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 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.
The way in which Mexicans deal with time differs considerably from that of Europeans or Northamericans: the Mexican >has< or >allows himself< more time. The virtue of punctuality, which is so highly valued in countries with protestant work ethics, is unknown to him. >Mexican time< includes many festivities and reveals a social character related to a matriarchal complex. One lives day by day without concern, expects to always have enough for a living, and tries to regain the paradise lost. How was Fromm able to cope with this attitude to life? To begin with many of his students saw him—the psychoanalyst who had emigrated from Germany and who had been working and teaching in the USA—as an >authoritarian< person. They found the very demand for a punctual start of the sessions and a limitation to a 50- minute duration unacceptable. As time went by, however, a fruitful interchange evolved: not only did the students learn from Fromm the psychoanalytic technique, but they were also deeply impressed by the personality behind it. On the other hand Fromm's comprehensive view of human beings and his humanitarian disposition could not be understood without the experience he gained during his long stay in Mexico. In this way >Mexican time< contributed to a large extent to the development of a >humanitarian psychoanalysis<.
Salvador Millán's main thesis is that social character--the way patients and therapists internalize the values, cultural beliefs, and class structure of their society--is always present in the consulting room and often becomes manifest as transfer-ence and counter-transference reactions. Indeed, according to Millán, transference and countertransference are just another name for developmental processes of so-cial adaptation as it be-comes expressed in a particular relationship between an analyst and his/her patient. Millán takes us through the origin of the concept of transference in Freud, with its patriarchal and authoritarian overtones, to its classical definition in Fenichel's work. With its surgical metaphors, Fenichel crystallized an approach to technique and the handling of the transference. Analytical technique re-quired a neutral and detached observant role, with precise interpretations directed at the psyche, similar to a surgeon's skilled incisions into the patient's body. Millán compares this approach with the guidance Fromm offered to the students of the Mexican Psychoanalytic Institute during supervision and in his seminars in Cuer-navaca during the 1960s. Fromm's point of departure was like Freud's. Transference has to do with the experience of infancy that is repeated in the presence of the ana-lyst. Fromm (1968) thought that this definition of transference, while true, was lim-ited, since it took into account only one source of irrational strivings based on infan-tile longings. However, if one looked at transference as an experience in which the patient deposits in the person of the analyst the origin of >all of his expectations and fears,< (p. 2) a much broader range of transferential reactions is taken into consid-eration. Some of these reactions may be traced to parental influence. Others may have origins that are broadly social, in which the parents' influence is based on be-ing representatives of societal norms, or parental roles may even be irrelevant. In this definition, transference is not just based on childhood experience, but repre-sents the whole experience of the patient's life. Millán points out that one of the limi-tations of psychoanalysis is that it is primarily based on the experience of working with clinical populations. Millán briefly reviews a series of social character studies that have been conducted in the last two decades in factories, in corporate environ-ments, and in rural communities with normal populations, and that have broadened our understanding of the process of social adaptation beyond the consulting room. According to Millán, these studies provide support for Fromm's more inclusive con-cept of transference.
>Mexikanische Zeit. Erich Fromm in Mexico<: Die Art, wie in Mexiko mit der Zeit umgegangen wird, unterscheidet sich beträchtlich von der westeuropäischen oder nordamerikanischen: Der Mexikaner >hat< oder >nimmt sich< mehr Zeit; die in der Ländern der protestantischen Arbeitsethik hochgeschätzte Tugend der Pünktlichkeit ist ihm fremd. In der >mexikanischen Zeit<, zu der viele Feste gehören, bekundet sich eine dem matrizentrischen Komplex zugehörige Art von Gesellschafts- Charakter. Man lebt unbekümmert in den Tag hinein, erwartet, dass immer genug zum Leben vorhanden ist, und sucht das verlorengegangene Paradies wiederzufinden. Wie kam Fromm mit dieser Art von Lebenseinstellung zurecht? Anfangs galt er – der aus Deutschland emigrierte Psychoanalytiker, der in den USA praktiziert und gelehrt hatte – bei vielen seiner Schüler als >autoritär<. Schon die Forderung nach pünktlichem Beginn und die Begrenzung der analytischen Sitzung auf 50 Minuten galten ihnen als unannehmbar. Mit der Zeit kam jedoch ein fruchtbarer Austausch zustande: Seine Schüler erlernten von Fromm nicht nur die psychoanalytische Technik, sondern sie waren auch zutiefst von der dahinterstehenden Persönlichkeit beeindruckt. Umgekehrt sind Fromms ganzheitliche Sicht des Menschen und seine biophile Grundhaltung nicht ohne die Erfahrungen, die er während seiner langjährigen Tätigkeit in Mexiko machte, zu verstehen. So trug die >mexikanische Zeit< viel zur Entwicklung der >humanistischen Psychoanalyse< bei.
>Die Dritte Welt und der Gesellschafts-Charakter<: Die von Erich Fromm aufgestellte Theorie des Gesellschafts-Charakters gibt uns die Möglichkeit, uns die emotionalen Prozesse zu erklären, die sich in den Individuen im Verlauf des sozialen Anpassungsprozesses entwickeln und verändern. Nach Fromms Schema, das von den sozialen Strukturen ausgeht, ist der Gesellschafts-Charakter zwischen der ökonomischen Basis und den Ideen angesiedelt. Wenn man in Rechnung stellt, dass die sozio-ökonomischen Faktoren den Charakter beeinflussen und determinieren, kann man nicht von einem gleichartigen Charakter in der Ersten und der Dritten Welt sprechen – Differenzen, die in empirischen Studien aufgewiesen wurden, haben das gezeigt. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird die Dynamik des Geschlechterkampfes geschildert, der nicht nur für die Dritte Welt zu gelten scheint. Die Studien zum Gesellschafts- Charakter haben unterschiedliche Charaktertypen beschrieben; in diesem Text werden Charaktertypen dargestellt, die bei führenden Persönlichkeiten in einer mexikanischen Provinzgemeinde angetroffen wurden. Ebenso werden einige theoretische Aspekte untersucht, wie z.B. der Einfluss der sozio-ökonomischen Bedingungen, das kapitalistische Modell und der Zusammenbruch der totalitären Regime in den Ländern des Ostens. Schließlich erfolgt eine kurze Zusammenfassung des praktischen sozialpsychoanalytischen Prozesses, im Anschluss an eine methodologische Studie, die der Anwendung des interpretativen Fragebogens in der erwähnten Provinzgemeinde voraufging.
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.