Postmodern theory and critiques currently exert a considerable influence on psychoanalytic theory, particularly in regard to the revision of a theory of sexuality and gender. This article reviews some of the critiques and alternative views of sexuality proposed by various postmodern theorists such as Butler, Jameson, Baudrillard, and Foucault. After conducting a critical comparison of these critiques and alternatives with contemporary analytic revisionist theory, I contend that, despite the useful aspects of postmodernism's critical cultural perspective, some postmodern positions run directly counter to certain key psychoanalytic tenets about human agency and the existence of an inner psychic world or selfhood. Furthermore, I believe that, despite the laudable politics of many postmodern writers to promote a greater diversity of nonpathologized sexual experience, the atrophied views of agency and selfhood depicted in the postmodern writings reviewed in this essay cannot support an approach that is concerned with clinical treatment or with describing processes of psychological transformation. A case vignette is provided illustrating the main arguments of the paper.
Stoller proposes two fundamentally contradictory conceptions of core gender identity. This paper urges that we accept the first, a relational conception: Core gender identity develops in the context of unambiguous sex ascription at birth and the virtually infinite number of daily infant-parent interactions permeated by all the conscious and unconscious meanings the child's gender has for its parents. The implications of this conception are explored in four contexts. The first shows that a recent case of sex reassignment, purporting to demonstrate a neurological base for gender experience, does not do so. The second argues that children's core gender identities as >girls< or >boys< are as diverse as the meanings that their genders have had for their interaction partners (usually the parents). The third emphasizes the priority of infant-parent interactions in core gender identity development and in the gendered meanings that children's genitals have for them. The fourth argues for the rejection of the >disidentification< hypothesis rooted in Stoller's second and unsupported conception of core gender identity and in Mahler's conception of separation?individuation, which might usefully be replaced by Lyons-Ruth's conception of attachment-individuation.
Promises, promises.
(1999)
La proyección, desde referentes marxistas y humanistas, de los principales conceptos del psicoanálisis aplicados al ámbito de la acción de la persona y de la situación social constituye una línea de pensamiento e investigación fructífera para la solución de los problemas de la sociedad contemporánea. La importancia metodológica de categorías holísticas como la de Proyecto de Vida, construída y aplicada en diversas investigaciones por el autor podrían aportar, desde los referentes teóricos que se expresan, a la complejidad del campo de conocimiento y tranformación humana de la sociedad.
This paper addresses the gender of the analyst as an important factor in the shaping of the analytic experience. Specifically, it focuses on the notion that female analysts bring something different from what male analysts bring to the analytic dyad and that this influences and shapes the analysts’ translation of the patients’ experience – determining treatment course and therapeutic enactments. It begins with the idea that, for some men, working with a female analyst may ease the processing and metabolization of their aggression – allowing for a (re) integration of it with their sexuality and desire. The clinical material of a male analysand who sought treatment from a woman analyst is used to explore this idea within a post-Lacanian framework incorporating Kristeva's work on the maternal chora, the imaginary father or third, and the journey that the infant must make from the real to the symbolic, from biology to desire.
Freud's characterization and dismissal of the >symbolic dream interpreting< of his time – his idiosyncratic distinction between that metaphoric form of interpretation and what he called the >scientific< mode, and his subsequent asymmetrical focusing on the latter – seriously skewed his presentation of the nature and history of the Western dream tradition. It obscured the facts that an old theory regarded the dream as the unmasker of the hidden psychic life and that a venerable hypothesis that it could bring to light licit and illicit unconscious desires had not been forgotten by Freud's fin de siècle contemporaries. For many years, his injunction against the use of symbolism, except in the case of the sexual, had an inhibiting effect on psychoanalysts’ free use of manifest dream interpretation.
Psychoanalysis as a vocation
(1999)
In this centenary of Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams it is important to revisit this classic, to discuss why it is a classic, to consider what has been learned since its publication, and to discuss what changes in our understanding of dreams and dreaming are called for. To this end, we briefly discuss some of the main themes of the book. Then we review both changes in psychoanalytic thinking and theory and the results of many studies made possible by the discovery of the electro-encephalographic changes that occur during sleep and their relevance for understanding dreams and their function. We suspect that Freud would have been delighted to know about this explosion of information about the physiology of dreaming. With this in mind, we consider the need for modification of some of Freud's theories while noting that his basic contribution, that dreams are meaningful and understandable, has been amply confirmed. We then discuss these observations in relation to how we approach working with dreams.
Psychoanalysis, dissociation, and personality organization reflections on Peter Goldberg's essay
(1999)
In this paper, I consider the feeling of interiority as it evolves within the treatment relationship. A capacity to access and sustain one's interiority reflects a sense of personal solidity within which the validity of subjective process and privacy is taken for granted. When this capacity is relatively undeveloped, individuals rely on the >other< (including the analyst) to help them contact, elaborate, or manage their affective experience. Quite paradoxically, the analyst's active investigation of dynamic or intersubjective process may obfuscate rather than clarify this core difficulty. I suggest two alternative approaches to the treatment situation that stand in some tension and yet also complement each other. One emphasizes the >active< investigation of dynamic and dyadic process, wherein the analyst works interpretively and/or around relational issues. The other is organized around the >interior< dimension of the treatment experience, emphasizing the patient's need to develop or manage her affective process in the relative absence of input from the analyst. Two clinical situations are described, the first illustrating the use of silence with a patient whose difficulties involved affect articulation, and the second involving a patient whose need for affect regulation made her highly dependent on the analyst for soothing.
Psychoanalytic Expertise
(1999)
The experience of selfhood is that of struggle, between conflicting demands, inevitable dilemmas, and shifting allegiances toward deciding what is for us. The complex nature of this struggle often makes the boundaries between health and sickness ambiguous. Therapeutic work is significantly dependent on the capacity to engage with such struggles. This is illustrated by two striking examples of successful work, as well as my own two analyses, and other clinical material.
Rationaalisen demokratian paluu? Jürgen Habermas Frankfurtin koulun ohjelman demokratisoijana
(1999)
Reply to Ann‑Louise Silver
(1999)
Sándor Ferenczi's first paper (1908) on the subject of premature ejaculation – in its stress on the repercussions of the symptom itself in the other (in this case, the woman), rather than its unconscious significance or the patient's pathology – is an early signal of the ethical directions his future clinical work would take. Ferenczi – displaying a decidedly relational, not merely intrapsychic, orientation – underlines the peculiar idiosyncrasies of each partner in the couple and also the fact that any relationship worthy of the name must take place in conditions of mutual pleasure and advantage. In particular, Ferenczi strikes a blow for the >legitimate< needs of the weaker partner to whom the stronger must allow and offer mental space and voice by virtue of his knowledge and power. For the above reasons this first paper is a >calling card< which announces Ferenczi's later reflections on the specific affective qualities that may render the psychoanalytic environment non-traumatic, as well as his criticism of the narcissistic aspects of the analyst (one of the most important motives for subtle and hidden trauma), who views the work of interpretation as the product of a single mind (in my terms: a kind of colonisation and expropriation of the other) rather than as fruit of an encounter that would take into account both the unique characteristics of the partner as well as the rhythms appropriate to such a relationship.
Satjagraha als Wissenschaft
(1999)
Satyagraha nach Gandhi
(1999)
Psychoanalysis is the product of a highly original and independent thinker from an historically marginalized minority with a perspective dedicated to plumbing the depths of our self-deceptions. Although the European anti-Semitism faced by Sigmund Freud was particularly relevant to his personal and professional identities, he was not unmindful of conflictual >race, creed and color< paradigms peculiar to the >New World<. Fragments from the analyses of two American psychiatrists (whose formative years were centered in the post-Civil War South) reveal the confluence of such crosscurrents in their autobiographical accounts of his inter- relationships with each of them.
Sozialisationswidersprüche heutiger Kinder und Möglichkeiten der Wertebildung in der modernen Schule
(1999)
Since Freud's Dream Interpretation and his additional writings on the analysis of dreams, the technique of handling a dream report within the analytic session has remained nearly unchanged. It is characterised by dream-centred associations and their interpretation in regard to dream content and to transference. This approach constitutes an alien element within contemporary interactional psychoanalytic technique and tends to provoke resistances in the analytic dialogue. This article stresses the function of dream reporting during the session with respect to the interactional process. It is concluded that sufficient attention should be given to interactional analysis of dream reporting in accordance with the questions: Why does the patient at this point of the process tell a dream, and why does he tell this very dream instead of another?
The analyst's >Bad-analyst feelings<: A counterpart to the process of resolving implosive defenses.
(1999)
The Dream Unbound
(1999)
Since the publication of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, the psychoanalyst has been concerned with how to bring the unconscious mind closer to consciousness. This paper reflects the shift in understanding the use of dreams for the psychoanalytic exploration of the vicissitudes of the self and a shift away from the notion of wish fulfillment as a core motivational force in wish production. Another important change in psychoanalytic theory is the relevance of the analyst's subjective experience of the patient, which enhances the understanding of the therapeutic process. From the acknowledgment of the importance of a countertransference dream, the analyst has greater access to thoughts, feelings, and images which enable the analyst to work through the resistances to change, which occur in the consulting room. Two clinical vignettes depict the use of self-state dreams which reveal the patient's self-experience and a countertransference dream which gives greater access to the analyst's inner world and thus wards off a potential dismantling of the psychotherapeutic relationship.
Nowadays Freud bashing is not only à la mode, in certain circles it has become de rigueur. Once a name of respect, Freud has become a name of ridicule. But like any scientific method, body of knowledge, and therapeutic procedure, psychoanalysis should be subjected to critical scrutiny. The recent crop of hostile Freud critics may have filled a vacuum left for decades by a psychoanalytic establishment which, like the Church of yesteryear, shunned all forms of criticism intramural and extramural. A central guiding idea of this essay is the distinction between the psychoanalytic method and psychoanalytic doctrines, hypotheses, and theories. This distinction has been invariably confused by both Freud's adherents and Freud's attackers. Moreover, arguments ad rem have been conflated with arguments ad hominem. A socially responsible criticism must seek to be constructive and not merely destructive. It is the latter course that was taken by the various hostile critics that came to be labeled as Freud bashers. The time has come to take a stand against the more egregious attacks on Freud and the psychoanalytic method.
The pleasure of thought during the session is an intellectual feeling, that can take several forms at different moments during the analyst's thought process. The following should be distinguished: the disruption introduced by interpretative interference, which by underlining an unconscious element, upsets the conscious logical flow of the analysand's speech; finding the key-word or the overdetermined image which springs to the mind in the same way as a poet finds a rhyme; the resurgence of a memory, once evoked and subsequently forgotten again by the analysand, which imposes itself with quasi hallucinatory sharpness in the analyst's representative space; the experience of co-thought, either on one particular occasion related to a specific representation, or as a complement, accompanying the analysand's associative process.
The forming and early development of the Swedish Society for Holistic Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis is described. The influence of the personal background of those who formed the society, the general zeitgeist in which the society unfolded and the specific circumstances in the field of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in Sweden at the actual time is paid attention to. The significance of Dr. Harold Kelman as a supervisor and teacher during the forming years is underlined. The forming of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) is mentioned as an important matrix for the growth of the society.
Freud published his >On Narcissism: An Introduction<' in 1914. The writing has many levels, including, among other things, Freud's criticism of his former colleagues, Adler and Jung. Psychoanalysts received the essay with reservations. Ernest Jones, among others, expressed his concerns in his history of psychoanalysis. The aim of this study is to place Heinz Kohut's ideas about narcissism into the context of the history of ideas. Especially, the paper explores, at a theoretical level, the status of the castration complex both in self psychology and Freud's essay as well as seeks reasons why the discussion on narcissism should be continued.
Masochistic fantasy staging can be seen as a creation of the ego in order to compensate for a psychic structural deficit that stems from being deprived of sufficient empathetic mirroring in early childhood. It consists in the inability to establish an internal empathetic object as a stable psychic structure. Using case-studies vignettes, it is shown how as a result struggle for empathy can become the central live theme and coincide with ?perverse? masochistic fantasies. After a short review of the most important traditional attempts to interpret masochism, the author delineates the communicative meaning of masochistic fantasies, which are composed of the complementary roles of the sufferer, the tormentor and the spectator. By this means the patient creates an inner scene which is apt to serve as a mirror for the experience of psychic pain and to represent the preverbal childhood trauma in a symbolic way. During analysis, this inner scene is shifted to the therapeutic relationship where different roles are kept ready for the analyst: the sadistic adversary; the unobtrusive witness of psychic pain and the role of an answering, reacting object. The relevance of these roles in therapy is examined. It is also shown how by somatisation of psychic pain the struggle toward empathy can be transferred to the stage of somatic medicine with the risk of provoking there a reaction referring solely to the body of the patient.
They Shall Wear Fringes
(1999)
This paper attempts to reassess Elizabeth Severn's place in the history of psychoanalysis. It does so by focusing on her three out of print books, which until now have been overlooked in discussions of the patient Ferenczi called ?RN? in the Clinical Diary. Her first two books, written in 1913 and 1917, provide the reader with valuable glimpses into what was the pre-analytic mind and person of Elizabeth Severn before she began what would be a ground breaking eight year analysis with Ferenczi. A key to understanding Elizabeth Severn, her writings, as well as many of our traumatized patients lies in a what Ferenczi and Severn called ?Orpha?. The paper suggests that an appreciation of this obscure phenomenon is critical in the treatment of trauma. After investigating her first two books in light of Orpha, the paper will compare and contrast them with her last book, The Discovery of Self, written toward the end of her analysis, and published shortly after Ferenczi's death in 1933. The tone, texture and content of this third book is strikingly different from her first two books, suggesting a depth of healing in Severn not previously reported in the literature.
Vom Gewaltkult zur Gütekraft
(1999)
The development of the concept of transference led to an early differentiation into varying methods and objects of transference analysis, referred to in this paper as ?work on transference? and ?work in transference?. Work on transference applies to the objectifiable aspect of transference as expressed in the stereotyped, recurrent behaviour of the patient outside as well as within the analytical setting, in the present and the past. Work in transference accepts the patient's current conception of the relationship, taking it further as a conflictfilled and sometimes stressful dialogue. Work on transference often includes genetical reconstructions and makes it possible for the patient to gain rational insights into the constant features of his experience and behaviour. Its main benefit takes the form of enhanced perception. Work in transference is aimed at change: it allows the patient to work through the internalized conflicts in relationships during discussion with the analyst, and, in his way to attain new conceptions for action and new object representations.