Merton Gill Research Articles

The Function of Metapsychology – Study of an American Controversy, 1970s–1980s

This article explores the controversies triggered by Freud's metapsychology, specifically the American critiques of the 1970s – Heinz Hartmann, Merton Gill and David Rapaport, Robert Waelder, and Lawrence Kubie for ego-psychology, leading into Roy Schafer, George Klein and again Merton Gill for hermeneutics, Emmanuel Peterfreund and Charles Brenner for positivism, before concluding with a summary of more inventive engagements with metapsychology including that of Joseph Sandler and André Green. The article argues that in the name of empirical or clinical evidence, the American critiques tried to reintroduce a subjectivity made of data into the heart of psychoanalytic theory and as a result, replaced the subject of the unconscious with a new figure of the subject not only transparent to itself, but also transparent to two main forms of discourse: the hermeneutic discourse, on the one hand, and the positivist discourse, on the other.

“Afterword” to the Gill/Bromberg Correspondence

In trying to convey what it is like 30 years later to reflect on my correspondence with Merton Gill I write about a memory that has stayed the same while changing. As I looked with fresh eyes at the ideas that excited us individually/together, I relived and here try to convey my experience of this extraordinary man while reentering my own self-experience during it. This is indeed an afterword but also such an experiential continuation that I felt his “real time” absence in this discussion as a palpable loss.

Nachtraglichkeit

In this brief introductory essay, Harris and Bass consider the historic correspondence between Merton Gill and Philip M. Bromberg (1979–1981) in light of psychoanalytic developments over the past 30 years, which have included the emergence of Relational Psychoanalysis. The authors consider the ways in which the issues engaged by Bromberg and Gill in the correspondence stimulated by the publication of Bromberg's (1979) “Interpersonal Psychoanalysis and Regression” helped shape the development of Relational Psychoanalysis as it emerged, and how the development of Relational Psychoanalysis has provided a new vantage point from which to view these early discussions.

The Gill/Bromberg Correspondence

This correspondence between Merton Gill, M.D., and Philip M. Bromberg, Ph.D., includes five letters written between December 7, 1979, and January 8, 1984. The first letter, from Gill to Bromberg, shared reflections on Bromberg's paper “Interpersonal Psychoanalysis and Regression,” published in the October 1979 issue of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. The exchange of letters that follows takes up a number of issues relevant to the evolution of analytic theory and technique, of historical as well as contemporary interest. Their discussion moves from a consideration of the nature and role of regression in psychoanalytic work to a consideration of mental structure and mental states, to free association and the analysis of transference, and finally to their reflections on the analytic frame and analytic technique itself.

Interview with Lewis Aron.

Safran: What do you think that psychoanalysis will look like 10 or even 20 years from now? Aron: In some ways it depends on what you mean by psychoanalysis, because I think one of the ways that we’ve gotten ourselves into so much trouble is by defining psychoanalysis in contrast to psychotherapy. So, if we’re defining psychoanalysis in this very limited or narrow way, as opposed to psychoanalytic therapy or other analytic therapies, then the question of what the discipline of psychoanalysis will look like would lead you to one answer, which I do not think would be a very optimistic one. But I tend to think that it’s a mistake to define it that way, and that we need to think of psychoanalysis as a broad continuum of treatments with different frequencies and differences in variables of other types, all based on psychoanalytic ideas. And if we define psychoanalysis more broadly in this way, then I have a much more optimistic perspective on the future of psychoanalysis. Not everyone would agree with me on this. Kernberg, for example, defines psychoanalysis in the more narrow sense, and takes the position that psychoanalysis is for the very few and that most people are either too ill or too healthy for psychoanalysis. Thus, from his perspective, and from the perspective of many others, many people need some other treatment, an analytically modified kind of treatment. From his perspective, psychoanalysis is an appropriate treatment for very few people, and he believes that the most important contribution we can make as psychoanalysts is to develop a broad range of analytic treatments or therapies. Safran: I didn’t realize that was Kernberg’s position. Aron: Yes, I did a panel with him last year where he took that position . . . . And I think this position is based on a choice he makes to keep the definition of psychoanalysis rather narrow and very specific. But I think that’s a mistake. Merton Gill, for example, in his final book before he died, took the position that he didn’t differentiate between psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy. He spoke of all forms of psychoanalysis as consisting of a range of different forms of therapies, varying with respect to variables such as frequency, intensity, and so on. And I think there are many advantages to this type of perspective. For one thing, I think that it really is very troubling for analysts who spend most of their working lives doing what would have to be called modified analytic therapy (from Kernberg’s perspective) and then end up having a tremendous identity problem about what it means to be a psychoanalyst, since they’re not really doing “psychoanalysis.” And the statistics in the field are very clear. A number of surveys have shown that the great bulk of psychoanalysts are doing something other than psychoanalysis, as it was

Analysis of transference: a North American perspective.

Using detailed clinical vignettes, the author illustrates and compares several North American approaches to the analysis of transference, tracing their origins in Freud's works and in various post-Freudian conceptualizations, including the writings of Anna Freud and Charles Brenner. Particular attention is paid to the work of Merton Gill, Evelyne Schwaber, Paul Gray, and the British analyst, Betty Joseph. Discussed and illustrated are controversies over the broader and narrower views of transference, the interpretation of action in the analytic setting, earlier and later interpretations of transference with particular emphasis on the contrast between contemporary Kleinian and ego psychological perspectives, the role of extra-transference interpretation, and the concept of the transference neurosis. An argument is made for an integrative approach, drawing upon different emphases, depending on the clinical circumstances and the point of affective immediacy for the patient, which may or may not coincide with the point of affective immediacy for the analyst.

Changing Conceptions of Psychoanalysis: The Legacy of Merton M. Gill

DORIS K. SILVERMAN AND DAVID L. WOLITZKY (EDS.): Changing Conceptions of Psychoanalysis: The Legacy of M. Gill. The Analytic Press, Hillsdale, NJ 2000, pp. viii+317, $36.00, ISBN: 0-88163-235-X. This outstanding text, available in paperback, should be in the library of anyone practicing psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy. is divided into four parts, with essays by a variety of contributors constituting each part. A few of these have been reprinted from elsewhere. The parts are: I. Merton Gill's Place in Psychoanalysis, II. Personal/Professional Reminiscences, III. Merton Gill: Theoretician and Psychoanalyst, and IV. Current Controversies in Psychoanalysis. The fourth part is divided into sections on the debate over natural science and the hermeneutic orientation, on psychoanalysis as a one-person and a two-person psychology, on psychoanalysis and psychotherapy: critical differences or blurring of boundaries?, and on transference. Most of the contributions are of high quality and when studied together produce a volume that offers an overview of some of the most current controversies in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. Each contribution is preceded by a short editorial introduction that helps to orient the reader to what is to follow. The late Gill, M.D., was one of the outstanding figures in contemporary psychoanalysis. Apparently he was an iconoclast and as a result did not rise high in psychoanalytic politics, but he was respected, and, as I gathered from this book, a feared scholarly debater on a number of salient issues. All of these issues are well covered in the volume under review. changed his opinions continuously throughout his life, including the production of a major change on the order of the revolutionary transposition undergone by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, a complete overturning of his previous point of view. He began as a classical psychoanalyst and one of his papers (1954) for a long time was considered a paradigmatic description of orthodox classical analytic style. In his later life however, perhaps influenced by another personal analysis conducted by Samuel Lipton of Chicago, he began to argue that transference was insufficiently explored in clinical work. Transference for emphasized the interaction of the patient and the in a mutually influencing relationship. We are told Gill forcefully rejected the idea that the had a superior view of the patient's intrapsychic reality and that the transference was a distortion to be judged and corrected by the analyst. He stressed instead the exploration of the plausibility of the patient's construal of the analyst (p. 4). This evolved into a position, often labeled the hermeneutic-constructivist position, too complex and controversial to be discussed in a brief book review, and to a major change and deviation from so-called classical psychoanalytic technique. in his new approach emphasized that interpretation should focus primarily on the here-and-now transference from the very beginning of the treatment. This is carried to the point where defines psychoanalysis as a treatment that contains such a central focus, regardless of the frequency of the sessions, use of the couch, etc. This is consistent with the view of those who maintain what is known as a postmodern stance but it carries the danger of sliding into relativism, as was well aware. raises a whole host of philosophical and epistemological issues, which are explored in the present text. So It was not unusual for in 1984 to find himself differing sharply with someone who cited `Gill, 1954' to buttress his or her own (pp. 49-50). tended to support the traditional position of the central importance of drives in development, a position with which I am in agreement, and this separated him to a certain extent from his colleagues who were more radically postmodern and constructivist in orientation. …

Kohut’s Freudian Vision

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book Forum: PsychoanalysisFull AccessKohut’s Freudian VisionAARON ESMAN, M.D., AARON ESMANSearch for more papers by this author, M.D., New York, N.Y.Published Online:1 Aug 2000https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.157.8.1353AboutSectionsView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail Heinz Kohut is now known as the founder of the school of self psychology, thought by some to be a parallel or tributary to the mainstream of psychoanalysis and by others to be a radical alternative, if once derivative, mode of psychological thought and clinical procedure. Whichever the case, it is characteristic of our increasingly ahistorical era that Kohut’s origins in and prolonged adherence to the classical Freudian mainstream have been largely forgotten and his innovative ideas seen as revolutionary rather than evolutionary revisions of traditional views.Rubovits-Seitz, who was closely associated with Kohut for many years, takes it as his mission in this volume to correct these misconceptions and to demonstrate the continuity of Kohut’s thought with the classical Freudian corpus. His principal vehicle for doing so is the presentation of on-the-spot synopses of the series of lectures on psychoanalytic psychology given by Kohut to students at the Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis in 1958–1960, several years before Kohut’s turn to self psychology. Already known as a gifted teacher and theoretician, Kohut sought in these lectures to explicate Freud’s evolving theoretical views and, in particular, to clarify the often confusing complexity of Freud’s metapsychological concepts. Considering as he did that Freud’s fundamental contribution was his demonstration of the nature and power of unconscious mentation and its relation to consciousness, Kohut traced with great clarity the progression and modification of these constructs from the treatment of Anna O and Studies on Hysteria(1) through The Interpretation of Dreams(2) to the final reformulation in “Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety” (3).Kohut’s Freudian Vision includes a paper, “Concepts and Theories of Psychoanalysis,” jointly prepared in 1963 by Kohut and Rubovits-Seitz, that spells out, elaborates on, and clarifies the themes encapsulated in the preceding synopsis of Freud’s views. Rubovits-Seitz describes how Kohut’s precision of language and his insistence on absolute clarity of expression delayed the completion of this essay, in which one can see the seeds of Kohut’s later ideas beginning to sprout among the metapsychological thicket. In particular, he elaborates at some length his notion of optimal frustration as the key to healthy development and, far more than Freud, the direct correlation between the quality of parental response and formative childhood experience.The book concludes with Rubovits-Seitz’ discussion of the continuities he perceives between the essentials of Freudian theory and Kohut’s later theories on narcissism and self psychology. Acknowledging the differences between the two, he, like Kohut himself, maintains that “at the level of basic methods and concepts the continuities between self psychology and traditional psychoanalysis are as significant as their differences” (p. 164). “Kohut himself stressed that self psychology adds something to traditional analysis; it does not substitute for it” (p. 165).It is here, of course, that the locus of controversy lies. It is doubtless true that in certain respects Kohut’s mature work builds on Freud’s basic discoveries; in fact, Kohut’s depictions of particular patterns of narcissistic transference have been widely accepted and integrated into mainstream analytic thought. Kohut’s abandonment of Freud’s metapsychology, after years of struggle, was shared, and in some cases anticipated, by a number of more classically oriented analysts, notably George Klein, Merton Gill, and Roy Schafer. In his last statements, however, as Gedo (4) put it in his critical review, Kohut (and with him many of his followers) “put forth the claim that the appropriate end point of…psychoanalytic treatment…is the erection of compensatory mental structures” and stated that “he wished to replace insight with empathy as the primary goal of the therapeutic enterprise” (p. 416). Although Rubovits-Seitz maintains the position that Kohut restricted his technical innovations to the treatment of “narcissistic disorders,” it seems clear that, at the end at least, Kohut included all manner of psychopathologies as “disorders of the self.”In the current ecumenical trend that seems to have invaded psychoanalysis, self psychology is being embraced, along with a number of other schools—interpersonal, intersubjective, object relational—once considered heretical or deviant by some. This may well prove to be for the good; it certainly opens possibilities for a more dispassionate exchange of views and collaborative investigational efforts. In this spirit, Rubovits-Seitz’ slender book may help to bridge some gaps and to remind members of the different psychoanalytic persuasions of their common roots.By Philip F.D. Rubovits-Seitz. Hillsdale, N.J., Analytic Press, 1999, 234 pp., $49.95.

Psychoanalysis: Clinical and Theoretical.

Psychoanalysis: Clinical and Theoretical.

Discussion of Dr. Patrick Zimmerman's article on Merton Gill's contributions to the evolution of psychoanalysis: A memorial commentary on Transitions in psychoanalysis.

Discussion of Dr. Patrick Zimmerman's article on Merton Gill's contributions to the evolution of psychoanalysis: A memorial commentary on Transitions in psychoanalysis.

Merton Gill: In Appreciation

Merton Gill: In Appreciation

Hereditary transmission in Siberian Shamanism and the concept of the reality of legends

Belief in the hereditary transmission of shaman's gift is common to all Siberian shamanism. One can find corresponding motifs in Nganasan shamanism as well as in Tuvinian one. Often there is impossible to become a shaman without having shamans-ancestors in family. Sometimes they are namely the spirits of shamans-ancestors, who at first reveal themselves to the devotee and force him to shamanize. More frequently they are supernormal beings, who were in close relations with them - for instance former helping spirits of a shaman-ancestor. Gilyak researcher Taksami wrote: The boy named Koinyt, who's father - the shaman - died not long ago, fell asleep after noon and began suddenly to toss about and cry, repeating typical shouts of shamans. After waking he looked pale and tired. In dream he saw two spirits - a man and a woman, who said: Before we played with your father, now we would play with you. (Taksami 1981, 167) Belief in the hereditary transmission of shaman's gift was firm among several peoples in Siberia. For that very reason children in famous shaman families, who desired not to become shamans, fell ill and lived as mentally or physically diseased persons. For example Nikolai Agitshev, son of the famous Ostyak-Samoyedic shaman, who worked in 1930-is together with linguist G. Prokofyev. Last years of his life Nikolai spent in loneliness, made wooden idols and fed them. (Prokofyeva 1981, 45-46) In the present paper we attempt to explain some aspects of the belief in the hereditary transmission of shaman's talent. Associating the shaman trance with a hypnotic state, we proceed from the definition and general causes of origin of an altered state of consciousness as formulated by Arnold Ludwig (Ludwig 1968, 69) and the analysis of spirit possession given by Sheila Walker. latter shows, elaborating on Merton Gill's and Margaret Brenman's psychoanalytical approach to hypnosis (Gill, Brenman 1961), that hypnosis and possession represent different forms of the same phenomenon - regression in the service of the ego (Walker 1972, 26-51). Together with Walker, we can say, that in many cultures the hypnotists need not to be a person. external pressure that influences the individual and his own conscious and subconscious motives, based on different religious ideas, create a subsystem of the ego, which is the supernatural being that possesses an individual. After that, we shall come from psychoanalysis to psychology and try to explain the process of origin of the shaman's sickness, relying on the notion of the generalized realityorientation borrowed from Roland Shor. He termed so a structured frame of reference that characterizes a normal state of consciousness and supports, interprets and gives meaning to all the experience of an individual. (Shor 1959, 585) Shor stated that hypnosis is a complex of two processes, one of which is the construction of a special, temporary orientation and the other is the relative fading of the generalized reality-orientation into non-functional unawareness. (A.-L. Siikala's resume of theses of Shor - Siikala 1978, 50) To mark the temporary orientation that enables possession (or, more narrowly, the shaman's sickness), we are using the term reality of legends. This is a system which springs from religious images transmitted by tradition and which arises onto generalized reality-orientation in some cases of altered state of consciousness. Applying it, we state that the shaman's sickness common among the Siberian peoples represents an acute manifestation of the shaman's world induced by an activation of the reality of legends and caused by any event or provocation that can be interpreted appropriately. novice is possessed not only by one particular supernatural being but the whole world beyond with its inhabitants. Although familiar

On transference: developmental and clinical considerations.

Following a short historical overview of the evolution of the concept of transference, the factors involved in this process are examined. The developmental or dynamic aspects of transference, that is, its illusory character defined by the "potential space" within which transference develops, and the importance of the holding environment at the early stages of therapy for an optimal development of transference are discussed. To understand resistances, Merton Gill's distinction of resistances to the awareness of the transference, and resistances to the resolution of the transference are particularly relevant. Finally, the concept of transference neurosis is focused upon. Detailed clinical vignettes are given to illustrate the points made. Although the clinical material is taken from sessions of patients in analysis the theoretical implications pertaining to the transference are equally applicable to the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It is in this spirit that throughout the paper the terms "therapeutic" and "analytic" are used interchangeably.

Pictures of Treatment by Gill and Schafer

Roy Schafer and Merton Gill evoke two historically distinguished images of psychoanalytic treatment, one showing analysis elaborating life histories, and the other picturing the analyst as stirring transference embers into flame. A close examination of their implied theories of therapeutic action suggests that they mainly differ on whether allusions to the analyst are often localized in certain gestures or are always uniformly distributed throughout the patient's presentation. Because of this theoretical difference, these authors use different means to invite new experience, and they weigh differently the advantage of having a firm guide to turning-points in behavior against the advantage of maintaining an unconfinable curiosity.

Analysis of the transference: Implications for theory and research

(1984). Analysis of the transference: Implications for theory and research. Psychoanalytic Inquiry: Vol. 4, Commentaries on Merton Gill's Analysis of Transference, pp. 429-442.

The inevitability of interaction

(1984). The inevitability of interaction. Psychoanalytic Inquiry: Vol. 4, Commentaries on Merton Gill's Analysis of Transference, pp. 413-428.

On Reading Psychoanalytically

THE RELATIONSHIP between the theory and the practice of psychoanalysis is presently in the state Thomas Kuhn calls a poor fit. Roy Schafer, George Klein, Robert Holt, Merton Gill, and Benjamin Rubenstein are among many analytic theorists who have expressed discomfort with the various metapsychological of the mind, and the roots of these models in nineteenth century biology, neurology, and physics. The old models are felt to have decreasing explanatory value for the data of psychoanalysis (that is, what goes on in the mind of the analyst, and in his consulting room). Criticisms of psychoanalytic metapsychology must inevitably affect those of us who attempt to apply psychoanalysis to the study and teaching of literature. Like the analysts, we literary scholars and teachers must sooner or later recognize that the aspect of psychoanalysis which remains most nearly constant and most vital in the face of sweeping theoretical criticism is the analytic process itself: the ability of the analyst and the analvsand to establish a unique human alliance which is oriented to the analyst's empathy, on the one hand, and to the analysand's mental processes, on the other. I will not attempt to summarize here the criticisms of Freudian metapsychology, or the efforts to create new hypotheses and models for analytic theorists. Instead, I will point out that the study of literature is currently in a situation similar to that of psychoanalysis. A poor fit exists between literary theory and the data of our field. In particular, literary theorists are uncomfortable with questions of literary epistomology. How does a reader know literature? Where does literary meaning reside? In the time of the New Criticism literary meaning was believed to inhere in the text (that is, the object). Partly because of the influence of psychoanalysis on literary studies the philosophical position of the New Critics has largely collapsed (though not, fortunately, their emphasis on close reading). David Bleich (and following Bleich, Norman Holland) have established what Bleich calls a stance with regard to literary epistomology.1 Bleich's subjective paradigm holds that meaning inheres not in the text but in the reader. The shift from objectivist to subjectivist position, following the ancient dualism of Western philosophy, coincides with a shift in the philosophy of science from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries-the same shift which has made Freud's metapsychology seem archaic. But despite the efforts of Bleich and Hol-

The Initial Interview in Psychiatric Practice (with phonograph records). By Merton Gill, Richard Newman, Frederick C. Redlich, in collaboration with Margaret Sommers. New York: International Universities Press, 1954. 423 pp. $6.00

The Initial Interview in Psychiatric Practice (with phonograph records). By Merton Gill, Richard Newman, Frederick C. Redlich, in collaboration with Margaret Sommers. New York: International Universities Press, 1954. 423 pp. $6.00

The Initial Interview in Psychiatric Practice by Merton Gill, Richard Newman and Fredrick C. Redlich

The Initial Interview in Psychiatric Practice by Merton Gill, Richard Newman and Fredrick C. Redlich