Aggressive Wishes Research Articles

On the Logic of the Unconscious Conception of Causation Part I: The Oedipal Meta-Wish and the Sexualization of Asymmetric Time.

The direction of time is often defined by describing asymmetries between past and future events, referred to as "time-arrows." Two important time-arrows are the mutability time-arrow, which specifies that the past is unalterable, while the future is not; and the causal time-arrow, which stipulates that past events may cause future events, but not vice versa. The author argues that the unconscious conception of causation expressed in both the oedipal myth and certain oedipal wishes negates the mutability and causal time-arrows. The author suggests, therefore, distinguishing between oedipal phantasies that undermine the ordinary conceptions of causation and time (such as the wish of being one's own parent), and classical content that is in line with our time perception (such as sexual and aggressive wishes toward parents). Analyzing clinical examples suggests that some patients' oedipal phantasies are combined with unconscious sexual satisfaction from the asymmetric conception of time. When this sexual satisfaction is analyzed, they might expose the oedipal phantasies founded on the symmetric conception of time.

Allergies: from stress to psychosomatic diseases

<p>Holistic approach to the nature of human beings shows the view of the man as a unique and indivisible whole and not as a collection of organs that are not interconnected. This means the integrity of the biological, psychological and social nature of the man and that just means the psychosomatic approach to the disease. More and more studies indicate that psychological stress can aggravate or improve some allergic diseases. Today there are a lot of discussions about the effects of chronic stress which has lasted for years and decades. Many unpleasant events from the past, such as fear, aggressive wishes, guilt and others, can have its effect on the body systems later, and gradually cause functional disorders and organic diseases within them. Enhanced work of the nervous system and increased secretion of hormones, which can protect us when the stress occurs for the first time, represents the same changes which can destroy us in the end when we face constant and persistent stress. Some studies have shown that in addition to heredity, common infections of the respiratory tract and pollution of the environment are the main villains for the development of allergic diseases as well as stress. Recent studies emphasize that stress and anxiety can extend the duration of seasonal allergies and boost their symptoms.</p>

Hearing voices: the fate of the analyst's identifications.

Using detailed clinical examples, the author illustrates the function of conscious and unconscious identifications with former training analysts, supervisors, teachers, and theorists in the mind of the working analyst. As compromise formations, analytic identifications are the product of loving and aggressive wishes, defenses against those wishes, and self-punitive trends that accompany the analyst in the work. The analyst's stance at any given moment has an identificatory history that may become conscious at certain times with certain patients. While the analyst's identifications modify over time, following a predictable developmental path, they are never fully given up, but consciously and unconsciously remain an active part of the analyst's inner life. During the clinical hour they are responsive to both the analyst's and the patient's conflicts, and they coexist in a dynamic reciprocal relationship with the patient's inner life.

Treatment Parameters and Structural Change: Reflections on the Psychotherapy of a Male Homosexual

Abstract Shechter R. A. Treatment Parameters and Structural Change: Reflections on the Psychotherapy of a Male Homosexual. Int Forum Psychoanal 1992;1:197-201. Stockholm. ISSN 0803-706X Sequential highlights from a four-year treatment period demonstrate specific instances when technique parameters, defined as deviations from psychoanalytic neutrality, triggered the emergence of repressed memories. These memories were connected to forbidden impulses and intense annihilation and castration anxiety. Parameters also functioned to keep anxiety at tolerable levels, allowing the working-through and rechanneling of highly charged libidinal and aggressive wishes and fears, and the establishment of a reparative transference. As the patient explored affect and memory, he incorporated a more benign superego. Drive was neutralized, sublimation occurred, and structural change unfolded. Intrapsychic change led to behavior change. The patient moved from a monogamous, sadomasochistic, homosexual lifestyle to a more positively invested and pleasurable heterosexual relationship. Treatment was not a defense analysis. The patient's ego structure could not have tolerated the anxiety of a transference neurosis that mirrored the abuse of childhood. The treatment dyad was a reparative force. Parameters indirectly functioned as interpretations of repressed longings, surgically cutting through false self-deception.

The Uses of Moral Ideas in the Mastery of Trauma and in Adaptation, and the Concept of Superego Severity

The power of moral ideas, here equated with superego strength, has been explained in increasingly complex terms over the course of the development of psychoanalysis. At first regarded mainly as useful in opposing oedipal instinctual demands, morality came to be seen also as opposed to aggressive wishes while at the same time capable of gratifying aggressive and libidinal forces. In this paper, I discuss the contribution to the strength of morality that comes from the effects of painful ("traumatic") experiences and from the use of moral ideas for social, adaptational purposes. In addition I consider the possibility that unchanging moral ideas can have changes in function in clinical work. A case is presented to illustrate these points.

The psychoanalytic theory of depression: Symptoms as a function of aggressive wishes and level of field articulation.

The psychoanalytic theory of depression: Symptoms as a function of aggressive wishes and level of field articulation.

The psychoanalytic theory of depression: symptoms as a function of aggressive wishes and level of field articulation.

The psychoanalytic theory of depression: symptoms as a function of aggressive wishes and level of field articulation.

A test of two theories of dream forgetting

Seventy-two female undergraduates kept home-recall dream diaries for two 20-day periods in a test of predictions generated from Freud's (1900/1965) repression theory and Cohen's (1974) interference theory. One-half of all the Ss participated in an assertion training program during the time they kept the second dream diary. All Ss were assessed for proneness to use repression as a defense against aggressive wishes. It was found that Ss who were undergoing assertion training experienced a decrease in dream recall and dream pleasantness when compared with control Ss. Changes in dream recall and pleasantness were uncorrelated, and the measure of repression did not account significantly for dream recall or pleasantness variance. These findings are interpreted as being more supportive of interference theory than repression theory.