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This study is to suggest the aggression, human`s instinct as the new essence of sport. Through the psychological approach it could be found that the aggression which is human instinct is deeply related with the origin of sport. In relation to the instinct of death Freud has proved that there exists the aggression in human mentality and it could be said that the aggression of sport is related with Thanatos, the instinct of death that Freud said. Fromm, a sociopsychologist expanded the concept of Freud`s aggression and divided the aggression in human mentality as the defensive and positive aggression and destructive and malignant aggression and he saw that sport is related with the malignant aggression. I think we have to discard the attitude just to try to adapt the methodical value of sport although the value of sport exists with human instinct. Sport is the only thing to express and purify the aggression and it is expected to play the important role to create the future culture.
September 9/11 shocked the Japanese. It also reminded me of the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subways by the Aum Shinrikyo and the Oklahoma City Bombing by the American extreme right. A novel form of terrorism seems to have aroused since 1995. Therefore I have tried to analyze some similarity and difference between the Aum Shinrikyo Sect and Usama bin Laden's al-Quaida for several months in order to clarify the content of a >new terrorism<. Although at first assumed that the two incidents were heterogeneous, the more I have analyzed them, the more I have founded out that were homogeneous. This paper tries to examine the similarity between the two groups and point out that their common motivation is a kind of self-actualization developed by A. H. Maslow. The survey includes anomie scale and authoritarian scale. This analysis reveals that economic factor and anomie factor influence over the self-actualization of current Japanese students who must overcome their anxiety aroused by the serious economic crisis as well as their identity crisis developed by Erick H. Erikson. It also points out that such a self-actualization and authoritarian personality developed by Erich Fromm influence over their inclination to religion. As a result it implies that such a perspective could explain also the behaviors of the Aum Shinrikyo Sect and Usama bin Laden' al-Qaida: The two terrorist groups that are mainly consisted of young males escape from freedom committing to religion, namely Aum Shinrikyo or >fundamentalist< Islam to remove anxiety aroused by the serious economic crisis.
Um Erich Fromms Beitrag zur Psychoanalytischen Pädagogik zu erheben, wird zu-nächst aufgezeigt, dass sich eine am Sein orientierte Erziehung nur von den Wir-kungen her definieren lässt, die ein konkretes pädagogisches oder didaktisches Tun zeitigt. Die aufgezeigten Wirkungen einer am Sein orientierten Erziehung stellen zugleich Leitwerte psychisch gelingenden Lebens und Zusammenlebens dar, wäh-rend eine Orientierung am Haben zu einer Entfremdung des Menschen von seinen Eigenkräften und vom anderen Menschen führt. Die die Entfremdung des Menschen fördernde Psychodynamik der Orientierung am Haben wird im Hauptteil zum einen am Beispiel autoritärer Strukturen verdeutlicht, zum anderen für Strukturen aufge-wiesen, die vom Marketing bestimmt sind. Hierbei werden noch einmal zwei ver-schiedene Arten der Marketing-Orientierung unterschieden: die produktorientierte und die Wirklichkeit inszenierende. Da gerade letztere immer dominanter wird, wer-den abschließend hierzu schulpädagogische Hinweise für eine Erziehung zur Orien-tierung am Sein gegeben.
Worin suchen wir unser Heil
(2002)
The only way in our opinion to account for this striving for justice and truth is by the analysis of the whole history of man, socially and individually. We find then that for everybody who is powerless, justice and truth are the most important weapons in the fight for his freedom and growth (Fromm, 1942/2002, p. 248).
Wege aus der Nekrophilie
(2002)
Walter Bonime: 1904-2001
(2002)
Vorwort
(2002)
Vom Sinn des Lebens
(2002)
In den letzten Jahren haben Gewaltdelikte von Jugendlichen, vielfach in Verbindung mit Alkoholismus und Drogenmissbrauch, drastisch zugenommen. Die Täter haben häufig keine erkennbare ideologische Motivation. Ihre aggressiven Delikte erfolgen scheinbar grundlos, wie >aus heiterem Himmel<. Manchmal wird ein negativer Einfluss der Medien dafür verantwortlich gemacht. Helmut Johach, Therapeut in einer Fachklinik für junge Suchtkranke, geht der Frage nach, wie junge Menschen dazu kommen, Gewalt anzuwenden. Seine Grundthese lautet: Wer in späterem Alter als Täter Gewalt anwendet, hat selbst oft in jüngeren Jahren Gewalt am eigenen Leibe erfahren. Die Familie als >psychologische Agentur der Gesellschaft< (E. Fromm) bietet nicht nur förderliche Wachstumsbedingungen für die junge Generation, sie erzeugt häufig auch ein Klima der Gewaltbereitschaft. Hier zeigt sich, dass Sucht und Gewalt nicht nur individuelle Ursachen haben: Infolge von Arbeitslosigkeit des Ernährers reicht das Familieneinkommen häufig nicht aus; die Mütter sind überfordert, die Väter trinken und misshandeln die Kinder. Auch sexuelle Übergriffe sind vielfach mit der Sucht verbunden. Betroffen davon sind nicht nur junge Mädchen und Frauen, sondern auch männliche Jugendliche. Die Aggression gegen Außenstehende in der Gleichaltrigen-Clique stellt für viele ein Ventil dar, mit dem sie eigene Gewalterfahrungen in der Familie abreagieren. Helmut Johach belegt diese – an sich längst bekannten – Zusammenhänge an drei Biographien junger männlicher Klienten. Er sieht sich in seinen Schlussfolgerungen in Übereinstimmung mit jüngsten Ergebnissen einer repräsentativen Untersuchung aus dem Kriminologischen Institut Niedersachsen. Im letzten Teil seines Beitrags befasst sich Johach mit der Fage, was aus pädagogisch-therapeutischer Sicht getan werden kann, damit junge Menschen der Spirale von Sucht und Gewalt entrinnen können. Aufklärung allein genügt nicht. Hinzukommen muss das Bestreben, die Lebensbedingungen junger Menschen so zu verändern, dass sie nicht mehr anfällig für Sucht und Gewalt sind. Vor allem das Frommsche Prinzip der Biophilie (d.h. Liebe zum Leben) ermöglicht, wenn es in sozialpädagogisches oder -therapeutisches Handeln umgesetzt wird, den jungen Menschen korrigierende Erfahrungen, die sie befähigen, künftig ein suchtmittelfreies Leben zu führen und auf Gewalt zu verzichten.
This article is the result of a study on Psychoanalysis and Racial Matters which has been conducted by a group of black Brazilian psychoanalysts affiliated to the Círculo Psicanalítico de Minas Gerais – CPMG, Brazil. Even though Brazil is a multiracial and miscegenetic country, the lowest levels of the social pyramid have always been occupied by its black citizens who represent almost half of the Brazilian population. Therefore, the idea that people have about blacks is that they are ugly, dirty and weak: the image of failure. In this article we have considered the effects that are caused by this imaginary psychic register which has been historically produced on the psyche of the black Brazilian. Although Psychoanalysis has had significant influence on mental health in Brazil, it has made little or no contribution to the understanding of this matter. To further our comprehension of this enigma, we pose the question: what does a psychoanalyst hear when a black person speaks?
This article examines utopian elements in Wilhelm Reich's writings in his American phase (1939-1957) in order to illustrate utopian sources of dynamic psychology. Although there are scholars who have used the term >psychological utopia< and applied it to individual thinkers (Reich, Marcuse, Fromm) and to specific psychological disciplines (psychoanalysis, behaviorism, cognitive psychology), the term itself has remained elusive and vague. Furthermore, there have been few attempts to systematically examine utopian elements in twentieth-century psychology in general and the basic assumptions of psychological utopianism in particular. While pointing out that Reich's orgonomic theories have no scientific merit, this article argues for the relevancy of his ideas for understanding the nature of utopianism in dynamic psychology. (© 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)
Trauma Lives in Speech
(2002)
The author approaches the topic through infant observation. At the age of eight months the baby moves in the borderland between the physical and the symbolic. When the baby hurts herself, she needs the mother's arms to protect her: at the same time, her budding spoken symbol >mama< is comforting in itself, it carries the memory of the mother's arms. Can speech – tone of voice, rhythm, pauses – and the moments of loss, absence, the losing of self also be intertwined? The author discusses the question of how trauma starts to live in speech through two patients. She talks about >a silent language< which speaks in between the words and sentences – changes the rhythm of speech, makes lose words, tears a hole in speech. This >silent language< talks about trauma, reaches for its very essence – a bodily experience and meaning to the wholeness/ disruption of self.
To fully develop a science of social character, three aspects of Fromm's social character theory need to be clarified. The first has to do with the difference between individual and social character. Fromm expanded on Freud's description of normal types: erotic (receptive), obsessive (hoarding) and narcissistic (exploitative). Besides the concept of social character, Fromm made three major contributions to the psychoanalytic theory of character: the concept of productiveness, sociopolitical modes of relationship, and the marketing character. Social character is an interac-tion between internalized culture (values) and individual character. This interaction results in variations in social character and helps explain the Secon issue, how so-cial character changes. The concept of social selection explains how narcissistic en-trepreneurs restructure social institutions to shape a new social character. The third issue concerns how social character develops throughout the life cycle. Fromm never offered a developmental theory. Erik Erikson's model of development fit the social character of America at the mid-century. A revision of this model provides a useful construct for understanding changes in the kind of problems being brought to psychoanalysis at the start of the 21st century and also changes in psychoanalytic practice.
An etymology of a biophilia is Latin and is also mentioned with the instinct of the preservation of race as defined in Japanese-English dictionaries, in American dictionaries it is defined as an appreciation for life. And also bio is life and philia is love in Greek. The preface of >The Revolution of Hope< as described by Erich Fromm who is an American philosopher is a reference for biophilia. He described >The love of life< which exists in most of us is a latent power that is mobilized and whose behavior can change and can bring about change when life is threatened by danger and is fully recognized.
Three distinct, yet overlapping, phases of treatment emerge when working with some borderline and psychotic patients. This are patients who test the ordinary limits of psychoanalysis, but can profit from its deep exploration. The first phase is colored by acting out, interpersonally and intrapsychically. An analytic envelope of containment is necessary to sustain the treatment. Interpretive holding and containing help the patient find a psychic receptacle capable of detoxifying violent projections. Many of these patients terminate prematurely. The second phase is centered around the patient's defensive use of the death instinct to extinguish or destroy certain parts of their mental functioning. This difficult standoff between parts of the patient's mind becomes replicated in the transference. The third phase reveals the more fundamental problem of paranoid~schizoid anxieties of loss and primitive experiences of guilt. These include fears of persecution and annihilation. Some patients abort treatment in the first or second phase and never work through the phantasies and feelings of loss. Nevertheless, much intrapsychic and interpersonal progress is possible. Given the instability and chaotic nature of these patient's object relations, the analyst must be cautiously optimistic in their work and realize the potential to help the patient even when presented with less than optimal working conditions.
Our profession is being challenged theoretically and by practical realities. Many of its basic premises are being questioned and a hostile managed care bureaucracy has been curtailing treatment opportunities. These challenges force a latent issue into full view: Is psychoanalytic wisdom tied to its dogma and technical rituals or can much of its wisdom be integrated into a more inclusive interdisciplinary perspective? Psychoanalysis has a history of resisting change. It defined too early what was and what was not to be considered psychoanalysis. Dogmatization made idols out of theories and the rituals of techniques. Theories are valuable tools only and not scientific truth. While in-stitutes and official sanctions have lacked in open-mindedness, the unofficial practicing psychoanalyst has been far more creative in adapting psychoanaly-sis to the patient's needs and embracing the freedom to develop his or her idio-syncratic ways, wisdom, and skills. We need to increase our therapeutic reper-toire beyond those that carry the label of psychoanalysis. I present some con-siderations that derive from my experience as a psychoanalytically trained dy-namic psychotherapist.
Our profession is being challenged theoretically and by practical realities. Many of its basic premises are being questioned and a hostile managed care bureaucracy has been curtailing treatment opportunities. These challenges force a latent issue into full view: Is psychoanalytic wisdom tied to its dogma and technical rituals or can much of its wisdom be integrated into a more inclusive interdisciplinary perspective? Psychoanalysis has a history of resisting change. It defined too early what was and what was not to be considered psychoanalysis. Dogmatization made idols out of theories and the rituals of techniques. Theories are valuable tools only and not scientific truth. While institutes and official sanctions have lacked in open-mindedness, the unofficial practicing psychoanalyst has been far more creative in adapting psychoanalysis to the patient's needs and embracing the freedom to develop his or her idiosyncratic ways, wisdom, and skills. We need to increase our therapeutic repertoire beyond those that carry the label of psychoanalysis. I present some considerations that derive from my experience as a psychoanalytically trained dynamic psychotherapist.
The author describes the historical pathway trailed by a psychoanalytical institution (C rculo Psicanal tico de Minas Gerais) in a developing country (Brazil) and the structural consequences to this institution. As this institution was founded according to Igor Caruso's non-orthodox proposals, it has been destined to be a pluralistic society, composed of members who follow multiple theoretical orientations. As all of these members are united in the same institution, they all have the same hierarchical rights. The author discusses the difficulties encountered in maintaining this sort of institution.
Reviews the unique contributions of Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm in synthesizing a psychoanalytic outlook with concern for political, economic, and social issues. Discusses some of the reasons why succeeding generations of interpersonal psychoanalysts have lost touch with these issues. Concludes with suggestions about how contemporary psychoanalysis might expand its vision to include the study of race, gender, and class issues.
The Closing of the Western Mind. The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason. London (Pimlico) 2002.
(2002)
Although an intersubjective analytic approach reflects postmodern concerns about the problems associated with authority and influence, it does not altogether escape them. Interpreting subjective states invokes a veiled analytic authority, and labeling them as dissociative creates a pathway for the influence of questionable assumptions about the origins of dissociation as a defense against trauma. Harris and Gold's paper can be used to illustrate these ideas.
An overarching thematic implication of both Grand's discussion of my article and my. Reply to her discussion is the need for sharing and integration of knowledge and concepts belonging to the separate fields of psychoanalysis and the trauma/dissociation. Grand and I have different expressive voices, both singular and plural, which, I conjecture, are in part reflective of different traditions. Grand's response demonstrates eloquently a problem facing both psychoanalysis and the field of trauma treatment: the tendency of fields, like individuals, to proceed in isolation deprives all from the benefit of shared information. Procrustean beds cannot be shared.
In this discussion, I nest Howell's work in a broader psychoanalytic look at trauma and dissociation. I approach Howell's paper as a trauma narrative situated in the context of emergent relational theory and practice. A critique is offered that focuses on the way trauma is vocalized and inscribed in psychoanalytic writing and reading. In particular, I examine the problematic aspects of that inscription and suggest that trauma resists psychoanalytic articulation in both writing and reading. I suggest that, as an alternative model, psychoanalytic reading must become psychoanalytic witnessing. Such witnessing is demonstrated in the analysis of style and content in Howell's work. In this context, contemporary definitions of trauma and dissociation are challenged, insofar as they occlude the traumatic history they attempt to elucidate.
Chronic and complex posttraumatic stress involving terrorization and betrayal by a caretaker can result in a particular kind of psychic organization that is structured largely by underlying, alternating victim/masochistic and abuser/rageful states. When we move our view of experience >back< to its underpinning in states, we can see how the oscillation between these states is a continual reenactment of the traumatic violation of the relational boundary. While >borderline< persons are capable of conscious awareness of their dramatically differing behaviors, the meaning of the behavior is disavowed. These unlinked, but switching states are decontextualized. Inasmuch as context provides meaning, the acted-out parts remain encapsulated as unowned experience. Diagnostic formulation in terms of these dissociated states supplies a needed cohesiveness for the criteria given in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM – IV) and adds specificity to the >borderline< defenses as spelled out by Kernberg. These shifting victim/masochistic and abuser/rageful self-states can be observed and talked about and are accessible to experience. Themes of behaviors that are typically enacted have to do with boundary violations, destructive entitlement, betrayal, and mirroring the earlier experience, particularly of traumatic betrayals of attachment, of these survivors.
This paper is a response to an essay by Drew Westen. The author agrees with many of Westen's arguments about problems in the psychoanalytic literature and adds that the psychoanalytic literature has always been a problem for psychoanalysis. If we think of psychoanalysis as an ongoing experiment, then its >trials< are all the analytic sessions that have been conducted. Our >literature< has never systematically drawn on those. Westen critically scrutinizes certain habits that, in his view, haunt our literature, but that we do not explicitly note or disown as conceptual contrivances we mean to get rid of, while they are often misguiding clinical thinking and practice. I suggest that a fascinating question riding below the waves of Westen's paper is why patients and analysts accept this situation. I suggest that we all treat psychoanalysis as wisdom, art, relationship, skill, and something other than the application of established scientific findings because we recognize and accept it as that kind of human activity. It is unclear if patients care whether or not their analysts are scientists, but it is clear that analysts are not optimistic about sifting the research literature and finding clear clues to more effective clinical thinking, work, or writing.
Two central questions raised by Spezzano's commentary have to do with the extent to which we seek objectivity in psychoanalytic theory and practice, and the extent to which one or another set of methods (e.g., clinical observation) is adequate or optimal for generating that knowledge. A discipline and treatment devoted to understanding subjectivity is nevertheless devoted to objective knowledge about a patient's subjectivity, defenses, and so forth and requires valid theories to guide exploration, inference, and intervention. Seeking objective knowledge does not require a naïve empiricism ignorant of the limits of objectivity. We would do well to use multiple methods to learn about how the mind works and what leads to therapeutic change.
Much contemporary analytic writing is focused on the intersubjective >space< between analyst and analysand. This article focuses on a different area of analytic subjectivity and intersubjectivity – on the implicit rules that guide psychoanalytic thought and discourse, which have not received the kind of critical scrutiny as our explicit theories. The paper describes five problematic aspects of this implicit grammar and corresponding ways of refining it: articulating conceptual multiplicity where we often use unitary constructs (such as the unconscious or the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis) specifying mechanisms rather than causally ambiguous descriptions (such as two unconsciouses talking to one another) and conditional rather than blanket statements avoiding using terms in overdetermined ways that lead to theoretical imprecision and confusion of theory and metaphor exercising greater caution in the use of developmental constructs and analogies, particularly from infancy and rethinking the nature and presentation of evidence in psychoanalytic discourse.
In. Replying to the commentaries by Adrienne Harris and Barbara Pizer, I further elaborate some of the ideas set forth in >Something Is Happening Here.< In particular, some considerations are offered with regard to work with trauma survivors from a body-centered energy therapy perspective. I also further consider some of the complexities of touch in a psychoanalytic treatment and the nature of >inadvertency.<
The Analyst's Unconscious Contribution to the Impassse Commentary on Paper by Stuart A. Pizer
(2002)
In my discussion of Graham Bass's paper, my comments fall under three main categories: an aspect of Bass's theoretical/technical view that informs his conscious clinical choices, his incredible work with Robert as presented in the written case, and, finally, theory in practice as exemplified in his phrase, >inadvertent touch.< I mean for my perspective and the purely personal associations that are stimulated by this case to evoke further discussion and, in general, open some sort of useful dialogue. I believe that anybody who sits with severely dissociated patients would agree that, side-by-side with the necessary terror creeping around in the room, we often experience a confusing, sometimes even silly, >higgledy-piggledy< that seems pathognomonic to the work entailed. This weird experience seems, almost, to set our sense of continuity and logic on its edge. When reading Bass's paper, we must, to maintain our equilibrium, begin by taking for granted some of the contradictory, nonlinear aspects of his reporting, which is, after all, an accurate reflection of what happens in this work. At the level of theory in practice, I consider the implications for symbolic realization in the clinical process when touch need not be relegated to the category of the >inadvertent.<
In this commentary I address the functions of gender and of bodily state as a way of managing memory, affect, and interactions. I consider the status of alters as narrative or as historical truths. Graham Bass's case illuminates problems and potentials of touch and the inevitability of intersubjectively constructed enactments.
There has been much consideration in recent years of the nature of gender as socially constructed. During the same time there has also been much consideration of the nature of consciousness and of self-experience, and a calling into question of the experience of a unitary self versus multiple self-states. This paper offers case material of a patient who presents with traumatically induced multiple self-states. The author considers the way in which the gender of different self-states reflects both cultural and personal experience the way in which the patient's and the therapist's respective and mutual experience of their genders are intersubjectively experienced and the impact of an inadvertent touch in the course of treatment, in the light of both multiplicity and gender.
Almost all psychoanalytic theorizing posits some basic and presumably built-in motivational thrusts. The goal of this paper is to present an alternative way of thinking about the beginnings of motivation. I go into some detail about recent contributions from two areas of research: dynamic systems theory as applied by Esther Thelen to infantile motor development and Gerald Edelman's (1992) theory of >Neural Darwinism.< What emerges are two interlocking hypotheses: The first is that what we infer as drives or other versions of >basic< motivations are already a late development of motivational organizations that started out from a collection of rather primitive biases. The second hypothesis, based on dynamic systems thinking or complexity theory, is that a great many developmental features that appear to be driven by a built-in genetic program or design, are, in fact, the spontaneously emergent, and therefore the never completely predictable, resultant of the interplay of embedded, embodied, and environmental elements. It is also hypothesized that, just as motivational systems lead to the emergence of new capacities and functions, so too do new capacities beget new motivational derivatives in an ever-more complex developmental spiral. Early experience plays an enormously important and highly individual role in the creation of conative patterns that eventually crystalize into what we, as observers and theoreticians, begin to categorize into systems of motivation. Depending on the observer and his or her frame of reference, certain motivational systems are held to be superordinate to others these then are held up as basic motives. As psychoanalysts we currently find ourselves in a situation of competing organizational systems vying for prominence. The multiplicity of such systems speaks to our uncertainty and the need for further study to clarify the many questions that this line of thinking evokes. The second section of this paper explores the relations among need, wish, impulse, and defense as varieties of motivational systems that have already crystalized out of the early beginnings of motivation.
Using a clinical vignette, in which self-disclosure appears as a starting point, the authors investigate the connection between method and techniques. As the recent literature on the subject generally maintains, the classical analysts' neutral position can no longer be accepted. Analysts are always fully engaged in the intersubjective relationship and pass their values on to their patients through their professional roles – which can be understood as self-disclosure in a wider meaning. However, self-disclosure, and in more general terms the analyst's participation in the process, need technical criteria of reference. By deepening the relationship between method and techniques, established by Rapaport, the authors maintain that method is determined by theory and in turn gives meaning to techniques. As a consequence, techniques play a minor role with regard to theory and method. The opening of psychoanalysis to the relational perspective is bringing about the decrease of technique as an absolute value in favour of a greater self-awareness of the analyst who, following the method related to his/her theory will be able to better cope with techniques.
The discussions by Pizer and Brandchaft are so different in tone and focus that I answer them separately. Pizer invites dialogue about the relationship between identification and dissociation, which I pursue further with him. I then briefly consider his therapeutic model, which emphasizes the negotiation of paradox, in the light of the identificatory divisions in self-experience that my model highlights. Finally, I address his concern that I bypassed the >crunch< of the repeated relationship in the case example of Jonathan. I argue that the stance I ultimately adopted was my way of bridging the paradoxes presented by Jonathan. Brandchaft couched his discussion as a dismissive attack, prompting me to defend myself while trying to engage in a dialogue about substantive issues. I respond to his criticisms regarding my epistemological position, my use of the concepts of identification and projective identification, and the process and outcome of my treatment of Jonathan. The bottom line is that the differences between our perspectives are not, as Brandchaft contends, those between an objectivist, causally >unidirectional< model and an intersubjective one, but rather those between two versions of intersubjectivity.
The passing of the dominance of the doctrine of intrapsychic determinism has created a vacuum, leaving behind it a >crisis< in American psychoanalysis. A confusing array of relational concepts and models are emerging in attempts to fill the gap. It is my conviction that, in order to help determine what is transient and what may have enduring value, such attempts should be subject to the same scrupulous deconstructivist efforts as were formerly directed at the classical psychoanalytic model. With this in mind, some hidden assumptions that underlie the model offered in Steven Stern's paper are the focus of examination in my discussion.
In this discussion of Stern's rich and thoughtful contribution to the dialogue between unified- and multiple-self theories, I refer to his earlier conceptualization of repeated and needed relationships. I thus highlight how his current model strikes me as shifting his emphasis toward identificatory factors, both in development and in clinical process, and away from the working through, or negotiation of, repetitions of relational configurations. Through Stern's clinical examples, I engage dialogue about how his construct of an >intersubjective self< relates to the qualities of multiplicity he accounts for in his theory. And I consider the implications for clinical technique of favoring identificatory influences over the analyst's living through the experience of transference repetitions with the patient and thereby introducing ameliorating responses from within, rather than from a stance more external to, embeddedness in transference–countertransference repetitions.
This paper addresses the postmodern critique of unified-self theories that argues that the self is not unified but multiple, not a static entity but in constant flux, not a separate center of initiative but intersubjectively constituted. The author proposes that there are two kinds of division in self-experience: the dissociative divisions of multiple-self theory, and a division, akin to the divisions between Freud's structural agencies, between what are here termed the >intersubjective self< and >primary subjective experience.< In contrast to dissociated self-states, which occur in different moments in time, these two dimensions of self-experience occur simultaneously indeed, what is most important about them is their relationship. The author suggests that it is this intrapsychic relationship, as it occurs in a given psychological moment, that determines the qualities of self-experience that are emphasized in unified-self theories: such qualities as cohesiveness versus fragmentation authenticity vs. falseness vitality versus depletion optimal versus nonoptimal self-regulation and agency versus feeling one is at the mercy of others. Furthermore, a major organizer of the intersubjective self is early identifications, especially >identifications with the other's response to the self.< The implications of these concepts for therapeutic action are discussed and illustrated with an extended account of an analytic case.
In this commentary I examine homoerotic countertransference within the context of the analyst's erotic countertransference experience. Discussing male analysts' difficulties receiving and experiencing homoerotic feelings as a function of their dominant erotic desires (along gender lines), I propose both cognitive and affective explanations to illuminate their defenses. I suggest that Sherman's erotic countertransference is best understood when viewed as a product of both induced feelings emanating from his patient's dissociated sexual abuse and also his anxiety and shame in response to particular relational configurations with his patient that arouse him. Finally, I point to the site of the transgressive as integral to the construction of erotic desire and suggest shifts that need to occur in the erotic subjectivity of this dyad so that the treatment can move forward.
Sherman underscores the tenacity of phobic avoidance of homoeroticism, especially between men. Homophobia and anxieties related to gender identity are prevalent. I agree with Sherman that the feeling of being psychically penetrated can represent a particular threat to men. Sherman's use of the image of opening Pandora's box reveals a fear of a vulnerable, >vaginal< opening in men. In defense, rigidly >professional< relationships may prevail. This clinical scenario often repeats an early developmental dynamic with the father erotic desire between males has a deep genetic history of dissociation and denial. Psychoanalytic theorists have had difficulty approaching this topic of passions for the same sex. Thinking further about elements that might entrench this dread and avoidance, I focus on the image of >being bad on the side,< with its potential meaning with regard to the primal scene. Homoeroticism might unconsciously register as a form of >cheating< on the heterosexual, reproductive couple – not sanctioned, tabooed, >cursed,< and thus particularly tantalizing and frightening. Analytic understanding of male development allows for the recognition of an especially strong sense of both attraction and danger for the male pairing – a >Laius curse.<
Despite the recent interest in erotic countertransference and self-disclosure, little has been written about these phenomena when both analyst and patient are the same gender. Since homoerotic feelings can surface in any treatment, regardless of the participants' sexual orientation, this may well be a phobic avoidance that restricts many treatments, as well as our profession. I propose that the analyst's awareness of homoerotic feelings in the countertransference – including struggling with ways to express them – ultimately can create an atmosphere of safety. I offer an extended case example of one man with whom I colluded to ignore frightening aspects of his sexual fantasies. It was only by using my erotic countertransference, especially at a charged and pivotal moment, that I was able to help the patient begin to integrate split-off aspects of his sexuality.
In response to Cohen's rich and evocative presentation of her case of Lisa, I offer some additional perspectives on the material. Labeling Lisa a >naughty girl,< I explore the relevance of Winnicott's notions of the antisocial tendency and of the pathology of self-sufficiency, something Corrigan and I have called the mind object. I have looked at the treatment in terms of the facilitation of regression to dependence and a child's reconnection to her body. Herzog's concept of father hunger leads me to an exploration of Lisa's finding the father in her therapist, which helps her separate from omnipotent internal objects and accept the individuality of the other. Finally, inspired by Cohen's characterization of her treatment of Lisa as >relational and action oriented,< I attempt to review what I believe is essential to child treatment and what is beautifully illustrated in Cohen's work.
This paper addresses how to be an available and responsive therapist to a controlling and narcissistically vulnerable young girl. It presents an overview of the treatment relationship and specific vignettes from sessions. The paper describes an impasse that posed a quandary: how to find a balance between staying in control of the treatment while being responsive to the kind of object the child needs the therapist to be – being empathic without being intrusive – and meeting her aggression without getting into a power struggle. The author discusses how asserting her subjectivity by playfully role-playing aspects of the patient, by spontaneously using humor, and by surviving her destructiveness allows the treatment to move forward. Trial and error, reflection on practice, and informed intuition contributed to the author's understanding of the child and of the transference. Various theoretical perspectives influenced the work.
In my. Reply to commentaries by Glen Gabbard and Mark Gerald I offer further views on the implications of an integrative approach to treatment of substance-using patients, and the role of countertransference in that approach. I also address the phenomenon of >leverage,< examined by Gerald for the particular role it plays in the treatment of chronic drug use. I consider the use of leverage within the context of discussing the broader therapeutic effort to help substance-using patients achieve integration.
Lisa Director proposes a relational model with an emphasis on enactment for the treatment of chronic drug and alcohol use. She illustrates her thesis with an extensive case report. The story of her patient's addiction, and of the embroiled analytic developments, is engaging, disturbing, and rewarding. I suggest that the telling of this inspiring story, and the narration of her theoretical framework, is a response to the devastation involved in the encountering of addictions and that this story unintentionally obscures some basic issues about addiction and the psychoanalytic treatment of it. I believe that the survival of patient and analyst was achieved with the help of three underemphasized factors: Director is an expert in the assessment and treatment of chemical dependency problems, and her patient, Helena, knew this despite her chronic addiction, Helena brought exceptional resources for survival to the analysis and the authority of the analyst was used for leverage to help replace Helena's reliance on drinking and drugs.
Symposium on gender and the analytic relationship. Sex, gender, and the analyst's subjectivity
(2002)
Director's paper calls our attention to the lack of attention to addiction in the relational literature. Clinical case studies of patients with chemical dependency may provide a window into the complexities of the mind – body connection in psychoanalysis. The transference – countertransference dimensions of the treatment of addicted individuals offer the therapist a privileged glimpse of the patient's internal object relations and thereby enable the therapist to gain greater understanding of the patient's characteristic problems in relationships with others.
Symposium on clinical judgment in relational psychoanalysis: The problem of technique. Introduction
(2002)
A view of chronic drug use that draws on central assumptions in relational theory is proposed. Namely, chronic substance use is seen as being driven by conflicting and unresolved relational dynamics that derive from the early organizing relationships in a person's life. In the case of the substance user, the terms of this conflict find concrete expression in characteristic acts of drug use that serve to perpetuate it through the combined effects of reinforcement and disguise. The goal of treatment is for patient and therapist to find the components of the relational bind that are embedded in the drug use, to reformulate these forces in symbolic terms, and to revisit them in the dynamics of the transference, alongside opportunities for new exchange. Seen this way, the treatment needs of substance users can best be met by a relational model of psychoanalysis, augmented by other approaches needed to address addiction. In particular, the relational emphasis on the role of enactment as a vehicle for the expression of unsymbolized experience, and therefore the source of the phenomena to be analyzed and understood, makes this model especially well suited to substance-using people.
Symbolization
(2002)
In its psychic action, the writing and revelation of Janine de Peyer's essay create a parallel process for the reader that must reflect the uncertain pleasures and unsettling demands of the case itself. By taking us into the intimate vortex of therapeutic work with this sexually aggressive and traumatized patient, the author is challenged to write with sufficient specificity to illuminate the psychic and technical demands on the analyst without lapsing into a confessional narrative that defaults into a subtle exhibitionism – a genre that allows the reader to evade the work of identification by becoming an ambivalent voyeur instead. Holding the tension between these two positions in treatment and in writing about such treatment is the focus of this commentary.
This paper examines a state of fear aroused in the analyst during a session. I suggest that the fear arose from the attempt to enter the patient's mental state – a state that was unfamiliar to the analyst. In entering what was essentially psychically foreign territory, I terrified myself with a version of the patient's experience.
This clinical paper explores the meanings and evolution of an analyst's reaction of fear in relation to her patient's sexualized aggression. From both an intrapsychic and an intersubjective perspective, the author analyzes the coconstruction of this transference – countertransference phenomenon. Case vignettes illustrate the author's attempts to address her patient's sexualized aggression while struggling to free herself from the feelings of intimidation and fearfulness stirred by his sadomasochistic fantasies and patterns of interaction. The analyst's unconscious identification with the patient's disowned femininity and narcissistic vulnerability is seen as central to this countertransference >stranglehold.< Release from the analyst's masochistic position comes through a shift in her own affective participation. The importance of the analyst's recognizing her own unconscious contributions to this sadomasochistic dynamic is emphasized and elaborated. Discussion also focuses on the relevance of gender to the issue of countertransference fear, as illustrated in this particular male patient – female analyst dyad.