Showing papers in "International Forum of Psychoanalysis in 2007"

Interpretation and method

Abstract: Interpretation started as the central tool of psychoanalytic theory, but it has undergone changes, just as the theory it was based on has evolved. Not only have these significant changes been determined by cultural trends, but different authors have also contributed to their evolution through their approaches to various other pathologies besides neurosis. Today, the cure process is divided between those who believe that therapeutic efficiency should be based on the different interpretation models, and those who maintain that it can be only sustained by the modifying capacity of the therapeutic relationship. Both positions are supposedly upheld by the results of tests that both models believe are sufficient proof but that, in the current author's opinion, lead back to the type of pathology they arose from, although they may at times attempt to cover the entire theoretical spectrum. The position upheld by Gedo—who considers that the psychoanalyst's intervention will depend on the degree of evolutio...

New approaches to understanding unconscious processes: Implicit and explicit memory systems

Abstract: Freud viewed the unconscious as being roughly equivalent to dynamically repressed wishes, needs, and motivations. Findings from developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience over the past 40 years have dramatically changed our views of unconscious processes and the human mind. It is now clear that Freud's dynamic unconscious is only a minor segment of information that is processed at subsymbolic, implicit, and automatic levels. Only a fraction of this information is further processed at explicit conscious levels. Moreover, the vast majority of the information that remains nonconscious is adaptive and has major consequences for development. We examine some clinical implications of these views.

The organizing functions of dreaming: Pivotal issues in understanding and working with dreams

Abstract: Although contemporary dream models differ, the view of dreams as centrally organizing information and regulating affect in keeping with shifting needs and motivational priorities is an increasingly convergent perspective evolving out of dream and neuroscientific research, contemporary psychoanalytic theory, cognitive psychology, and clinical work. The author's organization model of dreams is presented as a representative of our contemporary understanding of dreams. Pivotal issues concerning understanding and working with dreams are delineated, followed by a detailed clinical illustration.

Imagination as reciprocal process and its role in the psychoanalytic situation

Abstract: Imagination has been widely discussed in literature, literary criticism, philosophy, and psychology but has attracted limited attention among psychoanalysts and psychiatrists. However, imagination is a basic psychologic function, as basic as sense-perception. After laying the ground by discussing the dialectics of sense-perception and imagination in everyday life, literature, psychology and philosophy, the author applies imagination as a core concept to the interpersonal processes in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Given that the person in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy reveals him- or herself via the exercise of free association, Freud's central methodologic contribution, the author then builds a bridge between imagination and free association, which are complementary processes. Furthermore, the traditional view of free association as limited to the analysand is then extended to include the free association of the analyst. The interaction between the free association and imagination in the a...

The archive and psychoanalysis: Memories and histories toward futures

Abstract: The archive and psychoanalysis are reconnected in a new framework The archaeological metaphor of psychoanalysis, the traditional view of archives as storehouses of historical items, and the notion of memory as storage are revised according to the conceptions of fluid and dynamic archival and memory systems A combination of psychoanalytic models and cognitive memory research is proposed to form developmental archival theory that will take into account the changing contexts of memory, meaning-making, negotiation of interpretation, and knowledge regulation The three phases of registration (archivalization, archivization, and archiving) are seen in the dynamics of unconsciousness–consciousness, and in relation to the archivists’ and researchers’ transferences to their records as self-objects, transitional objects or evocative objects Becoming conscious of archives is a continuous journeying through the multiple registrations and narrativizations of archives in the interaction between non-declarat

The snares of seduction in life and in therapy, or what do young Jewish girls (Spielrein) seek in their Aryan heroes (Jung), and vice versa? – Part 2

Abstract: The author presents biographical facts of Sabina Spielrein's life after 1911, following her graduation as a medical doctor from the medical school of Zurich University, the completion of her doctoral dissertation, and the publication of her landmark paper on destruction as a forerunner of becoming. Spielrein joined the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and continued to publish important papers. In 1923, at the insistence of her family and urged by Freud's dreams of her success, she returned to Russia, only to see those dreams dissipate due to both the politics of the Russian psychoanalytic movement and later the repression of psychoanalysis in Russia. Stalin's terror and purges killed her brothers, and finally the German invasion killed her and her daughters. In addition, the author documents the various Spielrein myths described in Part 1 of this document and their glaring self-contradictions in the still-growing secondary Spielrein literature, in the professional press, the popular press, and the e...

Psychic pain as a result of disrupted narcissistic fantasies among Japanese immigrants: A self-psychological study of the stress and trauma of immigrating

Abstract: This representative case study investigates three Japanese immigrants’ unconscious narcissistic fantasies. Unlike traditional psychoanalytic research on immigration, which views the central factor of psychological distresses arising from immigrating as object loss, mourning work, and identity re-formation, this study finds that the essential factor of an immigrant's psychological distress is the injury to the narcissistic fantasy. An immigrant arriving in a new country hopes that his or her central organizing fantasy will be realized immediately, concretely, and positively, and an immigrant dreads experiencing his or her central organizing fantasy as valueless or illegitimate in the new country. The disruption of the fantasy can be experienced in an immigrant as a sense of betrayal by both the old and the new country, which, together, represent the whole world. The author argues that, for an immigrant patient, entering into psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic therapy is experienced as a kind of re-i...

Listening to words, seeing images: Metaphors of emotional movement

Abstract: Using three case illustrations, the new cognitive linguistic theory of metaphor is presented, and its usefulness for psychoanalytic practice is demonstrated. The step from poetic to conceptual metaphor and, further, to mental kinesics and embodied schemata, as proposed by cognitive linguistics, illustrates the closeness of this approach to the essence of psychoanalysis. The Freudian programmatic theorem, that the ego is embodied, can be applied in more detail. Language is not the opposite of embodiment but its continuation. Conclusions for psychosomatics are indicated.

The perversion of language in the analyst's activity: Navigating the rhythms of embodiment and symbolization

Abstract: In this short text, the problem of how “the talking cure” itself can become a perverse relation is considered and illustrated with a brief clinical vignette. Contributions coming from the work of Stern in infant research and Lacan in post-Freudian thought illuminate the potential for experience to be split off through the use of language itself. These perspectives are brought to bear on thinking about representation, splitting, and perversion as a basis for considering a clinical instance in which patient and analyst enact a perverse relation constituted by the way in which the patient uses the analyst's language to construct a sado-masochistic perversion of the treatment process. Within the clinical episode, Stein's reformulation of perversion, informed by Ogden's observations and expanding Stoller's earlier contribution, provides a basis for considering how the analyst was able to use attention to the body-based countertransferential experience to repair a sense of “erasure” that was being acco...

Body and meaning

Abstract: This paper discusses the very important but disregarded theme of somatization. Somatizers comprise a wide-ranging group of patients, who normally choose to consult doctors rather than psychoanalysts for treatment. We present two clinical reports of somatizing patients in which the psychoanalyst played a considerable role in the study and treatment of their problems. The subjects were not only totally relieved of their physical symptoms, but also dramatically changed their psychic lives.

Note on the extraordinary similarity between the worlds of Freud and of the Ratman

Abstract: In this short note, the extraordinary similarity between the worlds of Freud and of the Ratman is underlined. Aspects relating to four areas are taken into account. First is their family background: the same Eastern European origin of a Jewish family, which was also of similar composition. Second, we see the same entanglement of death and sex in Freud and in Lanzer, and a strong ambivalence towards the father. Third, the mother was dominant in Freud's family of origin, as she was in that of Lanzer, in important matters. Finally, the worlds of Freud and Lanzer had much ground in common, and Freud understood the obsessional neurosis of Lanzer from within. A short conclusion is added, stipulating that the closeness of both men and the strong bond between them enabled Freud to understand Lanzer and to make him quit his stuck position.

Some reflections on writing the history of the IFPS

Abstract: A knowledge of the history of psychoanalysis strengthens our understanding of its concepts. A specific characteristic of psychoanalysis is that its creative development unfolds in confidential processes. One way to remedy this ‘basic fault’ is extensive and intensive interviews with analysts. In earlier times, collections of correspondence between analysts provided such information. There is very little material on the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) and its importance in the development of psychoanalysis. The first forums of the IFPS were published in Fortschritter der Psychoanalyse, whereas from 1992 onwards, significant papers have been published in the International Forum of Psychoanalysis. Although not bound to any specific school of psychoanalysis, the journal has been especially open to developments with roots in the so-called Budapest school.

“Transitional subjects”: Therapeutic persons being curative

Abstract: The concept of therapeutic persons as “transitional subjects” has been denoted and described primarily by Benedetti. When the intersubjective dimension of providing patients with self-object experiences is supplemented by a very specific personal commitment on the part of the therapist, the constitution of a transitional subject can take place. Transitional subjects can be envisioned as “eu-constructions” or eu-constructive personal transactions, which facilitate patients to enter new territories of experience. Clinical examples are cited where these piloting phenomena emerge. Transitional subjects are based on therapeutic self-object experiences, go a step further, and try to enable novel movements, for example in the area of the capacity to mourn. New psychic possibilities assist efforts to integrate disparate psychic parts and to develop new choices. Various options to comprehend the phenomena of transitional subjects are presented.

Schismatic processes in the psychoanalytic movement and their impact on the formation of theories

Abstract: Of the first generation of psychoanalysts, Otto Rank was the one to discover how immensely significant the importance of the early mother–child relation is for the psychosocial development of the human being. The basic perspective of the psychoanalytic theory and treatment technique, which had first and foremost before then concentrated on the father, was not broadened until Rank's book The Trauma of Birth and its Meaning for Psychoanalysis was published (1924/1952). Even the term “pre-oedipality” goes back to Rank (1927, p. 14), a fact which is not widely known as Rank's oeuvre was scarcely read after he had parted with Freud. In the following, a discussion of Otto Rank's birth trauma theory will be presented in the context of the history of theories, and the “trauma of birth” metaphor will be illustrated by the Oedipus legend and by the figure of the Sphinx.

Acts of betrayal. Reading the letters of Wilhelm Stekel to Sigmund Freud

Abstract: This paper presents a discussion of the previously unpublished correspondence between Stekel and Freud. The authors start with a brief overview of most important historic events and facts that constitute the context against which these letters should be read. The matters cover questions of publishing policy, personal priorities, and psychoanalytic principles. The authors suggest that the Stekel letters may have been preserved by Freud as evidence of the latter's estrangement from him, as tokens of betrayal. A minute discussion of the correspondence makes it possible to discuss day-to-day developments in this fateful relation, taking into account Stekel's side of the story for the first time as well, highlighting the backfiring of a strategic maneuver by Stekel to psychoanalyse the Freud family, which heralded his downfall, and also revealing the role that Victor Tausk played in this. The paper concludes with a discussion of the dialectics of estrangement.

Between tradition and change: Teaching psychoanalysis within psychology and psychiatry

Abstract: Psychoanalysis is a difficult topic to teach within the present intellectual landscape of psychology and medicine. My own point of departure is teaching psychoanalytic psychology and psychoanalytic therapy within the departments of clinical psychology, personality psychology, and developmental psychology, and also within the context of postgraduate clinical training for psychologists and physicians in psychoanalytic child psychotherapy. The first three of these fields are to a large extent dominated by a quantitative empiricist attitude. The ‘‘soft’’ data of clinical experience are regarded with mistrust, and theoretical research is often regarded as mere speculation. Psychoanalysis is seen at best as unscientific, at worst as scientific fraud. In the present climate of evidence-based medicine and clinical psychology, psychoanalysis has also got a tough match. It is mostly regarded as ineffective, time-consuming and expensive. In addition, the psychoanalytic movement is often seen as a kind of religious cult, as a group uncritically worshipping Freud and his scriptures, isolating itself from the knowledge and ideas within rest of psychology and medicine. Does teaching psychoanalysis, then, sound like a fun job? Surprisingly, it can be very gratifying. It is a topic that stimulates a lot of interest also because of all its negative publicity. And psychoanalysis is a topic that feels different to the students; it is filling an empty space within fields that often neglect the complexity and ambiguity of our major themes of life. One of the first great surprises for an audience unfamiliar with psychoanalysis is the fact that psychoanalysis today is such a pluralistic field. It consists of classical Freudian theory, ego psychology, Kleinian psychoanalysis, object relations theory, selfpsychology, Lacanian psychoanalysis, interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis, and the latest newcomer mentalization theory. And even within these schools, there are manifold viewpoints and theoretical and clinical positions. This makes what Roy Schafer (1983) introduced as ‘‘comparative psychoanalysis’’ and important enterprise. So, if Freud was such a dogmatist, as his enemies says he was, the truth must be that he really failed as a dogmatist. The state of the intellectual field that he opened up is really one of pluralism and multiple perspectives on truth. Within contemporary psychoanalysis, it is possible to agree with certain interpretations of the Freudian concept of drive (Freud, 1905). But it is also possible to agree with the position that human beings are mainly motivated by seeking intersubjective contact (Stolorow & Atwood, 1992), establishing emotional ties and fulfilling relational needs (Mitchell, 1988), and establishing meaningful and coherent self-organization (Kohut, 1977). There is therefore also a manifold of ways to interpret the Oedipus complex. We could even discuss whether the Oedipus complex is such an important developmental theme (Kohut, 1984). The concept of the unconscious is also similarly debated is it to be understood in light of repressed drives? Or in the light of repressed emotional ties, as Fairbairn (1943) and Mitchell (1993) suggest? Is there perhaps more than one unconscious? Maybe there are several realms of the unconscious, also including unfulfilled developmental possibilities, as suggested by Stolorow and Atwood (1992).

Social conflict and subjectivity: The analyst's involvement

Abstract: Traditionally, psychoanalysts have operated only with intrapsychic determinants of the therapeutic relationship, whether in the transference–countertransference realm or, more recently, in the so-called intersubjective realm. The latter refers to the ways in which analysts’ personal characteristics play a role in their relationship with their patients and in the analytic process. Despite such ascertainments, analysts have not paid enough attention to or gone deeper into that aspect of the analytic situation that inadvertently defines its evolution and even creates the conditions for its occurrence—analytic listening. Analytic listening is traversed by the institutions that constitute psychoanalysts as subjects and professionals. These are, among others, the family, religious institutions, customs, habits, social class, recreational and community organizations, and undoubtedly the institution where analysts train and of which they are members. In other words, the listening apparatus is not neutral...

A controversy between Freud and Ferenczi and beyond

Abstract: With the aid of passages of Ferenczi's paper on elasticity, and of the correspondence between Freud and Ferenczi, the author points out the conceptual difference between Freud and Ferenczi, evokes the historical roots of this difference, and highlights its continuing importance in present-day psychoanalysis.

“You touched my heart”: Modes of memory and psychoanalytic technique

Abstract: With the concept of procedural unconscious processes, contemporary psychoanalysis goes beyond Freud, who did not know of implicit memory and the resulting procedural relational dynamics. Today, lack of mentalization and symbolization is regarded as another mechanism besides repression constituting the psychodynamic unconscious. From that theoretical background, the manifestation of early pre-reflexive archaic experience can be conceptualized as procedural transference and handled in a way that takes care of the specific functioning inherent to the underlying archaic states of mind. Using material from the analysis of a narcissistic patient, the merging of episodic and procedural modes of transference and how this affected the psychoanalytic technique are demonstrated.

Historiography and psychoanalysis

Abstract: The act of writing the history of psychoanalysis poses crucial questions with regard to the openness of society. This article examines the fundamental issues faced by researchers when they set about writing the history of psychoanalysis in a specific country. The significance of reconstructing features of the psychoanalytical practice is discussed. The opposition that exists between the current academic ideals and those of the psychoanalytic societies is outlined with reference to the changes that society has undergone, particularly during the past 30 years. In this context, the stance maintained by psychoanalysts with regard to psychiatry, academic psychology, and the university education of psychotherapists is defined. Government accreditation processes for psychologists and psychotherapists are likewise illustrated in the light of the opinions held by psychoanalysts at different moments in time.

The time dimension and its relationship to the analytic process

Abstract: Human beings seem to have a need for transcendence. The present is examined in light of the past to build our biographical identity, the essence of the continuity of our person in time. Renunciation, being fundamental to the achievement of psychic maturity, is related to leaving something behind and accepting the passing of time and the impossibility of controlling the future. But is it enough? No; renunciation is not enough; we need something more. In psychoanalysis, this can be defined as facilitating a space to play or a space of illusion in our own lives. In therapy, analysands perform a core task basically related to time. They remember the past to then abandon and renounce it. In addition, they forfeit control over the future. In addition, a space of illusion to push them beyond mere renunciation is also required—a space for playing, and therefore also for encounter. Analysands pretend that life and therapy can be eternal, that the therapist will always be there, that they can fully possess...

Who defends itself from what? Toward a reformulation of the concept of defense

Abstract: The theme of the present paper is the concept of defense. The aim is to explore the possibility of reformulating the concept in a way that is free from any compromise with the drive model. The author first re-examines the classic conception of defense and then identifies specific theoretical elements in the works of Freud (in particular, the notions of external fright, primary defense, and signals of anxiety). These elements can easily benefit from further development in the current scientific context, specifically from reconsideration in the light of modern emotion theories and somatic marker theory (Damasio). The paper thereby identifies a regulating and meaning-attribution system that is deeply embedded in the biological and that can nurture certain somatically marked emotion-expectation-action schemas. It is then proposed that children's progressive mastering of the semantic and linguistic universe determines the grafting of the symbolic sphere onto this biological regulating mechanism. Indee...

Beyond the representation field

Abstract: This article outlines the importance of representation and several Freudian concepts such as Vorstellung, Trieb, and word and object representations The author refers to the division of the analytical process into two main fields: the field of representation, and the field of the Real, which is characterized by impossibility He then states that this field is the proper field of psychoanalysis The author presents two clinical vignettes in an attempt to demonstrate the significance of the analytical act as a tool to deal with such extreme psychic situations

Letters from the past that affect the present and shape the future

Abstract: In my psychoanalytical practice, I have become aware that letters from the past both affect the present and shape the future. I keep letters from one of my cousins, letters that he wrote to his mother from the front in 1944 during the Continuation War, one of the two wars fought between Finland and the Soviet Union during the Second World War. In his letters, he asks about the harvest, about the horses and the cows, of course also about his relatives. My cousin died at the age of 19 after being injured by a mine. Even though I never met him*he died before I was born*his destiny has affected my life. During my childhood, I stayed with my aunt*his mother*during the summers. I remember her agony; I remember her crying and shouting desperately every night. I also know that his letters and his death do not reveal all the reasons for her agony. My aunt was never married. To be able to work as a midwife, she let her child be brought up by her own parents. They already had twelve children and he became number thirteen. My grandparents treated him as their own child;.many times his mother neglected him. All my relatives were aware of these circumstances, but nobody talked about them. Afterwards, one can say that I sensed a family history that was a semi-lie. This part of the history cannot be found in any documents but is inscribed in my mind. A large part of the history of psychoanalysis also cannot be found in official documents, not even in personal letters. It is inscribed in the minds of analysts, as well as in the minds of their analysands. This makes the history of psychoanalysis so interesting and also clinically relevant since we need to both identify and analyse the semi-lies existing in our professional field, lies or narrative truths that blur our understanding of the present. Returning to the early history of psychoanalysis, Jaap Bos and Paul Roazen (2007), in this volume, examine the letters between Stekel (1868 1940) and Freud. Stekel was a disciple of Freud. Following his prompting, Freud started a small weekly discussion group in the autumn of 1902 for his four Viennese followers: Alfred Adler, Max Kahane, Rudolf Reitler, and Wilhelm Stekel. This was Freud’s Wednesday Society, the first psychoanalytic society, which was followed by other societies in other cities of middle Europe. Ferenczi’s proposals were adopted at the Nuremberg Congress of 1910 (Kuhn, 1998), transforming a loose federation of local societies into an International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) of ‘‘friendly communication’’ and ‘‘mutual support’’ between psychoanalysts from different centres. But behind the façade, the IPA was built upon deep fissures of compromise. One such fissure was the irreconcilable cultural and religious differences between the Jewish doctors of Vienna and the nonJewish academic psychiatrists of Zurich. The comprehension of these differences was one of the controversies between Freud and Stekel. Discussing the final break between them, Boss and Roazen (2007) argue:

Moses, Michelangelo and Freud: From an interlacement of stories in history to some suggestions for treatment theory

Abstract: The first part of this paper is inspired by Freud's interpretation of Michelangelo's Moses, which as the author shows, profoundly expresses Freud's subjectivity and personal features With reference to clinical treatment, when the analyst “reasons” without considering his or her partner's position, the setting is lacking from a relational point of view The consequence is that the analyst is missing a precious resource, that is, his or her patient and the documental sources he or she transmits in the analytic dialogue In the second part of the paper, the author analyzes the nature of documental sources This information pertains to both the patients’ pasts and their histories, expressing their rigid conservative needs, and to their evolution and transformational needs, in view of future possible change Evolution needs are not visible, because they are implicitly present, and—according to the author—they could be recognized through the method of discrete details proposed by the Italian art criti