Freud's Observations Research Articles

Debt Immense: The Freudian Satan, Yet Once More

Reflecting on Freud's observation that Milton was among his “real teachers,” this article revisits the claim that the predicament of Satan in Paradise Lost might be interpreted through the psychoanalytic notion of trauma. After reviewing past efforts at employing this critical approach, the article tries to establish a clearer understanding of the satanic motive for rebellion and the existential crisis that underlies it by drawing on Cathy Caruth's Unclaimed Experience and Ruth Leys's Trauma: A Genealogy.

Notes on Loving a Mourner (with Roland Barthes and Others)

This essay examines the place of love in grief, staging a relation between a mourner and her lover. Taking as its point of departure Freud's observation that mourning leads to a ‘loss of the capacity to love’, it considers the effects bereavement might have on the bereaved's relations with those that love them, and the possibilities, pitfalls and ethics of care in such a context. This is explored largely through a reading of Roland Barthes's late work (both as a writer of grief and a theorist of love), as well as ideas drawn from Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Sara Ahmed, Hamlet and personal observation. Love and care are thought through alongside notions of ‘tact’, ‘benevolence’ and ‘parrying against reduction’ in late Barthes.

An Instance of Emotional Absence of a Father Traumatized by War-Clinical Material and Musical Illustration.

In his minor essay from 1914, Some Reflections on Schoolboy Psychology, Freud placed immense significance upon the father-son relationship as enabling or inhibiting the individual quest towards a mature, separate, and healthy development. In this essay, I will explore Freud's observations to illuminate the journey taken by Assaff, a 34-year old man who, during the early stages of his adolescence, had a father who was emotionally absent due a traumatic experience during his military service in the Israeli Defense Forces. Through transference work, the impact of the emotional absence will be shown. I will demonstrate how the boy was able unconsciously to use the music of Tommy, a rock opera by the British band The Who, as a transitional object. I will show how that piece of music provided Assaff with the sense of hope that helped during the darker times of his adolescent.

The “Vicissitudes of Love” Between Therapist and Patient: A Review of the Research on Romantic and Sexual Feelings, Thoughts, and Behaviors in Psychotherapy

Beginning with Freud's observations in the early 1900 s, therapists' and patients' experiences of romantic and sexual reactions to each other during the course of therapy has been a topic that has generated alternating waves of avoidance and intense discussion in the professional literature. Research in the area flourished in the 1980s and 1990 s but then nearly disappeared with very little integration. We offer a review of the research to date. Although we focus primarily on quantitative studies, we also reference some qualitative studies when the data help illuminate other findings. Our review is structured to answer 10 key questions in an effort to integrate the findings in a meaningful way for clinicians and researchers. In our conclusion, we note implications raised by the review for clinicians to consider in their practice and we highlight some directions for future research.

The Function of Suffering as Portrayed in The Scarlet Letter and Reflected in Clinical Work

Suffering is commonly seen as an unconscious effort to alleviate painful feelings of guilt. However, suffering also aims at averting loss of ego functions and hence loss of mental stability. This second function of suffering is discussed in the light of Freud's observations of characters wrecked by success and Weiss's ideas about mutual love as a threat to mental stability. Hawthorne's portrayal of Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter (1850), biographical material about the author, material from his diaries, and material from a psychotherapy case and an analysis illustrate the function of suffering to preserve mental stability in the face of heightened success and happiness. Hawthorne, it is argued, intuitively grasped this function of suffering in his novel.

Cries of Fire: Psychotherapy in Contemporary British and Irish Drama

The theatricality of the psychotherapeutic encounter has been evident since its origins: Freud complained in 1914 that the patient in the grip of transference-love “gives up her symptoms or pays no attention to them; indeed, she declares that she is well. There is a complete change of scene; it is as though some piece of make-believe had been stopped by the sudden irruption of reality – as when, for instance, a cry of fire is raised during a theatrical performance” (“Observations on Transference-Love”). In the century that followed Freud's observation, the theatre has shown a reciprocal interest in the dramatic possibilities of psychotherapy – the imbalances of power, incomplete access to knowledge and history, and confessional styles of narrative revelation. This theatrical interest in the dynamics of therapy is particularly striking in that it inevitably becomes self-reflexive, an examination of the negotiation of power, knowledge, and autonomy between therapist and patient, analyst and analysand, that ultimately uncovers anxieties about the spectator–actor relationship. In this article, three works from the millennial moment in the United Kingdom and Ireland – Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis, Joe Penhall's Blue/Orange, and Conor McPherson's Shining City – reveal a shifting conception of how psychotherapy works as a theatrical and a metatheatrical device. Kane and Penhall's plays are produced in a historical context in Britain that is equally sceptical about the institutions of psychiatry and the idealism of anti-psychiatry, and McPherson's characters inhabit an Ireland caught in the ambiguous space between the sanitized, globalized conventions of weekly psychotherapy and the ghostly consolations and convictions of spirituality. All three plays suggest that psychotherapy in drama can function metaphorically and metatheatrically by leading us to examine how performances of identity, narrative-making, and interpretation play out both in the theatre and in life.

Happiness and Chance: A Reappraisal of the Psychoanalytic Conception of Suffering.

Enduring happiness is inherently enigmatic and elusive and for all our efforts to obtain it, it always seems just beyond our reach, no matter how hard we try or how devoted to our quest. Every culture in the world has its own term for happiness, and every culture in history has tried to find ways to obtain happiness. The vast majority of people who come to psychoanalysts for help complain of being unhappy in their lives. Relief from suffering is the principal motivating factor that brings them to therapy. In this paper, Michael Guy Thompson explores some important questions through a review of Freud's observations on the nature of happiness and, specifically, the relation between suffering and unhappiness. What does happiness entail? How much control do people have over their own happiness and how much is left to chance? Does the cessation of suffering equate to human happiness? What role does contemporary psychoanalysis have play in the typical patient's quest for happiness? Freud's distinction between psychological suffering - epitomized by, but not limited to, neurosis - and common unhappiness is examined. His views are reviewed and compared with other conceptions of happiness derived from many of the great philosophers over the past two thousand years.

Manufacturing "Bad Mothers": A Critical Perspective on Child Neglect • Fathers and Developmental Psychopathology • Mothers and Sons • No Voice Is Ever Wholly Lost

Manufacturing "Bad Mothers": A Critical Perspective on Child Neglect • Fathers and Developmental Psychopathology • Mothers and Sons • No Voice Is Ever Wholly Lost

Chaucer’s Lollard Joke: History and the Textual Unconscious

Chaucer’s Lollard Joke: History and the Textual Unconscious

The Core Conflictual Relationship Theme

This article presents a brief but comprehensive guide to the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme (CCRT) method, including its scoring, its reliability, and its validity in relation to CCRT congruent evidence that is within Freud's observations about transference. The usual CCRT method is concretely illustrated through its application to a sample interview; an extension of the CCRT is also illustrated in order to help distinguish parts of the CCRT of which the person is less aware.

Utopian thought and communal practice

Theory and practice are essentially separate activities. Just as the artist invents imaginary worlds, so the social theorist invents pure states of society. In neither case is the disjunction absolute, of course. The imaginary world of the artist is built of the bricks of the world he inhabits, however novel and fantastic the structures he creates; all science fiction attests the truth of Freud's observation that "the imagination remains incurably earthbound." So also there is probably no such thing as social theory that does not embody, at some level, the practice of past or present society. The world of Rousseau's The Social Contract, for instance, partakes, in however reworked and rarefied a form, of the practices of the classical Greek polis, especially those of Sparta.

The histologist Sigmund Freud and the biology of intracellular motility.

Sigmund Freud, the acclaimed founder of psychoanalysis, invested nine years of his early scientific effort investigating animal histology, cell biology and basic neuroscience prior to concentrating on human nervous and mental disorders. Through his histological studies Freud provided coherent evidence suggesting that the protoplasm consists of a contractile fibrillary network, the present-day cytoskeleton; he was one of the original founders of the fibrillary theory on the structure of the protoplasm. Concerning the biology of the cell nucleus, Freud appears to have been the first author who documented movements of nucleoli in nerve cells, a phenomenon presently referred to as nuclear rotation. In certain instances, Freud's observations antedate later views by more than half a century and are important to our current understanding of cell structure and basic processes of intracellular motility.

Oedipal determinants in differential outcome of bereavement

According to psychoanalytic theory, a bereaved individual's prior relationship with the lost person affects his vulnerability to bereavement. Freud attributed the vulnerability to the intensity of ambivalence, and Fenichel saw Oedipal rivalry as one example of that ambivalence. It is argued that, after the death of a parent, reality testing, crucial to the resolution of the Oedipus complex, is disrupted differently for children of the same sex, from those of the opposite sex. Based on Freud's and Fenichel's clinical observations, the effects of disrupted reality testing were transformed into a testable hypothesis. The predictions were validated by testing them against the data supplied by patients before they had any professional contact, when two-thirds of bereaved psychotherapy patients exhibited different effects when the deceased parent was of the same sex, from when he/she was of the opposite sex. A majority of the same-sex children develop an unconscious sense of guilt, which blocks their expression of Oedipal attitudes towards both parents and which attacks their capacity to function adequately at work, and in their sex-linked roles; while the opposite-sex children maintain their preference for the dead parent, aversion to the alive one, and have idealized expectations of their lovers or spouses.

A verification of Freud's grandest clinical hypothesis: The transference

Nine of Freud's observations about his concept of transference were reexamined and found to correspond to observations from a more systematic method of evaluating relationship patterns—the core conflictual relationship theme method. These were: (a) Each patient has one main transference pattern; (b) it is specific for each patient; (c) it applies to love relationships in a broad sense; (d) part of it is in awareness and part kept out of awareness; (e) the pattern remains consistent throughout a person's life; (f) it can change some; (g) the relationship with the therapist reflects the pattern; (h) the pattern derives from the relationships with the early parental figures; (i) it is also active in relationships outside of psychotherapy.

Some Observations on the Rescue of Fallen Women

Citing the example of the creator of Professor Higgins of Pygmalion , as well as other celebrated figures, this paper delineates a number of biographical features common to some would-be rescuers of degraded women. Aside from demonstrating the relevance of these portraits to Freud's observations on the oedipal aspects of the subject, the author emphasizes the attempted verification of phallic attributes in the women as an additional motive in their redemption .

Psycho-Analysis and Group Analysis

This chapter defines the conceptual boundaries of psychoanalysis and group analysis. The psychoanalyst offers his understanding to his patient, who is based on the psychoanalytical ordering of psychological data, through his interpretations and, hopefully, helps his patient to bring about a fundamental re-structuring of his psychology. Group analytic theory has definite notions of time space and causality. These were devised by Trigant Burrow, Moreno and Foulkes as therapists, as ideological models which differ from that of psychoanalysis. The conductor's communications and responses are dictated by his theories. He recognises two basic levels of action, those of communication and of change. The level of communication of the conductor is also variable although they tend to remain at a high level of organisation. Freud's observations on groups related to large organised groups such as the Church and Army or else to mass phenomena as exhibited by mobs and crowds.

Special problems of women in psychotherapy.

Feminist critics have failed to acknowledge the usefulness of Freud's neutral observations about female sexual development. This paper is an attempt to refute the prejudiced, incorrect view of the modern psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist as sexist in orientation. Several detailed case examples are utilized to illustrate the interpretive treatment of excessive passivity in women patients with a variety of neurotic difficulties.

The Freudian influence

THE IDEAS of Sigmund Freud have had the widest impact in medicine and have also influenced anthropology, education, sociology, art, literature, and other areas. His ideas have filtered into the common consciousness. I recall words uttered long ago by my revered chief, Stanley Cobb, to the effect that one needn't concern himself about the seeming resistance to Freudian principles, since they are engrained in the culture and ubiquitous. Freud is honored even in resistance to his precepts. Like anyone leading a new cause, Freud attracted a number of followers, naturally nowhere near as wise or innovative as their master. They attempted to fix the discipline into pattern and hold it steady, seemingly unaware of or indifferent to Freud's observation that "it is the external changefulness of life that makes it so beautiful." By word and deed Freud advocated change; one need only examine his career to see how he continued

The Freudian Influence

THE IDEAS of Sigmund Freud have had the widest impact in medicine and have also influenced anthropology, education, sociology, art, literature, and other areas. His ideas have filtered into the common consciousness. I recall words uttered long ago by my revered chief, Stanley Cobb, to the effect that one needn't concern himself about the seeming resistance to Freudian principles, since they are engrained in the culture and ubiquitous. Freud is honored even in resistance to his precepts. Like anyone leading a new cause, Freud attracted a number of followers, naturally nowhere near as wise or innovative as their master. They attempted to fix the discipline into pattern and hold steady, seemingly unaware of or indifferent to Freud's observation that it is the external changefulness of life that makes so beautiful. By word and deed Freud advocated change; one need only examine his career to see how he continued

The metapsychology of Abraham Joshua Heschel

There is an effort on the part of some theologians and psychotherapists to bring psychology and theology together in a way that enables the vision of theology to lend depth and value to the techniques of psychotherapy. New approaches to religious counseling and education can be extracted from clinical data. Consequently, the synthesis of these two disciplines contributes toward a deeper understanding of human nature. I hope in this brief essay to demonstrate that the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was involved, to some extent, in precisely the area where theology and psychology merge into metapsychology. Professor Heschel's treatment of man in his general theological works has often been noted; references have been made to his compassion and concern for the human condition. It is my intention to show that his concern was more than just sympathy. It led to fundamental speculation on the nature of man, the structure of his personality, and a hypothesis for change. Heschel's observations do not appear in any one systematic paper, but are embedded within his theological writings. Just as it was understood that Freud's clinical observations led him to make certain philosophical proposi tions, it must be pointed out that Heschel's theology includes assertions about the nature of man and his inner conflict. While I do not intend to argue that Heschel has created a comprehensive psychological theory, I believe he did give great consideration to the prob lems of the personality structure and its implications for man. Indeed, his evaluation of psychology ranges from a general critique of the nature of the discipline, its assumptions and methodology, to a more particular analysis of the ego as a source of man's religious difficulties.