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.
Erich Fromms Einstellung gegenüber den abstrakten Wissenschaften wie der Ma-thematik erscheint uneinheitlich: einerseits hat er bekannt, abstraktes Denken falle ihm schwer, andererseits hat er Vertretern abstrakter naturwissenschaftlicher Theo-rien wie Einstein und Heisenberg eine revolutionäre Haltung attestiert. Tatsächlich lässt sich Fromms Kreativitätsbegriff auch für die Mathematik fruchtbar machen. Fromm fordert auf, die Dinge in ihrem >So-Sein< wahrzunehmen und darauf kritisch zu >antworten<, ein Verhalten, das die Bereitschaft zur Abstraktion mit einschließt. Der didaktisch bedeutsame >Siehe-Beweis< in der Mathematik ist damit ein Muster-fall dieses Frommschen Ansatzes. Zu Fromms ganzheitlichem Anspruch gehört seine von ihm auch gelebte Forderung an den Menschen, sich Konflikten zu stellen und so seinen Charakter zu entwickeln. Dies verweist auf einen speziellen Grund-zug mathematischen Denkens, nämlich das Bestreben in der Mathematik, sich über Normen hinwegzusetzen, wie es die Entdeckung der nichteuklidischen Geometrien im 19. Jahrhundert zeigt. Dieser prometheische Geist der Mathematik, der von Pädagogen oft übersehen wird, steht damit dem Frommschen Kreativitätsbegriff sehr nahe.
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.
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.
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.