Psychoanalytic Sessions Research Articles

Commentary on Dr. Riccardo Lombardi’s “Three Psychoanalytic Sessions”

(2004). Commentary on Dr. Riccardo Lombardi’s “Three Psychoanalytic Sessions”. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly: Vol. 73, No. 3, pp. 793-799.

Commentary on Dr. Riccardo Lombardi’s “Three Psychoanalytic Sessions”

Commentary on Dr. Riccardo Lombardi’s “Three Psychoanalytic Sessions”

Consciousness and the Novel: Connected Essays

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewsFull AccessConsciousness and the Novel: Connected EssaysSharon Packer, M.D.Sharon PackerSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:1 Nov 2003https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.54.11.1554AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail Once upon a time, psychiatrists discussed the thought-disordered dialogues of James Joyce as glibly as they discuss dopamine transmitters today. Long before they conversed about cytochrome P-450 inducers, they garnished grand rounds presentations with literary allusions. It was a point of pride that Freud earned the Goethe Prize not for science but for literature. Then the "doctors of the mind" entered the "decade of the brain," and times changed.David Lodge's Consciousness and the Novel: Connected Essays is a throwback to the best of those bygone times. Lodge never romanticizes the days when psychiatry was more art than science but, rather, attempts to update his topic by talking about current controversies surrounding cognitive science, neuroimaging studies, and consciousness.Intended for literary types rather than for mental health professionals, the book has a style that is easy and accessible. It reflects the author's dual skills as professor and novelist. Lodge energetically explains concepts such as "memes," "intertextuality," "postmodernism," and "modernist." Still, most psychiatrists will find themselves limping behind the literary lingo, hobbled by an aching awareness of how much has transpired it literary criticism since their college days. Some will decide that literature is best left to specialists and will put the book aside. Those who persevere will be rewarded with a renewed appreciation of the interface between literature and psychiatry.Each chapter is a self-contained unit about a specific author, which makes the book easily adaptable to teaching seminars. My favorite—on film adaptations of the novels of Henry James—tells us that James' novels "succeed" as cinema because filmmakers delete inner dialogue that captures "consciousness." They instead concentrate on surface action, costume, pageantry, and historical sites to appeal to visually oriented film audiences who want strong story lines.The quotes from Kierkegaard are especially valuable for readers treating participants in 12-step programs who "live in the now" and refuse to reflect on the past. Lodge's updates on Philip Roth will appeal to those who came of age during the free speech movement of the 1960s, when Portnoy's Complaint appeared. Roth's kvetchy character recounted his life experiences in a single tell-all psychoanalytic session, thus mirroring the political ethos of the era and simultaneously starting the trend of memoir that continues to this day. When Lodge reminds us that D. H. Lawrence's depiction of the Oedipus complex in Sons and Lovers was a self-conscious attempt to incorporate Freudian theory, he makes us realize that psychiatry influenced literature as much as literature influenced psychiatry.Readers who demand "multicultural inclusiveness" or "political correctness" will not find those qualities in this book. The discussion of Dickens proceeds without a moment's mention of the serious social ills or public health perils that Dickens detailed. E. M. Forster's concerns with consciousness are dissected without regard to his link to colonialism. There are a few quick allusions to women writers, but none were deemed to merit an entire chapter. However, readers who are looking to learn about consciousness and the novel—and just that—will be glad they began with David Lodge's book.Dr. Packer, the author of Dreams in Myth, Medicine, and Movies, is a psychiatrist in private practice and adjunct professor of media studies at the New School for Social Research in New York City.by David Lodge; Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2002, 320 pages, $24.95 FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 54Issue 11 November 2003Pages 1554-1554 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 November 2003 Published in print 1 November 2003

Psychoanalysis, a gay spatial science?

Psychoanalysis is primarily a praxis devoted to curing psychic distress. While human geographers are well acquainted with the theoretical insights of psychoanalysis, there are few spatial analyses of how its theories are put to work in its clinical methods, techniques and practices. The thesis of this paper is that an investigation of the intense spatialities in psychoanalytic sessions can further understandings of psychoanalytic theory and its relevance to critical geographic inquiry. I argue that the transferential forces of play, desire and affect in Donald Winnicott and Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic treatment of analysands is a realization of, or at least comparable to what Friedrich Nietzsche called a 'gay science'. In proposing a historical precedent to psychoanalysis, I draw on a constellation of meanings associated with the category 'gay' in order to map some spatial nuances of psychoanalytic praxis. The paper focuses on the case studies of Winnicott's 're-mothering' of a male analysand and contemporary Lacanian analyses of hysterics and autistic children. In striving for clinical efficacy, these psychoanalyses utilize, on the one hand, the gaiety of joy, love, desire and mothering, and, on the other hand, the not-so-gay, yet therapeutic, forces of pain, aggressiveness, separation and mourning. The paper concludes by suggesting future directions for gay psycho-spatial analyses through a brief appraisal of the interdisciplinary social theoretical literature of the 'new Lacanians', in particular the work of Slavoj Z iz ek.

Preparing and delivering interpretations in psychoanalytic interaction

The article examines conversational practices through which the analyst and patient in classical psychoanalysis deal with what is understood to be the patient's unconscious. It focuses on the interpretations of statements with which the analyst gives new meaning to material provided by the patient. In psychoanalysis, consecutive topics introduced by the patient - associations - are seen as providing cues to the unconscious dynamics of his or her mind. Interpretation refers to the process by which the analyst explores links between associations, points to their underlying reasons and, when appropriate, communicates them to the patient. Interpreting is examined from the conversation analytic perspective, as a feature of institutional interaction. Based on analyses of audiotaped psychoanalytic sessions, I show that interpretative talk is woven into the patient's talk through a particular development, the interpretative trajectory. I also examine the conversational devices analysts use at different stages of this trajectory in order to present their interpretative contributions as grounded in the patient's own associations. In this step-by-step manner, the analyst builds a case for the interpretation by invoking a puzzle: an accountable or enigmatic issue. The interpretation, then, presents a possible way of dealing with this puzzle.

Reflections on psychoanalytic listening

What are the factors influencing analytic listening? This issue is discussed with reference to Schäfer, Bollas and Hamilton and illustrated by a psychoanalytic session which can be listened to in different ways. The author refers to Hamilton's description of two main contradictions between (1) a total versus a relative view of transference and between (2) the uncovering of psychic truth versus interpretations as hypotheses. To this, the author adds one further contradiction between (3) analytic „appliers” versus analytic „explorers”. When analysts listen more to their inner maps and principles than to associations in the clinical material, they risk shutting off from new discoveries. It is suggested that different styles of handling clinical material really become like two different professions that need to be integrated if analysts want to become emancipated discoverers instead of guardians of their own maps.

Narrative Derivatives of Alpha Elements: Clinical Implications

The author considers both the psychoanalytic field and the ways in which the characters of a psychoanalytic session can be understood. He then develops one of Bion's ideas, the dream in the waking state, by isolating the derivatives of such dreams or rather the alpha elements they consist of. The author implies a theory of technique which takes account of all the signals "the bi-personal field" gives the analyst about the functioning of the analytic couple by means of "narrative derivatives". This enables continual changes to be made in interpretation

Extending the Field of Psychoanalytic Change: Exploratory–Assertive Motivation, Self-Efficacy, and the New Analytic Role for Action

Psychoanalysts' interest in the need for exploration and assertiveness, originally investigated empirically during the 1940s and 1950s, has recently been revived (Lichtenberg, 1989; Lichtenberg, Lachmann, and Fosshage, 1992, 1996). Exploratory–assertive motivation has been seen as a basic motive that interacts with several other forms of motivation to fulfill and regulate the person's basic needs, direct interpersonal relations, and maintain the organization of the self. In this paper, it is reasoned that recognizing and systematically and actively integrating the pervasive influence of this powerful motivational system outside, as well as within, psychoanalytic sessions can usefully redefine and broaden the scope and reshape the thrust of many psychoanalytic interventions. Three specific areas of psychoanalytic technique are probed in relation to exploratory–assertive motivation: enhancing patients' feelings of self-efficacy, shading interpretations toward action, and promoting adaptive coping skills. Patients' achieving enhanced feelings of self-efficacy—gaining confidence in their ability to perform—deserves to be elevated, explicitly, as an important aim of psychoanalysis. Clinical illustrations are offered.

Teaching with Tape-Recorded Psychoanalysis

The pedagogic advantages of the study of psychoanalytic process with the help of tape-recorded psychoanalytic sessions is described, with some reference to others’ experiences with recording drawn from the literature. Illustration is provided through reference to the reactions of fourth- and fifth-year psychoanalytic candidates to such samplings of one patient’s recorded analysis.

The Relevance and Perversity of Psychodynamic Interventions in Consulting and Action Research

An attempt is made to clarify the nature and relevance of the psychodynamic perspective for the work of action researchers and organization consultants. Since this perspective is grounded in psychoanalytic theory and clinical psychology, some important distinctions need to be made between the various work-domains of the consultant/action researcher and the classic individual psychoanalytic session. The author argues that without explicit reference to observable data, interventions may in fact pervert rather than facilitate learning and development. This argument is illustrated by vignettes grouped together under: (a) questionable interventions in group-relations conferences, (b) self-reflections and interpretations as a cult, and (c) the individual in interaction with the group.

Emotion-abstraction patterns in verbatim protocols: a new way of describing psychotherapeutic processes.

The goal of the study was to develop a computer-aided system that is able to identify key moments in transcripts from psychoanalytic sessions and to provide an adequate theory of change. The term key moment refers to 1 or more sessions of a treatment or to segments of a session that are seen as clinically important and often considered to be a turning point or breakthrough and that mirror points of insight as they occur in the course of the psychotherapeutic process. It will be shown that patterns built of combinations of the content analysis variable "emotion tone" and "abstraction" allow for describing therapeutic cycles including key moments. The method is shown successfully for a single case and for a sample of improved and not improved patients.

“Center-to-center” relatedness between analyst and patient

Abstract The distinction between having mode and being mode would seem to be the basis of the Frommian clinical approach, which finds its main application in the “center-to-center” relatedness between analyst and patient. The analyst can understand the patient because he/she experiences what the patient experiences. The dialogue is based on emotional and conceptual responses and reactions which are reciprocally communicated; both identities come into play. Psychoanalytic treatment which is not inspired by biophilia can only compile an inventory of data upon data, imposing interpretations and reconstructions. Biophilia makes psychoanalysis an art because it is applied to living things. The psychoanalytic session can save itself from the having mode by addressing the patient's living memory, which represents the past relived in the present, according to the being mode. The author comments on a psychoanalytic session.

Narratives and Counseling, Part 1: From Analysis of the past to Stories about It

It is proposed that the present practice of psychotherapy and counseling would be enriched by introducing a narrative model of the psychotherapeutic process. Recent contributions supporting the importance of a narrative (story) based model are discussed. Theorists briefly treated are: Schafer (1980, 1983), with his narrative interpretation of Freud's major concepts and a narrative understanding of the psychoanalytic session; Spence (1982), who introduced the notion of narrative truth as distinct from historical truth for understanding a client's past, an approach that supports non-psychoanalytic narrative interpretation; and Viederman (1983; Viederman & Perry, 1980), who used short life histories for interpreting relatively healthy clients facing acute crises. Within this context and the narrative literary theory of Frye (1957), a Christian narrative approach to counseling is introduced.

Le lien d’emprise

The Link of Mastery Through the analysis of a psycho dramatic psychoanalytic session with anorexic patient, the author examines the hypothesis according to which domination is partly responsable for instigating relationships. Transformability of object and experience of satisfaction are two fundamental factors where one begins the domination of life as opposed to the cold and sterile self-domination of the anorexic.

The Function of Humor in a Four-Year-Old

A child's attempt at humor in the midst of a psychoanalytic session is examined. A joke is told that began as a dream which the 4-year-old analysand attempted to modify. The joke is not entirely successful from a formal standpoint. This "failure" is examined from the point of view of the anxiety that may have derailed the joke and the developmental immaturity that may have compromised it. A developmental line of the symbolic process is suggested, double meanings and multiple meanings becoming more complex as development proceeds.

Narratology and Oral Poetry: The Case of Homer

Headed by Barthes (Innombrables sont les recits du monde), narratologists claim as the object of their study a vast and heterogeneous corpus of texts: newspaper reports, history books, novels, films, comic strips, pantomime, dance, gossip, psychoanalytic sessions, etc. (Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 31).1 However, the theoretical apparatus of narratology has mainly been developed on the basis of one specimen of narrative text: the novel. This is understandable from both a histori-

Memories and Hallucinations: A Memoir (review)

Reviewed by: Memories and Hallucinations: A Memoir Charles Hebert D. M. Thomas . Memories and Hallucinations: A Memoir. New York: Viking, 1988. 195 pp. $18.95. In Memories and Hallucinations, a provocative memoir loosely woven around a series of imaginatively reconstructed psychoanalytic sessions, D. M. Thomas struggles to come to terms with the complex relationship between life and art. This relationship terrifies him, he says—yet clearly he finds it intriguing also. Thomas describes art as "the fatal Oedipal crossroads where dreams, love and death meet." He claims that many of his imaginative creations actually come to life. When he shares a new poem about a mauled nestling with his students for the first time, an unwitting colleague enters the classroom cradling an injured nestling. Additionally, prophetic dreams, clairvoyant predictions, and fears produced by the unconscious often become reality in frightening coincidences. Thomas relates numerous incidents throughout his book to affirm his belief that, for the creative individual, life imitates art more frequently than vice versa, and the artistic creator must somehow assume responsibility for the result. In a way this book is a self-exorcism of the demons that have obsessed Thomas all his life. Using his Freudian therapist as a guide, Thomas journeys with her through vividly recollected episodes of his entire life that take him from a supposedly blissful childhood (the notable exception being a disastrous sojourn in Australia away from his beloved Cornwall) to his undergraduate days at Oxford and his subsequent work as a translator, including his trips behind the Iron Curtain. In this soul-wrenching process, as he painfully grapples with the deaths of his mother and father and the suicide of a close friend, he analyzes himself as poet, novelist, translator, academic, and family man. Thomas masterfully employs the guiding analyst as a foil to his bouts of alternating self-denigration and self-justification while examining his often contradictory roles as both son and father, faithful adulterer and unfaithful husband, and numerous other perplexing relationships experienced during his diverse voyages. At the same time he also reveals some wonderful insights into the creative process involved in some of his other works, including his brilliant novel The White Hotel. One method that Thomas uses effectively is the poetry that he intersperses throughout the book which illustrates another aspect of this multiply divided soul, whether he is actually a poet or a prose writer. As a serious artist, he feels a compelling need to reconcile divisions in a life filled with diversities. Even though success seems always to elude him in these quests, the subsequent creations are extraordinary. This captivating study of the intricate machinations of a superb but neurotic artist's mind is an unusual work, as one would expect from as unconventional an author as D. M. Thomas. It provokes at times, challenges at others, but always fascinates. It will interest readers wanting to know something about the mind behind Thomas' complex and disturbing fiction, but it will also reward anyone desiring a well-written, honest exploration of a talented artist's psyche. [End Page 629] Charles Hebert University of South Carolina Copyright © 1990 Purdue Research Foundation

Lexical differences between working and resistance sessions in psychoanalysis.

Divided 25 psychoanalytic sessions with a single patient into 10 working sessions, 5 neutral sessions, and 10 resistance sessions on the basis of ratings by psychoanalysts. Using the Regressive Imagery Dictionary on keypunched transcripts of these sessions, significantly more primary process content and less secondary process content was found in the patient's working-session speech, as opposed to resistance-session speech. Lexical diversity was also higher during working sessions. Results are compared with those obtained with other types of verbal material and are discussed in terms of psychoanalytic views on the process of psychotherapy.

Fictive Psyches: The Psychological Melodrama in 40s Films

Despite the increasing importance of a deconstructive approach for film analysis, the fictive psyches of screen characters still lure film analysts to apply psychoanalysis to them as if they were patients. The characters are, after all, endowed with a psyche, with a past, with disorders (by the narrative); the duration of the film parallels the psychoanalytic session in which the patient speaks while the analyst listens and observes. In the light of his or her study, the analyst writes the case history replete with oedipal crises, fetishes or hysteria. If there is more than one film, the sessions can be multiplied to assume a greater resemblance to a real analysis. If the character changes identities slightly from film to film within the body of filmic fictions under analysis, as in the case of Hitchcock's heroes or the evil women of film noir, so much the better, for the analyst can deftly disrobe all disguises in favor of a core identity. Further, this analysis of the fictive psyche as real patient can be closely linked to traditional methods of film criticism and history such as auteurist criticism, speculation on audience identification or historical readings of national identities or cultural mythologies. One might think that structuralism would interfere, break the decoy, by presenting characters in fiction as constructions of the semic codes. From a structuralist perspective, the fictive psyches appear as bejeweled nightingales whose spring-wound mechanisms are soon

Analysis of Transference, Vol. I: Theory and Technique. Psychological Issues Monograph 53; Analysis of Transference, Vol. II: Studies of Nine Audio-Recorded Psychoanalytic Sessions. Psychological Issues Monograph 54

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article ArticleNo AccessAnalysis of Transference, Vol. I: Theory and Technique. Psychological Issues Monograph 53; Analysis of Transference, Vol. II: Studies of Nine Audio-Recorded Psychoanalytic Sessions. Psychological Issues Monograph 54SCOTT D. JONESSCOTT D. JONESSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:1 Apr 2006https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.140.10.1372-aAboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail "Analysis of Transference, Vol. I: Theory and Technique. Psychological Issues Monograph 53; Analysis of Transference, Vol. II: Studies of Nine Audio-Recorded Psychoanalytic Sessions. Psychological Issues Monograph 54." American Journal of Psychiatry, 140(10), pp. 1372-a–1373 Access content To read the fulltext, please use one of the options below to sign in or purchase access. Personal login Institutional Login Sign in via OpenAthens Purchase Save for later Item saved, go to cart PPV Articles - American Journal of Psychiatry $35.00 Add to cart PPV Articles - American Journal of Psychiatry Checkout Please login/register if you wish to pair your device and check access availability. Not a subscriber? Subscribe Now / Learn More PsychiatryOnline subscription options offer access to the DSM-5 library, books, journals, CME, and patient resources. This all-in-one virtual library provides psychiatrists and mental health professionals with key resources for diagnosis, treatment, research, and professional development. Need more help? PsychiatryOnline Customer Service may be reached by emailing [email protected] or by calling 800-368-5777 (in the U.S.) or 703-907-7322 (outside the U.S.). FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited byNone Volume 140Issue 10 October 1983Pages 1372-a-1373 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 April 2006 Published in print 1 October 1983