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Why Psychoanalytic History?
(2001)
In the 100-year-old history of the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology, there are several fields whose practitioners have not received the prize. Among the unlucky candidates for the Nobel Prize, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is probably the most prominent and best known. He is also the one proposed for the prize during the longest period of time, almost a quarter of a century, or more precisely, between 1915 and 1938. In this article I will examine the nominations of Freud and the evaluations of his work by what is perhaps the most science centered of medical institutions, the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine. I will place these in the context of the reception of Freud's work by Swedish psychiatrists. Here the influence of the most prominent psychiatrist at the time, Bror Gadelius, deserves special attention.
Wege aus einer kranken Gesellschaft. Sozialpsychologische Überlegungen im Anschluss an Erich Fromm
(2001)
Understanding Intersubjectivity: Psychoanalytic Formulations and Their Philosophical Underpinnings
(2001)
This article describes the experience of dying, shared in the therapeutic process by the psychoanalyst and patients suffering from incurable or terminal illness. Chronic illnesses and the possibility of death places the patient and the family in a disturbing and stressful situation, that requires not only continued medical care but also sensible listening to the patients’ needs, to prevent harm-ful and unnecessary interventions. When disease is in an advanced stage, and death is inevitable, high technology medicine must be avoided and the intimacy of the person must be the highest and most important issue in the relation. The clinical material of this article describes the psycho-social stages that patient and family go through during the process and also how understanding hope could be a universal clinical strategy that creates a therapeutic bond, offering the patient and the analyst the alternative of meaningful experiences.
This paper describes a case in which analyst and analysand became interlocked in battles that drew out the 'mad' parts of each other. It explores how the extreme conflict may have actually been an integral part of what has become a truly therapeutic process for both. Theoretically, the dialectical movement of becoming through contradiction is used to help explicate how mutually destructive enactments were necessary building blocks of genuine intimacy.
This critical study attempts to determine the role of sexual and political identity in Klaus Mann’s works. By examining such recurrent thematic patterns as the work of art as progeny, supernatural births, the image of the writer as soldier and monk, or obsession with death, among others, the study finds in Klaus Mann a characteristic sense of >social self-identity.< This is the first book-length treatment of Mann’s fiction and non-fiction prose, drama, and diaries to show the interrelationship between his political development as an anti-fascist and his sexual identity as a gay writer. The theoretical approach to Mann’s works contrasts earlier twentieth-century conceptions of personal identity, articulated by such writers as Erik Erikson, Karen Horney, and Erich Fromm, with more recent thinking on identity questions. [Taken from Publisher’s Website: http://www.peterlang.com/]
The Nature of the Transference Between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein: Learning from the Controversies
(2001)
As we work through our theories, we rejoice in discovering the logic of concepts and their articulation in clinical experience. Such joy hides other movements, in which the only stakes are demands for love, sexual curiosity and the satisfaction of hate, transferred from infancy to others worlds, idealised or despised. When we participate in our psychoanalytical institutions, we feel pride or even vanity to be participating in the great historical movement of psychoanalysis. This conceals the working of transference in our institutional life; transference which is crudely sexual at its origins, and implies maternal, paternal or fraternal objects. This is its constraining power. We should be fully aware of this, as Strachey or Balint have already shown, in order to attenuate the violence of transference and stimulate our creativity. Anna Freud and Melanie Klein's controversies had a reality of their own. This reality was quickly forgotten and trapped in various conflicts, as those existing between Jones and Freud or between Glover and the rest of the British Psychoanalytical Society of his times. These reelaborations gave rise to ideological elements, which have ever since pervaded the history of psychoanalytical theory, influencing psychoanalytical methods and clinics. It is important for us today to elucidate these ideologies in order to improve our achievements.
Our intention in this brief article is to explore the idea of what it means to be a >good< manager. We discuss some of the dilemmas faced by managers seeking to define their role performance in terms additional to those of organizational effectiveness and efficiency. To do this, we describe critical aspects of the contemporary context. We propose that the changes we are experiencing give organizations a central role in how people define their personal and social well-being. Our contention is that in this central role organizations will be faced with situations requiring solutions of fundamental value conflicts. This means that the nature of the question as to what it means to be a >good< manager will become both increasingly important and increasingly complex. Further, the exploration of the issue can no longer be limited to operational efficiency, but must include the manager's capacity to conceptualise both his own role and that of the organization within the broader socio-environmental context. We contribute to the dialogue by proposing that being >good< will involve on the part of the manager an awareness of the values involved in a decision and an alignment of action with what Erich Fromm has called >life-giving< values. This approach in no way diminishes the requirement that a manager be competent in the fullest sense of the word; it requires, however, a deeper understanding of competence and of the commitment a manager will need to act justly, fairly and with care.
The adopted child has experiences of loss, changes of goals for attachment, and of being biologically separate in the family, which are similar to the experiences of adoptive parents who are infertile. In this paper, the correspondence of experiences between the adopted child and the infertile adoptive parents will be examined with the motivational system theory constructed by Joseph Lichtenberg. This theory is based on psychoanalytical knowledge as well as on infant research. It comprises five motivational systems, all existing from the beginning of life, which promote the fulfilment and regulation of: 1. the need for psychic regulation of physiological requirements, 2. the need for attachment and later affiliation, 3. the need for exploration and assertion, 4. the need to react aversively through antagonism or withdrawal (or both) and 5. the need for sensual enjoyment and (later) sexual excitement. In regard to these basic needs, infertile parents have certain experiences that correspond to and correlate with those of the abandoned child. This implies a risk for the development of the adoptive family as well as a possibility for growth. The author suggests potential healing factors that may exist within an infertile couple regarding meeting and understanding an abandoned child.
When Freud began his professional career, psychotherapy was already an established practice, standing upon the theory of ideogenesis, according to which certain motor symptoms were caused by ideas . This theory offered the rational ground for psychotherapy: if a symptom was provoked by an idea, it was possible to undo it by finding and erasing this very idea. Freud developed this theory into the model of unconscious ideas and into the technique of >interpreting the contents<. Whereas the later discoveries of resistance, transference, and character structure, should have promoted a break with the ideogenetic model, Freud never gave up the erroneous assumption that behind an action there was an idea, which had to be captured if one wanted to stop the action. This assumption was questioned again and again during the interminable controversy over the relative importance of remembering and experiencing: by Ferenczi and Rank in the Twenties, Alexander in the Fifties, and Gill in the Eighties, when they tried to shift the focus from remembering to experiencing, in order to make psychoanalysis an effective psychotherapy. Today, the view that what organizes our actions is stored in the form of >ideas< is no longer accepted by the scientific community. Instead, we speak of >operative models< and implicit or procedural memories.
The authors discuss several surveys that cover the practices of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in the Stockholm region. They compare these practices with other psychiatrists in both the private and the public sector. In addition, they discuss the results from an attempt towards continuous evaluation of psychoanalytical practices and their treatment standards including an evaluation of the development of individual psychoanalytical processes.