Refine
Language
Document Type
- Articles (308)
- Books (25)
- Reviews (17)
- Dissertations (16)
- Forewords (12)
- Interviews (7)
- Collections (1)
- Event Reports (1)
- Necrologues (1)
Year of publication
- 2005 (388) (remove)
This article examines a debate concerning the exegesis of the story of the garden of Eden and the tree of knowledge, as told in Genesis. Two contradictory interpretations of the garden narrative are examined, the first as the story is elucidated by the psychoanalyst and social theorist Erich Fromm and the alternative interpretation by the Talmudic scholar and philosopher Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. This article compares and contrasts their exegeses and the respective implications of each view. The controversy, which has profound implications, reflects differences in world views concerning the good life, autonomy and relatedness, assertion and submission, will and surrender, obedience and rebellion, independence and interdependence, subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Links are drawn to a variety of contemporary psychoanalytic theories, developments, and controversies.
In this commentary on Arnold Rothstein's >Compromise Formation Theory: An Intersubjective Dimension,< I address some of the limitations of compromise formation theory in addressing issues of intersubjectivity. Namely, compromise formation theory does not address intersubjectivity as a principal motivation it takes up mutual regulation but not mutual recognition or other aspects of intersubjectivity it does not place the intersubjective matrix at the center of clinical psychoanalytic understanding and it does not sufficiently examine clinical concerns regarding the patient's conflicts regarding intersubjective contact with the analyst. I then discuss Rothstein's clinical vignette in an effort to provide an alternative understanding of the therapeutic action of Rothstein's clinical interventions. Drawing on the work of the late Lloyd Silverman, I present an intersubjective explanation that highlights the analyst's compassionate understanding of the patient's conflicts and acceptance of the pleasure in the patient's impulses, achieved through the analyst's own personal and subjective struggles.
Traumatic social violence provokes adaptive transubjective phenomena of banalization, familiarity and obviousness, which can be understood as a 'defence through ambiguity' that leads to an 'adaptation to whatsoever'. In a state of ambiguity there is numbing of critical thinking and of the alarm mechanisms. During the psychoanalytic process with survivors of social violence (torture, etc.) we can find a secret refusal of the external alienating situation in the intrapsychic representation of an 'object to be saved', an object of concern. In this paper, Ferenczi's concept of 'identification with the aggressor' (introjection of the culpability of the abuser on the child's subjectivity) is compared with this clinical experience. We try to understand and challenge through comprehension and insight the subjective consequences of traumatic social violence, in the three spaces of subjectivity (intra-, inter-, trans-) considering psychic dynamics in relation to reality contexts.
I argue that on both the small-scale level of the interpersonal relationship, and the large-scale level of society, the manic defense makes it difficult to care about others, and so militates against a sense of social responsibility. I address four basic questions: what is the nature of social responsibility? What is the nature of the manic defense? How does the manic defense interfere with the potential for social responsibility? And, on a more general level, what are the issues with respect to methodology for efforts such as this one to link psychoanalysis and social theory?
Este artículo trata de la construcción de una variante del carácter cultural con base en la teoría de las necesidades psicológicas de Erich Fromm y en el carácter social por él desarrollado. Se describen algunas diferencias entre carácter y personalidad y, luego de revisar brevemente la teoría frommiana sobre el tema, se mencionan los fundamentos teóricos y conceptuales necesarios para la elaboración del carácter cultural. Este será una herramienta para estudiar las necesidades psicoculturales de algunos grupos étnicos en Chiapas.