Showing papers in "International Forum of Psychoanalysis in 2013"
TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that if one takes the re-inviting of repressed contents back into self-consciousness to be the defining process of psychoanalysis as a discipline (distinguishing it from those psychotherapies that are based on psychoanalytic models of the mind), then free-associating is indeed the sine qua non of the psychoanalysis process.
Abstract: The history of attitudes toward Freud's adoption of free-associative discourse, as well as toward the significance of the clinical significance of the free-associative method, is critically reviewed. It is argued that, if one takes the re-inviting of repressed contents back into self-consciousness to be the defining process of psychoanalysis as a discipline (distinguishing it even from those psychotherapies that are based on psychoanalytic models of the mind), then free-associating is indeed the sine qua non of the psychoanalysis process. It is further suggested that whereas Freud's notion of libidinality radically subverts Cartesian dualism, our thinking about the significance of free-associative discourse has too frequently lapsed into the mistaken assumption that free-associating should only be about what “comes to mind.” In this context, a way of free-associating with the “bodymind” is described as an addendum to customary psychoanalytic practices. This augmented method remains faithful to Fr...
26 citations
TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that certain types of so-called "sacred music" -music whose form aligns with implicit affective registries that are filtered through intrapsychic constellations of true self object relations -act as perhaps the most potent catalyst.
Abstract: Music has the uncanny potential to transport its listeners to normally inaccessible realms of the psyche. Grounded in an object relations perspective informed by the burgeoning neo-monistic philosophical discipline of somaesthetics, it is suggested that the synthesis of conscious (necessarily explicit), unconscious (potentially explicit), and nonconscious (necessarily implicit) elements comprises a more utilitarian concept of the psychic essence of an individual: the “foundational self.” This foundational self, or the “spiritual self,” represents the irreducible and ultimately unformulatable core of human experience that results from the dialectical fusion of true-self object relations with concomitant developmentally primitive psychosomatic self states. It is argued that certain types of so-called “sacred music” – music whose form aligns with implicit affective registries that are filtered through intrapsychic constellations of true self object relations – act as perhaps the most potent catalyst...
14 citations
TL;DR: Buechler as discussed by the authors describes the various phases of the work of a clinical therapist showing how fundamental the first steps one takes in this profession can be in forming a clinical identity.
Abstract: In her new book ‘‘Still Practicing’’, Dr. Sandra Buechler describes the various phases of the work of a clinical therapist showing how fundamental the first steps one takes in this profession can be in forming a clinical identity. Dr. Buechler draws from her own experience as a clinical psychoanalyst using topics encountered during her long career and outlining and explaining them through clinical examples and queries. The book offers an interesting mirrored structure with frequent queries of the narrative side by side with the essence of the psychoanalytical practice, the problematization: as a supervisor, teacher and long time professional she asks herself how to create the conditions to instill trust into the trainer both as a clinician and as a person. She introduces crucial matters such as the feeling of shame and inadequacy that may limit the work of the trainer as well as feelings of sorrow and regret especially after the loss of a patient. According to Dr. Buechler shame can undermine your clinical judgment making you feel inadequate as a professional but can also bring you to question your value as a person and because shame entails vulnerability and low self-esteem, when the feeling of shame is experienced at the beginning of the training it will leave deep scars throughout your clinical career. Therefore, dealing with shame is a necessary premise for clinicians to achieve fundamental characteristics in their work: having a sense of purpose, embracing the job with empathy, being able to draw from ones inner emotions to make positive feelings like joy, hope and love for the truth emerge. The clinician should have the capacity to link life experiences with analytical knowledge and to favor a non-narcissistic approach towards the patient, this includes accepting that the results of treatment may only be visible with time and sometimes only partially and the awareness of ones limits in trying to offer help to others. The theme of shame functions as a leitmotiv as the book unravels and on this subject the author includes a few passages dedicated to how the American healthcare system is partly responsible for the clinician’s feeling of shame since rookie therapists usually move their first steps in clinics and hospitals where they often have to deal with the more difficult cases and their lack of experience makes them inevitably feel unable to cope, useless and therefore deprived of self confidence. The positive inner object is identified as an ‘‘internal chorus’’ made out of voices of teachers and supervisors that have followed us during training and that is fundamental to handle difficult moments. The author emphasizes two kinds of shame: the shame you feel within you as a person, that triggers a process of self punishment for which it is not what you do that’s wrong but who you are; then there is a constructive type that is an inherent part of the process of growth and acculturation. Among the queries that Dr. Buechler poses in her book, the feeling of loss due to termination of treatment is one of the most important and one that she covers extensively. The author makes a distinction between two kinds of termination: when the patient simply stops going to therapy and termination when a patient dies, naturally or due to suicide. How do you get over such a loss when there is no standard behavioral code to support you? How do you handle the loss of that part of you that existed through the relationship you had with that patient? How do you find a way to hold on to the internal object while letting go of the external one? One of the methods she suggests is to share the pain with other people within the analytic community when teaching or acting as supervisor and finding relief in the writings of other therapists who have gone through similar experiences. Through the act of teaching and writing Dr. Buechler deals with the feeling of failure and loss as she interacts and speaks about themes and issues she experienced personally in her work and she finds a way to sort out the personal experience.
13 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the author draws attention to how Freud had a tendency to develop different theories simultaneously and to neglect to state how they were related to each other, taking Freud's "Beyond the pleasure principle" as a case in point.
Abstract: Taking Freud's “Beyond the pleasure principle” as a case in point, the author draws attention to how Freud had a tendency to develop different theories simultaneously and to neglect to state how they were related to each other. The theory of traumatic neurosis, which he explains by both the theory of the two egos and the theory of the mental apparatus and the energies at work within it, is cited as an example. Similarly, Freud's definition of the death instinct is also not reconcilable with his previous definition of the instinctual drives. A third example is that of Eros, important parts of whose definition are at variance with Freud's previously formulated definition of the sexual drives. In none of these cases, the author argues, did Freud replace the “old” theory “with the “new” one. He simply retained the old theory and added the new one, without integrating them.
10 citations
TL;DR: Freud's attitude toward philosophers and philosophy in published works was consistently hostile as mentioned in this paper, which is explicable by his proclivities toward speculative thought, without the net of empirical data, and by his often unacknowledged borrowings from philosophers, old and new.
Abstract: Freud's attitude toward philosophers and philosophy in published works was consistently hostile. This paper aims to show that Freud's persistently hostile attitude toward philosophers and philosophy was the result of ambivalence. On the one hand, it is explicable by his reaction to the resistance on the part of philosophers toward his innovative notion of “unconscious” and by his embrace of Comtean progressivism. On the other hand, it is explicable by his proclivities toward speculative thought, without the net of empirical data, and by his often unacknowledged borrowings from philosophers, old and new.
9 citations
TL;DR: The distinctive correlates of forgiveness are studied and analyzed in this article, and it is concluded that superficial and hasty forms of forgiveness might have a harmful impact on self-respect, selfconcepts, self-complexity, and authenticity.
Abstract: The distinctive correlates of forgiveness are studied and analyzed in this paper. It is concluded that superficial and hasty forms of forgiveness might have a harmful impact on self-respect, self-concepts, self-complexity, and authenticity. Even deep forgiveness might not completely free the individual from negative side-effects, and there is some doubt whether complete forgiveness is possible. The paper also examines what place forgiveness should have in therapeutic settings and how it could be practiced in an accurate and safe manner.
8 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors pointed out that psychoanalysis as a whole has been in decline, reflected in a reduced influence on culture, academia and mental health, and that three factors among others have contributed to this changing situation: interest in personality disorders, attachment theory and links to neuroscience.
Abstract: Neurosciences have experienced tremendous development in the last decades. Research on genetics, structural and functional neuroimaging advance at a frantic pace. At the same time, psychoanalysis as a whole has been in decline, reflected in a reduced influence on culture, academia and mental health. However, there are some optimistic signals pointing to a slow but steady recovery. Three factors among others have contributed to this changing situation: interest in personality disorders, attachment theory and links to neuroscience. The approach to neuroscience has been especially contested among us, and some colleagues distrust these advances and take refuge in more familiar approaches to clinical work and research. There are also colleagues who maintain a naive view of neuroscience, expecting confirmations it can never provide. Some interesting ideas in psychoanalysis today come from projects involving neuroscience – or at least taking advantage of a research methodology more usually applied to na...
8 citations
TL;DR: The first conference on psychotherapy research in Italy was held in 1990 as mentioned in this paper, in the context of the very first conference held in Italy on psychotherapy research, in which Kachele was one of the participants.
Abstract: I had the good luck to meet Horst Kachele for the first time more than 20 years ago, in May 1990, in Venice, in the context of the very first conference held in Italy on psychotherapy research. I w...
8 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the notion of irrationality and madness are addressed within the psychoanalytic framework. But their similarities and differences, as well as the crucial defensive position that manifest psychosis holds in the midst of all this, are highlighted.
Abstract: This paper addresses the notion of irrationality and madness, as they are understood within the psychoanalytic framework. By highlighting their similarities and differences, as well as by emphasizing the crucial defensive position that manifest psychosis holds in the midst of all this, an attempt is being made to delineate the links between the conjectured earliest interaction that the infant has with its environment and the burgeoning conscious rational mind. Winnicott's conceptualizations around fear of breakdown, disintegration, the environment-mother, and therapeutic regression are utilized to form a bridge between the theoretical understanding of madness and the clinical applications of this understanding, as illustrated by a clinical vignette.
8 citations
TL;DR: Fromm's approach to psychoanalysis is still of relevance to understanding how the intersubjective and intra-psychic are interwoven in each individual as discussed by the authors, which enables insights into what is going on psychically in society and how these changes can influence the individual's welfare or suffering.
Abstract: Erich Fromm was not only one of the founders of IFPS in the 1960s, but also one of the forerunners of the intersubjective tradition in psychoanalysis. Trained at the Berlin Institute, he started in the 1930s, after emigrating to the USA, to reformulate psychoanalytic theory by focusing on man's need to be related to reality, to others, and to him- or herself. Similarly to Sullivan, Fromm looked at man primarily as a social being. But in contrast to Sullivan, Fromm stressed much more man's being molded by societal requirements and by an intersubjectivity that is determined by strivings originating in the structure of his social character. Because of Fromm's “societal” orientation, his approach to psychoanalysis is still of relevance to understanding how the intersubjective and intrapsychic are interwoven in each individual. Beyond that, his approach enables insights into what is going on psychically in society and how these changes can influence the individual's welfare or suffering.
7 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors see H.S. Sullivan's interpersonal theory as the best theoretical framework for the contemporary intersubjective perspective in psychoanalysis and present the former in its pluridimensional articulation.
Abstract: The author sees H.S. Sullivan's (1892–1949) interpersonal theory as the best theoretical framework for the contemporary intersubjective perspective in psychoanalysis and presents the former in its pluridimensional articulation. After having extended Freud's therapeutic approach to psychotic patients, Sullivan developed both a developmental psychology and a psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic technique based on the “interpersonal field” as the basic unit of study. To the pluridimensional character of his theory also belongs its application to the cultural and social aspects of our personal identity. Having the contemporary psychoanalytic authors who shaped the intersubjective perspective limited themselves to the clinical dimension, Sullivan's interpersonal theory can still provide the theoretical framework that any psychoanalytic perspective needs.
TL;DR: In this article, Ferenczi considers the object's role to be the determinant as far as an event's traumatic fate is concerned, when the object cannot accommodate the subject's needs or assign some meani...
Abstract: This article probes psychoanalytic theory regarding the repercussions of traumatic experiences in memory function. Both memory and trauma are fundamental to psychoanalysis and lead to the psyche's constitution as well as to its limits. The relationship between trauma and memory, based mainly on an aspect beyond the pleasure principle, points toward a function at the limits of the psychic, something between the body and the psyche, between perception and representation – all of which is responsible for psychic differentiation. Trauma has been associated with death drive dynamics and automatic anxiety, which constantly require a prior link to the establishment of the pleasure principle. When there is no possibility of linking and transcribing an event, its effects are negative, that is, it causes narcissistic damage. Ferenczi considers the object's role to be the determinant as far as an event's traumatic fate is concerned. When the object cannot accommodate the subject's needs or assign some meani...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss countertransference in relation to the impact of training institutions on the therapist as a person and claim that therapist's feelings and experiences determine the diagnosis of the personality.
Abstract: The author discusses countertransference in relation to the impact of training institutions on the therapist as a person. The author claims that therapist's feelings and experiences determine the diagnosis of the personality. It is neither the behavior nor the psychopathological phenomena, which have a diagnostic value, but how the relationship is experienced in terms of the therapist's feelings. The author speaks about the problems connected to of “as if” personalities as a starting point. This concept originated with the psychopathological studies of Helene Deutsch, who associated it with schizophrenia. Later, Paul Roazen transported the concept to the social dimension of politics and to the personality of politicians. In this article, the author treats the “as if” personalities as a concept of unification, in contrast to current attempts to fragment diagnostic personality disorders, as in many psychoanalytic concepts in relation to the medicalization of psychoanalysis. Some clinical vignettes ...
TL;DR: The concept of imaginative elaboration of body functioning, which is essential to Winnicott's idea of psyche-soma, has rarely been investigated up to now, and as discussed by the authors sets out to do this and tries to pursue the meaning and articulation of that concept in the corpus of the Winniott's theory.
Abstract: Since the concept of imaginative elaboration of body functioning, which is essential to Winnicott's idea of psyche-soma, has rarely been investigated up to now, this article sets out to do this and tries to pursue the meaning and articulation of that concept in the corpus of Winnicott's theory. In this way, it contributes to bringing the body to the core of psychoanalytical theory.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors apply the sociologically oriented humanist psychoanalysis of Erich Fromm to the evaluation of the political character of the North Korean state and society, with particular attention given to Fromm's concepts of the matricentric complex and Patricentric Complex, as well as to his analysis of fascism and Stalinism.
Abstract: This paper considers the possibility of applying the sociologically oriented humanist psychoanalysis of Erich Fromm to the evaluation of the political character of the North Korean state and society, with particular attention given to Fromm's concepts of the matricentric complex and patricentric complex, as well as to his analysis of fascism and Stalinism. The author explains that if humanist psychoanalysis is consistently applied, North Korea can be understood as a transitional postcolonial Stalinist state with a patricentric social order that exploits the matricentric complex for mass control.
TL;DR: In this paper, the author described psychohistorical processes as early as 1986 in an article in an issue of psychosozial on the topic of “Nach Tschernobyl - regiert wieder das Vergessen?” (“After Chernobyl - does oblivion rul...
Abstract: The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki represent a historical break that can be understood from a social psychological position as a collective trauma of the “generic identity”. The “peaceful use of nuclear power” served as an “integration ideology of the 1950s” and corroborated the worldwide denial of nuclear danger. Not until the ecology and peace movement of the 1970s and 80s did a fundamental criticism of both the peaceful and the military use of nuclear power take shape. These initiatives, which were critical for growth, had a particularly strong, influential, and lasting effect in West Germany as the movements that were critical for expansion received here additional impetus from the confrontation with National Socialism and with the Holocaust's “breach of civilization.” The author described these psychohistorical processes as early as 1986 in an article in an issue of psychosozial on the topic of “Nach Tschernobyl – regiert wieder das Vergessen?” (“After Chernobyl – does oblivion rul...
TL;DR: In this article, a review of the psychophysics of pain is presented, based on Freud, Klein, Bion, and French authors, with the objective of clarifying as far as possible the nature and vicissitudes of pain.
Abstract: The intention of the author is to further the knowledge on pain, based on a review of the concept of psychic pain as found in Freud, Klein, Bion, and French authors, with the objective of clarifying as far as possible the nature and vicissitudes of pain. After this review, the author describes a case in which she proposes that psychic pain is made up of three essential elements: the first is the overflowing of great quantities that cannot be contained; the second is an intense and immediate defense to protect the psychic apparatus from destruction; and the third is the “return of the foreclosed.” At the end of the paper, the author makes her final, subjective considerations.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a historical overview of the evolution of the German journal Psyche, starting from its foundation by Alexander Mitscherlich, Felix Schottlaender, and Hans Kunz in 1946.
Abstract: The author presents a historical overview of the evolution of the German journal Psyche, starting from its foundation by Alexander Mitscherlich, Felix Schottlaender, and Hans Kunz in 1946. After the gradual reorientation of Psyche in the direction of being a purely psychoanalytic journal, Mitscherlich became its sole editor in 1969. In the 1980s, Psyche played a central role in the discussion and working-through of the German analysts' involvement in the National Socialist Regime. In 1997, Werner Bohleber followed Margarete Mitscherlich as editor-in-chief. Psyche, the only monthly psychoanalytic journal in the world, keeps not only documenting, but also shaping the main developments taking place in our field, on both a national and an international level. As far as the last 20 years are concerned, the journal has also played a central role in the debate conducted in and outside Germany in terms of empirical research in psychoanalysis and the dialogue with the neurosciences.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss how concepts such as narcissism and the Oedipal arrangement signify a deeper need for affiliation beyond the content of the myth itself but from within the psychoanalytic field; that they provide a flexible resource but also accrete a historical residue presenting as inertia against a unified psychoanalyst approach.
Abstract: Is psychoanalysis scientific? Which Oedipus is the “correct” Oedipus? Questions like these have divided psychoanalysis and fueled debates about it since its inception. In this paper, I explore these issues by outlining and adopting an “intertextual” perspective, not to answer such questions but to establish a metatheoretical position that might enable us to step outside of them to consider the broader relationship between theory, myth, literature, and the clinical session. I discuss how concepts such as narcissism and the Oedipal arrangement signify a deeper need for affiliation beyond the content of the myth itself but from within the psychoanalytic field; that they provide a flexible resource but also accrete a historical residue presenting as inertia against a unified psychoanalytic approach. In doing so, the term theory drift is developed to argue that psychoanalytic theory might in part develop through idiosyncratic “etymological” processes that reflect an obligation to retain concepts such ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the body is presented as a possible psychic retreat in the face of annihilation anxiety, where self and object representations tend to reside in the body and are accessible via the body.
Abstract: This paper aims to present the body as a possible psychic retreat in the face of annihilation anxiety. The sensations produced on the body seem to be a preferable place of psychic retreat in the patient's efforts to assuage her tormented intrapsychic reality. In such cases, unconscious phantasies are experienced mostly on the bodily level because of their intensity and primitive nature. Accordingly, self- and object representations tend to reside in the body and are accessible via the body. In this regard, bodily sensations offer a sense of continuity and cohesion, and allow for the further psychic elaboration of the unconscious conflicts.
TL;DR: The six German-Jewish psychoanalysts who fled from Nazi Germany to the Netherlands in the 1930s are discussed in this article, where they worked as psychoanalyst in the Netherlands for the rest of their lives.
Abstract: This article deals with the six German-Jewish psychoanalysts who fled from Nazi Germany to the Netherlands in the 1930s. Watermann and Landauer perished in the German concentration camps. Levy-Suhl survived the German occupation of the Netherlands but died soon after. Reik went on to the USA before World War II. Lampl and Keilson lived and worked in the Netherlands for the rest of their lives.
TL;DR: In this article, Caruso understood that Man's specific human ability to transcend his overdetermined biological constitution into a development of conciousness, care, and self-awareness is basic for his need for and lifelong activity related to intersubjective relationships.
Abstract: Igor A. Caruso (1914–1981), one of the founders of the IFPS and the early Vienna Circle of Depth Psychology, began to discuss questions of the interplay between biological, social, and evolutional realities and intrapsychic development in the early 1950s. Caruso understood that Man's specific human ability to transcend his overdetermined biological constitution into a development of conciousness, care, and self-awareness is basic for his need for and lifelong activity related to intersubjective relationships. Sexual and survival drive as a biological basis contain their own transformation as cultural potency within the subject–object relationship. Each act of relationship – to things and living objects – creates a new reality that is a meaningful symbol for both parts of the relationship in their single reality. This new – third – reality gains full effectiveness for both actors as “symbolic realism” and initiates the ongoing development. On this understanding, psychic development is a process of...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyse the phenomenon of a specific language that was spoken within the walls of a maximum security prison in the south-east of England between 2006 and 2007.
Abstract: I present and analyse here the phenomenon of a specific language that was spoken within the walls of a maximum security prison in the south-east of England between 2006 and 2007. In doing so, I look at the adolescent who becomes an offender, and how his language is thereby altered, here exploring language in groups and drawing on Freud and Bion, as well as the sociological contributions of Emery, Goffman and Messerschmidt, and the linguistic contribution of Teresa Labov. Examining the social structures that the language enforced, I examine my own role within and outside the prisoners' language, and explore what the prisoners learned from me and my language, and vice versa. I explore the nature of learning a language inside a prison, and examine the need for a homogeneity of language and the social adhesive in the language used. I look at my experience of one-to-one teaching versus group teaching: specifically, the differences in language used by the prisoners in these different scenarios, and try...
TL;DR: Kumar et al. as mentioned in this paper have collected eight essays ranging over the period from 1985 to 2010 about psychoanalytic dialogue with non-western societies, including India, focusing on the "motherlyfeminine in Indian psychoanalysis".
Abstract: In this book, Kakar has collected eight essays ranging over the period from 1985 to 2010. The subtitle of the book gives a more precise direction for what it is about: ‘‘Psychoanalyse im Dialog mit nicht-westlichen Gesellschaften’’ [Psychoanalysisin dialogue with nonwestern Societies]. Kakar is in an exceptional position to discuss this issue. He is Indian by birth and a practicing psychoanalyst in India, having received his psychoanalytic training at the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt. He has been guest professor at Harvard and Chicago in the USA, McGill in Canada, Melbourne in Australia, and Hawaii. He is a fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton and the Wissenshaftskollegium Berlin. In 2005, the French newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur named him ‘‘Psychoanalytiker of Civilizations’’ and ‘‘one of the 25 Master thinkers of the world.’’ In the first essay, Kakar depicts his own journey as an Indian in the psychoanalytic world. When I started reading, I did not expect to find anything that would touch the basic tenets of psychoanalytic theory and practice. I was wrong. In a gentle way, Kakar juxtaposes psychoanalytic thinking and theory as it began and evolved in Western cultures, and what happens in its meeting with Indian culture. From this aspect, he demonstrates how culturally determined psychoanalytic theory is. This view is unfolded in the following essays mainly through vivid examples from Kakar’s psychoanalytic practice as well as from anthropological studies and the rich mythological world in India. Myths have a much stronger impact in Indian culture than in Western cultures. Kakar exemplifies this with the hundreds of myths about the great Goddess Devi, especially in her manifestation as mother to her sons Ganesha and Skanda. A central thesis in Kakar’s discussion regards the ‘‘motherlyfeminine in Indian psychoanalysis.’’ He argues that Indian men have a deep unconscious wish to be a woman. This gives a very different relation to the father compared with Western cultures, and consequently does the same for the castration complex. Another significant difference exists between the individualistic orientation of Western societies and the dominant pattern of extended family in India. I remember myself that when my psychoanalytic society was visited many years ago by an Indian psychoanalyst, he remarked that in the West we tend to think that personal development will go from dependence to independence. From his Indian perspective, however, development should go from independence to being dependable. Kakar tells of a businessman coming to his office to consult about his 21-year-old granddaughter who was becoming depressed as her marriage to the offspring of another rich family came close. He could hardly hold back his disappointment over my concern for the girl. He said ‘‘For her it may be better, but for us it will be worse.’’ In a similar way, the Indian medicine tradition Ayurveda emphasizes the basic connectedness between body and cosmos, and body and psyche. In the West, Kakar notices that we rather observes what happens within the bodily stronghold mainly from biological determinants, giving scant interest to any external aspects. He exemplifies this by noting that psychoanalysts in the West seldom take account of natural aspects of the surrounding world such as the quality of the air, the richness of the sunshine, and the presence of birds and other animals, plants and trees. In an essay on ‘‘Religion und Psyche: Freud’s Zukunft der Illusion aus indischer Perspective’’ [Religion and Psyche: Freud’s The Future of an Illusion] Kakar delineates essential differences between the Judeo-Christian religious forms and the pattern of Hinduism. The manifold gods in Hinduism plays a quite different role in Indian culture from the monotheistic God in Western religion. With the concept ‘‘maya’’ as point of departure, Kakar discusses ‘‘Illusion’’ in an interesting way. The book ends with a chapter on ‘‘Globalisierung, Migration und Psyche [Globalization, Migration and Psyche].’’ This concerns a very pertinent issue in the world of today. In the small village (around 400 inhabitants) in Sweden where I live, we house some hundred refugees from all parts of the world, huge International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 2013 Vol. 22, No. 2, 129 130, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0803706X.2012.750035
TL;DR: In this paper, the use of empathy is defined as a decisive factor in handling clinical cases and situations in which the treatment encounters obstacles that restrict the power of the analyst's verbal interventions.
Abstract: The clinical challenges faced in encountering patients who do not fit the standard treatment of Oedipus conflicts clearly show the limitations of the interpretative method, thus making indispensable the study of clinical concepts and techniques as a way to broaden the psychoanalytic horizons. In order to analyse the different psychopathological problems resistant to traditional clinical approaches, it is necessary to reorganise the technique on the basis of a better understanding of the ways in which subjectivity is rooted in early psychic constitution. In this way, empathy becomes important as a clinical tool. The use of empathy must be understood as a decisive factor in handling clinical cases and situations in which the treatment encounters obstacles that restrict the power of the analyst's verbal interventions.In this case, can we say that the use of empathy interferes directly with and changes the position of the concept of psychic reality? Moreover, as we use empathy, can we also say that t...
TL;DR: In this paper, a former patient who was in psychoanalysis with me from 1998 to 2004 wrote: ‘Still I am surprised about my sense of freedom and safety, whatever happens around me, but I trust myself in a way that still is new for me.
Abstract: In May 2013 I received a letter from a former patient. His letter reminded me of the difficulties my patient and I had in understanding reality and in finding ways to adapt to it. Reality is a complex concept. It is even more difficult to understand how the relational, bodily, social and political dimensions of reality become psychic. Mats, the patient who wrote the letter in May, was in psychoanalysis with me from August 1998 to June 2004. He wrote: ‘‘Still I am surprised about my sense of freedom and safety, whatever happens around me. Of course I feel worried many times, but I trust myself in a way that still is new for me. Once during our analysis you said that you would like me to feel content with myself and it works surprisingly well. I feel that I have a different relation to those thoughts that earlier made me lose my self-confidence. What you did for me is fantastic, Christer. You gave me another and better life. Those six years, when I was in psychoanalysis, were the most terrible years in my life, but I came to every session, whatever aversive feeling I had. The result is something that I never could have anticipated. Today I have a feeling of inner strength, which makes it possible for me to believe in myself. You are an important person for me.’’ Mats suffered from anxiety and struggled with identity problems when he began his analysis. He was preoccupied with his body and had different somatic symptoms, many of which were related to his genetic condition, Klinefelter syndrome. Reading Zygmunt Bauman’s latest book Collateral damage: Social inequalities in a global age I thought of Mats and our work together. Mats’s genetic reality, following Bauman, can be thought about as the result of a game of chance, something which, in turn, evokes questions linked to the relationship between reason and faith. As an analyst and medical doctor it is tempting to look at genetic fate with rational medical eyes and ignore the despair related to an unfair fate, and the question: ‘‘Why me?’’ Our work raised many questions related to adaptation to a bodily reality, which is also a sign of an unpropitious fate. To suffer from something that is inconceivable evokes feelings of being hapless and thereby also of humiliation and shame, eroding self-confidence and self-esteem. The feeling of shame is amplified by difficulties in understanding the present Swedish social reality and the ongoing rapid deconstruction of the social security system. Bauman links the decline of the social security system to ongoing globalisation and the replacement of solid modernity with liquid modernity. One sign of liquid modernity is an increasing inequality, another source of shame for those who cannot afford to consume. The solid phase of modernity was linked to the belief that necessities of life were finite in number while liquid modernity is linked to a belief that necessities are infinite. When the superego is dominated by values which have their roots in solid modernity, adaptation to liquid modernity and its credo of consumerism is difficult something which, in its turn, may result in a defective understanding of the sources of shame, rooted in marginalisation and the inability to take part in the race of consumerism. A full understanding of the replacement of solid modernity with liquid modernity is related to a process of mourning for the welfare state, earlier conceived as a solid base of reality. It is a kind of nostalgic pain linked to homecoming and the discovery that home does not exist in the way in which it is remembered. Home is not a stable and reliable point from which to venture out and to return. Christo Joannidis elaborates on this theme in the article ‘‘Homecoming’’. Joannidis links this description to psychoanalytic concepts such as the ‘‘secure base’’, developed by Bowlby, and the ‘‘background of safety’’, elaborated by Sandler. For some patients home is not stable and reliable. Instead life may be formed on lies, resulting in a rigid system which prevents necessary transformations in an ever-changing context. In such cases psychic reality is not just something that must be discovered or revealed by access to the repressed unconscious material. In their article ‘‘On psychic reality and neutrality: Empathy and the work of construction in countertransference’’ Perla Klautau and Nelson Coelho discuss the use of empathy in constructing psychic reality in the analytic space. Klautau and Coelho have six references to Freud in their article. His understanding of psychic reality is still important and his theories of psychic reality are still influential. Both Greek philosophers and International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 2013 Vol. 22, No. 3, 131 132, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0803706X.2013.833023
TL;DR: German themes in psychoanalysis was the topic of the fourth monographic issue of the International Forum of Psychoanalysis (IFTOPS) as mentioned in this paper, which was dedicated to German themes in psychophysics.
Abstract: I am happy to propose to our readers a fourth monographic issue of the International Forum of Psychoanalysis on the topic “German themes in psychoanalysis,” a topic whose treatment I inaugurated in...
TL;DR: The author presents case material related to a young woman with an inborn physical illness, who became depressed during the course of interferon treatment for a medical complication, hepatitis virus infection, and supportive psychotherapy of a psychodynamic orientation was started in order to address the patient's low self-esteem and anxiety about her future.
Abstract: Treatment for drug-induced depression usually consists of cessation or reduction of the causative agent and psychopharmacologic management. In addition, psychotherapy can be useful as an adjunctive treatment. The author presents case material related to a young woman with an inborn physical illness, who became depressed during the course of interferon treatment for a medical complication, hepatitis virus infection. In addition to the cessation of interferon and pharmacologic management, supportive psychotherapy of a psychodynamic orientation was started in order to address the patient's low self-esteem and anxiety about her future. During the course of psychotherapy, it was understood that the premature cessation of interferon was, to her, a narcissistic injury. It was also important to explore the meanings of her inborn illness and her guilty feelings. After reviewing various formulations of depression, the author discusses the case material from an integrative perspective, which describes vicio...