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Dieser Aufsatz befasst sich mit der frühen Phase der Kritischen Theorie in der Geschichte der Frankfurter Schule, die sich vom Jahre 1930 zum Jahre 1938 erstreckt. Sie ist durch die folgenden Vorgänge gekennzeichnet: die Übernahme des Amtes des Institutsdirektors durch Horkheimer; die Teilnahme Fromms an dem Institut im Jahre 1930; die offizielle Teilname Adornos an dem Institut im Jahre 1938; den Austritt Fromms im Jahre 1939. Diese Phase ist für die Frankfurter Schule dadurch gekennzeichnet, dass durch die Mitwirkung Fromms ein konkreter Prozess der Integration der Psychoanalyse in den interdisziplinären Materialismus Horkheimers verwirklicht wird. Er erreicht seinen Höhepunkt in den im Jahre 1936 veröffentlichten zweibändigen >Studien über Autorität und Familie<. In diesem Beitrag soll dargestellt werden, wie sich diese fruchtbare Zusammen¬arbeit der beiden in ihren fühen Werken widerspiegelt, und ferner aus welchem Grund es zu dem Bruch zwischen den beiden kam.
佛洛姆雖然沒有提出系統的教育理論,但其理論以人的全面發展、充分誕生為目標,以建立人本主義的社會主義社會為理想,冀望人人覺悟異化的實相,努力克服非理性的熱情與性格,發展生產性格,以解決生存的矛盾,而能夠健全的生活,實具有教育理論的內涵。本文所嘗試為其建立的教育理論,奠基於其人性論、異化論與歷史唯物論,既重視人本身人性力量的發揮,也重視社會整體結構對人發展的影響,有別於先前對其教育理論探討者之忽視社會結構的分析。其人性論承繼馬克思的人性論,以自由而有意識的活動的社會存有為人的本質,同時又根據其心理分析實踐的反思,以內在於人生存處境的矛盾為人的本質。人要獲得自由,必須擴大對自己無意識的覺察,從無意識的壓抑中解放出來。在最深的無意識中,人可以覺察到普遍的人性,而體驗到與所有人類為一體。一般人無法意識到如此深的無意識,但如能意識到其性格結構、社會性格、社會無意識、社會的意識形態等,則能覺察到諸種壓抑其自由發展的內、外在障礙。資本主義社會的生產方式,促使人發展非生產性的市場性格、接受性格等異化的性格,又發展出產業與人工頭腦時代的宗教,來強化這些性格。人由這些非生產性格發展出貪婪、自戀、亂倫固著、威權性格、破壞性等非理性熱情,又屈從於匿名權威,成為自動機器人,遂不得自由發展。人由生產性的工作、工作社群、產業民主、健全消費、全民參與式民主、集體藝術、人本主義的宗教與教育,可以發展生產性格結構,發展生產性的愛與理性的力量,以克服與自我、他人、自然異化的生存矛盾,而達到與世界合一的真我,真正得到自由的發展。生產性格者能夠帶動產生更多的生產性格者,一個社會若有許多生產性格者,就能逐漸轉變社會盛行的價值與觀念,進而逐漸轉變社會性格與社會的生產方式。佛洛姆以生產性的愛為基礎的認識論,和格物致知的修養功夫相似,必須格除私欲,克服自戀等非理性熱情,以無我的愛與世界關聯,心清淨無染,才能看清世界。在這個基礎上,才能發展愛與理性的能力,及其他的人性潛能。故學為聖人,放下自我,從自我的牢籠中脫離出來,乃人得以自由發展的重要關鍵。以「存有」情態學習人類導師與人本宗教的教誨,知行合一的實踐博愛,能夠克服自戀,發展生產性格。能相當程度的發展生產性格,解決生存矛盾之後,才能健全的生活,發展各種人性潛能。生產性格的教育者與領導人「作之君、作之親、作之師」,將家庭、學校、公司等小團體,建立成以愛生性為導向的學習社會,可以促進所有成員生產性格的發展。這種學習社會可以漸次擴大,而將整個社會、國家建立成以愛生性為導向的團體。經由教育者的愛與人格典範、童蒙養正、教勞結合、內在自我實現動機的啟發、落實所教內容、對受教者的信心,可以幫助人發展生產性格,克服異化。教育學的理論與實踐,應更重視整體社會結構與歷史對人的影響,應更重視德育對人整體發展的影響,避免將自私、異化的人視為常態,而應以幫助人發展成生產性格者為目標去進行研究與實踐。
Inhaltlich geht es in dieser Arbeit vorrangig darum, die Erkenntnisse Wilhelm von Humboldts aus seiner sprachwissenschaftlichen Untersuchung >Über den Dualis< (1827) zunächst einmal in den Kontext ihrer Zeit einzubinden – folglich in die Epoche des Neuhumanismus – um dann in einem nächsten Schritt zu zeigen, in welchem Zusammenhang bzw. Verhältnis Humboldts Auffassung mit der Ich-Du Philosophie eines Martin Buber sowie der humanistisch-sozialistischen Charaktertheorie eines Erich Fromm steht. Letztlich soll somit gezeigt werden, ob – und wenn ja in welchem Umfang – Humboldts Ideen von Bedeutung für spätere Theoretiker und damit für die heutige Pädagogik waren bzw. sind.
Éloge de la perversion, ou >Éloge tempéré d’une perversion incertaine par météo de gros temps<
(2005)
Éditorial
(2005)
Éditorial
(2005)
In. Reply to Altman's and Schellekes's questions and discussion, the author explores in more depth his own theoretical-technical point of view in order to clarify – chiefly in the light of a modern application of Ferenczi's and Heimann's way of thinking – the rationale for the selection of clinical facts in his paper.
In response to Franco Borgogno's article, the author talks about the dread of falling, a theme that appears in some of the dreams presented in Borgogno's case study and that conceals very primitive anxieties, each resulting from specific object relations constellations. The discussion elaborates the understanding of this dread through various theoretical perspectives as well as through Samuel Beckett's (1946) short story, >The Expelled.<.
The thoughtful discussions of my paper by Alan Schore, Wilma Bucci, and James Fosshage raise important considerations about the relationship between theory, research, and the micromoment interactions constituting the activity of psychoanalysis. For the opportunity afforded by their contributions, and to Psychoanalytic Dialogues for publishing our exchanges, I express deep gratitude. I am initially impacted by the appreciation shown by my colleagues for the approach I am illustrating to clinical attention and its value for an expanded and, in certain ways, revised scope of psychoanalytic activity. In particular, I am appreciative of the ways that each commentator has taken up my emphasis on expanding psychoanalytic attention beyond symbolic pathways of exchange and has further contributed to understanding how this can occur. As part of a consideration of points of convergence and difference between us, I address how such convergences and differences shape both the values and pitfalls of comparisons across research, theory, and practice.
Steven H. Knoblauch has been developing a strategy and theoretical perspective for using and understanding complex nonverbal experiences and communications that occur in the analytic exchange. His delineation of nonverbal communication contributes substantially to the ongoing expansion of our views of psychoanalytic interaction and theories of therapeutic action. This expansion, contributed to by many, involves the development of an interactive systems model in which verbal and nonverbal communications are viewed as actions occurring at explicit and implicit levels. In a number of Knoblauch's clinical illustrations, subsymbolic processes rapidly invoke, or are invoked by, nonverbal or imagistic symbolic processing and meaning-making as well, often followed by verbal symbolizing processing. Subsymbolic and verbal and imagistic symbolic processing, intrinsic modes of organizing data, probably continually influence one another bidirectionally in a flowing feedback loop.
Bucci's model of emotional communication, developed in the context of her theory of multiple coding and the referential process, is applied to Knoblauch's microanalytic report of his experience of the patient and himself and their interactions during a single session of an ongoing treatment. The referential process is a bidirectional function connecting the diverse sensory, somatic, and motoric representations of the subsymbolic system with imagery and words. The process operates partially and to varying degrees within both participants in the case presented here, the dissociation among systems is severe, and emotional communication within the dyad occurs at first primarily in subsymbolic, bodily forms. Where gaps in the referential process exist for the patient, the analyst's own experience and associations operate to evoke new connections for her we see this process in moment-by-moment glimpses of the analyst's experience and his interactions with the patient. Gaps in the reader's knowledge, and possibly the analyst's knowledge, of the patient are discussed.
In October 2004 it was my pleasure to present at a cutting-edge conference entitled The Interplay of Implicit and Explicit Processes in Psychoanalysis. In addition to offering an address (>The Essential Role of the Right Brain in the Implicit Self: Development, Psychopathogenesis, and Psychotherapy<), I also provided a commentary to Steven Knoblauch's excellent paper, >Body Rhythms and the Unconscious: Toward an Expanding of Clinical Attention.< In the following, I briefly summarize these presentations, with the purpose of showing how current advances in developmental and neuropsychoanalysis are being incorporated into the practice of clinical psychoanalysis. This work is part of an ongoing effort to expand regulation theory, an overarching theoretical model of the development, psychopathogenesis, and treatment of the implicit self.
Wish, Need, Drive: Motive in the Light of Dynamic Systems Theory and Edelman's Selectionist Theory
(2005)
Limitations to the process of symbolization for communication in psychoanalytic work are considered as the basis for an expansion of clinical attention to include embodied experience as a source of unconscious meaning. The displacement effect of language and the futility that language meets, as description of lived experience, are key points recognized in the contributions of Daniel Stern and Jacques Lacan. Irwin Hoffman's critique of assumptions underlying Freud's technique for analytic work are reviewed as a point of departure for recommending a relational approach to analytic attention expanded with an emphasis on micromoment-embodied communication in addition to symbolized communication. A clinical narrative is offered, highlighting the rhythms of movement between embodied and verbally symbolized communication as a basis for constructing unconscious meaning. The implications of this approach are summarized for expanding analytic attention to include registers of communication in addition to the verbal symbolic.
This paper revisits the case of >Karen< (>Whose Bad Objects Are We Anyway? Repetition and Our Elusive Love Affair with Evil,< PD 14/6) eight years after the time period described in the earlier paper, and uses this case material as a backdrop for discussing a relational reformulation of the termination process. The paper posits that an analysis conducted around a model of mind that holds multiple self–other configurations as the fundamental organizing structures needs to take these self–other configurations into account in ending an intensive treatment. Therefore termination becomes, from this perspective, a series of endings between multiple self–other dyads that have emerged during the treatment process. Extended clinical material is provided to illustrate this point of view.
Stephen Wangh's thoughtful essay on revenge and forgiveness in Laramie, Wyoming, raises a number of questions about the role of psychoanalytic theory in shaping as well as reflecting culture. The events that took place in Laramie cannot just be material for psychoanalysts to examine and interpret. Rather, Laramie is a mirror that forces us to reflect on ourselves and our own contribution to the killing of Matthew Shepherd because he was gay. Psychoanalysts have described gay men as immature, predatory, paranoid, narcissistic, sadistic, masochistic, and pitiable. As the major discourse on gender and sexuality in the Western world, we have been and remain an influential part of the larger context in which gay men become the targets of hatred disguised as moral outrage. Rigid gender prescriptions add to the problem by pathologizing some groups and idealizing others. Psychoanalysts need to acknowledge this homophobia and its consequences directly and begin to rethink theory along more intersubjective, less value-laden lines. Some parallels to the South African truth and reconciliation movement are suggested.
Davies contributes to the development of relational theory by formulating and illustrating what occurs during especially difficult moments in an analytic exchange. In understanding enactments, Davies importantly underscores the contribution of both the analyst's and patient's >bad objects.< This author attempts to build bridges between Davies' language and concepts anchored in object relations theory and this author's language and concepts based in contemporary or relational self psychology, including the integration of cognitive psychology. In addition, this author delineates the use of the >empathic,< >othercentered,< and >analyst's self< listening/experiencing perspectives to explicate the case material and to provide alternative understandings and pathways for psychoanalytic work. The thesis set forth is that the use of different listening/experiencing perspectives expands choice for the analyst when working in difficult moments of the clinical exchange.
Replying to eight commentaries on my paper submitted by readers of this journal, I address such disparate issues as matters of training and supervision, theories of regression, the analyst's self-states, the patient's vital purpose, complexities of doing for the Other, and the question of what needs to be spoken (interpreted, formulated, declared) explicitly between patient and analyst. I further explore the meaning of my stating to my patient that I would not hug her in our analytic work ahead. And I respond to questions regarding my concept of the paradoxical analytic triangle.
Stuart A. Pizer's fascinating article explores through a relational lens analytic impasse, and its manifestation through transference and countertransference love. How this love is demonstrated (or not) and the ways in which we provide for our patients will have profound effect on the process (and progress) of any treatment. But, too often, reluctance to >do for< our patients compromises our ability to provide what may be needed in any given moment. Perhaps an expansion of the >doer – done to< dyadic paradigm into a >doer – done for< model might allow more analytic leeway and more possibility of growth within our patients.
This case provides a delicate approach to vital purpose, unconscious pattern, and >emotion recollected in tranquillity.< The author defines, the >paradoxical analytic triangle< to which Pizer refers, as a human quality, an unprecedented level of understanding and comprehension, that lets analyst and patient recognize their own dependence on the object. In so doing, they both gain a quality of presence through recovering the projections that they have attributed to the object. Four aspects are considered important steps leading to this human quality within the analytic process: dissociation leading to impasse sensibility opening to countertransference recollection in tranquillity leading to self-reflexivity and the patient's >vital purpose< – the most salient aspect (the lighthouse) of the whole project.
It seems it would be helpful for all impasses to be >recollected in tranquility.< In the thick of impasses, however, when we are experiencing pressure, defensiveness, vulnerability, and the responsibility to come up with a quick solution, it can be nearly impossible to think clearly. Time may take us to a place of greater calm and fresh awareness. But it may also provide an illusory calm, leaving us stuck circling in old familiar grooves, grooves rimmed by our own unconscious vulnerabilities and limitations. At such times, we may operate in a perceived state of calm, but with a set of powerful, yet ineffective, unseen or outgrown, concretized beliefs and perceptions, creating a perception of calmness. Some of these may even silence or damage the cooperative or struggling patient, who remains or dares to return (out of a longing to connect or make things >right<). I wondered whether what Dr. Pizer's patient said at the end of Rebecca's second therapy with him was true (that she no longer needed a hug from him, finding it more mature to proceed without one), or if this was merely what she felt she should say in order to leave a key relationship she valued – also in peace and tranquillity.
This discussion of the paper by Stuart Pizer focuses on the unconscious forces operating within the analyst that can contribute to a therapeutic impasse. The author discusses a period when she unknowingly skirted interpersonal and transferential interpretations as a result of particular stresses in her personal life. It was not until she was taken to task by one of her patients that she realized the extent to which these stresses had led her to back away from the intensity of the therapeutic relationship. This discussion is offered as a cautionary tale, to remind every analyst of the importance of remaining as aware as possible of one's own circumstances, history, dynamics, and limitations and to be forever watchful of oneself.
This discussion addresses two key points concerning Pizer's thoughtful paper about a long-term, difficult analytic process. First, it responds to Pizer's quest for theoretical and clinical concepts that do not limit the analytic work of mature, experienced analysts to interpretive work, but reconnects them theoretically, clinically, and technically with deeply engaging emotional experiences of life-giving, profound transformation through treatment. The author suggests that the clinical theory of therapeutic regression, which was developed and forged within intense and difficult analytic treatments, brings the critical need for fundamental experiences of the analyst's loving and sustaining provision into the framework of the psychoanalytic process and therapeutic action. The discussion further elaborates on the emotional risking and vulnerability – the venture zone, as the author terms it – that creating psychic change implies for both patient and analyst. This venturing by both of them is illustrated through the clinical example presented by Pizer in his paper.
In our response to Pizer's paper, we underscore the importance of discerning when to more deeply and conjointly explore emergent intersubjective moments in the therapeutic exchange. Pizer states that he would not now proceed clinically in the same way that he conducted his first treatment of his patient Rebecca, which occurred prior to his receiving full analytic training. However, he questions whether the therapeutic engagement would have advanced as well as it did if he had not offered various sponsoring and sheltering provisions to his patient. We believe that a more reflective and self-aware Pizer could have both supplied the provisions that Rebecca so desperately needed and more actively explored the meanings of their experiences together. Further discussion is needed regarding how impasses result when deepening analytic reflection and interpretation are not used to negotiate the multiple and paradoxical relationships that develop in treatment. In addition to training and consultation, we need to identify and utilize various ways to better understand what interferes with our capacity to negotiate the balance between remaining true to our own subjectivity and being enough of what our patients need us to be.
In providing the background to a pivotal session, Stuart Pizer reveals his clinical work as an unsupervised neophyte, prior to his own analysis and analytic training. These early therapeutic efforts were flawed, leaving Pizer at times >grimacing with mortification 26 years after the fact.< But they were also extraordinarily helpful to the patient. Schaffer discusses the challenge of supervising similarly talented beginners: how does one teach psychoanalysis without desiccating a treatmen? How does one teach a relational approach, with no >basic model< and few rules, to a beginning analyst infused with an unformulated, yet often passionate, sense of what is >curative<? Pizer recognizes that were he to meet the same patient today, he would not conduct the same treatment. Now trained and analyzed, not to mention more cautious and >worldweary,< Pizer would not do what he did then. But what if he were the supervisor then? Schaffer concludes her discussion by asking Pizer how he, now a seasoned analyst, would supervise his early therapist self.
This article examines a debate concerning the exegesis of the story of the garden of Eden and the tree of knowledge, as told in Genesis. Two contradictory interpretations of the garden narrative are examined, the first as the story is elucidated by the psychoanalyst and social theorist Erich Fromm and the alternative interpretation by the Talmudic scholar and philosopher Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. This article compares and contrasts their exegeses and the respective implications of each view. The controversy, which has profound implications, reflects differences in world views concerning the good life, autonomy and relatedness, assertion and submission, will and surrender, obedience and rebellion, independence and interdependence, subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Links are drawn to a variety of contemporary psychoanalytic theories, developments, and controversies.
The progress of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy depends on our capacity to study, in a scientific manner, the process of therapy. Since a study of this kind involves charting the waxing and waning of something as elusive as the sense of personal existence, the task has, in the past, been seen as virtually impossible. However, words, or more particularly, the way words are used, manifest such shifting states. Sophisticated linguistic analyses are available, providing the means to conduct these necessary studies. This article suggests that an ongoing sense of personal existence, which William James called >self,< is multilayered, in the manner of the poetic, and that indices of such layering will reflect beneficial change. The description of this zone of experience, which might be called the synchronic, depends on contributions from Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Henri Bergson, and Ferdinand de Saussure. An illustration of the value of a consideration of the minute particulars of the therapeutic conversation is given by means of extracts from therapy sessions seven months apart.
Freud's theory of melancholia has lately experienced a renaissance among those interested in the creative potentialities of the psyche. In this essay, I consider the ways in which melancholia can contribute to the actualization of these potentialities by preparing the ground in which inspiration can later take root. I also outline the circumstances in which the melancholy subject's refusal to abandon its lost objects represents an entirely valid response to loss. At the same time, I propose that if the subject is to develop an affirmative and imaginatively supple relationship to its psychic history, it must in the end move from melancholia to meaning production. Insofar as melancholia signals the psyche's inability or stubborn unwillingness to move forward, its powers by necessity remain dormant until the subject is able to exchange its sadness for the versatile meaning-making capacities of the signifier. I moreover argue that it is only when the subject is able to transcend its melancholia enough to begin to desire new objects that it can develop loving and responsible relationships with others – that it can begin to welcome others in their own terms rather than reducing them to its own narcissistic image.
Burton's response to discussions by Krystal and Khantzian addresses the manifestation and engagement of aspects of bad objects in addictions treatment and acknowledges the broader relationship between compulsive behaviors and dissociation. In addition, Burton presents thoughts on cross-disciplinary communication and an emergent relational metapsychology and its potential impact across schools of psychotherapy.
Commentaries by Edward Khantzian and Henry Krystal allow me to elaborate the role of dissociation in addictive disorder, and its misguided place in the design of many therapeutic strategies to overcome it. Promising direction for the treatment of the characters and symptoms of drug-dependent patients lies in the application of developments in current analytic theory and technique. Such developments include familiarity with enactment, dissociative and projective processes, and work in a two-person frame to enable treatment to encompass and reach more of the patient.
The two papers on the psychoanalytic treatment of addiction are important contributions and provide us with newly organized tools and techniques. Emphasizing the dissociative reactions in this area also highlights the issues we encounter in the analysis of the addictive type of personality. Both the transferences and the countertransferences need special attention because they are difficult for every patient and analyst. Thus we are alerted to these individuals' great neediness and dependency and their desperate defenses against confronting the core problems. After all, their personalities are dominated by their need to escape, deny, or block their lifelong misery. Hence, the burden is for the analyst to deal with his or her own feelings of boredom or helplessness, and the challenge is to handle the patients in a supportive and yet interpretive way in the interactional and relational cooperation. These new insights and review of old principles will reward the reader.
The author discusses papers by Director and Burton, placing their work in a context of contemporary psychoanalytic models for understanding addictive behavior. Whereas early psychoanalytic models stressed drive theory and a topographic model of the mind, the contemporary models discussed here emphasize themes of dissociation – integration, helplessness – omnipotence, self-organization, and relational therapy. The author considers how these modern themes resonate with psychoanalytic formulations of addictive vulnerability that have considered disturbances in affect recognition/tolerance, self-esteem, relationships, and self-care. The author concludes by suggesting that the dyadic paradigms advanced by Director and Burton likely have implications for psychodynamic group treatments.
Relational perspectives on the nature of self and the unconscious have transformed how we can understand addictions and substance use problems. Addictions have received little attention in the contemporary literature and therapeutic approaches outside of psychoanalysis have been skeptical of psychoanalytic approaches. It is my contention that viewing substance use problems through the lens of a relational/multiple self-state model offers new clinical possibilities resulting in greater success in treating these patients. In this model, addictive behavior is seen as embedded in dissociated self-states. Therapy focuses on helping the patient to move from dissociation to a true multiplicity and a decreased dependence on substances.
An assumption made in this paper and explored for its clinical implications is that an act of chronic drug use often marks or serves to implement an underlying omnipotent self-state. Psychoanalytic work with substance users, as compared with other approaches, trains attention on these omnipotent states and makes use of the transferential exchange as a therapeutic tool. States of omnipotence are particularly examined here in the context of recent attention to dissociation as an organizing force in the personality, and in the configuration of the transference – countertransference of the treatment relationship. A case illustration is used to apply current thinking on dissociative and projective processes, and their role in enactment in the therapeutic exchange, to illuminate the frequent interplay of omnipotence and helplessness in analytic work with substance-using and other patients.
In. Replying to the discussions of Gilbert Cole and Stefanie Solow Glennon, I focus on several issues raised, including the continuing intrapsychic relationship with a dead parent who may have been destructive to the patient the analyst's facilitating role in enabling the patient to connect with, and construct the future of, the lost relationship the potential meaning of an enactment with a bereaved patient and some thoughts on the dyad's needs to work creatively postloss in multiple affective time zones.
The author makes use of Glennon's and Cole's discussions to elaborate the relationship between our conceptions of self and the ways in which we understand the experience of loss. In discussing the intrapsychic self, the self as it is constituted through the process of relating and the existential self, he argues that when we make room for multiplicity and the complex, dynamic interplay of diverse self states and modes of experiencing, these different conceptions of self both enhance and complement our experience of loss.
What is a selfobject?
(2005)
This discussion examines the theme of time as it is experienced by someone who has suffered a loss, in an attempt to understand and differentiate certain contrasts in these authors' approaches to theory and technique. The discussant argues that the frame is a vital tool in helping the analyst to gain access to the differential interplay between awareness of mortality and our flight from it. Finally, the discussant asks whether certain prevalent relational themes, such as mutuality, empathy, and the ubiquity of enactments, have contributed to an atmosphere in which attention to the frame can recede.
This commentary highlights the differences between Frommer's and Sussillo's views on what might be done in the clinical situation to promote beneficial mourning. Sussillo is concerned with maintaining an intrapsychic tie to the deceased parent of an adolescent to lessen the ravages of loss. Her advice to analysts is to promote that internal connection through specific questioning about the lost parent and encouraging the patient to directly address the deceased other. Frommer's focus is on how best to facilitate an ongoing psychic connection to mortality through a shared experience of loss with the analyst. His therapeutic goal is the intensification and appreciation of the now as a route to more fulfillment in living. Glennon asks Sussillo what might be different in her conceptualizations if the lost parental relationship had been destructive instead of growth enhancing. Glennon also is concerned about the possibility of a renewed experience of loss being the ultimate outcome of maintaining an intrapsychic tie. Her concern regarding Frommer's conceptualizations has to do with possible psychic difficulties involved in keeping grief in the forefront of one's mind.
What Grounds Creativity?
(2005)
The author considers a relational perspective of mourning and suggests an elaboration and extension of Freud's theory of mourning with a sharper focus on the dialectic of holding on and letting go of the formative lost object relationship. Sussillo argues that Freud's early (1917) theoretical tilt toward the relinquishment of affective ties with the dead, later expanded and culminated in a deeper relational sensibility, was shaped by his developing theories and personal losses. Her position is that the analyst can help facilitate the adult patient's affective experience of felt continuity with the absent object, lost in adolescence, that ultimately allows the separation and the transformation of the primitive bond. Sussillo's perspective represents a synthesis of relational theories in a broad sense – also informed by attachment theory, contemporary bereavement research, infant research, and developmental theory. This thesis is illustrated by a clinical example that highlights the therapeutic action.
Our mortality – the fact that we will die and that we know it – defines the human condition, although this knowledge is often defensively maintained psychically as a theoretical, intellectual proposition. This paper explores one route by which such knowledge is transformed into felt experience: I suggest that how we mourn – what occurs psychically as we live the pain of loss – strongly influences our relationship to our own deaths. Because the psychic labor involved in making mortality real has compelling individual and social consequences, I position the role of the psychoanalyst as well as intersubjective aspects of the psychoanalytic process as central to helping patients grapple with their own mortality.