The article discusses some moral aspects of the conceptions of A. Maslow, C. Rogers, S. Jourard, R. May, and other representatives of humanistic psychology. The relations between human nature and >good< and >evil<, autonomy of mature morality, personal freedom and responsibility, conscience and guilt, moral determinants of interpersonal relations are the major problems under analysis. The author also presents some basic objections made against the moral formulations stated in humanistic psychology.
Female Psychosexuality
(1995)
Jewish Food Rituals
(1995)
The article attempts to show relations between technology, economy, social life and education. In the first part author shows H. Marcuse’s conception of dependencies between technology, consumption, human needs and social consciousness. In the second part shows E. Fromm’s point of view on two ontological categories >to be< and >to have<. Special attention is paid to the possibility of using Marcuse’s and Fromm’s theories to analyze situation of man, his social consciousness and in this context – the role of the education in contemporary world.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential connection between Consumer Education and Environmental Education for the purpose of avoiding the geo‐catastrophe of the human race. An educational approach has been made to examine this subject. I will examine Erich Fromm's thought, especially with reference to the ideas of >Social Character< and >the being mode of existence.< Hence an attempt to unite the two kinds of education will be made. The conclusion here is that a view of children's character formation dominated by >the being mode of existence< will be necessary.
The paper present the method of measurement of the attitudes of >to be< and >to have<. They are interpreted in philosophical (in existentialism and personalism), psychological and sociological literature either as contradistinctive attitudes or as different hierarchies of values. In the paper >o be< and >to have< are taken to mean attitudes. The attitude >o be< is such a relation to the world which is characterized by a total openness. It has been assumed that the attitudes >to be< and >to have< make the extreme ends of one continuum. On the basis of the theoretical definitions of the attitudes >to be< and >to have< the Scale of >to be< and >to have< Attitudes (SPBiM) has been construed. It is a scale of Likert type made up of 29 statements (one buffer statement, four experimental statements). Additionally, for the sake of a deeper psychological characteristics, Semantic Differential, Value Understanding Test and Value Preference Test have been construed. The array of the above methods has been used in research concerning the sample of 262 persons (131 women, 131 men) who live in large cities. On the basis of the findings obtained in SPBiM (with regard to quartile deviation) a group of 50 persons has been distinguished with the highest intensity of the attitude >to be< (group B), persons with >mediate< (group M-B) and a 50-person group >to have< (group M). Thus distinguished groups B and M differ as to their connotative meanings assigned to 6 aspects of the overall reality understood here as the object of the attitudes >to be< and >to have< (the Universe, nature, temporality, suffering, other people, one's own person). The persons which adopted the >to have< attitude perceive reality as being more >negative<, whereas persons oriented towards >to be< see it in a more >positive< manner. The persons with the >to be< and >to have< attitudes differ as to their understanding of values and their preference. >Perfecting oneself< takes a particular place in the preference of values. The attitudes of >to be< and >to have< are psychologically significant and their measurement is plausible. In the light of the above findings it seems that it is necessary to conduct further empirical research of the >to be< and >to have< attitudes, as well as of ties with other psychological variables.
Humanno-pedagogicheskoto poslanie na Erih From (The Human pedagogical message of Erich Fromm)
(1995)
The Psychoanalytic Foundations of a Dialectical Approach to the Victim/Victimizer Relationship
(1995)
Psychoanalysis and Empirical Research: The Example of Patients Who Lack Psychological Mindedness
(1995)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Editorial philosophy
(1995)
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.
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.
Notes on the null dimension
(1995)
The Social >Instinct<
(1995)
Empathy is perception and interpretation (and who ever said it wasn't?). Reply to Ghent and Stern
(1995)
To See the Thing Itself: The Influence of Early Object Loss on the Life and Art of Edward Weston
(1995)
Editorial.
(1995)
Dialogues and Monologues
(1995)
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.
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.
In poststructuralist thought, in particular ethnographically oriented studies of culture, language, action, or text, context has become an indispensable concept as a way of challenging the claims of an autonomous meaning-making subject with the corresponding depiction of the mind as an encapsulated formal representational system that can be detached from the various strata of social organization. Instead, context is recognized as providing a frame of interpretation for the production of meaning in terms of which events embedded within the frame must be understood. In psychoanalytic theorizing, the recent shift from a one-person to a two-person paradigm can similarly be characterized in terms of an appeal to context. Whereas invocations of the relevance of context in determining the patient's subjective experience in the analytically based process typically lead to a concern with the therapist's subjectivity or countertransference, thus promoting the view of the clinical process in terms of the mutually reciprocal influence of the patient and therapist, in contrast, the present paper focuses on another dimension of the context in analytically based work, namely, the particular set of the theoretical assumptions that constitute the therapist's professionally grounded preconceptions about the nature of psychological distress. It is argued that these assumptions function as >demand characteristics< in that they structure the therapist's mode of intervention and thus, ultimately, how the therapeutic work is carried out. In particular, the argument is made that these demand characteristics play a role in bringing about a self-reflexive stance on the patient's part in which one part of the self observes and reflects on other parts of the self (thoughts, feelings, fantasies, etc.) and begins to cultivate the skills of self-expression and self-formulation as the key to understanding personal distress. We refer to this self-reflexive stance as one of >analytic subjectivity< and raise the question of how such attention to the self is brought about. Then, after having characterized this aspect of the contextual frame, in the second part of this paper we go on to examine a particular event that occurs within the frame. Specifically, we examine a patient's use of the discourse marker I DON'T KNOW from the transcripts of a psychotherapy study and suggest that its use can be understood in terms of the context-driven agenda of having the patient self-inspect and self-reflect.
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.
Empathy a common ground
(1995)
Bereavement and Neurosis
(1995)
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.
Schreber and Hölderlin: The Concept of >A-Father< or the Psychological Origin of Mental Breakdown
(1995)
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.<