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In a letter of May 31, 1931, Ferenczi sent Freud a set of >Preliminary Communications< containing the substance of a lecture that he was planning to give at the International Psychoanalytic Congress to be held later that year. Although the Congress was postponed until the following year, the ideas contained in these communications form the basis for the controversial >Confusion of Tongues< paper that Ferenczi delivered, over the protestations of Freud and his closest associates, at the Twelfth International Psychoanalytic Congress in Wiesbaden, Germany, in September 1932. With reference to primary sources, chiefly letters, original papers, and commentaries, my paper will chart the course of the intensifying dispute between Freud and Ferenczi over the conception of psychic reality contained in their respective views on the nature of trauma. Although the controversy over the >Confusion of Tongues< paper marks a crisis in the personal relations between Freud and Ferenczi – and a turning point in the history of psychoanalysis – I will attempt to show that Freud's and Ferenczi's divergent views of trauma are not irreconcilable.
Erich Fromm's Ecological Messianism: The First Biophilia Hypothesis as Humanistic Social Theory
(2014)
Revisiting Erich Fromm’s works provides a theoretical foundation for a comprehensive and normative theory of human–nature relations that contains psychical, social, economic, and ethical components. Fromm’s system of thought was rooted in understanding humanity’s effort to establish meaningful relations with the natural world and how socioeconomic systems mediate this endeavor. His normative theory maintained that society must develop a nondestructive relationship with the environment by fostering and perfecting the human potentiality of biophilia—a thorough love of living beings. He argued that biophilia will not become the prevailing character structure until society is capable of meeting three prerequisites for human flourishing: security, justice, and freedom. Because Fromm’s social–ecological and ethical insights were partially rooted in humanism and Talmudic studies, he forces environmental scholars to rethink the Judeo-Christian and humanistic traditions, two pillars of Western thought often criticized in environmental literature.
The philosophical anthropology of Erich Fromm rests on his analysis of the existential dichotomy, which breaks man’s humanity. When man disobeys God in paradise, he begins to become human. He begins to be free. For Fromm, disobedience is a prerequisite towards freedom. However, there is in him a yearning to go back to paradise to enjoy the >roots of his own nature.< He wants to be secured and taken care by a loving God. This allegory was taken and interpreted by Fromm that man is separated from his own nature. In paradise, he is an animal. He does not possess any reason or freedom as a human being. Physiologically, he does what other creatures do. However, saying >no< to God’s commandment allowed him to become human. He has reason and freedom. He is forced to take the responsibility to build his own humanity. Now, he is torn between two existential nature i.e., his animal nature and human nature. There is no way for him to return to his paradisiacal roots. He has to move on and build his true human nature. For Fromm, this can be done through reason, faith, and love.
At the beginning of the 20th century, social sciences were institutionalized for the first time. While initially being a part of philosophical thinking, the promise of a scientific, objective interpretation of social phenomena granted social scientists a distinguished place within universities in Germany as well as in the USA. A larger focus on empirical research should guarantee that social science was indeed an independent endeavor, instead of a new form of social philosophy under another name. However, when analyzing the research of social scientists in the early 20th century, it is clear that ideological biases still prevailed and heavily influenced the interpretation of the collected empirical data. In this thesis, the problem of objectivity in social science and its relation to both theory and empirical research is addressed. As a case study, I have used the development of the social research of the members of the Frankfurt School in the period 1923-1950. Starting with a clear call for objectivity, over years it became clear that ideological bias was not easily removed from social science, especially at the background of the emergence and fall of the Weimar Republic and the establishment of the Nazi Regime. In my thesis, I argue that ideologically biased social science is not less empirically or more theoretically orientated than attempts to conduct objective social research, but have different interpretations of what it means to be empirical.
Preface
(2014)
The Ethnographic Spiral: Reflections on the Intersection of Life History and Ideal-Typical Analysis
(2014)
In light of the recent emphasis on social and cultural factors in psychoanalytic theory and practice, this article will elaborate earlier attempts to bridge psychoanalysis and the study of culture. I begin by considering the disciplinary tension between the fields of psychoanalysis and anthropology and the emergence of a >psychoanalytic anthropology,< which began in the 1920s and lasted through the 1950s. I then turn to the works of Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm, who developed an approach known as >cultural psychoanalysis.< I suggest that Sullivan and Fromm anticipate today’s sociocultural turn in psychoanalysis and that their work on culture and its role in psychological development and experience continues to be relevant. Rather than embracing a social or cultural determinism, Sullivan and Fromm focus on the interaction between culture and the person, thus creating an >integrationist< approach. Sullivan and Fromm develop a broad conception of culture that encompasses a critique of social and cultural norms and values. I suggest that this is particularly valuable because much current discussion of culture focuses chiefly on diversity and difference, thus overlooking the implicit social and cultural values at work in all human experience. I build on Sullivan and Fromm’s insights to illustrate the significance of early interpersonal psychoanalysis for the sociocultural turn in contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice.
Foreword
(2014)
Escapes from Freedom: Political Extremism, Conspiracy Theories, and the Sociology of Emotions
(2014)
The authors attempt to outline the historical course of the Hellenic Society of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (HSPP). They put forward several hypotheses concerning the dynamics of its foundation and evolution. The HSPP was founded in 1977 by five Greek psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists trained abroad, after three decades of fruitless attempts at establishing psychoanalysis in Greece. The authors sustain that the foundation of the HSPP addressed the complex problems of Greek society in the 1970s. The request for the founding of an institution for psychoanalytic therapy and training can be linked to a search for new orientations in thought that would enhance the working-through of traumas that had marked Greek society in the previous decades; these traumas played a role in the insurmountable problems in establishing psychoanalysis in Greece and in the difficulties met by the emancipation of Greek psychiatry from asylum-centered practice. The HSPP remained the only psychoanalytic institution in Greece until the foundation of the Hellenic Psychoanalytic Society in 1984. One of the main traits of its historical course has been the effort to shape a psychoanalytic organization directed towards the clinical reality of Greek society.
Just as there are many roads to Rome, the trial period may be considered one of many opening moves in psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. The responsive – and responsible – therapist must be many things to many patients, some of whom know nothing about the psychotherapeutic/analytic process. Freud advocated the trial period to help him take a >sounding< when he knew little about the patient and when the patient knew little about psychoanalysis. R.I.P.? This brief communication laments the apparent demise of this promising procedure and makes an effort at resurrection by describing the hitherto unmapped latent structure of the trial period. Even if there are fewer patients in psychoanalysis today, there may be a number of reasons to recommend a trial period, no matter what we name this period of optimistic uncertainty at the beginning of every treatment. Even if >consultation< is the term de jour, the psychoanalytic psychotherapist cannot escape certain role responsibilities at the beginning of every treatment, which has been made clear in the ethical principles of the American Psychoanalytic Association. What we will learn about the trial period should serve our understanding of what must also occur in the beginning of every psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. Conceptually, I propose that a trial analysis (1) will serve as a discriminative stimulus, signaling, to the patient, the unique nature of the analytic conversation; (2) will permit an in vivo assessment of the patient's suitability for psychoanalysis, and, more importantly, the fit between analyst and patient; (3) will provide anticipatory socialization for the unfamiliar and difficult roles of patient and therapist within the analytic process; (4) will offer true informed consent about the task facing therapist and patient; and (5) will facilitate an opportunity for therapeutic assessment, all of which will help the naive patient acquire the skills and lived experience to become an analytic patient. The trial period is the perfect host for all that must happen – and what we can do– to help naive patients become analytic patients.
War is a uniquely human scourge with complex biological, psychological, social, and political determinants. In this paper, repetition-compulsions both in making war and in the diagnosis and treatment of war trauma are documented. The diagnosis and treatment of war trauma are reviewed from the Napoleonic wars until the present, and parallel tracks in the development of military history, neurology, and psychoanalysis are traced. A personal history of the author and a clinical case history are included to demonstrate the effect of war on both family members and soldiers. Prevention of war through political negotiation is emphasized.
Erich Fromm's Social Psychological Theory of Religion: Toward the X-experience and the City of Being
(2014)
Starting from the concept of confusion of tongues between passion and tenderness, the authors illustrate two clinical situations of traumatized children and adults and try to show how these kinds of patient are not able to give voice to and symbolically represent their archaic anxieties connected with their having been Ferenczian >unwelcome children.< Therefore, in the therapeutic situation, they often make use of the language of >passion< and sexualization in order to communicate to the analyst their early broken intimacy and their traumatized >tenderness,< related to a lack of parental libidinal involvement and of maternal permeability to their raw emotions, which gave rise to their >passion of death.< Sketching out two clinical cases (an adolescent and an adult), the authors describe how, in their opinion, this confusion of tongues may be the only way for some patients to represent and share the traumatic events of their past, while at the same time it may become a deep-rooted, strong, rigid, and exciting defense mechanism against an early child depression connected with devitalizing unconscious identifications.
This article illustrates the psychoanalyst's reverie as it appeared in analytic work with a child patient who had suffered an early trauma. According to Bion and later Ogden, the analyst's reverie can take many forms, including different sound images. During the analysis of the traumatized child, the analyst's reverie developed from a simple tune derived from an aria belonging to a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, to a more tangled journey through the music of Bach and the story of the child. Bion's theory of containment and reverie, and its further development by Ogden and others, is described. The author tries to show how impressions in art can help the analyst to understand the patient and develop his or her sensitivity to the human condition.
The relationship between psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalytic practice is highly complicated. In this paper, the author presents case material from the psychoanalysis of a man with social anxiety. In the process, the analyst came to be perceived as a version of a blank screen. At the same time, the analyst noted a discrepancy between the patient's attitude on and off the couch. Further work revealed that this splitting in his attitude had its root in the patient's relationship with his parents during his childhood. It was crucially important that the analyst did not take his perceived blankness as a technical success but that he understood the patient's reaction contextually, taking his past relationships with his parents into consideration. The author then discusses theoretical issues related to the blank screen concept. Finally, the author discusses the importance of understanding the two aspects of analytic theorizing, that is, the prescriptive and descriptive aspects.
Neutrality is a most important concept, yet a controversial one. Theorists of different analytic schools have defined it in their own terms, leaving behind them a legacy of disparate and often contradictory formulations. In this paper, the author reviews briefly some of these ideas about neutrality. Then, from a contemporary interpersonal/relational perspective, the author takes a new look at the idea of neutrality. The author points out how unacknowledged discrepancies among these ideas get in the way of understanding and so complicate analytic discourse, and argues that useful work with this concept requires that analysts differentiate between two aspects of neutrality, specifically operational neutrality and intentional neutrality. The theoretical discussion is followed by a case vignette illustrating the clinical usefulness of this differentiation.
The aim of this paper is to show how the life, personality, and scientific work of Gaetano Benedetti and Johannes Cremerius shaped the original form and structure of the Milan Associazione di Studi Psicoanalitici (ASP), which they founded together with their pupils in 1971 and which became a member society of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) in 1989. The training analysis was substituted by a personal analysis to be finished before the beginning of the training proper; group supervision had and still has as much importance as individual supervision; transference and countertransference analysis are fundamental dimensions of both psychoanalysis and psychotherapy; and psychoanalysis can survive only in a context of interdisciplinary dialogue, empirical research, and social commitment. The author thinks that all these ingredients, which Benedetti and Cremerius contributed to the life of the Milan Scuola di Psicoterapia Psicoanalitica and ASP, could represent important resources, as far as the future of the IFPS is concerned.
What are the competences required to satisfactorily practice effective or >good enough< psychoanalytic supervision? In this paper, I would like to consider that question. Over the past approximate 15-year period, increasing attention has been directed toward more specifically identifying and defining the components of competent psychoanalytic practice. But any parallel attention toward identifying and defining the components of competent psychoanalytic supervision practice has, in comparison, been sorely limited if not virtually absent. If we are to best practice competent psychoanalytic supervision and best train future psychoanalytic supervisors for competent practice, effort needs to be made to concretely delineate the competences that are requisite for such practice. In what follows, I present and adapt six broad-based families of internationally relevant supervision competence areas for use in psychoanalytic supervision: (1) knowledge about/understanding of psychoanalytic supervision models, methods, and intervention; (2) knowledge about/skill in attending to matters of ethical, legal, and professional concern; (3) knowledge about/skill in managing psychoanalytic supervision relationship processes; (4) knowledge about/skill in conducting psychoanalytic supervisory assessment and evaluation; (5) knowledge about/skill in fostering attention to difference and diversity; and (6) openness to/utilization of a self-reflective, self-assessment stance in psychoanalytic supervision. Although by no means an exhaustive list, 30 supervision competences (five per family) are proposed as significant for guiding competent psychoanalytic supervision practice and supervisor training, and a brief explanatory comment is offered in support of each broad-based family of competences.
The centrality of the supervisory relationship to the professional development of supervisees may encourage dependency needs and regressive wishes. This process may undermine the delicate balance in supervision between an optimal didactic tension and an atmosphere of calmness and security. The present paper advises supervisors to take into account the gap in power and interests between their supervisees and themselves, and the temptation that may arise within them to use their supervisees' regression in order to avoid resistance. Such awareness will help them make controlled and appropriate use of such analytic powers and maintain the balance between supervisees' >regressive selves< and >mature selves.< In addition, a perception of supervisory relations as a space of mutual alternating regressive states is offered as an important aspect of supervisor–supervisee communication.
The boundary concept has been central to discussions on ethics and psychoanalysis over the past few decades. The main distinction has been between less malignant boundary crossings and more harmful violations. More recently, the concept has been criticized as not discriminating between technique and ethics. The author argues that these problems are connected to the way the boundary concept is defined. He suggests that it is specified to indicate a delimitation of an analytic area of conduct. In an analogous manner, an area of ethical conduct is framed by a boundary between ethical and unethical actions in the treatment situation. The analytic area has a narrower limitation than ethics and a stricter articulation of its concept of attitude; not all unanalytic actions are unethical. This simple model of interpersonally specified boundaries allows us to discriminate between different kinds of transgression in analytic work. In addition to violations and crossings, a third instance is described denoting a transgression of the analytic but not the ethical boundary. These can be called boundary stretchings, and are either intended or unintended deviations of method. The slippery slope mechanism of ethical misconduct is an imminent risk if boundary stretchings are ignored and not subject to scrutiny and analysis.
The pioneering work of Marguerite Séchehaye into the psychotherapy of psychosis: a critical review
(2014)
The author suggests attachment theory as a theoretical framework for psychoanal-ysis, based on ethology, alternative to Freud’s drive model. He points out the affinity between attachment theory and the American interpersonal-cultural approach. He regards psychopathology as due to the thwarting of innate behavioural tendencies due to an unnatural culture.
In his approach, Igor A. Caruso, one of the founders of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies, started with a traditional Christian anthropological view on human development. His early conception of psychosocial disturbances described the loss of cognitive and social ability as a loss of orientation on the objective values of human responsibility and attachment. Caruso later transformed his views on neurosis into a concept of individual alienation of transcendence. In the 1960s, he conceived psychosocial development as an ongoing individual dealing with the social and collective alienation of human nature, life, and work. The process of becoming a cultural person obliges the ego to face its individual unconscious drive demands, as well as the unconscious demands of society. Caruso's stays in Latin America – especially in Brazil and Mexico – caused him to reinforce the interference of materialistic theories on socialization with the psychoanalytic knowledge of individual unconscious dynamics. He understood the psychoanalytic situation as a ‘micro-social model’ that symbolizes the collective and the individual alienated conditions. In the 1970s, Caruso's conception was understood as a Freudo-Marxist point of view on alienated psychosocial reality. With his view on psychoanalytic treatment as a dialectic and relational process, Caruso demanded a psychoanalytical responsibility within collective changes.
The foundation of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) in 1962 was – from the author's point of view – a reaction to the exclusive politics of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) in the postwar years. It was a political act of self-assertion, and only secondarily a science-related initiative. But meanwhile, the field of international psychoanalysis has changed fundamentally, and the former identity of the IFPS, which was defined from its differences from the IPA, has come under increasing pressure. Meeting this challenge, the question arises: what is the contribution of the Federation to psychoanalysis in the contemporary world? The author believes that the future lies in the exploration of identity-creating relations in all areas and periods of life. To deal with this huge challenge would be a shared task for the whole psychoanalytic community.
Ferenczi's discovery of trauma was labelled by Freud as a return >to errors< that he himself upheld he had committed before 1897. During the dramatic period running from the Wiesbaden Congress (September 1932) to Ferenczi's death (May 1933), Freud wrote to numerous correspondents (among them Jones, Eitingon, and his daughter Anna) complaining that Ferenczi's latest theoretical elaboration corresponded to a simple return to the origin of psychoanalysis and was also a symptom of a serious psychosis. The theme of this paper is that Freud's opinion concerning Ferenczi's concept of trauma is a result of misunderstanding: the trauma as described by Ferenczi is not the one that preceded (in Freud's theory) the desertion of the seduction theory, but is something that is much deeper and mortifying, where the sexuality role is less central. The author pauses to ponder and reflect on the importance of the concept of Erschütterung as a cause in losing basic trust, a perspective that moves far from Freudian sex-centrism that puts psychoanalysis face to face with the sufferings of the victims of extreme trauma.
Particularly due to technical innovations, we are witnessing an unbounding of reality that increasingly is reflected in an inner striving to get rid of the limitations and boundaries of our own personality by reconstructing it anew. This pursuit of de-limitation, dissolution and blurring of boundaries is seen as a central character trait of the Ego-oriented social character. Such a fabrication of a limitless personality doubtless results in a weakening of such psychic abilities as experiencing one’s self as a consistent and ambiguous entity, be-ing emotionally attached to oneself and to others, feeling one’s own strivings, affects and emotions, and being guided by one’s internalized norms and values. Lastly, the impact of this character formation is discussed in regard to clinical and therapeutic issues.
An individual's identity is gradually built upon a lifelong process of maturation. Sexual life and how our desire is channeled and expressed represent a key area of that global identity. Also, the nation to which we feel we belong constitutes another cornerstone of that complex structure. The obvious attraction that nationalism awakens in many parts of the world might be related to the facilitation of a valuable identity acquired by just belonging to a idealized group instead of through a tiresome and continuous effort. In this process, >others< are chosen by us to establish comparisons with our tribe, helping us through a mirroring process to shape our own image. We project upon those >others< all kinds of undesirable traits. Those attributions tend to be very similar, regardless of which specific groups are involved. The >others< are always lazy, dishonest, untrustworthy, dirty (…). Interestingly, there are a specific set of >positive< attributions that are almost always present: the >others,< and specifically the men in that group, are sexually more potent, attractive, or able. This contradictory image of the >other< can help us to understand the complex dynamics, at the individual and group levels, that are present in radical nationalist movements, and to open up new fields of inquiry and exploration in which psychoanalytic theory can offer guidance.
Conceptualizing intersecting psychical dynamics taking place within the analytic relationship, the concept of truth is considered as an integral element of the patient's unrepresented, subjective self-experiences, particularly in respect to traumatic aspects. Truth is also conceptualized as a process of exploration of traumatic elements emerging dynamically in the context of transference. During such processes, it is possible that the patient's traumatic truth may collide with certain aspects of the analyst's mental life affecting deeply his/her phantasy and stirring strong feelings and representations of traumatic self-experiences of personal and subjective meaning. These instances are vital intersubjective aspects of the analytic relationship. They facilitate the exploration of the patient's unconscious inner truth and are signified as internal moments of meeting, emphasizing a psychical interchange between the analytic dyad and creation of a mental-cradle, a space for exploring and representing the patient's traumatic self-experiences. Clinical material is provided from the psychotherapy of a young woman with borderline psychopathology and unrepresented traumatic parental loss and migration. Discussion brings together basic theoretical conceptions regarding dynamic, joint mental functions of transference and countertransference and indicates the utility of actualizing disturbing countertransference experiences and the analyst's personal recourses and subjectivity for the exploration of the patient's truth.
The International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) was created to achieve an open, plural spirit, not constrained by any single psychoanalytic theory, such that one of its main aims was to >avoid the bureaucratization of its theory.< The IFPS did not intend to turn its back on the statements of early psychoanalysis; instead, it sought to use them as a basis for proposing and developing the theory of psychoanalysis. These same aims and origins served as an inspiration for each of the Latin-American societies that would gain affiliation to IFPS over the years. The Sociedad Psicoanalítica Mexicana AC, under the guidance and representation of Erich Fromm, played a central role in the creation of the IFPS. A brief account of the participation, affiliation, and development of each of the six affiliated Latin-American Societies – from Mexico, Brazil, and Chile – and one Study Group in Argentina will be described.
Preface
(2014)
This paper explores psychosocially the intergenerational transmission of aspects of working-class masculinities through the shaming, embarrassment, and bullying of young unemployed men, when faced with taking up service work they describe as >embarrassing< and >feminine.< The context is the closure of a steelworks in a town in the South Wales valleys, in which the men's resistance to service work is mediated by father–son relationships that dictate what counts as proper manly work. In this study, young men, as well as their mothers and (where possible) their fathers, were interviewed. The interviews reveal a community suffering the effects of intergenerational trauma and riven with complex feelings about masculinity and femininity. These feelings are projected onto the young men, who feel bullied and shamed by their families, peers, and others in the community because they are unable to find gender-appropriate work. The implications of these findings for understandings of youth male unemployment are considered.
In Ferenczi's view, dreams have a traumatolytic function that is anterior to and more primary than the wish-fulfilment function considered by Freud. This view is influenced by a number of metapsychological conceptions that occasionally are quite different from Freud's approach, especially as regards the economical and topical points of view, which Ferenczi clearly set apart in posthumous works. In these conceptions, he >dismisses< pondering a so-called death instinct and advancing towards the notion of an unconscious other than repressed. Otherwise, as Ferenczi considers that in dreams there is an >optimistic counterfeit,< the present article reflects on how to overcome this hypomanic solution in order to turn the traumatolytic potential of dream into a fully therapeutic function. A dream taken from a film is used to illustrate Ferenczi's point of view.
The Swiss member societies of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies, namely the two existential analytic societies and the Institute of Psychoanalysis in Kreuzlingen, have always stressed the philosophical foundation of psychoanalysis as psychoanalytic approaches with severely disturbed and psychotic patients. The colleagues working in these institutes have often cooperated very closely with analysts from the International Psychoanalytical Association. This paper stresses the important contributions for inpatient psychoanalytic approaches.
Institutt for Psykoterapi: background and developments of the Institute for Psychotherapy in Norway
(2014)
The Institutt for Psykoterapi is a nationwide training institution offering postgraduate studies in psychoanalytic psychotherapy for physicians and psychologists. It is also a membership society aiming at safeguarding and disseminating the psychoanalytically oriented perspective in mental health care. The Institute was founded in October 1962 as a result of cooperation between the psychologists Einar Dannevig and Per Mentzen and the psychiatrist Endre Ugelstad. At that time, the only systematic training in psychotherapy for physicians and psychologists in this country was provided by the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society. The training took place in Oslo alone, the teaching capacity was limited, and only psychoanalysis was taught. It is a demanding form of treatment that many patients with mental disorders are unable to carry through. The great majority of patients in institutions needed other forms of psychotherapy, but there was at that time no systematic training for this purpose. In a letter of recommendation for the foundation, Harald Schjelderup, professor of psychology, described the prevailing poor conditions for training in psychotherapy: >Training in psychotherapy in our country has been both sparse and poorly organized. There is no institution at the moment which can offer physicians and psychologists a sufficient basis for an independent practice of depth psychologically oriented psychotherapy for adults. Neither does it appear that any of the existing institutions will be able to take on this task for a long time to come.<
The author traces the profile of psychoanalyst Igor Caruso, one of the founders of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies, an alternative institution to the dogmatic International Psychoanalytic Association. She comments on his first visit to Brazil in 1956, and his longer stay in 1968/69 in Belo Horizonte, where he helped to consolidate the then newborn Círculo Psicanalítico de Minas Gerais, as well as taking part in the foundation of Círculo Brasileiro de Psicanálise. Caruso was also important in the creation of other circles of psychoanalysis in Latin America. The article presents his psychoanalytic ideas, especially about personalization and the permanent dialectic influence of socialization, still emphasizing his human qualities.
Against the background of a condensed sketch of the psychotherapeutic tradition in Sweden, I indicate my own path to the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS). The 1962 Forum, held in Amsterdam, at which the IFPS was founded, is depicted through a young man's eyes. Some viewpoints are given on the importance of the IFPS's existence. The development of the journal International Forum of Psychoanalysis is also described and commented on.
Eden Halt. An Antrim Memoir
(2014)
Freud's pre-1914 texts demonstrate why he consistently asserted that his free-associative method was the sine qua non of his discipline. Prior to 1914, Freud's theorizing was intimately and inextricably connected to his lived experience with the discovery of this method. After 1914, he became more speculative in this thinking and writing; his models of the >mental apparatus< and its functioning drew increasingly on conceptual sources other than his experience with free association. The four fundamental coordinates of his discipline (the methodical disclosure that self-consciousness is repressive, the nonlinear >time of the mind,< the significance of our sensual embodiment or libidinality, and the formation of the repression barrier by the incest taboo) are all closely tied to free-associative experience. By contrast, post-1914 theoretical preoccupations (from object relations to the structural-functional model, and other formulations generated after Freud's life) are comparatively divorced from such experience. These conceptual edifices imply a conventional depiction of the theory–practice relationship, which is radically challenged by free-associative discourse. The notion of praxis is introduced as contesting the prevailing depiction of practice as an application of theory, and as serving to rescue psychoanalysis from the somewhat >sterile debates< over its scientific status and over the relevance of metapsychological speculation to clinical treatment. Against the normative ideology of theory and practice, the lived experience of free-associative discourse, with its potential for change and healing, can only be understood in terms of this notion of praxis, and this justifies Freud's claim to have initiated >a critical new direction in science.<
This paper explores the change processes that took place in a woman, an ex-prostitute, in the context of psychotherapeutic treatment over a period of over three years. The treatment took place within a relational psychotherapeutic setting influenced by the ideas formulated by Sándor Ferenczi regarding trauma, as well as by his intense involvement with and commitment to his patients, as expressed in his Clinical Diary of 1932 (Ferenczi, 1988). Zoe, the current patient, was a woman born in Latin America who emigrated to Spain at the age of 28 and became trapped, for nearly a decade, in a mesh of prostitution networks. She eventually entered regular psychotherapeutic treatment at the age of 39. Her change process is an example of the mutual influence between the factors of resilience that characterized her and the opportunity for co-creation that the treatment signifies. The marks of the intense traumatic burden of Zoe's history and the rays of sunlight and hope that she is currently experiencing become intermingled in the dreams evoked and brought to the treatment setting. Zoe's capacity for resilience and the potential for founding self-object relations, ethically implied, that therapists can offer construct a scenario that brings back to life the essence of Ferenczi from 1932.