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In light of the recent emphasis on social and cultural factors in psychoanalytic theory and practice, this article will elaborate earlier attempts to bridge psychoanalysis and the study of culture. I begin by considering the disciplinary tension between the fields of psychoanalysis and anthropology and the emergence of a >psychoanalytic anthropology,< which began in the 1920s and lasted through the 1950s. I then turn to the works of Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm, who developed an approach known as >cultural psychoanalysis.< I suggest that Sullivan and Fromm anticipate today’s sociocultural turn in psychoanalysis and that their work on culture and its role in psychological development and experience continues to be relevant. Rather than embracing a social or cultural determinism, Sullivan and Fromm focus on the interaction between culture and the person, thus creating an >integrationist< approach. Sullivan and Fromm develop a broad conception of culture that encompasses a critique of social and cultural norms and values. I suggest that this is particularly valuable because much current discussion of culture focuses chiefly on diversity and difference, thus overlooking the implicit social and cultural values at work in all human experience. I build on Sullivan and Fromm’s insights to illustrate the significance of early interpersonal psychoanalysis for the sociocultural turn in contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice.
Conceptualizing intersecting psychical dynamics taking place within the analytic relationship, the concept of truth is considered as an integral element of the patient's unrepresented, subjective self-experiences, particularly in respect to traumatic aspects. Truth is also conceptualized as a process of exploration of traumatic elements emerging dynamically in the context of transference. During such processes, it is possible that the patient's traumatic truth may collide with certain aspects of the analyst's mental life affecting deeply his/her phantasy and stirring strong feelings and representations of traumatic self-experiences of personal and subjective meaning. These instances are vital intersubjective aspects of the analytic relationship. They facilitate the exploration of the patient's unconscious inner truth and are signified as internal moments of meeting, emphasizing a psychical interchange between the analytic dyad and creation of a mental-cradle, a space for exploring and representing the patient's traumatic self-experiences. Clinical material is provided from the psychotherapy of a young woman with borderline psychopathology and unrepresented traumatic parental loss and migration. Discussion brings together basic theoretical conceptions regarding dynamic, joint mental functions of transference and countertransference and indicates the utility of actualizing disturbing countertransference experiences and the analyst's personal recourses and subjectivity for the exploration of the patient's truth.
Travel as Qualitative Method: Travel in Psychology’s History and in Medard Boss’ Sojourn to India
(2014)
This article details the history, possibility, limits, and ethics of cross-cultural travel as a qualitative method in psychology. The article provides a brief overview of the ambiguous relationship between psychology and culture and develops an account of the history of travel methods in psychology. It then analyzes an exemplary case of travel research involving Medard Boss’ sojourn to India and his encounters with Indian sages. This article argues that the history of psychology is, in many ways, a history of the exiled, the dispossessed, and the traveler (e.g., Freud, Fromm, Fanon, Jahoda, Rogers, Jung, and others). The article concludes with reflections on using travel methods in an increasingly globalized world and in an ecologically sensitive way.
Ferenczi's discovery of trauma was labelled by Freud as a return >to errors< that he himself upheld he had committed before 1897. During the dramatic period running from the Wiesbaden Congress (September 1932) to Ferenczi's death (May 1933), Freud wrote to numerous correspondents (among them Jones, Eitingon, and his daughter Anna) complaining that Ferenczi's latest theoretical elaboration corresponded to a simple return to the origin of psychoanalysis and was also a symptom of a serious psychosis. The theme of this paper is that Freud's opinion concerning Ferenczi's concept of trauma is a result of misunderstanding: the trauma as described by Ferenczi is not the one that preceded (in Freud's theory) the desertion of the seduction theory, but is something that is much deeper and mortifying, where the sexuality role is less central. The author pauses to ponder and reflect on the importance of the concept of Erschütterung as a cause in losing basic trust, a perspective that moves far from Freudian sex-centrism that puts psychoanalysis face to face with the sufferings of the victims of extreme trauma.
War is a uniquely human scourge with complex biological, psychological, social, and political determinants. In this paper, repetition-compulsions both in making war and in the diagnosis and treatment of war trauma are documented. The diagnosis and treatment of war trauma are reviewed from the Napoleonic wars until the present, and parallel tracks in the development of military history, neurology, and psychoanalysis are traced. A personal history of the author and a clinical case history are included to demonstrate the effect of war on both family members and soldiers. Prevention of war through political negotiation is emphasized.
The purpose of this final academic paper is to describe the love story which tells sadness in William Blake’s >Love's Secret<. The writer adopts Erich Fromm’s theory of unrequited love from >The Art of Loving<. This final academic paper concerns intrinsic and extrinsic side of the poem. In the intrinsic side, the writer discusses about the existing diction and figurative language such as denotation and connotation and imagery to understand the true meaning of the poem. The extrinsic side, the writer discusses about unrequited love. The writer used library research, note-taking and internet browsing for collecting the data. The result is that love does not only bring happiness but also deep sadness for the speaker of the poem as unrequited love which is reflected in >Love's Secret<. So, it succeeds in bringing the readers to feel what the speaker feels.
Particularly due to technical innovations, we are witnessing an unbounding of reality that increasingly is reflected in an inner striving to get rid of the limitations and boundaries of our own personality by reconstructing it anew. This pursuit of de-limitation, dissolution and blurring of boundaries is seen as a central character trait of the Ego-oriented social character. Such a fabrication of a limitless personality doubtless results in a weakening of such psychic abilities as experiencing one’s self as a consistent and ambiguous entity, be-ing emotionally attached to oneself and to others, feeling one’s own strivings, affects and emotions, and being guided by one’s internalized norms and values. Lastly, the impact of this character formation is discussed in regard to clinical and therapeutic issues.
Just as there are many roads to Rome, the trial period may be considered one of many opening moves in psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. The responsive – and responsible – therapist must be many things to many patients, some of whom know nothing about the psychotherapeutic/analytic process. Freud advocated the trial period to help him take a >sounding< when he knew little about the patient and when the patient knew little about psychoanalysis. R.I.P.? This brief communication laments the apparent demise of this promising procedure and makes an effort at resurrection by describing the hitherto unmapped latent structure of the trial period. Even if there are fewer patients in psychoanalysis today, there may be a number of reasons to recommend a trial period, no matter what we name this period of optimistic uncertainty at the beginning of every treatment. Even if >consultation< is the term de jour, the psychoanalytic psychotherapist cannot escape certain role responsibilities at the beginning of every treatment, which has been made clear in the ethical principles of the American Psychoanalytic Association. What we will learn about the trial period should serve our understanding of what must also occur in the beginning of every psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. Conceptually, I propose that a trial analysis (1) will serve as a discriminative stimulus, signaling, to the patient, the unique nature of the analytic conversation; (2) will permit an in vivo assessment of the patient's suitability for psychoanalysis, and, more importantly, the fit between analyst and patient; (3) will provide anticipatory socialization for the unfamiliar and difficult roles of patient and therapist within the analytic process; (4) will offer true informed consent about the task facing therapist and patient; and (5) will facilitate an opportunity for therapeutic assessment, all of which will help the naive patient acquire the skills and lived experience to become an analytic patient. The trial period is the perfect host for all that must happen – and what we can do– to help naive patients become analytic patients.
Of all the great dualities of human experience, >good and evil< have been the most instrumental in shaping the beliefs, rituals, and laws of >Homo sapiens<. The polarization of our nature into >good and bad< and anthropomorphic externalizations of these impulsions have been with us for millennia, providing inspiration for magical rites, representational forms, and the cornucopia of dramas, narratives, and artworks to which they give expression. Furthermore, whereas all religions advocate for good, the particular narratives of evil underlying the traditions of Western culture come to us from the Bible. However, good and especially evil are theological and moral, not psychological, constructs. With Freud's death instinct, and later Fromm's necrophilous character, the darker shadow of human nature became definitively secularized. After an introduction and historical/developmental overview of select theorists, this paper adopts a strictly psychoanalytic frame of reference in the exploration of what renders some human beings capable of doing inhuman things. Looking at behaviors manifesting through the psychodynamics of character structure and severe personality disorders, the breakdown of empathy and defacement of the >other< in the creation of an enemy is discussed. In conclusion two clinical portraits are offered, illustrating how primitive emotions and defenses, superego pathology, and latent schizoid, narcissistic, and projective mechanisms provide fuel and rationalization for malignant aggressive, duplicitous, and sadistic behaviors.
The Relevance of Erich Fromm
(2014)
The pioneering work of Marguerite Séchehaye into the psychotherapy of psychosis: a critical review
(2014)
The philosophical anthropology of Erich Fromm rests on his analysis of the existential dichotomy, which breaks man’s humanity. When man disobeys God in paradise, he begins to become human. He begins to be free. For Fromm, disobedience is a prerequisite towards freedom. However, there is in him a yearning to go back to paradise to enjoy the >roots of his own nature.< He wants to be secured and taken care by a loving God. This allegory was taken and interpreted by Fromm that man is separated from his own nature. In paradise, he is an animal. He does not possess any reason or freedom as a human being. Physiologically, he does what other creatures do. However, saying >no< to God’s commandment allowed him to become human. He has reason and freedom. He is forced to take the responsibility to build his own humanity. Now, he is torn between two existential nature i.e., his animal nature and human nature. There is no way for him to return to his paradisiacal roots. He has to move on and build his true human nature. For Fromm, this can be done through reason, faith, and love.
The ways of transferring knowledge and values have drastically changed, and the “others directed” people, the market and/or receptive orientation people, as Fromm would call them, turn to others in order to confirm their self-value. Others, however, are often only intermediaries in promoting what the mass media have defined as “currently desirable” attitude, behaviour or set of qualities. A radical example is a problem of being torn apart between the illusion that life should be easy and the (repressed) feeling that it is not, as quoted by Riesman, which results in unfounded belief in the possibilities of effortless life and rapid success, among other things. The mutual influences of the media and the social character of the public and individuals are emphasized in the paper.
The ideology of psychotherapy is questioned through critical concepts taken from the Freudo-Marxist tradition. The paper first analyses in detail six determinant ideological processes detected in psychotherapy that three pioneers of Freudo-Marxism criticised in the 1920s: dualistic scission and metaphysical immobilisation (Luria); idealist generalisation and mechanistic determination (Bernfeld); and repressive adaptation and historical decontextualisation (Reich). Following this, it briefly reviews seven paired analogous processes that were denounced by continuators of the Freudo-Marxist tradition: valorative moralisation and the psychologisation of the social (Fenichel); instinctual–rational deprivation and the mechanisation of the subject (Adorno); alienating performance and surplus repression (Marcuse); manipulation and dehumanising alienation (Fromm); abstraction and mythologising (Bleger); authoritarianism and suggestion (Caruso); and depoliticisation and rationalisation (Langer). The argument will show how Freudo-Marxist questionings of these operations – many now forgotten – are still current and can be inspiring and enriching for a modern critique of psychotherapy.
Well before the now flourishing field of animal studies, the thinkers associated with Frankfurt, Germany’s Institute of Social Research theorized and problematized society’s troubling relationship with animals. Early critical theory explored the various manifestations of >unrelenting exploitation< animals have experienced in human societies and maintained that the domination of animals is intimately linked to the domination of human beings, especially of women and racial and ethnic minorities. They criticized Western thought for instrumentalist attitudes toward animals and were committed to extending compassion to animals. Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse mount four challenges to sociologists today: (1) to unmask the shared forms of domination experienced by both animals and marginalized human beings, (2) for environmental sociologists to make animals a principle subject of investigation, (3) for sociological animal studies scholars to engage with philosophy, and (4) to adopt a critical and normative sociological perspective when studying human–animal relations.
The Ethnographic Spiral: Reflections on the Intersection of Life History and Ideal-Typical Analysis
(2014)
What are the competences required to satisfactorily practice effective or >good enough< psychoanalytic supervision? In this paper, I would like to consider that question. Over the past approximate 15-year period, increasing attention has been directed toward more specifically identifying and defining the components of competent psychoanalytic practice. But any parallel attention toward identifying and defining the components of competent psychoanalytic supervision practice has, in comparison, been sorely limited if not virtually absent. If we are to best practice competent psychoanalytic supervision and best train future psychoanalytic supervisors for competent practice, effort needs to be made to concretely delineate the competences that are requisite for such practice. In what follows, I present and adapt six broad-based families of internationally relevant supervision competence areas for use in psychoanalytic supervision: (1) knowledge about/understanding of psychoanalytic supervision models, methods, and intervention; (2) knowledge about/skill in attending to matters of ethical, legal, and professional concern; (3) knowledge about/skill in managing psychoanalytic supervision relationship processes; (4) knowledge about/skill in conducting psychoanalytic supervisory assessment and evaluation; (5) knowledge about/skill in fostering attention to difference and diversity; and (6) openness to/utilization of a self-reflective, self-assessment stance in psychoanalytic supervision. Although by no means an exhaustive list, 30 supervision competences (five per family) are proposed as significant for guiding competent psychoanalytic supervision practice and supervisor training, and a brief explanatory comment is offered in support of each broad-based family of competences.
The foundation of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) in 1962 was – from the author's point of view – a reaction to the exclusive politics of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) in the postwar years. It was a political act of self-assertion, and only secondarily a science-related initiative. But meanwhile, the field of international psychoanalysis has changed fundamentally, and the former identity of the IFPS, which was defined from its differences from the IPA, has come under increasing pressure. Meeting this challenge, the question arises: what is the contribution of the Federation to psychoanalysis in the contemporary world? The author believes that the future lies in the exploration of identity-creating relations in all areas and periods of life. To deal with this huge challenge would be a shared task for the whole psychoanalytic community.
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.
In >The Revisionist Psychoanalysis<, Adorno criticizes the neo-Freudian psychoanalysis for losing the critical edge of Freud’s theory with regard to social critique. Neo-Freudians whom Adorno calls >revisionists< criticize Freud for his >mechanical< views of the human psyche and for his over-emphasis on sexual libido. They reverse Freud’s dictum – >where id was, there ego shall be< – by stressing the importance of development of the ego, and thus that of its adaptive functions. For revisionists, the aim of psychoanalytic practice is to help analysands be better adapted to their social environment. According to Adorno, the revisionist psychoanalysis is suspected of conformism, and implicitly advocating an ideology that what is existent is the best of all possible worlds. The emphasis on adaptation actually weakens the ego instead of strengthening it – leaving it vulnerable to the whim of social conditions, and that of instinctual impulses. Most importantly, it weakens individuals’ ability to think critically and makes them susceptible to ideological and psychological manipulation against their own rational interests.
The authors attempt to outline the historical course of the Hellenic Society of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (HSPP). They put forward several hypotheses concerning the dynamics of its foundation and evolution. The HSPP was founded in 1977 by five Greek psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists trained abroad, after three decades of fruitless attempts at establishing psychoanalysis in Greece. The authors sustain that the foundation of the HSPP addressed the complex problems of Greek society in the 1970s. The request for the founding of an institution for psychoanalytic therapy and training can be linked to a search for new orientations in thought that would enhance the working-through of traumas that had marked Greek society in the previous decades; these traumas played a role in the insurmountable problems in establishing psychoanalysis in Greece and in the difficulties met by the emancipation of Greek psychiatry from asylum-centered practice. The HSPP remained the only psychoanalytic institution in Greece until the foundation of the Hellenic Psychoanalytic Society in 1984. One of the main traits of its historical course has been the effort to shape a psychoanalytic organization directed towards the clinical reality of Greek society.
At the beginning of the 20th century, social sciences were institutionalized for the first time. While initially being a part of philosophical thinking, the promise of a scientific, objective interpretation of social phenomena granted social scientists a distinguished place within universities in Germany as well as in the USA. A larger focus on empirical research should guarantee that social science was indeed an independent endeavor, instead of a new form of social philosophy under another name. However, when analyzing the research of social scientists in the early 20th century, it is clear that ideological biases still prevailed and heavily influenced the interpretation of the collected empirical data. In this thesis, the problem of objectivity in social science and its relation to both theory and empirical research is addressed. As a case study, I have used the development of the social research of the members of the Frankfurt School in the period 1923-1950. Starting with a clear call for objectivity, over years it became clear that ideological bias was not easily removed from social science, especially at the background of the emergence and fall of the Weimar Republic and the establishment of the Nazi Regime. In my thesis, I argue that ideologically biased social science is not less empirically or more theoretically orientated than attempts to conduct objective social research, but have different interpretations of what it means to be empirical.
The objective of this paper is to describe the implications of an exploratory investigation to assess the behavioral preferences of employees in Human Resources Management (HRM) applying the concepts of work motivational orientation (Mediating, Analytical, Receptive and Entrepreneurial) taken from the contributions by Erich Fromm about personality and the resulting styles – Collaborator, Negotiator, Competitor, Conqueror, Achiever, Maintainer and Specialist. These styles originated from a data bank, composing 4,981 cases and the groupings that resulted in the seven profiles utilized in the present work were obtained by multivariate statistical analysis. The survey, relying on self-perceptions of 355 individuals, was obtained through the voluntary participation of employees who work in the HRM Department of the private sector and a public health organization. The results have an impact on the strategic and operational roles that human resources itself performs, since a difference in the composition of the behavioral styles was identified depending on the sector where these professional perform their work.
An individual's identity is gradually built upon a lifelong process of maturation. Sexual life and how our desire is channeled and expressed represent a key area of that global identity. Also, the nation to which we feel we belong constitutes another cornerstone of that complex structure. The obvious attraction that nationalism awakens in many parts of the world might be related to the facilitation of a valuable identity acquired by just belonging to a idealized group instead of through a tiresome and continuous effort. In this process, >others< are chosen by us to establish comparisons with our tribe, helping us through a mirroring process to shape our own image. We project upon those >others< all kinds of undesirable traits. Those attributions tend to be very similar, regardless of which specific groups are involved. The >others< are always lazy, dishonest, untrustworthy, dirty (…). Interestingly, there are a specific set of >positive< attributions that are almost always present: the >others,< and specifically the men in that group, are sexually more potent, attractive, or able. This contradictory image of the >other< can help us to understand the complex dynamics, at the individual and group levels, that are present in radical nationalist movements, and to open up new fields of inquiry and exploration in which psychoanalytic theory can offer guidance.
Erich Fromm argues that the only reliable way to solve the environmental crisis is to alter current social formations in a way in which biophilia can flourish, so humankind can solve its existential dichotomy as well as meet survival needs in an ecologically sound way. However, society's preoccupation with the non-alive-elements such as technique, the mechanical, gadgets, and commodities – shows that the modern social character is far from biophilous. Instead, modern societies are inherently ecologically destructive due to systematic processes and attraction to its progress is a less acute form of, what Fromm terms, necrophilia. His insights can help formulate a social theory of environmental degradation that includes structural and ideational variables. Prescriptively, this means appeals for value changes must correspond with fitting appeals for structural changes in social systems.
While alienation is an ancient human phenomenon, largely because of the social-economic structure of American society, its pervasiveness and extensiveness today is unrivaled in all of history. This, at least was the view of a popular social critic and psychoanalyst, Erich Fromm. In his analysis this market-oriented society had produced almost totally alienated men. Alienation characterized their relationship to their work, to the things they consumed, to the State, to their fellow men and even to themselves. 2 Everyone and everything was thus treated as commodities whose values depended on their exchange values on the personality and commodity market. 3 Therefore, being in demand was held to be the supreme value by alienated man, and as a result he was another-directed man, a conformist, a slave to irrational authority. It was as his most comprehensive solution to this moral and social predicament that Fromm made the concept of man’s realization of his intellectual, emotional, and sensuous potentialities the foundations in his theory of the good. [Taken from University's Website: http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/31579]
This paper explores the possibility that consideration of Fromm's social character is relevant not only to an improved understanding of the collective unconscious of an entire community, but also to the clinical practice of psychodynamic psychotherapy with individuals. In doing so it attempts to extend Fromm's ideas about the intersectionality of psychoanalysis and sociology beyond the realm of social theory. The paper centers around the description of the psychodynamic treatment of an adult female whose psychological problems are thought to be partly the result of her social character, which was internalized during her formative years but whose impact remains apparent in light of her choice of ego defenses and general way of relating to and understanding the world.
Preface
(2014)
Preface
(2014)
Pre-freedom
(2014)
Although some concepts like negative and positive freedom are certainly considerable in the area of freedom; this paper argues to highlight what the researcher has called >pre-freedom<. For this purpose, it tries to clarify the concept of pre-freedom as a condition in which a person is related to other ones by primary ties. It is observed under the light of the fact that s/he does not conceive itself as a person who is being instructed his/her own social role. In other words, pre-freedom is the condition in which a person is not able to choose. It only imitates its leader and practice sheepish obedience of authorities. This person can, thus, be employed and exploited through three major techniques, namely the dependent identity, the doll of authorities, and the fragile security that the researcher attempts to explain them respectively based on various German thinkers such as Erich Fromm, Hannah Arendt, and Herbert Marcuse.
On traumatic and therapeutic factors in communication: From Sándor Ferenczi to Charles Rycroft
(2014)
Discussing Charles Rycroft's seminal paper >The nature and function of the analyst's communication to the patient,< presented in 1956 at the Freud Centenary, the author reflects on Rycroft's theory of what constitutes a healthy and a pathological communication and of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis, linking it with Sándor Ferenczi's theory of trauma.
This article illustrates the psychoanalyst's reverie as it appeared in analytic work with a child patient who had suffered an early trauma. According to Bion and later Ogden, the analyst's reverie can take many forms, including different sound images. During the analysis of the traumatized child, the analyst's reverie developed from a simple tune derived from an aria belonging to a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, to a more tangled journey through the music of Bach and the story of the child. Bion's theory of containment and reverie, and its further development by Ogden and others, is described. The author tries to show how impressions in art can help the analyst to understand the patient and develop his or her sensitivity to the human condition.
The centrality of the supervisory relationship to the professional development of supervisees may encourage dependency needs and regressive wishes. This process may undermine the delicate balance in supervision between an optimal didactic tension and an atmosphere of calmness and security. The present paper advises supervisors to take into account the gap in power and interests between their supervisees and themselves, and the temptation that may arise within them to use their supervisees' regression in order to avoid resistance. Such awareness will help them make controlled and appropriate use of such analytic powers and maintain the balance between supervisees' >regressive selves< and >mature selves.< In addition, a perception of supervisory relations as a space of mutual alternating regressive states is offered as an important aspect of supervisor–supervisee communication.
In a letter of May 31, 1931, Ferenczi sent Freud a set of >Preliminary Communications< containing the substance of a lecture that he was planning to give at the International Psychoanalytic Congress to be held later that year. Although the Congress was postponed until the following year, the ideas contained in these communications form the basis for the controversial >Confusion of Tongues< paper that Ferenczi delivered, over the protestations of Freud and his closest associates, at the Twelfth International Psychoanalytic Congress in Wiesbaden, Germany, in September 1932. With reference to primary sources, chiefly letters, original papers, and commentaries, my paper will chart the course of the intensifying dispute between Freud and Ferenczi over the conception of psychic reality contained in their respective views on the nature of trauma. Although the controversy over the >Confusion of Tongues< paper marks a crisis in the personal relations between Freud and Ferenczi – and a turning point in the history of psychoanalysis – I will attempt to show that Freud's and Ferenczi's divergent views of trauma are not irreconcilable.
This paper explores psychosocially the intergenerational transmission of aspects of working-class masculinities through the shaming, embarrassment, and bullying of young unemployed men, when faced with taking up service work they describe as >embarrassing< and >feminine.< The context is the closure of a steelworks in a town in the South Wales valleys, in which the men's resistance to service work is mediated by father–son relationships that dictate what counts as proper manly work. In this study, young men, as well as their mothers and (where possible) their fathers, were interviewed. The interviews reveal a community suffering the effects of intergenerational trauma and riven with complex feelings about masculinity and femininity. These feelings are projected onto the young men, who feel bullied and shamed by their families, peers, and others in the community because they are unable to find gender-appropriate work. The implications of these findings for understandings of youth male unemployment are considered.
Institutt for Psykoterapi: background and developments of the Institute for Psychotherapy in Norway
(2014)
The Institutt for Psykoterapi is a nationwide training institution offering postgraduate studies in psychoanalytic psychotherapy for physicians and psychologists. It is also a membership society aiming at safeguarding and disseminating the psychoanalytically oriented perspective in mental health care. The Institute was founded in October 1962 as a result of cooperation between the psychologists Einar Dannevig and Per Mentzen and the psychiatrist Endre Ugelstad. At that time, the only systematic training in psychotherapy for physicians and psychologists in this country was provided by the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society. The training took place in Oslo alone, the teaching capacity was limited, and only psychoanalysis was taught. It is a demanding form of treatment that many patients with mental disorders are unable to carry through. The great majority of patients in institutions needed other forms of psychotherapy, but there was at that time no systematic training for this purpose. In a letter of recommendation for the foundation, Harald Schjelderup, professor of psychology, described the prevailing poor conditions for training in psychotherapy: >Training in psychotherapy in our country has been both sparse and poorly organized. There is no institution at the moment which can offer physicians and psychologists a sufficient basis for an independent practice of depth psychologically oriented psychotherapy for adults. Neither does it appear that any of the existing institutions will be able to take on this task for a long time to come.<
The author traces the profile of psychoanalyst Igor Caruso, one of the founders of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies, an alternative institution to the dogmatic International Psychoanalytic Association. She comments on his first visit to Brazil in 1956, and his longer stay in 1968/69 in Belo Horizonte, where he helped to consolidate the then newborn Círculo Psicanalítico de Minas Gerais, as well as taking part in the foundation of Círculo Brasileiro de Psicanálise. Caruso was also important in the creation of other circles of psychoanalysis in Latin America. The article presents his psychoanalytic ideas, especially about personalization and the permanent dialectic influence of socialization, still emphasizing his human qualities.
In his approach, Igor A. Caruso, one of the founders of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies, started with a traditional Christian anthropological view on human development. His early conception of psychosocial disturbances described the loss of cognitive and social ability as a loss of orientation on the objective values of human responsibility and attachment. Caruso later transformed his views on neurosis into a concept of individual alienation of transcendence. In the 1960s, he conceived psychosocial development as an ongoing individual dealing with the social and collective alienation of human nature, life, and work. The process of becoming a cultural person obliges the ego to face its individual unconscious drive demands, as well as the unconscious demands of society. Caruso's stays in Latin America – especially in Brazil and Mexico – caused him to reinforce the interference of materialistic theories on socialization with the psychoanalytic knowledge of individual unconscious dynamics. He understood the psychoanalytic situation as a ‘micro-social model’ that symbolizes the collective and the individual alienated conditions. In the 1970s, Caruso's conception was understood as a Freudo-Marxist point of view on alienated psychosocial reality. With his view on psychoanalytic treatment as a dialectic and relational process, Caruso demanded a psychoanalytical responsibility within collective changes.
Many relational analysts believe that hope and despair make up a dynamic dialectic underlying all human development, and therapeutic change is created in the space between them. Twelve years have passed since I presented the case of Dana at the International Sẚpndor Ferenczi Conference in Israel. Since that time, there have been more International Ferenczi's conferences. In the intervening years, I began to rethink Dana's case from a different perspective. Simultaneously, I was trying to make new sense of the then-described >temporary< emotional upheaval I had thought I left behind. In this process of reflection, I realized not only that I was as resistant as Dana to surrendering to my despair, but also that this resistance on my part led to an impasse and might have closed some possibilities for Dana in dealing with severe trauma. This newly found emotional awareness has helped to transform my work with subsequent trauma patients. Through >getting into mud,< to use my patient Gary's words, I was no longer afraid of regressing to a place where despair ruled the day. In this way, my patient and I discovered that genuine hope could be sustained.
The aim of this paper is to show how the life, personality, and scientific work of Gaetano Benedetti and Johannes Cremerius shaped the original form and structure of the Milan Associazione di Studi Psicoanalitici (ASP), which they founded together with their pupils in 1971 and which became a member society of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) in 1989. The training analysis was substituted by a personal analysis to be finished before the beginning of the training proper; group supervision had and still has as much importance as individual supervision; transference and countertransference analysis are fundamental dimensions of both psychoanalysis and psychotherapy; and psychoanalysis can survive only in a context of interdisciplinary dialogue, empirical research, and social commitment. The author thinks that all these ingredients, which Benedetti and Cremerius contributed to the life of the Milan Scuola di Psicoterapia Psicoanalitica and ASP, could represent important resources, as far as the future of the IFPS is concerned.