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The concept of countertransference has a long history in psychoanalysis. This paper sketches the phenomenon referred to by countertransference and the development of the concept, from being signs of disturbance in the analyst to an important road to knowledge about the patient's inner life. The complexity of the questions discussed today – how to understand the concepts of neutrality, abstinence, and empathy; the relative subjective mutuality and symmetry of the analytic situation; the analyst's enactments and self-disclosure of feelings – reflects the complexity of the contemporary view of the patient–analyst relationship. In conclusion, the author presents a model illustrating the disturbing and informative aspects of countertransference together with the conceptual relationship between countertransference on the one hand and empathy and projective identification on the other. Finally, by differentiating between intuitive and irrational levels of functioning, an integrated model for countertransference is presented, synthesising the essence of the concept as it is used today.
Using one detailed case presentation, this paper examines the clinical hardship of making accurate and helpful interpretations that do not become part of the patient's defensive system. The author argues that interpretive acting-out is inevitable in the psychoanalytic process. But, if properly monitored, understood, and contained, these interpretive enactments can sometimes actually be a profit to the overall treatment. Issues of projective identification, countertransference, and the importance of realizing our transference role in the patient's changing phantasies are discussed throughout the case material.
This paper examines the psychology of ethnic, national, religious or political ideological groups composed of thousands or millions of people. In such large groups most of the individuals will never meet during their lifetimes. But, they share a persistent sense of sameness, >large-group identity.< This paper examines how this abstract concept, large-group identity, can become the central force that influences international relationships. Psychoanalysts who are willing to become involved in interdisciplinary initiatives can provide information to the diplomats about large-group psychology in its own right and suggest peaceful strategies for international conflicts.
This text was written for a panel with the ambitious title >With Bion to the future.< Can we tell something about the future? Can we apply this to the future of psychoanalysis? And are some of Bion's concepts of any help to such questions? Bion, following Freud, tells us that the caesura between present and future is not so great. The shadow of the future is present. So how can we read this shadow with Bion as a companion? We may see the future as consisting of many probable evolutions – like an infinite number of virtual lines, growth curves or probability lines only one of which is becoming real. Which lines will develop; which seeds will grow? And is our mind equipped to have an idea of this?
John Klauber's introduction of the concept of >encounter< signifies a milestone on the way towards an intersubjective understanding of the psychoanalytic method. The concept of encounter is comprehensive and refers to all aspects of the >here-and-now,< including transference from the >then-and-there.< Klauber's contribution points out that the psychoanalytic situation is primarily a therapeutic one. The solution to the transference depends on new experience, and therefore he emphasizes the role of spontaneity. Klauber describes unintended traumatizing aspects, one of the antidotes for which is spontaneity. What is real and actual in the transference should be admitted – at least as >plausible.<
Words are Ways
(2009)
This interview, performed by e-mail from December 2007 to September 2008, covers the psychoanalytic itinerary of André Haynal. His emigration from Hungary to Switzerland gave him occasion to think about alienation and its significance for identity. Gustav Bally, among others, introduced André Haynal in the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society after a very special interview. Other encounters with prominent and interesting personalities such as Jean Piaget and Michael Balint are also evoked. Furthermore, Haynal?s involvement in the publishing of the Freud–Ferenczi Correspondence and in the renaissance of Ferenczi's influence in contemporary psychoanalysis is also discussed.
This paper discusses the conflict between lustful desire leading to an extramarital affair and loyalty to one's partner. Drawing a parallel between the hero of Wagner's opera and the conductor-hero of the film Meeting Venus, the consequences of being an >outsider< are being considered. Whereas Tannhäuser's conflict is resolved in that he finds salvation from the Virgin Mary, Szanto is abandoned by the woman he loved and by his wife. He remains an outsider and alone.
The author describes experiences gathered during several years of teaching psychodynamic psychotherapy with psychologists and psychiatrists within a 2-year-training programme in Shanghai, China. Questions and problems of the reception of psychoanalysis – shame, sexuality, harmony, abstinence – as well as the possibilities and limitations of exporting psychoanalysis are discussed. The possible future development of psychoanalysis in China is also outlined.
Awakening the Patient
(2009)
Breakthrough
(2009)
Bion's investigation focused on the clinically observable field of psychoanalysis and a description of its rules of transformations. Analytic observation has as its objective the discovery of connections and objects not previously observed, and therefore it necessitates breaking pre-existing meaning configurations. The discovery of a new meaning requires not only integration, but also a shift toward disintegration. Rupturing the protection of common sense, rationality, and consensus entails >a catastrophic impact with the true experience of the self,< and it is therefore obstructed by the individual and by the group, who consider it dangerous for their own survival. And not wrongfully so. We cannot know in advance, Bion affirms, if that impact will involve a break-up, a breakdown or a breakthrough – a disturbing perspective that is replete with consequences for theory and technique.
Violence inflicted on men and women has repercussions on succeeding generations. Indeed, suffering that is not narrated and shared can become masochism and destruction. Based on a clinical case, I will propose an illustration of this fact and discuss it. I will also propose a discussion of countertransference linked to this case history. Finally, I will approach some topics on metapsychology and the way I use this concept to understand my experience.
Hiding and being lost: The experience of female patients and staff on a mixed sex secure ward
(2009)
In this article, I explore the themes of hiding, losing, and being found in relation to the experiences of women in secure mental health settings. Their hidden abuses, acts of violence, creative aspects, and secret desires play a central role in their identity, but are often lost to those who work with them, and even to the women themselves. Psychotherapeutic engagement with these women, including the work of arts therapists, can enable them to give voice to their hidden experiences, to disclose and explore their violent thoughts, feelings, and actions. Sometimes the women have used their bodies to encode those experiences which cannot be put into words, for example through hidden acts of self-harm. For other women, sexual feelings are hidden away, through shame and guilt. I will explore how therapeutic approaches can enable what is hidden to be brought into the open, using illustrative clinical material and inviting discussion throughout.
There are patients whose outstanding feature is a particular difficulty in >communicating with themselves.< According to Bion, who reconceptualized Freud's theory, all of us have in our inner world the potential for both producing and blocking alpha-transformations. When they are blocked, beta-elements are formed, which are unable to generate thought. Our capacity to think and to think >ourselves< depends exclusively on alpha-elements. Patients suffering from problems derived from a compensated >structural mental void< are unable to think. Following Bion, the >non-edited< would, generally speaking, be one of the facts that condition the formation of beta-elements. The production of beta-elements transforms these personalities into >functional illiterates.< To what extent can we ignore the >novelties< that these patients present us with through the production of beta-elements and >bizarre objects<? I wonder whether the concepts of >repetition< and >re-edition,< as they are currently used in the clinical process, are not actually casting a shadow over our minds, thus thwarting our ability to assess the total dimension of this >functional illiterate< condition. The analyst's mind can be the first link in a patient's chain of unthinkable thoughts: (1) repetition; (2) embryonic thoughts; (3) the non-edited; (4) structural mental void; (5) functional illiterate; and (6) mental abortions.
Action and interaction, and emotion and thought as the inner wellsprings of action, play a central role in the lives of individuals, families, and society, spanning the continuum between everyday life and disorder. Until now, the narrative tradition has been the main methodology for portraying and formulating human action and interaction, and little has been written about the dramatic approach to life, disorder, and therapy. Since the essence of drama is action, dialogue, character, and emotion, it is time to give drama its due. The author proposes a methodological concept – dramatology – analogous to narratology, to highlight the dramatic method of investigating action and interaction in life, disorder, and therapy. Breuer and Freud presented both aspects of dramatology: dramatization in dream and fantasy, and dramatization in act, focusing on the person. This approach was elaborated by psychoanalysts with an interpersonal orientation, focusing on the person and speech as action. Dramatology is applied to exploring ongoing patient–therapist interactions as reality and as transference. Analyzing unconscious and latent dramatization in dream, fantasy, and enactment with free association is enhanced by utilizing clarification and confrontation, focusing on the manifest and mutually observable expressive form and style of actions and enactments, defenses and resistances, and the discharge and meaning of emotions. Dramatology puts forward a new paradigm for psychiatry, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis.
Bion asserted that the possibility of change inherent in emotional growth and development was inevitably linked to fears of catastrophe. Did he intend this to apply to all patients and parts of the mind, or only to psychotic areas of functioning? Does subsequent clinical experience substantiate the universality of this assertion? These questions will be taken up from a general theoretical perspective in an attempt to understand what Bion had in mind when he proposed this view, and a clinical case will be presented to illustrate and examine the link between catastrophe and change.
A Crucial Encounter
(2009)
Conceptualization of hostile psychopathy and sadism: Drive theory and object relations perspectives
(2009)
A distinct formulation of hostile psychopathy is presented, based on analytic clinical experience with psychopathic youth and adults. Two psychodynamic conceptualizations of aggression are presented – one connoting a basic destructive drive, the other portraying aggression as a means of ensuring gratification and countering frustration. Following Meloy's (1988 Meloy, J. R. 1988. The psychopathic mind: Origins, dynamics, and treatment, Northvale, NJ: Aronson. [Google Scholar]) analysis of psychopathy as a combination of a deficient object relational capacity to bond and high levels of instinctual aggression, hostile psychopathy in general, and sadism specifically, are conceptualized from these two perspectives. Sadism, which features re-enacted events of violence, is posited as a distinct manifestation of hostile psychopathy with ritualized features attributable to object relations disturbances. Other variants of hostile psychopathy are analyzed as derivatives of more direct aggressive instinctual expressions that are not relational in their intent or function, in which destructiveness is an end in itself. Hostile psychopathy is presented as entailing elements of an instinctual propensity toward aggressive discharge. In addition, a more elaborate motif is posited in which the pain and suffering of others is the key factor in sadism. In the latter facet, there is an actual enjoyment of the others’ suffering, and unresolved relationships are re-enacted with a reparative intent. A psychosexual developmental hypothesis is suggested, in which drive-based aggressive discharge is linked to the oral sadistic stage, while sadistic relational dynamics are posited to reflect the power-control battles of the anal sadistic stage. As a limitation, it is noted that the sociopolitical aspects of psychopathy are not addressed in this clinical analysis. Moreover, since the data presented are oriented toward the intrapsychic (in contrast to social) aspects of psychopathy, the countertransference aspects of relationships that psychopaths tend to engender are not addressed specifically.
Editorial: Psychoanalysis and forensics – identifications with the oppressor and with the oppressed
(2009)
Theoretical and clinical concepts of psychoanalysis are presented here in terms of their relevance for forensic psychotherapy. They can be applied to individual psychotherapy, special nursing care, and the theory and practice of a therapeutic community. Essential concepts of seduction and traumatisation are presented in the language of drive psychology, as well as in the modern terms of self psychology and object relations theory. The criminal act forms the basis of forensic psychotherapy, the aim of which is to prevent a repetition of this or a similar act. This means that a certain type of act, namely a criminal act, lies at the heart of not only forensic psychotherapy, but also the concept of action itself. Psychoanalytic concepts stress the unconscious processes around and after the act. These processes are repeated in the everyday life of the therapeutic community and in the specific psychotherapeutic situations. Empiric evaluations are methodologically very difficult, as they must investigate multiprofessional settings.
Jews’ journey from time to time showed an ebb and flow situation. Sometimes they reached glory, while in the other times they experienced deterioration. However, the traces of suffering were seen more obvious befalling the nation that claimed themselves as the chosen people. Being enslaved in Egypt, stranded in Arab Coast for 40 years, evicted from the promise land (Palestine), inquisitioned by Christian Church in Middle Age and killed in Holocoust tragedy were the long period of dark destiny afflicting Jewish people. Expulsion, hatred and assassination became the common things for Jews. Meanwhile, this minority nation among billions people around the world could survive through every bitter period that approached their lives. Reclining to the belief in God, the messianic hope had given an optimistic feeling to them to face deal with whatever bitter the life was. This research used a figure approach to discuss a topic. The figure that I took to explain Jewish messianic concept was Erich Fromm, a social psychology expert that had a strong Jewish tradition background. This research was a literary research by using methodical elements: description, interpretation, holistika and reflection. Referring to Fromm’s analysis, the question about Jewish survival can be explained through the concept of hope in Jewish belief called >messianic<. The hope bandage by the faith spirit had a link with the concept of >homo esperans< or expectancy beings. Hope and expect are human basic conditions. The spirit of hope for messianic era had made Jewish people traversed various bitter conditions in their history. Messianic concept had some philosophical values: suffering for freedom, theological hope for repairing life and harmony.
Elation and Fortification
(2009)
The History of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) in Latin America
(2009)
Introduction
(2009)
Direct Meeting
(2009)