Psychoanalytic Technique Research Articles

Field, Process, and Metaphor

The concepts of field and metaphor are necessarily related, first, because the very idea of the field is a metaphor; second, because metaphors generate a field in themselves, when considered as a form of mental activity. The mind works in terms of two logics and two processes: the secondary process, which is verbal, realistic, logical, and scientific; and the primary process, which is iconic, fantastic, metaphorical, and poetic. The logic of the secondary process is asymmetrical and that of the primary process is symmetrical; the confluence and articulation of both is bilogical. The analogical synthesis of both logics gives the fullest integration of the human mind. At the unconscious level, there is no individuation and no differences, but rather a primeval fusion of subject, object, and environment; this is the psychological and logical basis of the bipersonal field and process, which include both patient and analyst in an evolving dynamic whole. There is necessary complementarity between psycho-analysis and group analysis, as there was between the Barangers’ (2008) concept of the dynamic field and their teacher Enrique Pichon-Rivière's (1971) concept of the spiral process. These ideas originated from the group-analytic experience and found their way into the theory of psychoanalytic technique.

Sullivan and the intersubjective perspective

The author sees H.S. Sullivan's (1892–1949) interpersonal theory as the best theoretical framework for the contemporary intersubjective perspective in psychoanalysis and presents the former in its pluridimensional articulation. After having extended Freud's therapeutic approach to psychotic patients, Sullivan developed both a developmental psychology and a psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic technique based on the “interpersonal field” as the basic unit of study. To the pluridimensional character of his theory also belongs its application to the cultural and social aspects of our personal identity. Having the contemporary psychoanalytic authors who shaped the intersubjective perspective limited themselves to the clinical dimension, Sullivan's interpersonal theory can still provide the theoretical framework that any psychoanalytic perspective needs.

DESIRE ON AND OFF THE COUCH

The concept of desire is potentially useful and underutilized for elucidating and understanding psychoanalytic material and informing psychoanalytic technique. It can be employed as a lens for viewing and clarifying diverse clinical phenomenon and other mental productions. One way of defining desire as a conceptual framework as applied to psychoanalytic theory is to refract it into three components: (1) love (emotional desire), (2) sex (physical desire), and (3) passion (other manifestations of desire). These different aspects of desire are manifest in and of themselves and as enhancements of one another. Focusing on each of them as manifest in the transference/countertransference relationship in analysis can facilitate a patient becoming more aware of psychological conflicts and working them through in analysis. This paper presents and discusses a case study in which these different aspects of desire are employed and analyzed.

Winnicott's Contribution to my Psychoanalytic Development

I describe how Winnicott's concept of the whole person, play in the therapeutic relationship, and the necessity to hide the real self enabled him to make dramatic changes in his clinical theory and psychoanalytic technique that filled large gaps between how clinical analysis is described and what actually takes place.

Keep Research Weird: Psychoanalytic Techniques and Fieldwork in the Study of Religion

Abstract Contemporary ethnographic fieldwork in the study of religion has made a relational turn. Research in this field is often explicitly conceived as a relationship between scholars and those they seek to understand. Knowledge is inter-subjective, the field agrees, and the only reasonable way to move forward is in open acknowledgement of this through attentiveness to the relational character of research. This paper aims to augment this relational turn by considering and addressing the risks it entails. Drawing on research experience among Catholics in Boston, it identifies normalization as a potential liability entailed in the relational understanding of research. Opportunities for enriched understanding may not emerge if researchers prioritize smooth relations with those they get to know. The paper explores the possibility that clinical psychoanalytic techniques of listening, while likely to make research relationships “weird,” may be an asset in the search for understanding in the ethnographic study of religion.

Thirty Years On: K.R. Eissler's Interview with Joan Riviere (1953)

In her interview Joan Riviere talked about her analysis with Freud and her translation of his writings. Other subjects were her discovery of Melanie Klein's work the question of psychoanalytic technique, her relationship with Anna Freud viz. her views on child analysis, and the confidentiality of this interview. With her well-known severity Riviere assessed Freud as analyst. She provided a testimony of his approach to training analyses.

Limites: a questão do manejo clínico hoje

Objetiva-se refletir sobre a necessidade de transformação na técnica psicanalítica, considerando o intrapsíquico e o intersubjetivo. A frequência de insucessos nos atendimentos indica a necessidade da discussão de novos parâmetros. A forma de abordar o tema buscou ultrapassar fronteiras entre as escolas psicanalíticas. Procurou-se caracterizar as manifestações subjetivas contemporâneas articulando-as às condições de oferta do trabalho analítico, visando eventuais ajustes no manejo clínico.

Combining Functional and Psychoanalytic Techniques, Using Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation (RAS) and Songwriting to Treat a Man with a Traumatic Brain Injury

A common dilemma for music therapists, particularly when treating the symptoms of neurological damage, is deciding whether to employ functional or psychotherapeutic treatment techniques (Jochims 2004). This paper discusses the process and outcomes of combining two different techniques as a short-term treatment with a man with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) who is transitioning from post acute into the community stage of rehabilitation. Beginning with a brief review of examples where other music therapists have used a combination of techniques in the treatment of TBI patients, I will continue with a case study describing the referral, assessment and treatment plan for the client, including the outcomes of the two main techniques and concluding with a discussion of the process, outcomes and some interpretation of the client’s responses within the six week period. Working with Will, a 35-year-old man with a TBI, sessions began using several techniques in order to assess his condition, establish goals and begin treatment. Following an initial four months of weekly music therapy we planned to employ two different techniques over a six week period with two different aims: 1. RAS to improve gait parameters, 2. song writing to help sustain motivation for RAS and to address adjustment, self-expression, identity and communication difficulties. This resulted in a highly motivating, holistic treatment plan that was structured, with clear goals and timescales. Sessions lasted for 70 minutes, with 50 minutes of RAS and pregait exercises, followed by 20 minutes spent working on a song: ‘Life After a Bike Crash (that I can’t remember having)’. The RAS programme was set up conjointly with a privately employed physiotherapist and also supported with a daily home programme of RAS and pregait exercises.

Psychoanalytic thinking in primary care: The Tavistock Psychotherapy Consultation model

This paper describes the conceptual underpinnings, structure and operations of a novel service, the City and Hackney Primary Care Psychotherapy Consultation Service – a service set up partly with the aim of addressing the needs of patients who present with ‘medically unexplained symptoms’. As part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, this service moves its clinical base, staff members and daily work, as well as the foundations of psychoanalytic thinking that define the Trust's work, into the heart of a community, and provides psychoanalytically informed clinical practice and consultation to patients and general practitioners in the City and Hackney, one of London's (and the UK's) most deprived and ethnically diverse boroughs. The authors describe the psychoanalytical underpinnings of the model, the design and structure of the service, patient demographics and preliminary outcome data, as well as an example of consultation work with general practitioners. The authors propose that psychoanalytic applications have a place in primary care and that psychoanalytic thinking can help general practitioners and patients alike, even when the clinical interventions offered are not solely based on psychoanalytic technique or therapeutic approaches. The paper concludes with thoughts about the model, its origins and its future.

Reflections on psychoanalytic technique with adolescents today: Pseudo‐pseudomaturity

The starting point for this paper is current observation of adolescents who seem unable to break the latency structure, making it difficult for the adolescence process to become established. These youngsters present with a specific set of characteristics which the author proposes to call ‘pseudo‐pseudomaturity’: they seem for the most part well adapted, with an absence of unconscious conflicts. However, they differ from Meltzer’s description of pseudomaturity in that the omnipotent attitude of dependence‐denying is not seen. On the contrary, they seem eager to take the opportunity to have the infantile true self accepted and contained before they can safely enter the process of adolescence, with all its turbulence. Some aspects of our culture are discussed in relation to the psychic configuration described. Using fragments from the analysis of a 19-year‐old patient, the paper looks at technical issues raised by these cases. There is an emphasis on the analyst’s own mental processes and the importance of being able to contain the emotional turbulence that cannot be sensed by the patient. The author sets out the different modalities suggested/tested/proposed in the analytic relationship in support of the transferential work. Some questions regarding how and when to make interpretations are also discussed. In these types of cases, the psychoanalytic process carries a two‐fold responsibility – to the patient and to society as a whole, in view of the creative potential that adolescents represent, essential for social change and growth.

O neutro em psicanálise: da técnica à ética

O presente artigo retoma a noção de neutralidade proveniente da técnica clínica psicanalítica, confrontando-a com noções próximas, tais como a neutralidade científica e o neutro na semiologia de Barthes. Procuramos demonstrar como tal noção descreve bem a postura analítica, exigida tanto do paciente (associação livre) quanto do analista (atenção flutuante), e como ela nasce na prática clínica freudiana, respondendo a problemas decorrentes dela. Assim, abordaremos os temas da hipnose e da sugestão, como também aqueles ligados à contra-transferência. Defenderemos, ainda, que a neutralidade não é apenas questão de técnica, mas é central para o entendimento da própria ética da psicanálise.

Herr Professor and His “Grand Vizir”

By taking a social psychological approach, this article seeks to offer an alternative perspective to the traditional psychoanalytic studies of Freud and Ferenczi's close personal and professional relationship, and the rift that occurred in the early 1930s. It is suggested that the socially constructed, divergent roles that these two men fulfilled in the psychoanalysis movement deeply influenced the dynamics of their relationship. It is further proposed that the ever-present, conflicted political interdependence that characterized Freud's and Ferenczi's home countries (Austria and Hungary, respectively) may have affected them differently, and contributed to their divergent attitudes towards power and other issues relevant to the development of psychoanalytic theory and technique, as well as how they related to one another personally.

Book Review: Psychoanalytic Technique Expanded: A Textbook on Psychoanalytic Treatment

Book Review: Psychoanalytic Technique Expanded: A Textbook on Psychoanalytic Treatment

“A Psychotherapy for the People”

The development of psychoanalytic technique can be traced in part to the dialogues between Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, dialogues that took place in the context of psychoanalysis's encounter with poverty and destitution in the wake of World War I. These dialogues, which served as precursors to contemporary, especially Relational, psychoanalysis, also inspired Freud's call for greater psychoanalytic engagement with the poorest and most vulnerable. This inspired the early psychoanalysts to “sharpen in all directions the sense of social justice” by engaging in political activism, experimenting with clinical technique, and by promoting short-term, more affordable treatments. The relevance of this history for clinical work with diverse populations will be discussed, and aspects of contemporary psychoanalysis (countertransference, enactment, new relational experience) will be understood in light of Freud and Ferenczi's responsiveness to the underprivileged.

An Operational Analysis of the Clinical Goals of Psychoanalytic Technique

An operational description is presented of the clinical goals of analytic technique shared by various analytic orientations. This operational schema of their similarities is then used to organize their differences. In this schema, analytic schools differ from one another in three areas: the kind of unconscious content looked for in uncovering; aspects of the process considered subject to direct intervention; and the most effective stance and interventions with which to pursue their shared analytic goals. Organizing the differences between approaches in the context of shared analytic process goals makes it possible to clarify implicit clinical assumptions and to develop empirical rather than theoretical clinical discussions between analytic orientations. Understanding the intent or purpose of an intervention is useful in comparing approaches, exploring clinical controversies, clarifying implicit clinical assumptions, and understanding approaches more deeply in their own terms.

Implicit Theories of Technique and the Values That Inspire Them

When the editor of this issue invited me to write about technique, I found myself drawn to a general consideration of the nature of technique, rather than to an overview of my own views about how to practice. This article concerns what seems to me to be the inevitability of multiple and implicit theories of technique in psychoanalysis. We are continuously in the process of formulating articulate versions of technical theories that have been implicit up to that point. Implicit technical theory is the source of all explicit technical theory. And implicit theory, in turn, is the expression of value positions that we often have not reflected on. It is our positions about what is good in life, so frequently unexamined, that underlie our theories of technique. Evaluation of technical theory requires that we identify the values that have inspired our theories, and that we then decide which of these purposes are most important to us, and which theories best accomplish them.

Comments on the Development of a Psychoanalytic Technique

The convergences and divergences in our techniques across analysts are, to me, the most fascinating phenomena in the field of clinical psychoanalysis. Although I assumed, before my psychoanalytic education, that I'd be learning about a standardized and monolithic technique, I've actually found much more divergence, and so I have become particularly interested in considering the how and why of divergences.

We Could Do Much Better With the Clinical Theory of Psychoanalysis

I argue that the clinical theory of psychoanalytic technique is flawed because of the absence of the conceptualization of the patient and analyst as whole people who are vital alive agencies. This flaw interferes with the effectiveness of psychoanalytic technique and limits the description of what actually takes place in psychoanalysis. It is then difficult to focus on the transformational changes in the present moment with its issues of closeness, intimacy and responsibility in an evolving self.

Comunicação e não Comunicação em Psicanálise: Abordagem de Seis Autores

A comunicação humana é um aspecto desenvolvido a partir dos estímulos iniciais do desenvolvimento emocional do bebê, na interação afetiva dele com sua mãe, à qual está fusionado. Nessa etapa, desenvolve-se uma comunicação silenciosa que NÃO deve ser desconsiderada. Tal comunicação é a mais primitiva e fundamental e deve continuar existindo no homem, pois é anterior à comunicação por meio da fala.

Inside and outside the window: Some fundamental elements in the theory of psychoanalytic technique

The underlying concern of this paper is that psychoanalysis as practised today is in danger of losing its specificity and so losing its way. The author suggests this is possible for three reasons: the problem analysts face in responding to the strong emotional demands the great majority of patients necessarily place on them, the unintended consequences of the apparent success of ‘here and now technique’ and the absence of good clinical theory. The paper mainly discusses the author’s ideas about some core elements of the clinical theory that all psychoanalysts must use when they are working and proposes (at the risk of being facile) some relatively simple heuristics related to them which are meant to be helpful. Recalling Kurt Lewin’s maxim that ‘there is nothing so practical as a good theory’, he will suggest that continuous reflection on how one is using theory in daily practice is highly practical, if the theory is good enough. Theory in fact is a necessary ‘third’ in psychoanalytic practice which, if kept in sufficient working order close enough to clinical experience, provides an ongoing and very necessary check on our sense of reality. But, of course, as a third it can, like reality itself, be the focus of both love and hate with equally problematic consequences. The paper starts with a clinical example of a difficult but apparently successful analysis reaching its end, which will be used throughout the paper to illustrate and elaborate the theoretical ideas set out.