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Hidden
and Overt Rage: Their Interpretation in the Psychoanalytic Treatment Process
Paul
H. Ornstein
6(1):
1–14
This
paper presents Heinz Kohut’s innovative ideas regarding the understanding and
treatment of “narcissistic rage” and their subsequent further elaborations
by other authors, exemplified by three clinical vignettes. In doing so, the
paper dispels the mistaken notion that self psychology neglects or bypasses the
problem of overt or hidden rage in favour of a warmer ambience, instead of
analysing destructive aggression.
The
core elements of Kohut’s approach consist of (1) viewing destructive
aggressions as reactive, hence secondary, arising out of the soil of an
underlying self-disorder; more specifically as a response to a variety of
injuries to archaic grandiosity and idealizations; and (2) the psychoanalytic
treatment therefore consists of a focus on the self-disorder itself and not
directly on the various manifestations of rage and destructiveness.
The
clinical examples illustrate the varied meanings and uses of rage and
destructiveness and the empathy-based interpretive approach to them as opposed
to direct confrontations.
Lord
Byron, His Mother, and Greece
Peter
Hartocollis
6(1):
15–34
Physical
deformity and the narcissistic injury that such a misfortune usually produces,
when established early in life can become a sustaining source of creative and
socially responsible achievement. Lord Byron is a case in point: his congenital
lameness, treated by his mother as a personal sin, gave rise to a persistent
effort—through the compulsive pursuit of love, prolific writing, radical
social criticism, and revolutionist activities—to recapture a state of natural
perfection that he imagined existed before the onset of his deformity. The
same deformity that he experienced as a shameful “dark” secret made him feel
entitled to be loved without having to love in return, unless the other mirrored
his own ideal image—a feeling that derived from the narcissistic fantasy of
union with an ideal, all-loving and loveable mother, a union that he finally
achieved with his self‑sacrificial death for the cause of Greece.
The
Erotization of the Gaze
Daniel
Traub-Werner
6(1):
35–50
The
case of a patient whose scoptophilic drive was organized around voyeurism is
presented. Analysis reveals the presence of early and inordinate castration
anxiety as the source of his passive scoptophilia. Overstimulation contributed
to the failure to neutralize oral sadism. Lingerie represents the fetish that
the erotized gaze searched for. Incorporation via the oral gaze and primitive
identification with the devoured object are some of the vicissitudes of the
component instinct. Specific use of language betray the structures of this
man’s reality. His voyeurism rests on an organizational triad constituted by
castration anxiety, scoptophilia, and fetishism.
The
Nietzschean Monster: Reconsidering Guilt in Developmental Theory
Christine
Ury
6(1):
51–74
While
psychoanalytic theory posits that unconscious guilt is a civilized and adaptive
form of intrapsychic activity, the equation of guilt with higher levels of
mental functioning not only obscures its primitive nature, but contradicts
clinical observations of the destructiveness of guilt. The author (1) reviews a
range of theorists who view guilt as the result of mature internalizing ego
processes, and then (2) examines guilt as an expression of the primitive
unconscious. Guilt is understood to be part of a cyclical process of aggressive
fantasies that, it is suggested, provoke guilt and further aggression leading to
destructive pathology. A case example is used as an illustration. The author
concludes that notions such as conscience, concern, and the capacity to repair
are indicative of complex, psychological development, which should not be
confused with the affect guilt.
The
Symbolization of Absence under Third Party Payment: Symbolic Markers with Adults
Allanah
Furlong
6(1):
75–98
Symbolic
markers have been proposed as a technical adjunct in the framework of
state-sponsored psychotherapy. The patient is allowed to play with this
instrument according to certain prescribed rules. The symbolic token can serve
an analytically supportive function in at least three different areas. First, by
introducing a gesture of exchange, the symbolic token can become a conduit for
payment-related associations. Second, it can function as a totem that encourages
mental representation of the hidden third party. Third, it stands as a marker
for the patient’s unconscious place in the therapy, whether he is present at
sessions or absent. In particular, by its restituting presence, the symbolic
marker can fundamentally alter in the après-coup the psychological meaning of
the patient’s missed sessions. Whereas the trivial, nonmonetary nature of the
symbolic counter remains essential to its credibility as a symbol, the fact that
it is also a concrete, potentially limited object can help make certain
omnipotent strivings accessible in the transference.
L’art
et le pouvoir : Un itinéraire psychanalytique autour du Persée de Benvenuto
Cellini
Domenico
A. Nesci
6(1):
99–111
Focusing
his attention on the masterpiece by Benvenuto Cellini, the author discusses the
interesting observation of an anthropologist (Siebers 1983) who discovered that
Perseus and Medusa were represented by the artist as two perturbing doubles.
This unheimlich (Freud 1919) interpretation of the classical myth by Cellini is
studied from a psychohistorical perspective (the symbolic meaning of the bronze
statue for the Florentine people and for Cosimo I Medici, who had commissioned
the work of art) as well as from an ethnopsychoanalytical perspective (the hero
and the monster as the two sides of an ambivalent Janus-like figure). In this
way the author continues his research on the placental imago, which had begun
with his previous papers, “Entre ciel et terre” (Nesci 1993, 1996).
Some Thoughts on the Role of Independent Report Reading in
Psychoanalytic Training
Edward
A. Hanna
6(1):
113–132
Although
the Reader, in at least some psychoanalytic institutes, has an important role to
play in psychoanalytic education, little has been written on the mechanics and
dynamics of the role of independent evaluator of candidates’ written reports
of the progress of their control work. As a result, beginning Readers are most
often left on their own, with only their student experiences of Readers’
reports to serve as preparation and direction for assuming the role of Reader.
The lack of training and direction for Readers is analogous to the remarkable
situation of university professors who are expected to teach on the basis of
their expertise in a given field, without any training in the art of teaching.
In most cases, the situation is the same for those who are deemed ready to
supervise.
The
purpose of this paper has been to discuss some of the mechanics and dynamics of
evaluating candidates’ reports on their work in supervised clinical work.
There are no standards agreed upon for the role of Reader. Indeed, not all
institutes for training psychoanalysts have Readers as part of their educational
structure. Clearly, also, there is more than one way of approaching the role.
This discussion, although elementary, is intended to provide some direction to
inexperienced Readers. It is hoped that others experienced at reading
candidates’ reports will publish their experiences so that we may collectively
make a contribution towards explicating, providing a rationale, and
standardizing the process.
Aggression,
Hatred, and Social Violence
Otto
F. Kernberg
6(2):
191–206
The
psychobiological functions of aggression, expressed in the neurobiology of
affects, may be distorted in the human being by pathology of the corresponding
neurobiological regulating systems, severe physical trauma during early stages
of infant development (painful, chronic illness), or severe psychic trauma
related to the pathology of early object relations.
Hatred
is the dominant affect of the psychopathology of human aggression—the
transformation of rage into the structured intrapsychic relationship between a
hateful self and a threatening, hateful and hated object that needs to be
controlled, to be made to suffer, to be destroyed.
Hatred
is activated under conditions of mass psychology, when an individual experiences
himself as part of an unstructured but mutually relating social group. A
combination of a paranoid leadership, a group regressed to a paranoid position,
and the context of particular historical circumstances may evolve into socially
sanctioned murderous expression of aggression.
Unconscious
Communication and Its Relational Manifestations in the Analytic Process
Douglas
H. Frayn
6(2):
207–232
Contemporary
thought about unconscious communication in the analytic situation focuses more
on its dyadic manifestations than on the analysand’s topographical “mental
apparatus.”
Unspoken
actions as well as verbal communication between the analyst and the patient have
major and unconscious influences on the developing psychoanalytic situation. The
dynamic unconscious has a mutual but frequently asymmetrical influence within
this analytic relationship.
Some
unconscious communications will lend themselves to transference interpretation
while at other times interventions that highlight the countertransference or
intersubjective features will be more constructive.
These
unconscious influences can be either therapeutic or psychotoxic, depending on
the analyst’s understanding of and involvement in such communications. The
analytic goal is to focus on the patient’s psychic realignments, as often
portrayed through unconscious relational manifestations, thereby advancing
self-understanding. At times this may also include putting forward the
analyst’s subjectivity.
Transformation
of Meanings in the Analytic Discourse: A Strategy for Research
Wilma
Bucci
6(2):
233–260
The
multiple code theory is a psychological model of emotional information
processing that accounts for pathology and its repair in treatment on a
structural rather than symptomatic level, and provides a framework for
systematic research on the treatment process. The theory draws on aspects of
Freud’s metapsychology, in the context of current work in cognitive
psychology, developmental psychology, neuropsychology, and emotion theory. Three
modes or systems of representing and processing information are identified: the
nonverbal subsymbolic, nonverbal symbolic, and verbal symbolic modes. They are
connected by the referential process, which enables us to verbalize inner
experience and understand the words of others. Emotion schemas are made up of
components of all three systems, dominated by subsymbolic representations in
somatic and sensory modalities. Pathology is determined by dissociation between
subsymbolic and symbolic representations in the emotion schemas. and maladaptive
attempts at repair. In treatment, patients reconstruct the schemas by permitting
emergence of the traces of the painful affective core in the context of the
relationship, and by connecting subsymbolic experience to symbolic imagery and
language, in the iterative process of the referential cycle. Empirical studies
that trace the referential cycle in verbatim transcripts of analytic sessions
are described.
Les
visages de l’amour chez Maupassant
François
Sirois
6(2):
271–298
Some
problematic splits in the affective world of Guy de Maupassant are explored from
an initial puzzling aspect of his work: why did he end up as a novelist, and so
late in life? Taken as a symptomatic evolution of his work, it is explained by a
hypothesis that links his turning to writing novels as a symptom fostered by a
double psychological task, a double mourning. He inherited one from his mother
and succeeded in overcoming it by disidentifying from his mother’s lost
brother through the experience of mourning Flaubert. That enabled Maupassant to
become a novelist. He was less successful with his own mourning of his affective
bond with his mother, which was treated by a reversal into its opposite as
manifested in his caustic attitude towards women as shown in his mundane
chronicles. Yet the fate of the positive nostalgic longing to which he clung had
to be addressed through the romantic attitude that permeates his novels. In that
sense, the clinging to the maternal object forced him to be a novelist. The
study sketches a picture of the world of Maupassant through his attitude to
women, his bitterness, and his fondness for the sea.
Foot
Symbolism
Joseph
Fernando
6(2):
309–320
I
have tried to demonstrate, through an example of foot symbolism, that this
symbol represents the real or fantasied penis of the phallic phase (and later
genital phase) but that the displacement of the genital significance downwards
seems to be determined by a connection of the phallic-phase conflicts with
anality.
It
is especially because of these links with anality that the foot is, as Zerbe
(1985) points out, “scotomized” and degraded, despite its valuable
functions. Paying attention to this easily neglected part of our patient’s
anatomy when it shows up in dreams and associations can often be a route to a
deeper understanding of certain of their important issues.
Psychoanalysis
and Freedom
7(1):
1–21
This
paper is a response to an invitation from the National Scientific Program
Committee of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society to discuss the theme of freedom
in the psychoanalytic process. Several conceptions of freedom are outlined in
relation to drive theory and Freud’s reflections on the relationship between
civilization and the superego. It is suggested that human freedom is not merely
the absence of external constraints on the drives. Understood as “an
interweaving of energy and representation,” drives may be seen as engendering
an intrinsic moral dialectic of commandment and constraint, which is a
precondition for a psychoanalytic concept of freedom. These ideas are then
explored in relation to St. Augustine, Kant, Heidegger, and Arendt, with
particular emphasis on the analytic process as a new beginning, and the
discovery of freedom through the revelation of self in relation to the other.
Repetition
and Working Through of Childhood Psychic Trauma in the Psychoanalytic
Relationship: A Case History
7(1):
31–51
A
case is described involving two analyses 13 years apart. The first analysis,
despite the development of a promising idealizing selfobject transference,
failed due to the analyst’s erroneous theoretical approach. In the second
analysis, the idealized transference again developed, punctuated by many
disruptions—some severe. Disruptions repeated the traumatic interactions of
the patient’s childhood. These traumas came to be understood in the aftermath
of the disruptions and led to self-restoration. Restoration took place
especially through the analysis of the facial and vocal interactions in the
psychoanalytical relationship.
The
case was discussed from several perspectives. These include the nature of the
idealizing transference, the facial-vocal transactions, homosexuality and
sexualization, the patient’s paranoia, intersubjective aspects of the
analysis, and the relationship between developing psychic structure and psychic
trauma.
Long-Term
Manifestations of “Death-Watch” Imagery and Related Jewish Rituals for a
Significant Family Member During the Early Childhoods of Sigmund Freud and Abram
Kardiner
7(1):
63–78
Sigmund
Freud was two years old when Julius, his next-born sibling, died. The trauma of
concomitant events was later apprehended, at least in part, through his
self-analysis and associative links in his dreams. Certain burial customs and
funeral rites apparently intensified Freud’s conflicts. It is postulated that
he had repressed an array of “death-watch” imagery and traditional Jewish
ritualistic practices, which manifested themselves throughout his life.
A
comparable loss was suffered by Abram Kardiner who lost his mother at the age of
three and a half. Through his analysis with Freud, Kardiner was able to
reconstruct how he likely witnessed his mother’s death, a reconstruction
confirmed by his older sister who was 11 at the time. Understanding this
“defining episode” helped Kardiner work through and resolve an infantile
phobia about masks that had haunted him for over 28 years. In a derivative
context, he in turn came to realize that the attendant Jewish rituals also
served to “relieve my father’s guilt about my mother.”
Although
both analysts were presumably able to have archaic images and memories
reconstructed, their early object losses left a profound longterm impact upon
their character formation.
Capacity
for Sublimation Liberated and Developed in the Termination Phase: Clinical
Illustration and Theoretical Discussion
7(1):
79–96
The
author presents the termination phase of a “successful” eight‑year
analysis of a 31-year‑old married female psychiatrist to demonstrate the
formation of a new psychic structure leading to the liberation and development
of the capacity for sublimation and its vital contribution to the resolution of
a severe and deeply ingrained problem about separation and loss. This problem
was rooted in a traumatic separation at two and a half years when her mother
left her to the care of a neighbour for eight months. The course of the analysis
showed the progression of psychic changes, which crystallized in the termination
phase. The changes were the outcome
of a persistent working through of her tenacious resistance in the context of a
stable therapeutic alliance. She became gradually aware of her projections and
enactments of her traumatic separation, in the transference. The analyst’s
self-analytic function enabled him to analyze his countertransference, to
identify with her enacted feelings of abandonment, helplessness, and rage, to
empathize with her and help her with timely mutative interpretations, and to
derepress and become conscious of them. A great deal of pent-up energy became
available to her ego to enable her to sublimate and create a new psychic
structure in her internal world. The formation of this structure was catalyzed
by her perception of the analyst as a new object and paved the way to a
reworking of her relations with her parental objects.
Thanks
to this new internalized structure, she was able to move from her rigid clinging
to the analyst as a transference figure that she had to possess or could not
leave without a murder‑suicide outcome, to the realization that separation
from him as a representative of an internalized primitive object was
unavoidable. Her new capacity to separate from her primitive objects compelled
her to become aware of her feelings of loss, the pain and suffering she would
have to endure, and her willingness to accept them. What she accepted was not
the loss but only its inevitability. This acknowledgement triggered the process
of mourning, which was fuelled by the motive to recreate and restitute the lost
objects. This motive was carried out by the capacity to sublimate, founded on
the newly constructed psychic structure. The capacity to sublimate propelled her
to solidify and creatively enrich this psychic structure, which enabled her to
pursue and achieve the purpose of recreation and restitution as the ultimate
solution to the experience of loss.
Oral
Deprivation, Envy, and the Sadistic Aspects of the Ego
7(1):
97–110
The
analytic situation is an intimate study of the evolving intrapsychic and
interpersonal relationship between analyst and patient. Some patients find the
idea of a back-and-forth exchange fundamentally intolerable. These are patients
who are enraged and pained by the concept of giving, in any capacity. Careful
analysis reveals phantasies of wanting to control, own, or feed on the emotional
nutrients the patient feels the mother/analyst has denied him. The feeling of
starving and the phantasy of being blocked from the analyst/mother’s breast
create resentment and desires for revenge. Envy of what the analyst has and
doesn’t provide shapes a transference reaction wherein the patient is always
demanding and simultaneously being careful never to be dependent or forthcoming.
Klein
(1957, 187) writes, “ . . . greed, envy, and persecutory anxiety, which are
bound up with each other, inevitably increase each other.” I have explored
some of the difficulties with patients suffering from these oral anxieties and
chronic envy. These patients use projective identification and devaluation to
ward off the introjection of the good object, as they see such outrages as
giving in to a dominating and humiliating experience. They feel ashamed of
feeling dependent and in turn refuse to give to the analyst. Rather than feeling
hopeful and grateful, they demand praise and feeding as their right. This
omnipotence is a negation of intense feelings of deprivation and loss, an
expression of rage and revenge, and a cry for restitution. Such a patient wants,
and demands, past hurt to be undone, revenge to be won for ongoing feelings of
disappointment, and idealized goods to be handed over—from a hoped for object
that never was. Careful analysis of both projective identification processes and
countertransference reactions are crucial in this type of treatment. It is hoped
that a gradual understanding and mourning of these lost objects and persecutory
deprivations is possible in the context of the transference. This leads to a
move into the depressive position (Klein 1940) and the acquisition of whole
objects, gratitude, and trust.
The
Struggle for Dominance in the Oedipus Situation
7(2):
161–177
In
this paper the role of a struggle for dominance in the resolution of the Oedipus
Complex is discussed. It is suggested that the classical resolution described by
Freud gives rise to a psychic retreat dominated by resentment and a wish for
revenge. Alongside this, a depressive outcome also exists in which the child
is—in phantasy—initially dominant. At first this leads to a triumph over the
father with the blessing of the mother, but as the child recognizes that he has
in phantasy destroyed both parents, it turns to despair and guilt. If the child
in his development, and the patient in his analysis, can get support to tolerate
this guilt, it can be used to initiate a move toward remorse and reparation.
Obstacles
to this type of resolution are discussed in relation to clinical material. It is
suggested that some of the struggle has to do with the individual’s need to
contain the destructiveness, which is associated with envy and with what Freud
described as the repudiation of femininity.
Christianity:
A Kleinian Perspective
7(2):
187–218
Psychoanalytic
theory has taken a guarded approach to religion ever since Freud advanced his
view of religion as a collective obsessional neurosis and an illusory fulfilment
of infantile wishes. But post-Freudian theory has offered more positive ways of
conceptualizing religious experience. Hartmann, Winnicott, and Loewald, among
others, enable us to recognize creative and adaptive as well as maladaptive and
regressive aspects of religion. In addition, the theory of Melanie Klein
suggests ways in which religion promotes, rather than inhibits, psychic growth.
Although Klein herself does not address the question of the psychological
underpinnings of religious experience, and although her theory does not appear
to offer concepts immediately relevant to its psychoanalytic understanding, a
closer look shows that Kleinian theory can usefully illuminate certain
psychological functions of Christianity. In addition to extending Freud’s
patricentric analysis of religion back in developmental time to include the
subject’s earliest relations with the maternal (part-)object, Klein’s
revisions permit an understanding of Christian doctrine and ritual in
therapeutic and creative, as distinct from primarily regressive and defensive,
terms.
“I
Always Hurt the One I Love—And Like It”: Sadism and a Revised Theory of
Aggression
7(2):
219–244
Psychoanalytic
theory considers sadism a manifestation of the aggressive drive. Buie, Meissner,
Sashin, and Rizzuto have suggested that aggression is not a drive but a
motivated psychic capacity to overcome external or internal obstacles that
interfere with attainment of the goal of an intended physical or psychical
action.
The
paper reviews the literature on sadism and presents an analytic case to
illustrate this theoretical approach. The dynamics of sadistic behaviours and
wishes originate in multidetermined motivational sources. The author suggests
that at the centre of motivations in sadism there is an internal obstacle: the
conviction of being unlovable and acceptable as an object. Most sadistic
behaviours and wishes represent efforts to overcome this internal insurmountable
obstacle. The intrapsychic situation created by this internal obstacle calls to
action the aggressive capability to carry out internal or external actions to
overcome it. The repetition of sadistic actions and fantasies is only a measure
of the continuous but ineffective effort to overcome the internal obstacle.
A
person who enjoys hurting a loved object is, by definition, sadistic. The
individual’s hurtful actions, hostile words, destructive and humiliating
behaviours, and their accompanying affect of satisfaction led Freud and
present-day psychoanalysts to conceive of sadism as a manifestation of an
aggressive instinct or drive. This paper applies a revised theory of aggression
presented in earlier papers (Buie et al. 1983, 1996, Meissner et al. 1987, and
Rizzuto et al. 1993) to the motivational understanding of sadism. It also
proposes a core unconscious fantasy that sustains the many complex sadistic
psychic activities and external behaviours.
Quid
Pro Quo: The Inverse of Talion
7(2):
245–270
It
is proposed that in the paranoid-schizoid position, the unconscious is governed
both by “tit for tat,” the Talion Law, as well as “quid pro quo,” its
inverse. The “quid pro quo” attitude, also related to enlightened self
interest, has to do with a measured and equal repayment of favours. This
attitude differs from the attitude of love freely given and freely received of
the depressive position. A linkage rule is proposed in defining a “quid pro
quo” attitude if the object of the ego’s desire does not reciprocate with an
equal payment of “love,” then the ego is obliged to retaliate with an equal
withdrawal of cathexis. If such a retaliatory response (conscious or
unconscious) is not the forthcoming attitude, the subject has likely entered the
depressive position. Clinical examples are offered. Quid pro quo is seen as part
of the paranoid-schizoid position as well as a failed attempt to reach true
reconciliation with the object.
7(2):
271–296
Le
travail de Louise Kaplan (Female Perversions, 19911) soulève à
nouveau la question de la perversion chez la femme. « Women
are just as perverse as men » (p. 8), soutient l’auteur. Les
explications avancées pour rendre compte de la disparité clinique dans le
tableau manifeste des perversions font état d’une situation de rapport inadéquat
(Richards 1989) ou de système pervers caché chez la femme par analogie avec la
conformation anatomique des organes génitaux de la femme à partir de certaines
idées empruntées à Greenacre (1960) quand elles ne procèdent pas le recours
aux facteurs hormonaux ou à des stéréotypes sociaux (Kaplan p. 9). Certains
énoncés de Kaplan, qui soutiennent que les perversions sont des « pathologies
of gender stereotyping » (p. 196), tirent la définition de la perversion
du côté d’une « inégalité sociale » selon laquelle des «
infantile gender ideals » (p. 16) se traduisent en caricature dans la
perversion. L’auteur avance que la définition actuelle de la perversion
repose sur une « psychologie de mâles » (p. 196) ; elle suggère
que l’examen des idéaux sociaux de la féminité dévoilera les aspects de la
perversion féminine.
Sans
entrer dans une critique élaborée des positions établies par Kaplan qui nous
permette de faire justice au développement de sa pensée, nous tirerons parti
d’une certaine confusion liée à ce type de formulation pour réexaminer
certains aspects de la question soulevée par cet auteur. Cette façon de poser
le problème sous-entend le principe d’une identité de position chez
l’homme et chez la femme par rapport à la perversion. Or c’est précisément
cette question fondamentale qu’il s’agit d’expliciter ; nous le
ferons de façon générale d’abord en détaillant certaines dérives et par
l’exemple plus spécifique du fétichisme ensuite.
Psychoanalytic
Time: A Developmental Perspective
7(2):
303–319
This
paper reviews the development of the sense of time up to early adulthood, from a
psychoanalytic perspective. Data indicate that the sense of time as
duration—time as it is felt—develops by early infancy, while time as
perspective—time as a concept—develops by late infancy or early toddlerhood.
Investigators
propose that the sense of time develops out of perception of bodily function and
is intimately related to the development of the sense of self. The sense of time
further evolves as a function of psychosexual and other developmental stages.
Two clinical vignettes are used to illustrate how the psychoanalytic setting is
ideally suited to the re-experience and understanding of difficulties with time.
Soul
Murder Reconsidered: “Did It Really Happen?”
8(1):
1–18
Over
the past ten years, the abuse of children has become subject to much publicity
and fierce controversy. The consequences of the traumatization and deprivation
of children are complex and show much individual variation. Whether the alleged
“soul murder” has actually taken place cannot always be determined with
certainty. Recovering the memory of trauma is less important than enabling
patients to feel responsible for how the memory—or its possibility—is
currently registered and functions in their minds. Successful therapy in those
who have been abused as children depends on their ability to acquire or enhance
trust and caring in others, which in turn depends on the patients’ capacity to
feel and tolerate the rage and hatred that are such burdens for these
unfortunate people.
Normal
and Pathological Mourning: A Kleinian Interpretation of Verdi and Rigoletto
8(1):
19–40
This
essay utilizes the Kleinian theory of the depressive position as the unifying
framework that highlights the process of working-through of loss, its relevance
for the mid-life crisis, and the process of artistic creativity. These themes
are relevant for a psychoanalytic understanding of Rigoletto, Verdi, and the
relationship between the composer and the operatic character.
I
propose an interpretation of Rigoletto as a case of pathological mourning and
compare it to Verdi’s presumably normal mourning. Rigoletto does not overcome
loss and does not recover trust in life. Instead, he suffers a new loss through
the enactment of a murderous fantasy, condemning himself to unending suffering.
The evidence that Verdi worked through his losses is also convincing. Verdi’s
real losses were similar to Rigoletto’s fictional ones; he had a passionate
relationship to the libretto; he composed the score with remarkable speed and
inspiration; Rigoletto initiated the middle operatic period during which he
obtained musical transcendence and international fame; and, finally, soon after,
he introduced a number of long-lasting changes in his personal life. The theory
of the depressive position includes a view of mid-life development and artistic
creativity particularly fitting to Verdi’s case, because it predicts that
successful mourning results in a reorganization of psychic structure with
renewed optimism and creativity. The evidence for the interpretations applied to
Rigoletto and Verdi varies. The text of the opera is closed and final, giving a
defined material for interpreting, whereas an analysis of Verdi’s character is
necessarily based on letters, journals, and memories of friends and witnesses.
A
World of Illusion: The Creation of a Perverse Solution as a Reaction to Parental
Emotional Absence
8(1):
41–66
This
presentation describes two patients who responded to parental emotional absence
by creating a world of illusion. I demonstrate how parental “not-thereness”
substitutes for internal representation of a missing object.
An
effective illusory state develops following adolescence and becomes entrenched
as an aspect of psychic reality and is subsequently discharged in perverse
fantasies and enactments.
I
trace how an illusory fantasy object is created to replace the emotionally
absent object, who otherwise would be experienced as having abandoned the child.
This fantasy object is subsequently enacted as a presence filling the void of
emotional absence. The perverse enactment erases the “not-thereness” by a
fantasy or enactment, which is changed or disguised in a sexualized interaction
and displaced into a different time and place.
This
illusion is sustained by an attempt to make the fantasy real and has the
function of creating freedom from anxiety of object loss, thereby maintaining a
temporary psychic cohesion. Thus the power of illusory psychic reality exerts an
organizing effect on the patient’s internal structure by creating an illusory
presence of an absent object. Once created, this fantasy object serves a
powerful defensive function, which opposes the analytic process endangering it
to succumbing to a severe negative therapeutic reaction.
Somatic
Illness on Nemesis Dates: The Impact of the Faustian Bargain
8(1):
67–86
After
describing a fantasy called the developmental version of the Faustian bargain,
in which the early child experiences the parental message that he is allowed to
survive but not to live an autonomous existence, the author focuses on a version
of the Faustian bargain in which the child experiences the parental message that
she is allowed to live but not to survive beyond the date of the parent’s
illness or death. The author argues that both versions of the Faustian bargain
experience constitute a serious risk factor with respect to somatic
vulnerability, because the subject’s sense of ownership of his or her psyche
and soma is impaired. This paper stresses the impact of nemesis anniversary
dates and the fantasies that accompany them upon vulnerability to disease and
even death. The point is made that the Faustian bargain is an expression of the
tragic vision of human existence, which has to be transcended if, through
psychoanalytic experience, the subject is to acquire a sense of freedom to
construct a personal destiny instead of feeling bound by an inexorable fate. A
clinical illustration is offered, which describes some of the transference and
countertransference issues in such analyses.
Entitlement
as a Process Influencing One’s Review and Evaluation of Adult Life
8(1):
87–97
There
are advantages to observing modifications of the sense of entitlement during
adult development. The dynamic interactions of hope, loss, and entitlement cause
alterations in the sense of entitlement that explains several phenomena typical
of aging. Conclusions are drawn about how losses are evaluated, hopes modified,
and non-pathological forms of adaptation take place with aging.
Superego
Analysis in Narcissistic Patients with Superego Pathology
8(1):
99–117
A
view of narcissistic personality disorder that sees the disorder as a
consequence of a primary fixation on childhood omnipotence, a fixation that
interferes during early latency with the integration of a portion of the
superego into the personality, is used as a basis for a discussion of the
analysis of the superego in these patients. Clinical material is presented from
two patients who had a marked tendency to externalize their guilt and superego
as a defence against fully facing and internalizing the limits of reality and
morality. This form of externalizing transference puts great pressure on the
analyst and especially works on the analyst’s own sense of guilt about being
an authority figure, as the patients attempt to get the analyst to play the part
their parents played in their childhood, in not helping them to face limits.
Dream
and Identity
8(2):
131–146
Dreaming
and identity are closely related. Whereas a dream can shake one’s sense of
self, conversely, a problematic identity status can thwart nocturnal dreaming
activity. Classical dream theory
gives a clear preference to libidinal and object-related dreaming. However, not
all dreaming falls into the realm of the classical wish-fulfilling model. It is
the aim of this paper to examine another important role of dreaming.
“Actual” dreaming activity is different from classical dreaming in that it
reflects deeper and more continuous mental processes that go on during sleep and
wakefulness, and are dedicated to building and maintaining the subject’s
identity. The author explores this aspect of mental functioning by drawing from
clinical psychoanalytic experience and current neuroscientific research. He then
expounds a specific psychoanalytic theory of identity formation and maintenance
and illustrates its usefulness in understanding what takes place within the
psychoanalytic setting.
The
Unlikely Fate of the Ideal
8(2):
153–166
Signifiers of the ideal are a constant of psychic life and serve as a buffer between ego and reality, bridging, soothing, stabilizing and inspiring through a reminiscence of completeness. In certain pathological conditions, however, the ideal changes in form and function. No longer acting as a buffer, emanations of the ideal attempt to foreclose on the very possibility of loss and lack and assume a materialized, fetishized form that strives to plug the hole brought about by narcissistic rupture. This paper examines such fetish-making in two male patients, both of whom compulsively turned to the pornographic in order to disavow primal fears through a split in the ego. The author describes the defensive and addictive role of the ideal in such instances and its function in maintaining the narcissistic economy of the cases described.
The
Internalizing Transference
8(2):
167–180
The
internalizing transference is the complement to the externalizing and displacing
transferences.
The
internalizing transference replaces the experiences of the analytic situation
and process by their intrapsychic representations. Analytically altered
structure can follow this development.
A
tripartite view of transference is proposed, consisting of displacing,
externalizing, and internalizing coordinates that can fix a point at which the
transference is located at any time.
The
internalizing transference has its own dynamic. It can be employed as
resistance; there can also be resistance to internalizing which blocks insight
and disrupts the treatment alliance, as illustrated in the case vignettes. There
is a corresponding mapping of counter-transference at any time. To fix the
analyst’s position, the three coordinates of counter-displacement,
counter-externalization, and counter-internalization can be delineated and
described.
The
optimal consequence of the internalizing transference is the development of the
analyst and analysand as a new real object and subject, and structural
modifications that follow in both.
The
capacity to internalize cannot be newly created but should be in situ as part of
the patient’s adult mentation and analyzability.
Fairbairn and the Self as an Organized System: Chaos
Theory as a New Paradigm
8(2):
181–195
Chaos
theory offers a paradigm for psychoanalysis that improves our powers of
understanding. Because it offers an explanation for the essential
unpredictability of complex dynamic events, it relieves analysis of the burden
of prediction, and at the same time enables it to offer enhanced understanding
of complex and repetitive patterns of psychic organization and interpersonal
interaction. Fairbairn’s
endopsychic model of personality introduced the idea of dynamic flux of
endlessly complex factors into psychoanalytic theory. The clinical concepts of
transference-countertransference exchange and of the analytic process are best
theoretically explained by his model. Chaos theory offers to ground these ideas
on the firmer support of a model of the organization of complex self-organizing
systems as they tend towards higher levels of organization—a fitting model for
the psychoanalytic process.
Psychoanalysis
works because it introduces into patients’ internal system new organizing
pulls that throw them away from the rigidly repetitive, narrow patterns into the
chaos they have often feared, but from which, with our help, they can recover
with new patterns, self-organized, more adaptive, more integrated.
The
Tapestry of the Erotic Transference: Weaving the Threads
8(2):
207–232
Explanations
for the phenomenon of the erotic transference tend to be overarching, and
generally arise out of a particular set of theoretical constructs. This paper
proposes that there are multiple meanings of the erotic transference for the
same patient, and these multiple meanings can be seen even within a single
session. An argument is made that it is necessary to draw on a reservoir of
theoretical concepts for a full understanding of this phenomenon. A clinical
example is given of a male patient in a short-term analytic contact with a
female analyst, and a number of themes are presented to explain the erotic
transference material. The author proposes that an understanding of the variety
of meanings of the erotic connection may help the analyst not to shy away from
exploring this rich area of experience.
What Can Neuroscience Teach Us about Transference?
9(1):
1–18
Long
Analyses: Theoretical and Clinical Questions
Konstantinos
Arvanitakis, Eva P. Lester, Rose-Marie Richard-Jodoin, & Brian Robertson
9(1):
27–38
Analyses
have progressively lengthened since Freud’s time. Analyses that last more than
eight years, at three or more sessions per week, are no longer uncommon.
Although there is a sizable literature on analytic stalemates and impasses, few
published papers have dealt directly with the increased duration of analyses. In
the present paper, the authors propose that, in certain long analyses, analysand
and analyst share with individual variations a central dynamic, often associated
with early trauma, which they call the Indestructible Ideal. It consists of a
strong wish to preserve an intense relationship between the ideal ego and the
idealized object. Omnipotent unconscious fantasies are prevalent, involving the
magical satisfaction of life’s needs, without effort or struggle. Such
dynamics preclude mourning, which is necessary for further growth. Attention is
drawn to certain types of enmeshed transference-countertransference events that
are frequently encountered in such cases.
Progressive
Crisis: An Outline
9(1):
39–61
Many
patients do not seek therapy in order to make changes in their lives but to
tolerate and understand their anxieties and to work through the complex griefs
that have come their way in the wake of constructive discoveries and changes
they have already made. Such progressive experiences are virtually ubiquitous in
the lives of most people, even those whose emotional development has been
seriously compromised by early trauma.
This
formulation has implications for the theory of treatment. The fundamentally
explanatory nature of the process is reaffirmed. The idea of a therapeutic
relationship, as opposed to the analyst’s simple commitment to serving the
patient’s curiosity, is considered redundant. The core transferences that
appear are generated not by reactivated desires for parental assistance to
facilitate developmental steps, but by reactivated fears of parental
exploitation of newly discovered vitality.
Analyst
Self-Disclosure: Context and Countertransference
9(1):
65–76
In
a number of situations, analysts offer self-disclosure to advance the
patient’s analysis. Using clinical vignettes, the author describes
circumstances in which the context of analysis may call for such interventions.
A distinction is made between self-disclosures embedded in technique such as a
precursor to an analysis of a defence, and comments offered as a product of a
countertransference enactment. An argument is offered that as analysts become
more relaxed in their identities, they also become more responsive to “holding
environment” qualities in analyses that may prompt them to use self-disclosure
as an intervention. The author recommends that empirical research be done to
settle some of the controversies surrounding this practice.
The Complexity and Plasticity of Female Sexual Choice
9(2):
125–136
A
Necessary Illusion: Projective Identification and the Containing Function
Louis
Brunet & Dianne Casoni
9(2):
137–163
A
theoretical discussion of the concepts of identification, projective
identification, and the containing function is presented with the aim of
isolating the clinical implications of differing definitions of projective
identification on transferential and countertransferential issues. Following the
analysis of a clinical vignette, the proposition is made that some analysands
must rely on the unconscious fantasy of a powerful, if not omnipotent,
transferential object in order to accept the necessary regression to dependence
that must occur for the analyst’s containing function to be experienced.
Making
Our Philosophical Unconscious More Conscious: A Method of Exploring the
Philosophical Basis of Psychological Theory
9(2):
165–186
All
psychological and psychoanalytic theories rest upon a series of important
philosophical assumptions, yet they are infrequently dealt with in a clear,
direct, or comprehensive manner. In this paper a method is offered with which to
more systematically and rigorously explore the philosophical bases of
psychological theories. This method involves analysis of the stated or implied
stances taken by any psychological theory on a hierarchically organized series
of essential philosophical questions. This Hierarchy of Levels of Theoretical
Inquiry includes such levels as the Ontological, the Epistemological, the
Field-Specific Epistemological, and the Psychological” ones. An example of a
hierarchical sketch is presented in which the philosophical basis of the
classical psychoanalytic model is briefly examined and summarized in this
manner. Applications of such sketches are discussed, including their usefulness
for such tasks as the explication of a psychological theory, and of the
assessment of its internal consistency and of the level of inquiry at which a
given argument may apply. They may also be very useful for making philosophical
comparisons among different psychological theories or in psychological
theory-building and development. Overall the method is offered as a tool to aid
us in the ongoing task of making our
philosophical unconscious more conscious.
The
Siege of Psychotherapeutic Space: Psychoanalysis in the Age of Transparency
Charles
Levin
9(2):
187–215
The
failure of the psychotherapeutic profession, and psychoanalysis in particular,
to provide a consistent and coherent public account of the specialized nature of
the psychotherapeutic relationship and setting has had harmful consequences for
both the profession itself and for the public. Among the most serious of these
consequences are (1) erosion and devaluation of confidentiality as a basic
precondition of psychotherapy; (2) a tendency to conflate psychological and
legal concepts and principles; (3) a tendency to think of psychotherapy as a
form of redress or rehabilitation and a perhaps related tendency to think of the
law as a form of social therapy; (4) the creation of misguided public
expectations about what psychotherapists can fairly be asked to do without
exceeding their mandate and what public authorities can be expected to do
without overreaching the democratic limits on their powers and responsibilities.
The
paper begins with a broad account of the roots in traditional society of the
psychotherapeutic relationship, while emphasizing that psychoanalysis is a
specifically modern institution that cannot survive for long outside a framework
of law limiting the power of collective institutions over the individual.
Following a schematic description of the different levels of the confidential
relationship, the paper discusses the rise of the “therapeutic society” and
the forces contributing to the attenuation of the working space in contemporary
psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic practice.
10(1):
5–24
This
paper traces a parallel between the intrapsychic phenomena provoked in witnesses
of terrorist acts and the psychodynamics present in authors of such acts. Thus,
the idea that terrorists seem to unconsciously wish to draw witnesses into a
psychic realm similar to their own is proposed. Through complex processes of
identification, the fact of witnessing terrorist acts is understood as
triggering a regressive pull towards the use of splitting and projective
identification in order to defend oneself against despair. The intrapsychic
differences between witnesses and terrorists are also outlined, and a clinical
case study is presented to illustrate the propositions presented.
Acting
Out, the Death Instinct, and Primitive Experiences of Loss and Guilt
Robert
Waska
10(1):
25–44
With
certain borderline and psychotic patients, clinical material reveals three
overlapping layers of working through. Acting out predominates in the first
phase. Rigorous containment, support, and verbal holding is required. This is
done in a psychoanalytic manner as opposed to the use of suggestion or
manipulation. Many of these patients terminate prematurely. The second phase
consists of the patients’ defensive use of the death instinct to ward off or
banish certain aspects of their mental functioning. This difficult standoff
between parts of the patient’s mind becomes replicated in the transference as
well as acted out in other external situations and relationships. The third
phase shows a bedrock problem with paranoid-schizoid fears of loss and primitive
experiences of guilt. These include fears of persecution and annihilation. Some
patients abort treatment in the first or second phase and never work through
their phantasies and feelings of loss. Nevertheless, much intrapsychic and
interpersonal progress is possible. Given the instability and chaotic nature of
these patients’ object relations, the analyst must be cautiously optimistic
and realize the potential to help the patient even when presented with less than
optimal conditions.
Growing
Psychoanalysis: Rethinking Psychoanalytic Attitude
Howard
E. Gorman
10(1):
45–69
The
definition of psychoanalytic intention in terms of classical psychoanalytic
technique was originally intended to eliminate support from psychoanalysis,
support that was viewed as undermining the analytic process. However, not only
does the possibility of such an elimination theoretically misconceive the
relationship between support and analyzing, the definition of psychoanalytic
attitude in terms of technique has created serious problems for the
psychoanalytic movement. It has undermined the analytic rigour of the
psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapies. It has created a schism between
psychoanalysis and these psychotherapies, between different psychoanalytic
subtheories, between psychoanalysis and non-psychoanalytic psychotherapies, and
between psychoanalysis and systematic analytic research.
This
paper explicates the misconception referred to above, and then redefines
psychoanalytic attitude in terms of psychoanalytic
intention. In so doing, it expands psychoanalysis to homogeneously encompass
all current forms of psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytically oriented
psychotherapies. It allows the work of all analytic psychotherapists and
researchers to be integrated into a rigorous, flexible, coherent analytic
approach, while improving communication with non-psychoanalytic psychotherapies
and creating an atmosphere more amenable to psychoanalytic research.