This paper attempts to reassess Elizabeth Severn's place in the history of psychoanalysis. It does so by focusing on her three out of print books, which until now have been overlooked in discussions of the patient Ferenczi called ?RN? in the Clinical Diary. Her first two books, written in 1913 and 1917, provide the reader with valuable glimpses into what was the pre-analytic mind and person of Elizabeth Severn before she began what would be a ground breaking eight year analysis with Ferenczi. A key to understanding Elizabeth Severn, her writings, as well as many of our traumatized patients lies in a what Ferenczi and Severn called ?Orpha?. The paper suggests that an appreciation of this obscure phenomenon is critical in the treatment of trauma. After investigating her first two books in light of Orpha, the paper will compare and contrast them with her last book, The Discovery of Self, written toward the end of her analysis, and published shortly after Ferenczi's death in 1933. The tone, texture and content of this third book is strikingly different from her first two books, suggesting a depth of healing in Severn not previously reported in the literature.
Since Freud's Dream Interpretation and his additional writings on the analysis of dreams, the technique of handling a dream report within the analytic session has remained nearly unchanged. It is characterised by dream-centred associations and their interpretation in regard to dream content and to transference. This approach constitutes an alien element within contemporary interactional psychoanalytic technique and tends to provoke resistances in the analytic dialogue. This article stresses the function of dream reporting during the session with respect to the interactional process. It is concluded that sufficient attention should be given to interactional analysis of dream reporting in accordance with the questions: Why does the patient at this point of the process tell a dream, and why does he tell this very dream instead of another?
Le Coq-Héron
(1999)
La proyección, desde referentes marxistas y humanistas, de los principales conceptos del psicoanálisis aplicados al ámbito de la acción de la persona y de la situación social constituye una línea de pensamiento e investigación fructífera para la solución de los problemas de la sociedad contemporánea. La importancia metodológica de categorías holísticas como la de Proyecto de Vida, construída y aplicada en diversas investigaciones por el autor podrían aportar, desde los referentes teóricos que se expresan, a la complejidad del campo de conocimiento y tranformación humana de la sociedad.
A Case of Primary Vaginismus
(1999)
Sometimes human sexuality manifests itself in forms that must be interpreted as symptoms of a severely disturbed psychological situation. The author presents a case in which primary vaginismus – a long known symptom in the gynaecological field and difficult to approach both from a gynaecological and a psychological point of view – is the manifestation of a personality with psychotic elements.
Sándor Ferenczi's first paper (1908) on the subject of premature ejaculation – in its stress on the repercussions of the symptom itself in the other (in this case, the woman), rather than its unconscious significance or the patient's pathology – is an early signal of the ethical directions his future clinical work would take. Ferenczi – displaying a decidedly relational, not merely intrapsychic, orientation – underlines the peculiar idiosyncrasies of each partner in the couple and also the fact that any relationship worthy of the name must take place in conditions of mutual pleasure and advantage. In particular, Ferenczi strikes a blow for the >legitimate< needs of the weaker partner to whom the stronger must allow and offer mental space and voice by virtue of his knowledge and power. For the above reasons this first paper is a >calling card< which announces Ferenczi's later reflections on the specific affective qualities that may render the psychoanalytic environment non-traumatic, as well as his criticism of the narcissistic aspects of the analyst (one of the most important motives for subtle and hidden trauma), who views the work of interpretation as the product of a single mind (in my terms: a kind of colonisation and expropriation of the other) rather than as fruit of an encounter that would take into account both the unique characteristics of the partner as well as the rhythms appropriate to such a relationship.