Psychoanalytic View Research Articles

Not Available

Under a psychoanalytic view, the etiological relevance of neurobiological modeis of obsessive-compulsive-disorder is discussed referring pharmacological and behavioral therapeutic options. From the beginnings of clinical psychoanalytic research, neurobiological correlates were considered for the understanding of obsessive-compulsive-disorder. However, within etiological psychoanalytic modeis those correlative biological markers have not the Status of monocausal independend variables. New biological findings regarding obsessive-compulsive-disorder can also be integrated in psychoanalytic concepts without renunciation of the significance of unconscious processes and an interaction oriented approach. Insight and Symptom oriented therapies are characterized with regard to necessary further research and to their complementary benefits.

Hysteria and Trauma in Pauline Hopkins' Of One Blood; or, the Hidden Self

Though the medical and psychological literature contemporaneous with Pauline Hopkins might lead one to suspect that only white, middle-class women were vulnerable to the medical diagnosis of hysteria, Hopkins, in her novel Of One Blood; Or, the Hidden Self (serialized in the Colored American Magazine between 1902 and 1903), deliberately represents Dianthe as suffering from hysteria to emphasize that this is not the case.(1) She attributes to Dianthe several of hysteria's classic conversion or somatic symptoms, including trances, amnesia, fainting spells, lethargy, passivity, and dissociative states of consciousness, in order to investigate the politics of this illness. Although I will briefly discuss Of One Blood as an text, my primary foci are the ways in which Hopkins racializes the turn-of-the-century discourse on hysteria by considering its relevance to African American women and girls victimized by sexual trauma during and after slavery. She interprets the behaviors and symptomatology of hysteria as expressions of the very specific trauma inherent in the political and familial histories of black women: rape and incest perpetrated by white men. As an hysteric, Dianthe represents - or, more precisely, her body represents - the site of the convergence of violence, racism, and misogyny. Most obviously, she is sexually coerced by Aubrey, but also her light skin color testifies to miscegenation resulting from two additional rapes - those of her mother and grandmother by their white master, Aubrey Livingston's father. Hopkins imbues the intriguing ideas of the new psychology at the turn of the century with significance for black women by making use of these nascent theories in her exploration of racially motivated sexual sadism, by which I mean slavery's eroticization of cruelty. Incorporating Freud's controversial psychoanalytic views on hysteria which, simply put, consider repressed sexual trauma its source, Hopkins calls attention to the confluence of intrapsychic and political forces that results in sexual and political domination, specifically Aubrey's oppression of Dianthe. And, from what I can determine, Of One Blood is the first, possibly the only, text by a black woman at the beginning of the twentieth century to do so. In her chapter in The Bonds of Love entitled Master and Slave, contemporary psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin argues that within the fantasy of erotic domination lies his wish for independence and his wish for For complex reasons based on early disturbances in the infant-mother relationship, the child cannot satisfy his ordinary and expected desire for differentiation - an identity separate from that of the mother - inter-subjectively through mutual recognition. Hence, his wish to be independent is perverted into his need to be dominant. Influenced by Hegel, Benjamin defines a dialectic of control like this: If I completely control the other, then the other ceases to exist, and if the other completely controls me, then I cease to exist (53). In this paradigm, in which dependence becomes synonymous with submission and annihilation, and existence itself is at stake, domination is eroticized when the master forcibly takes control of the slave's body. Benjamin asserts that the master's sadistic pleasure consists not in direct enjoyment of [the slave's] pain, but in the knowledge of [his] power over her - the fact that [his] power is visible, that it is manifested by outward signs, that it leaves marks (57).(2) If, from a psychoanalytic perspective, we view Aubrey - representative of white, Western patriarchy - as an oppressor who quite literally appropriates the identity/body of Dianthe in order to assert his own self, then we must simultaneously understand that, without culturally sanctioned, institutionalized racism, this psychodynamic, compelling as it is, could not have been so blatantly and publicly promulgated. Benjamin's ideas regarding the literal or figurative master/slave relationship and Dianthe's hysterical symptoms - particularly her somatic disorders, dissociative trances, and passivity - an be linked with the literary concept of the text as described by Claire Kahane. …

Defense Mechanisms Development in Children, Adolescents, and Late Adolescents

To replicate and extend Cramer's (1987) original cross-sectional study concerning the development of defense mechanisms, the Thematic Apperception Test responses of 148 students in Grades 2, 5, 8, 11, and college freshmen were collected and scored for denial, projection, and identification using Cramer's Defense Mechanisms Manual (1991). Our results supported the notion that the relative use of denial and projection decreases and identification increases as a function of grade level. The findings provide additional support for the psychoanalytic view (Freud, 1966) of an ontogenetic developmental line of defense.

Psychoanalytic Contributions to the Study of the Emotional Life of Organizations

In light of increasing interest in organizational emotions, this article argues for a reintegration of psychoanalytic scholarship into the study of organizations. A brief presentation of social constructionist approaches to emotions in organizations is followed by a presentation of major psychoanalytic contributions to the study of emotions at individual, group, and organizational levels. The author argues for a rapprochement between constructionist views which emphasize the cultural character of emotional displays, and psychoanalytic views which explore the origins, vicissitudes, and communication of emotional experiences within individual or group biographies.

'A good person does not feel envy': envy in a nursing community.

The definition of envy is commonly based on psychoanalytical views of organizational culture. The purpose of this paper is to describe envy in a nursing community. The population study consisted of random sample of 120 subjects drawn from among the employees of one central hospital in Finland. The study material consisted of data collected by questionnaires (response rate 65%). The data were processed by various statistical methods. Open-ended questions were analysed by inductive content analysis. The results of this study indicated that the employee's view of his/her official position in the nursing community, his/her relationships with his/her fellow workers and the management as well as relationships with other nursing communities are all related to envy. The employee's view of his/her official position intensified his/her feelings of envy, if he/she had other negative feelings, anxiety, dissatisfaction with him/herself, and negative feelings towards fellow workers. The major object of envy was fellow workers' salaries. Envy towards other nursing communities was generated by alleged differences in the amount of labour, or by the charge nurse's greater interest in other sections. Employees coped with envy by hiding these feelings and being modest. Women coped with envy by being silent, while men denied the value of the object of envy.

The psychoanalytic view of child sexual abuse: past errors and continuing relevance

Far from existing only as a fantasy, incest is thus also a fact … Where the chances of harming a child’s normal developmental growth are concerned, it ranks higher than abandonment, neglect, physical maltreatment or any other form of abuse. It would be a fatal mistake to underrate either the importance or the frequency of its actual occurrence (Anna Freud, 1981: p.34).

A Valiant and Admirable Psychoanalytic View of the Jews

A Valiant and Admirable Psychoanalytic View of the Jews

Dreams: the convergence of neurobiologic and psychoanalytic perspectives.

Fromm's Aristotelian statement that "Dreaming is a meaningful expression of any kind of mental activity under the condition of sleep" (Fromm, 1951, p. 25) is similar to a modern neurobiological conclusion about the dreaming process. The current data from the neurosciences lead to the definition of dreams as a neuropsychological event during sleep whose manifest contents are affect laden, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Their functions are adaptive and problem solving in themselves. They are part of the brain's connectionist information-processing system which channel, compare, and integrate current affect-laden memories with memories of past successful strategies. Thus, the neurobiological perspective of dreams provides an underlying neuroanatomical and information-processing matrix for the dream process that further supports the current psychoanalytic view concerning their assimilative and accommodative functions. In conclusion, I would like to return to the termination phase of Mr. M's therapy. This patient planned to leave therapy approximately 22 months after the occurrence of Dream 2, as this dream had predicted. He was to be married and move to another city. Although I felt somewhat anxious about his leaving, despite his significant progress, we agreed to a termination date. Just prior to the second-to-last session Mr. M had the following dream: It took place in a large gothic building in a zoo. It is dark and depressing and filled with cages of rhesus monkeys. I go around with a nurse to inoculate the monkeys. I am scared of the virus. My future wife appears. She is immune to the virus. She is brave and she rescues me. The patient seemed pleased in relating his dream, and it offered resolution and closure for both of us despite a paucity of discussion. Two years later I received a letter from him in which he stated that he was well and had no additional "monkey dreams."

Seeing in the dark: reflections on dreams and dreaming

What is the relationship between waking experience and dreams, and between dreams and literary creativity? In this book, Bert States explores the nature of dream imagery, the metaphorical processes in dreaming, and the nature and source of dream narrative. Challenging the classical psychoanalytic view that dreams represent censored wishes, he argues instead that dreams are nonrepressive, unplanned constructions, the most integral use of the images at hand. Dreams are a phenomenon of mind and, like art, are manifestations of a biological need to convert experience into structure, says States.

ETHICAL MOMENTS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY: INTERPRETATION, SEDUCTION OR …?

ABSTRACT Following Wittgenstein's consideration of ethics, the term‘ethical moments’describes certain moments in psychotherapy that seem not to be able to be captured in language, although language expresses something in the moment. Wittgenstein has said that the basis of ethics, and indeed of philosophy, cannot be put into either logical or empirical propositions. Expressions that arise out of‘the existence of language' show rather a poetic response in these moments that are felt to be profound. These expressions can be shown to be neither factual nor logical, yet nevertheless‘hit the mark’.Moments in psychotherapeutic practice are used to illustrate this clinically, and the nature of interpretation at these times is considered both in relation to Wittgenstein's discussion of the limits of logic and of language, and to the psychoanalytic view that not to interpret is to be seduced by the patient. It is held that in these ethical moments something transpires beyond the reach of theory‐ based interpretation.

Embracing the Random in the Self-Organizing Psyche

The history of the idea of randomness in the Nineteenth Century is presented as a backdrop to Freud's understanding of randomness in the psyche. Next, the role of the random event in nonlinear dynamical systems theory is discussed. Then, a revision of the traditional psychoanalytic view of the synthetic function of the ego is proposed based on the process of self-organization in which random elements are utilized in the emergence of new systemic structures. A theory of dreaming is elaborated which transcends the traditional dichotomy of dreams as either random events or meaningful psychological contents. Finally, remarks about psychoanalytic treatment as a process of self-organizing incorporation of the random are offered.

No Laughing Matter

As personified in jokers, fools, and clowns, humour is an integral part of human history [44]. Humour can lighten what might otherwise be dull, tense, or tedious situations. Common definitions of humour emphasize and laughter, implying some form of benign diversion. But recent research suggests that jokes are not events that are funny - or harmful - as such. Rather, entails a dynamic process where the characteristics of the joke teller and the audience interact with the embedded meaning of the joke. It is the interactions among these factors that determine whether efforts to be funny are acceptable or not [26, 40, 42]. The present study employs a power-based approach to examine how situational factors affect the degree of acceptability of gender-based humour in classroom settings. Theories about the Role of Humor Probably the best-known proponent of the psychoanalytic views about humour is Freud [14]. In Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, Freud argues for the cathartic effect of joking, especially in areas of unconscious turmoil about human sexuality and aggression. Humour is seen as a safe outlet that prevents the teller from expressing his hostilities in more destructive ways. Such a release of unconscious steam is also expected to vicariously cleanse the audience [9, 10, 32]. In other words, humour is seen as a mechanism to distance oneself from the potential disorganizations of the social world and their incumbent anxieties. More recently, Dundes [10] applied the psychoanalytic assertions to joke cycles. He claims that sick jokes ranging from dead babies, to Auschwitz serve as coping mechanisms to deal with bothersome issues such as sexuality, racial tensions, violence, and guilt. More relevant to the current study, Dundes [10] claims that sheep and blond joke cycles (which center on degradation of women), reflect men's struggle to deal with their anxiety about the changing role of women. Wilson [44] also recognizes the anxiety reduction aspect of jokes through displacement, projection, and rationalization of taboo impulses. The common denominator in all these assertions is the psychological (and indirectly, social cleansing) function of humour. The conventional sociological approach to humour builds on the concept of role distance [8]. In this perspective, humour is a transposition of frameworks, a brief switching from the serious to the unserious or playful realm [1, 13, 18]. Such switchings are meant to provide license, so that humour does not officially count [11]. As jocular departures from the official line of interactions, puns, witticisms, jokes, sarcasm, and mimicry produce amusement in an audience while allowing speakers to address topics that are taboo. In this latter sense, the conventional sociological perspective overlaps with the psychoanalytic orientation in finding humour functional. Thus it can reduce stress (as in the morbid humour of police and surgeons) and lubricate social interaction through self-mockery and the development of joking relationships [41]. Whereas the conventional sociological perspective recognizes that certain switchings in the name of humour can be inappropriate, power-based approaches reject unqualified functionality arguments [31, 38, 46]. Power imbalances under the auspices of humour are seen as reinforcing old belief systems, blocking social change, and preserving inequality. In the past decade or so, minorities and feminists have pointedly challenged the prevailing views about humour. Increasingly, gender-based humour is seen as a manifestation of power imbalances between men and women, which in turn helps to solidify and perpetuate that power disparity. Feminists argue that men define reality for both men and women in work and in leisure. Men also take measures to legitimize the reality they themselves have constructed and demand conformity from those who are disadvantaged by male standards [12, 24, 36]. …

Collecting: An Unruly Passion: Psychological Perspectives (review)

Reviewed by: Collecting: An Unruly Passion: Psychological Perspectives Kevin Melchionne Collecting: An Unruly Passion: Psychological Perspectives, by Werner Muensterberger; 295 pp. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1994, $29.95 cloth, $13.00 paper. Due to the growth of museum studies, collecting practices are receiving more attention these days. Muensterberger’s book is one of the more ambitious of recent studies in this area. He applies classical psychoanalytic concepts to collecting. Cultural theorists often say that collecting is dominated by neurotic, fetishistic, compulsive, or obsessional desires. Muensterberger is firmly in this camp, and his performance confirms rather than dispels the misgivings that nonpsychoanalytic students of culture have often expressed about the psychoanalytic approach. The first two parts of the book are an exposition of the psychoanalytic view. The third treats several “case studies” of lunatic barons and desperate social climbers whose unbridled accumulation drove their families to ruin. The tales make for good reading. The final part of the book aims at a cultural history of [End Page 524] collecting. This section strays farthest from Muensterberger’s theoretical turf and suffers from a certain confusion of purpose. Much of it reads like a selection of case studies taken from the past rather than a history of collecting. In all, Muensterberger’s cultural history of collecting does not compare favorably with the extensive work in art history on the origins of the museum. I will limit my discussion to his psychoanalytic account of collecting. Muensterberger’s psychoanalysis is starkly classical: collecting is essentially a compensation for prior disappointment and an illusory comfort in the face of an uncertain future. Collecting serves this role particularly well, it seems, because its repetitive structure allows the individual to repeat the tension-reducing act of acquisition when the satisfaction induced by the previous act fades. The meaning of the process of collecting resides in the “momentary undoing of frustrating neediness but is felt as an experience of omnipotence. Like hunger, which must be sated, the obtainment of one more object does not bring an end to the longing. Instead, it is the recurrence of the experience that explains the collector’s mental attitude. The compelling concern to go in search, to discover, to add to one’s store, or holding, or harem, is not generated by conscious planning. Rather, every new addition, whether found, given, bought, discovered, or even stolen, bears the stamp of promise and magical compensation” (p. 13). In a similar vein, Muensterberger locates the origins of the urge to collect in the child’s reliance upon objects as “symbolic substitutes” for the parent. The acquisitive bent of the collector is derivative of the “grasping and clinging” of the infant (p. 18–19). If this sounds like your generic caricature of psychoanalysis, then you have the picture. Muensterberger makes an effort to distinguish his own perspective from a facile reductionism, whereby collecting is no more than the sign of a pathological state of mind. But this is exactly what he is doing. According to the author, collectibles are simply “narcissistic supplies” (p. 234). Speaking of the noted Italian collector, Mario Praz, Muensterberger writes: “the inanimate objects’ function is essentially compensatory . . . they are being used not only as an attempt to disguise old wounds but at the same time to serve as reminders of past injuries and humiliations” (p. 43). The idea that cultural practices like collecting serve in some way to compensate for the frailty of the human spirit is deeply attractive. If only through repetition, Muensterberger’s insistence upon the essentially compensatory nature of collecting (and for that matter, all culture) begins to make one wonder if the compensatory view of culture has not, through an excess of intellectual scruple, received too little recognition. Unfortunately, he pursues standard Freudian explanations with a relentlessness that sinks to self-caricature. In this respect, the book is a missed opportunity. It is plausible to suggest that collecting temporarily eases all sorts of psychological and existential tensions in adults though I doubt that it does this better than eating, sex, or yoga. [End Page 525] But it is not just his brand of psychoanalysis that is simplistic. Muensterberger defines collecting as the “selecting, gathering, and keeping of...

Death, resistance and liberation in Peter Horn's “The Plumstead Elegies”

Summary The article focuses on the notions of death, resistance and liberation in Peter Horn's sequence of poems “The Plumstead Elegies”. It argues that the process of radical personal and social transformation described in the poems is rendered problematical by employing a conceptual framework that is at once psychoanalytic and Marxist. The dilemma posed by the process of transformation described in the poems is seen to arise from a disjunction between the psychoanalytic view of an inevitable division within the psyche, which suggests that the subject can never fully embrace his or her freedom, and the teleological logic of a Marxism requiring that domination be followed by the singular event of a deliverance.

Review of Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream: A Forensic Psychiatrist Illuminates the Darker Side of Human Nature.

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1996, Vol 41(8), 844. The reviewer states that although this book (see record 1995-98837-000) aims to bring the “scientific” knowledge base of forensic psychiatry to bear on criminal behavior, the author never relies at all on the vast scientific literature regarding criminal behavior. Instead, he presents his own, untested, psychoanalytically derived views of criminal behavior as though these were scientifically validated positions. Clinicians and researchers with an interest in forensic issues that goes beyond mere dilettantism will find this book superficial and of little use. Lay persons may find it interesting for its presentation of psychoanalytic views of criminal offenses but should be cautioned that these analyses are based in little other than unscientific theoretical speculation (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

The Wisdom of the Ego

GEORGE E. VAILLANT: The Wisdom of the Ego. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1993, 94 pp., $27.95. The rumor of the death of Ego Psychology is greatly exaggerated. As long as George Vaillant writes his engaging books extolling the wisdom of ego psychology it is destined to remain part of our theoretical landscape. Vaillant's Adaptation to Life (Little, Brown & Co. 1977) had been based on the longitudinal study, started in 1938, of a cohort of Harvard students viewed from the perspective of changing, maturing coping styles through the life cycle. His latest book The Wisdom of the Ego is partly a useful recapitulation and update, as well as a considerable expansion of this earlier book's themes. This time we are given a fascinating glimpse of two other longitudinal studies in which the author had participated in various phases, adding to the Harvard group a contrasting socioeconomic group of Core City men who had been peer controls for a study of juvenile delinquents in the early 1940's and a subsample of 90 women from the 1920's Terman study of gifted California school children. Thus, Vaillant draws, at this point, not only on one, but on three diverse longitudinal studies to demonstrate the empirical existence of defenses which he views basically as biologically based phenomena, in that [M]aturity of defensive style did not seem affected by socioeconomic status, intellectual ability, or gender (p. 136). Vaillant's book could be viewed as a celebration of the human capacity to engage in self-deception in order bear inner and outer assaults. The author likens mechanisms to the immune system, which is both basic to our survival, while also known to turn against itself in its protective efforts. He makes some room for contextual considerations, yet continues to divide defenses into four categories ranging from psychotic to mature. Vaillant thus remains faithful to the basic psychoanalytic view that even admirable human behavior is mostly a defense against baser instincts [in Anna Freud's words, altruism resulting from the badness of one's heart] (p. 248). He even views human creativity as an activity that transmutes pain and restores the self (p. 27), thus as the highest level of defensive sublimation. Vaillant pursues his earlier interest in the association between maturity of defenses and other measures of successful adulthood, positing a causal link between the former and the latter. The author's definition of successful adulthood is embedded within traditional Western values, exemplified by his defining Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar as inspirational and generative leaders (p. 199). A person's defensive style is linked to such presumably inborn personality traits as fortunate temperament (p. …

Mapping the mind in relational psychoanalysis: Some critiques, questions, and conjectures.

Mind maps in psychoanalysis consist of hypothetical constructs, first posited and then interwoven, for generating conceptual leverage so that the analyst may make useful clinical interventions. An infinite number are conceivable; they must be tested in the clinical situation for efficacy. Maps of the mind proposed by relational analysts are examined and critiqued as pulling clinical theory too far toward environmental factors. Potential clinical dilemmas that then follow are identified. A dichotomous view that parses relational from other psychoanalytic views is discussed as a strategy that limits necessary clinical theorybuilding and evolution. A view of mind maps that attempt to coordinate a balanced view between endogenous and exogenous pressure is recommended and linked to some available evidence from human development. Questions concerning the role of representations and the developmental course of the structures in the mind are taken up

The internalized primal scene

An important critique has been developing that questions the ways in which psychoanalytic theories have conceptualized gender and sexuality. Contemporary (postmodern) feminist theories and the work of gay and lesbian theorists have challenged the traditional psychoanalytic view of gender as formed primarily through fixed, unitary identifications. This paper reviews the classical concept of the primal scene and the Kleinian concept of the combined parent figure and recontextualizes these ideas within contemporary relational theory. The revised metaphor of an internalized primal scene challenges traditional notions of a unitary gender identity and lends support to the postmodern critique of the notion of a core or unified identity. This paper develops the idea that we need both a notion of gender identity and a notion of gender multiplicity; more broadly, we need an emphasis on people both as unified, stable, cohesive subjects and as multiple, fragmented, and different from moment to moment. In line with th...

Psychopathology, Sin, and the DSM: Convergence and Divergence

In this article, the Judeo-Christian view of sin is reviewed as well as the psychoanalytic and humanistic views of psychopathology. All three perspectives converge in their assumption of a universally flawed human condition. Conversely, the behavioral and symptom oriented phenotypal description of psychopathology found in the DSM diverges from the Judeo-Christian theological tradition. Inconsistencies and inherent difficulties are noted in the list oriented phenotypal approach to psychopathology or sin.

Experiencing self and others: contributions from studies of autism to the psychoanalytic theory of social development.

Psychoanalysts have long been interested in autism as a disorder in which the development of a sense of self and other is altered dramatically. This paper outlines how our psychoanalytic understanding of the process of emergence and maintenance of the self and of inner world may be informed by recent findings from developmental psychology about how normal and autistic children develop the capacity to attribute mental states such as desires, feelings, and beliefs to others. Because autistic individuals frequently fail to develop an understanding of the relation between feelings or beliefs and the behaviors of themselves or others, studies of autism provide a clinical model for how these neurocognitively based functions, related to acquiring a so-called theory of mind, are involved in the elaboration of an inner world and in the ongoing definition of self. Understanding how both autistic and normal children develop, or fail to develop, the capacity to attribute meaning to others' actions, beliefs, and feelings speaks to psychoanalytic notions of internalization, identification, and introjection and provides a neurocognitive frame for how representations of self and others are created in the inner world. Conversely, the psychoanalytic view that the infant's emerging sense of self is also shaped by the infant's desire for mother underscores that affective precursors are absolutely necessary for a theory of mind to emerge.