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- 2014 (416) (remove)
The aim of this paper is to show how the life, personality, and scientific work of Gaetano Benedetti and Johannes Cremerius shaped the original form and structure of the Milan Associazione di Studi Psicoanalitici (ASP), which they founded together with their pupils in 1971 and which became a member society of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) in 1989. The training analysis was substituted by a personal analysis to be finished before the beginning of the training proper; group supervision had and still has as much importance as individual supervision; transference and countertransference analysis are fundamental dimensions of both psychoanalysis and psychotherapy; and psychoanalysis can survive only in a context of interdisciplinary dialogue, empirical research, and social commitment. The author thinks that all these ingredients, which Benedetti and Cremerius contributed to the life of the Milan Scuola di Psicoterapia Psicoanalitica and ASP, could represent important resources, as far as the future of the IFPS is concerned.
Many relational analysts believe that hope and despair make up a dynamic dialectic underlying all human development, and therapeutic change is created in the space between them. Twelve years have passed since I presented the case of Dana at the International Sẚpndor Ferenczi Conference in Israel. Since that time, there have been more International Ferenczi's conferences. In the intervening years, I began to rethink Dana's case from a different perspective. Simultaneously, I was trying to make new sense of the then-described >temporary< emotional upheaval I had thought I left behind. In this process of reflection, I realized not only that I was as resistant as Dana to surrendering to my despair, but also that this resistance on my part led to an impasse and might have closed some possibilities for Dana in dealing with severe trauma. This newly found emotional awareness has helped to transform my work with subsequent trauma patients. Through >getting into mud,< to use my patient Gary's words, I was no longer afraid of regressing to a place where despair ruled the day. In this way, my patient and I discovered that genuine hope could be sustained.
On traumatic and therapeutic factors in communication: From Sándor Ferenczi to Charles Rycroft
(2014)
Discussing Charles Rycroft's seminal paper >The nature and function of the analyst's communication to the patient,< presented in 1956 at the Freud Centenary, the author reflects on Rycroft's theory of what constitutes a healthy and a pathological communication and of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis, linking it with Sándor Ferenczi's theory of trauma.
Herzog is one of the most successful novels written by the Jewish Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow. Herzog, the protagonist of the novel, has experienced a spiritual and emotional collapse, triggered by the breakup of his second marriage and his contemplation of the wasteland of modern life. In the novel, he has divorced twice respectively because he is bored and boring. The characteristics of the two ex-wives are in sharp contrast. Deep analysis of the two women and their marital relationships with Erich Fromm’s theory can facilitate our understanding of the novel, the writer as well as the modern world.
Freud's pre-1914 texts demonstrate why he consistently asserted that his free-associative method was the sine qua non of his discipline. Prior to 1914, Freud's theorizing was intimately and inextricably connected to his lived experience with the discovery of this method. After 1914, he became more speculative in this thinking and writing; his models of the >mental apparatus< and its functioning drew increasingly on conceptual sources other than his experience with free association. The four fundamental coordinates of his discipline (the methodical disclosure that self-consciousness is repressive, the nonlinear >time of the mind,< the significance of our sensual embodiment or libidinality, and the formation of the repression barrier by the incest taboo) are all closely tied to free-associative experience. By contrast, post-1914 theoretical preoccupations (from object relations to the structural-functional model, and other formulations generated after Freud's life) are comparatively divorced from such experience. These conceptual edifices imply a conventional depiction of the theory–practice relationship, which is radically challenged by free-associative discourse. The notion of praxis is introduced as contesting the prevailing depiction of practice as an application of theory, and as serving to rescue psychoanalysis from the somewhat >sterile debates< over its scientific status and over the relevance of metapsychological speculation to clinical treatment. Against the normative ideology of theory and practice, the lived experience of free-associative discourse, with its potential for change and healing, can only be understood in terms of this notion of praxis, and this justifies Freud's claim to have initiated >a critical new direction in science.<
The Relevance of Erich Fromm
(2014)
This paper explores the change processes that took place in a woman, an ex-prostitute, in the context of psychotherapeutic treatment over a period of over three years. The treatment took place within a relational psychotherapeutic setting influenced by the ideas formulated by Sándor Ferenczi regarding trauma, as well as by his intense involvement with and commitment to his patients, as expressed in his Clinical Diary of 1932 (Ferenczi, 1988). Zoe, the current patient, was a woman born in Latin America who emigrated to Spain at the age of 28 and became trapped, for nearly a decade, in a mesh of prostitution networks. She eventually entered regular psychotherapeutic treatment at the age of 39. Her change process is an example of the mutual influence between the factors of resilience that characterized her and the opportunity for co-creation that the treatment signifies. The marks of the intense traumatic burden of Zoe's history and the rays of sunlight and hope that she is currently experiencing become intermingled in the dreams evoked and brought to the treatment setting. Zoe's capacity for resilience and the potential for founding self-object relations, ethically implied, that therapists can offer construct a scenario that brings back to life the essence of Ferenczi from 1932.
Neutrality is a most important concept, yet a controversial one. Theorists of different analytic schools have defined it in their own terms, leaving behind them a legacy of disparate and often contradictory formulations. In this paper, the author reviews briefly some of these ideas about neutrality. Then, from a contemporary interpersonal/relational perspective, the author takes a new look at the idea of neutrality. The author points out how unacknowledged discrepancies among these ideas get in the way of understanding and so complicate analytic discourse, and argues that useful work with this concept requires that analysts differentiate between two aspects of neutrality, specifically operational neutrality and intentional neutrality. The theoretical discussion is followed by a case vignette illustrating the clinical usefulness of this differentiation.
The relationship between psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalytic practice is highly complicated. In this paper, the author presents case material from the psychoanalysis of a man with social anxiety. In the process, the analyst came to be perceived as a version of a blank screen. At the same time, the analyst noted a discrepancy between the patient's attitude on and off the couch. Further work revealed that this splitting in his attitude had its root in the patient's relationship with his parents during his childhood. It was crucially important that the analyst did not take his perceived blankness as a technical success but that he understood the patient's reaction contextually, taking his past relationships with his parents into consideration. The author then discusses theoretical issues related to the blank screen concept. Finally, the author discusses the importance of understanding the two aspects of analytic theorizing, that is, the prescriptive and descriptive aspects.
Die politische Funktion der Gedenkkerzen. Über die Rolle der Juden im Zeitalter des Neoliberalismus
(2014)
Gesetz und Evangelium. Antijudaistische Vorurteile und Projektionen in der (evangelischen) Theologie
(2014)