Analytic Stance Research Articles

African Rhythm: A Northern Ewe Perspective

African Rhythm: A Northern Ewe Perspective. By Kofi Agawu. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. [xx, 217 p. and 1 compact disc. ISBN 0-521-48084-1. $64.95.] Kofi Agawu's stimulating and provocative book African Rhythm: A Northern Ewe Perspective, presents a model of rhythm in northern Ewe (Ewedome) music from seven Ghanaian towns--Peki, Matse, Ziavi, Klefe, Avenut, Kpando, and Ho--and in music of their Akpafu neighbors. Juxtaposed with a fictionalized ethnography, model appears at end of chapter 1, Rhythms of Society, and argues that primordial, originary, rhythmic event is gesture. It lies at base of four other aspects of rhythmic expression, each generated by preceding one: (1) spoken word, having tone and rhythm: (2) vocal music in free and strict rhythm, as is case with speech and stylized speech; (3) instrumental music, embracing drum language in speech rhythm and dance music in stylized speech rhythm; and (4) dance. In subsequent chapters--Rhythms of Language, Rhythms of Song, Rhythms of Drumming and Dancing, Rhythms of Musical Performance,--Rhythms of Folktale Performance--Agawu's attempts to demonstrate model are subverted by claims of a purely musical impulse, rhythm for rhythm's sake (p. 106), purely musical thinking lacking constraints of speech-tone patterns (p. 176), nonverbal descending melodic line as originary musical element (p. 181), and processual factors, some of which he acknowledges (pp. 182, 183, 184), and others that will he clear to reader. Agawu defines rhythm as stress, quantity and resultant pattern (p. 34) and, by starting with speech acts in chapter 2, gives careful attention to lone levels and accentual schemes embedded in greetings, announcements, riddles, and prayers. This is a strength of book, along with its exposition of musical categories that Ewedome and Akpafu share with other Ghanaian musical cultures. Among these categories is music for funerals, children, occupational groups, religious practices, recreation, and storytelling. Each adds new information of comparative value, which is enhanced by accompanying nineteen photographs and compact disc. Agawu emphasizes, however, that book was not conceived to be a contribution to ethnomusicology (p. 3). In chapter 3 Agawu describes his analytical stance: The particular generative musical structure developed here, draws on work of Heinrich Schenker (p. 201). This frame of reference, along with other tools from music theory, enable him to show ways in which recurring patterns of Northern Ewe music are like rhythmic modes of medieval Europe (p. 34), and how parts of funeral dirge are sung in a Schoenbergian Sprechstimme (p. 77), performer highlighting transformation of recitative into aria (p. 83, see also p. 171). Upon examination of Ziavi Zigi group in performance, Agawu asserts in chapter 5, that the strophic impulse is everywhere in evidence (p. …

Active Neutrality and Loewald's Metaphor of Theater

The value of neutrality as an integral aspect of a desirable analytic stance is viewed here through Hans Loewald's metaphor of theater, applied to the analytic situation. His emphases on both the analyst's subjectivity and objectivity and their influence on the “new object” are explored through clinical vignettes. James Strachey's 1934 views on similar concepts are used to highlight derived contemporary shifts influenced by Loewald's work.

Difficulties in maintaining an analytic stance in the treatment of adults who were sexually abused as children

Difficulties in maintaining an analytic stance in the treatment of adults who were sexually abused as children

Activity/nonactivity and the group therapist: “Don't just do something, sit there”

The abstinent stance of psychoanalytically-oriented clinicians is often confused with passivity or coldness toward the patient or the group. Given the current move toward more active, shorter-term treatment, this paper offers a reaffirmation of the value of the abstinent analytic stance. The theoretical rationale for the technique is reviewed, and some specific arguments are made to illustrate the continuing importance of the method in the treatment of patients in psychodynamic group psychotherapy.

Natural Order

This article argues that the notion of natural language should be treated with caution, for natural language is not an empirical object so much as the product of a particular analytic stance that is sensitive to the action orientation and sequential embeddedness of discourse. The virtue of studying materials that are generated without the influence of researchers (e.g., records of talk in home and work situations) is pressed. However, it is suggested that social psychologists are impeded in pursuing such a course by their adherence to hypothetico deductivist methods, tocognitivist metatheory, and toetic rather than emic styles of analysis.

Practical understanding: Hermeneutics and teaching the management of information systems development using a case study

Though there is an increasing interest in information systems research that is not based on attempting to emulate perceived scientific techniques, the teaching of management and information systems remains either didactic and fact based or restricted to case studies that encourage the use of specialised techniques. In both contexts, the student is expected to adopt an objective and analytic stance in relation to the subject material. This paper attempts to redress this imbalance by focusing on the importance of the hermeneutic process of understanding both as a theoretic concept and its implications in practice. It stresses the interpretative nature of understanding and the situatedness of those who apply techniques. Practical understanding derives, not from the accumulation of abstract concepts, but from the application of those concepts and associated methods in concrete situations; that is, the application of general principles in specific circumstances that require decisions that cannot be left to technique alone. However, it can be difficult to see the use of hermeneutics in practice and a case study used in teaching information systems development that employs these concepts is presented together with examples of some of the issues that such an approach raises.

Interpretive Fallibility and the Psychoanalytic Dialogue

The concept of the analyst's interpretive fallibility is utilized to understand and organize the ways in which contemporary psychoanalytic theory has expanded on Freud's notions regarding the hypothetical nature of interpretation. This expansion involves a particular axis regarding the analyst's stance, an axis that cuts across theoretical scaffolding to include the analyst's view of symmetry and asymmetry in the analytic setting and the epistemological positions and preferences accorded to analyst and analysand. The ways in which the analyst constructs and imposes meaning are examined more specifically in the theories of Roy Schafer and Ernest S. Wolf. The benefits and problems of constructivism in analytic stance are evaluated and illustrated through a case example. Finally, the notion of psychoanalytic neurality is reconsidered with regard to a series of tensions between the construction and foreclosure of meaning in the analytic situation.

Sado-masochism as a defense against merging: Six case studies

This paper reports on several patients who use sado-masochism as a defense against an unconscious wish for and fear of merging. The sado-masochism can be expressed as a sexual perversion or in a difficult ungratifying interpersonal relationship. These relationships have some of the quality of addictions in that the patients have a compulsive need to continue them and find it extremely difficult to leave them. Therapy must focus on helping the patient become more separate, rather than on other problems which may also be present. Initially, the therapist needs to take an educational stance in regard to the process the patient must complete, rather than the more traditional analytic stance.

Our war/their war: Comparing theintifadehand the gulf war on U.S. and Israeli television

War coverage puts journalism to the severe test of choosing between patriotic fervor and morale building, on one side, and a more distant and analytical stance, on the other. Journalist choice in wartime can be observed by comparing coverage of “our” war—when the journalist's own country is at war—and “their” war—when the journalist reports on a conflict among nations not his or her own. Comparing Israeli coverage of the Palestinian intifadeh and American coverage of the Gulf (“our” wars) with American coverage of the intifadeh (“their” war) reveals widely different framing mechanisms. In “our” war coverage, television journalists tend to excise the opposite side, sanitize the suffering inflicted on it, attribute equal strength to both sides, personalize “our” side, demonize “their” side, and decontextualize its aggressive actions.

A Reading of Freud’sPapers on Technique

Freud's Papers on Technique (1911-1915) is the canonical description of the psychoanalytic procedure. It is a puzzling work because it is dominated by the original paradigm of treatment as memory-retrieval, while at the same time it introduces a new picture, more consistent with Freud's emerging theory of passions, according to which treatment is the stirring up and integration of wishes. I suggest that Papers on Technique becomes less puzzling if we assume that, when he wrote it, Freud was mainly concerned not with theory but with a crucial problem of practice. In exchange for some theoretical inconsistency Freud acquired an important practical advantage, and Papers on Technique uses that advantage to teach analysts how to divide the patient's consciousness into a passionately committed experience, on the one hand, and a detached contemplation, on the other hand, without worrying about the element of manipulation that is involved. The lesson is that a theoretical ambivalence of this sort is essential to the analytic stance.

Helping Patients by Analyzing Self-Criticism

This paper is addressed to patients' need for help with punitive self-critical attitudes. Such help has not always been sufficiently provided by psychoanalysts, owing to an unrecognized failure of neutrality. Historically, a gradual overemphasis on the concept of an unconscious sense of guilt has acted as a barrier to the appreciation of shame. An alternative concept, punitive unconscious self-criticism, which stands in contrast to constructive self-criticism and is common to the painful affects of guilt, shame, humiliation, and depression, can facilitate helpful analytic treatment. Heinz Kohut's contributions are examined. His analytic stance is differentiated from his theories of development. In the former, characterized by an affirmative attitude, he takes a position of functional neutrality toward shame and pays consistent though unstated attention to the effects of punitive unconscious self-criticism. The affirmative attitude can be employed without adoption of Kohut's self psychology, i.e., without abandoning the basic psychoanalytic approach to mental conflict and development. The concept of punitive unconscious self-criticism and the concept of divergent conflict, provide sufficient explanatory power. Clinical examples are used to illustrate these ideas.

Surrendering the ideal of disinterestedness in the policy research process: A cautionary note

As policy researchers increasingly see the politicization of the use of analysis as inevitable they have called for changes in the conduct of analysis and in the analyst's role in order to promote utilization and its supposed benefits. The basic prescription is to shape analysis to serve both the political and information needs of specific decision makers or policy participants or to become partisan analysts. In accepting this approach the professional norm of disinterested inquiry is compromised without much knowledge of the consequences. Pressing theoretical, normative, and pracical issues should at least be addressed before the analytic community abandons the ideal of disinterestedness and adopts a partisan analytic stance.

Weakenings and repairs of the working alliance in short-term psychotherapy.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the weakening and repair of the working alliance in short-term psychotherapies relate to change in therapy. In six short-term, timelimited therapies, weakenings and repairs were identified with a unitized process ratings scale. Though the data must be considered preliminary, interesting relations emerged. Patients with greater ego strength had a higher initial quality of alliance with their therapist and were better able to work to repair any weakenings. These patients also exhibited a growing use of observing ego in their increasing ability to initiate talk about weakenings. Highest levels of patient alliance were preceded by high levels of therapist repair action. The success with which weakenings and repairs were handled was predictive of the general outcome of therapy. Surprisingly, more frequent interpretations of transference allusions were associated with poor outcome. The working alliance is defined as the relatively nonneurotic, rational rapport between the patient's observing ego and the analyst's analyzing ego. An essential aspect of this alliance is the ability to split one's observing ego from one's experiencing ego, and to ally the observing ego with the therapist's analytic stance (Dickes, 1975; Freud, 1933; Sterba, 1934; Zetzel, 1956). The ability to form and maintain a working alliance is related to the soundness of a person's object relations or psychological health (Dickes, 1975; Greenson, 1965; Ryan, 1973; Zetzel, 1956). Development of the alliance is benefited by active therapist participation in fostering the alliance (Greenson, 1965; Lehrke, 1978; Sterba, 1934), and is diminished by resistances. However, analysis of resistance can strengthen the development of the alliance (Sandier, Dare, & Holder, 1973). The strength of the alliance should be expected to vary over the course of any given therapy. Bordin (1976, 1980) proposed the idea that psychotherapy was best understood as the building and repair of a strong working alliance. He viewed this building and repair as the mutual resolution of difficulties in working together, and considered it to be the process that allowed change to occur. In this context, the building and repair of the alliance

Some uses of the Psychoanalyst in the NHS

SUMMARY This paper addresses various training issues of psychotherapy training in mental hospitals. It discusses some particular attitudes about the use of the Psychoanalyst as a Psychotherapist as well as the Institutions' (i.e. psychiatric establishments) desire often for a superficial teaching in Psychotherapy. It describes a training for NHS staff in psychodynamics and in particular in use of the counter-transference from Balint's model of general practitioner training groups. Training groups most usually seen in GP seminars, with their central use of counter-transference by the analyst, can be extended to train medical students, nurses, social workers, etc. It is a form of training that uses the analytic stance rather than something of lesser alloy, and allows the Psychoanalyst to be himself rather than function at the level of a Psychotherapist alone.

Applications of object relations theory and self-psychology in current group therapy

In an effort to explore how group therapists can apply psychoanalytic theory in the group modality to advantage, two major developments in analytic theory are examined. 1) Kernberg stresses the neutral interpretive stance and utilizes concepts of “protective identification” and “splitting” in dealing with borderline pathology. This paper illustrates concretely how such theory can be used by the group therapist to encourage working through in the group situation. 2) Kohut's work stresses the empathic, nurturant analytic stance and focuses upon “idealization,” “the grandiose self” and the “self-object.” An understanding of these concepts helps the group therapist avoid obstacles in the treatment of narcissistic patients and can enrich the therapeutic work. The paper concludes that treatment of the difficult patient may be enhanced by the group situation in combination with specific psychoanalytic concepts.

The Child With Multiple Birth Defects

This book should be welcomed by physicians treating patients with birth defect syndromes as it is a notable departure from many of the standard books already published on this subject. Because these syndromes now number in the thousands rather than the hundreds, there has been a need for a book that classifies and evaluates them in depth and shows their relationships to each other in terms of groupings rather than as isolated entities. This interrelationship of the various symptomatologies of isolated syndromes has not been too frequently emphasized by former books on this subject, but Dr Cohen performs a heroic service in analyzing these interrelationships for us using extremely good analytical stance, and, according to Dr Josef Warkany who writes the foreword to his book, Dr Cohen has an encyclopedic knowledge of malformation syndromes. The reader should be forewarned that this book does not deal in any manner whatsoever

Individual Voice in the Collective Discourse: Literary Innovation in Postmodern American Fiction

Since World War II, a new aesthetic and social configuration-the postmodern-has appeared in Europe and the Americas. Studied, but only imprecisely defined, by scholars, artists and writers alike, the postmodern signals a significant change in the nature of the individual's relationship to society. Like the dominant aesthetic traditions of the past 150 years, modernism and the avant-garde, postmodernism displays an alienated, if not antagonistic, response to the aesthetic, ethical and spiritual concerns of bourgeois culture. But with few exceptions, contemporary writing is much less anguished and is narrower in scope than its predecessors. Rare are the heroic modernist efforts to conceive metaphoric or mythic systems to both encompass and transcend the social referent. At the same time, the bravado of the avant-garde assault on culture is curiously lacking. At the heart of recent innovative writing is a troubled and problematic creative sensibility. The writer's analytic stance still fosters a critical response to culture, but there is clearly less faith in one's assumptions of self-knowledge and mastery, in one's perception and knowledge of the external world, and even more importantly, in the writer's very means of expression. Gone are the modernist and avant-garde premises of the privileged nature of the writer's perspective and language. No longer does the feeling of alienation suggest a compensating critical and totalizing vantage point from which the writer can declare his independence from his culture. Instead, the essential dynamics of postmodernism indicate a major re-evaluation of the individual's response to his society, and in particular to society's semiotic codes of behavior, value and discourse. The postmodern individual, the writer, and the text now experience and articulate themselves self-consciously from within the social context-from which, nevertheless, they may still feel alienated and of which they may still be critical. Postmodern literature recognizes that all perception, cognition, action and articulation are shaped, if not determined, by the social domain. There can be no simple opposition to culture, no privileged perspective or language, no secure singular selfdefinition, for all find their meaning only within the social context.

The Therapeutic Function of Hate in the Countertransference

PSYCHOANALYSTS WOULD GENERALLY AGREE that the optimal treatment setting is one which would enable the patient to experience the full range of those intra-personal conflicts which have stunted his development as person and have impaired his capacity for coping with the problems of living. There would also be general agreement that the analyst may be in the best position to help the patient resolve these conflicts when they are played out in the interpersonal field of the patient-analyst relationship so that the analyst becomes for the patient the primary object of his fantasies and the primary target of his feelings of love and hate. In short, concerning the therapeutic and maturational value of generating and resolving the patient's transferences and resistances toward the analyst, there is little argument. Opinion varies, however, concerning the therapeutic and maturational value for the patient of those emotional reactions he typically induces in the analyst. Positive feelings from the analyst are generally recommended as being beneficial to the patient, sometimes with something like moral force; interest, warmth, all within limits, are vital for the working alliance. (Greenson, 1967, p. 379) ; a certain amount of compassion, friendliness, warmth, and respect for the patient's rights is indispensable. (p. 391). In such statements, it is strongly implied, but not explicitly stated, that it is therapeutically beneficial for the patient to experience positive feelings from the analyst. The subject of emotional communication as therapeutic tool has always been an uncomfortable one for classical psychoanalysts, implying departure from an objective analytic stance, acting-out, dilution of the transference, etc. The communication of negative feelings is generally felt to be incorrect or is, at best, mistrusted. However, the following statement by Greenson seems contradictory: Bearing