Showing papers in "The International Journal of Psychoanalysis in 2017"
TL;DR: The earliest experience of the object is as a process, rather than a thing in itself, but the infant perceptually identifies his experience of an object with the maternal object, and the ego experience remains as an unconscious memory in the adult who relives it through his adamant quest for a transformational object as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In work with certain kinds of patients in psychoanalysis who hyperbolize a particular form of object seeking, and in our analysis of certain features of western culture, I think we can isolate the trace in the adult of the earliest experience of the object. The infant's first experience of the object is as a process, rather than a thing in itself, but he perceptually identifies his experience of the object (an experience of psycho-somatic transformation) with the maternal object. For this reason I have termed the first object the transformational object, as I want to identify it with the object as process, thus linking our notion of the object with the infant's subjective knowing of it. Before the mother is personalized to the infant as a whole object she has functioned as a source of transformation, and as the infant's own nascent subjectivity is almost completely the experience of the ego's integrations (cognitive, libidinal, affective) the first object is identified with the alterations of the ego's state. This ego experience remains as an unconscious memory in the adult who relives it through his adamant quest for a transformational object: a new partner, a different form of work, a new material acquisition, an ideology or a belief. The most vivid memory of the earliest object relation occurs in the aesthetic moment when the person feels in deep rapport with the aesthetic object. Such moments are notable for their evocation of the affective memory of the earliest object relation. It is important for psychoanalysts to understand that the psychoanalytic setting and process invites the patient to remember the earliest object relation, so that a patient's expectation that the analyst will perform a transformational function is not necessarily either a wish or a resistance to the analytic work, but may, in fact, be the patient's response to the regressive invitation of the psychoanalytic space.
128 citations
TL;DR: In Relational Freedom: Emergent properties of the interpersonal field as discussed by the authors, Stern takes the reader on an intimate journey through an interpersonal landscape, where the reader is taken on an interpersonal expedition.
Abstract: In Relational Freedom: Emergent properties of the interpersonal field Donnel Stern takes the reader on an intimate journey through an interpersonal landscape. This interpersonal expedition occurs s...
37 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that only free‐association methodically opens the discourse of self‐consciousness to the voicing of the repressed, and the status offree‐associative praxis as necessary for a genuinely psychoanalytic process is justified.
Abstract: Translations of summaryIt is argued that only free‐association methodically opens the discourse of self‐consciousness (the representations available to reflective awareness) to the voicing of the r...
27 citations
TL;DR: The current proliferation of psychoanalytic theories challenges the integrity of psychoanalysis, theoretically and clinically as mentioned in this paper, and debates ensued over the viability and advisability of the psychoanalistic theories.
Abstract: The current proliferation of psychoanalytic theories challenges the integrity of psychoanalysis, theoretically and clinically. In the 1980s debates ensued over the viability and advisability of the...
19 citations
TL;DR: Grotstein this paper discusses psychoanalytic theory and technique in the Kleinian/Bionian mode in the context of psychoanalysis of sexually traumatized patients, and proposes a method for creating analysts, creating analytic patients.
Abstract: psychoanalysis of sexually traumatized patients. Bull Menninger Clinic 61:495–519. Grotstein JS (2009). “ . . . But at the same time and on another level . . . ” Volume 1: Psychoanalytic theory and technique in the Kleinian/Bionian mode. London: Karnac Books. Killingmo B (1989). Conflict and deficit: Implications for technique. Int J Psychoanal 70:65–79. Levine HB (2010). Creating analysts, creating analytic patients. Int J Psychoanal 91:1385–404. O’Shaughnessy E (1992). Enclaves and excursions. Int J Psychoanal 73:603–11.
16 citations
TL;DR: The complete works of W.R. Bion were published in 2001 as mentioned in this paper and represent both a psychoanalytic and publication milestone that will be celebrated for decades to come.
Abstract: The culmination of years of painstaking work, research and re‐editing, the publication of The complete works of W.R. Bion represents both a psychoanalytic and publication milestone that will be lon...
16 citations
TL;DR: Pichon Rivière's ideas are compared with those of Klein, Fairbairn, Bion, Winnicott and Bowlby, and contemporary writers including Ogden, Kaës, and Ferro whose works echo Pichon Richer's thought.
Abstract: Enrique Pichon Riviere's work, fundamental to Latin American and European psychoanalytic development, is largely unknown in English-language psychoanalysis. Pichon's central contribution, the link (el vinculo), describes relational bonds in all dimensions. People are born into, live in, and relate through links. Psychic structure is built of links that then influence external interaction. Links, expressed in mind, body and external action, continuously join internal and external worlds. Links have two axes: vertical axis links connect generations through unconscious transgenerational transmission; horizontal axis links connect persons to life partners, family, community and society. For Pichon, treatment constitutes a spiral process through which interpretation disrupts existent structures, promoting new emergent organizations at successively deeper levels. Psychic and link structures evolve over time unless repetitive cycles stunt growth. For Pichon, transference is constituted in the here-and-now-with-me because of the analytic link. Pichon also undertook family and group psychoanalysis where individuals become spokespersons for unconscious links and family secrets. He developed operative groups that apply psychoanalysis to both analytic and non-analytic tasks. After describing Pichon's major contributions, the paper compares Pichon Riviere's ideas with those of Klein, Fairbairn, Bion, Winnicott and Bowlby, and contemporary writers including Ogden, Kaes, and Ferro whose works echo Pichon Riviere's thought.
16 citations
TL;DR: It is concluded that a partial and dynamic common ground exists on the clinical common ground shared by psychoanalysts who have different theoretical frameworks and that communication is possible in crucial areas.
Abstract: Translations of summary
Clinical discussion groups based on the Three-Level Model for Observing Patient Transformations (3-LM) enable us to reflect on the clinical common ground shared by psychoanalysts who have different theoretical frameworks. The very existence of this common ground is controversial. While analysts such as Wallerstein support it, others, like Green, think it is just a myth. In their 2005 controversy Wallerstein and Green proposed an observation procedure that might clarify this matter. This procedure bears great similarity to the one used by clinical discussion groups that apply the 3-LM. The study of numerous theoretically heterogeneous groups that use this model shows that communication is possible in crucial areas. We may thus conclude that a partial and dynamic common ground exists.
At a phenomenological level, certain fragments of material produce a shared resonance that enriches clinical understanding for the whole group. Communication is also possible with regard to the conceptualization of patient changes, although some controversial issues persist at this level. Finally, at the level of theoretical explanations, divergences concerning abstract theories do not prevent a fertile interaction among ‘in vivo’ personal implicit theories. The latter give rise to the actual operational frameworks underlying participants' approach to clinical problems.
15 citations
TL;DR: One hundred and twenty years ago, Freud commenced his transition from neurologist to psychoanalyst and furnished us with his ‘Project for a scientific psychology of the mind' as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: One hundred and twenty years ago, Freud commenced his transition from neurologist to psychoanalyst and furnished us with his ‘Project for a scientific psychology’ of the mind. So began a necessary ...
15 citations
TL;DR: Drawing on Thomas Ogden's notion of ‘reverie’, the role of self‐reflection in research interviewing is explored, showing how reverie can be used to help overcome impasse, and develop research hypotheses.
Abstract: Drawing on Thomas Ogden's notion of ‘reverie’, the role of self‐reflection in research interviewing is explored. Ogden views reverie as a co‐created intersubjective phenomenon, a ‘third’, distinct ...
14 citations
TL;DR: In the author's view, the idea of the transmission and communicative potential of unconscious phantasies enabled these authors to overcome the solipsistic origins of drive theory in favour of a notion in which unconscious phantsies both set down the coordinates of the inner world and form and reflect the matrix of inter‐subjective relations.
Abstract: Starting with Freud's discovery of unconscious phantasy as a means of accessing his patients' internal world, the author discusses the evolution of the concept in the work of Melanie Klein and some of her successors. Whereas Freud sees phantasy as a wish fulfilling imagination, dominated by primary process functioning and kept apart from reality testing, Klein understands phantasies as a structural function and organizer of mental life. From their very beginnings they involve object relations and gradually evolve from primitive body-near experiences to images and symbolic representations. With her concept of projective identification in particular, Klein anticipates the communicative function of unconscious phantasies. They are at the basis of processes of symbolization, but may also be put into the service of complex defensive operations. The author traces the further evolution of the concept from the contributions of S. Isaacs, the theories of thinking proposed by W.R. Bion and R. Money-Kyrle, Hanna Segal's ideas on symbolization and reparation all the way to the latest approaches by R. Britton, J. Steiner and others, including the understanding of transference and counter-transference as a 'total situation'. Points of contact with Freud are to be found particularly in connection with his concept of 'primal phantasies'. In the author's view, the idea of the transmission and communicative potential of unconscious phantasies enabled these authors to overcome the solipsistic origins of drive theory in favour of a notion in which unconscious phantasies both set down the coordinates of the inner world and form and reflect the matrix of inter-subjective relations.
TL;DR: It is shown that sexuality, gendered subjectivity, and intimacy are not simply personal and self contained, but always invaded by and cohabiting with forces of power and history, whether violent or seductive or dominating, or all at once.
Abstract: This title comes from an essay on the impact of political and, in particular, totalitarian regimes on intimate life. What I most want to convey today is that sexuality, gendered subjectivity, and intimacy are not simply personal and self contained, but always invaded by and cohabiting with forces of power and history, whether violent or seductive or dominating, or all at once. Martin Mahler, a contemporary analyst in Prague, conjured up the clinical and social and professional dilemmas when Czech analysts and Czech citizens began to rehabilitate and recover psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic work, after the collapse of communism.
TL;DR: It is argued that adopting the Kleinian notion of unconscious phantasy is transformative and introduces a radical change that defines Kleinian thinking and practice and significantly impacts the analyst's basic clinical approach.
Abstract: Analysts may incorporate many of Melanie Klein's important contributions (eg, on preoedipal dynamics, envy, and projective identification) without transforming their basic analytic approach In this paper I argue that adopting the Kleinian notion of unconscious phantasy is transformative While it is grounded in Freud's thinking and draws out something essential to his work, this notion of phantasy introduces a radical change that defines Kleinian thinking and practice and significantly impacts the analyst's basic clinical approach This impact and its technical implications in the analytic situation are illustrated and discussed
TL;DR: This article suggests that both members of the analytic dyad will seek to reappropriate the experience through a forced ego integration that interferes with accessing states of unintegration in the analytic treatment and produces subtle alterations to symbolisation work.
Abstract: Ideas about psychoanalysis via videoconference-videoconference teleanalysis (VT)-are presented with the general understanding that these settings produce a twofold split between various degrees of recognition/negativisation of the absence of the other, on one hand, and the expectation of physical co-presence, on the other. This split has been put forward as dismantling the here, now, with me pre-reflexive unity of the analytic experience. This article suggests that both members of the analytic dyad will seek to reappropriate the experience through a forced ego integration that interferes with accessing states of unintegration in the analytic treatment and produces subtle alterations to symbolisation work. The effort to overcome this condition is illustrated with clinical vignettes and therapists' comments about feelings of inauthenticity and discontent when trying to sustain evenly-suspended attention, as well as in the perception of a form of flattening of the alive nature of speech. However, this is not a constant for all VT, and mutual understanding can be an important mitigating feature. The focus of the discussion should be on the capacity of the analytic dyad to overcome such a split and not on a direct extrapolation of the perceptual limitations of VT to possible effects on transference / countertransference.
TL;DR: Some hypotheses formulated by Spielrein in her 1912 work in order to elucidate her concept of death instinct as well as her hypothesis of the existence of a more primitive mental functioning than the one governed by the pleasure principle are discussed.
Abstract: In ‘Destruction as Cause of Come‐into‐being’, Spielrein argues for the need of postulating the existence of a death instinct in mental functioning. The idea that she thus anticipated the concept of...
TL;DR: These narratives of separation published as part of memoirs written about Freud by three of his patients give an innovative point of view on the psychoanalytic process, with respect to the importance they place on the termination phase of the analysis at a time when Freud himself had not given it much consideration.
Abstract: This article presents a unique collection of narratives of separation - unique because the separation here is from psychoanalysis and from Freud as analyst. These narratives were published as part of memoirs written about Freud by three of his patients. Their narratives of separation give us an innovative point of view on the psychoanalytic process, in particular with respect to the importance they place on the termination phase of the analysis at a time when Freud himself had not given it much consideration. The three autobiographical texts are Abram Kardiner's memoir (1977); the memoir of Sergei Pankejeff, known as the Wolf Man (Gardiner, ); and 'Tribute to Freud', by the poet H.D. (). These three distinguished narratives are discussed here as works of translation, as understood by Walter Benjamin (1968 [1955]), Paul Ricoeur (2006 [2004]), and Jean Laplanche (1999 [1992]). They express translation under three aspects: reconstruction of the past (the work of memory), interpreting the conscious residues of the transference (the work of mourning), and, as a deferred action, deciphering the enigmatic messages received from Freud as the parental figure. This representation of the analysand's writing suggests that the separation from analysis is an endless work of translation within the endless process of deciphering the unconscious.
TL;DR: On the 40th anniversary of the publication of The Piggle, the author of as mentioned in this paper re-read the book in light of new information about the patient and explored transgenerational transmission of pathology/trauma, and the ways that language, in general and given names, organize individual subjectivity.
Abstract: On the 40th anniversary of its publication, the author re-reads Winnicott's The Piggle - a case of 'on demand analysis' with a child suffering from psychotic night terrors - in light of new information about the patient. Conversations between the author and 'Gabrielle' explore two areas not regarded as priorities by Winnicott: the transgenerational transmission of pathology/trauma, and the ways that language, in general - and given names, in particular - organize individual subjectivity. The question raised is to what degree Winnicott - who described the treatment as "psychoanalysis partage [shared]" due to the parents' involvement - thought of the pathology itself as 'shared.' The goal is not to supplant but to expand Winnicott's understanding of the case, borrowing insights from the work of Lacan and others.
TL;DR: It is argued that the recognition, containment, and effective use of the parallel process phenomena and supervisory countertransferences are essential in order to evaluate candidates’ progression and readiness to graduate.
Abstract: Utilizing detailed, in‐depth material from supervisory hours from around the world (explored in End of Training Evaluation groups), this paper shows that supervisors are subject to multiple, divers...
TL;DR: Aspects of the myths of Narcissus and Oedipus are used here as models for studying stupidity to help broadening the understanding of technical aspects in working with adolescents who defend themselves against detachment from infantile aspects through defensive organizations.
Abstract: Translations of summary
This paper has the objective of broadening the understanding of technical aspects in working with adolescents who defend themselves against detachment from infantile aspects through defensive organizations. These organizations numb the adolescent toward both triangular reality and narcissistic defenses. The families of such young people may be part of the organization and the analyst can also be recruited to participate in it. But the analyst's perception can become blurry and this fact makes him appear stupid. Aspects of the myths of Narcissus and Oedipus are used here as models for studying stupidity. The analysis of a psychotic teenage girl who is symbiotic in relation to her family shows how the analytical field can be invaded by defensive configurations. Collusions of idealization and domination/submission involve the young person, her family and the analyst but the defensive organizations are only identified after their traumatic breakdown. The expansion of the symbolic network allows symbiotic transgenerational organizations to be identified, while models related to enactments prove helpful for understanding technical ups and downs. The paper ends with imaginative conjectures where Oedipus, as ‘patient’, is compared to the patient discussed here. These conjectures lead to reinterpretations of aspects of the Oedipus myth. The reinterpretations, together with the theoretical and clinical study, may serve as models for understanding the technical ups and downs in working with troubled teens.
TL;DR: By the means of a self‐portrait by Bacon it will be examined how, in art, terror and traumatization are represented via targeted disorganization of beauty endowing mechanisms, hence finding an enabling form of confrontation and integration of fended contents.
Abstract: Translations of summary
Even close to 80 years after Freud's words that psychoanalysis “has scarcely anything to say about beauty” (Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, SE 21, p. 82) the question of a specific psychoanalytic aesthetic is still faced with a deficit in theory. Since aesthetics is related to Aisthesis, the Greek word for ‘perception’, a psychoanalytic aesthetic can solely emerge from a psychoanalysis of perceptive structures. The term ‘kinaesthetic semantic’ is introduced in order to exemplify via music how perceptive experiences must be structured for them to be experienced as beautiful. The basic mechanisms – repetition of form (rhythm, unification) and seduction (deviation, surprise) – are defined. With the help of these mechanisms an intensive contact between perceiving object and kinetic subject, the physical self, is established. The intensive relatedness is a requirement for the creative process in art and also for psychic growth on the subject's level. The described basic mechanisms of the aesthetic process in music can also be encountered in painting and poetry. By the means of a self-portrait by Bacon it will be examined how, in art, terror and traumatization are represented via targeted disorganization of beauty endowing mechanisms, hence finding an enabling form of confrontation and integration of fended contents.
TL;DR: Another argument for using verbal interventions to a baby in therapy is focused on; they present him with a symbolic order that differs from that of the parent.
Abstract: Parent-infant psychotherapy, a rather new field in psychoanalysis, raises questions of how to conceptualize the clinical process. Previous publications have used semiotic concepts to account for the therapist's non-verbal communication and investigated the countertransference, including what the baby might grasp of its variations. The present paper focuses on another argument for using verbal interventions to a baby in therapy; they present him with a symbolic order that differs from that of the parent. The qualitative difference between the parent's and the analyst's address is conceptualized by Dolto's term parler vrai. The therapeutic leverage is not the analytic interventions' lexical content but their message that words can be used to expose conflicts. Thereby, one can transform warded-off desires into demands that can be negotiated with one's objects. The reasons why this address catches the baby's attention are discussed. A prerequisite for such attention is that the infant brain is prewired for perceiving words as a special communicative mode. Relevant neuroscientific research is reviewed in regard to this question. The presentation relies on concepts by Dolto, Lacan and Winnicott and findings from neuroscience and developmental psychology. It also briefly discusses Chomsky's linguistic concepts in relation to these therapies.
TL;DR: A paradigm shift is proposed that reframes Freud's late instinct theory into a theory of dehumanization by recovering reparative and relational components of guilt by reforming guilt as drawing on the life instincts to revivify victims’ humanity through analytic witnessing and acknowledgment.
Abstract: It is likely that under the impact of impending Nazism, aggression theory in late Freud, as presented in Civilization and its Discontents (1930), left the entirety of guilt to self-punishment, thus retracting his view that love functions in the superego as remorse and restitution. This change however, essentially withdraws provision for treating victims of abuse, violence and terror. This paper proposes a paradigm shift that reframes Freud's late instinct theory into a theory of dehumanization by recovering reparative and relational components of guilt. This reframe has major implications for the position taken with regard to the role of witnessing and the moral imperative in recovery from dehumanizing experience, which orthodox psychoanalytic theory has essentially bypassed. It is propose that victim treatment, as case examples illustrate, reformulates guilt as drawing on the life instincts to revivify victims’ humanity through analytic witnessing and acknowledgment. Indeed, unless breaches of humanity are confronted by a witness, the life instincts stay merely rhetorical, if not contradictory, by leaving the death instincts to grow unseen and, thus, unopposed. A two-fold formulation of guilt may better address and redress disorders of dehumanization, whereby ‘death guilt’ (under the sway of aggression) signifies the orthodox, irrevocable guilt of self-reproach for the bad we may have done, and ‘life guilt’ (under the sway of a moral imperative) the redeemable guilt for the good we have still to do.
TL;DR: In ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’, perhaps the most inscrutable of his works, Freud attempted to derive the genesis of life and of all its more highly developed forms from the chance collision of two systems by conceiving development as resulting from the dynamics of this interaction.
Abstract: In ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’, perhaps the most inscrutable of his works, Freud attempted to derive the genesis of life and of all its more highly developed forms (without positing any previously conceived or anticipated end) from the chance collision of two systems; by conceiving development as resulting from the dynamics of this interaction. This view enabled him to state that “The present development of human beings requires, as it seems to me, no different explanation than for that of animals” (Freud, 1920, p. 42). The development of higher forms of life, however, appears ‘merely’ as providing a detour on the road to inevitably end in death, that is in the reduction of tension, the rise of disorder (entropy), and attainment of Nirvana. In these speculations Freud drew close to monism, for the systems he described in interaction were, on the one hand, an organism – that is, a product with a history of earlier interactions with systems of its environment – and, on the other hand, a stimulus, which was the exponent of a second organism for its part also historically evolved. Yet these two systems were both seen as being determined in their inner dynamics solely by the tendency towards a reduction of tension. In other words both were determined by the death drive. Freud had, however, strictly and repeatedly rejected such a monistic perception of drives. He reasoned that in the interaction of two organisms the meeting of the death drive in each of them produced a new and more
TL;DR: This paper re‐examines the three episodes that framed anthropology's early encounter with psychoanalysis, emphasizing the important works and their critical reception.
Abstract: In the early 20th century, many analysts - Freud and Ernest Jones in particular - were confident that cultural anthropologists would demonstrate the universal nature of the Oedipus complex and other unconscious phenomena. Collaboration between the two disciplines, however, was undermined by a series of controversies surrounding the relationship between psychology and culture. This paper re-examines the three episodes that framed anthropology's early encounter with psychoanalysis, emphasizing the important works and their critical reception. Freud's Totem and Taboo began the interdisciplinary dialogue, but it was Bronislaw Malinowski's embrace of psychoanalysis - a development anticipated through a close reading of his personal diaries - that marked a turning point in relations between the two disciplines. Malinowski argued that an avuncular (rather than an Oedipal) complex existed in the Trobriand Islands. Ernest Jones' critical dismissal of this theory alienated Malinowski from psychoanalysis and ended ethnographers' serious exploration of Freudian thought. A subsequent ethnographic movement, 'culture and personality,' was erroneously seen by many anthropologists as a product of Freudian theory. When 'culture and personality' was abandoned, anthropologists believed that psychoanalysis had been discredited as well - a narrative that still informs the historiography of the discipline and its rejection of psychoanalytical theory.
TL;DR: This paper reports on a psychoanalytically oriented doctoral programme offered at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, and reflects on how this specific programme illuminates and extends some of the broader debates in the field of psychoanalysis.
Abstract: There is increasing interest, both internationally and in South Africa, in strengthening the relationship between psychoanalytic practice and research. This paper reports on a psychoanalytically or...
TL;DR: The Group Affective Model is described, a method for teaching psychoanalytic concepts and their clinical application, using multi‐channel teaching, process and review in group settings, and learning from experience in an open systems learning community for Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.
Abstract: This paper describes The Group Affective Model, a method for teaching psychoanalytic concepts and their clinical application, using multi-channel teaching, process and review in group settings, and learning from experience in an open systems learning community for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. This innovation arose in response to criticism of existing methods in psychoanalytic education that have subordinated the primary educational task to that of the training analysis. Noticing this split between education and training analysis, between cognition and affect, and between concepts of individual and group unconscious processes, we developed the Group Affective Model for teaching and learning psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in an open psychological space in which students and faculty experience individual and group processes of digestion, assimilation, and review, which demonstrate the concepts in action and make them available for internalization selectively. We discuss our philosophy and our educational stance. We describe our institution and our participants. We give examples of teaching situations that we have studied to provide some insight about assimilation and internalization of the concepts and clinical approaches being taught. We discuss the transferability of the Group Affective Model to other teaching settings and psychoanalytic training institutions and propose it as the fourth pillar of psychoanalytic training, next to analytic treatment, clinical supervision, and didactic seminars.
TL;DR: The idea of the role is permeating the field of psychology and the operational field of psychoanalysis and it is becoming an interpretation vector as discussed by the authors. If analysands assign a role to analysts and analysts...
Abstract: The idea of the role is permeating the field of psychology and the operational field of psychoanalysis. It is becoming an interpretation vector. If analysands assign a role to analysts and analysts...
TL;DR: The CalibAn project as mentioned in this paper is a collection of short articles about Latin America, focusing on issues related to psychoanalysis, social relations, art, and neighboring and far-away countries.
Abstract: short articles distinguish Calib an from conventional publications issued by psychoanalytic institutions. Calib an fits in with the modern need to narrate, even if in a fragmentary, complex way, issues related to psychoanalysis, social relations, art, and neighboring and far-away countries. Estrangement is welcome; that is the fabric of our everyday work. A question remains: whether or not Latin Americans have a history that brings us together. Do we have a common history, and to what extent? Beyond the unstable quagmire of memory, Calib an brings us into contact with the memory of the other, our neighbor, and with the narcissism of small differences, which needs to be problematized to avoid creating gulfs or preventing connection. Diverse geographies, alien habits, an economy on the verge of chaos, and psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis could serve as the common thread that ties and connects. The anarchic gathering of texts, the parade of unknown authors with whom we can gradually become familiar through their writings, and the elaborate, ambitious literary project may bring us news from another Latin America, full of many Americas, which is home to the foreign. Next issue: a surprise! And Latin America endures, like Calib an. It resists.
TL;DR: It is suggested that it is more useful for the individual to use more adaptive defence mechanisms and seek out social or interpersonal support when undergoing psychic difficulties.
Abstract: Theories and classifications of defence mechanisms are not unified. This study addresses the psychological system as a dissipative structure which exchanges information with the external and internal world. When using defence mechanisms, the cognitive-affective schema of an individual could remain stable and ordered by excluding psychological entropy, obtaining psychological negentropy or by dissipating the energy of self-presentation. From this perspective, defences can be classified into three basic types: isolation, compensation and self-dissipation. However, not every kind of defence mechanisms can actually help the individual. Non-adaptive defences are just functioning as an effective strategy in the short run but can be a harmful approach in the long run, while adaptive defences could instead help the individual as a long-term mechanism. Thus, we would like to suggest that it is more useful for the individual to use more adaptive defence mechanisms and seek out social or interpersonal support when undergoing psychic difficulties. As this model of defences is theoretical at present, we therefore aim to support and enrich this viewpoint with empirical evidence.
TL;DR: It is argued that ‘religious objects’ are allegorical objects that can be encountered in the second person; that these may not always be well described as ‘illusion’; and that they may in some cases be better understood as providing opportunities for experience that, like the transference in psychoanalysis, may have far‐reaching psychological impacts.
Abstract: Translations of summary
Starting with an outline of Buddhist history from a psychoanalytic perspective, this paper uses ideas from philosophy and psychoanalysis to consider the nature of the psychological effectiveness of religious objects. It suggests that the development of the devotional cult of Buddhas ‘without form’ such as Amitābha, at-first-glance surprising when juxtaposed with the founding vision of Gautama Siddhartha, tells us a great deal about the psychological needs that impel the evolution of religious thinking. Distinguishing religious objects from mythological ones, it argues that ‘religious objects’ are, more specifically, allegorical objects that can be encountered in the second person; that these may not always be well described as ‘illusion’; and that they may in some cases be better understood as providing opportunities for experience that, like the transference in psychoanalysis, may have far-reaching psychological impacts.