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- 1996 (325) (remove)
We, as analysts, are constantly confronted with the paradox between the infantile as a phantasmal reconstruction based on the patient's fantasies and recollections, and childhood as a period of maturation and development, where it is impossible to avoid a reference to chronology. Although many authors have indicated that psychoanalytic practice is based on the traumas, conflicts, wishes and fantasies of the child within the adult, what happens when the patient is a child and not an adult? This paper discusses psychoanalysis with children from a structural point of view, asserting that psychoanalysis can only be beneficial to a given child if it considers his potential as a subject, promoting a change of places within the family structure. In other words, if it helps the child to displace himself from the position as an object of parental discourse, facilitating the access to his own desire.
Children in Violence
(1996)
Multiversal truths
(1996)
Marco Bacciagaluppi attempts to place Fromm's clinical approach within the spectrum of current psychoanalytic models of therapy. Based on Goldberg, Hoffman, and Hirsch, among others, Bacciagaluppi distinguishes three therapeutic stances: the observationalinterpretative stance, in which the analyst observes conflict and limits his participation to providing insight; the >participation with< stance of empathic immersion into the patient's experience; and the >participation in< stance, which recognizes the analyst's inevitable involvement in (and likely reenactment of) the patient's problems. Bacciagaluppi notes several discrepancies in Fromm's approach, including the discrepancy between Fromm's advanced theoretical position, which places him in the >participation in< position, and his emphasis on insight, which places him in the observational-interpretative position. A second discrepancy is that between Fromm's emphasis on providing insight and the importance he attributed to providing a new experience for the patient. Bacciagaluppi concentrates primarily on the second discrepancy and illustrates Fromm's approach using a published case he supervised. – In the clinical case, Fromm is empathic and respectful toward the young woman's traumatic history and emphasizes, like Ferenczi and Bowlby, the importance of real-life experience. At the same time, Fromm states that the essence of analytical cure resides in the conflict engendered by the meeting of the rational and irrational parts of the personality. Bacciagaluppi points out that Fromm at times seems to downplay the importance of the analyst, and lists the personality of the analyst as just one of seven other factors that are important in clinical work. In discussing the importance of new experience in therapeutic change, Bacciagaluppi points out that new experience is seldom new, and that we often find the existence of >weak precursors< (Hoffman 1983) that provided in childhood a supportive and positive experience for the patient. Bacciagaluppi points out that we should be grateful for these weak precursors, and need to be modest in our claims to success as healers, as we are often building on the positive contributions of others who preceded us. Bacciagaluppi offers two clinical examples that illustrate the weak precursor concept. The first example exemplifies a case in which the history of a weak precursor was present from the onset of the therapy. In the second example the existence of a positive figure in the patient's life emerged only much later in the therapy.
Many patients manifest a desire to help the analyst. This is usually understood as being derivative of defensive aims or in the service of other primary motivations. This paper argues for the developmental and clinical importance of primary altruistic aims, which are often warded off by the patient because of his or her fears of exploitation or rejection. Several pathogenic beliefs and varieties of psychopathology result from the failure of the patient's caretakers to allow the child to contribute to their welfare, to >take< the child's >help.< Similarly, some patients require tangible evidence that they are having a positive impact on their analyst. Ordinary >good-enough< technique often reinforces the patient's view that he or she has nothing to offer. A full appreciation by the analyst of the importance to patients of having their altruistic gestures and concerns recognized and accepted can open up possibilities for analytic progress and therapeutic growth. Various sources of resistance to and misunderstanding of these dynamics are explored, ranging from ethical concerns to certain traits that cluster in the personalities of analysts.
A Commentary
(1996)
Flat Mountain
(1996)
Remembrances of Erich Fromm
(1996)
Behandelt wird die Frage nach Entstehung, Wesen und Funktion des Gewissens. Zunächst wird kurz der Herkunft und Sprachgeschichte des Wortes Gewissen nachgegangen. Dann folgt ein Überblick über die Darstellung psychologischer Aspekte des Gewissens in den Werken philosophischer und religiöser Denker der griechischen und römischen Antike, der Bibel, des Mitelalters, der Neuzeit und der Gegenwart. Zwischen diesen Denkern und der eigentlich modernen Tiefenpsychologie steht der religiös orientierte, ganz auf die Praxis ausgerichtete Pädagoge Pestalozzi. Für ihn ist das Gewissen als Stimme Gottes keimhaft in jedem Menschen angelegt und drängt diesen, mit sich selbst identisch zu werden. Es folgen Ausführungen über die Gewissensdarstellungen in den Werken der Tiefenpsychologen Zulliger, Freud, FROMM und Jung. Die Interpretationen des Gewissens erweisen sich als so vielfältig und unterschiedlich, daß sich keine fortlaufende Entwicklung der Deutungsversuche herauskristallisieren lässt. Jede Deutung ist nicht nur der jeweiligen Zeitströmung angepasst, sondern auch immer durch die Brille des je eigenen Denksystems gesehen. Doch zeigt sich gerade in den immer neuen Deutungsversuchen, daß das Phänomen Gewissen die Menschheit seit ihren Anfängen als wesentlich zum Menschen gehörend beschäftigt und wohl auch weiterhin zur Auseinandersetzung damit zwingt. Auch in der heutigen, rational denkenden Zeit kann der Begriff Gewissen noch keineswegs als veraltet angesehen werden, da er nie ausgeschöpft oder je restlos erklärt worden ist. Das Gewissen hat somit seine Gültigkeit und Wichtigkeit für das menschliche Leben unverändert bewahrt.
The distinction between the having mode and the being mode seems to be the basis of E. FROMM's clinical approach, which finds its main application in the center-to-center relatedness between analyst and patient. Analysts can understand a patient because they experience what the patient experiences. The dialog is based on reciprocally communicated emotional and conceptual responses and reactions; both identities come into play. The psychoanalytic session can save itself from the having mode by addressing the patient's living memory, which represents the past relived in the present, according to the being mode. Case material from a psychoanalytic session with a 31-yarr-old woman is included. (German and Spanish abstracts.)
Biancoli presents a case study illustrating an application of E. FROMM's theoretical concepts to clinical work. The case ...is of a young woman torn between an unstable, aggressive, and impulsive attitude and a desire to form lasting and loving relationships; the case history takes us through the difficult steps that gradually lead the patient to a better understanding of the origin of this conflict and the transferential testing of the analyst. Biancoli points out that FROMM saw the role of ...psychoanalysis as articulating >real possibilities< or progressive change. This discovery of alternatives in the consulting room requires from analyst and analysand alike a realistic assessment of internal or external contraints--inherent in any specific situation--and a willingness to forgo illusory or unrealistic plans for change. A commentary by Ana Maria Barroso follows this chapter.
Money and fetishism
(1996)
Borderline desire
(1996)
The borderline personality unconsciously seeks emotional turbulence because this complex of affect is the shape of the object of desire. Whether these people were intrinsically disturbed as infants, or, whether the early object world was itself disturbing, they knew the maternal object as disruptive effect. This effect then became the shape of the object, so, in seeking turbulence they are in fact constituting the primary object. As painful and disturbing an event as this is, it is nonetheless desired and finding themselves in states of distress is unconsciously gratifying. This person cultivates >borderline objects< which evoke turbulent frames of mind. Such an object usually has an escalatory potential to it, so that the borderline may turn to ordinary distressing facts of life—environmental pollution, harassment of workers in the work place—and transform these facts into self stimulating objects. They bring about a toxic response which constitutes the object of desire. The borderline personality often seeks moments of misunderstanding with the psychoanalyst paradoxically enough in order to feel closer to the clinician. If he feels that he is bringing about irritation or distress in the analyst, the patient feels that he and the analyst are sharing the primary experience together. By persistently interpreting to the patient the unconscious desire of his character the analyst can effectively deconstruct the analysand's pathological attachment and help the patient to understand a complex dynamic that has always put this person at acute odds with himself, let alone with others.
Editorial
(1996)
Mute correspondence
(1996)
This paper reconsiders the case of Frau Emmy von N – Freud's first effort to treat hysteria – from the vantage point of hypnoid states of consciousness and the phenomenon of dissociation. It proposes that Freud, in ultimately repudiating Breuer's concept of autohypnosis and alterations in consciousness, led psychoanalysis for the next century towards a one-sided emphasis on repression at the expense of dissociation. It is suggested here that Freud's inability to >cure< Emmy was largely due to his treating her symptoms simply as pathological pieces of her past to be removed and to his failure to attend to their immediate relevance in the here-and-now context of their own relationship. To comprehend why, as Freud states, Emmy's cure >was not a lasting one< is to accept that patients such as Emmy are not cured of what was done to them in the past rather, we are working to cure them of what they continue to do to themselves and to others in order to cope with what was done to them in the past.
A Commentary
(1996)
Sandra Buechler's commentary provides an interesting counterpoint to Mar-golies's chapter. She observes that Fromm believed work should be an expres-sion and a vehicle for self-development and that this urge transcends historical circumstance. She questions whether the categories we create hinder or en-hance our understanding. She believes the self-developer category may have blinded the therapist to other aspects of the treatment. Her own reading of the clinical material would have led her to focus on different aspects of the patient, such as his narcissism and his sadistic sexual fantasies. Margolies would argue that these pathological elements were declining as he worked through old com-promise solutions and developed life-affirming passions in work and love-particularly as he strengthened the positive strivings of his social character ori-entation.
Daniel Burston and Sharna Olfman's note that early in his career Fromm had begun to question Freud's historical perspective that assumed that the ad-vancement of society would necessarily create a stronger repression of instinc-tual drives. According to Freud, there were no free rides on the route to pro-gress, and any cultural advancement would leave in its wake a legacy of com-mon unhappiness. Regardless of the merits of this position, Freud's sober out-look had the virtue of challenging the belief that reason would bring gradual and inexorable progress. Fromm also thought that society had a repressive function, but as Burston and Oilman point out, Fromm's approach was qualitative rather than quantitative. Social demands based on economic modes of production and unequal distribution of goods would conflict with human demands for freedom and happiness. The conflict between social demands and human aspirations had to be analyzed for each particular case and could not be generalized into false historical categories as Freud's theory did.