Unresolved loss and unresolved trauma in adult mothers, and the commonly disorganized attachment pattern developed by their infants, have been repeatedly reported in longitudinal research literature as a crucial correlate or precedent of severe pathology. We describe and illustrate how unresolved loss and unresolved trauma are manifested in verbatim-transcribed language and how they are to be detected, so that psychoanalysts and clinicians in general are able to distinguish them and understand how such >states of mind< evidence the process of fragmentation they involve. We follow each example with a resolved transcript so it can be contrasted with a nonresolved case. We then describe excerpts of a taped >disorganized infant< – an example of infants who are usually babies of unresolved mothers, as shown during the Adult Attachment Interview. The analyst’s ability to identify and understand these >states of mind< and the subsequent sensitive reflection on the transcendental role of primary traumatic relations, which are involved in fear and the destructive dynamics of mental fragmentation – as seen in empirical research on attachment – can facilitate a resourceful integrative analytic scrutiny of the processes gone through by patients, and encourage the discovery of alternatives for working through the disturbing experience.
A longitudinal study of early attachment and social character development of 14 Nahuat mother-infant dyads -since the infants were 11 months, having assessed them at 9 years of age and again in their late adolescence- show a significant improvement on the youngsters’ emotional development. The study conducted by the Seminario de Sociopsicoanálisis within a 40-year-long humanizing project in the village, called >Intercultural Participation Project,< suggests the benefit of promoting the rescue of their indigenous Nahuat culture and tradition.
A group of psychoanalysts led the Seminario de Sociopsicoanálisis to broaden their clinical perspective gained through working with patients in the setting of a private practice. In this paper we describe participatory action research initiated by a community. We started by interviewing impoverished and economically disadvantaged children, first from a miner's village and later on from a center for children living in the streets. A study on Attachment and Social Character of mothers and children as well as the systematic appraisal of the unconscious motivations in the individual's responses to the Social Interpretative Questionnaire are presented. We strive to bring the findings of our social character studies back to the communities themselves. Our purpose is to support or foster possibilities for initiating participatory community-based action projects, aimed at transforming the quality of life and to confront the difficulties and obstacles that emerge on the path to change; furthermore we hope that our research will help to stimulate the development of childcare health policies.
The International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) was created to achieve an open, plural spirit, not constrained by any single psychoanalytic theory, such that one of its main aims was to >avoid the bureaucratization of its theory.< The IFPS did not intend to turn its back on the statements of early psychoanalysis; instead, it sought to use them as a basis for proposing and developing the theory of psychoanalysis. These same aims and origins served as an inspiration for each of the Latin-American societies that would gain affiliation to IFPS over the years. The Sociedad Psicoanalítica Mexicana AC, under the guidance and representation of Erich Fromm, played a central role in the creation of the IFPS. A brief account of the participation, affiliation, and development of each of the six affiliated Latin-American Societies – from Mexico, Brazil, and Chile – and one Study Group in Argentina will be described.
The theory of social character developed by Erich Fromm asserts that the significance of experience is intimately linked to the material conditions under which persons, located in a specific economic system, live. The shared character traits thus correspond to the social role that these persons play. In the case of women, existing literature does not focus on their function as reproducers of the work force within the family, although this is a generalized function and additional to out-of-home work. This function has a transcendent importance to the development and emotional health of children, as has been established in longitudinal research of attachment theory.
This study explores Mexican mothers’ shared character traits, a systematized appraisal of their attitudes towards their lives and their children, their states of mind, and the quality of care they provide as well as their relationship to attachment patterns of their infants; some come from urban Middle, Middle-upper and Upper-class families and others from Poor in-digenous peasant families.
The fundamental focus is on the woman’s participation inside the family, although it does not exclude the possibility that some of these mothers handle not only the care giving and housework but also work outside of the home (the "double shift”). It concludes that the daily material conditions of existence are closely related to shared character traits and that these are in turn related to patterns of attachment in their infants, their sensitivity in the treatment of their babies, and the results of their Adult Attachment Interviews. Women have been the sup-port and pillar of subsistence for urban populations as well as the most poor and disadvan-taged communities. This role played by women is as widespread as undocumented in litera-ture.
All contemporary psychoanalytical theorists are concerned with the common problem of how to account for the preeminent importance of relations. John Bowlby, the founder of attachment theory, suggests that >instinctive< behavioral systems underlie much of the emotional life of man and have developed because they were necessary for survival. The system with which he was almost exclusively concerned was the multitude of behaviors and experiences constituting the child's >attachment< to the mother. This >strikingly strong tie, evident particularly when disrupted<, has systematically been observed by attachment researchers, through the development of a series of instruments that gauge interpersonal communication. These interpersonal communications have on their part been found to >contain traces of developmental history<. Bowlby's theory is based on clinical accounts of cases of important loss experiences. A transcendental role is given in Bowlby's theory to the experiences of loss. It stresses that the construction of mourning processes can be seen as a manifestation of search and as a general gradual mental reorientation. The paper introduces the methodological perspectives, which are observable derivations of Bowlby's psycho-ethological ideas. We will argue that becoming acquainted with these attachment-research tools and with socio-psychoanalytic assessment can enhance the development of the clinicians' observational skills, their insight and their scientific research practices. A clinical vignette seen through the lenses of the attachment assessment of loss is presented. It points in addition to the socio-cultural-ethnical basis that serves as an underlying structure for the development of meaning.
We present a study of 40 youngsters who live and work in the streets of Mexico City and who have abandoned their homes for significant periods of time. They seek out their own means of survival from a very young age. In many cases they have children of their own already as teenagers. The Seminario de Sociopsicoan lisis was invited to take part in a project aimed at facilitating the access of these children to graphic arts, artistic creation and therapeutic listening. This article presents our principal findings of the children's everyday life conditions, their work and their dreams, based on data obtained from social character questionnaires – with which therapeutic intervention in this project began. Vignettes of two case studies are also presented. The interviews were complemented by data gathered in weekly sessions attended by the youngsters on a voluntary bases. The sessions attested to both the narcissistic, aggressive impulsiveness of these youngsters and the vital effort they make toward their own recovery and toward establishing affective emotional ties with instructors and therapists. We found that socio-psychoanalytic methods could be used successfully to expand the scope of psychoanalytic theoretic postulates about character to a non-clinical, disadvantaged population. By analyzing the content of the psychoanalytically guided interviews we were able to recognize the central, distinctive motive, which leads these youngsters to run away from home and forge their own sense of identity.
Erich Fromms Einstellung gegenüber den abstrakten Wissenschaften wie der Ma-thematik erscheint uneinheitlich: einerseits hat er bekannt, abstraktes Denken falle ihm schwer, andererseits hat er Vertretern abstrakter naturwissenschaftlicher Theo-rien wie Einstein und Heisenberg eine revolutionäre Haltung attestiert. Tatsächlich lässt sich Fromms Kreativitätsbegriff auch für die Mathematik fruchtbar machen. Fromm fordert auf, die Dinge in ihrem >So-Sein< wahrzunehmen und darauf kritisch zu >antworten<, ein Verhalten, das die Bereitschaft zur Abstraktion mit einschließt. Der didaktisch bedeutsame >Siehe-Beweis< in der Mathematik ist damit ein Muster-fall dieses Frommschen Ansatzes. Zu Fromms ganzheitlichem Anspruch gehört seine von ihm auch gelebte Forderung an den Menschen, sich Konflikten zu stellen und so seinen Charakter zu entwickeln. Dies verweist auf einen speziellen Grund-zug mathematischen Denkens, nämlich das Bestreben in der Mathematik, sich über Normen hinwegzusetzen, wie es die Entdeckung der nichteuklidischen Geometrien im 19. Jahrhundert zeigt. Dieser prometheische Geist der Mathematik, der von Pädagogen oft übersehen wird, steht damit dem Frommschen Kreativitätsbegriff sehr nahe.
We present a study of 40 youngsters who live and work in the streets of Mexico City and who have abandoned their homes for significant periods of time. They seek out their own means of survival from a very young age. In many cases they have children of their own already as teenagers. The Seminario de Sociopsicoan lisis was invited to take part in a project aimed at facilitating the access of these children to graphic arts, artistic creation and therapeutic listening. This article presents our principal findings of the children's everyday life conditions, their work and their dreams, based on data obtained from social character questionnaires – with which therapeutic intervention in this project began. Vignettes of two case studies are also presented. The interviews were complemented by data gathered in weekly sessions attended by the youngsters on a voluntary bases. The sessions attested to both the narcissistic, aggressive impulsiveness of these youngsters and the vital effort they make toward their own recovery and toward establishing affective emotional ties with instructors and therapists. We found that socio-psychoanalytic methods could be used successfully to expand the scope of psychoanalytic theoretic postulates about character to a non-clinical, disadvantaged population. By analyzing the content of the psychoanalytically guided interviews we were able to recognize the central, distinctive motive, which leads these youngsters to run away from home and forge their own sense of identity.
All contemporary psychoanalytical theorists are concerned with the common problem of how to account for the preeminent importance of relations. John Bowlby, the founder of attachment theory, suggests that >instinctive< behavioral systems underlie much of the emotional life of man and have developed because they were necessary for survival. The system with which he was almost exclusively concerned was the multitude of behaviors and experiences constituting the child's >attachment< to the mother. This >strikingly strong tie, evident particularly when disrupted<, has systematically been observed by attachment researchers, through the development of a series of instruments that gauge interpersonal communication. These interpersonal communications have on their part been found to >contain traces of developmental history<. Bowlby's theory is based on clinical accounts of cases of important loss experiences. A transcendental role is given in Bowlby's theory to the experiences of loss. It stresses that the construction of mourning processes can be seen as a manifestation of search and as a general gradual mental reorientation. The paper introduces the methodological perspectives, which are observable derivations of Bowlby's psycho-ethological ideas. We will argue that becoming acquainted with these attachment-research tools and with socio-psychoanalytic assessment can enhance the development of the clinicians' observational skills, their insight and their scientific research practices. A clinical vignette seen through the lenses of the attachment assessment of loss is presented. It points in addition to the socio-cultural-ethnical basis that serves as an underlying structure for the development of meaning.
The History of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) in Latin America
(2009)
Reply
(1997)
Two clinical vignettes are described. I wish to show how much an open recognition of the social conditions of both participants in a treatment process may enrich the analyst's understanding of the transference-countertransference dynamics. I claim that although analysts intuitively integrate this aspect of the therapeutic relationship they commonly do it without a specific formulation. In an explicit and systematic manner, Fromm emphasized the social dimensions of human experience. His background knowledge of the social sciences framed his therapeutic practice. The clinical implications which derive from this perspective will be illustrated. The clinical material which I present shows how today's psychoanalytic attention to the dynamic interaction between analyst and patient while it enables us to deal with the complexity and different layers of the treatment process can also include the social dimension. The benefits and difficulties of developing our consciousness about our own social roles and our involvement in the social milieu deserve our careful and critical attention.
Sonia Gojman traces many contemporary innovations in psychoanalytic technique to Fromm's explicit humanistic approach to psychoanalysis. As Gojman notes, Fromm emphasized the need to know the patient from within (from >center to center<). This requires from the analyst an openness to use his own experience as a vehicle for understanding the patient. Fromm legitimized the patient's observer role in the analytic process, and he supported efforts to abandon a mythical neutrality in favor of adopting a role as an observant participant who affirms not only unconscious truths but also steps toward health. Gojman notes that these changes in technique--a term Fromm was reluctant to use since the stance he advocated was not simply a matter of the head but of the heart--are consistent with contemporary intersubjective approaches and with some of the positions advanced by Casement, Gill, and Mitchell, among others. Gojman also points out that in Fromm's discussion of technique in the Cuernavaca seminars, he repeatedly emphasized the analyst's unconventional attitude, his aliveness, his honesty, a profound interest in patients and their well-being. According to Fromm, these were all key ingredients to diminish the patient's resistance within the psychoanalytic process and increase the patient's confidence in the analyst. Gojman courageously looks into the realities of psychoanalytic institutes, where analysands are exposed to their therapist as teachers and colleagues in a variety of situations. This leaves training analysts in an extremely difficult position, >surrounded by analysands and former analysands as junior colleagues, creating situations of high-risk professional communication in groups ridden by all kinds of secrets and nonusable information.< Gojman proposes that rather than treat issues such as prestige and power in psychoanalytic institutes as nonexistent or useless sources of information, that the process be analyzed from the perspectives of the analyst and the analysand, each with different positions in the group structure. Needless to say, this effort is demanding for analyst and analysand alike, but may come as a relief >acknowledging our real participation and not struggling to conceal it.<
>Ein sozio-psychoanalytischer Interventionsprozeß in einem mexikanischen Bergarbeiterdorf<: Dieser Beitrag gibt Rechenschaft von den Wirkungen, die eine knapp 6jährige soziopsychoanalytische Arbeit in einem mexikanischen Bergarbeiterdorf, speziell bei der kindlichen Bevölkerung an einer Grundschule, gehabt hat. Zunächst wird in allgemeinen Begriffen die Struktur des >sozio-psychoanalytischen Prozesses< beschrieben, wie er im Anschluss an Erich Fromm konzipiert ist: Aus der erweiterten Perspektive einer Integration des Unbewussten wird nicht nur der Bezug zu unterdrückten Sexualimpulsen wiedergewonnen, sondern es wird auch aufgezeigt, inwieweit das Sozialsystem als solches diese verdrängt und so Charakterzüge ausprägt, die dazu beitragen, das System und seine sozio-ökonomische Struktur durch Rationalisierung und Ideologiebildung zu stabilisieren. Dir Bericht basiert auf der Auswertung von insgesamt 141 Fragebögen, die bei einer Zufallsstichprobe von Kindern 3 Jahre vor und 3 Jahre nach dem Anlaufen des Projekts erhoben wurden (hiervon umfasste die erste Stichprobe 73, die zweite 68 Fragebögen). In einer vom Mexikanischen Nationalen Rat für Wissenschaft und Technologie (CONACYT) geförderten Auswertung wurde zwischen beiden Stichproben ein systematischer Vergleich gezogen. Bei der Inhaltsanalyse der Antworten wurde besonders auf die Bildung von Charakterzügen und auf das moralische Urteil geachtet; die häufigsten Charakterzüge und die Differenzen zwischen den beiden Auswertungen werden beschrieben. Dabei stellt sich, was das Selbstbild der Kinder angeht, eine gewisse Besserung heraus, verbunden mit einer Verschiebung hin zu produktiven und biophilen Charakteren. Bei einer gründlicheren Auswertung des Materials tritt als ein spezieller Befund eine merkliche Verringerung im Ausmaß der physischen Misshandlung, die die Kinder zwischen der ersten und der zweiten Erhebung zu erleiden hatten, hervor. Dies weist darauf hin, dass der Prozess der sozio-psychoanalytischen Intervention eine hervorragende Möglichkeit von Gemeinwesenarbeit darstellt. Es scheint gelungen zu sein, selbsttätige Entwicklungsprozesse in Gang zu setzen, die vor allem bei den beteiligten Müttern der betroffenen Familien eine prophylaktische Wirkung zugunsten der geistigen Gesundheit der Kinder hatten, abgesehen davon, dass ihnen auch eigene Möglichkeiten der Partizipation zugänglich wurden.