Refine
The case of Anna presented by Professor Giliberti is discussed from an interpersonal perspective. Attention is given to Anna's real experiences of hypocrisy, social inadequacy, hatred and blame projection. Paranoid aspects are emphasized and seen as connected with a disparity between appearance and reality in the communicative pattern of the family.
A Commentary
(1996)
Sandra Buechler's commentary provides an interesting counterpoint to Mar-golies's chapter. She observes that Fromm believed work should be an expres-sion and a vehicle for self-development and that this urge transcends historical circumstance. She questions whether the categories we create hinder or en-hance our understanding. She believes the self-developer category may have blinded the therapist to other aspects of the treatment. Her own reading of the clinical material would have led her to focus on different aspects of the patient, such as his narcissism and his sadistic sexual fantasies. Margolies would argue that these pathological elements were declining as he worked through old com-promise solutions and developed life-affirming passions in work and love-particularly as he strengthened the positive strivings of his social character ori-entation.
The analyst and the patient must feel enough hope to sustain their active effort. A significant aspect of the analyst's role is inspiring hope. This seems to require that the analyst take a life-affirming position that violates traditional notions of analytic neutrality. Yet, in facilitating the patient's full self-expression, we do not want to lose the benefits of neutrality. Fromm's work can inspire us to try to integrate an attitude of spirited hope with interpretations whose content neutrally encourages the patient to reveal his whole self.
This article describes three attitudes toward psychic pain and suffering, and their clinical implications are explored and illustrated. When analyst and patient differ fundamentally in their understanding of the place of suffering in psychic life, treatment destructive clashes may result. The attitude that pain should be reduced as quickly as possible has a significant impact on the analyst's focus in treatment, most especially on the timing of interpretations of defense. A different orientation is that pain is an inevitable part of human experience and is best accepted rather than avoided. A third possibility embraces suffering as not only unavoidable, but as a primary source of wisdom and personal identity.