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With their book Psychoanalytic perspectives on migration and exile (1989), L. Grinberg and R. Grinberg (1984) opened up a new clinical field, which had been neglected for a long time in the psychoanalytic community, although Freud’s multilinguistic competence had greatly contributed to the creation of psychoanalysis. With their book The Babel of the unconscious, Jacqueline Amati Mehler, Simona Argentieri, and Jorge Canestri were able to confirm the hypothesis that it is possible to help multilingual patients to integrate the different aspects of their self which are bound to their mother tongue and to their foreign tongue(s), and thus to allow them to develop a new identity. The author, who has been a psychoanalyst in Munich since 1999, works every day with his Italian patients in this new clinical field, that is in their common mother tongue and at the two levels of their old Italian and their new German identity. Through the detailed presentation of a clinical case, he furthermore shows how, on the one hand, the migration creates a new space in which therapy actually becomes possible, and on the other hand, not only therapy, but also the kind of relationship developed by the patients to their >new country< plays a decisive role in the whole process. Such a frame proved to be particularly good for the emergence, revisitation, and reelaboration of the transgenerational trauma around which the case of Penelope is centered. The author further assumes that the theme of >migration and identity< is becoming more and more important in our globalized world, with clinical consequences whose elaboration requires a specific cultural and technical preparation.
In 1929, Wilhelm Reich lectured on >Psychoanalysis as a natural science< before the Communist Academy in Moscow; he was the only Freudian-trained Central European psychoanalyst to do so. That same year, his article >Dialectical materialism and psychoanalysis< was published in the Academy's journal, Under the Banner of Marxism, in both Moscow and Berlin. By this time, Reich's involvement with political activism aligned with the Austrian Communist Party was increasing, while simultaneously psychoanalysis in the Soviet Union was in decline. Our paper places these events in their proper historical context and includes a discussion of the various attempts to determine the compatibility of psychoanalysis and Marxism. We offer analyses of both the article, >Dialectical materialism and psychoanalysis,< and the lecture, >Psychoanalysis as a natural science,< and the reactions to both by Reich's Russian critics. We show the ways in which responses to his lecture foreshadow what becomes the standard Soviet assessment of psychoanalysis. As an appendix to this paper, we provide the first English translation of the Russian account of his lecture, as published in the Herald of the Communist Academy.
The psychoanalytic movement is experiencing a serious crisis: its scientific consensus, social standing, and impact on practice in mental health have all been steadily declining over the last decades. This unfortunate process has been variously explained in terms of prevailing hedonistic social values, the political influence of drug companies, and cuts in health-related expenditures. Following a suggestion by Garza Guerrero, we rather believe that the sources of the contemporary crisis in psychoanalysis are to be searched for within its own development and current social and cultural life. Specifically, we think psychoanalysis has failed to bring the revolutionary contribution of interpersonal and intersubjective paradigms to its fuller consequences. Here, we review five core dimensions in which such failure is particularly apparent: (1) an unwitting reliance on the medical model of mental illness; (2) an ontological, concrete understanding of unconscious processes; (3) a manifest failure to fully appreciate the role of extratransference relationships in the patient’s life; (4) a naive and idealized view of the psychoanalyst’s person and role; and (5) a marginal awareness of the impact of group-level unconscious phenomena on the social life of psychoanalytic institutions.
This paper tries to outline two different ways of thinking about the concept of negative liberty. On the one hand, one can think of negative liberty in the external view that is entitled the external negative liberty in this paper. Here, human being is free if no one stops him/her from doing whatever s/he may want to do. On the other hand, one can think of negative liberty in the internal sense that is entitled the internal negative freedom by the researcher. In this view, human being realizes him/ herself as a person who exists separately from others but s/he does not have his or her own identity. For this purpose, after analyzing of two approaches through a two prominent thinkers’ standpoints including Isaiah Berlin and Erich Fromm, this question is going to be answered; what negative liberty is based on the two new perspectives, the external and internal perspectives.
In this chapter, we embark upon a historical journey, examining aspects of the lives and work of three individuals who attempted to incorporate the world outside the clinic into their theorizing about psychology and mental health: Frantz Fanon, Karen Horney, and Erich Fromm. These >worlded< clinicians waged important critiques of the psychological theories and practices of their time, particularly along the lines of race, gender, and political economy. We will pay attention to how elements of their own life travels informed their understanding of the importance of context vis-à-vis psychology. We will close with a concrete example of supportive intercultural travel by exploring the cross-cultural engagement of Zen Buddhism and D.T. Suzuki with Horney and Fromm.
Coetzee’s novel >Disgrace< addresses the question of dysfunctional inter-human relationships and explores the themes of domination, subjection, and character distortion in the context of the post-apartheid South Africa. In fact, this paper holds, >Disgrace< fictionalizes Coetzee’s concerns about the social deformation that springs from distorted relationality. According to Erich Fromm’s social thought, the apartheid regime represented an insane society based on sadistic domination and masochistic submission. It systematized sadomasochistic patterns of interpersonal relatedness and excluded horizontal relationships based on love and mutual care. Disgrace shows that how the same dynamics of intersubjective relationships still feature in the >new< South Africa. A parallel is, therefore, drawn between Coetzean ideas about deformed relationality and social deformation and Frommian symbiotic relatedness and sociocultural insanity. The apartheid’s spirit of insanity lingers in the post-apartheid period since its modes of human interactions persist. The transition from the earlier racist system to a genuine democracy, the novel suggests, sounds impossible unless love replaces sadomasochistic relationality.
In this article we will explore the postmodern conception of the >death< of the subject and the fol-lowing postmodern philosophical premises: the critique of the master narratives, the critique of metaphysics, the deconstruction of foundationalism, and the critique of the Enlightenment notion of the autonomous and free subject. In the central part of the article we will explore the limitations of the postmodern philosophy and introduce Fromm’s notion of the birth of the self in the time-history continuum. Contrary to the postmodern philosophy, we will insist on Fromm’s non-essentialist notion of being as a paradox and on the notion of the human agency which is crucial for the psychoanalytic (therapeutic) work and a personal transformation.
In this article, I claim that humor can be a form of social pathology. In opposition to the general humor-affirmative atmosphere, I develop the critical tradition of humor research, and suggest that there is a darker side to fun and laughter. Using insights from Henri Bergson’s theory about laughter and Erich Fromm’s critical social thinking, I formulate a novel theoretical combination which opens up fruitful perspectives on contemporary humor and its social nature. This empirically motivated conceptual position helps us to understand the role and function of humor and laughter. My conclusion is that parts of the contemporary humor catalogue reflect collective destructive and even death-orientated tendencies. The main argument is that if humor is not in line with humanistic values and is not based on a life-orientated worldview, it is in danger of becoming pathological.
Criminology (as the scientific study of criminal behaviour on the individual and social level) and psychology (as the science, which seeks to understand individuals and groups) pay special attention to motivation – a theoretical construction, used to explain behaviour. In this article the motivation of recipients of bribery is widely investigated. In addition to such well-established motives as greediness, selfishness, prevalence of personal interest, the author analyzes also other criminal behaviour determinants. The works, which are used in this research are of the following authors: John Broadus Watson, Edward Lee Thorndike (Behavioural); Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm (Psychoanalysis); Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow (Existential-humanistic theories); William Isaac Thomas (Thomas theorem); Florian Witold Znaniecki (sociological theory); Erik Homburger Erikson (theory on psychosocial development of human beings); Jean William Fritz Piaget (theory of cognitive development); Herbert Lefcourt, Ronald Smith (>Locus of Control<) etc. As the result of this research the author has concluded that bribe-takers’ behaviour is determined by such psychological constructs as the desire for power, fear, envy, mental deflections, mania, feeling of exclusion, the need for extreme, oppressed creativity.
The 50-minute hour is a feature of psychoanalytic work that is most commonly discussed in the context of case reports. This paper examines it as a concept. The author starts by describing the origin of the 50-minute hour and its development as an element of the psychoanalytic setting or framework. Next, he considers the significance of the clock as a relational factor in the session and reflects on the alienness of the time of day to the unconscious, and the consequences of this alienness. He then uses a clinical example to illustrate the phenomenon of the stretching effect of time in analytic sessions. Finally, the author demonstrates how cleverly the 50-minute hour excises the time needed for unconscious processes from our accelerated present; he shows that it challenges the social convention of time, and has a structuring effect in that it >times< psychic processes.
This paper studies the interaction of the clinical theories of two major British theorists, Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott. Through three clinical examples, we see how the >Klein-Winnicott dialectic< operates in a significantly developmental fashion to advance and fulfill clinical work. Winnicott’s >object survival< is looked at in developmental conjunction with Klein’s >mourning< as a primary clinical and developmental process. This interaction also captures the essence of working with the aggression of a self that has been traumatically disrupted within its early development. This paper demonstrates how such work leads to the assimilation and grieving of primal object loss, evolving into a >developmental mourning process.< This developmental mourning includes the working-through of an >abandonment depression< in the character-disordered patient. A clinical example in a 1989 essay on >psychic pain< by Betty Joseph is used to set up the clinical challenge of going beyond the symptomatic clinging behavior of developmental arrest, into full psychic birth as a separate other, an Other who can relate to an Other. Conclusively, the subjective visceral affect noted and monitored in its clinical dimensions here is that of human >heartache,< which can also include regret.
The Art oft Leading. The Significance of Personality and Character in the Choice of Business Leaders
(2018)
The paper attempts to explore the patient–analyst contribution to the analytic process – focusing mainly on the contribution of the analysand – and how their mutual influence might affect the outcome, sometimes beyond the analyst’s capabilities. This is approached through exploration of the co-creation of an intersubjective analytic field by the analytic dyad, in which the analytic phenomena occur, somehow in both participants, but in an asymmetrical way. Their co-creation of the analytic third in this space includes conflictual as well as healthy elements of themselves. The analyst’s professional self and the analysand’s healthy ego parts form an unconscious alliance directed towards a common cause, the progress of analysis, which unavoidably affects both. Clinical material and vignettes from three cases are presented. In these, becomes apparent that the patient can temporarily take over the analytic situation, permitting continuation of the analytic progress. It is argued that, through the above process, a patient can often help and support the analytic process, surpassing the weaknesses and defects that their analyst might have. Influences on patients’ developing mentalization.
Some have attempted to address the popular acceptance of irrational ideas like fascism or capitalism through various combinations of the work of Marx and different forms of psychoanalysis. Some of the better - known attempts in this regard are Erich Fromm’s humanistic psychoanalysis, Wilhelm Reich’s discussion of the role of repressed sexuality as a control mechanism, and today, the philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s explanation via Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism and Lacan’s psychoanalysis.
Here we introduce the dissertation program PSAID (Postgraduate Studies for the Advancement of Individual Dissertations), conducted at the International Psychoanalytic University in Berlin, Germany. We tell stories about our experience: about a wish to sum up in a dissertation after long years of clinical practice what has been learnt in diving deeply into human experience; about the fear of losing one’s identity when something new is to be learned, either planning a research study or conducting an interview that has not clinical but research-driven orientations; about the >biography of theory< – what motivates therapists to make a choice between psychoanalysis or cognitive-behavioral therapy; about how the experience of listening changes when you do not hear a voice but read a transcript and understand how many details allude to a relationship and influence your perception and thinking; about the experience of seeing a voice visualized on an audiogram; about summing up certain characteristics of >situations< in the consulting room. We propose not only to distinguish >online/offline< research, but to include >situationism< as a third concept.
Treatment for drug-induced depression usually consists of cessation or reduction of the causative agent and psychopharmacologic management. In addition, psychotherapy can be useful as an adjunctive treatment. The author presents case material related to a young woman with an inborn physical illness, who became depressed during the course of interferon treatment for a medical complication, hepatitis virus infection. In addition to the cessation of interferon and pharmacologic management, supportive psychotherapy of a psychodynamic orientation was started in order to address the patient’s low self-esteem and anxiety about her future. During the course of psychotherapy, it was understood that the premature cessation of interferon was, to her, a narcissistic injury. It was also important to explore the meanings of her inborn illness and her guilty feelings. After reviewing various formulations of depression, the author discusses the case material from an integrative perspective, which describes vicious cycles of depression.