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This paper presents a case of >trauma by omission< as a product of the attachment process. The absence of intimate and specific recognition and response by the caretaker of a child can create, by their omission, a >freeze< version of the fight/flight/freeze trauma response. The frozen moments, then dissociated, can become confusion and paralysis at the cusp of adulthood. This state is illustrated in the case below of a 23-year-old Chinese woman being treated by a 29-year-old Chinese male psychoanalytic fellow. The role of cultural context in >omission< is highlighted regarding development and treatment, which is taking place in a Communist society with a recent violent history of extinguishing individuality, modifying how attachment and individuation are expressed. A relational/interpersonal treatment orientation is applied and advocated at this intersection of individual and social realities. This paper contributes to attachment theory by raising awareness of how its many forms and outcomes may or may not be deemed healthy and functional.
Triangularity in separation
(2019)
Traditional psychoanalytic literature tends to present issues of separation as a two-person dilemma. Current understanding, however, seems to challenge that view. The recent realization that there is no such thing as a baby, but only a mother-and-baby unit, has opened the way to the further understanding that there is no such thing as a mother-and-baby unit >extra-context<. In other words, there is always a father in the background – be he real or phantasized. Separation, therefore, cannot but be conceptualized as involving a triangle. It should never be forgotten that Oedipus’s own life history starts with a separation initiated by a father and acquiesced with by a mother. The aim of this paper is to present some thoughts on the Oedipal (i.e., triangular) dimension of separation.
This article intends to propose a basis for a reflection on how separation mechanisms, both intrapsychic and social, may, by a normal identification process, be comparable in traumatic situations to true forms of violence. According to the theories of Benedetti and Peciccia (1996), a symbiotic Self and a separate Self are continuously present, integrated development lines of the Self, even though they are never fully conscious. Conversely, in the structure of the psychotic Self, a deintegration is inferred between the symbiotic and the separate states of the Self, of which the patient is painstakingly conscious. In light of significant psychoanalytic theories relating to the anxiety of separation, we aim to interpret this symbiosis and separation through the history of Michele, a psychotic young man from a Camorrist family, who was currently hospitalized in a psychiatric facility. The article intends to investigate the separation imposed by the clan, and the even deeper one, inferred from the significant separations experienced within the family circle. Furthermore, we will also outline our therapeutic method and the use of progressive mirror drawing, a psychotherapeutic technique which can be used with patients suffering from different pathologies that compromise verbalization, such as psychosis.
The world is regularly confronted by occurrences of mass violence wherein specific groups of a population are brutally killed, raped, and tortured by another group that considers its own behavior morally justifiable. There are social, economic, and political crises that lead to the scapegoating of one group designated as the enemy. It represents a mental instrument that validates dehumanizing the chosen enemy and gives >meaning< to the extermination of dangerous >elements< as part of a battle between good and evil. In the case of suicide bombers and terrorists, sacrifice and devotion to the ideology that promises martyrdom and support for sacred ideals are requirements. Some researchers talk about the personality of the torturer, particularly about how some childrearing practices annihilate children’s sense of self by teaching them to be obedient to authority. Others talk about the role of moral disengagement and the role of specialized military training. Psychoanalytic thinkers emphasize that the key mechanisms at work in these atrocities are splitting, paranoid projections, projective identification, sadomasochistic forces, strong mechanisms of negation and dissociation, and an extremely weak social identity. Those who commit evil acts seldom perceive their actions as evil. This paper focuses on the social influences that lead to dehumanizing and blaming the >other,< and childrearing practices that influence the creation of the genocidal mentality.
One of the most controversial members of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and Freud’s intimate for many years, Reich is known not only for his seminal contributions to therapeutic and social psychoanalysis in his 1933 classic Character analysis, but also for his notoriety as a discoverer of an energy he named orgone. This paper is devoted to Reich the psychoanalytic sociologist and reformer, with special prominence given to his other, now somewhat forgotten, 1933 book >The mass psychology of Fascism<.