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The author discusses papers by Director and Burton, placing their work in a context of contemporary psychoanalytic models for understanding addictive behavior. Whereas early psychoanalytic models stressed drive theory and a topographic model of the mind, the contemporary models discussed here emphasize themes of dissociation – integration, helplessness – omnipotence, self-organization, and relational therapy. The author considers how these modern themes resonate with psychoanalytic formulations of addictive vulnerability that have considered disturbances in affect recognition/tolerance, self-esteem, relationships, and self-care. The author concludes by suggesting that the dyadic paradigms advanced by Director and Burton likely have implications for psychodynamic group treatments.
A Clinical Perspective of the Cause-Consequence Controversy in Alcoholic and Addictive Suffering
(1987)
The Great Escape: World War II, Neo-Freudianism, and the Origins of U.S. Psychocultural Analysis
(2011)
Psycho-cultural analysis stands as a signal accomplishment of the 1930s U.S. assimilation of European refugee-intellectuals. Scholars in the U.S. had been moving toward a kind of psycho-cultural analysis well in advance of the Great Migration – the U.S. was not an intellectual vacuum or wasteland – nevertheless, it was through their interdisciplinary collaboration, fueled by the specter of war, that these international peers stimulated one of the most wide-ranging, dynamic, and productive exchanges of ideas of the century. Through the lens of Erich Fromm's >Escape from Freedom<, this article explores psycho-culturalism's emergence in the interstices between cultures, nations, ideas, and disciplines – between Europeans and Americans, psychoanalysts and social scientists.