This commentary addresses two themes: parallels between religious and psychoanalytic education an... more This commentary addresses two themes: parallels between religious and psychoanalytic education and the question of group survival in a world of competitive groups, whether religious (“strict” vs. “weak”) or psychoanalytic (differing psychoanalytic approaches). “Strict” religious education involves teaching both critical thinking and identification with the particular religion. This blend of critical thinking and identification with psychoanalysis is crucial in psychoanalytic education. We want to graduate students who see themselves as psychoanalysts rather than as being “interested” in psychoanalysis. This goal is accomplished when students have close, positive experience with personal analysts, supervisors, and teachers who are strongly committed to psychoanalysis but in a manner that encourages students to think critically and find their own psychoanalytic perspective. With regard to the second theme, I discuss how our narcissistic commitment to one or another psychoanalytic model interferes with open integration of new insights. Individual analysts privately integrate competing ideas in their own idiosyncratic ways. When these individuals publicly represent competing psychoanalytic groups, however, they tend to emphasize differences among these groups. They then find ways to appropriate new ideas as extensions of their own evolving tradition. In this way, a theoretical school is able to integrate new developments while preserving its own identity.
In this paper, I define a psychoanalytic object broadly, as an object that “matters” to an indivi... more In this paper, I define a psychoanalytic object broadly, as an object that “matters” to an individual. My focus is on how someone becomes a psychoanalytic object and how our ideas about this process lead us to a particular conception of an analyst’s mutative role. Further, I examine the function of a psychoanalytic object in one’s inner world. One view of the object leads to a “dynamic” emphasis, examining the object’s role in a system of unconscious conflict and compromise, whereas a second, overlapping line of thought leads to a “structural” focus, emphasizing the object’s role in developing, stabilizing, and often maintaining compromised internal psychic capacities. These capacities are developmental achievements that form the context of conflict and compromise. Dynamic and structural emphases lead to different clinical stances. In considering the object and evolving conceptions of the object within Freudian psychoanalysis (my focus), we simultaneously review the evolution of Freudian psychoanalysis itself.
has gifted us with an exciting new book, Freud's Papers on Technique and Contemporary Clinical Pr... more has gifted us with an exciting new book, Freud's Papers on Technique and Contemporary Clinical Practice. The book is primarily a collection of Friedman's previously published papers, with the addition of a helpful introduction, three orienting prefaces, and a short end section. We have the privilege of following Friedman as he thinks through, with great rigour, depth, and insight, issues inherent to what Friedman sees as Freud's empirical discovery of the "strange" experience that is "the psychoanalytic experience … a novel state of unusual mental freedom" (1; all quotes in this review are from Friedman). The papers-now chapters-are beautifully written in prose that is non-technical, clear, and suffused with wit. However, they are not always easy reading. They require concentration and thought, as Friedman takes us into a question, leading us as he thinks it through, always considering and evaluating different alternatives that would challenge or modify his main point. Friedman tends to begin with a thesis, based on an aspect of the analytic stance. He develops it, and then moves to questioning it, often based on post-Freudian challenges. He then challenges the challenges, and ends with a conclusion that reaffirms the initial thesis (and Freud's thinking). The papers are masterful contributions, one after the other. Friedman's focus throughout is on how the analyst's "attitudes" (170) allow the psychoanalytic experience to unfold. He sees Freud's technical recommendations-abstinence, neutrality, and anonymity-as default positions for the analyst, "beacons" (142) within which he can establish and maintain the psychoanalytic phenomena that Freud discovered, and tolerate the necessary ambiguity and paradox that psychoanalysis demands. Friedman writes: "It bears repeating that most of those anti-analytic attitudes (the 'don't's) that Freud's Papers on Technique cautions against are normal social attitudes. It is the task of training to make what is perfectly normal feel inappropriate to analysts while they are at work" (224). Friedman stresses that Freud's technique papers are best understood as a whole. I will review Friedman's book in a similar way, looking at the whole book and his central argument as it develops through the various chapters. I will quote him frequently, so that the reader gets a feel for his writing. Friedman's first point is that Freud's Papers on Technique, as a whole, are a record of Freud's experience. "The technique is not deduced from a model of the mind" (4). Freud's recommendations of anonymity, abstinence, neutrality, etc. are not derived from his drive theory. Rather, Freud's book records "an experiment in the evocation of a certain state of mind; specifically, to see what brings about that particular state and what interferes with it" (3, original emphasis). Psychoanalysis was Freud's "discovery" (3) and the Papers on Technique record Freud's process of discovery. This is important because it allows us to think about Freud's technical recommendations empirically, as ideal positions that affect the unfolding of a psychoanalytic process. We can think, for example, of these recommendations as facilitating or interfering with a patient's capacity to "flirt" with a "virtual reality" (Chapter 9). We can also look at how different analysts balance or collapse the always ambiguous interplay of illusion and "reality," as a way of differentiating between analytic approaches, as Friedman does (150-151, 172-174, for example). Friedman uses Freud's Papers on Technique as the base of his discussion of the analytic stance, and the cornerstone of this base is Friedman's understanding of Freud's concept of working through. Friedman asserts, in three chapters offering close readings of Freud's papers, that Freud concluded that working through is the major mutative agent of psychoanalysis. Working through occurs "in a patient's private experience" (51). Working through is the
This paper presents a theoretical model for the psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist worki... more This paper presents a theoretical model for the psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist working in a therapeutic milieu in which the standard psychoanalytic situation is altered in three respects: (1) the patient is borderline or psychotic and has difficulty participating in a verbal, insight-oriented approach, (2) the therapist is part of a treatment team, and (3) the patient is treated while in a community setting. These three factors can create difficulties in treatment, which will be reviewed with the goal of delineating a model to guide the therapist as he or she responds to the multiple stimuli of a therapeutic community. The role of the therapist will be examined from two broad points of view: the nature of psychotherapy with borderline and psychotic patients within the milieu, and the interaction between therapist, treatment team, and therapeutic community and its effect on the patient. Certain aspects of transference and countertransference in milieu treatment will also be discussed.
Ferenczi, S. (1949). Confusion of tongues between the adults and the child: The language of tende... more Ferenczi, S. (1949). Confusion of tongues between the adults and the child: The language of tenderness and of passion. International Journal of PsychoAnalysis, 30, 225–230. Gabbard, G.O. (1994). Sexual excitement and countertransference love in the analyst. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 42, 1083–1106. Saks, E. R. (2007). The center cannot hold: My journey through madness. New York, NY: Hyperion. Sandler, J. (1976). Countertransference and role-responsiveness. International Review of Psychoanalysis, 3, 43–47. Winnicott, D. W. (1965). Ego distortion in terms of true and false self. In The Maturational processes and the facilitating environment: Studies in the theory of emotional development (pp. 140–152). London, England: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis.
Dr. Charles Hanly's paper, "The Interplay of Deductive and Inductive Reasoning in Psychoanalytic ... more Dr. Charles Hanly's paper, "The Interplay of Deductive and Inductive Reasoning in Psychoanalytic Theorizing," provides us with a welcome opportunity to discuss the process of constructing and refining psychoanalytic theories. Hanly presents a relatively straightforward account of change in psychoanalytic theory, concentrating on the evolution of Freud's ideas. He argues that psychoanalytic theory, like theory in the natural sciences, has evolved through the interplay of deduction and induction, in which induction is based on assessment of psychoanalytic facts, i.e., clinical observations. The epistemological context within which this process occurs is that of critical realism, rather than irreducible subjectivity, which interferes with objective assessment of clinical observations. However, other important assumptions and assertions are embedded in Hanly's argument, and they are best discussed as they emerge in the course of that argument. Therefore, I will structure my discussion through my reading of Hanly's paper, as I try to follow his thinking and highlight assumptions that deserve further exploration. I will then briefly discuss two issues raised by Hanly: subjectivity in psychoanalytic theorizing and the relation of a psychoanalyst to his or her theory.
This commentary addresses two themes: parallels between religious and psychoanalytic education an... more This commentary addresses two themes: parallels between religious and psychoanalytic education and the question of group survival in a world of competitive groups, whether religious (“strict” vs. “weak”) or psychoanalytic (differing psychoanalytic approaches). “Strict” religious education involves teaching both critical thinking and identification with the particular religion. This blend of critical thinking and identification with psychoanalysis is crucial in psychoanalytic education. We want to graduate students who see themselves as psychoanalysts rather than as being “interested” in psychoanalysis. This goal is accomplished when students have close, positive experience with personal analysts, supervisors, and teachers who are strongly committed to psychoanalysis but in a manner that encourages students to think critically and find their own psychoanalytic perspective. With regard to the second theme, I discuss how our narcissistic commitment to one or another psychoanalytic model interferes with open integration of new insights. Individual analysts privately integrate competing ideas in their own idiosyncratic ways. When these individuals publicly represent competing psychoanalytic groups, however, they tend to emphasize differences among these groups. They then find ways to appropriate new ideas as extensions of their own evolving tradition. In this way, a theoretical school is able to integrate new developments while preserving its own identity.
... Preston (1954), working with women who were chronic inpatients, ran a complex didactic group ... more ... Preston (1954), working with women who were chronic inpatients, ran a complex didactic group involving a discussion of development, informal talks while the group was engaged in physical activity (finger painting, clay, dancing), discussion of individual case histories, and ...
This commentary addresses two themes: parallels between religious and psychoanalytic education an... more This commentary addresses two themes: parallels between religious and psychoanalytic education and the question of group survival in a world of competitive groups, whether religious (“strict” vs. “weak”) or psychoanalytic (differing psychoanalytic approaches). “Strict” religious education involves teaching both critical thinking and identification with the particular religion. This blend of critical thinking and identification with psychoanalysis is crucial in psychoanalytic education. We want to graduate students who see themselves as psychoanalysts rather than as being “interested” in psychoanalysis. This goal is accomplished when students have close, positive experience with personal analysts, supervisors, and teachers who are strongly committed to psychoanalysis but in a manner that encourages students to think critically and find their own psychoanalytic perspective. With regard to the second theme, I discuss how our narcissistic commitment to one or another psychoanalytic model interferes with open integration of new insights. Individual analysts privately integrate competing ideas in their own idiosyncratic ways. When these individuals publicly represent competing psychoanalytic groups, however, they tend to emphasize differences among these groups. They then find ways to appropriate new ideas as extensions of their own evolving tradition. In this way, a theoretical school is able to integrate new developments while preserving its own identity.
In this paper, I define a psychoanalytic object broadly, as an object that “matters” to an indivi... more In this paper, I define a psychoanalytic object broadly, as an object that “matters” to an individual. My focus is on how someone becomes a psychoanalytic object and how our ideas about this process lead us to a particular conception of an analyst’s mutative role. Further, I examine the function of a psychoanalytic object in one’s inner world. One view of the object leads to a “dynamic” emphasis, examining the object’s role in a system of unconscious conflict and compromise, whereas a second, overlapping line of thought leads to a “structural” focus, emphasizing the object’s role in developing, stabilizing, and often maintaining compromised internal psychic capacities. These capacities are developmental achievements that form the context of conflict and compromise. Dynamic and structural emphases lead to different clinical stances. In considering the object and evolving conceptions of the object within Freudian psychoanalysis (my focus), we simultaneously review the evolution of Freudian psychoanalysis itself.
has gifted us with an exciting new book, Freud's Papers on Technique and Contemporary Clinical Pr... more has gifted us with an exciting new book, Freud's Papers on Technique and Contemporary Clinical Practice. The book is primarily a collection of Friedman's previously published papers, with the addition of a helpful introduction, three orienting prefaces, and a short end section. We have the privilege of following Friedman as he thinks through, with great rigour, depth, and insight, issues inherent to what Friedman sees as Freud's empirical discovery of the "strange" experience that is "the psychoanalytic experience … a novel state of unusual mental freedom" (1; all quotes in this review are from Friedman). The papers-now chapters-are beautifully written in prose that is non-technical, clear, and suffused with wit. However, they are not always easy reading. They require concentration and thought, as Friedman takes us into a question, leading us as he thinks it through, always considering and evaluating different alternatives that would challenge or modify his main point. Friedman tends to begin with a thesis, based on an aspect of the analytic stance. He develops it, and then moves to questioning it, often based on post-Freudian challenges. He then challenges the challenges, and ends with a conclusion that reaffirms the initial thesis (and Freud's thinking). The papers are masterful contributions, one after the other. Friedman's focus throughout is on how the analyst's "attitudes" (170) allow the psychoanalytic experience to unfold. He sees Freud's technical recommendations-abstinence, neutrality, and anonymity-as default positions for the analyst, "beacons" (142) within which he can establish and maintain the psychoanalytic phenomena that Freud discovered, and tolerate the necessary ambiguity and paradox that psychoanalysis demands. Friedman writes: "It bears repeating that most of those anti-analytic attitudes (the 'don't's) that Freud's Papers on Technique cautions against are normal social attitudes. It is the task of training to make what is perfectly normal feel inappropriate to analysts while they are at work" (224). Friedman stresses that Freud's technique papers are best understood as a whole. I will review Friedman's book in a similar way, looking at the whole book and his central argument as it develops through the various chapters. I will quote him frequently, so that the reader gets a feel for his writing. Friedman's first point is that Freud's Papers on Technique, as a whole, are a record of Freud's experience. "The technique is not deduced from a model of the mind" (4). Freud's recommendations of anonymity, abstinence, neutrality, etc. are not derived from his drive theory. Rather, Freud's book records "an experiment in the evocation of a certain state of mind; specifically, to see what brings about that particular state and what interferes with it" (3, original emphasis). Psychoanalysis was Freud's "discovery" (3) and the Papers on Technique record Freud's process of discovery. This is important because it allows us to think about Freud's technical recommendations empirically, as ideal positions that affect the unfolding of a psychoanalytic process. We can think, for example, of these recommendations as facilitating or interfering with a patient's capacity to "flirt" with a "virtual reality" (Chapter 9). We can also look at how different analysts balance or collapse the always ambiguous interplay of illusion and "reality," as a way of differentiating between analytic approaches, as Friedman does (150-151, 172-174, for example). Friedman uses Freud's Papers on Technique as the base of his discussion of the analytic stance, and the cornerstone of this base is Friedman's understanding of Freud's concept of working through. Friedman asserts, in three chapters offering close readings of Freud's papers, that Freud concluded that working through is the major mutative agent of psychoanalysis. Working through occurs "in a patient's private experience" (51). Working through is the
This paper presents a theoretical model for the psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist worki... more This paper presents a theoretical model for the psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist working in a therapeutic milieu in which the standard psychoanalytic situation is altered in three respects: (1) the patient is borderline or psychotic and has difficulty participating in a verbal, insight-oriented approach, (2) the therapist is part of a treatment team, and (3) the patient is treated while in a community setting. These three factors can create difficulties in treatment, which will be reviewed with the goal of delineating a model to guide the therapist as he or she responds to the multiple stimuli of a therapeutic community. The role of the therapist will be examined from two broad points of view: the nature of psychotherapy with borderline and psychotic patients within the milieu, and the interaction between therapist, treatment team, and therapeutic community and its effect on the patient. Certain aspects of transference and countertransference in milieu treatment will also be discussed.
Ferenczi, S. (1949). Confusion of tongues between the adults and the child: The language of tende... more Ferenczi, S. (1949). Confusion of tongues between the adults and the child: The language of tenderness and of passion. International Journal of PsychoAnalysis, 30, 225–230. Gabbard, G.O. (1994). Sexual excitement and countertransference love in the analyst. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 42, 1083–1106. Saks, E. R. (2007). The center cannot hold: My journey through madness. New York, NY: Hyperion. Sandler, J. (1976). Countertransference and role-responsiveness. International Review of Psychoanalysis, 3, 43–47. Winnicott, D. W. (1965). Ego distortion in terms of true and false self. In The Maturational processes and the facilitating environment: Studies in the theory of emotional development (pp. 140–152). London, England: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis.
Dr. Charles Hanly's paper, "The Interplay of Deductive and Inductive Reasoning in Psychoanalytic ... more Dr. Charles Hanly's paper, "The Interplay of Deductive and Inductive Reasoning in Psychoanalytic Theorizing," provides us with a welcome opportunity to discuss the process of constructing and refining psychoanalytic theories. Hanly presents a relatively straightforward account of change in psychoanalytic theory, concentrating on the evolution of Freud's ideas. He argues that psychoanalytic theory, like theory in the natural sciences, has evolved through the interplay of deduction and induction, in which induction is based on assessment of psychoanalytic facts, i.e., clinical observations. The epistemological context within which this process occurs is that of critical realism, rather than irreducible subjectivity, which interferes with objective assessment of clinical observations. However, other important assumptions and assertions are embedded in Hanly's argument, and they are best discussed as they emerge in the course of that argument. Therefore, I will structure my discussion through my reading of Hanly's paper, as I try to follow his thinking and highlight assumptions that deserve further exploration. I will then briefly discuss two issues raised by Hanly: subjectivity in psychoanalytic theorizing and the relation of a psychoanalyst to his or her theory.
This commentary addresses two themes: parallels between religious and psychoanalytic education an... more This commentary addresses two themes: parallels between religious and psychoanalytic education and the question of group survival in a world of competitive groups, whether religious (“strict” vs. “weak”) or psychoanalytic (differing psychoanalytic approaches). “Strict” religious education involves teaching both critical thinking and identification with the particular religion. This blend of critical thinking and identification with psychoanalysis is crucial in psychoanalytic education. We want to graduate students who see themselves as psychoanalysts rather than as being “interested” in psychoanalysis. This goal is accomplished when students have close, positive experience with personal analysts, supervisors, and teachers who are strongly committed to psychoanalysis but in a manner that encourages students to think critically and find their own psychoanalytic perspective. With regard to the second theme, I discuss how our narcissistic commitment to one or another psychoanalytic model interferes with open integration of new insights. Individual analysts privately integrate competing ideas in their own idiosyncratic ways. When these individuals publicly represent competing psychoanalytic groups, however, they tend to emphasize differences among these groups. They then find ways to appropriate new ideas as extensions of their own evolving tradition. In this way, a theoretical school is able to integrate new developments while preserving its own identity.
... Preston (1954), working with women who were chronic inpatients, ran a complex didactic group ... more ... Preston (1954), working with women who were chronic inpatients, ran a complex didactic group involving a discussion of development, informal talks while the group was engaged in physical activity (finger painting, clay, dancing), discussion of individual case histories, and ...
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