Negative oedipal transference of a male patient to his female analyst during the termination phase

There has been some debate in the literature concerning the ability of the male patient to experience his paternal, and particularly negative oedipal, transference feelings directly toward his female analyst. In this context, the author describes paternal transference manifestations evident throughout her male patient's analysis, and presents detailed process material from the termination phase. At this time the patient's obsessional neurosis was revived in the context of setting a termination date, and transference to the negative oedipal father could be clearly demonstrated. The paper illustrates that even the negative oedipal component of the paternal transference can be experienced directly in the male patient/female analyst, dyad, and interpretation of this material can bring it into clearer focus. The author discusses some possible influences of her sex on the timing and intensity of the material.     

Work and motherhood: preliminary report of a psychoanalytic study

This paper reports preliminary findings of a systematic inquiry into the manifest experience of conflict between paid work and motherhood. Psychoanalytic principles inform the design of a questionnaire and a research interview and the interpretation of data derived from both sources. An initial review of material from 140 questionnaires and 65 clinical interview series suggests that women vary tremendously in the ease or difficulty with which they navigate real obstacles to the integration of paid work and motherhood. The quality of a woman's relationship with her mother emerges as a singularly powerful influence on her experience of work-family balance.     

How Françoise Dolto links Lacanian psychoanalysis with the Christian Gospels

This article introduces to an English-speaking audience of pastoral therapists, the writings of the French Lacanian psychoanalyst, Fran?oise Dolto (1908-1988) on the links she discovered between the most profound question raised by Lacanian psychoanalysis in its dynamics effects and the questions raised by the Christian Gospels. The author summarizes the main points of Dolto's Lacanian thought and where she departed from Lacan in her interpretation of the unconscious ethic of desire. Using Dolto's three writings on Lacanian psychoanalysis and the Bible, as well as material from her published clinical studies, the author illustrates Dolto's approach to the Bible, the parable of the Good Samaritan, and her application of the dialectical principles of desire in three case studies.     

The work of the psychoanalyst in the field of psychosis1

Psychosis questions the foundations of psychoanalytic theory and challenges our ultimate convictions about psychic functioning. Using her clinical practice, the author explores the foundations of representation and underscores the central position of sensoriality in constituting a representation. Psychoanalytical work with a psychotic subject requires a certain sharing of the psychotic experience which puts the analyst in touch with raw material grasped as a fragment of sensoriality that must consequently be shaped and figured so that the subject's representational activity can resume. The author thus uses the Freudian notion of figuration to specify this ‘raw material’ and its sensory texture. She then refers to Aulagnier's pictograms as a way of thinking about sensoriality under the sign of displeasure and pain rather than pleasure. In the light of this theoretical development, the author re‐examines the opening excerpts from her clinical cases to come up with a practice of interpretation as figuration that allows jointly for the shaping of the raw material and the identifying import of this shaping.     

“Keeping It in the Family”: Sarah Kofman Reading Nietzsche as a Jewish Woman

This article examines Sarah Kofman's interpretation of Nietzsche in light of the claim that interpretation was for her both an articulation of her identity and a mode of deconstructing the very notion of identity. Faulkner argues that Kofman's work on Nietzsche can be understood as autobiographical, in that it served to mediate a relation to her self. Faulkner examines this relation with reference to Klein's model of the child's connection to its mother. By examining Kofman's later writings on Nietzsche alongside her autobiography, this article contends that Kofman's defense of anti‐Semitism in Nietzsche serves to fend off her own ambivalence about being Jewish.     

BELIEFS OF A CHRISTIAN MINISTER IN LIGHT OF CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE

Abstract. This paper states the author's understanding of the doctrines of the Christian faith in the light of her scientific background and her interpretation of current evolutionary, neuropsychologi–cal, and other scientific theories. It contains the actual ordination vows and her response to them, based upon an outline of questions suggested by the United Church of Christ.     

The Human Being in the Context of Nature: Philosophical Anthropology and Natural Sciences in Hedwig Conrad-Martius

The most original aspect of Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ research is her interpretation of nature, performed through the phenomenological method. She pinpoints the very essences of the natural phenomena, discovering entelechies inside them and a trans-physical dimension. She reads the evolution of nature in a new way, against the deterministic interpretation of it. Inside nature one can discover many levels, qualitatively different. The human being participates to all of them, but his/her peculiarity is linked to the mental–spiritual life.     

Erna and Melanie Klein

Erna was one of the child patients treated by Melanie Klein in Berlin, employing her recently discovered play technique. Since Erna died in Chile, the authors considered the IPA Congress in Santiago an opportunity to present a paper as a homage both to Erna and, especially, to Klein. She learned much from that very disturbed child, which she later used to sustain the ongoing development of her theories. The paper explores biographic data relevant to understanding both the case and the theories. It analyses the case material to follow Klein in the discovery and the handling of the child's transference and the harsh expressions of hate, jealousy and envy, which are brought in, with sad consequences, by strong persecutory feelings. Klein's comparison of this case with that of Freud's Wolf-man is also considered, mostly to show that the similarities were less than originally claimed, and that Klein, perhaps, was introducing a theoretic shift which led her technique to gradually change from ' Nachträglichkeit ' to the 'signification-resignification' pair, akin to Strachey's concept of the mutative interpretation. Lastly, the comprehension of Erna's strong psychotic traits and the links with later developments of the theory on psychosis are studied.     

The Mania of Existence: Klein,Winnicott, and Heidegger's Concept of Inauthenticity

This paper offers a new interpretation of Heidegger's concept of inauthenticity (Uneigentlichkeit) in Being and Time. It breaks from the “conformity interpretation” of inauthenticity, according to which the anonymity of the inauthentic person is due to her conformity to das Man. Rather, it argues that the anonymity of the inauthentic person is due to “existential mania” – a state in which a person denies her death and anxiety, understands her abilities to be limitless, and is perpetually active. It shows how this existential mania – and the anonymity to which it gives rise – is analogous to the mania described by the object relations psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. Finally, drawing on D. W. Winnicott's discussion of mania, it shows how both the inauthentic person's conformity to das Man, and her existential mania, give rise to anonymity.     

Epistemological Misgivings of Karen Barad’s ‘Posthumanism’

Karen Barad develops a view she calls ‘posthumanism,’ or ‘agential realism,’ where the human is reconfigured away from the central place of explanation, interpretation, intelligibility, and objectivity to make room for the epistemic importance of other material agents. Barad is not alone in this kind of endeavor, but her posthumanism offers a unique epistemological position. Her aim is to take a performative rather than a representationalist approach to analyzing ‘socialnatural’ practices and challenge methodological assumptions that may go unnoticed in some disciplinary fields. Yet for all the good of the challenge, Barad must support it with sound epistemological theorizing, theorizing that would apply to any methodology, whether that be sociological, historical, anthropological, or philosophical. Thus, where one might critique Barad on her assessments of sociological, historical, or anthropological incorporations of humans and the nonhuman, I critique Barad’s epistemology on its sense of objectivity and dismissal of the centrality of the human. I argue that Barad’s epistemology must retain a particular form of humanism, a humanism that stakes human subjectivity as the locus of rationality and objectivity, without which it creates intractable problems. To recuperate Barad’s challenge to contest assumptive distinctions while avoiding her epistemological problems, I offer some parting reflections.     

Mutative interpretation and close process monitoring in a study of psychoanalytic process

When James Strachey defined the mutative interpretation, he did not have defense interpretation in mind, but a few years later Anna Freud opened the door to new ways of making small-scale non-transference and transference interpretations that alter superego functions. Using her model and a special mode of listening, the authors suggest an updated technique of intervention with resultant superego change, which qualifies for consideration as a later version of the mutative interpretation.     

Marcella: the transition from explosive sensoriality to the ability to think

The author discusses an analytic case in which it was necessary to first address the patient's need for containment of her protoemotions--her sensoriality--before the analysis could proceed along more standard lines, with interpretation of the transference, work on displacement and aspects of her childhood history, and so forth. Prior to treatment, the patient had resorted to a sort of affective autism in order not to experience dangerously overwhelming emotions, and her emotional lethargy in sessions at first engendered similar feelings in the analyst, making progress impossible until a container was established for her projective identifications.     

The role of all things considered judgements in practical deliberation

Suppose an agent has made a judgement of the form, ‘all things considered, it would be better for me to do a rather than b (or any range of alternatives to doing a)’ where a and b stand for particular actions. If she does not act upon her judgement in these circumstances would that be a failure of rationality on her part? In this paper I consider two different interpretations of all things considered judgements which give different answers to this question, one suggested by Donald Davidson, the other by Paul Grice and Judith Baker. I argue that neither interpretation is adequate. However, a third interpretation that combines features of the Grice/Baker view with the Davidsonian view is possible. In the final section of the paper I defend this interpretation against two objections.     

On the Contradiction in Conception Test of the Categorical Imperative

Abstract

The author argues against Christine Korsgaard’s influential interpretation of Kant’s contradiction in conception test of the categorical imperative. Korsgaard’s rejection of the ‘teleological’ interpretation is shown to be based on a misunderstanding of the role that teleology plays for Kant in ruling out immoral maxims, and her defence of the ‘practical’ interpretation is shown to be less faithful to the text than the competing ‘logical’ interpretation. The works of Barbara Herman and Allen Wood are also discussed and evaluated.     

It takes two to tango: Research and practice as an amazing dance

This paper offers an appreciative critique of Kim Etherington's recent book, Narrative Approaches to Working with Adult Male Survivors of Male Child Sexual Abuse. I discuss the issues raised in the book with reference to one of my current clients. Etherington does not produce new substantive theory: the power of this work is in the narrative. Her important contribution lies in the reflexivity with which she encounters her material. The use of critical reflexivity challenges the subject/object dichotomy inherent in much positivistic research, and presents a much‐needed approach to process that is congruent with the lived experience of counselling. I would suggest that research is more likely to succeed in informing practice if the material is open to personal interpretation by the reader/therapist. Further, I would claim that the activity of using research creatively is itself a heuristic process: useful learning is most likely to occur if the dialogic relationship with the client and therapist is mirrored in the relationship between the therapist and the research text.     

Murdoch's ontological argument

Anselm's ontological argument is an argument for the existence of God. This paper presents Iris Murdoch's ontological argument for the existence of the Good. It discusses her interpretation of Anselm's argument, her own distinctive appropriation of it, as well as some of the merits of her version of the argument. In doing so, it also shows how the argument integrates some key Murdochian ideas: morality's wide scope, the basicness of vision to morality, moral realism, and Platonism.     

Impediments to the development of attachment

The function of the mother's reverie, as described by Bion, is viewed as a psychological parallel, following birth, to the physical function of the placenta.

Clinical material from psychotherapy with a 3 1/2-year-old girl illustrates that, as long as she maintained the delusion of being attached to her mother's body by a physical placenta, she was hindered from learning to experience herself as a separate individual and from developing normal feelings of attachment and grief over loss.

She was referred soon after her parents' separation when she showed a lack of reaction to the loss of her father. The material suggests that at the time of separation from her father she regressed to an earlier stage where there had already been a failure to work through infantile separation and individuation from her mother

The material reveals stages of her emergence from an illusory state of union, into one in which she could increasingly tolerate her separate existence. There followed an enrichment of her psychological means of communication through the use of imagination and symbolic play. She also became more receptive to her therapist's communications and could increasingly use psychological support to share and face inner pain.     

LIFE RECEDES WHEN EXCHANGE FAILS: CLINICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AMONG TURKISH PATIENTS

This paper presents a multidimensional analysis of a young Turkish ill woman. The psychological interpretation is based on clinical data and on projective techniques, i.e., the Thematic Apperception Test and the Rorschach Test. The psychological interpretation is combined with a semantic interpretation of the symbolic cultural processes. This anthropological approach concentrates on the temporal and spatial aspects of the culturally established symbolic congruence between the subject's bodily acts and her socio-cultural environment (in particular the subject's family and their discourse).     

The termination phase of psychoanalysis as seen through the lens of the dream

The decision about when to terminate analysis has long been underpinned by a theory-driven criterion model, which may steer the analytic dialogue away from its customary activities of free association, empathic listening, and interpretation. As a remedy to this situation, the author proposes that by paying careful attention to less consciously crafted patient communications such as dreams, the analytic dyad can consider readiness to set a termination date from a perspective that is context-sensitive and less encumbered by preordained criteria. Tracing the dreams of one analysand from the vantage point of contemporary dream theory, the author demonstrates how careful attention to the dream elucidated the patient's readiness to terminate and her complex feelings about the termination process. Finally, the author challenges the notion that the termination phase is of greater evaluative than therapeutic importance, and provides clinical material as evidence that this is not the case.     

In Search of Śiva: Mahādēviyakka's V&īraśaivism

Mahādēviyakka was a radical 12th century Karnataka saint of whom surprisingly little has been written. Considered the most poetic of the Vīra?aivas, her vacanas are characterized by their desperate searching for ?iva. I attempt to convey Mahādēvi's epistemology and its struggle to 'know' ?iva, necessitating a lifetime of searching for him; offer an interpretation of the innate presence of ?iva in the world and its consequences for epistemology; and explore the sense of tragic love inherent in devotional searching for ?iva. My primary goal is to offer a powerful and positive, yet critical, interpretation of Mahādēvi's beautiful prose on her relationship with ?iva.