Showing papers in "International Forum of Psychoanalysis in 2003"

The Metaphors We Live by

Abstract: The author discusses how the analyst makes use of personal metaphors in working with patients. Reflecting upon her experience in elaborating the personal metaphor of "lost childhood" in writing a book, the author describes how the process of "metaphorisation" can help patients come into contact with their unthought and unknown emotions.

Extreme Traumatisation: Strategies for Mental Survival

Abstract: Disruption and loss characterise the life of the person who has undergone extreme traumatisation (torture, concentration camp, etc.), especially when he/she lives in exile. This presents new challenges both in understanding trauma and massive traumatisation and in treating it. When planning and conducting treatment, it is of special importance to take into consideration the mental survival strategies that the person has developed. These are mental capacities that aim both at developing methods of avoiding the pain of re-experiencing and at achieving solutions to the dilemmas posed by the posttraumatic phase. The latter often consists of aborted attempts at mentalisation and integration of traumatic experiences. The traumatised person will often experience the therapeutic encounter as threatening because of fear of re-experiencing and re-traumatisation, and also because having experienced atrocities disturbs or damages the capacity for developing a trusting relationship. This paper discusses the complexiti...

Fundamental pathways to change: illuminating old and creating new relational experience

Abstract: Drawing on developmental, cognitive, and neuroscientific research, as well as on psychoanalytic theory and clinical experience, this paper focuses on implicit/non‐declarative and explicit/declarative domains and the intractability of mental models to provide additional inroads for understanding and effecting change within the psychoanalytic encounter. Inherent in “A Spirit of Inquiry” (Lichtenberg, Lachmann and Fosshage, 2002), foundational to psychoanalysis, are two processes. Analyst and patient striving to explore, understand and communicate create a “spirit” of interaction that contributes to new implicit relational knowledge. “Inquiry” more directly brings explicit/declarative processing to the foreground in the joint attempt to explore and understand. A spirit of inquiry in the psychoanalytic arena highlights both the autobiographical scenarios of the explicit memory system and the mental models of the implicit memory system as each contributes to a sense of self, other, and self with other. This pr...

Between Symbol and Antisymbol - The Meaning of Trauma Reconsidered

Abstract: Within psychoanalysis, it has usually been assumed that what makes an external event traumatic is the personal meaning of the event for that individual, i.e. how it resonates within his/her internal world and in relation to the infantile conflict. Such an assumption, which implies that a trauma operates as a symbol, is compared with the contrasting view that a trauma rather destroys the capacity of symbolization, and discussed in relation to the psyche-soma issue. It is finally maintained that psychic trauma forces upon the victim a vast and difficult transformation, in relation to which the body can be used as an antisymbolic device to resist mental change.

Power politics and psychoanalysis - an introduction

Abstract: It is a privilege to be the guest editor of this special issue of theInternational Forum of Psychoanalysis devoted to the history of psychoanalysis, before, during and after the reign of terror of the infamous Third Reich. It is continuation of a previous such issue ofThe Psychoanalytic Review , “Psychiatry, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in the Third Reich” I edited in 2001 (1) and a sequel to Bernd Nitzschke’s ground-breaking paper on this history and the role played in it by Freud, the IPA, and Wilhelm Reich (2, 3). Even as past political controversies are being resolved in the present climate of growing psychoanalytic pluralism, it is important, I believe, to continue the preservation and study of this history, for its own sake and for the purpose of working through personal and institutional traumas. There are many mansions in the house that Freud built. Three issues face us here: 1. a) psychoanalysis astherapy, the evolution of psychoanalytic methodand theories of disorder, and the historic debates these have engendered; b) applied psychoanalysis, which includes 2. the psychoanalysis of politics and 3. the politics of psychoanalysis. Like members of other establishments, analysts are political beings but they tend to shy away, or repress, intramural discussions about psychoanalytic politics with the result that such matters have been taken over by so-called psychoanalytic dissidents and scholars in other fields, e.g., political scientists, literary critics, and journalists. In this way there evolved an orthodox, authorized, largely hagiographic, version of the history of psychoanalytic politics by the so-called orthodox analysts and an unauthorized, revisionist version, sometimes merely criteriological, i.e., critical in the positive sense, and at times eristic, i.e., destructive in intent. In the papers collected in this issue of the Forum the method, theories, and power politics in psychoanalysis once again present a counterpoint of competing interests and goals. Before introducing the various contributions, let me first set forth some facets of the historical background for these themes and the topics discussed in the contributions. Roughly, in the first three decades of his cientific work Freud was concerned with developing the depth psychology of the individual, with the exception of his first seminal application of psychoanalysis to culture and society, Totem and Tabooin 1913 (4, SE 13). In the remaining decades and until his death in 1939 Freud wrote the great essays on social and political thought, starting with Group Psychology and the analysis of the Ego in 1921 (4, SE 18) up toMoses and Monotheism, and including a collaborative analysis of the American President Thomas Woodrow Wilson (5). In the latter work, while “employing analytic methods in a psychological study which is concerned with the deeper psychic facts” (5:xiv), Freud was also ware that “fools, visionaries, sufferers from delusions, neurotics and lunatics have played great roles at all times in the history of mankind . . . [and] have exercised far-reaching influence on their own and later times, they have given impetus to important cultural movements and have made great discoveries” (5:xvi). Did Freud include himself in that series, seeing that he gave impetus to a new science of psychoanalysis and a psychoanalytic movement, the IPA and its affiliates, and a new cultural movement, Freudian psychoanalysis? Be that as it may, while Freud’s psychoanalysis revolutionized our understanding of the deeper psychic facts of the individual, as bearer of memories, dreams and desires, this psychology could not serve as an exhaustive explanation of the deeper olitical and social factsof groups and masses, which began to occupy Freud in 1921: for “in the individual mental life someone else is invariably involved, as model, an object, as a helper or an opponent; and so from the very first individual psychology . . . is at the same time social psychology as well” (4, SE 21:69; 6). For the facts of social psychology are concerned with mass phenomena: with matters of might, money, mass meetings, mass media, and mass-mindedness, i.e., mass mythology as the

Wilhelm Reich and Anna Freud: His expulsion from psychoanalysis

Abstract: This article describes the growth of hostility towards Wilhelm Reich in the psychoanalytic community over his Marxist ideology and activism as well as disagreements over the death instinct. It brings to the fore the behind the scenes political manipulations between Ernest Jones and Anna Freud to effect the expulsion of Reich both from the Vienna and Berlin local psychoanalytic societies and from the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). It describes Reich's reactions to these events and the pressure placed on other psychoanalysts to stop supporting him and also the revision of history about the expulsion. It discusses the use of the term "crazy" as it was used in the psychoanalytic movement. Further the article discusses personality attributes of Anna Freud leading to counter-transference possessiveness to children and women, especially patients. It briefly touches on the attitudes of both Sigmund and Anna Freud toward sex and how this furthered the clash with Reich. It discusses the similarity ...

Psychoanalysis and national socialism

Abstract: Was psychoanalysis in Germany "destroyed" or "saved" in the period 1933-1945? To this day ever new answers are given to the question, answers which depend on the time and the interests involved. This contribution seeks to reconstruct once again the steps leading to the incorporation in 1936 of the German Psychoanalytic Society (Deutsche Psychoanalytische Gesellschaft [DPG]) into the National Socialist German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy (Deutsches Institut fur psychologische Forschung und Psychotherapie). This process of incorporation, which was intended as a "rescue" and led to the self-disbandment of the DPG in 1938, took place during ongoing talks between Felix Boehm and Carl Muller-Braunschweig, officials of the DPG, on the one hand, and Ernest Jones, president of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA), on the other. The process was connected to yet another desideratum: the expulsion of Wilhelm Reich from the DPG/IPA.

Psychoanalysis in Austria after 1933-34

Abstract: Our essay focuses on major developments of the history of psychoanalysis during the fascist and National Socialist years in Austria and sheds light on the re-establishment of psychoanalysis after World War II. With the consolidation of National Socialism in Germany in 1933 and Austro-fascism in 1934, any psychoanalytical reflection that was critical of political and cultural trends was extinguished. Vienna - once again - became the center of the psychoanalytical movement in Central Europe, taking over the role Berlin had played during the twenties. But, during the Austro-fascist system, psychoanalysis was isolated from an important part of its public. Psychoanalysts reacted by adopting an attitude of political abstinence, accompanied by self-censorship, they concentrated on training and clinical work, or they went into exile. Austria's Anschlus to the National Socialist Third Reich led to the final destruction of psychoanalysis. Nearly all Viennese analysts were affected by the anti-Jewish measures of the...

Parent‐infant‐psychotherapy and psychoanalytic treatment: contradiction or mutual inspiration?

Abstract: Psychoanalysis and parent‐infant‐psychotherapy are compared. Although parent‐infant‐psychotherapy developed from psychoanalysis, it appears at first glance not to be “analytic” with its aim of dealing quickly with the symptoms presented and also with its different setting. The author shows that an analytic approach in understanding the multi‐facetted net of relationships between family members and the infant in its “phantasmic interaction” and a consideration of the implication for analysis of the empirical research carried out in conjunction with parent‐infant‐therapy can lead to a fruitful exchange of ideas. One example of this is research into the correlation between attachment patterns and the processing of conflicts. Furthermore a dialogue between these two disciplines can remind psychoanalysts that a critical discussion of the external circumstances of their methods does not immediately call into question their fundamental approach to therapy: the work in transference on relationship fantasies.

ÉmigrÉ analysts in Boston, 1930-1940

Abstract: A brief history of the European analysts who settled in Boston during the first decade of the newly re-organized Boston Psychoanalytic Society/Institute, as part of the great intellectual migration fleeing from Hitler Germany and Austria. The term emigre was chosen as more inclusive, since not all were refugees forced to emigrate. The sequence of each analyst's arrival is traced, and their reasons for choosing Boston are identified, whenever possible.

An unexamined ‘post-script’ to the demise of Sigmund Freud's Seduction Theory: A spurious reification or prescient second thoughts?

Abstract: The beginning of this paper documents Sigmund Freud's pre-psychoanalytic experience as a ‘first hand’ observer of childhood behavior both professionally and as the patriarch of a large extended family in Vienna. During 1898, Freud was in the midst of an intensive correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess – his most trusted confidant, mentor and colleague – when he wrote, in part, about his sister Marie whose family was relocating in Berlin. She was apparently about to consult Fliess as her prospective physician. During the process, Freud voiced psychological assessments not only about his sister; but, also about her husband and their three daughters. The youngest among them was a 5-year old whom he characterized as “a rather gifted child, severely [hysterical]” (bracketed word in quotation juxtaposed for clarity). Eleven years later, Freud wrote a case study about a 5-year old boy whose pseudonym, for publication purposes, was Little Hans. The life of Little Hans (as well as the lives of his parents) has been th...

Norman Elrod (November 22, 1928 – July 01, 2002) unity and conflict of opposites

Abstract: The contradictions are the hopes! Bertolt Brecht (1:243) To look back on such a complex personality as Norman Elrod and his extensive work can only mean, for me, to pick out one aspect of the many ...

Childhood Lost and Recovered

Abstract: The author is trying to grasp the significance of two antagonistic concepts in order to understand life, as trauma and resilience-bouncing back ("orpha" in the Ferenczi-Severn sense in Ferenczi's Clinical Diary); with references to recent research in- and out-side psychoanalysis.

Comment on “Parent‐Infant Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Treatment: Contradiction or Mutual Inspiration?” by Christiane Ludwig‐Körner

Abstract: The title is challenging and the reader is immediately presented with the difficulties encountered by child analysts who, in the forties, began to involve parents in the analytical treatment of children. The author dates the beginning of parent-infant psychotherapy to the period when Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham opened the Hampstead War Nurseries (1944–1995) in which also the children’s mothers and relatives were welcomed. In 1954 Dorothy Burlingham founded a Kindergarten for blind children with an auxiliary advisory service for their parents. The author also cites Bowlby’s research on the mental health of homeless children, published in his monograph “Maternal Care and Mental Health” (1) and the research project carried out from 1972 to 1979 at the Michigan University in Ann Arbor by Selma Fraiberg, considered a pioneer of the parent-infant therapy. I think it is important to mention here Alicia Lieberman’s contribution to parent-infant therapy (2). She emphasized beneficial links between the attachment theory and the work of psychoanalytic parent-infant psychotherapy. More recently, in 1994, Jack and Kerry Novick founded the Allen Greek Preschool in Ann Arbor which provides experts for young children and their parents to promote intellectual, social and emotional growth in young children, by blending the objective of early childhood education with a psychoanalytic perspective. The author comments that neither Bowlby’s attachment theory nor Anna Freud’s work with children carried out at her Child Psychoanalysis Educational Institute received the recognition it deserved from the official psychoanalysis of that period. I would like to add that working with parents did not fare any better. The application of work methods used with adults and Klein’s emphasis on the role of internal objects and the unconscious phantasy in fact minimised the importance of the relationship with the parents and interfered with the elaboration of a theory on work with parents. The Novicks group together the reasons for the history of relative neglect of work with parents under social/historical, theoretical and political headings. Since her early work in 1957 (3), Erna Furnam has presented a rich and complex theory of parentinfant relationship. In her work (4, 5) she maintains that the aims of child analysis can be reformulated not only as the restoration of the child’s progressive development, but also as a restoration of the parent-child relationship to its potential as a lifelong positive resource for both. Furnam claims that the progressive, mutual narcissistic investment between parent and child is important not only at the start, but also throughout therapy. I want to also draw attention to the research carried out in the sixties at the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic by I. Hellmann (6), K. Levy et al. (7) on simultaneous mother-child therapies aimed at exploring the pathogenic role of the parent’s p rsonality in the genesis of the child’s disorder; the relations between the mother’s unconscious fantasies and the child’s attitude and disorders; the points of interaction between the abnormalities of mother and child. I presented a research and treatment model involving supervision by one supervisor carried out separately with the psychotherapist of the child nd the psychotherapist of the parent/parents (8). This technique facilitates the exploration of the reciprocal influence of mother and child, with particular reference to the traumatic impact of the mother’s mental and emotional life on the child and vice versa. I noted that the mental functioning, defensive structure, fantasy-making and changes of the mother can have a traumatic effect on the child and, vice versa, the child’s primitive or archaic mental functioning may reveal or activate depressive nuclei and psychotic scars in the

Ferenczi's Concept on Trauma, Connected with the Katonadolog - 'Soldiers Can Take It' Concept

Abstract: Although Ferenczi did not write his Clinical Diary - neither most of his late works - in Hungarian, he uses the term katonadolog in Hungarian even in the German text, and later translations apply the original Hungarian word annotated in a footnote as 'soldiers can take it'. Ferenczi connects the term katonadolog to the concept of biphasic trauma and to the interpretation of trauma as a moral shock. The paper investigates how this can be connected to the idea of intersubjective self theories stating that commonly constructed meanings in the early mother-child interactions, meaningful inner contents and common experiences are of utmost importance. Further, it analyses how the child, who may be exposed to parental interpreting power, can create a distorted image of reality that has nothing or little to do with his own real experiences. However, due to the deviant parental mirroring the 'transcription of reality', the formation of 'false and robbed self' (Winnicott and Schibbye) can already start in preverbal...

Psychoanalysis in the Netherlands during World War II

Abstract: To understand what happened in the psychoanalytic world in Holland during the German occupation (1940-1945) we must have knowledge of the conflicts within the Dutch Society of Psychoanalysis in the nineteen-thirties. Those conflicts mainly deal with the subject of lay analysis, the compulsory training analysis and in general if compliance with foreign, with IPA rules was advisable. These differences of opinion reached their peak when four Jewish psychoanalysts arrived from Germany in 1933. The Dutch Society broke up in two parts, but was reunited in 1938. During the German occupation the training was finally regulated according to the IPA rules. This lead to a new splitting in the world of Dutch psychoanalysis that has not been healed to date.

The dream between “here‐and‐now” and “there‐and‐then”

Abstract: The analysand recounts his/her dream now, and here, in the setting. Though a dream may be recounted repeatedly, the human situation in which the recounting takes place is unrepeatable. Each moment of the analytic relationship is unique, and the recounting is essentially relational. Even if the dreamer were to read from a written text, his/her voice and non‐verbal aspects would render the communication unique. Not only the recounting but also the content recounted may present relational aspects, manifest or latent, but of a relational nature different from that of the session “here‐ and‐now”. The dream dreamt belongs to the “there‐and‐then”, and its analysis, like every analysis, implies an objectification. The analyst reacts to the recounted dream, trying to objectify it in its “there‐and‐then” and also inviting the dreamer to a common task. Working on the manifest content, free associations and interpretations of symbols, they voyage through the time and space of the analysand's life. The recounted dream...

Psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts in France between 1939 and 1945

Abstract: France was affected by a deep psychoanalytic silence, both in theoretical and clinical fields, throughout the four years of German occupation. The psychoanalytic Institute closed its doors and the Revue francaise de Psychanalyse interrupted its publication as soon as the armistice was declared in 1940. Some people, e.g. Rudolf Loewenstein or Princess Marie Bonaparte emigrated, others fought, for instance, Sacha Nacht or Paul Schiff. Daniel Lagache went on with his researches under the auspices of the University of Strasbourg which had sought shelter in Clermont-Ferrand. Rene Laforgue cooperated with the German occupier; after the Liberation of France in 1944 he was discarded from a group in which, a few years before, he may have entertained the hope of playing an outstanding role. Quite a few of those he analysed remained faithful to him - which was to have an important bearing on the evolution of the psychoanalytic movement in France after 1945. In 1945, indeed, the new generation emerging from the last ...

The superego and its vicissitudes in contemporary society

Abstract: Assuming that psychic reality and social phenomena are two sides of the same social totality, this article attempts to discuss the building up of the concept of superego in the Freudian text emphasizing its social roots and the function it performs as the representative of the symbolic law. Critical turning points in the development of the concept are presented and possible theoretical consequences of Freud's argument in “Civilization and its Discontents” are questioned when considered against the background of our present society determined by globalization and consumption. The author concludes by suggesting that the contemporary superego may represent an erractic reaction against the conditions prevalent in the social realm. Thus it appears to be rather the heir to the initial state of helplessness than the result of a paternal identification. That could account for its role as the representative of the symbolic law.

May I call you father

Abstract: The paper discusses what the author calls “The seduction by the father”. It would occur when, in the Oedipus complex, the father reverses his role: instead of being the one who castrates, he seduces. Seduction here is understood in the sense that he does not act as the one who imposes limits to the child. Consequently the child can not project his hostile impulses onto the father. Based on clinical data, the Author says that, in the male child, the seduction by the father hampers the transformation of the two Oedipal attitudes towards the father into identifications. The consequences of this fact upon the construction of the “nostalgia of the father's protection” are discussed, so as the transformation of this father into the symbolic father.

Fleeing from one place, searching for another

Abstract: The history of psychoanalysis also tells the story of how individuals were uprooted. Oppression and persecution forced Jewish psychoanalysts into exile during the interwar period and the Second World War. An account of the history of psychoanalysis in a particular country is also bound to mirror international conditions. This article tells the life story of a psychoanalyst of Jewish descent. However, it also tells another story, namely the painful history of psychoanalysis. The life of the Jewish psychoanalyst, Lajos Szekely (1904-1995), who found his way to Sweden in May 1944, summarises and distils the destiny of other Jewish psychoanalysts. The article describes the life of a psychoanalyst, but is at the same time about what he represents in a more general sense. It is about the many Jewish psychoanalysts who were forced to flee and who, although the flight was finally over, still uprooted, were compelled to seek a place and a purpose in a new social environment.

Dreams, psychoanalysis and virtuality: the ancient mind in the modern world

Abstract: The modern psyche is being shaped by the technological revolution involving the development of a virtual electronic environment in replacement of the natural world. Through the lens of the dream, as it has been valued and devalued in various cultures (including psychoanalysis), we can explore changes in the status of inner life. Psychoanalysis at first celebrated, now ignores dreams. This development runs parallel to the high value of dreams in pre‐industrial cultures and their demotion in contemporary post‐industrial Western culture. Despite official disregard for dreams, dreams as the original virtual experience, serve as the basic model from nature for the electronic virtual world displayed on the external screen. Also, dreams reappear in a technological transformation as film, video, TV and computer imagery. The ancient importance of dreams has been transferred to the powerful influence of life on the external screen. But dreams as dreams are like “the canary in the mind,” warning of a continuing demo...

Obstacles to development – reflections on Eugene O'Neill's play “A Moon for the Misbegotten.” Special reference to Banter, Fear and Suspicion

Abstract: Obstacles for development are discussed with Eugene O'Neills play “A moon for the misbegotten as starting point” and with special reference to banter, fear and suspicion The dead mother is used to understand the characters as well as the oidipal situation and the fear of the stranger.

The Significance of Belief for Psychoanalysis

Abstract: The author discusses Lars von Triers film "Breaking the Waves" using Bion's concept catastrophe and faith as well as Winnicotts concept "use of the object."

Disbelief and Trust in Psychoanalysis - A Case Study

Abstract: A case of unorthodox psychoanalysis with a 27-year-old woman, during the years 1994-1998 is presented. The patient, Silja, suffered from severe character neurosis with depression. She studied humanities at the University of Helsinki with poor results, because of severe inner demands of perfection. The therapy was unorthodox, because it was necessary to change the method a few times. After two years of psychoanalysis, a life-threatening crisis occurred in 1996, and I was obliged to take a more active role and even give direct advice concerning her studies. This was successful, and she could achieve her B.A., the lower university degree. The change of method was necessary to avoid suicide. In the end we could resume psychoanalysis and analyse what had happened. Suddenly in the summer of 1998 Silja's depression disappeared and her looks improved. Therapy ended in November 1998, when she was ready to try on her own. According to her both the holding and love and also the direct advice were the most important ...

A Comment on Pekka Kiviranta "Disbelief and Trust in Psychoanalysis - A Case Study"

Abstract: On listening to the other analyst's voice: "In fact we were fellow language students, although she did not know this". We read Pekka Kiviranta's paper a while ago, but it was only in March 2002, when we met in Pecs (Hungary), that we had the time and were in the appropriate mood to talk about it. The seminar in the Autobiographical Dialogue we had given for two and a half days at the University of Pecs was over. We had an early lunch at Afium, a casual place with a university atmosphere. I (Gersh) took my wine and coffee to another table, as Judy was talking with Kata (a PhD student who participated in the seminar), discussing her paper on trauma. While re-reading Kiviranta's paper and browsing in our previous notes, I glanced from time to time at the mother-daughter scene at the table I had just left, touching in my mind the parallel father/therapist-patient/daughter situation in Pekka's case and in my own life and work. I was still feeling the power of the life-stories that came out in the seminar-dialo...

Superego and perversion

Abstract: Contemporary debates about the Freudian notion of superego are presented highlighting the importance of this notion for both psychoanalytic theory of culture and clinical work. Different versions of the relationship between superego and moral conscience, as well as between superego and ego ideal are identified, which may account for the contradictory positive and negative aspects that the superego assumes in Freudian theory. Points of convergence and divergence between Kantian categorical imperative and the superego are discussed.