Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique: enriching psychoanalytic views of creativity

Focusing on the eighteenth-century French composer Hector Berlioz as he is revealed in his masterpiece Symphonie Fantastique and in his Memoirs, this paper investigates a proposed intermediate area between healthy creativity and paralyzing neurosis. Artists like Berlioz use their work primarily to manage what has been variously labeled as Seelenschmerz, narcissistic injury, and painful fluctuation of internal object representations. Their affectively unprocessed experiences are incorporated into their artwork, so that their heightened experience of Seelenschmerz has particular effects on their audience. Our consideration of these dynamics allows Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique to regain the truly harrowing impact that it evoked before it became assimilated as a tamed icon of Romantic-era expressiveness.     

Utopic ideas of cure and joint exploration in psychoanalytic supervision

The idea of the decisive and complete cure is deeply rooted in our unconscious and in the sacral roots of symbolic healing. Double sets of private theories of cure can frequently be found among patients in psychoanalysis and their analysts. The utopian cure involves a profound transformation of the personality by way of deep regression. The idea of an attainable and more limited cure includes new ways of managing old problems. The actual ongoing treatment is then seen as the 'next-best solution'. The utopian fantasy of creating 'the new person' by means of 'proper' psychoanalysis or analytic training has far-reaching consequences for psychoanalytic education and supervision. Our awareness of the inevitable temptation in the 'utopian state of mind' can help us to trace and focus on utopic elements in the supervisory process. Exploration of utopic ideas of all the three parties involved can itself be a fruitful and stimulating way of working in supervision. An important aim of psychoanalytic supervision is to promote a distinct state of mind that can counterbalance utopic ideas and counteract the phenomenon of a 'false analytic self'.     

Introduction: The role of shame in psychoanalytic theory and practice

Introducing three papers by Leon Wurmser, Claude Janin and John Steiner the author gives an overview of the development of the concept of shame in psychoanalytic theory and practice. Different aspects of the phenomenon of shame are being discussed including its relation to guilt, object relations and identity as well as the role of gaze when emerging from a psychic retreat.     

Divorce therapy: an in-depth survey of therapists' views

In-depth interviews were conducted with 21 highly experienced therapists on the criteria of a constructive divorce, the obstacles to achieving such a divorce, and the strategies and tactics of divorce therapy. The primary criterion of a constructive divorce was the successful completion of the process of psychic separation and the protection of the welfare of minor children. Therapy may focus on the decision to get divorced and/or the negotiation of the terms of a divorce settlement. Three types of therapeutic strategies were identified: reflexive intervention by which the therapist orients himself to the marital problems and attempts to gain the trust and confidence of the partners; contextual interventions by which he tries to promote a climate conducive to decision-making; and substantive interventions intended to produce resolution on terms the therapist has come to believe are inevitable or necessary. The nascent state of divorce therapy as an area of therapeutic specialization is noted. The problem of diagnostic criteria for divorce, the relationship between therapists and lawyers, the nature and consequence of therapist impartiality, and the degree to which therapists should mediate the terms of divorce are considered central issues meriting further study.     

Mourning and psychosis: a psychoanalytic perspective

The author attempts to develop some of the basic models and concepts relating to mourning processes in psychotic patients on the assumption that situations of loss and mourning are key moments for psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and therapeutic approaches in general. Secondly, he reminds us that 'mourning processes in psychotics' are not always 'psychotic mourning processes', that is to say, that they do not necessarily occur within, or give rise to, a psychotic clinical picture. These ideas are illustrated by a number of sessions and vignettes concerning two psychotic patients in psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic treatment. In theoretical terms, it seems vitally important in this context to combine a relationship-based approach within a framework of special psychoanalytic psychopathology with an updated view of processes of mourning and affective loss. A fundamental requirement at clinical level is to determine the role to be played by psychoanalytically based treatments in combined, integrated or global therapies when working with psychotic patients. For this purpose, the paper ends by outlining a set of principles and objectives for such treatments.     

Pronouns and progress: a psychoanalytic primer

Psychoanalytic psychotherapists have the role responsibility to hover evenly over everything that is said--and not said--in the analytic situation. Pronouns may be worthy of special attention. Just as children demonstrate a predictable course in the acquisition and mastery of pronouns, it may be that the analytic patient also shows a predictable sequence in the deployment of pronouns over the course of a successful treatment. The analytic patient will move from a focus on "They," to joining the analyst in "We," before ultimately separating to become an "I." A third person focus in the opening phase, may, with familiarity, move to second person intimacy, ultimately yielding to first person agency. These grammatical markers occur in the opening, middle and termination/follow-up phases of a successful psychoanalytic treatment, during which the pre-morbid introjects are identified, chewed up, and, eventually nudged aside by the healthier therapeutic-introject, from which a new or renewed identity may emerge. Analysis of the Grimm's fairy tale "The Wolf and the Kids" illustrations the importance of metabolizing old introjects.     

The real person of the analyst and his role in the process of psychoanalytic cure

This paper focuses on the real relationship with the analyst in the psychoanalytic situation as an aspect of the therapeutic process that leads to change. The role of free association, clarification, and interpretation of the transference are taken for granted as major activities of the analyst, and the real relationship with him is seen as a complementary but important ingredient for change. In particular, his emotional availability determines the climate of analysis. The concepts of neutrality, anonymity, and abstinence, though of importance as guideposts in the conduct of an analysis, have conceptual limitations that not infrequently bind the analyst in a stance that is not useful for the progress of the analysis. On occasion, confirmation by the analyst of the verity of an experience in the patient's early life facilitates the analytic process. This occurs particularly in situations of early trauma, but at times may include chronically traumatic early life experiences. An important motivating force in analysis is the patient's unconscious wish to find the ideal parent absent in early life experience, a wish that is experienced and ultimately analyzed. This is to be distinguished from a defensive idealized transference. Psychoanalytic developmental psychology contributes to our understanding of how the real person of the analyst, his emotional availability, his responsiveness at particular times, his attitude toward action and progressive change in the patient, affect the therapeutic process that leads to change.     

The play of transference: some reflections on enactment in the psychoanalytic situation

The incessant play of nonverbal activity between patient and analyst actualizes and amplifies the primary verbal data of the psychoanalytic dialogue. Both parties must inevitably register this kinesic level of communication, and react with capacities acquired in and elaborated from earliest childhood. The analyst's apperceptive (unfocused) looking, as part of his freely hovering attentiveness, utilizes these capabilities gradually to perceive and organize patterns combining the verbal and nonverbal data. It is through the recognizing and eventual understanding of these gestalts that the analyst builds up his knowledge of his patients. In these patterns can be identified: (a) conspicuous behaviors, idiosyncratic for the individual, which often yield to psychoanalytic inquiry to reveal their dynamic-historical antecedents; and (b) inconspicuous background kinesics, habitual to the individual, which ordinarily are opaque to analytic exploration, yet hold rich meaning. Observing these small behaviors in relation to verbal content provides evidence of their linkage to, and enactment of, pregenital- and genital-level conflicts over diadic and triadic object relations, even in highly structured personalities. These enactments combine elements of play, miming, and drama to constitute an experiential dimension that actualizes and externalizes the patients' inner life of conflict and relation to objects.