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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.
Un grupo de psicoanalistas celebró el Seminario de Sociopsicoanálisis para ampliar el punto de vista clínico que había adquirido por medio de su trabajo con pacientes en el marco de una práctica privada. En esta ponencia describimos la investigación de una acción participativa emprendida por una comunidad. Empezamos entrevistando a niños pobres y desposeídos, primero en un pueblo de mineros y después en un centro para niños en situación de calle. Se incluyen un estudio sobre Apego y carácter social de las madres y los niños, así como la evaluación sistemática de las motivaciones inconscientes de las respuestas de los individuos al cuestionario interpretativo social. Nos esforzamos por devolver a las propias comunidades los hallazgos de los estudios del carácter social. Nuestro propósito es apoyar o fomentar las posibilidades de iniciar proyectos de acción participativa basados en las comunidades, encaminados a transformar la calidad de vida y a enfrentar las dificultades y superar los obstáculos que surgen en el camino hacia el cambio; asimismo, esperamos que nuestra investigación ayude a impulsar el desarrollo de políticas para el cuidado de la salud de los niños.
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.
Introduccion
(1985)
Prologo
(1980)
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.
Palabras Preliminares
(1989)
Artista del amor
(2000)
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<.
Prefacio
(1997)
Prefacio
(1997)
Cinco historias entrelazadas
(1997)
La dinamica del caracter
(1989)
Impacto de Erich Fromm en la escuela de medicina y en el desarollo del psicoanálisis en México
(1990)
Prefacio
(1991)