The countertransference: When painful traumatic traces sustain the countertransference and reveal themselves to the psychoanalyst … 14 years later!

Although she experienced, as did the many psychoanalysts before her, the countertransferential dynamics of disgust towards a patient presenting great deficiency in terms of mentalization capacity, the author strives to understand what urged her to tolerate the patient, to invest in her and lead her to develop a capacity for internalization, after 6 years of analytic work filled with transgressive‐transferential acting‐out. Fourteen years later, she becomes aware of the way in which the revival of some grief related to traumatic traces in her own lived experience, sustained, without her knowledge, a saviour/countertransference, creating a specific transferential‐countertransferential spiral which rescued a situation whose advent could have been compromised. This could happen thanks to what she refers to as the unique inter‐relation between her and this particular patient.     

Racists or tolerant multiculturalists? How do they begin?

The author discusses how negative racial attitudes originate. First, she looks globally at how various theories have attempted to explain the origins of racism. Second, she reviews some research on this topic that she and her colleagues have completed with very young children. Both the theories and the studies have ramifications for how psychologists might reduce the possibility of children becoming racist.     

One surprise after another

The author of this article describes her childhood, career, and some of her main findings as a personality psychologist who studied women's creativity and adult development as she herself constructed her personal and professional identity in a changing environment and developed in a number of ways.     

One Surprise After Another

The author of this article describes her childhood, career, and some of her main findings as a personality psychologist who studied women's creativity and adult development as she herself constructed her personal and professional identity in a changing environment and developed in a number of ways.     

The Long Journey to Becoming an Emancipated Woman and a Relational Psychotherapist

This article contains a biography of the author, taking into consideration the cultural landscape in which she was immersed all along. It also shows how her search for an identity and a position in the world shaped her orientation, first to feminism and then to psychotherapy. Beginning with her belonging to Orbach’s self-help groups and evolving to a feminist and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist, she later became a bioenergetic analyst only to join the relational turn in psychoanalysis after having met Jessica Benjamin in 2002 and having published a number of papers to deconstruct classical psychoanalytic thinking with the help of Judith Butler, Nancy Chodorow, Emilce Dio Bleichmar, and many others.     

Hermanas de Corazón y Alma

Friendship is a relationship that can traverse generations or be located within a specific era of a person's life. In this article, the author examines the role that her childhood friendship played in shaping her understanding of gender, ethnicity, poverty, immigration, spirituality and family processes. This friendship was during emerging adolescence and helped the author navigate and develop mestiza consciousness. These lessons were reinforced during her graduate training and have influenced her identity as a Chicana feminist therapist and the manner in which she connects with clients in psychotherapy. After presenting the story of her friendship, the author incorporates the theoretical perspectives of Chicana Feminism and Spirita to demonstrate how this friendship has influenced her clinical work with women. Specific themes discussed are language, invisibility, and cultural formulations of gender and spirituality.     

Meeting a New Me: An Autoethnographic Journey into Kenya and Back

In this article the first author (MG) examines her experiences, reflections, and questions after traveling to Kenya and then attempting to integrate those experiences into her Western life. Using an autoethnographic format, different implications for the author are explored as she becomes more culturally aware both of other ways of being as well as of her own identity. MG publically shared her experiences on three different occasions, and then used a reflective stance to consider the implications of the questions posed for her personally, for the therapy field, and for the meaning of maintaining multicultural competencies.     

Review Essay: Beyond the Fear of Intimacy

Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance Over Time by Stephen A. Mitchell (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2002, 224 pp.)

This article reflects on the importance of Mitchell's work in the United Kingdom, where notions of intimacy sit uneasily with psychoanalytic practice. The author argues that a reluctance to take up intimacy in the consulting room has a deleterious effect on intimate relations outside it. Drawing on her work with women, in particular, she posits that the erotic is still an undertheorized area of relational analysis. Although most orthodox theory has been jettisoned, new theory is necessary for an understanding of what the author observes to be a “false” erotic in many of her patients in whom the erotic is temporarily available but is unreliable as a desire and as a source of identity.     

The Extreme Claim,Psychological Continuity and the Person Life View

Marya Schechtman has raised a series of worries for the Psychological Continuity Theory of personal identity (PCT) stemming from what Derek Parfit called the ‘Extreme Claim’. This is roughly the claim that theories like it are unable to explain the importance we attach to personal identity. In her recent Staying Alive (2014), she presents further arguments related to this and sets out a new narrative theory, the Person Life View (PLV), which she sees as solving the problems as well as bringing other advantages over the PCT. I look over some of her earlier arguments and responses to them as a way in to the new issues and theory. I will argue that the problems for the PCT and advantages that the PLV brings are all merely apparent, and present no reason for giving up the former for the latter.     

Witnessing and Passing. Discussion of Prince's “The Self in Pain: The Paradox of Memory. The Paradox of Testimony”

The author indicates that she has two voices. One voice speaks to the patient's loneliness and detachment and her expectation to not be seen, believed, or acknowledged. This voice, housing the knowledge that events that remain unprocessed continue to have an impact, wants Dr. Prince to risk intrusion and preemption. This voice believes that it is worth it. The author's other voice considers bottomless wounds and speaks to the patient's need to build up healthy aspects of personality that is necessary to do the holocaust work. This voice holds that this is not the time for Dr. Prince to witness what happened to the patient, what the perpetrators of massive crimes did to her or what the onlookers saw and chose not to do. This voice says that the patients lead should be followed. The author elaborates on her two voices and indicates what she would have done had she been working with the patient.     

Change,Vulnerability, Fear,and Taking Risks–An Interview with Virginia Satir

SUMMARY

The author addresses the mythic characters of Ulysses and Penelope as archetypes for herself. She reviews divergent attitudes, beliefs and aspirations of her life by detailing an internal conflict between her identification with Ulysses1 adventuresomeness and her reluctant realization that Penelope can also represent her, however much she rejected her for seeming dull and repetitve

In this process the author notes how she constricted her own creativity when she took on uncritically the patriarchal beliefs about the roles of wives and mothers. Nevertheless she wonders whether present-day women's liberation from archaic notions about women inadvertently sacrifices the optimal development of children because of the rigid demands of the work-place.

Finally she experiences the symbolic reunion of Penelope's and Ulysses' different images within herself, and considers how what each represents can have renewed meaning for her as she moves towards the end of her life.     

Character Attacks and Their Effects on Perceptions of Male and Female Political Candidates

The study examined the perceptions of political candidates (male and female) who make negative statements about the personality and integrity of their political opponents. Male and female participants (Sex of Participant factor) indicated their impressions of a male or female political candidate (Sex of Candidate factor) who either attacked or did not attack the character of his/her opponent (Attack factor) in a political leadership debate. Participants who read a speech given by a candidate of their own gender tended to rate the candidate as having greater integrity when the candidate attacked his/her opponent than when he/she did not. When judging a candidate of the opposite gender, participants tended to rate the candidate who attacked his/her opponent as having less integrity than a candidate who did not attack his/her opponent. Results are discussed with regard to the impact that aggressive campaign tactics can have on voter perceptions, and how similarity between voters and candidates may affect perceptions of such tactics.     

Divorced women's sexual and contraceptive issues

This work attempts to answer the question: could divorce create a feeling of alienation in women which causes one to feel vulnerable and detached and thus making sexual decision-making and planning difficult? When a women is married her sexuality is taken for granted because she is expected to have children; however, after a divorce, she must face many of the conflicts she felt as a young single woman. Guilt, planning contraceptive use, and coming to terms with her sexual behavior all present themselves again. 1 factor that must be considered is that contraceptive use is always assumed to be the function of the married women. Very little research has gone into the contraceptive use habits of unmarried women. This is primarily due to the societal assumption that unmarried woman don't have sex. This work contains the clinical observation of the author in which 28% of 459 prenatal patients were interviewed specifically because they were divorced. The conclusion is that divorced women are being neglected by the health care profession and are in great need of contraceptive counseling. This work primarily discusses a study done to expand and examine the conclusions of the clinical research. The study consisted of 101 sexually active, legally divorced, single women between the ages of 18-44 and physiologically capable of becoming pregnant. 53 of these women had experienced post-divorce pregnancies. Each woman was interviewed and given 3 standard tests: the Rosenberg Self-Acceptance Scale, the Snyder's Self-Monitoring Scale and Beckham's Coping Strategies Scale. The conclusion of the author is that divorce and its associated psychological problems may temporarily or permanently affect one's thoughts, feelings, and life course. Sexual and contraceptive use decision-making are both directly both directly affected by these changes. Some divorced women may be experiencing inadequate self-esteem, identity, and self-awareness.     

Whiteness Revisited: Reply to Commentary

In reply to Altman's discussion, the author explores in more depth the topic of whiteness, both her South African and American whiteness. She situates American whiteness in the history of slavery, Jim Crow, and the ongoing racial discrimination of the present. When Altman points to the author's unconscious submission to the regulatory power of the larger society, she postulates that her submission is to American whiteness. She notes that, in finding a new home, that which she wished to discard—a white racist identity synonymous with the oppressor—has reappeared, to be confronted once again.     

CHARACTER,PSYCHOANALYTIC IDENTIFICATION,AND NUMERICAL IDENTITY

Identification figures prominently in moral psychological explanations. I argue that in identification the subject has an ‘identity‐thought’, which is a thought about her numerical identity with the figure she identifies with. In Freud's psychoanalytic psychology character is founded on unconscious identification with parental figures. Moral philosophers have drawn on psychoanalysis to explain how undesirable or disadvantageous character dispositions are resistant to insight through being unconscious. According to Richard Wollheim's analysis of Freud's theory, identification is the subject's disposition to imagine, unconsciously, her bodily merging with the figure she identifies with. I argue that this explanation of identification is not adequate. Human character is held to be capable of change when self‐reflection brings unconscious identifications to conscious self‐knowledge. I argue that for self‐knowledge these identifications must be an intelligible part of the subject's self‐conception, and that Wollheim's ‘merging phantasy’ is not intelligible to the subject in this way. By contrast, the subject's thought that she is numerically identical to the figure she identifies with does provide an intelligible starting‐point for reflecting on this identification. This psychoanalytic account provides a clear conception of identification with which to investigate puzzle cases in the moral psychology of character.     

As If Religion Matters: Teaching the Introductory Course as if it Does

This essay chronicles the academic odyssey of a young professor who sets out to revise the department's Introduction to Religion course only to realize that she must first clarify her vocational commitments before she can create a teachable course. She is convinced through working with many students who express disdain or even hostility toward the subject matter that she wants to model a relationship to the subject matter that says religion matters, but is uncertain how to do this. After an autobiographical foray into her academic upbringing in active learning, the author articulates four values to model in her teaching: personal relevance, academic responsibility, ethics, and community. The author then engages current scholarship in active learning, and narrates the process of translating those four values into concrete course goals and particular assignments. The essay concludes with an assessment of teaching the revised course.     

Coming Out in Voices

This paper articulates the personal experiences of a woman with a physical disability who enters therapy to explore issues involving lesbian identity, health and illness, disability oppression and pride, and relationships. Written in the first person, the article uses anecdotes, poetry, and journal entries to chart the author's process of self-discovery. As a woman, a lesbian, and a person with a disability, the author frequently finds herself at odds with the culture around her. This creates conflicts between the author's real self, and the self she must present to others. She discusses how she had learned to "silence the voices" which were not useful in challenging the stereotypes, making others comfortable, or communicating with assistants. The author describes how therapy offered her the opportunity to unlearn the silence, value all of her voices, listen to herself, resolve her internal dilemmas, and develop a deeper sense of self.     

Casper or 'the cabinet of horrors'

This paper is an account of a four-times-a-week analysis with a very deprived, feral-like child. The author, who has come to understand feral children as very deprived children, turns to an historical account written in 1826 by Anselm von Feuerbach, the jurist who was asked to make enquiries into the identity of a savage and mysterious boy, Kaspar Hauser. The author describes how she has made use of the observations and thoughts of Anselm von Feurbach in her attempts to process her own thoughts and reflections around the unfolding clinical material and how the exploration of the differences and similarities between Casper and Kaspar Hauser helped her to gradually grasp the psychological essence of the patient. The question of an appropriate reading of the clinical material for theoretical purposes remains open.     

MARGARET THATCHER'S CHRISTIAN FAITH: A Case Study in Political Theology

Throughout the 1980s Margaret Thatcher dominated British and global politics. At the same time she maintained an active Christian faith, which she understood as shaping and informing her political choices and policies. In this article I argue that we can construct from Thatcher's key speeches, her memoirs, and her book on public policy a cultural “theo‐political” identity which guided her political decisions. Thatcher's identity was as an Anglo‐Saxon Nonconformist. This consisted of her belief in values such as thrift and hard work, care for the family and local neighbor, and charitable generosity; her belief in the renewal of the national British Christian spirit; and her notion of morality as the opportunity for free choice. Without a recognition of the centrality of her theo‐political identity, it is difficult to understand the values and beliefs which were central to her political life. The methodological issues raised by the construction of this theo‐political identity are examined in this article. The aim of the proposed methodology is to develop theological insights into a political phenomenon like Thatcher rather than make policy judgments or recommendations.