Psychoanalytic Work Research Articles

The inheritance of silence in Cría cuervos/Raise Ravens (Saura 1976) and Julieta (Almodóvar 2016)

Looking specifically towards child figures who serve as witnesses of death and its afterlives, this article mobilizes Esther Rashkin’s psychoanalytic work on the phantom to analyse the inheritance of silence as trauma between the mother/daughter pairings presented in Carlos Saura’s Cría cuervos/Raise Ravens (1976) and Pedro Almodóvar’s Julieta (2016). As Ana in Cría cuervos and Antía in Julieta both grow up in the shadow of a parent’s death, they are forced to confront the haunting legacy of premature death and the paralysing presence of silence in their family histories. Saura’s Ana and Almodóvar’s Antía must challenge the previous generation’s secrets, which have shaped their upbringings, through the use of imagination and fantasy in order to combat the silences they were raised in, with the ultimate goal of constructing a new family narrative. By forging a new female voice through these child protagonists, Saura and Almodóvar present an enduring intergenerational project for redefining maternity and femininity in the post-Franco era.

The Origins of the Leading Edge in Kohut's Work.

This article traces the evolution of the concept of the leading edge in Kohut's work. The leading edge is defined as the growth-promoting dimension of the transference. The authors argue that although Kohut did not ever use the term explicitly in his writings-Marian Tolpin (2002), one of Kohut's gifted pupils, introduced the concept into the psychoanalytic literature in the form of the forward edge-the idea of the leading edge was already present in nascent form in Kohut's earliest papers and became ever more central as his psychology of the self evolved and the concept of the selfobject transference took center stage. Kohut, it is argued, could not fully develop the idea of working with the leading edge for fear of being accused of advocating for a corrective emotional experience in psychoanalytic treatment. However, in his posthumous empathy paper (1982) Kohut came as close as he could to endorsing the leading edge as pivotal in all psychoanalytic work.

A psicanálise: Entre a arte e a clínica

In the center of Psychoanalysis and art surrounds points that are related to each other. During this article it will be analyzed a little about history of art and artists, focusing on the writer Leon Tolstoi, in which will be perceived a similar thought between Freud and Tostoi. Later on, there will appear notions of art in the psychoanalytic works of Freud and Lacan. Finally, in the topic implications of art for psychoanalysis, there will be perceptible approximations between such fields of knowledge. Thus, in essence, this entire article intends to update the theoretical, technical and ethical references of how art acts as a source of inspiration for the psychoanalytic clinic

Análise dos veículos elétricos no estado do Espírito Santo: Uma visão econômica e ambiental

In the center of Psychoanalysis and art surrounds points that are related to each other. During this article it will be analyzed a little about history of art and artists, focusing on the writer Leon Tolstoi, in which will be perceived a similar thought between Freud and Tostoi. Later on, there will appear notions of art in the psychoanalytic works of Freud and Lacan. Finally, in the topic implications of art for psychoanalysis, there will be perceptible approximations between such fields of knowledge. Thus, in essence, this entire article intends to update the theoretical, technical and ethical references of how art acts as a source of inspiration for the psychoanalytic clinic

Fear of blackness: Understanding white supremacy as an inverted relationship to oppression

How can psychoanalytic theory help make sense of the social and psychic dimensions of white supremacy? This paper seeks to make sense of the relationships between identity, privilege, and oppression among white Americans. Drawing on decades of social science and psychoanalytic work on race and racism, it argues that the normativity and invisibility of whiteness is integral to the ego identity of white Americans. The cohesion of this internal identity becomes threatened by any challenge to this invisibility, resulting in an inverted internal identification with oppression and privilege.

The pandemic crisis as a crisis of the symbolic order and psychoanalytic work regarding imaginary objects

The title of the article already indicates the structure of the text. In the first part, it is argued that the Corona crisis is a crisis as it challenges the symbolic order in many ways. The virus becomes an imaginary object that is uncanny. In the second part, psychoanalytic work on the uncanny object (how is it dealt with?) and work with the uncanny object (how can work be done under the conditions of the uncanny?) are discussed.

How Much Electricity Can a Household Appliance Tolerate? The Litmus Test for the Analytic Field

ABSTRACT The author approaches his commentary on these original and interesting articles from the perspective of Bion’s psychoanalytic theory. Two of the pillars of Bion’s thought were surely the concepts of transformations and waking dream thought which enable the alphabetizing of sensorial stimuli in real time and narrative deconstruction and de-concretization, toward an expansion of the oneiric dimension of the psychoanalytic work. The author’s observations are made from within the structure called the analytic field in which the session appears as a dream of minds where the figures that come to life during the session are not treated as historically real characters or internal objects but as characters which express the emotions shared by analyst and patient.

More Than Simply Human: Intersectionality in Psychoanalytic Theory, Practice, and Establishment

In a society that is increasingly awakening to the intersectionalities of identity and self-definition, psychoanalytic work must not remain dissociated from the larger racial, ethnic, class, cultural, sexual, and gender dynamics informing and structuring our psychic realities through layering, overlapping, and decussating entanglements. These intersectionalities are always defined against—and by—power dynamics. Malin Fors’ article (in this issue) outlines some of these power themes that weave in and out of the practitioners’ and patients’ lives, inside as well as outside the office. In this article, I explore the relevance of intersectionality. I move within a psychoanalytic thought frame from the themes outlined by Fors to a different perspective on intersectionality. I propose that the denial of three fundamental intersectionalities lies at the very core of Western, White culture, and therefore, also at the core of psychoanalytic theory, practice, teaching, and establishment. These intersectionalities are: Mind/Body, Individual/Community, and Human/Nature. This denial, I suggest, is what originates, facilitates, nurtures, and reinforces the neglect of racial, ethnic, class, cultural, sexual, and gender intersectionalities in the service of maintaining established power structures.

De-interpersonalization.

This clinical essay describes a moment of de-interpersonalization that occurred during a psychoanalytic session conducted by videoconference with a patient in the context of the necessary social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores some aspects and orthodoxies of contact, distance, and boundary in psychoanalytic work that have implications beyond the present pandemic crisis moment.

Disturbing positions: The crisis and potentials of sociopolitical emotions.

This article considers the special challenges and opportunities of psychoanalytic work amidst sociopolitical crises. Therapists may find themselves sharing the specific concerns animating the patient, especially amidst political turmoil, as we have recently seen in the U.S. This dislocates several aspects of the conventional setting: Asymmetry, the therapist's expertise, and the usual focus on the individual-dyadic situation. Exploring these particular issues is part of the contemporary movement toward a socially oriented psychoanalysis.

Commentary on “Bridging cultures in Psychoanalytic work – the case of Yune”

Yune is a woman in her fifties, married with two daughters, working as a medical doctor. She describes a childhood in a poor and traditional environment. Her mother has never been to school because...

Discussion of “Bridging cultures in Psychoanalytic work”

Dr Rho introduces us to his patient, Yune, a physician in her early fifties and gives an account of his work with her that takes place over seven years. Interestingly, and like many referrals for t...

Bridging cultures in Psychoanalytic work: the case of Yune

Video Read the transcript Watch the video on Vimeo © 2021 Wangku Rho. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

“It Takes a Village”: Concurrent Eating Disorder Treatment and the Multiperson Field

ABSTRACT Patients with eating disorders often rely on dissociation, cordoning off parts of the self that come to reside in disconnected mind and body states. In this paper, I explore the use of the multidisciplinary treatment team as a vehicle for accessing, engaging and linking the patient’s dissociated self-states as they emerge within different therapeutic dyads. While it is common for therapists who work with eating disorders to collaborate with other clinicians, the team has not typically been viewed as playing a role in the psychoanalytic process. Through a detailed case illustration, I demonstrate some of the ways that the treatment team can help to provide multiple perspectives on the same patient, generating a rich multiperson field that enhances and augments the psychoanalytic work. I also discuss challenges that can arise in concurrent therapy situations.

The Long Winding Road to Liberation: The Tales of Two Iranian Immigrants

ABSTRACT In this article, we attempt to illuminate the unique and distinctive experiences of Iranian refugees and immigrants through the lens of our own autobiographical and phenomenological experiences as émigrés in two separate countries, the United States and Austria. We will draw from our own personal experiences of exile, occurring at different periods in Iran’s sociopolitical history, pre- and post-Islamic revolution, to elucidate our separate and different experiences of dislocation, adjustment, and acculturation. We will illustrate that, even with the starkly differentiated patterns of our cultural and religious immersions, we appeared to share elements of experience in adjusting and adapting to our host cultures. Psychoanalytic work offered us an experience of a surrogate motherland that bridged our cultural selfhoods. In particular, analytic work provided us with a tool and a cultural vehicle to accommodate our passage, facilitating our adaptation and acculturation, our senses of selfhood, and relational dimensions. We maintain that psychoanalysis helps by illuminating and loosening patterns of attachments to archaic cultural ties, or cultural pathological accommodation, thereby allowing for the development of an expanded version of cultural horizons.

Racker and Heimann on Countertransference: Similarities and Differences

Both Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein recognized the existence of countertransference but distrusted its clinical use. This idea was the one that prevailed until the late 1940s, when Heinrich Racker in Buenos Aires and Paula Heimann in London played decisive roles in reinstating countertransference. More specifically, both Racker (in 1948) and Heimann (in 1949), independently of and without contact with each other, claimed the importance of countertransference for signifying the transference and unconscious processes that the patient re-enacts in the analytic relationship. The context in which their ideas were developed allows us to recognize differences within their common view of countertransference as a useful tool in psychoanalytic work. In this article, we present the development of both Racker’s and Heimann’s ideas on countertransference and attempt a comparison of similarities and differences of those ideas and put them into a historical and clinical-theoretical context.

Psychodynamic Functions of Digital Media within Our Child/Adolescent Sessions – From Interference to Enhancement – A Benevolent Viewpoint

ABSTRACT To provide a structure for our thinking about the impact of digital media on our therapeutic work, I have outlined a way of organizing such thinking. I utilize the idea of the “psychodynamic functions” digital media perform within the context of our therapeutic work. Based mainly on my own experiences as a therapist, I outline 16 “psychodynamic functions,” which are the most frequent and salient ones. I provide additional structure by organizing these “psychodynamic functions” into three categories. The three categories are the “enhancing functions” that are likely to contribute to the richness of our psychoanalytic work, the “straddling functions” which are likely to have both enriching, enhancing aspects at times, along with defensive or impeding aspects at other times, and finally, the “defensive functions” which seem always to have defensive purposes. Equipped with these conceptualizations of psychodynamic functions, I consider seven detailed clinical examples of children and adolescents who have used digital media in their sessions. These examples include one patient suffering from trauma, one at a neurotic level of functioning, and five who were on the autism spectrum (either Asperger’s or high-functioning autism). I conclude with integrated reflections on the case illustrations, including discussion of how formulating the psychodynamic functions illuminates the types of in-session interventions to consider.

REFLEXÕES SOBRE O CONCEITO DE FANTASIA NAS OBRAS DE FREUD E LACAN

INTRODUCTION: Introduction: the term fantasy is a correspondent of the idea of psychic reality, elaborated in the midst of the circumstances that put the seduction theory in check, and concerns the subject's imaginary life. OBJECTIVE: To identify and present appearances of the term fantasy throughout the psychoanalytic work, more specifically in the writings of Freud and Lacan, and to establish discussions between the classic authors mentioned and other contemporary ones, about the controversies and evolution of the concept. METHODS: The present bibliographical research was constructed in the format of a theoretical essay. The article cuts through the way fantasy as an object of study is developed, based on the different arguments discussed below. RESULTS: In Freud's view, fantasy unfolds in three stages, starting from a present impression, from a dissatisfaction in the present that awakens the subject to his or her unfulfilled desire, the subject searches in the past for some moment when this desire was fulfilled and then creates a scene for the future in which the present dissatisfaction can magically be transformed into a fulfilled desire. As for Lacan, it is related to desire and points, right from the start, to the originary subjection of the subject to the other. CONCLUSION: It is concluded that fantasy can be considered a set of ideas and feelings, ideas where affective memories predominate. The term can also be thought of as an unconscious satisfaction of the libido, of desires, due to its particular character, but it can also be thought of in the sense of lack.

Marie H. Briehl and Rosetta Hurwitz: Pioneers in North American Child Psychoanalysis

ABSTRACT This paper is a tribute and exploration of the contributions of two hidden but important figures in the history and development of North American child psychoanalysis, Marie H. Briehl and Rosetta Hurwitz. These early child psychoanalytic pioneers were the author’s great-aunts. They trained as young lay analysts in Vienna with Anna Freud and other key Viennese psychoanalysts between 1924 and 1930, and were among the original group to study with Ms. Freud. The author considers various significant aspects of her great-aunt’s childhoods that played a large part in the spirit of their determination to go to Vienna. She looks at their beginnings in a large socialist family, later as teachers, at their passion for the development of children, and their recognition of the limitation of pure pedagogy in reaching certain children in the classroom. The author takes the reader through Marie’s and Rose’s studies in Vienna and the difficulties of acceptance as lay analysts upon their return to New York City. While Rose practiced quietly in New York, this paper highlights Marie’s contributions to child psychoanalysis including the development of one of the first child analytic training programs in Los Angeles, as well as her strong belief in the qualities necessary to do good child psychoanalytic work.

Au-delà de la bisexualité constitutive : la queersexualité psychique

BackgroundThe emergence of queer theories and LGBT movements, while dialoguing with psychoanalysis because of its promises to explore the intimate of the sexual, puts back on the agenda the obsolescence of psychoanalysis and its collusion with the heterosexual, patriarchal and colonialist norms. Psychoanalysis is once again confronted with one of its failures: its repression of sexual and gender pluralities, which goes hand in hand with their pathologization. Unknown or even despised by psychoanalysts, queer studies nevertheless represent an inescapable heuristic reality for research in psychoanalysis. ObjectivesThis work wishes first to question the theoretical validity of psychic (constitutive) bisexuality by articulating it with queer perspectives. It also wishes to defend the thesis of a psychic queersexuality starting from the postulate of an essentially queer psyche. MethodThe author presents a series of “traditional” and contemporary theoretical perspectives on the concept of psychic (bi)sexuality and describes the particularities of the queer perspective in the humanities and social sciences. In addition, it questions the psychoanalytical theoretical reflections as they appear in critical studies. ResultsIn most psychoanalytical work, psychic bisexuality remains a structuring element in the identifications and psychological genesis of the individual. According to critical approaches, it is only useful in reaffirming the distribution of male and female roles according to the social law dictated by the colonialist patriarchy, while at the same time producing exclusion and pathologization. Queer studies provide a deconstruction of the dominant norm by privileging not only the plurality of identities, genders, sexes and sexualities, but also the intersectional approach; the latter allows for an extension of this field of study to aspects of race, class, globalization, terrorism, etc. Queer studies thus question the necessary articulation of psychoanalysis with the political, conceived as inseparable from the psychic construction of each individual. Psychic queersexuality seems to be confirmed by the intersection of psychoanalytical models and queer theories. ConclusionWithout losing its identity and its clinical objectives and in order to avoid clinical views with deadly effects that queer activists denounce, contemporary psychoanalysis has the duty to articulate its theories to queer studies. According to the author, this is the most relevant and complete model for a psychoanalysis in accordance with its time. Psychic queersexuality could represent the starting point for such an articulation.