is a more textured, critical, and realistic view of the practice of physical science that can ameliorate the present insecurity and thraldom that I believe characterizes the attitudes of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists toward natural science. By examining three vignettes, from physics, molecular biology, and psychoanalysis respectively, I hope to show that knowledge in the physical sciences is as socially constructed as it is in psychoanalysis and that just as the historicity of living matter is not a problem for biology but defines the object of study, so too is subjectivity not a problem for psychoanalysis but defines its object of study. I explore the function that the fantasy of an unproblematic natural science has served in psychoanalysis and suggest that one consequence for psychoanalysis of its failure to understand the actual practice of natural science has been a failure to take seriously and to develop with confidence what is truly original in the discipline.
Freud's discussion of melancholy in >Mourning and Melancholia< includes an account of identification as the incorporation of the lost object. This essay first seeks to establish a relation between that incorporative identification and the formation of >the bodily ego.< It then seeks to situate this melancholic condition of the bodily ego in terms of the >loss< of the same-sexed object under prevalent conditions of compulsory heterosexuality. This >loss< might be better understood on the model of foreclosure, suggesting that it is a loss resolved into a melancholic identification and hence central to the formation of same-sex gender identification. This account of the melancholic consequences of a disavowed homosexual attachment is then situated in terms of contemporary conditions of grief over the loss by AIDS of so many gay men. The suggestion here is that the cultural >unreality< of that >loss< may be attributable to the foreclosed status of homosexual love as that which >never was< and >never was lost.<
An important critique has been developing that questions the ways in which psychoanalytic theories have conceptualized gender and sexuality. Contemporary (postmodern) feminist theories and the work of gay and lesbian theorists have challenged the traditional psychoanalytic view of gender as formed primarily through fixed, unitary identifications. This paper reviews the classical concept of the primal scene and the Kleinian concept of the combined parent figure and recontextualizes these ideas within contemporary relational theory. The revised metaphor of an internalized primal scene challenges traditional notions of a unitary gender identity and lends support to the postmodern critique of the notion of a core or unified identity. This paper develops the idea that we need both a notion of gender identity and a notion of gender multiplicity more broadly, we need an emphasis on people both as unified, stable, cohesive subjects and as multiple, fragmented, and different from moment to moment. In line with the postmodern emphasis on deconstructing dichotomies, the paper emphasizes the deconstruction, or rather the psychoanalysis, of such polarized concepts as male-female, masculine – feminine, heterosexual – homosexual, father – mother, genital – pregenital, oedipal – preoedipal, identity – multiplicity, paranoid-schizoid-depressive position, drive theory – relational theory, and even patient – analyst.
Excerpts from prolonged analytic work with a multiply traumatized young man who deliberated a sex-change operation are presented, highlighting some problematics in the treatment of transsexualism, a gender-identity disturbance that may become significant in recent psychoanalytic and cultural discourse on self and gender. The paper aims both to report some >technical< issues in such an analysis and to throw some light on such themes as identification, domination and submission, sadomasochism and guilt and shame, narcissistic entitlement and empowerment, desire and recognition, gender and difference, and the vertiginously multiple meanings and emotional elaborations of masculinity and femininity. The analytic itinerary is recounted with emphasis on diverse relational approaches that were attempted to fit the delicate balance of the patient's needs, his quasi-delusional transferences, and his capacity to persevere in a mutually >nightmarish,< though possible and feasible psychoanalysis.
Desire and dread in the analyst. Reply to Glen Gabbard's. Commentary on >love in the afternoon<
(1995)
Dialogues and Monologues
(1995)
This essay identifies Kohut's major contribution as methodological: that psychoanalytic inquiry entails the sustained empathic immersion in the patient's psychological experience. Kohut's consistent employment of this method enabled him to discover that it was not instinctual drive derivatives but selfobject needs that were central to all psychological relationships. This discovery was the basis for the transformation of analysts’ approach to the >narcissistic< aspects of a wide variety of disorders – a transformation whose theoretical and therapeutic importance rivals the revolutionary approach taken by Freud to the vicissitudes of psychosexuality and its disturbances. The author describes the major areas of progress in self psychology – much of which centers on the growing recognition that the health and vitality of the self depend on complex relational, or intersubjective, selfobject experiences. He indicates how this recognition is changing our perspectives on transference and countertransference and is improving our ability to respond optimally to our patients. He describes how optimal responsiveness constitutes the guiding principle for therapeutic work, and how it may both constitute, and be different from, >being empathic.<
Self psychology is maintaining continuity with Kohut's last work, >How Does Analysis Cure?< and his vision of human nature, as well as exploring a multiplicity of new directions. This paper discusses the expansion of Kohut's contributions in terms of the >figure-ground< dimensions of transference: a selfobject dimension and representational configurations. On the basis of empirical studies of infancy, the paper proposes that both self- and mutual regulation organize the treatment relationship. It illustrates the clinical applicability of the expansion of Kohut's contributions by discussing a case in which countertransference, aggression, and resistance could place an analyst in danger of contributing to a therapeutic stalemate were it not for the contributions of Kohut.
At this time in the evolution of the various psychoanalytic theories, we can make only some general comments regarding the direction that psychoanalytic self psychology may take in the future. We can, with greater certainty, however, predict the enduring importance of two of its basic concepts: 1) the significance of empathy as a mode of observation will endure and 2) the developmental and clinical conception of the selfobject will remain central to self psychology for the foreseeable future. Selfobject experiences have been recognized as crucial in all aspects of mental life: in development, in the clinical situation, and in everyday life throughout the lifespan.
This article locates self psychology within the context of the evolving paradigm for psychoanalysis that the author calls intersubjectivity theory. It is argued that Kohut contributed significantly to the new paradigm but stopped short of fully embracing it. Self psychology and intersubjectivity theory are compared and contrasted, and an intersubjective view is offered of the patient's transference, the analyst's transference, and the system created by their reciprocal interaction.
Following Hartmann's theoretical formulations, the self has been explored primarily as a body of self-representations coordinate to object representations the dynamic organizations of the mind (the id-egosuperego systems) have been seen as impersonal (nonself) functions.This paper attempts a conception of the id-ego-superego structures as self-functions in intimate relation to self-representations. Building on an integration of Piagetian and psychoanalytic object relations frameworks (event theory), it proposes that the earliest self-experience occurs in dynamic schemes of personally motivated interaction between self and nonself. These I-schemes lay the groundwork for both the dynamic and the representational aspects of the self: Their structure results in experience characteristic of the dynamic id and in their character as undifferentiated interactions provides the base for the development of self- and object representations. Development occurs by integration and differentiation in processes of conflict resolution. The paper traces these developments in outline as they lead to the transition in the dynamic self from id to ego organizations, and in the self-representations from part-selves and part-objects to a whole and individuated self in relation to whole objects.
To view all that occurs in the analytic arena, including verbal exchange, as interaction broadens the horizon and affects our understanding of the analytic process, transference – countertransference, therapeutic action, and theory of technique. This paper focuses particularly on implications of the organization model of transference: the process of illuminating transference, the mutual interactional shaping that occurs in the analytic relationship, and the distinction between the content and the process of communications. Defining countertransference as the analyst's experience of the patient, the paper proposes that all analysts, regardless of persuasion, use their experience of the patient (that is, countertransference) as the central guide to analytic exploration and understanding. Differences in analysts’ experience of their patients arise not only because of different models and respective subjectivities, but also because of the variable use of two principal listening perspectives: listening from within the patient's vantage point (subject-centered listening perspective) and listening from the as-the-other (other-centered) vantage point. The paper proposes that the analyst's listening from within and as-the-other, oscillating in a background – foreground configuration, can illuminate more fully the patient's experience of self and of self in relation to others. And, finally, recognizing that all interventions are interactions firmly anchors the interpretive process and its power within relational experience and opens the door to reassessing and potentially embracing the many varied forms of interventions that contribute to the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis.
In psychoanalytic psychotherapy we are primarily interested in psychic change and how to facilitate it for the better. Change is a universal property of matter, living or inanimate: everything in nature is influenced by everything else interaction is ubiquitous. In the early years of psychoanalysis, the prevailing view was that therapeusis was essentially informational – insight and awareness would bring about changes in the ways one would experience events and respond to them. Over time, there has been a subtle shift from the informational perspective to the transformational, where insight is often retrospective rather than the active agent. The growing awareness of the need to be deeply recognized and responded to by another human being is reflective of this shift and has loomed ever larger in the interactive arena known as psychoanalysis. This paper focuses on a single facet of the need for recognition by another – the role of enacted response in effecting psychic change. It also addresses another level of the meaning of interaction: Whereas the internal interaction between perception and response has tended to be looked upon, in psychoanalysis, as unidirectional, the present discussion draws attention to the complexity of the bidirectional interaction between perception and response.
Dissociation is posited as a form of psychical organization in which psychical conflicts and threats to self-preservation are regulated on the terrain of mind/body relations. Economic, social, and cultural processes are implicated in the establishment of stable forms of dissociation, and at the same time render these dissociative regimes opaque. This essay attempts to show 1) how the dissociative organization and process relies on a mechanism that may be described as a type of de-repression 2) that dissociative communication is not symbolic in nature but employs a signaling function, giving rise to pseudointegration of the personality rather than true integration 3) how a phenomenon of false encoding may be observed in these cases and 4) how a stable regime of pathological dissociation subtly creates a sensory cocoon or invisible wall, the effect of which is to erect a narcissistic field of omnipotent constructions (a >pathological container<) in the place of actual contact between people. Lastly, it is in the structure of pathological dissociation that it is possible to locate a specific psychological definition of inauthenticity.
Erik. Erikson's concept of identity, reworked from the perspective of contemporary relational theory, is used to propose an integrative, dialectical view of subjectivity. This view captures dimensions of personal experience and personality organization that have stayed peripheral to most psychoanalytic discourse, from whatever point of view: Personal experience is created and re-created at the threshold of the intrapsychic and the social, such that they are inextricable, and this ubiquitous transaction is itself experienced as the ground and location of how it feels to be a person. Simultaneously, the vitality of personal experience rests on the dynamic synthesis of unity and complexity this transactional perspective emerges amid the integration of diverse elements of personal experience, such as identity and intimacy, the past and the present, and the world of internal object representations and external relationships. Subjectivity is essentially constructed in the context of relationships that is, it is intersubjective at its core. Thisimplies extending the very definition of the relational to encompass the broadest view of the social environment, including families, institutions, cultural influences, and even broad historical forces.
Editorial
(1995)
Editorial
(1995)
Editorial
(1995)
Editorial
(1995)
Editorial philosophy
(1995)
Editorial.
(1995)
Empathy a common ground
(1995)