Development Of Psychoanalysis Research Articles

Psychoanalysis as an Ethical Process: Ethical Intersubjectivity and Therapeutic Action

While psychoanalysis has come a long way towards recognizing the central role of ethics in human experience, there is still an overall skittishness about conceptualizing therapeutic change as essentially ethical in nature. This paper suggests that the trajectory of theory development in psychoanalysis, which has largely been seen as evolving from a “one-person” to a “two-person” view of the mind, can also be mapped out along an ethical dimension—the extent to which the theorist explicitly invokes ethics to explain “how change happens” in the analytic process. A basic heuristic to organize theories along these lines is outlined, designating psychoanalytic models as ethically neutral, ethically unilateral, or ethically intersubjective. Utilizing a clinical example in which he wanted to physically strike his patient, the author proposes his own ethically intersubjective vision of therapeutic action, which involves the co-creation of an intersubjective space that is progressively more consistent with the unconditional worth of both analyst and patient. By further appreciating the distinction between ethical and nonethical psychoanalytic approaches, we will open up new imaginative space to support theoretical innovation, clinical vitality, and the expanded responsibility of analyst and patient within the analytic process.

Paths of the countertransference in the analyst—clinical examples of working through

ABSTRACTToday the importance of working through the analyst’s countertransference is stressed throughout all different schools of psychoanalysis. This article aims to make the microprocesses more transparent regarding the transformations of transference and countertransference, from the beginning of the anchoring of a projection in the analyst up to the re-internalization of a transformed projection in the patient. This is introduced by a survey of the history of two central terms: Projective Identification (on the side of the patient) and Countertransference (coming from the side of the analyst). How the analyst is also a “do-er” and how this fits in with the projective identifications of the patient is a newer development in psychoanalysis and is the main subject of this paper. Alongside the clinical material shown is described what the patient triggers in the analyst with his projections, and how the analyst manages to work through his countertransference where the patient becomes a temporary object, connecting with objects of the analyst until—if all goes well—the analyst manages to transform the projection of the patient while “triangulating with his inner understanding parents”.

Toward a Reflexive History of Modern Subjectivity

Toward a Reflexive History of Modern Subjectivity

Melitta Schmideberg: Her Life and Work Encompassing Migration, Psychoanalysis, and War in Britain

The article deals with the forgotten work of Melitta Schmideberg (1904–83), who was a significant, pioneering female psychoanalyst in the intellectual culture of 1930s and 1940s Britain. If scholars know anything about Schmideberg, it is that she was the troubled daughter of eminent psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. Contributing to the still limited scholarship on this intense period in the development of psychoanalysis in Britain, the article reveals that Schmideberg was a very active early psychologist, an avid public speaker, a founding member of important institutes for the study of crime, and a prolific author on a very wide range of issues that bothered her and others and that were tied to the troubled history of the twentieth century. A Central European Jewish refugee in Britain, she was among the first to psychoanalyse children and criminals. As the focus on women in the scholarship of twentieth-century European intellectual history is hardly sufficient, this article recovers her forgotten work whose significance warrants reclamation from obscurity. It provides the first exploration of her life showing that the issues her experiences raise are central to the history of the time.

Psychoanalysis in a changing Cuba: A note from the field

In 2015 and 2016, the author and four other psychoanalysts from New York City visited Havana and met with the Psychoanalytic Association of Cuba (APDECU), a study group of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS). These meetings provided an important opportunity to learn about psychoanalysis in Cuba, a little known topic. The author discusses the APDECU’s history and its members’ interest in psychoanalysis, describes the trajectory of psychoanalysis since the Cuban Revolution of 1959, and observes how economic, political, and social change has affected this trajectory. Psychoanalytic private practice, as we know it in capitalist countries, ended with the revolution, and psychoanalytically-oriented clinicians are employed by state-run public health institutions. Cuba’s leaders have introduced unprecedented economic change since 2008, resulting in an increasing marketization and privatization of the economy, which they refer to as “updating” or “reforming” socialism. The author explores the impact that economic reform may have on the future development of psychoanalysis and on the professional identity of psychotherapists.

L’intégration des psychothérapies : pourquoi ce rendez-vous manqué en France ?

ObjectiveThis article reviews part of the history of integration in psychotherapy. This is a theme that emerged in the United States in the 1930s, and has been an important research topic since the 1980s. However, it has not been an important concern in France. This field of research and thought, arising in the United States, advocates a common or integrative view of care that is not found in France. MethodWe set out to consider the French inability to reflect, in depth and over the long term, on our practices from the perspective of integrative psychotherapy, which is still not a field of study or research in our universities. This involves crossing historical and philosophical elements from United States and France concerning the development of psychoanalysis and psychotherapies, and their transformations or integration. ResultsPhilosophical and cultural differences could explain this lack of research in the field; alongside, the place of behaviorism in the United States has provided a means of involving analytic and humanistic concepts. DiscussionIn our country, our university courses, the fear of the influence of therapists and their view of psychotherapy (the place of the subject, and the function and meaning of the symptom) in terms of psychoanalysis and clinical phenomenology are aspects that provide part of the answer to our question. ConclusionWe believe that reflection on the integration of psychotherapies would place clinical practice and theory in a different relationship. It would also provide an overview of all psychotherapies, instead of questioning each school of thought individually, thus enabling a critical and epistemological approach.

Au carrefour des cultures monothéistes, la psychanalyse au Liban. Du conflictuel au dialectique

Le développement de la psychanalyse au Liban s’inscrit sur la toile de fond que constitue son arrière-plan historique et culturel, au carrefour des religions monothéistes qui le composent. Sans pour autant rencontrer les mêmes résistances présentes dans d’autres pays arabes voisins, la psychanalyse a évolué avec un travail de culture qui ne peut advenir sans prendre en considération les préjugés, croyances, conflits et aménagements qui constituent l’essence de ce pays. L’auteur tente d’examiner ce travail en considérant aussi la culture hébraïque – et son articulation au conflit israélo-arabe –, comme absent-présent dans l’implantation et le développement de la psychanalyse dans la région.

Pichon Rivière's psychoanalytic contributions: Some comparisons with object relations and modern developments in psychoanalysis

Enrique Pichon Rivière's work, fundamental to Latin American and European psychoanalytic development, is largely unknown in English‐language psychoanalysis. Pichon's central contribution, the link (el vinculo), describes relational bonds in all dimensions. People are born into, live in, and relate through links. Psychic structure is built of links that then influence external interaction. Links, expressed in mind, body and external action, continuously join internal and external worlds. Links have two axes: vertical axis links connect generations through unconscious transgenerational transmission; horizontal axis links connect persons to life partners, family, community and society. For Pichon, treatment constitutes a spiral process through which interpretation disrupts existent structures, promoting new emergent organizations at successively deeper levels. Psychic and link structures evolve over time unless repetitive cycles stunt growth. For Pichon, transference is constituted in the here‐and‐now‐with‐me because of the analytic link. Pichon also undertook family and group psychoanalysis where individuals become spokespersons for unconscious links and family secrets. He developed operative groups that apply psychoanalysis to both analytic and non‐analytic tasks. After describing Pichon's major contributions, the paper compares Pichon Rivière's ideas with those of Klein, Fairbairn, Bion, Winnicott and Bowlby, and contemporary writers including Ogden, Kaës, and Ferro whose works echo Pichon Rivière's thought.

A Review of Maria Teresa Savio Hooke’s Lecture and Workshop

The development of psychoanalysis in new areas, revisiting the analytic attitude and Melanie’s Klein’s depressive position.

The Neuropsychoanalytic Approach: Using Neuroscience as the Basic Science of Psychoanalysis.

Neuroscience was the basic science behind Freud's psychoanalytic theory and technique. He worked as a neurologist for 20 years before being aware that a new approach to understand complex diseases, namely the hysterias, was needed. Solms coined the term neuropsychoanalysis to affirm that neuroscience still belongs in psychoanalysis. The neuropsychoanalytic field has continued Freud's original ideas as stated in 1895. Developments in psychoanalysis that have been created or revised by the neuropsychoanalysis movement include pain/relatedness/opioids, drive, structural model, dreams, cathexis, and dynamic unconscious. Neuroscience has contributed to the development of new psychoanalytic theory, such as Bazan's (2011) description of anxiety driven by unconscious intentions or “phantoms.” Results of adopting the “dual aspect monism” approach of idiographic psychoanalytic clinical observation combined with nomothetic investigation of related human phenomena include clarification and revision of theory, restoration of the scientific base of psychoanalysis, and improvement of clinical treatments. By imbricating psychoanalytic thinking with neuroscience, psychoanalysts are also positioned to make contributions to neuroscience research. Freud's original Project for a Scientific Psychology/Psychology for Neurologists can be carried forward in a way that moves psychoanalysis into the twenty-first century as a core contemporary science (Kandel, 1999). Neuroscience as the basic science of psychoanalysis both improves the field, and enhances its scientific and cultural status.

The Maison Verte, a transitional space: introducing the work of Françoise Dolto in the UK

This paper looks at Dolto’s contribution to preventative interventions with the foundation of the Maison Verte in 1979. The author’s intention is to show that this project brings with it an interesting development of psychoanalysis in the community. The author was part of a team setting up the first Maison Verte in the UK. Maison Verte-UK was established in 2013 as an independent non-profit organisation, financed mainly by public grant funds. The centre provides a free, three half-days weekly service, for pre-school children and their families. It offers a welcoming, non-structured and non-bureaucratic space for conviviality. This openness generates an unusual quality of encounter between children and their adults, through the mediation of the staff.

Medical semiotics; its influence on art, psychoanalysis and Sherlock Holmes.

Semiotics is the analysis and interpretation of signs and the basis of medicine since antiquity. It is suggested that the growth of technology has led to the virtual eclipse of the clinical examination with consequent loss of skill, empathy and patient trust. This paper views the value of medical semiotics through the method of the 19th century Italian doctor, Giovanni Morelli, which has had a significant but little recognised impact on the early development of psychoanalysis, the detective novel and art connoisseurship. Semiotics and, specifically, the linguistic semiotics of Ferdinand Saussure have been influential in the fields of the visual arts, literature and the social sciences since the 20th century. With its roots in the medical treatises of antiquity, medical semiotics should again be brought to the forefront of medical practice.

What Would I Do with Lacan Today?: Thoughts on Sartre, Lacan, and Contemporary Psychoanalysis

This article is a reply to Blake Scott’s discussion of the Sartrean critique of Lacan that I present in three chapters of Sartre and Psychoanalysis. Here I revisit those chapters, written 25 years ago, with questions about how I might approach Lacan today. I also discuss how I might approach recent developments in psychoanalysis, some of which are influenced by both Lacan and postmodernism. While I still think Lacan does not give an adequate account of agency and responsibility, there are definitely parallels between Sartre and Lacan and even a significant, though ambiguous, debt that Lacan owes to Sartre, similar to the often-neglected influence of Sartre on postmodern philosophy. The rest of the article considers the influence of postmodernism and existential phenomenology on contemporary psychoanalysis. Despite certain theoretical difficulties, the relational and intersubjective emphasis in much of contemporary psychoanalysis, combined with a rejection of drive theory, is in some ways surprisingly compatible with Sartre’s requirements for an existential psychoanalysis.

Group Analysis and the Different Approaches: The Portuguese Contribution. A Tribute to E.L. Cortesão

The development of psychoanalysis itself and, in particular, the publication of the so called Freud’s anthropological works led to the appearance and growth of group psychotherapy, namely, of their psychoanalytic approaches. Their general characteristics are described and some of their particular aspects (Slavson, Wolf and Schwartz, Ezriel, Bion) referred. The importance of the contributions of Ego psychology, ORT and self-psychology in this evolution are particularly stressed. The use of philosophical (existential) models, though complemented by psychoanalytical and behavioural contributions (Yalom) are also referred. The point of view and basic conceptions of group analysis, the most diffused of analytical group psychotherapies in Europe, are particularly described and, in their context, the points of view of Trigant Burrow, Foulkes and Cortesão compared. Cortesão’s points of view are particularly developed and, among them, the conceptions of group-analytic process (developed in analogy with Bibring similar point of view established in the psychoanalytic setting), group-analytic pattern and matrix, changing levels of experience and interpretation, specific aspects of group-analytical transference, commutative interpretation, aesthetic balance and its importance in the group analytic process. The working through of the group transference neurosis becomes a nuclear step in this approach. Finally, Foulkes’ and Cortesão’s approaches in group-analysis are compared and the similarities between them underlined, in spite of some apparent contradictions.

Qu’apporte le « psychisch-somatisch » de Heinroth à la métapsychologie freudienne ?

Le concept de psychosomatique est attribue a un psychiatre allemand, Heinroth. Dans les periodiques et les chapitres d’ouvrages francophones, il apparait des meconnaissances que notre article tente de lever : meconnaissance sur le milieu theorique d’ou survient le concept, meconnaissance sur les debats qui ont preside a la naissance de ce concept, et meconnaissance des debats theoriques que cette idee a provoquee dans tout le xixe siecle allemand (notamment avec l’idee de somato-psychique). En exhumant ces meconnaissances et en appui d’une traduction serieuse, nous replacons l’idee de Heinroth au centre de ces debats et suivons un fil rouge, vitaliste, qui ouvre une nouvelle perspective aux precautions rhetoriques prises par Freud, en raison de ces debats contradictoires anterieurs, dans son modele freudien des pulsions. Ainsi, le debat ouvert par Heinroth a pu rester moderne et contemporain. En outre, notre traduction proposee du chapitre d’ouvrage en langue allemande revele que l’idee de la psychosomatique, originellement, s’articule avec l’insomnie maniaque.[resume d’auteur]

Sex versus survival: the life and ideas of Sabina Spielrein

Who was Sabina Spielrein? Her dramatic life story is most famous for her notorious affair with Carl Jung, dramatised in the film A Dangerous Method starring Keira Knightley. Yet she was a woman who overcame family and psychiatric abuse to become an original thinker in the field of psychotherapy. This is the first biography to put her life and ideas at the centre of the story, and to examine Spielreins key role in the development of psychoanalysis and in the rift between Jung and Freud. Drawing on fresh research into Spielreins diaries, papers and correspondence, John Launer tells the story of a passionate woman who transformed herself from one of Jungs disturbed patients into a leading figure in Western psychology, then the Soviet intelligentsia, before losing her life in the Holocaust. At the heart of Sex Versus Survival is the gripping tale of Spielrein and Jungs tumultuous affair, which played such an important role in both of their lives and intellectual journeys. Launer shows how Spielreins overlooked ideas rejected by Jung and Freud, but substantially vindicated by later developments in psychology and evolutionary biology may represent the last and most important stage in the rediscovery of an extraordinary life.

“Turning a blind eye” on sexual abuse, boundary violations and therapeutic practice

This article explores the themes related to ‘turning a blind eye’. This is first discussed in terms of the marvellous benefits of turning a blind eye and not seeing; this is followed with a discussion about the dangers of seeing and encountering the erotic. History and myth are referenced. Sex is special: the most powerful of all sensual experiences and therefore brings with it the power to transform or distort the mind. The link is made between pivotal developments in psychoanalysis and blindness to erotic manifestations in both patients and therapists. There follows a detailed discussion of the correspondence between Jung and Freud concerning the former’s severe boundary violations with Sabina Spielrein. From there, I discuss later developments within psychoanalysis which continues the theme of ‘turning a blind eye’. I bring this theme up to date with a clinical example of my own illustrating a multiple reluctance to see sexual abuse. The discussion concludes with thoughts about seeing and not seeing erotic material and/or sexual abuse prompted by the grave of Jimmy Savile. I conclude this article with some additional ideas stimulated by the discussion following my original lecture.

Teorias e práticas freudianas iniciais: considerações sobre a descoberta do Inconsciente

This article compares some theoretical postulates and some clinical practices of early moments of Freudian works, favoring production periods of Studies on Hysteria and the Interpretation of Dreams. Other works are cited in order to complement. The study highlights the role of concepts such as repression, resistance and transference before the emergence of the concept of the unconscious – without which all previous lose much of their senses; suggests that, rather than a Freud’s willful disposition in the formulation of concept of the unconscious, what we see is, instead, his reluctance to admit such a concept, which justifies its late appearance compared to the others. We conclude, finally, that such reluctance itself, conveys a valuable model to psychoanalysts about how theoretical and practical developments of psychoanalysis must happens.

Psychoanalysis: the sacred and the profane.

Colleagues from a variety of perspectives have written about the propensity to enshrine psychoanalytic theory. The meaning of the word "enshrine" is to cherish as sacred an idea or philosophy and protect it from change. In other words, the way we view psychoanalysis, our theories of mind and technique, become holy writ and we have divided the world of theory into the sacred and the profane. This is the kiss of death for theory, which must constantly evolve and change, but comforting for the analyst who believes he is on the side of the right, the sacred. In this paper I will discuss how our propensity to enshrine theory has had a debilitating effect on the development of psychoanalysis and, in particular, as a treatment for the most vulnerable people who seek our help. I also address the idea that movement away from enshrined positions allows us to construct different versions of reality. In this context, the notion of "action at a distance" is presented along with the attendant idea of psychoanalytic entanglement.

English

Sigmund Freud is considered the father and founder of psychoanalysis; however, numerous women contributed to its development and practice. Lou von Salome, Karen Horney, Sabina Spielrein and Anna Freud were instrumental in forming one of the leading psychological theories of the 20th century. Although the implications of each woman’s work are different, they individually made a unique impact on the development and practice of psychoanalysis in specific ways. Lou von Salome contributed much to the development of psychoanalysis through the arts, as she was a prolific writer and novelist. Karen Horney eventually broke with Freud and developed her own version of psychoanalysis, incorporating feminine psychology and criticizing the phallocentric and patriarchal nature of Freud’s theories. Sabina Spielrein contributed the “death instinct” to psychoanalysis, although Freud did not credit her fully for this development. Anna Freud, the youngest child of Sigmund and Martha Freud, was the founder of psychoanalytic child psychology along with Melanie Klein. She focused on the ego in childhood and ways to encourage its healthy development. Although each matriarch of psychoanalysis extended the ideas and theories of Sigmund Freud, they have not been given the credit they deserved. Keywords: Psychoanalysis, women, history, mothers.