Refine
Language
- English (174) (remove)
Document Type
- Articles (145)
- Reviews (19)
- Books (9)
- Collections (1)
Has Fulltext
- no (174) (remove)
Year of publication
- 1996 (174) (remove)
A reflective appraisal.
(1996)
Archaic Sadism
(1996)
Children in Violence
(1996)
Merton M. Gill's (1914–1994) contributions to psychoanalytic theory are reviewed. Gill's ideas are discussed as they relate to three fundamental challenges facing psychoanalysis: (1) defining the nature of psychoanalysis as a discipline, (2) defining the nature of the psychoanalytic situation and the optimal psychoanalytic technique, (3) finding ways to study the psychoanalytic process empirically. In all three areas special attention is paid to continuities and discontinuities in Gill's thinking over time. With respect to the first challenge, Gill's contributions to classical metapsychology are described as well as his subsequent repudiation of that perspective and its replacement with a >person point of view.< With respect to the second challenge, Gill's writings on hypnosis, on the initial psychiatric interview, and on psychoanalytic technique are reviewed. Gill's later emphasis on the analysis of transference and on the analyst's contribution to the patient's experience are shown to have precursors in his earlier work. Finally, Gill's hermeneutic, perspectivist orientation is described along with his longstanding commitment to systematic empirical research on the analytic process, a commitment he felt was not inconsistent with hermeneutics. Despite the points of continuity in his ideas, Gill's career was marked by radical changes in his point of view, so that one can find him, at different times, standing on opposite sides of fundamental controversies in the field.
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.
This paper discusses some aspects of consciousness from a psychoanalytical viewpoint, based on a reading of Freud's relevant texts and also incorporating some recent developments in neurophysi-ology and philosophy. Its aim is to put forward a >fuller< concept of consciousness than that often used in analytic theory. Rather than, for example, confining it to a sense organ, or to a receiver of one stream of inner or outer perceptions, the author suggests that consciousness has many streams or >voices,< with perhaps little sense of unity and that, partly because of this, consciousness has an important role to play in channelling the expression of the unconscious, as well as in helping to create a picture of the world, in addition to its familiar censoring and protective functions. The author also questions the notion of >mental representations< which has influenced what we mean by mental life, and discusses an alternative, >nonrepresentational< framework. Much of what the author writes is speculative but still based on the psychoanalytic encounter, for he believes that our model of consciousness does influence how we view clinical material. He presents a clinical session to illustrate some of the themes of the paper.
Erich Fromm
(1996)
Erich Fromm's Courage
(1996)
Paul Roazen points out that Fromm was enormously courageous to have sustained a lifelong effort to revise Freud in the face of rejection from the psychoanalytic com-munity. As an example Roazen points to one of Fromm's neglected contributions, Sigmund Freud's Mission (1959), which was the first challenge to Jones's uncritical biography of Freud. In it Fromm called attention to Freud's complex relationship to his mother, who stimulated his ambition of becoming a great leader. This narcissis-tic investment in her son also had negative consequences. The ambivalence of Freud's relationship to his mother did not escape Fromm's observations even be-fore it was known that Freud did not attend his mother's funeral. (Instead Freud sent his daughter, Anna, as an emissary.) Roazen also reminds us how ferocious-and childish-attacks could be on those who dared to deviate from the Freudian party line. In keeping with Freud's original standing as an outsider, it is striking how much of an uphill struggle it has been to establish the legitimate role Erich Fromm has played in the history of psychoanalysis; but that only makes me think that recti-fying the situation, and paying him his due honor, is especially incumbent upon us. Whatever legitimate disagreements there ought to be about what Fromm's legacy adds up to, I think few can deny that his responsible outspokenness, which I have called courage, should be a special beacon to us all.
Exploring the phenomenon of experiential and psychic duality in the bilingual speaker, the author proposes that bilingual speakers may possess different representations of self that are organized around their respective languages. Building on previous work describing the critical role of language in organizing cognitive/affective experience and titrating psychodynamic operations, the author presents case material that elaborates on these themes and further describes the dynamic use of language as a >characterological organizer.< Emphasizing that language is acquired within a complex matrix of social-contextual, object-relational, intrapsychic, and psycholinguistic elements, she views the languages of the bilingual speaker as signifiers of unique self-representations internalized at the time of respective language acquisition and early usage.
The current reemergence of clinicians’ attention to the sequelae of childhood sexual abuse has been met by a powerful critical opposition. The criticisms often extend to many forms of psychotherapy and to psychoanalytic treatments of trauma. This article situates the debate in its historical context. It examines the use of eyewitness testimony and the work of Elizabeth Loftus in this controversy and makes a case for a more wide-ranging, careful, and critical reading of cognitive neuroscience and empirical studies of memory processes. The distinctions between clinical data, legal evidence, and research findings are considered. The essay also examines some of the challenges and problems in treating trauma and in considering the impact of real events in a relational and social constructionist psychoanalysis.
This article analyzes the current controversey over the iatrogenic implantation of sexual abuse >pseudomemories< during psychoanalytic treatment. It includes a critique of contemporary memory >research< and an elaboration of the concept of traumatic dissociation, bringing it into the framework of relational theory. Specific clinical examples are used to illustrate why adult survivors of sexual abuse are so vulnerable to dissociative rather than repressive defensive structures. In the context of a long clinical vignette, the analyst's countertransference is explored as a fulcrum for the counterbalancing effects of traumatic memory, dissociation, and constructivism.
Faith and Denial
(1996)
False dialogues, real conflicts a response to the symposium on the >false memory< controversy
(1996)
Sexual misconduct by analysts and psychotherapists is a topic that causes great public concern. The profession should certainly respond to this concern. But the problem of sexual misconduct also provides a stimulus to new theorizing leading to an engagement with issues of social justice. I argue that there are three contentious issues: First, I criticize the growing practice of >safe< analysis, seen as a misplaced response to the problem of sexual misconduct. Second, I urge a fresh look at the theme of incestuous sexual fantasy in family process. This would provide a broader theoretical base for the exploration of sexual desire in analysis. Third, I seek to retheorize the father in general and paternal sexuality in particular. New thinking about paternal erotics turns out to have many sociopolitical implications.
The constructivist/relational perspective has challenged the analyst's emotional superiority, her omniscience, and her relative removal from the psychoanalytic dialogue. It at first appears to be antithetical to treatment approaches that emphasize the analyst's holding functions. In this essay I examine the holding model and its resolution from a relational perspective. I propose that the current discomfort with the holding function is related to its apparent, but not necessarily real, implications. I discuss the analyst's and patient's subjectivity during periods of holding. I believe that the holding process is essential when the patient has intensely toxic reactions to >knowing< the analyst and is therefore not yet able to stand a mutual analytic experience. During holding, the patient experiences an illusion of analytictic attunement. This requires that the analyst's dysjunctive subjectivity be contained within the analyst, but not that it be abandoned. Ultimately, it is the transition from the holding position toward collaborative interchange that will allow analyst and patient explicitly to address and ultimately to integrate dependence and mutuality within the psychoanalytic setting and thereby engage in an intersubjective dialogue. The movement toward mutuality will require that the analyst of the holding situation begin to fail in ways that increasingly expose her externality and thus her subjectivity to the patient.
Flat Mountain
(1996)
Each of us holds unconscious representations of man and woman. Traditional psychoanalytic theories have viewed gender as formed primarily through unconscious representations of either man or woman. These theories have linked gender identifications to the resolution of either oedipal or preoedipal developmental issues. With this resolution, gender identifications have been conceptualized as acquiring a cohesiveness and a fixed nature over the rest of the life span. Contemporary feminist theories have challenged these ideas of fixed, unitary identifications and have offered instead the notion of a fluid gender that moves between multiple identifications. What is problematic is that either the understanding of gender has been restricted to the idea of singular, fixed identifications because of the linear frame of traditional theories or, in the feminist psychoanalytic quest for multiplicity and fluidity, no place has been left for the more fixed quality of gender experience. The tension between gender rigidity and fluidity has been collapsed. The author argues that the complex and dialectical nature of gender as an aspect of experience that at times feels sure and fixed and at other times feels more open to fluidity and change must be accounted for in gender theory. She traces the major developments in the psychoanalytic gender literature and, through case vignettes, uses Klein's and Ogden's formulations of the psychological positions to illustrate how the dialectical movement between the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive positions continuously recontextualizes gender such that the tension between fixed and fluid experience is maintained.
This essay first situates the development of self psychology within the culture of North American individualism, then delves into its relevance for understanding Asians, and comes full circle in reassessing what is universal or culturally variable in the current formulation of self psychology. The Asian self is compared with the North American one, and Asian familial hierarchical relationships with American egalitarian ones, resulting in a different cultural structuring of selfobject relationships, including the psychoanalytic one. A comparative psychology of idealizing selfobject relationships is then developed. Intercultural encounters between Asians and North Americans in the United States reveal problems in the interface because of the different culturally influenced selfobject relationships.
Freud in America
(1996)