Psychoanalytic Writings Research Articles

On Some Contributions of the Interpersonal Psychoanalytic Tradition to 21st–Century Psychoanalysis

The Interpersonal psychoanalytic tradition is responsible, more than any other, for what has been described variously as the postmodern or the relational turn in psychoanalysis. This is insufficiently appreciated within the international and even the national community of psychoanalysts. Many psychoanalytic writers who should know better fail to adequately reference the Interpersonal roots of their contemporary perspectives.

On the relations between autism and psychoanalytic thought and practice

I consider the nature of the psychoanalytic enterprise, both methodologically and conceptually, and the various ways in which it may bear upon, and be affected by considerations from, individuals with autism. I conclude that in certain respects, phenomena from autism may serve to highlight the value of psychoanalytic concepts, precisely because those concepts are not applicable to children with autism in quite the way that they are to other human beings. Psychoanalytic writers and practitioners need to be especially circumspect when extending their customary ways of thinking and working to individuals with autism. The potential value and limitations of dynamic psychotherapy of some kind with affected children and adults, as well as with their families, are little understood.

Sublimation and Symbolization: The Case of Dental Anxiety and the Symbolic Meaning of Teeth

In a previous article (Capps and Carlin 2009) we discussed Freud’s visit to the United States in 1909 and the occasion it afforded for James Putnam to meet him and become an advocate of psychoanalysis. We focused on their subsequent correspondence on the concept of sublimation and argued that this correspondence reflected the fact that friendship may be a form of sublimation. In this article we focus on Isador H. Coriat, an advocate of psychoanalysis from the same time period (1910s). We show that his early psychoanalytic writings (Coriat 1917, 1920) not only support our earlier argument but also make a strong case for the role of symbolization in the process of sublimation. We also note his emphasis on the potential role of living religion in the sublimation process. We then discuss his later article on dental anxiety (Coriat 1946) and writings by other psychoanalytic authors to make the case that the patient’s conscious understanding of the meaning of the symbols—in this case, teeth-related symbols—is essential, for otherwise the energies invested in maintaining the repression will be unavailable to the sublimation process. This leads to a consideration of the role that living religion may play in the sublimation of teeth-related anxieties. We conclude that humor may also serve as a proxy for religion in this regard.

Clinical facts, turning points and complexity theory

In this paper, I explore how we might link ideas about clinical facts to current issues in child psychotherapy research. I consider what our understanding of clinical facts might contribute to our research methods and how our research methods might better represent the clinical facts. The paper introduces a selection of psychoanalytic writers' formulations of the concept and describes some of the debates about the shortcomings of the traditional style of case reporting. The importance of keeping emotional experience central in our research is discussed. I describe a research method that I believe has the potential to capture and describe some of the complicated processes of change in psychotherapy. This is the concept of the ‘turning point’ session. Introducing the paradigm of complexity theory, I briefly explore how we might think about and understand the relationship between processes revealed through detailed analysis of a single session and change over a longer period of therapy.

Reconnecting Psychoanalysis to Mainstream Psychology: Metaphor as Glue

In recent decades, psychoanalysts have examined the role of metaphor in psychodynamic theory and therapy, but the uses of metaphor in psychoanalytic research have received only modest attention. After briefly reviewing extant psychoanalytic writings on metaphor, we discuss how research from outside psychoanalysis (i.e., studies of embodied affect–space links, mental images and prototypes, and associative networks) can inform us about the nature of metaphor. We then explore the ways that metaphor deepens our understanding of psychodynamic research and its implications, focusing on metaphoric definitions of concepts, and the metaphoric features of experimental manipulations and outcome assessments. Implications of a metaphoric perspective for the empirical testing of psychoanalytic concepts are discussed, and future directions for exploration in this area are described.

The Evolving Psychoanalytic Vision of Boyhood(s) and Masculinity(ies)

Over the course of the past century, the dominant psychoanalytic paradigm for understanding boyhood and male gender identity development has been grounded in two complementary visions: Freud's original formulations and, later, the propositions of Ralph Greenson and Robert Stoller. Each of those visions, history suggests, contain a certain harshness, rigidity, and fixity about gender roles and can even be seen as supporting an unhealthy bifurcation between male and female. In the last generation of psychoanalytic scholarship, a viable alternative vision about boyhood and becoming men- what I term the psychoanalytic view- has emerged and increasingly gained structure, definition, and traction. In this paper, I identify some of the important elements of that evolving vision (still very much a work in progress), review briefly three robust areas of current post-structural focus, and consider some of the differences between past and present conceptualizations. While not ignoring pathology and dysfunction, the post-structural psychoanalytic vision also gives voice to health and function, variation and differentiation, creation and construction, and life; it can be seen as a reclamation of the positive and a celebration of the infinite hope, promise, and possibility of all that is boys and boyhood. Keywords: POST-STRUCTURAL PSYCHOANALYTIC VISION, DISIDENTIFICATION, PARENTAL ALLIANCE, FAMILY ALLIANCE, MALE GENDER IDENTITY, BOYS AND BOYHOOD If Freud's theories on female development reveal a certain lack, as is currently considered to be the case in even the most orthodox of psychoanalytic circles, would it not logically follow that his theories on male development may divulge different, yet equally problematic inadequacies '(italics in original; Christiansen, 1996, p. 97). The contemporary psychoanalytic vision of boyhood, men, and masculinity bears little resemblance to the original Freudian vision set forth approximately a century ago. What we see today is a far more fluid, flexible developmental conceptualization of boys to men, which attempts to increasingly give voice to complexity, possibility, and the manifold socio cultural forces that affect the construction of male gender identity (Corbett, 2009; Person, 2009; Reis & Grossmark, 2009). While the classical Freudian view has its adherents, it is now but one view in an open, evolving system of thought about how boys begin to form, shape, knit together, and congeal their own vision of what it means to be a man in today's world (Lieberman, 2006; Person, 2006; Pollack, 1995a). Over the past generation of psychoanalytic scholarship, the traditional phallo centric (even misogynistic; Fogel, 2006) perspective of psychoanalytic developmental theory has been repeatedly challenged (e.g., Chodorow, 1989, 1994; Diamond, 2006; Fast, 1990; Fogel, 1986), has been found lacking explanatory power for male (and female) gender development (Fast, 1984; Person, 1986), and calls for a new psychoanalytic vision of boyhood and masculinity have been increasingly made (Diamond, 2004a, 2004b; Pollack, 1995b). While most of last century's psychoanalytic writings about male gender identity development were heavily dominated by Freud's original formulations (Diamond, 2009), that has become less and less so since the mid-1980s, and in many ways, a new era has dawned in the psychoanalytic quest to better and more completely understand the process and experience of boyhood, masculinity, and boys becoming men. Although many psychoanalytic developmental theories exist (see Tyson & Tyson, 1990), three particular perspectives seem to have emerged over the past approximate one hundred year period to explain male gender identity development: The Freudian vision (Freud, 1923 a/1 960, 1923b/1959), the GreensonStoller vision (Greenson, 1966, 1968; Stoller, 1964, 1965), and the contemporary, post-structuralist psychoanalytic vision (Corbett, 2001a, 2001b, 2009; Diamond, 2004a, 2004b, 2006, 2007, 2009; Fast, 1990, 1999; Pollack, 1995a, 1995b), which is informed by efforts to (1) consider gender and gender identity as socially influenced and socially constructed, (2) more fully incorporate cultural influences into our understandings of the gender identity formation process, and (3) examine the richness offered by alternate viewpoints (e. …

Incorporating a concept of altruism into psychoanalytic theory

AbstractThis paper proposes the existence of an intrinsic, non‐conflictual altruistic impulse, and presents arguments from human behavior studies, evolutionary theory, attachment theory, and psychoanalytic writings to support this thesis. Altruism has been previously regarded as a defensive phenomenon based on assumptions about the superego, competitiveness, individualism, and self‐interested libido. This paper proposes that the element of primary other‐orientedness makes possible a non‐neurotic component of oedipal resolution, based on triadic love. Finally, the paper defines remorse as an altruistic or other‐oriented repair. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Religion and Spirituality in Psychiatryedited by HugueletPhilippe and KoenigHarold G. . New York, Cambridge University Press, 2009, 384pp., $99.00.

Religion and Spirituality in Psychiatryedited by HugueletPhilippe and KoenigHarold G. . New York, Cambridge University Press, 2009, 384pp., $99.00.

TEACHING AND TRANSFORMATION: A PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE ON PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC TRAINING

abstractWhile there has been much recent interest in the impact of organizational structures underpinning psychotherapeutic training (e.g. Davies 2008; Kernberg 2006), there has been curiously little interest in the impact of interpersonal dynamics on the process of teaching psychotherapy. In this paper, I draw on my experience as a university lecturer and tutor on a postgraduate counselling and psychotherapy training programme to explore some of the unconscious dynamics underpinning the psychotherapy trainee's development towards a mature professional identity. The implicit expectations that trainee psychotherapists hold at the start of their training are initially discussed; I then turn to psychoanalytic writers such as Bollas, Winnicott and Jessica Benjamin in an attempt to articulate and explore how trainees may progress from relating, to constructive use of their tutors in their quest for personal transformation and professional recognition.

How do children understand themselves as learners? Towards a learner‐centred understanding of pedagogy

This paper challenges notions that pedagogy is predominantly rational, conscious and deliberate. Drawing on two research projects about experiences of learning in primary and secondary schools, the paper explores pedagogic relationships and the ways these structure and enable different kinds of learning and knowledge creation. The data are read with (Felman, 1987) the psychoanalytic writings of Wilfred Bion to investigate the ways in which knowing and learning are bound up in the unconscious emotional flows of classroom relationships. A learner‐centred understanding of pedagogy is tentatively and critically developed. The desirability and some simultaneous difficulties of working with such notions of pedagogy are discussed.

Secondary Handicap & Learning Disability: A Component Analysis

The term ‘secondary handicap’ is frequently encountered in services for people with disabilities. The term has its origins in Freud’s original description of secondary gain (Freud, 1901), and Winnicott’s description of the ‘false self’ (Winnicott, 1965). Since the late 1980s, however, the term has largely been associated with the psychoanalytic writings of Valerie Sinason at the Tavistock Centre in London. This article examines the evidence base for secondary handicap and concludes that although no empirical evidence exists for the concept as a whole, evidence can be found for individual components that make up the phenomenon. It is concluded that sufficient evidence exists to infer the existence of secondary handicap. Therapy provided to people with learning disabilities must not, however, proceed in a formulaic or manualised manner as the stripping of individual defence mechanisms may cause more harm than good unless carefully considered.

The Accident of Gender

The Accident of GenderOren GozlanOren Gozlan82 Otter Crescent, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5N 2W5. E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:August 2008https://doi.org/10.1521/prev.2008.95.4.541PDFPDF PLUS ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations About Previous article Next article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Cited byCited by1. Gender as Lint CollectorOnline publication date: 21 October 2021. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar2. Adolescent Ruthlessness and the Transitioning Of The Analyst’s MindOnline publication date: 7 August 2022. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar3. Transphobie psychanalytique ou le trauma généralisé du genreOnline publication date: 4 January 2021. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar4. Pensare psicoanaliticamente, pensare meglio: riflessioni sul transgenderOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar5. Thinking psychoanalytically, thinking better: Reflections on transgenderOnline publication date: 28 October 2020. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar6. Working Clinically With the Skin’s Surface: Tattoos, Scars, and Gendered EmbodimentOnline publication date: 26 October 2020. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar7. De la transidentité du patient au vacillement identitaire du clinicienOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google ScholarOren Gozlan8. From Continuity to Contiguity: A Response to the Fraught Temporality of GenderOnline publication date: 24 January 2018. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar9. TranspsychoanalyticsOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar10. Aestheticizing trauma and the remains of childhood secrets: a conversation with Chase Joynt’s AkinOnline publication date: 20 February 2017. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar11. The Transsexual’s Turn: Uncanniness at Wellesley CollegeOnline publication date: 30 November 2016. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar12. Transsexuality as Sinthome: Bracha L. Ettinger and the Other (Feminine) Sexual DifferenceOnline publication date: 10 March 2016. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar13. Transsexual surgery: A novel reminder and a navel remainderOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar Volume 95Issue 4Aug 2008 Information© 2008 N.P.A.P.PDF download

Is there still a place for the concept of ‘therapeutic regression’ in psychoanalysis?

The author uses his own failure to find a place for the idea of therapeutic regression in his clinical thinking or practice as the basis for an investigation into its meaning and usefulness. He makes a distinction between three ways the term ‘regression’ is used in psychoanalytic discourse: as a way of evoking a primitive level of experience; as a reminder in some clinical situations of the value of non‐intervention on the part of the analyst; and as a description of a phase of an analytic treatment with some patients where the analyst needs to put aside normal analytic technique in order to foster a regression in the patient. It is this third meaning, which the author terms “therapeutic regression” that this paper examines, principally by means of an extended discussion of two clinical examples of a patient making a so‐called therapeutic regression, one given by Winnicott and the other by Masud Khan. The author argues that in these examples the introduction of the concept of therapeutic regression obscures rather than clarifies the clinical process. He concludes that, as a substantial clinical concept, the idea of therapeutic regression has outlived its usefulness. However he also notes that many psychoanalytic writers continue to find a use for the more generic concept of regression, and that the very engagement with the more particular idea of therapeutic regression has value in provoking questions as to what is truly therapeutic in psychoanalytic treatment.

Shelley and the Romantic imagination: a psychological study

Shelley was the most extreme and controversial of the English Romantics, and this book studies the most romantic element in his vision and in Romanticism in general: the attempt to bring to life imaginings of ideal eros and of a human paradise. Using concepts from Freud and such later psychoanalytic writers as Geza Roheim, Heinz Hartmann, Ernst Kris, Heinz Kohut, and Margaret Mahler, Shelley and the Romantic Imagination analyzes an interplay in Shelley between a regressive impulse to return to union with the mother and an aggressive, progressive impulse toward a separate, autonomous ego.

Rycroft and the Romantic Imagination

This paper addresses a gap in the critical literature regarding the psychoanalytic writings of Charles Rycroft. It argues that Rycroft's theoretical work is underpinned by Romantic ideas, most notably primal sympathy, the fusion of contraries, and creative agency. Based on an appraisal of key texts, the author reconstructs these ideas as principles of creativity, each of which is discussed in light of the object the infant needed to find. From the genetic principle of reciprocity, the synthetic principle of unity, and the productive principle of self-expression, Rycroft derives a coherent theoretical framework for psychoanalysis that in many respects contradicts Freud's hypotheses. The paper locates this alternative framework within the Romantic tradition and offers a detailed discussion of Wordsworth and Coleridge in support of this reading of Rycroft.

Sarduy avec Lacan: The Portrayal of French Psychoanalysis in Cobra and La simulación

campy women; the other, severe French intellectual famous for his extraordinarily complex psychoanalytic writings. Sarduy was born to humble family in the provincial town of Camaguey; Lacan, to an elegant couple of haute bourgeois Parisians. One was known for drinking cocktails at the Cafe de Flore, on Saint Germain des Pres; the other for teaching seminars on castration, transference, and the phallus at the university. One published novels with titles like Pajaros de L· play a; the other, academic articles devoted to The gaze as objet petit a and The function of the Ί.' Could these two writers have anything in common? Despite their extremely different styles, Sarduy and Lacan crossed paths several times during the height of Structuralism, and they influenced each other's work. As I will argue in this essay, Sarduy developed serious dialogue with Lacan and his psychoanalytic concepts in his novels and essays. Although most scholarship on Severo Sarduy mentions the fact that he was an avid reader of Jacques Lacan (see, for example, the texts by Montero, Gonzalez Echevarria, and Marquez) , no one has provided detailed account of how the Cuban novelist read and transformed the work of the French analyst. In this essay I propose to undertake such project by focusing on two works, novel and an essay: Cobra (1971) and La simulacion (1981). After identifying the key allusions to Lacan and Lacanian concepts in these two works, I will argue that Sarduy was one of the most original readers of the French analyst, because his work proposes radical, new model for interpreting many of the analyst's theoretical formulations. Severo Sarduy arrived in Paris in 1960 after receiving scholarship from the newly formed Cuban government to study at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris. Shortly after his arrival, he met the man who would be his lover for the rest of his life: Francois Wahl, an editor at the French publishing house Editions du Seuil, who introduced Sarduy to the stars of Parisian intellectual life in the 1960s, including Roland Barthes, Philippe Sollers, Julia Kristeva, and other members of

Assessing the Impact of Father-Absence from a Psychoanalytic Perspective

This article examines the role of father and effects of his absence within the context of psychoanalytic theory. The article begins by exploring some of the earliest psychoanalytic writings on the father and his role in child development. The literature describing the effects of father-loss/absence from a developmental perspective is then presented within the framework of the four central psychologies of drive/structural theory, ego psychology, object relations theory and self psychology. Treatment implications are then discussed in regard to five central areas of assessment: (1) the quality and nature of attachment to father; (2) father's role during the first and second separation-individuation; (3) Oe-dipal issues; (4) father's capacity to have functioned as an important selfobject; and (5) the nature and quality of the paternal representation. A case is then presented followed by a discussion of the clinical implications when assessing father-child dynamics. The article concludes by outlining societal trends that elevate the importance of understanding the father's role in child development and the necessity for therapists to competently assess paternally based issues that clients bring to treatment.

Dissociation, the true self and the notion of the frozen baby

The widespread ‘trauma talk’ that is prevalent in the social sciences, has, in recent years, become increasingly commonplace in psychoanalytic writings, especially in attachment theory and relational psychoanalysis. This paper examines dissociation, a key concept in ‘trauma theory’, in conjunction with the Winnicottian term ‘true self’, in the context of a particular discursive and theoretical combination of the two. This discursive formation is named ‘the frozen baby discourse’, and it is presented and analysed. A critique is offered of the way ‘true self’, understood as a humanistic concept, is often used together with dissociation, in order to create a theoretical construct that is far removed from Winnicottian theory. This paper begins by exploring definitional issues, both around dissociation and ‘true self’. It is subsequently argued that this contemporary usage of ‘true self’ in combination with dissociation has important implications for psychoanalytic practice.

NEGATIVE THERAPEUTIC REACTION

ABSTRACT For the last 80 years the term ‘negative therapeutic reaction’ has been used by psychoanalysts and psychotherapists to define the phenomenon of improvement followed by deterioration of a client's psychological or symptomatic condition, apparently in response to their therapist's interventions. Negative therapeutic reaction has been the subject of many papers written by these practitioners, who in various ways have attempted to clarify and understand what goes wrong in such therapeutic encounters.This paper summarises the ideas of many psychoanalytic writers and practitioners who have worked throughout the span of the twentieth century, and up to the present day. Various aspects of negative therapeutic reaction are explored, such as alternative definitions of the concept, possible origins of NTR, the impact of the therapeutic relationship, and treatment implications. These ideas are compared and discussed, drawing mainly on the object relations theories of Fairbairn (1943), and illustrated through examples from myth, literature, research and clinical vignettes.

When the Bubble Bursts: Clinical Perspectives on Midlife Issues

EDA GOLDSTEIN: When the Bubble Bursts: Clinical Perspectives on Midlife Issues. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, 2005, 239 pp., $49.95, ISBN 0-881163-348-8. This book deals with the midlife years, their special issues, and the distinctive problems that patients over age 50 pose for psychotherapists. Using both developmental and psychotherapeutic frameworks, Goldstein methodically covers the psychoanalytic literature on the subject. She leans heavily on the work of others, and after reviewing the long-standing debate between Kernberg and Kohut, she adopts a basically Kohutian self-psychological point of view, both theoretically and in practice. The book is clearly written and quite easy to follow. At times it borders on the simplistic so that it's difficult to identify its primary audience. Experienced clinicians could benefit from the collation of diverse materials on this important subject and students likely would find this a useful introductory text. As a psychoanalyst, I did, however, have a strong reaction to the book's great abundance of clinical material, most of which was evidently drawn from recorded psychotherapy sessions. The therapeutic work is based on the supposedly healing properties of therapists' surface understanding of, and empathie responses to, their patients' material, dilemmas, and conflicts. The sessions are laced with what is claimed to be therapists' judicious use of direct advice; explications of the evident implications of a patient's communications, behaviors and problems; selected personal self-revelations by the therapist (e.g., that the therapist had lost a homosexual partner but had found a replacement); and other interventions said to be supportive and curative. Even though it can be argued that no book is representative of how psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists work today-multiple theories and practices of psychoanalysis are well known-I took this book as a model of where psychoanalysis stands today. Thus, the comments that follow could be made about any current psychoanalytic text, an effort that I have made regarding other prominent psychoanalytic writings in my most recent books (Langs, R. (2004). Fundamentals of Adaptive Psychotherapy and Counselling. London: Palgrave-Macmillan; Langs, R. (in press). Love and Death in Psychotherapy. London: Palgrave-Macmillan). The clinical substance of this book reflects the current psychoanalytic tendency to believe and intervene in ways that reflect either the conviction that there is no unconscious component to human emotional suffering and emotionally charged communications, or that the unconscious component is to be found solely in the transparent, theory-guided implications ascribed by therapists to their patients' material-implications of which their patients seemingly are unaware. A word is a word, a sentence a sentence, a thought a thought. There is no sense of symbolic, or more critically, encoded meaning in the communications of either patients or therapists. There are no dreams to decipher, no ground rules or framework to explore and grapple with as these affect the therapeutic couple and the patient's psychotherapy. There is no unconscious flow of communications between patient and therapist, no unconscious realm of experience as it affects emotional maladaptations and human creativity, and there is nothing of substance beyond the direct meanings of what is said and done by both patients and their therapists. …