Postmodern theory and critiques currently exert a considerable influence on psychoanalytic theory, particularly in regard to the revision of a theory of sexuality and gender. This article reviews some of the critiques and alternative views of sexuality proposed by various postmodern theorists such as Butler, Jameson, Baudrillard, and Foucault. After conducting a critical comparison of these critiques and alternatives with contemporary analytic revisionist theory, I contend that, despite the useful aspects of postmodernism's critical cultural perspective, some postmodern positions run directly counter to certain key psychoanalytic tenets about human agency and the existence of an inner psychic world or selfhood. Furthermore, I believe that, despite the laudable politics of many postmodern writers to promote a greater diversity of nonpathologized sexual experience, the atrophied views of agency and selfhood depicted in the postmodern writings reviewed in this essay cannot support an approach that is concerned with clinical treatment or with describing processes of psychological transformation. A case vignette is provided illustrating the main arguments of the paper.
Passion, Responsibility, and >Wild Geese< Creating a Context for the Absence of Conscious Intentions
(1999)
On making rules: Toward a reformation of the dynamics of transference in psychoanalytic treatment
(1999)
The experience of selfhood is that of struggle, between conflicting demands, inevitable dilemmas, and shifting allegiances toward deciding what is for us. The complex nature of this struggle often makes the boundaries between health and sickness ambiguous. Therapeutic work is significantly dependent on the capacity to engage with such struggles. This is illustrated by two striking examples of successful work, as well as my own two analyses, and other clinical material.
Free association allows the emergence of novel formulations about self and, along with them, new insights, but it needs to modulate the risks of chaos and the compromising of mental integrity on the one hand and the arrest of growth on the other. Interpretation acts to contain and hold associative pressures and so helps maintain the patient's mental integrity, but it limits associative freedom by being necessarily inferential. In addition, in current interpretative strategies, analytic progress depends on the patient's ability to associate. This ability may be poor for longer or shorter periods during analysis. To help resolve these difficulties, a strategy of associative dialogue is proposed and clinically illustrated. The proposed strategy draws on the associative abilities of the analyst. This paper elaborates the way in which two basic forms of associative dialogue – bold and focused analysis – may facilitate the negotiation between freedom and continuity in analytic discourse.
Psychoanalysis as a vocation
(1999)
In this centenary of Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams it is important to revisit this classic, to discuss why it is a classic, to consider what has been learned since its publication, and to discuss what changes in our understanding of dreams and dreaming are called for. To this end, we briefly discuss some of the main themes of the book. Then we review both changes in psychoanalytic thinking and theory and the results of many studies made possible by the discovery of the electro-encephalographic changes that occur during sleep and their relevance for understanding dreams and their function. We suspect that Freud would have been delighted to know about this explosion of information about the physiology of dreaming. With this in mind, we consider the need for modification of some of Freud's theories while noting that his basic contribution, that dreams are meaningful and understandable, has been amply confirmed. We then discuss these observations in relation to how we approach working with dreams.
Stoller proposes two fundamentally contradictory conceptions of core gender identity. This paper urges that we accept the first, a relational conception: Core gender identity develops in the context of unambiguous sex ascription at birth and the virtually infinite number of daily infant-parent interactions permeated by all the conscious and unconscious meanings the child's gender has for its parents. The implications of this conception are explored in four contexts. The first shows that a recent case of sex reassignment, purporting to demonstrate a neurological base for gender experience, does not do so. The second argues that children's core gender identities as >girls< or >boys< are as diverse as the meanings that their genders have had for their interaction partners (usually the parents). The third emphasizes the priority of infant-parent interactions in core gender identity development and in the gendered meanings that children's genitals have for them. The fourth argues for the rejection of the >disidentification< hypothesis rooted in Stoller's second and unsupported conception of core gender identity and in Mahler's conception of separation?individuation, which might usefully be replaced by Lyons-Ruth's conception of attachment-individuation.
The analyst's >Bad-analyst feelings<: A counterpart to the process of resolving implosive defenses.
(1999)
Recent contributions to the psychoanalytic literature suggest that the classical focus on psychosexuaiity has been lost. This charge is both wrong and right. After briefly surveying the evolution of psychoanalytic thinking on sexuality and reviewing the concept of libido, this essay retrieves the word Lust from the footnotes to which Freud consigned it and remodels it into a new idea. The proposition is put forth that a postclassical theory of sex compatible with contemporary clinical and theoretical practice can emerge once sexuality is rethought in the ambiguous, potential space between Lust and libido.
The analyst's identification with his or her profession and its ethos may profoundly influence the patient's treatment in subtle and less subtle ways. A particularly noteworthy instance of this is the impact of the patient's knowing that he or she is the subject of the analyst's writings. I present illustrative material from a patient in intensive psychotherapy who had pronounced reactions, especially evident in her dream imagery, to my having written about her. This material and the issues it highlights are discussed from the vantage point of the analyst's professional self and psychoanalytic discourse, which together constitute a >third< dimension vis-à-vis the therapeutic relationship. I consider what a Lacan-inspired perspective (Muller, 1996) might contribute to a relational understanding of the impact of the analyst's professional aspect.
Post-Jungian Dialogues
(1999)