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Reply to Stern.
(2002)
The relationship of Richard Quinney's critical criminology to Marxism is explored in this article. The originality of his version of critical criminology is discussed, from its origins in social constructionism, to his engagement with Marxism in the 1970s, to the importance in his later work of issues such as existentialism, Eastern thought, and Erich Fromm's socialist humanism. It is argued that Quinney's writings, despite several shifts of perspective, nonetheless exhibit some basic continuities and that an engagement with various forms of unorthodox, humanistic Marxism is one of these.
There has been much consideration in recent years of the nature of gender as socially constructed. During the same time there has also been much consideration of the nature of consciousness and of self-experience, and a calling into question of the experience of a unitary self versus multiple self-states. This paper offers case material of a patient who presents with traumatically induced multiple self-states. The author considers the way in which the gender of different self-states reflects both cultural and personal experience the way in which the patient's and the therapist's respective and mutual experience of their genders are intersubjectively experienced and the impact of an inadvertent touch in the course of treatment, in the light of both multiplicity and gender.
In. Replying to the commentaries by Adrienne Harris and Barbara Pizer, I further elaborate some of the ideas set forth in >Something Is Happening Here.< In particular, some considerations are offered with regard to work with trauma survivors from a body-centered energy therapy perspective. I also further consider some of the complexities of touch in a psychoanalytic treatment and the nature of >inadvertency.<
This commentary considers Sander's contributions to our thinking about recognition, with particular emphasis on his idea of rhythmicity as a major organizing principle. The author suggests ways in which rhythmicity contributes to our apprehension of and participation in the third, that aspect of the intersubjective relationship which is cocreated and yet lawful. Both Sander's research and his contemporary reflections represent an important effort to unite our understanding of energy and information as complementary aspects of the same communication process.
Frankel's paper is related to issues in the study of multiple personality, as well as to the dilemmas of identification in psychoanalytic training. The main point raised in this discussion is that the generalization that all identification is related to fear is untenable and that a continuum should be recognized between identification with the other in a close relationship as a constructive building block of one's identity and a traumatic identification with the aggressor that results in alienation.
In Ferenczi's idea of identification with an aggressor we can distinguish two sides. One is what we might call an interactive tactic or a social strategy, which is used in upsetting or unbalanced relations of power in order to forestall lack of control, fear, and the like. This is the side that is explored in great detail by Jay Frankel. The other side consists in a intrapsychic change, which flows from severe trauma. The specific effects of the latter are described by Ferenczi as dissociation/fragmentation of the personality, sequestering of the trauma, emotional abandonment, and isolation. Elsewhere, Ferenczi refers to this as a form of psychic self-mutilation.
Commentary on Eric M. Plakun >Jihad, McWorld and Enactment in the Postmodern Mental Health World<
(2002)
The passing of the dominance of the doctrine of intrapsychic determinism has created a vacuum, leaving behind it a >crisis< in American psychoanalysis. A confusing array of relational concepts and models are emerging in attempts to fill the gap. It is my conviction that, in order to help determine what is transient and what may have enduring value, such attempts should be subject to the same scrupulous deconstructivist efforts as were formerly directed at the classical psychoanalytic model. With this in mind, some hidden assumptions that underlie the model offered in Steven Stern's paper are the focus of examination in my discussion.
Although an intersubjective analytic approach reflects postmodern concerns about the problems associated with authority and influence, it does not altogether escape them. Interpreting subjective states invokes a veiled analytic authority, and labeling them as dissociative creates a pathway for the influence of questionable assumptions about the origins of dissociation as a defense against trauma. Harris and Gold's paper can be used to illustrate these ideas.
Review: Steven H. Cooper: Objects of Hope: Exploring the Possibility and Limit in Psychoanalysis
(2002)
This paper addresses how to be an available and responsive therapist to a controlling and narcissistically vulnerable young girl. It presents an overview of the treatment relationship and specific vignettes from sessions. The paper describes an impasse that posed a quandary: how to find a balance between staying in control of the treatment while being responsive to the kind of object the child needs the therapist to be – being empathic without being intrusive – and meeting her aggression without getting into a power struggle. The author discusses how asserting her subjectivity by playfully role-playing aspects of the patient, by spontaneously using humor, and by surviving her destructiveness allows the treatment to move forward. Trial and error, reflection on practice, and informed intuition contributed to the author's understanding of the child and of the transference. Various theoretical perspectives influenced the work.
Instead of dichotomizing psychic life as either intrapsychic or interpersonal, I suggest we think in terms of a continuum of self-experience from the most private or interior to the most public or exterior. I articulate four >domains< – phenomenologic, intrapersonal, interpsychic, and interpersonal – that constitute this spectrum of self-experience. Each domain lends a specific quality to one's internal life, and together (but in varying proportions) they constitute the psychic dwelling place unique to a given individual. This article illustrates how the variability among our patients in their habitual dwelling places may explain their diverse responses to differing analytic stances, interpretive approaches, and indeed, different analysts. A clinician's awareness of his or her own personal proclivity toward a more interior or more exterior orientation helps promote optimal contact with the patient's psychic life.
Symposium on clinical judgment in relational psychoanalysis: The problem of technique. Introduction
(2002)
A view of chronic drug use that draws on central assumptions in relational theory is proposed. Namely, chronic substance use is seen as being driven by conflicting and unresolved relational dynamics that derive from the early organizing relationships in a person's life. In the case of the substance user, the terms of this conflict find concrete expression in characteristic acts of drug use that serve to perpetuate it through the combined effects of reinforcement and disguise. The goal of treatment is for patient and therapist to find the components of the relational bind that are embedded in the drug use, to reformulate these forces in symbolic terms, and to revisit them in the dynamics of the transference, alongside opportunities for new exchange. Seen this way, the treatment needs of substance users can best be met by a relational model of psychoanalysis, augmented by other approaches needed to address addiction. In particular, the relational emphasis on the role of enactment as a vehicle for the expression of unsymbolized experience, and therefore the source of the phenomena to be analyzed and understood, makes this model especially well suited to substance-using people.
In my. Reply to commentaries by Glen Gabbard and Mark Gerald I offer further views on the implications of an integrative approach to treatment of substance-using patients, and the role of countertransference in that approach. I also address the phenomenon of >leverage,< examined by Gerald for the particular role it plays in the treatment of chronic drug use. I consider the use of leverage within the context of discussing the broader therapeutic effort to help substance-using patients achieve integration.