Refine
Language
- English (124) (remove)
Document Type
- Articles (91)
- Reviews (14)
- Books (10)
- Forewords (4)
- Collections (2)
- Interviews (2)
- Dissertations (1)
Year of publication
- 2010 (124) (remove)
The relations between psychoanalysis and neuroscience have undergone considerable changes during the last two decades. From the cool distance that was maintained on both sides, a new neuroscientific basis has emerged for a dialogue between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. A crucial question then arises about the identity of psychoanalysis in this dialogue. What will be the effects of the growing impact of neuroscientific discoveries on psychoanalysis? Freud regarded psychoanalysis and the natural sciences as having a similar epistemological foundation determined by their relation to unknown aspects of reality. The author proposes that this viewpoint creates equal ground for psychoanalysis and neuroscience in their evolving mutual relationships. In the clinical realm, however, psychoanalysis cannot work without clinical, developmental, and metapsychological premises, which render clinical ontological autonomy to psychoanalysis in its relationship with the other sciences. This fact also needs to be taken into account when brain imaging techniques are applied to outcome research of psychotherapy.
In contrast to the management of erotic boundaries, the institutional and clinical management of transactions across narcissistic boundaries can have far-reaching implications for how and in what ways power is wielded within our organizations. This is especially true in regard to analysts who are, or are perceived to be, in leadership positions within their psychoanalytic groups, organizations, and institutes. This paper illustrates some of the difficulties in the management of narcissistic boundaries by exploring Freud's narcissistic investment in defining the field of psychoanalysis and determining the directions of its development, his attitudes towards dissent – for example, Jung, Adler, Ferenczi, etc. – and his clinical behavior with certain analysands. The institutional consequences of Freud's failure to successfully negotiate narcissistic boundaries – and our reluctance to recognize this aspect of his leadership – have become intertwined with defenses against the epistemic anxiety that follows from the inevitably subjective nature of the analytic enterprise. Together, they have tended toward the creation of a culture of rigidity and control within organized psychoanalysis. This is a legacy – the sins of our fathers – with which our field continues to struggle.
The American Psychological Association's Presidential Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice articulates a decision-making process based on the integration of the best available research, clinical expertise, and patient characteristics. The treatment method, the individual psychotherapist, the treatment relationship, and the patient are all vital contributors to successful psychotherapy. Several studies have shown that the variation in treatment effect among psychotherapists using the same method is greater than the variation in treatment effect among different methods. This outcome pleads for a comprehensive psychotherapist-related >g-factor< of psychotherapy. In terms of decision-making for health-care institutions and clinical practices, it would seem wise not to separate the psychotherapist, the patient, or the relationship from the method as there seem to be extensive effects relative to the interaction among these parameters. Parallel to a growing knowledge of evidence-based methods, there is still a decisive lack of scientific knowledge about these interactions.
By 1900, Freud had formulated an original and operational method of psychoanalytic treatment and research: the technique of free association. In 1912–1915 and later writings, he recommended it as a fundamental procedure and process, called the fundamental rule, in psychoanalytic therapy. In recent years, free association as a method has been variously misrepresented, misunderstood, and denied by some schools of psychoanalysis. This paper reviews the history of free associations and argues for upholding the continuity and relevance of Freud's fundamental methodology and for a renewal of interest in reciprocal, i.e., interactive and interpersonal, free association.
While exploring the transgenerational transmission of intrapsychic contents and processes, Faimberg coined the term alienating identification to convey the impact of the parents' intrusion into the child's psyche, and of the expulsion into it of rejected parts of themselves. In addition, Torok and Abraham use the term phantom to describe aspects of the presence of a split-off, traumatized part of the self of a person, usually related with unresolved mourning, in another person's mind. The existence of such processes constitutes a major problem for the subject's narcissism, that is, the way he invests himself, and for his relation to experience and reality. It also may be used as an omnipotent means of avoiding psychic pain, by identifying with his object's omnipotent way of rejecting painful reality. This paper will explore, with the use of clinical material, the defensive use of such phenomena on the part of the subject, as well as their impact on the analyst's mind, that is, on his countertransference, when he is working with carriers of alienating identifications and phantoms. Stress is put on the importance for the analyst of containing the uncanny experiences of being cut off from the patient's mind and of being controlled by something he ignores.
Prefacione, 10 pp.
(2010)
This article examines the role of comedy and the influence of Kafka in Ana María Shua's comic novel >Soy paciente< (1980). Using Northrop Frye's rubric of comedy as a point of departure, it traces the way in which Shua's text, like Kafka's work, simultaneously inscribes and distorts the traditional utopian themes of comedy: identity acquisition and social resolution. The aim is to relate the distortions to the novel's socio-historical context of El proceso by referring to Erich Fromm's observations on the effect Fascist regimes have on concepts such as social and individual identity. The article also exposes the correlation between Shua's cultural dependency (on Kafkaesque/European creative paradigms) and the novel's oppressive cultural/political context.
Trauma and the Avoidant Client. Attachment-Based Strategies for Healing. New York (Norton) 2010.
(2010)
The idea of sport's character-forming qualities is a globally spread notion, which has begun to be questioned in recent years. In problematizing this notion, the relation of sport to its practitioners has been the primary study. The way the problems reflect the relation of sport to society has been less in focus. This essay sets such a focus with the help of character concepts in social psychology (Riesman, Fromm and Sennett), developing a reconstruction of such concepts of sport in a Swedish context. From being a sphere by the side of society, sport in Sweden from the twentieth century onwards has been increasingly linked in complex ways to the various spheres and actors of society. This understanding of how characters are fostered into and within sport sheds light on the conditions for character formation at different stages of history until the present time. The problems receive further relevance when considering how New Economy culture and its conditions for character formation may affect Swedish sport in the near future.