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- 1995 (306) (remove)
Excerpts from prolonged analytic work with a multiply traumatized young man who deliberated a sex-change operation are presented, highlighting some problematics in the treatment of transsexualism, a gender-identity disturbance that may become significant in recent psychoanalytic and cultural discourse on self and gender. The paper aims both to report some >technical< issues in such an analysis and to throw some light on such themes as identification, domination and submission, sadomasochism and guilt and shame, narcissistic entitlement and empowerment, desire and recognition, gender and difference, and the vertiginously multiple meanings and emotional elaborations of masculinity and femininity. The analytic itinerary is recounted with emphasis on diverse relational approaches that were attempted to fit the delicate balance of the patient's needs, his quasi-delusional transferences, and his capacity to persevere in a mutually >nightmarish,< though possible and feasible psychoanalysis.
Desire and dread in the analyst. Reply to Glen Gabbard's. Commentary on >love in the afternoon<
(1995)
Dialogues and Monologues
(1995)
This essay identifies Kohut's major contribution as methodological: that psychoanalytic inquiry entails the sustained empathic immersion in the patient's psychological experience. Kohut's consistent employment of this method enabled him to discover that it was not instinctual drive derivatives but selfobject needs that were central to all psychological relationships. This discovery was the basis for the transformation of analysts’ approach to the >narcissistic< aspects of a wide variety of disorders – a transformation whose theoretical and therapeutic importance rivals the revolutionary approach taken by Freud to the vicissitudes of psychosexuality and its disturbances. The author describes the major areas of progress in self psychology – much of which centers on the growing recognition that the health and vitality of the self depend on complex relational, or intersubjective, selfobject experiences. He indicates how this recognition is changing our perspectives on transference and countertransference and is improving our ability to respond optimally to our patients. He describes how optimal responsiveness constitutes the guiding principle for therapeutic work, and how it may both constitute, and be different from, >being empathic.<
Self psychology is maintaining continuity with Kohut's last work, >How Does Analysis Cure?< and his vision of human nature, as well as exploring a multiplicity of new directions. This paper discusses the expansion of Kohut's contributions in terms of the >figure-ground< dimensions of transference: a selfobject dimension and representational configurations. On the basis of empirical studies of infancy, the paper proposes that both self- and mutual regulation organize the treatment relationship. It illustrates the clinical applicability of the expansion of Kohut's contributions by discussing a case in which countertransference, aggression, and resistance could place an analyst in danger of contributing to a therapeutic stalemate were it not for the contributions of Kohut.
At this time in the evolution of the various psychoanalytic theories, we can make only some general comments regarding the direction that psychoanalytic self psychology may take in the future. We can, with greater certainty, however, predict the enduring importance of two of its basic concepts: 1) the significance of empathy as a mode of observation will endure and 2) the developmental and clinical conception of the selfobject will remain central to self psychology for the foreseeable future. Selfobject experiences have been recognized as crucial in all aspects of mental life: in development, in the clinical situation, and in everyday life throughout the lifespan.
This article locates self psychology within the context of the evolving paradigm for psychoanalysis that the author calls intersubjectivity theory. It is argued that Kohut contributed significantly to the new paradigm but stopped short of fully embracing it. Self psychology and intersubjectivity theory are compared and contrasted, and an intersubjective view is offered of the patient's transference, the analyst's transference, and the system created by their reciprocal interaction.
Following Hartmann's theoretical formulations, the self has been explored primarily as a body of self-representations coordinate to object representations the dynamic organizations of the mind (the id-egosuperego systems) have been seen as impersonal (nonself) functions.This paper attempts a conception of the id-ego-superego structures as self-functions in intimate relation to self-representations. Building on an integration of Piagetian and psychoanalytic object relations frameworks (event theory), it proposes that the earliest self-experience occurs in dynamic schemes of personally motivated interaction between self and nonself. These I-schemes lay the groundwork for both the dynamic and the representational aspects of the self: Their structure results in experience characteristic of the dynamic id and in their character as undifferentiated interactions provides the base for the development of self- and object representations. Development occurs by integration and differentiation in processes of conflict resolution. The paper traces these developments in outline as they lead to the transition in the dynamic self from id to ego organizations, and in the self-representations from part-selves and part-objects to a whole and individuated self in relation to whole objects.
To view all that occurs in the analytic arena, including verbal exchange, as interaction broadens the horizon and affects our understanding of the analytic process, transference – countertransference, therapeutic action, and theory of technique. This paper focuses particularly on implications of the organization model of transference: the process of illuminating transference, the mutual interactional shaping that occurs in the analytic relationship, and the distinction between the content and the process of communications. Defining countertransference as the analyst's experience of the patient, the paper proposes that all analysts, regardless of persuasion, use their experience of the patient (that is, countertransference) as the central guide to analytic exploration and understanding. Differences in analysts’ experience of their patients arise not only because of different models and respective subjectivities, but also because of the variable use of two principal listening perspectives: listening from within the patient's vantage point (subject-centered listening perspective) and listening from the as-the-other (other-centered) vantage point. The paper proposes that the analyst's listening from within and as-the-other, oscillating in a background – foreground configuration, can illuminate more fully the patient's experience of self and of self in relation to others. And, finally, recognizing that all interventions are interactions firmly anchors the interpretive process and its power within relational experience and opens the door to reassessing and potentially embracing the many varied forms of interventions that contribute to the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis.
In psychoanalytic psychotherapy we are primarily interested in psychic change and how to facilitate it for the better. Change is a universal property of matter, living or inanimate: everything in nature is influenced by everything else interaction is ubiquitous. In the early years of psychoanalysis, the prevailing view was that therapeusis was essentially informational – insight and awareness would bring about changes in the ways one would experience events and respond to them. Over time, there has been a subtle shift from the informational perspective to the transformational, where insight is often retrospective rather than the active agent. The growing awareness of the need to be deeply recognized and responded to by another human being is reflective of this shift and has loomed ever larger in the interactive arena known as psychoanalysis. This paper focuses on a single facet of the need for recognition by another – the role of enacted response in effecting psychic change. It also addresses another level of the meaning of interaction: Whereas the internal interaction between perception and response has tended to be looked upon, in psychoanalysis, as unidirectional, the present discussion draws attention to the complexity of the bidirectional interaction between perception and response.
Dissociation is posited as a form of psychical organization in which psychical conflicts and threats to self-preservation are regulated on the terrain of mind/body relations. Economic, social, and cultural processes are implicated in the establishment of stable forms of dissociation, and at the same time render these dissociative regimes opaque. This essay attempts to show 1) how the dissociative organization and process relies on a mechanism that may be described as a type of de-repression 2) that dissociative communication is not symbolic in nature but employs a signaling function, giving rise to pseudointegration of the personality rather than true integration 3) how a phenomenon of false encoding may be observed in these cases and 4) how a stable regime of pathological dissociation subtly creates a sensory cocoon or invisible wall, the effect of which is to erect a narcissistic field of omnipotent constructions (a >pathological container<) in the place of actual contact between people. Lastly, it is in the structure of pathological dissociation that it is possible to locate a specific psychological definition of inauthenticity.
Erik. Erikson's concept of identity, reworked from the perspective of contemporary relational theory, is used to propose an integrative, dialectical view of subjectivity. This view captures dimensions of personal experience and personality organization that have stayed peripheral to most psychoanalytic discourse, from whatever point of view: Personal experience is created and re-created at the threshold of the intrapsychic and the social, such that they are inextricable, and this ubiquitous transaction is itself experienced as the ground and location of how it feels to be a person. Simultaneously, the vitality of personal experience rests on the dynamic synthesis of unity and complexity this transactional perspective emerges amid the integration of diverse elements of personal experience, such as identity and intimacy, the past and the present, and the world of internal object representations and external relationships. Subjectivity is essentially constructed in the context of relationships that is, it is intersubjective at its core. Thisimplies extending the very definition of the relational to encompass the broadest view of the social environment, including families, institutions, cultural influences, and even broad historical forces.
Editorial
(1995)
Editorial
(1995)
Editorial
(1995)
Editorial
(1995)
Editorial philosophy
(1995)
Editorial.
(1995)
Empathy a common ground
(1995)