Showing papers in "International Forum of Psychoanalysis in 2008"

The uses of humor in life, neurosis and in psychotherapy: Part 1

Abstract: Joy and sadness, the comic and the tragic, making jokes and telling jokes, have been known in life, literature, the theater, and art since the dawn of civilization. Following in the footsteps of classical antiquity, Freud added to the philosophical analysis of humor the insights offered by the psychoanalytic method. The bridge was the cathartic method of treating neuroses, where discharge of affect was one of the foundations of technique, and the cathartic, or discharge, function of humor. Freud's analysis of humor, that “A joke … is the most social of all mental functions that aim at a yield of pleasure” introduces Freud's first explicit formulation of an interpersonal approach to the human situation in health and disorder.

The uses of humor in life, neurosis and in psychotherapy: Part 2

Abstract: The first part of the paper focused on the dynamics of wit in life, literature, and psychoanalysis; the second part of this paper is devoted to the use of humor in therapy. The central concept is Freud's psychoanalytic method, as distinguished from Freud's various theories of disorder, or neurosis, with a further elaboration of Freud's inherently interpersonal conception of the analytic process, already present in the cathartic phase of the therapeutic technique. The cathartic, or discharge, function of humor is connected to reciprocal free association (a term coined by the author) to define the mutual and reciprocal free association in analysand and analyst, playing an essential role in the genesis of insight and interpretation. Humor has its role in loosening repression, facilitating the emergence of unconscious emotions and ideas, bringing to light character defenses, and thus driving the process of analysis.

The relevance of “role reversal” in today's psychoanalytic work

Abstract: In this paper, the author's main focus is on “role reversal: ”a primitive inter–intra-psychic process at the forefront of our current psychoanalytic practice, but not sufficiently theorised in our literature. The dynamics of “role reversal” are clinically presented and discussed in their two main aspects (the unconscious identification with the parents and with their psychic culture, and therefore the concomitant dissociation of the infant part of the self) through the presentation of analytic material regarding a typical “role reversal” case. Furthermore, the author explores some of the reasons why analysts have not underlined this particular form of repetition, which is above all re-enacted in the transference–countertransference play with patients who have experienced in their past a cumulative trauma, suggesting in conclusion the curative factors in this kind of treatment.

On mental pain: From Freud to Bion

Abstract: The author analyses the concept of mental pain, which as Seelenschmerz had already been described in the works of Freud, and systematizes the theoretical and clinical contributions of Bion to the issue of mental pain. Various developments of the concept are examined throughout Bion's work, as well as the different links that he established between mental pain and different theories on frustration, thought, psychic transformations, and the early infant–mother relationship. Conceptual links between different theoretical models are proposed, and clinical data are presented with implications for clinical work. How to conceptualize and deal in clinical practice with unnameable and unthinkable mental pains—emotions without a name—is one of the issues the author aims to answer in this article.

“Objects” and “characters” in psychoanalytical texts/dialogues

Abstract: The authors propose the use of the narratological category of “character” in psychoanalysis. They consider this notion useful in studying clinical material because it may help in making clearer the distinction between the clinical development of dialogue and the theoretical options that can be used to conceptualize the interaction.In order to facilitate theoretical comparison and effective technical integration, the authors outline three main schemes commonly found in different psychoanalytic traditions: (a) the models with a strong bias toward a reality-oriented approach, which could be defined “individual-historical;” (b) the models focused on the patient's internal world, which will be defined as “individual-phantasmatic;” and (c) the models centered on the study of the intersubjective clinical facts and usually referred to as theories of the “bipersonal psychoanalytic field.” The hypothesis developed in the paper is that the characters of the psychoanalytic materials are to be considered both...

The early unrepressed unconscious in relation to Matte-Blanco's thought

Abstract: The origins of the early unrepressed unconscious linked to primary experiences (some traumatic) stored in implicit memory are discussed in relation to the “structural” unconscious described by Matte-Blanco. Matte-Blanco's intuition relating to the bi-logic—symmetric and asymmetric—with which the unconscious operates is discussed in comparison with the “symmetrization” that characterizes the unrepressed unconscious described here. The hypothesis is advanced that this unconscious linked to implicit memory, marked by an indivisible and homogenizing set, and dominated by infinite emotions that make it similar to mathematical infinity, may work only with symmetrical logic. On this basis, the fundamental antinomy of human beings can be considered to reflect the opposing dual logic existing in the unconscious (repressed and unrepressed) and the opposing logic that characterizes the conscious with its asymmetry and the unconscious dominated by symmetric processes. The concept of bi-logic that Matte-Blanc...

The concept of functional pleasure: Should it be abandoned?

Abstract: The authors investigate the relationship between the concept of functional pleasure as defined by Fenichel and a number of other psychoanalytic concepts. Considered in the light of this concept, the pleasure–unpleasure principle as defined by Freud is to be distinguished in terms of a pleasure principle and a principle of avoiding unpleasure. These are then reunified in the sense of an unpleasure–functional pleasure principle, to which the substitutive formations of the repressed are subjected. It is argued that, in the realization of substitutive formations of repressed genital–sexual instinctual wishes, the intentional erogenous pleasure changes into a functional pleasure, in which a successful defence finds its experiential expression.

Gaetano Benedetti in his correspondence

Abstract: After presenting the scientific context in which he developed his research work, the author outlines Gaetano Benedetti's life and work and presents the relationship he himself developed with him, which led to Benedetti's giving him his correspondence as a gift. The correspondence allows us to document Benedetti's role on the international scene and his relational competence, that is, his human warmth and what the author calls his “bridging function.” The dialogical principle informs not only his work with his patients, but also his contacts with colleagues and the international connections essential for our work. His main legacy is the international network he established—which is also an essential ingredient of psychoanalysis.

The function of the analyst's boundaries in the psychoanalytic relationship

Abstract: Two definitions of the concept of analytic boundaries—the analyst's boundaries in the analytic relationship and the boundary between analyst and patient—focus, respectively, on the analytic function and the analytic relationship. A long analysis of a 20-year-old girl is characterized by the analytic work being slowed down by her chronic tendency to arrive late. A miscarriage very early in her pregnancy, occurring almost at the end of the analysis, produces associations and fantasies on ‘crushed’ fetuses and children. It also encourages reflection on the importance of the analytic space, equated by the analyst with the womb, in fostering the development of fetal aspects of the self that do not develop. In the clinical material from two sessions 4 months before termination, two analytic events—the introduction in the analytic field of the character of the autistic child and the episode of self-disclosure—mark a turning point in the analytic process. In the discussion, the author demonstrates the cr...

Silent dialogues in the analytic relationship

Abstract: In borderline or even narcissistic patients, the relation to the objects is built on the basis of omnipotent control, so that those patients present difficulties related to mourning for the loss, as well as for the independence, of the objects. Their basic trait is a huge inability to recognize the separateness of others, together with an excessive use of primitive defense mechanisms, such as projective identification. Each experience that contains the danger of re-experiencing the primal separation poses an attack on the analytic setting, in order to avoid such a re-experiencing. Those attacks sometimes take the known form of acting out, whereas other times they are limited to a special use of speech, which lacks any communicational faculty and is used rather as a weapon. This special climate affects the analyst, causing specific countertransferential reactions. Nowadays, we tend to consider such a communication not mostly as an obstacle, but rather as an opportunity, allowing the analyst to com...

Affects in psychoanalytic theory and practice

Abstract: Over time, two opposing views on the role of affect in psychoanalysis have emerged: on the one hand, the view of affect as only existing as long as it can be named, and thus enter the field of speech; and on the other hand, the approach that considers that affect has its own specific and independent role in psychoanalysis, which makes it harder to conceptualise this psychic phenomenon and, of course, to define its purpose in clinical practice. Regardless of the theoretical model that underlies it, however, the goal of psychoanalytic practice is to incorporate emotions into the field of representation. This paper aims to show the problem of affect's specificity and, at the same time, the need for a theory that explains how free affect (or emotion) turns into affect linked to representation – in other words, affect in its restricted sense. At the same time, the author stresses the need for practitioners to regard affect, in its status of truth, as a guide for the cure.

Italian themes in psychoanalysis – International dialogue and psychoanalytic identity

Abstract: ‘‘Have no doubt that there is a future for psychoanalysis in Italy too. You only have to wait for a suitable time,’’ wrote Freud to Edoardo Weiss (1889 1970), on November 1, 1923, responding to a letter in which the first Italian psychoanalyst had informed Freud of having successfully introduced the Italian psychologists, gathered together in Florence for their Fourth National Congress, to his new science (as we learn from Weiss’ book Sigmund Freud as a consultant, 1970). It actually took many years for psychoanalysis to become established in Italy and for Italian psychoanalysts to gain international recognition as important intellectual players in their field. It was to celebrate this achievement, coinciding with Antonino Ferro’s election to the post of Editor for Europe of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (from No. 4/ 2003), that we decided to produce this special issue, Italian themes in psychoanalysis International dialogue and psychoanalytic identity. This topic was also dealt with comprehensively in my interview with Stefano Bolognini for this journal (see No. 1/2006), and this special issue can also be seen as a continuation and amplification of that same interview. Last but not least, I am also very happy to say that the common denominator of the new, creative situation of Italian psychoanalysis, and of the papers contained in this issue, is embodied in the process of ‘‘internationalization,’’ whose first protagonists and contributions had already been a central theme of my paper ‘‘Psychoanalysis in Italy: a reappraisal’’ (No. 2/1994). The bridges built between Italian and international psychoanalysis, the theme of this editorial, are the hallmark of this very exciting new development. As an introduction, let me go back to history and to Edoardo Weiss. A native of Trieste (until 1918 part of the AustroHungarian monarchy, like my native Trent), where he had first heard about Freud, he went to Vienna in the fall of 1908 to study with him. After what turned out to be one of the first (and, for the time, very long) training analyses with Paul Federn (1871 1950), he became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1913, even before graduating from medical school. After the war, back in Trieste, he worked at the local psychiatric hospital for about a decade, introduced psychoanalysis to the Italian psychiatrists gathered in Trieste in September 1925 for their national congress, and, before moving to Rome in 1931, published Elementi di psicoanalisi [Basic concepts of psychoanalysis]. We can therefore take 1932 as the date psychoanalysis was established in Italy, that is, the year in which, together with a small group of colleagues, including his training analysands Nicola Perrotti (1897 1970) and Emilio Servadio (1904 1995), Weiss reconstituted the Società Psicoanalitica Italiana (SPI), founded in 1925 by the psychiatrist Marco Levi-Bianchini (1875 1961), the first Italian translator of Freud. In the same year, Weiss also launched the Rivista italiana di psicoanalisi (1932 1934), on whose editorial board also sat Cesare Musatti (1897 1979), the only university professor of the group and (together with Perrotti and Servadio) one of the protagonists of psychoanalysis in Italy after the war. Recognized by the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) in 1936 in Marienbad, the small Italian group was dissolved by the Fascists (Weiss emigrating to the USA, at first to Topeka and later to Chicago) and was rebuilt only in 1946. Out of the interviews conducted by Paul Roazen (1936 2005) with Weiss in the mid-1960s in Chicago arose the book about him that I reviewed in Issue 1/2006 of this journal. There were only six members that in 1946 organized in Rome the first national congress of the SPI (followed by a second in Rome in 1950), and its membership increased very slowly, to 20 by 1955 (the year in which Musatti refounded the Rivista di psicoanalisi), and 30 by 1963 (as we learn from ‘‘A letter from Italy,’’ published by Giana Petronio Andreatta and Stefano Bolognini in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1998). In other words, the ‘‘suitable time’’ envisaged by Freud for the development of psychoanalysis in Italy came

The vicissitudes of affect in Horney's theory

Abstract: Karen Horney, a Neo-Freudian analyst who immigrated from Germany to the USA, undertook the difficult task of developing a theory that remained concrete psychology without resorting to biology or to metapsychological entelechies. Although her basic construct, as in Freud, is a conflict between nature and culture, nature for her is the naturally endowed real self, which the neurotic abandons bowing to cultural pressures. This process of desertion is teleological and based on imagination, and is also creative. It entails the pursuit of a god-like idealized image of the self shaped according to narrow and despoiled values. Being interpersonal, Horney's theory avoids third-person objectification which creates a false distance; it thus remains (inter)subjective. A theory of interpersonal affect, it is dramatic before being dynamic. It also abandons claims to universality as it does to the “objectivity” of the natural sciences. Horney's focus on alienation brings her close to Hegel and Marx, a neglected...

When our words disturb the psychoanalytic process: From resistance as a defense to resistance as an interactive process

Abstract: Words that “touch’ are closely related to words that “jar.” This article faces the problem of micro- and macrotraumatic effects in psychoanalytic interpretation, using the theme of resistance as a guideline. If it is true that resistance is what blocks psychoanalytic comprehension and progress in clinical work, it is equally true that it provides elements for clinically organizing the psychoanalytic dialogue. Being attentive to the signals in the field, and making use of a greater dose of attention to communicating with the patient, one can try to reduce the “jarring” effect of interpretation. On the other hand, it is also true that this is probably a phenomenon that follows ineluctably from the very nature of psychic experience. To interpret resistance correctly, we must therefore view it not as negative viscosity opposing change but as a safety valve for the individual's identity, enabling one to negotiate between old and new patterns of experience. In this sense, it is not something concerning...

The issue of human existence as represented in dreaming: A new Daseinsanalytic interpretation of the meaning of dreams

Abstract: Dreams are associated with those issues of our waking life which preoccupy us emotionally. According to our Daseinsanalytic view, however, the issue that concerns us while dreaming is actually not the concrete worrying matter itself, but its existential dimension. This view is based on Martin Heidegger's concept of human being as that being to which its own being is an issue. It means that all feeling and understanding dealing with concrete issues concurrently refer to fundamental issues of our existence. Dreaming though, we are focused entirely on the fundamental aspects. Dreams show the very individual and specific struggle of the dreamer with certain conditions of human life, which he or she is unable or unwilling to accept because they seem too difficult to endure. I want to demonstrate this method of interpretation on a dream of a depressive patient. The example illustrates that the concerns of dreaming are rooted in and refer to an existential dilemma that is hidden in the concrete difficul...

''Can you whistle?'': The grammar of ''living through'' in psychoanalytic child psychotherapy

Abstract: The psychotherapist's or psychoanalyst's subjectivity is an important topic in modern psychoanalysis. In child psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, the therapist's subjectivity can play a central part, first of all as a receptive and understanding organ, but it can also take a more active role. This can be the use of self-disclosure or an active interaction with the child in what the author calls “living through.” Living through consists of the constant influence, interaction, and mutual dependence between child and therapist, and of the ability, or necessity, to bring the results of this relational phenomenon explicitly into the therapeutic exchange. This is especially important with severely disturbed children because these children will project heavily into the therapist, and inevitably the therapist must fail to contain all of what he or she is exposed to from the child. Severely disturbed children often cannot endure the mental work entailed in making use of the therapist's interpretations, and...

Clinical notes on the inner experiences of the analyst

Abstract: This paper suggests that the understanding of intersubjectivity, which refers to “the dynamic interplay between the analyst's and the patient's subjective experiences in the clinical situation”, is crucial for psychoanalytic work. The analyst's inner experiences, from the first moment that he or she thinks about or meets the patient, belong to an intersubjective situation. Not only are these experiences a valuable channel through which the inner experiences of the patient can be understood, but—as Theodore Jacobs puts it—they are often complementary to that which comes from the patient. The author tries to illustrate the above through the study of the analytic process in the psychoanalytic therapy of a severely disturbed patient. This therapy from its very early phase led to the reawakening of some of the analyst's old conflicts. The patient's difficulties in tolerating the limits of the analytic setting and using free association are discussed, as are his enactments. The analyst's close observat...

Reconsidering narcissism from a contemporary, complex psychoanalytic view

Abstract: In this paper, the author articulates a contemporary perspective on the narcissistic dimension in its complexity in the light of two clinical cases. Such a perspective takes into consideration and makes use of both the developments brought about by the French Freudian tradition of Green, Grunberger, and Chasseguet-Smirgel and the contributions of Kohut and self-psychology. In order to find the best strategies for treatment, it has today become of fundamental value and importance to distinguish between many possible forms of healthy and of pathological narcissism. For the same reason, it is also very important to develop both an intrapsychic and a relational point of view. Going beyond every conscious and/or declared adhesion to a specific school of thought, the contemporary analyst works and aims today at a good level of integration of different observational and technical viewpoints. As a consequence, work with narcissistic patients (based on a deficit or on an excess of the narcissistic profile...

Battle of the dinosaurs: The impact of internalized bad paternal and maternal objects in a three-year-old boy

Abstract: This paper begins with a summary of W. Ronald D. Fairbairn's object relations theory, with particular focus on his ideas of how paternal objects are internalized alongside maternal objects. A case is then presented of a three-year-old boy who experienced deprivation and frustration from both his mother and father, thus initiating the internalization of bad paternal and maternal objects. Assessment and implications for treatment are then discussed using Fairbairn's model as an organizing framework for developing goals and interventions, and monitoring treatment progress.

The romantic fantasy and its vicissitudes: A self psychological reconsideration of “hysterical fantasy” and the eroticized transference

Abstract: In this paper, I attempt to investigate the essential function of the romantic fantasy. I clearly differentiate the romantic fantasy from the sexual fantasy, and define the romantic fantasy as an archaic narcissistic fantasy in which a woman patient experiences herself as the only woman to whom a man is attracted and whom a man wishes to protect and support. As long as she believes that this fantasy is realizable, she experiences herself as being in the center of the world and she feels secure, protected, and whole. Based on a psychoanalytic consideration of a Japanese play script, Sotoba Komachi, I hypothesize that the essential function of the romantic fantasy is to deny the fear and pain of aging and death. Through a clinical vignette with a female patient, I prove the validity of my hypothesis and illustrate that a romantic fantasy provides for an individual a basic sense of security and a sense of immortality. I contend that a romantic fantasy functions to neutralize the destructive quality ...

Watch out for hallucinations and magic thinking in public debate

Abstract: First of all, I want to share a secret. After reading Elfrid’s and Milas’ Real Christmas by the Swedish writer Pernilla Oljelund, I understood how it is possible for Santa Claus to visit and fulfil the wishes of children all over the world during the same evening. It is nothing strange, since Santa Claus has got a secret magic time and space powder, which makes transitions in time and space possible. Ordinary people who get hold of it can*although Santa Claus forbids it*also use this powder. So better watch out when you hear someone saying ‘‘Internet’’ or ‘‘European Union’’ in public debate. At the moment they are uttering these phrases, it often is almost impossible to detect whether they are using the secret magic powder in order to transfer the discussion to an area in which it is difficult to tell what is true and what is false, what is reality and what is fantasy. Often, you have a feeling that something is wrong and rotten. However, not used to the new timeless global world, it still is difficult to fully trust one’s own imagination and intuition. I discussed these questions with my friends on New Year’s Eve. We also associated to the magic of theatre and talked about different theatre plays we had seen during 2007. The Dance of Death, written by August Strindberg, had played at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. In this play, Strindberg creates a couple, Edgar and Alice, living in a granite fortress and tormenting each other with intrigues and well-worn accusations. Their friend Kurt is drawn into their vicious marital games, as are their children. My impressions after the performance were complex. Although I admired the actors and the quality of the performance, the remaining feeling was that time had passed by. I had quite a different experience after seeing the play The Homecoming by Harold Pinter, at the Stockholm Stadsteater (City Theatre). During this play, I gradually was drawn into the story, experiencing the tensions and potential violence arising when Teddy and his wife Ruth returned from America to England and met Teddy’s two brothers, Lenny and Joey, his father Max, and his uncle Sam. All four are living in the old house, living without women, without love and care. As a result of this deficiency, they have developed a jargon filled with contempt for values connected with female care and female sexuality. But, unlike Strindberg, Pinter does not demonstrate the tragedy of Max and his family. Instead, he writes in such a way that I started to experience the tragedy within myself in terms of the existential dimensions of loss of hope and repressed longing for a better world. Drama developed greatly from 1900, when Strindberg wrote his play, up to 1965, when Pinter’s play The Homecoming was set up for the first time by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The development of drama and scriptwriting has similarities with the development that took place in other forms of art experimenting with perception and experience. But it also has connections to psychoanalysis, which at the beginning of the last century redefined the patient in terms of his or her transference to the therapist*whereas nowadays many analysts mainly focus their attention on countertransference and on the intersubjective experience. Even if Strindberg and Pinter write psychological dramas about power struggle and family conflicts, they also are interested in outer reality. Strindberg was awakened politically by the rise and fall of the Paris Commune in 1871, and after this time he started to see politics as a conflict between the upper and lower classes. Pinter is also politically interested, as his powerful Nobel Lecture shows. He was accused of anti-Americanism, and his answer to these accusations was that he criticized the policies and practices of American administrations, not American citizens, many of whom he recognized as ‘‘demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government’s actions.’’ The first two articles in this issue of International Forum of Psychoanalysis show that contemporary psychoanalysts also deal with the influence of politics and governmental actions on everyday life. In his article ‘‘Hallucination and psychopathy,’’ Michael Eigen discusses hallucination as a formative part of human experience that ‘‘silently plays a role in constituting what we take as sane and real.’’ ‘‘When things go well enough,’’ Eigen writes, ‘‘hallucination is offset by other tendencies and contributes to the intensity and colour of life. At the present time, it is part of psychopathic manipulation of political and economic life and contributes to destructive scenarios masked by self-interest.’’ In International Forum of Psychoanalysis. 2008; 17: 1 3

Hallucination and psychopathy

Abstract: Hallucination is a formative part of human experience and silently plays a role in constituting what we take as sane and real. When things go well enough, it is offset by other tendencies and contributes to the intensity and color of life. At the present time, it is part of a psychopathic manipulation of political and economic life and contributes to destructive scenarios masked by self-interest. The present paper focuses on hallucinatory psychopathy in the Bush government and the economic-military mania that permeates America's will to power.

Affects and globalization

Abstract: As early as 1895 in The project for scientific psychology, Freud discussed the significance of psychological qualities. He used “qualities” to refer to the differentiation between internal and exte...

Feeble therapies desperately seeking fickle pathologies

Abstract: Medicine, psychology, and psychiatry are not only modes of scientific knowledge or professional practice, but also means of social control that participate in regulating behavior. The “re-pathologizing” of psychiatry during the past 25 years bears witness to an anthropological mutation that reduces the human being to the sum of his or her conduct. In order to get to this “medico-economic” civilization of the subject, postmodern psychiatry has needed to deconstruct and reconstruct its normative landscape for the benefit of “fickle” notions and “behavioral disorders,” at the expense of the concept of “psychological suffering.”

Young Freud's linkage with Persia

Abstract: Sigmund Freud's hands helped to mutilate a volume containing a series of “colored plates” like the one replicated in Figure 1 in the text. As a young adult, his personal library included a fairytale whose German text was entitled Die Traumleiter: Ein Marchen. No one has yet been able to authenticate the author's identity beyond the following imprint: “S. Andreas (1832).” The poetic play centers upon a celestial meeting featuring Shakespeare, Goethe, and Dschami. It has been translated into English (The dream ladder: A fairy tale), but still awaits a psychoanalytically informed exegesis.