Schutzraum Familie

Extensively presented is the case history of an internationally noticed incest offender who incarcerated his daughter over a time span of 24 years, fathering 7 children and keeping her and most of the children successfully unnoticed by anyone over the whole period of time. The case history is followed by a brief compilation of some aspects of the phenomenon known as the family tyrant.     

Case Report—Loyalty, Legacy, and Ledger: Contextual Therapy in a Patient with a Family History of Ovarian Cancer

A client's emotional experiences and reactions to those experiences are influenced by his/her family of origin and direct or indirect interactions with various family members. Contextual therapists propose that a client's satisfaction with a relationship depends on the equity of his/her emotional interactions with family members. When relationships are inequitable, trust between individuals disintegrates. In order to reestablish trust in a relationship, a balance of interests must be restored. If not, imbalances may be passed down to future generations. A case of a woman with a family history of ovarian cancer is reviewed with the principles of contextual therapy in mind. In her family, several legacies have resulted in unbalanced relationships between family members that lead to difficulty in establishing trust within the genetic counseling session.     

谢灵运寄居钱塘杜治与家族信仰的中断

因族人的急剧凋零、子孙难得,年仅4岁的谢灵运开始寄居在钱塘杜治。在寄居的早期谢灵运可能比较严格地遵循道教的戒规;但随年龄的增长以及家族重任的承担,谢灵运不得不回到祖居地,接受一个高门子弟所必需的教育。但这种往返情形却最终因孙恩起义、杜子恭的去世而被迫中断;这也中断了本来能继续的家族信仰。寄居钱塘由此成了谢灵运不堪回首,甚至讳忌的往事,由比在其现存的作品中也仅能看到一点不无晦涩、难懂的记载。这也是现今难以确考的一个重要原因。     

‘The Ancient Cult of Madame’: when therapists trade curiosity for certainty

An experience in which the author followed his own objectives rather than the patient's, leading to a tragic end, is evoked as a frame for the presentation and discussion of a family treatment where the therapeutic process led by the therapist may have exceeded the needs and expectation of the family members. This is followed by a discussion about potential problems caused by a therapist's fascination for family stories, since its effects may be epistemologically discontinuous from, if not contradictory to, Cecchin's recommendation for ‘curiosity’ as a central dictum of the therapist's stance.     

Suicide in a middle-born child

A case of suicide in a 17-year-old boy is described. Extracts from an interview with his mother are used to illustrate his violent behavior, delinquency, relationships with his family and peers, efforts to seek treatment, and the clues he gave to his impending suicide. His life-style and subsequent suicidal behavior are related to his middle-born sibling position.     

Case Report: A Systems Approach to Genetic Counseling for Albinism

A systems approach to family therapy assumes that a person and his/her problems do not operate in a social vacuum but instead are imbedded in a social context. This context includes fairly small social systems such as a nuclear family and larger social systems such as school systems and cultural beliefs. A case of a girl with albinism born to a couple from India will be used to discuss how a systems approach might be useful in a genetic counseling setting.     

The Emergence of Eric: Co-Therapy in the Treatment of a Family with a Disabled Child

This paper focuses on the problem of socialization of the disabled child within his family. For the family of the disabled child, socialization is doubly challenging; the family must teach its child not only how to be human, but also how to be disabled in the larger society. Often families of disabled children need help in enhancing their child's participation in family life — a critical aspect of socialization. One highly effective means of assisting families in this task is the use of family therapy. A case study is included to illustrate the use of family interviewing with a congenitally blind adolescent boy. Two therapists — a rehabilitation counselor (who is blind) from a state agency serving blind children^a and a social worker from a child guidance agency^b— collaborated in working with the family, which included a mother, father, their congenitally blind thirteen-year-old boy, and his two sighted brothers. The authors conclude that the child's family is the most potentially powerful resource for the successful habilitation of the disabled child into larger society and postulate family treatment as an effective means of attaining this end.     

ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE

This is a clinical essay with case examples stressing the point that pathological families have not been proven to be a cause of schizophrenia and therefore indiscriminant blame and mistrust of the family, overtly or covertly, by the treating therapist is not helpful to the identified patient or his family. Suggestions to help therapists treat families are made.     

Therapeutic Assessment With an Adolescent: Choosing Connections Over Substances

This case study provides an in-depth example of a comprehensive therapeutic assessment with an adolescent (TA–A) and his parents. The TA–A addressed parental concerns about their son's drug experimentation as well as the adolescent's own private questions about his distinctiveness from others, all set against a backdrop of ongoing parental conflict and poor communication. The TA–A process and how it is specifically tailored to balance the needs of adolescents and their parents is discussed. Subsequently, each step of TA–A is illustrated through the case study. Research findings at the conclusion of the assessment and at follow-up indicated significant decreases in internalizing symptomology and school problems, increases in self-esteem and self-reliance, and improved family functioning as reported by the adolescent. At follow-up, the father spoke of developing a more assertive parenting approach and successful follow-through on recommendations. This case study provides a template for clinicians interested in conducting TA–A.     

Superego formation, adolescent transformation, and the adult neurosis

The superego is heir to the Oedipus complex but has a much larger developmental legacy which includes preoedipal precursors and the influence of latency and adolescence. The superego continues to change in function and content throughout life, and radical transformation in adolescence may result in developmental discontinuity as well as core developmental continuity. A case is discussed in which adolescence was overlooked in previous analysis and in which adolescent superego modification had a major impact on the patient's character and his adult neurosis. The developmental significance of adolescence experienced under conditions of social isolation and rejection with forebodings of the Holocaust was unrecognized in sanctioned silence and shared analytic denial. These repeated earlier experiences of silent submission and stifled protest, and the silent suffering of the patient and his family, were an integral part of his humiliating and emasculating adolescent experiences. The intimidated adolescent, threatened from within and without, identified with the aggressor as well as with the victim. Identification with the aggressor and glorified victor contributed to a final adolescent structuralization of a punitive, sadistic superego and a rigidly perfectionistic ego ideal. As an adult, he tended to passive masochistic compliance with diminished self-esteem and unconscious self-denigration. He was prone to shame and guilt, self-criticism, and hidden hypercritical attitudes toward others. The adolescent internalization of aggression, intense castration anxiety, and pervasive narcissistic mortification led to retreat from resolution of revived oedipal conflict and to concomitant detrimental superego alteration. These issues were of major importance for analytic understanding and therapeutic progress.     

Little Hans: a centennial review and reconsideration

Freud's "Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy" has stimulated interminable "reanalysis." The case of Little Hans, an unprecedented experimental child analytic treatment, is reexamined in the light of newer theory and newly derestricted documents. The understanding of the complex overdetermination of Hans's phobia was not possible in the heroic age of psychoanalysis. Current analytic thought, as well as distance de-idealization vis-à-vis the pioneering past, has potentiated a reformation of the case. The severe disturbance of his mother had an adverse impact on Little Hans and his family. Her abuse of Hans's infant sister has been overlooked by generations of analysts. Trauma, child abuse, parental strife, and the preoedipal mother-child relationship emerge as important issues that intensified Hans's pathogenic oedipal conflicts and trauma. With limited, yet remarkable help from his father and Freud, Little Hans nevertheless had the ego strength and resilience to resolve his phobia, resume progressive development, and forge a successful creative career.     

Making of Victim a Patient: Sexually Abused Children and the Consequences of Unprofessional Help

The disclosure of sexual abuse by a child not only disturbs the mental peace of the family members but influences their attitudes towards the victim as well. This article explores how the diverse types of attitudes of the family members towards the victim and un-fulfillment of role expectation of a victim from his/her family members make him/her a patient. An attempt has also been made to analyse how the reluctance of parents to take any professional help impedes the recovery of the child along with the strategy a child adopts to cope with this traumatic event of his/her life. The child wants love and support from his/her close relatives, besides expecting protection from them. In such circumstances even a little negligence from any of the family members or their unsupportive and unpractical attitudes towards the victim, makes him/her a silent sufferer. A sense of helplessness develops in her/him and later on this sense of helplessness makes him/her a patient of depression.     

Hume's Utilitarian Theory of Right Action

A theory of right action is implicit in Hume's delineation of the virtues. It gives qualified priority to 'rules of justice' as Hume's remarks on 'that species of utility which attends this virtue' require. It is a useful actual-rule, not an ideal possible-rule, purely utilitarian theory that discounts rules of justice in 'extraordinary cases', has a problem when rules conflict, and invites the question 'Why not hark directly to the supreme law of utility in every case?'. It does not reflect contractarian considerations of mutuality of interests evident in Hume's texts, which while sometimes relevant to what is reasonable, are in his view never also relevant to what is moral.     

Masculinity unraveled: the roots of male gender identity and the shifting of male ego ideals throughout life

A model of masculine gender identity development is presented that demonstrates how a male's sense of his masculinity and the ambiguities of his gender are being reworked throughout his life. Of factors shaping the boy's sense of masculinity early on, particular emphasis is placed on the role of the involved father, the nature of the parental relationship, and the mother's recognition and affirmation of her son's maleness. While healthy masculine gender identity is founded predominantly on the boy's unique struggles in separating from his mother, it does not result from what has been traditionally viewed as the boy's disidentification from her (and from the feminine more generally). Indeed, boys who need to violently repudiate their identifications with their mother are more susceptible to a fragile, rigid masculine identity and narcissistic psychopathology. A case example of a young adult man illustrates the impact of identifications with both parents. The interplay of early masculine identity development and later life challenges confronting the adult male is briefly noted. "Masculine" ego ideals shift across developmental junctions until, ultimately, a more mature sense of masculinity emerges: the phallic wish to deny differentiation and maintain unlimited possibility is renounced and mourned and certain real limits concerning sex, gender, and generational differences are accepted. This reshaping of the "masculine" ego ideal consequently involves the transformation of a man's previously adaptive "phallicism" into more realistic, "genital" ego ideals-an achievement involving interplay between masculine and feminine identifications and the integration of antithetical elements no longer so unconsciously gendered.     

Psychosomatics: a current overview

The term 'psychosomatic' has typically defined a series of illnesses in which somatic injury breaks out from psychic conflict not recognized as such. Currently, health is considered the only psychosomatic state of integration of mind and soma: an ideal state of integration. Somatic pathology is an effect of mind/body splitting. In the heterogeneous 'field of psychosomatics' interaction between psyche and soma ranges from classical psychosomatic illness to sporadic episodes in which the body has responded to an inability to process mental conflict. The author briefly reviews the development of psychoanalytic thought on psychosomatics in Argentina. He suggests the need to find appropriate conceptual tools to approach the mental structure underlying this pathology. He presents his ideas about the mental functioning of patients with somatization disorders. He introduces the concept of somatic event as a restitution phenomenon through which the subject attempts to re-establish self-integration and links with reality. He also offers some reflections on temporality and on changes in psychoanalytic technique with these patients. A clinical case illustrates his ideas.     

W. R. D. FAIRBAIRN AND THE PROBLEM OF HOMOSEXUALITY: A STUDY IN PSYCHOANALYTIC PREJUDICE

W. R. D. Fairbairn believed that the psychoanalyst's motivations and theories must ultimately be rooted in a need to resolve personal conflicts. His self‐analytic and other records, now publicly available, indicate how his struggles with unacceptable sexual feelings and their symptomatic manifestations affected not only his theorizing, especially about sexuality, but also his clinical practice, as well as his personal and family life. Fairbairn's case affords a unique opportunity to document the effects of homophobia in a major psychoanalyst.     

Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005)

Presents an obituary for Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005). Before Urie Bronfenbrenner, child psychologists studied the child, sociologists the family, anthropologists the society, economists the economic framework, and political scientists the structure. As the result of Urie's extension of the concept of the ecology of human development, these environments--from the family to economic and political structures--are viewed as part of the life course, embracing both childhood and adulthood. Bronfenbrenner, widely regarded as one of the world's leading scholars in developmental psychology, child rearing, and human ecology--the interdisciplinary domain he helped popularize--died at his home in Ithaca, New York, on September 25, 2005, at the age of 88. He was the Jacob Gould Sherman Professor Emeritus of Human Development and of Psychology at Cornell University, where he spent most of his professional career. A brief biography of Bronfenbrenner is followed by an overview of his published work, his theories and other influential accomplishments.     

Giving the sceptic a good name

The word ‘sceptic’ usually refers to a theoretical figure whose philosophical importance lies exclusively in his challenge to any attempt to justify the belief in the possibility of knowledge. But the label was once applied to living persons ‐ the so‐called Pyrrhonists ‐ whose scepticism encompassed a way of life. Following Sextus Empiricus's portrayal of the Pyrrhonists, Arne Naess has provided comprehensive arguments both in rebuttal of the frequent claims either that scepticism is logically inconsistent or that at least it is impossible to put into practice, and in support of scepticism as a fruitful philosophical attitude. The present essay attempts a critical consolidation of Naess's case for scepticism by drawing more explicitly than he does on his work in empirical semantics. The notion of degrees of preciseness is used to outline a philosophically interesting rationale for the Pyrrhonist's persistent abstention from any act or action that commits him to the truth of a proposition, and also to indicate why possible, or even inevitable lapses on the Pyrrhonist's part need not seriously prejudice either his status as a sceptic or the philosophical value of his sceptical ideal.     

Learning from the patient: The East,synchronicity and transference in the history of an unknown case of C.G. Jung

This article presents the history of one until now unknown case of C.G. Jung: Maggy Reichstein. Born in Indonesia in 1894 in a very aristocratic family, she brought her sister to Zurich to be treated by Jung in 1919, and later she herself was in analysis with him. Jung used her case as example in his lecture in 1937 on the realities of practical psychotherapy, relating it to the process of transference and countertransference. Jung deepened his studies in Eastern psychology after a series of dreams she had, which culminated in the Yoga Kundalini Seminars. She was also the case presented in his article of 1951 on the concept of synchronicity. Jung wrote that her case, concerning synchronicity, remained unique in his experience. Jung also published some of her mandalas. He considered her able to understand his ideas in depth. Reichstein was for Jung an important case, which challenged and triggered his interests in different subjects.     

Sigmund Freud and James Putnam: Friendship as a Form of Sublimation

This article focuses on Freud’s lectures at Clark University in 1909 and the correspondence that followed from Freud’s visit to America with the Boston neurologist James Jackson Putnam. Particular emphasis is given to the concept of sublimation, specifically to Putnam’s desire to make sublimation a goal of psychoanalysis and his view that sublimations should reflect the individual’s recognition of the interests of the community or desire for an ideal community. Against Putnam, we endorse Freud’s view that sublimation should not be a goal of psychoanalysis. However, we support Putnam’s emphasis on the social value of sublimations, but in a more limited sense than he proposes in his correspondence with Freud. We suggest that the correspondence between Putnam and Freud reflects the very fact that the lifting of sexual repressions makes possible the development of male friendships. Thus, we view the correspondence between Freud and Putnam as an instance of sublimation, and suggest that the friendship that this correspondence reflected and nurtured is an example of the ideal community to which we humans aspire but which often remains elusive and unrealized.