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Reply to Stern
(2001)
Irwin Hoffman's book Ritual and Spontaneity includes, but goes well beyond, his series of seminal papers – written over the past several decades – developing a psychoanalytic, constructivist perspective. A new, existential framework depicts what Hoffman calls the >psychobiological bedrock< at the core of the human process of constructing meaning – the lifelong effort to create a livable, subjective world in face of our ever present sense of loss, suffering, and, ultimately, mortality. This review describes Hoffman's encompassing, existential perspective and discusses how, within this framework, he uses his dialectical sensibility to frame our understanding of both parenting and analysis as >semisacred< activities. The >dialectic of ritual and spontaneity< – the vital clash between disciplined adherence to the analytic frame and personally expressive deviations from it – represents the creative tension between the >magical< dimension of analytic authority and the healing influence of a genuinely expressive human relationship. Hoffman's perspective on the self-interested, >dark side< of the analytic relationship is compared with Winnicott's views on the vital, therapeutic role of >hate< and the paradoxical process by which the patient comes to >use< the analyst. Unlike most postmodernist >constructivists,< Hoffman openly reveals his underlying belief in certain >transcultural, transhistorical universals< – his >psychobiological bedrock.< In acknowledging these >essentials< (assumptions about human nature) that in some form are integral, yet often hidden, elements of any system of thought, Hoffman saves his own dialectical constructivism from falling into dichotomous (constructivist vs. essentialist) thinking.
The emergence of an American middle school of psychoanalysis. Commentary on Karen Rosica's paper
(2003)
This paper focuses on how Islamic terrorism is primarily part of a larger internal conflict within Islamic culture. Western, liberal (largely Christian) democracies evolved over centuries of their own bloody philosophical and political struggles between religious authority and what came to be defined as a modern, civil society built on individual freedom of belief, secular authority, and law. Now, Western liberal modernity represents a deep existential threat to traditional Islamic societies around gender, family relations, and individual beliefs. A ferocious internal struggle exists between those Muslims who believe Islam can absorb those tensions – creating its own version of an open, tolerant, cultural modernity – versus political Islamists, jihadists, for whom the annihilation anxiety elicited by the threatened social change is directed both internally and in violent rage at the West.