Epistemology and Psychoanalysis: A Fruitful Relationship

Abstract

Bowlby may be viewed as one of the strongest exponents of the alternative psychoanalytic approach initiated by Ferenczi. His most important contributions are, on a theoretical level, to have potentially placed psychoanalysis onto a firm evolutionary basis, and, at a practical level, to have generated an enormous amount of empirical research. The main traits he shares with Ferenczi are independence of mind and the stress on a loving relationship in normal development and on real-life traumatic events in psychopathology. The similarities between them seem to be due to a convergence, or at the most to an indirect influence of Ferenczi, due to Bowlby's associations with Melanie Klein and the British Middle Group. As regards the specific issue of real-life experience, although Bowlby acknowledges Ferenczi's priority, he seems to have arrived at this concept independently.     

Relational Psychoanalysis: A Review

Relational psychoanalysis, a relatively new and evolving school of psychoanalytic thought, is considered by its founders to represent a “paradigm shift” in psychoanalysis. The relational approach, initiated by the publication of Jay Greenberg and Stephen Mitchell's book, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory in 1983, has developed into a movement with its own substantially separate literature. This paper reviews both the history and theoretical origins of the relational movement, as well as important theoretical premises and viewpoints now associated with the relational school.     

A Century of Psychoanalysis: Critical Retrospect and Prospect

Abstract

The distinction between having mode and being mode would seem to be the basis of the Frommian clinical approach, which finds its main application in the “center-to-center” relatedness between analyst and patient. The analyst can understand the patient because he/she experiences what the patient experiences. The dialogue is based on emotional and conceptual responses and reactions which are reciprocally communicated; both identities come into play. Psychoanalytic treatment which is not inspired by biophilia can only compile an inventory of data upon data, imposing interpretations and reconstructions. Biophilia makes psychoanalysis an art because it is applied to living things. The psychoanalytic session can save itself from the having mode by addressing the patient's living memory, which represents the past relived in the present, according to the being mode. The author comments on a psychoanalytic session.     

On Teaching Psychoanalysis in Antianalytic Times: A Polemic

The author argues that in the current attitudinal climate, characterized by significant denigration of psychoanalysis coming from biologically oriented psychiatrists, academic psychologists, pharmaceutical firms, insurance companies, managed care organizations, anxious taxpayers, and revisionist critics of Freud, psychoanalysts need to adapt their training and supervisory practices to take into account the preconceptions of many of those seeking training as psychotherapists. Specifically, we need to appreciate the nature of the transferences toward analysts and analysis that exist in the wider mental health community and in the general public. These include assumptions that analysts are cold, arrogant, rigid, and worshipful toward Freud (who is himself seen as cold, arrogant, rigid, and narcissistic), and the prevalent misconception that psychoanalysis has been empirically discredited. Analysts need to find creative and honest ways, some of which are suggested by the author, to challenge the distortions in these stereotypes and to respond nondefensively and generatively to the grains of truth they contain. The essay concludes with some reminders of the legitimate strengths of the psychoanalytic tradition that suggest that its future is not as bleak as its disparagers have assumed.     

精神分析中的主体间性研究

采取主体间性的视角,对精神分析中以治疗关系为核心的工作实践的演变与发展进行探讨。通过研究客体关系学派、拉康精神分析、人际精神分析以及主体间性精神分析在工作实践中的关注焦点与互动形式的差异,探讨患者主体与治疗师主体的主客关系的不同理念的演变,以及语言在主体间互动的重要作用。结论认为在主体间性的视角下,精神分析中的治疗关系与互动向着三个方面发展：治疗关系在根本上是超越的;治疗关系在实践上是双向开放的,是共同参与的;在工作实践中更关注语言诠释的主体以及非语言的互动。

     

PSYCHOANALYTICAL PSYCHOTHERAPY: Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy: A long and troubled relationship

The extended, inconclusive debate over distinguishing psychoanalysis and psychotherapy has been muddied by two underlying issues. The scientifi c identity that psychoanalysis claimed, leading it to affi rm that it was more than a treatment modality, was in confl ict with the actual therapeutic mission it assumed. Psychoanalysis was further hampered in those discussion by its internal confl icts over doctrinal purity; deviations for psychotherapeutic ends were vulnerable to the charge of dissidence. More recently, the debate has been clouded by the fact that newer candidates, by and large, can anticipate careers primarily as psychotherapists, driving a wedge between generations within institutes. The course of the debate and the problems encountered in it are affected by the formal relations between the psychoanalytic establishment and the health-care industry, including government agencies. In the long run, it appears to make little difference whether psychoanalysis is offi cially recognized as a mental-health treatment, as in Germany, or attempts to maintain its independence, as in the UK. Finally, as the debate appears to be winding down, the fate of dynamic psychotherapy is also in the balance. If in the past psychoanalysis seemed at risk of losing its specifi c identity, today dynamic psychotherapy is in danger as well.