Review John Fletcher and Martin Stanton (Eds.): Jean Laplanche: Seduction, Translation, Drives
(1996)
The work of Grünbaum is situated within an evolving epistemic schema as reflected in the history of psychoanalysis. His views are representative of an outmoded model of psychoanalytic practice, but also serve as a cogent critique of the underlying assumptions of this classical model, which can be called the causal-essentialist view. Subsequent anti-essen-tialist developments in post-Freudian thought have been instrumental in transforming the methodology and goals of psychoanalysis into hermeneutically oriented modern-humanistic and postmodern-histori-cist outlooks. These newer construals of analysis treat rationality as having a wider purview than causal explanatory science. It b suggested that the unique epistemic tension that characterizes psychoanalysis is the result of the elusive interrelationship of its explanatory, descriptive, and prescriptive features.
The image in form
(1996)
The Analyst's Authority
(1996)
Sexual misconduct by analysts and psychotherapists is a topic that causes great public concern. The profession should certainly respond to this concern. But the problem of sexual misconduct also provides a stimulus to new theorizing leading to an engagement with issues of social justice. I argue that there are three contentious issues: First, I criticize the growing practice of >safe< analysis, seen as a misplaced response to the problem of sexual misconduct. Second, I urge a fresh look at the theme of incestuous sexual fantasy in family process. This would provide a broader theoretical base for the exploration of sexual desire in analysis. Third, I seek to retheorize the father in general and paternal sexuality in particular. New thinking about paternal erotics turns out to have many sociopolitical implications.
Faith and Denial
(1996)
With the breakdown of the hegemonic hold of ego psychology on American psychoanalysis, we have been groping for ways to describe, explain, and label a new paradigm. A variety of terms have been offered, including participant observation, social constructivism, and intersubjectivity. In this paper, I use the phrase two-person psychology to embrace all these dimensions of the new paradigm. I suggest that both the ongoing struggle to define this paradigm and the proliferation of names for it are due to the fact that any viable psychoanalytic paradigm must address issues at least at three levels of discourse: the developmental (the origin of self and object representations), the ontological (the essentials of human nature), and the epistemological (on what basis and in what ways can we claim to know anything about anyone's unconscious psychology, including our own?). Perhaps the most widely recognized part of the one-person versus two-person dichotomy is the developmental component. At the developmental level, the question at stake has been whether we interpret as if children make themselves up or as if they are largely created by their parents. Ontologically, what is ultimately at stake in the one-person versus two-person debate is the fate of the concept of resistance. Any two person psychoanalytic theory of therapy will be forced to abandon the notions that resistance is intrapsychic and that resistance is the ego's primary agenda in the psychoanalytic situation. Finally, any psychology that is >two-person< at the epistemological level will assume that conscious insight, intellectual or emotional, is an event in a dialogue, not an achievement of a lone and private mind contemplating itself.
Children in Violence
(1996)
The ominous in nature
(1996)
Yes, one self is enough.
(1996)
The fifth basic assumption
(1996)
Exploring the phenomenon of experiential and psychic duality in the bilingual speaker, the author proposes that bilingual speakers may possess different representations of self that are organized around their respective languages. Building on previous work describing the critical role of language in organizing cognitive/affective experience and titrating psychodynamic operations, the author presents case material that elaborates on these themes and further describes the dynamic use of language as a >characterological organizer.< Emphasizing that language is acquired within a complex matrix of social-contextual, object-relational, intrapsychic, and psycholinguistic elements, she views the languages of the bilingual speaker as signifiers of unique self-representations internalized at the time of respective language acquisition and early usage.
From the Consulting Room to Social Critique: Commentary on Papers by Neil Altman and Rachael Peltz
(1996)
This paper explores paradox and negotiation in the analytic process by focusing on an approach to clinical technique that seeks to optimize the therapeutic use of the potential in >potential space.< Specific elements of technique that serve to keep an intersubjective potential space open for ongoing negotiation between patient and analyst include the employment of metaphorical forms and subjunctive modes of language. Through the practice of playful and nonauthoritarian exchanges within the analytic duet, the patient may gain in both the accessibility and articulation of internal life, and develop the competence to straddle, rather than foreclose, the paradoxes inherent in a range of self-states and relational experiences. These techniques for negotiating potential space are illustrated in detail by excerpts from the analysis of >Donald,< whose earlier therapy was presented in a previous article.
The distributed Self: Introduction to symposium on >The multiplicity of self and analytic technique.
(1996)
I hope to convey to the reader through the analysis of a dream specimen how I as an interpersonal psychoanalyst apprehend and process a dream in the context of an actual session how the dream evokes in me thoughts, images, associations, and affective responses and how these are shared in dialogue with the patient. I find the patient's dream important because it vividly expresses in imagery, affect, and narrative her modes of coping with interpersonal anxiety by selective inattention and dissociation. It is my view that this dream was triggered in response to a therapeutic impasse. My response to the impasse led to increased activity and a concordant effort on my part to engage the patient in the here and now, which led to a transference – countertransference enactment represented in the dream. The analysis of the dream allowed the recognition of what I had until then not been able to perceive. Sharing with the patient my associations to her dream permitted an in-depth dialogue to take place. I have attempted to reconstruct my personal reactions to the dream as they unfolded, the clinical decisions I made, and why I made them.
Merton M. Gill's (1914–1994) contributions to psychoanalytic theory are reviewed. Gill's ideas are discussed as they relate to three fundamental challenges facing psychoanalysis: (1) defining the nature of psychoanalysis as a discipline, (2) defining the nature of the psychoanalytic situation and the optimal psychoanalytic technique, (3) finding ways to study the psychoanalytic process empirically. In all three areas special attention is paid to continuities and discontinuities in Gill's thinking over time. With respect to the first challenge, Gill's contributions to classical metapsychology are described as well as his subsequent repudiation of that perspective and its replacement with a >person point of view.< With respect to the second challenge, Gill's writings on hypnosis, on the initial psychiatric interview, and on psychoanalytic technique are reviewed. Gill's later emphasis on the analysis of transference and on the analyst's contribution to the patient's experience are shown to have precursors in his earlier work. Finally, Gill's hermeneutic, perspectivist orientation is described along with his longstanding commitment to systematic empirical research on the analytic process, a commitment he felt was not inconsistent with hermeneutics. Despite the points of continuity in his ideas, Gill's career was marked by radical changes in his point of view, so that one can find him, at different times, standing on opposite sides of fundamental controversies in the field.
This article analyzes the current controversey over the iatrogenic implantation of sexual abuse >pseudomemories< during psychoanalytic treatment. It includes a critique of contemporary memory >research< and an elaboration of the concept of traumatic dissociation, bringing it into the framework of relational theory. Specific clinical examples are used to illustrate why adult survivors of sexual abuse are so vulnerable to dissociative rather than repressive defensive structures. In the context of a long clinical vignette, the analyst's countertransference is explored as a fulcrum for the counterbalancing effects of traumatic memory, dissociation, and constructivism.
This essay first situates the development of self psychology within the culture of North American individualism, then delves into its relevance for understanding Asians, and comes full circle in reassessing what is universal or culturally variable in the current formulation of self psychology. The Asian self is compared with the North American one, and Asian familial hierarchical relationships with American egalitarian ones, resulting in a different cultural structuring of selfobject relationships, including the psychoanalytic one. A comparative psychology of idealizing selfobject relationships is then developed. Intercultural encounters between Asians and North Americans in the United States reveal problems in the interface because of the different culturally influenced selfobject relationships.
Freud in America
(1996)
The constructivist/relational perspective has challenged the analyst's emotional superiority, her omniscience, and her relative removal from the psychoanalytic dialogue. It at first appears to be antithetical to treatment approaches that emphasize the analyst's holding functions. In this essay I examine the holding model and its resolution from a relational perspective. I propose that the current discomfort with the holding function is related to its apparent, but not necessarily real, implications. I discuss the analyst's and patient's subjectivity during periods of holding. I believe that the holding process is essential when the patient has intensely toxic reactions to >knowing< the analyst and is therefore not yet able to stand a mutual analytic experience. During holding, the patient experiences an illusion of analytictic attunement. This requires that the analyst's dysjunctive subjectivity be contained within the analyst, but not that it be abandoned. Ultimately, it is the transition from the holding position toward collaborative interchange that will allow analyst and patient explicitly to address and ultimately to integrate dependence and mutuality within the psychoanalytic setting and thereby engage in an intersubjective dialogue. The movement toward mutuality will require that the analyst of the holding situation begin to fail in ways that increasingly expose her externality and thus her subjectivity to the patient.
Many patients manifest a desire to help the analyst. This is usually understood as being derivative of defensive aims or in the service of other primary motivations. This paper argues for the developmental and clinical importance of primary altruistic aims, which are often warded off by the patient because of his or her fears of exploitation or rejection. Several pathogenic beliefs and varieties of psychopathology result from the failure of the patient's caretakers to allow the child to contribute to their welfare, to >take< the child's >help.< Similarly, some patients require tangible evidence that they are having a positive impact on their analyst. Ordinary >good-enough< technique often reinforces the patient's view that he or she has nothing to offer. A full appreciation by the analyst of the importance to patients of having their altruistic gestures and concerns recognized and accepted can open up possibilities for analytic progress and therapeutic growth. Various sources of resistance to and misunderstanding of these dynamics are explored, ranging from ethical concerns to certain traits that cluster in the personalities of analysts.
Flat Mountain
(1996)
Psychoanalysts have long looked to maternal experience to enhance our appreciation of what we may be feeling in our work. This tradition has drawn on psychoanalyst's construction of a particular kind of good-enough mother who is typically muted in her subjectivity. Contemporary efforts are relying on more subjectively complex descriptions of mothering to make sense of the analyst's subjective experience. However, even recent portrayals of the maternal misapprehend the degree to which mothering strains the ability of all mothers to tolerate ambivalence and tend to simply replace previous idealizations with updated prototypes. The mother as currently constructed is valorized both for her resilience and for her ability to play easily with her feelings of hate and aggression toward her baby. The questions of how the mother feels about what she feels and what she does with how she feels are not addressed. Ironically, insights derived from an increased appreciation of the mutual affect and impact that characterizes the analytic relationship are often set aside in discussing maternal experience. Suggestions are made for ways in which maternal analytic metaphors need to be reconfigured in order to capture and incorporate more finely textured notions of maternal experience.
Because of his limited brief, I find Grünbaum's arguments attacking the validity of clinical data for the purpose of testing theory to be superficial, a more interesting question being why his pieces have had the impact they have had. I suggest that a widespread uncritical acceptance of the ideology of science, a set of social representations of scientific practice, known in these debates as positivism, has placed psychoanalysis on the defensive, making it difficult to assert the independence, interest, and value of clinical experience.
What is psychosis?
(1996)
The Application of Postmodern Thought to the Clinical Practice of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
(1996)
Archaic Sadism
(1996)
The development of the clinical theory and technique of intersubjective psychoanalysis requires reconceptualization of the core concepts of neutrality, resistance, and self-disclosure. Current and historical usages of the concept of neutrality are examined in an attempt to deconstruct the role of neutrality within a hierarchical and gendered system. Neutrality is then reconceptualized as a relational event within the analysis that stands apart from transference-countertransference enmeshments. Neutrality is understood as a mutual achievement that cannot be claimed in an a priori manner by the analyst. Resistance is similarly reconceptualized as an aspect of a relational unconscious designed to maintain transference – countertransference configurations. This phenomenon is termed intersubjective resistance and, as a jointly held state, is most apt to reveal itself when the analyst breaches normative conduct. It is at these junctures that the analyst's self-disclosure and mutual exploration of the enactment become a powerful method for furthering the analytic process. An extended case vignette illustrates the use of self-disclosure for the purpose of understanding an enactment and unraveling an intersubjective resistance.
This paper discusses some aspects of consciousness from a psychoanalytical viewpoint, based on a reading of Freud's relevant texts and also incorporating some recent developments in neurophysi-ology and philosophy. Its aim is to put forward a >fuller< concept of consciousness than that often used in analytic theory. Rather than, for example, confining it to a sense organ, or to a receiver of one stream of inner or outer perceptions, the author suggests that consciousness has many streams or >voices,< with perhaps little sense of unity and that, partly because of this, consciousness has an important role to play in channelling the expression of the unconscious, as well as in helping to create a picture of the world, in addition to its familiar censoring and protective functions. The author also questions the notion of >mental representations< which has influenced what we mean by mental life, and discusses an alternative, >nonrepresentational< framework. Much of what the author writes is speculative but still based on the psychoanalytic encounter, for he believes that our model of consciousness does influence how we view clinical material. He presents a clinical session to illustrate some of the themes of the paper.
This paper reconsiders the case of Frau Emmy von N – Freud's first effort to treat hysteria – from the vantage point of hypnoid states of consciousness and the phenomenon of dissociation. It proposes that Freud, in ultimately repudiating Breuer's concept of autohypnosis and alterations in consciousness, led psychoanalysis for the next century towards a one-sided emphasis on repression at the expense of dissociation. It is suggested here that Freud's inability to >cure< Emmy was largely due to his treating her symptoms simply as pathological pieces of her past to be removed and to his failure to attend to their immediate relevance in the here-and-now context of their own relationship. To comprehend why, as Freud states, Emmy's cure >was not a lasting one< is to accept that patients such as Emmy are not cured of what was done to them in the past rather, we are working to cure them of what they continue to do to themselves and to others in order to cope with what was done to them in the past.
The richness and creativity of early classical work with dreams became narrowed through doctrinaire obedience to Freud's brilliant hypotheses. Interpersonal psychoanalysis, though originally little interested in problems of mind and private mentation, may be well suited, in part due to its lack of a comprehensive dream theory, to a clinical approach to dreams that is relatively open-minded, pluralistic, complexly layered, collaborative, and playful. Multiple possibilities for the meanings of dreams and multiple ways of approaching dreams in analytic therapy are suggested. Although many therapists for complex reasons shy away from working on dreams, an interpersonal approach recognizes that several wishes of both patient and analyst may be significantly fulfilled in the pleasures of working together on dreams. If it is mindful of what is unfortunately a growing tendency to project into all dreams a single-minded preoccupation with transference and countertransference, and if it respects the world of dream imagery in its own right, interpersonal psychoanalysis can make a genuine contribution to our understanding of dreams and dreams can lend an important dimension to interpersonal concepts. Several clinical examples are presented in an effort to highlight an approach that >stays with the image< and allows the dream images to make their way into the psychoanalytic dialogue.
Behandelt wird die Frage nach Entstehung, Wesen und Funktion des Gewissens. Zunächst wird kurz der Herkunft und Sprachgeschichte des Wortes Gewissen nachgegangen. Dann folgt ein Überblick über die Darstellung psychologischer Aspekte des Gewissens in den Werken philosophischer und religiöser Denker der griechischen und römischen Antike, der Bibel, des Mitelalters, der Neuzeit und der Gegenwart. Zwischen diesen Denkern und der eigentlich modernen Tiefenpsychologie steht der religiös orientierte, ganz auf die Praxis ausgerichtete Pädagoge Pestalozzi. Für ihn ist das Gewissen als Stimme Gottes keimhaft in jedem Menschen angelegt und drängt diesen, mit sich selbst identisch zu werden. Es folgen Ausführungen über die Gewissensdarstellungen in den Werken der Tiefenpsychologen Zulliger, Freud, FROMM und Jung. Die Interpretationen des Gewissens erweisen sich als so vielfältig und unterschiedlich, daß sich keine fortlaufende Entwicklung der Deutungsversuche herauskristallisieren lässt. Jede Deutung ist nicht nur der jeweiligen Zeitströmung angepasst, sondern auch immer durch die Brille des je eigenen Denksystems gesehen. Doch zeigt sich gerade in den immer neuen Deutungsversuchen, daß das Phänomen Gewissen die Menschheit seit ihren Anfängen als wesentlich zum Menschen gehörend beschäftigt und wohl auch weiterhin zur Auseinandersetzung damit zwingt. Auch in der heutigen, rational denkenden Zeit kann der Begriff Gewissen noch keineswegs als veraltet angesehen werden, da er nie ausgeschöpft oder je restlos erklärt worden ist. Das Gewissen hat somit seine Gültigkeit und Wichtigkeit für das menschliche Leben unverändert bewahrt.