Showing papers in "Psychoanalytic Quarterly in 2006"

Racial identities, racial enactments, and normative unconscious processes.

Abstract: The author surveys various views of racial and ethnic identity, and proposes a model of thinking about identity aimed at capturing both its oppressive and its facilitating character. To further elaborate the dual nature of identity, she discusses the way that inequities in the social world, and the ideologies that sustain them, produce narcissistic wounds that are then enacted consciously and unconsciously by both patient and therapist. A variety of such enactments are presented in a summary of the author's work with an Asian American patient, during which she began to recognize unconscious racial and cultural underpinnings of some of the ways she has thought about certain "basics" of psychoanalytic practice: dependence, independence, happiness, and love.

Identity: recent findings and clinical implications.

Abstract: After a review of foundational contributions to the concept of identity, including Erikson's, the author discusses the research methods and findings of the Personality Disorders Institute of the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University regarding the concepts of normal identity and identity diffusion, toward an elucidation of the psychopathology of personality disorders--their etiology, diagnosis, and treatment. The application of an object relations theory model to analyze the development of identity clarifies the relationship of individual identity with the social and cultural frame that influences identity formation and may amplify the effects of pathological identity development. Detailed excerpts are presented from a diagnostic structural interview at the Personality Disorders Institute.

In the eye of the storm.

Abstract: (2006). In the Eye of the Storm. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly: Vol. 75, No. 1, pp. 345-363.

The wrecking effects of race and social class on self and success.

Abstract: The literature on success neurosis has expanded in recent years to include a consideration of preoedipal as well as oedipal factors. Typically, success neurosis is considered to be a symptomatic result of complex intrapsychic phenomena, whether they be at the oedipal and/or preoedipal level. Having previously considered that success neurosis can also be determined by internalized representations of "real" factors, such as racism and poverty (Holmes, in press, b) the author here considers how these factors become primary intrapsychic building blocks of success neurosis through their negative impact on the components of success in the self and the ego.

Racism : Processes of detachment, dehumanization and hatred

Abstract: The author looks at definitions of racism from the viewpoints of various theoretical frameworks, addressing the role of projection and other phenomena. Racism is then examined according to principles of psychoanalytic relational theory, attachment theory, and radical group analytic theory. Power relationships, the psychosocial process, a sense of us versus them, and the universal importance of a feeling of belonging are also taken into consideration. In examining the meaning of race, the author addresses the notions of black and white and their evolution over time, as well as the phenomenon of othering.

A matter of time: actual time and the production of the past

Abstract: In psychoanalytic theory, space metaphors are frequently used to describe the psychic apparatus. As for time, it is traditionally invoked under the heading of timelessness of the unconscious, more aptly described as the resistance of the repressed to wearing away with time. This paper examines how the insertion of time into psychic events and structural differentiation form a single process. After looking into the parallelism between phenomenological and psychoanalytic views of time and differentiation, the author draws a distinction between two time categories: chronological versus actual. A clinical example is presented.

What is psychoanalysis

Abstract: Although we are now less inclined to argue about whose treatment is entitled to be called psychoanalysis, we will understand current debates better if we revisualize what originally made psychoanalysis different from other treatments. At its birth, psychoanalysis twisted the common-sense treatments it grew out of into very peculiar shapes. In reaction to that extreme peculiarity, a process of normalizing began almost immediately and continues to this day. This process is illustrated by tracing the rise and fall of peculiarities in four aspects: medical procedure, the analyst's vision, the analyst's role, and the sense of time.

Trauma, reverie, and the field.

Abstract: The author uses a clinical vignette to demonstrate complex concepts at work--concepts such as those derived from a productive grafting of Bion's thinking onto the concept of the psychoanalytic field. The underlying theory is narrated by the use of images, which the author finds to be the most appropriate way to demonstrate this theory at work--a theory of the mind based on the concept of digestibility of emotions, as well as the progressive introjection of instruments to render such an operation possible. Key points include the waking dream thought, the analyst's reverie, unsaturated interpretations, continual re-dreaming on the content of the session as permitted by the field, and the development of the ability to metabolize emotional contents.

The wish for revenge.

Abstract: The wish for revenge is a ubiquitous response to narcissistic injury, and particularly to the narcissistic injury that accompanies oedipal defeat. Vengeful fantasy serves to represent and manage rage and to restore the disrupted sense of self and internalized imagining audience that have resulted from injury. Clinical and literary examples demonstrate the split within the representation of the self and the imagining other that underlies the wish for revenge, and the way that this split operates differently in the psychic economy of the transiently and the chronically vengeful.

Technical challenges faced by the immigrant psychoanalyst.

Abstract: This paper delineates the technical challenges faced by immigrant analysts. These include (i) maintaining cultural neutrality toward "native" patients, (ii) wondering about the patient's motivations for choosing an ethnoculturally different analyst, (iii) scanning the patient's associations for interethnic clues to deeper transferences, (iv) negotiating the dilemmas posed by conducting analysis in a language other than one's mother tongue, and (v) avoiding shared projections, acculturation gaps, and nostalgic collusion in working with homoethnic immigrant analysands. While by no means irrelevant to the clinical work of non-immigrant analysts, these tasks seem to have a greater importance for the immigrant analyst. Brief clinical vignettes are offered to illustrate these propositions and to highlight the tension between the universality of fundamental intrapsychic and relational configurations, on the one hand, and the nuances of cultural and linguistic context, on the other.

Forging difference out of similarity: the multiplicity of corrective experience.

Abstract: In the context of work with an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse, the interplay of multiple forms of engagement contributing to therapeutic action is explored. The compulsion to repeat old patterns is seen to be gradually overcome by new corrective experience in which the whole of the patient's sense of the analyst as a person is greater than the sum of its parts. Interpretation of enactments--often involving patterns of dominance and submission--is complemented by a range of "helpful" actions that must be detoxified. That process entails the progressive differentiation of coercion and influence, on the one hand, and of compliance and responsiveness, on the other In the end, autonomy and creative responsiveness emerge as integral to each other rather than as mutually exclusive. This development requires that the patient gradually relinquish an "essentialist" view of self and other in favor of a "constructivist" view, in which the ambiguity of experience offers opportunities for new forms of relational engagement and understanding.

The filial piety complex: variations on the Oedipus theme in Chinese literature and culture.

Abstract: The Oedipus complex is central to Western tradition, but not to Chinese culture. Occurrence of oedipal themes in Chinese literature is almost negligible. This phenomenon seems to support a contra-Freud claim: that a theory of European origin, the Oedipus complex, is not universal to human experience in non-Western cultures. However, this article suggests that powerful moral repression may cause the Oedipus complex to undergo structural transformations in some cultures. Through studying a sample of Chinese literary and film representations, the author argues that the Oedipus complex in Chinese culture has been transformed into a filial piety complex. Some conceptual issues are considered from a cross-cultural perspective.

The meanings and functions of tunes that come into one's head.

Abstract: This paper is devoted to the study of internally generated auditory imagery, specifically tunes that appear spontaneously in one's consciousness exclusive of external musical input. Melodies that appear in the periphery of one's awareness during directed activity can protect the ego from the interference of internal desires or demands. Music present in consciousness irrespective of any specific melody may be experienced as a protective, omnipotent parental companion and thus guard against danger and the painful loneliness of separation and loss. The frequent or continuous spontaneous appearance of music in one's consciousness is considered to be a characterological mode of thinking--thinking in music.

Racism as a transference state: episodes of racial hostility in the psychoanalytic context.

Abstract: Episodes of racial prejudice emerging in the context of a psychoanalytic therapy suggest that racism can be thought of as a regressed state of transference, characterized by polarized representations of self and other, categorical thinking, and the predominance of splitting and projection as defenses. The author suggests that activation of racial hostility in the clinical situation occurs as a result of events and processes not atypical in an analytic process. Though such states occurring outside of the analytic context are more likely made conscious in certain situations and in certain persons, the author suggests that racism can be more generally described as an ever-potential state of mind for most people living in racialized contexts.

Unity of analysis: similarities and differences in the analysis of children and grown-ups.

Abstract: When comparing child analysis with that of grown-ups, we are confronted with a substantial unity of psychoanalytic method, beyond the apparent differences. The more we consider the analysis as a here-and-now interaction between analyst and patient with transformative potential, the more age-dependent differences become blurred, and the specificity of a particular analytic couple acquires more significance. At the same time, what seems to be all the same--the actual patient before us--is quite different, with several components (the child, adolescent, and adult parts), implying a need to recognize the part we should address at any given point.

Nested ideation and the problem of reality: dreams and works of art in works of art.

Abstract: This paper continues a line of investigation begun in a previous paper on nested dreams and works of art in dreams (Balter 2005). Part I of the present paper seeks to establish that works of art with nested dreams and works of art within them display certain phenomena also observed in comparable dreams: (i) they unsuccessfully deny a painful reality represented in the nested element; (2) they present an antithetical view of that reality (both denying and affirming); and (3) they are consistently associated with the problem of reality (the problem of deciding what is real or true). Part II of this paper seeks to establish the heuristic value of this line of investigation in dreams and art to elucidate the origin of reality testing.

Difference and the awakening of wounds in intercultural psychoanalysis.

Abstract: In many analyses, patients and analysts alike consciously or unconsciously wound each other. In intercultural analyses, these woundings may take on an extra bite. The author suggests that treatments can be viewed according to the following phenomenology: There are (1) sedimentations of history, which are (2) reactivated, and (3) subsequently extended to serve new and contemporary purposes via the inscription of intentionality. If the analysis is well presided over, the violence of difference may reveal significations that exceed the particular, entering into a general and transcendent sphere. Concrete and syncretic matter becomes symbolic and produces a transformation from the primitive origins of a phenomenon to new, motivated, and plural structures of experience.

Different differences: revelation and disclosure of social identity in the psychoanalytic situation

Abstract: The authors propose a taxonomy of social identities, suggesting that three different classifications of identities can be distinguished. These comprise those that are innate and visible, such as race or gender; those that are innate, but invisible, such as sexual orientation; and those that are acquired or achieved, such as marital status or political affiliation. The authors argue that each of these categories has different implications for the revelation or disclosure of aspects of the therapist's identity, as well as for transference-countertransference dynamics. These points are illustrated with brief clinical examples.

The misunderstanding (le malentendu)

Abstract: The idea that misunderstanding is simply a problem in both the psychoanalytic situation, between analyst and patient, and in translation between one language and another, is turned on its head in this paper. Originally written in French, this paper addresses both Francophone and Anglophone psychoanalytic communities in the realization that misunderstanding is the ground from which we start in analysis. The author portrays two patients who illustrate that, even when analyst and patient speak the same language, the patient may speak in a style that the analyst must first learn to hear as a kind of dialect, to hear his own misunderstanding, in order for meaning to appear.

Catching the wrong leopard: courage and masochism in the psychoanalytic situation.

Abstract: This paper introduces the subject of courage into the psychoanalytic discourse about masochism and also demonstrates that ordinary ethical and axiological concerns can and should be included in our psychoanalytic language and practice. At each stage of a psychoanalysis, it may be helpful to consider whether the patient's experience might be that taking a step deeper into the psychoanalytic relationship is both courageous and masochistic. This consideration can open the door to exploration of conscious beliefs and how they are related to unconscious fantasies and assumptions. Considering the possibility that even a sadomasochistic enactment may simultaneously represent a courageous attempt to rework conflict or trauma can enrich the way analysts listen to both manifest and latent material.

Neuroscience and imagination: the relevance of Susanne Langer's work to psychoanalytic theory.

Abstract: This paper presents the work of philosopher Susanne Langer and argues that her conceptualization of the human mind can provide psychoanalysts with a unique framework with which to theoretically combine interpretive and biological approaches to their work. Langer's earlier work in the philosophy of symbols directs her investigation into the biological sciences along the lines of sentience and imagination, which in turn become the cornerstones of her theory of mind. Langer's understanding of the continuing transformation of affect into language is a decisive contribution yet to be built upon by others.

Existence in time: development or catastrophe.

Abstract: The experience of existing in time is closely bound up with the phenomenology of the depressive position and, as such, represents a major developmental achievement. However, for some patients, awareness of time and their place in it is felt not as offering the possibility of development, but instead is dreaded as an imminent catastrophe that has to be evaded. This is achieved through the creation of an illusory timeless world, which, although offering some relief, compounds the feeling of threat. The author draws on material from Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and on clinical material from a psychoanalysis to illustrate the attractions and dangers of life in this illusory world, where the “picture in the attic” represents the threat that can never be fully faced nor fully erased. The link between the awareness of time passing and the capacity to mourn is discussed in relation to Freud's paper “On Transience” (1916), which in the author's view anticipates certain features of the depressive position as described by Klein (1935, 1940). The author makes further observations on the relation between instantiation in time, which brings a world of causes and consequences, as well as the capacity for bearing guilt.

Surviving in absence--on the preservative and death drives and their clinical utility.

Abstract: This paper offers a new theoretical and clinical look at the death drive in connection with the preservative drive. The author elaborates the flaws she sees in Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle (I920) and reformulates the transition between Freud's first drive theory and his second one within an implicit object relations theory. Simultaneously with this revised version of drive theory, a structural theory for the realm of healthy self- and object preservation and for pathological or deadened self and object parts is developed, including the devastating effects of trauma. Clinical material from an extended psychoanalysis shows how these concepts can help us understand these patients' absence and "deadness " and rethink the technical challenges they provide.

Perverse dreams and dreams of perversion.

Abstract: This paper (1) posits the occurrence of perverse dreams as a type of mental phenomenon in the constellation of perverse processes; (2) considers manifest dreams of frank perversion as a type of perverse dream within the class of perverse dreams as a whole; (3) relates the subtype of perverse dreams without manifest perversions to the occurrence of perverse defenses and the development of a perverse transference; and (4) suggests that consideration to perverse dreams in the psychoanalytic process finds application in identifying and differentiating perverse defenses from neurotic and other characterologic patterns; in identifying and tracing the vicissitudes of difficult perverse transference-countertransference constellations; and in furthering perverse patients' recognition and understanding of particularly troublesome and seemingly intractable issues in their psychic makeup. Clinical material illustrates perverse dreams and their usefulness in the often arduous process of analyzing perverse defenses.

As August approaches.

Abstract: An elegiac yet reassuring essay on why and how the prospect of the August summer vacation can stress even the experienced analyst, as well as the patient.

Josephine Baker: psychoanalysis and the colonial fetish.

Abstract: This paper traces an intricate path connecting racial fantasy, aesthetic judgment, and the larger cultural problem of inter-subjective recognition. In particular, the author examines the theme of fetishism, both sexual and racial, in a Western historical, colonial context, in order to unravel a set of disturbances that cohere around the racial fetish then and now. Taking the figure of an entertainment icon of the 1920s, Josephine Baker, as a case study, the author shows how the imagination of the colonizing white male was both articulated and disrupted by Baker as a ready-made representation of the cultural, racial, and sexual other.

Primo Levi’s Loneliness: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Suicide-Nearness

Abstract: To elucidate suicide-nearness, the perspectives of the death drive and narcissism are applied to the writings of Primo Levi. Emerging themes are Levi's struggle to maintain his self-regard from his year as a prisoner in Auschwitz and onward, and his observations on xenophobia, violence, and the need for love. The gradual increase of depressive content in Levi's work is noted, as are his identifications with others who succumbed in the Holocaust or took their lives after surviving it. The conflict between the wish for peace and the need for love is seen as impossible to resolve under the threat of extermination and as reemerging in the prevailing sense of loneliness that Levi described.

What the psychoanalyst learns from his own interpretations.

Abstract: The processes by which the psychoanalyst acquires knowledge of his or her patient exceed the traditional sequence of careful listening and reflection on the meaning of associations. This paper focuses on the value of the analyst's utterances as a source of information about what he or she thinks and is in the process of considering. Movement of the thought process from one subject to another, and the accompanying visual phenomena (among analysts who tend to envision memories and associations), supply valuable data. The author presents several clinical vignettes to illustrate how the analyst discovers ideas and words in the process of giving interpretations.

Memories of Jacob A. Arlow: A special tribute by the Psychoanalytic Quarterly.

Abstract: Jacob A. Arlow was for many years a devoted and much valued member of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly family. Editor of the Quarterly from 1971-1979, he remained active with the journal until his death on May 21, 2004, at the age of ninety-one. In tribute to and remembrance of him, we have assembled a series of brief reflections on his life from six of us who worked closely with him. It seems fitting to publish them in this, the first regular issue of the Quarterly’s 75th continuous year of publication.

Recent findings in neuroscience and their relevance to psychoanalysis

Abstract: ED BY FRED M. LEVIN, M.D. These abstracts are primarily of articles published in the journal Science. Their subjects are considered potentially important for psychoanalysis, particularly in regard to mind–brain relations and cognitive controls. I begin with the topic of research on corollary discharge, on the one hand, and reports on important revisions of the neuron doctrine, on the other; I then add a discussion of our conceptions of what controls development and behavior, citing recent work in molecular biology on protein pathways. PART I: OF CRICKETS AND MEN A recent article by Poulet and Hedwig (2006) clarifies an older neurological concept, that of corollary discharge, in a way that may help us better understand a key aspect of brain organization and mental life. These researchers wired the nervous systems of singing crickets sufficiently to anatomically determine “a single, multisegmental interneuron [that] is responsible for the preand postsynaptic inhibition of auditory neurons . . . . Therefore, this neuron represents a corollary discharge interneuron that provides a neuronal basis for the central control of sensory responses” (p. 518). The central idea, in a nutshell, is that the cricket’s “ears” (located in their feet) modify its hearing based upon information forwarded from motor areas to sensory areas about motor plans (e.g., intentions for action, such as the instruction to flap the cricket’s wings, an action that could well add to auditory input). Let me elaborate.