Freud and the Hammerschlag family: a formative relationship

From his obituary of Samuel Hammerschlag, we know of Freud's great veneration for his teacher of Jewish religion. However, not only Hammerschlag himself but his whole family had a formative influence on young Freud, who was deeply impressed by their humanity. This paper describes Freud's relationships with all the family members. In particular, it shows how warmly he felt towards the only daughter, Anna Hammerschlag, who was his patient for a while and whom he chose as a godmother for his youngest daughter Anna. By virtue of the crucial role she played in Freud's 'specimen dream' of July 1895 ('Irma's injection'), she also became as it were the godmother of Freud's magnum opus, The Interpretation of Dreams. All the known extant letters from Freud to members of the Hammerschlag family are published here for the first time in English translation.     

弗洛伊德论宗教和道德的关系

作为一个彻底的无神论者,弗洛伊德反对神道设教的主张。他认为,道德神圣化虽然能增强道德对一般民众的威慑力,从而对保护人类文明做出贡献,但将道德建立在宗教基础之上,却会使道德因失去现实基础而遭遇风险。另外,他强调宗教道德有着诸多消极的方面。     

Alfred Adler's individual psychology and pastoral care

Pastoral Psychology -     

Freud

The author explores the evidence-base and selection criteria for a short-term supportive dynamic approach for patients whose psychological mindedness and quality of object relationships is low. Illustrating this approach with a case example he outlines the central features of Supportive Dynamic Therapy. He describes a psychodynamic conceptual and developmental framework that can be used to guide the therapist's interventions and responses, and modulate the patient's anxiety. A dynamic focus presented in the form of a central issue is shown to have a significant function both in containing the patient's anxiety, and in giving shape to the therapist's efforts to support the patient's ego-strengths and adaptive abilities. The therapeutic work can be seen to result in an alteration in the trajectory or reiterating pattern of the patient's life.     

From Freud to Gehrig to Rapaport to DiMaggio

Lacking the size, talent, and speed to play shortstop for the New York Yankees, I chose instead to become a psychologist/psychoanalyst. Yet, baseball and psychoanalysis share much in common. Each is played in the inner diamonds of one's mind, values the past and what is passing, and requires a strong work ethic. Both are timeless and involve an almost boring leisureliness between occasional moments of crisis. Then too, each calls for an attitude of consistency and patience and a responsibility to do one's best. From my parents and brother to my wife and son and his family, from my teachers and supervisors to my colleagues, and from Menninger to the Society for Personality Assessment (SPA), I feel deeply grateful for the partners and teammates I have and have had.     

The story of an ambivalent relationship: Sigmund Freud and Eugen Bleuler

This paper examines the short-lived flirtation between psychoanalysis and academia and psychiatry in Europe and the reasons for, and consequences of, the fact that their paths diverged. It is argued that Bleuler's break with the psychoanalytic movement is a crucial and, until now, largely underestimated turning point. Bleuler's separation from the psychoanalytic movement was probably more important for the course it has since taken than those of Adler, Stekel, or even Jung. Bleuler's analysis by correspondence by Freud, and its failure, was of paramount importance for the future relationship between Freud and Bleuler, and for Bleuler's assessment of psychoanalysis.     

Inventing Freud

Written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Freud's birth, this paper construes Nina Coltart's statement that "if Freud did not exist it would be necessary to invent him," with its implicit comparison of Freud to God, to refer to (a) the things that Freud taught that are incontrovertibly true; (b) the unavoidable subjectivity in all judgments of Freud; and (c) the resemblances between psychoanalysis and religion. This last comparison is likewise seen to have both positive and negative aspects. Freud's ideas have inspired many people, yet he unscientifically arrogated sovereign authority over psychoanalysis. Freud's admirers are reminded of his extreme difficulty in admitting he was wrong and changing his mind when he should have known better, while his detractors are encouraged to consider the evidence supporting many of Freud's core tenets and to recognize that his discovery of psychoanalysis is indeed one of the supreme achievements in human history.     

Freud heute

Zusammenfassung Aus Anlass des 150. Geburtstags von Sigmund Freud untersuchte der Autor in einem Festvortrag in der Universit?t München den Standort der Psychoanalyse in der gegenw?rtigen Kultur und Gesellschaft. Auf der Basis von Das Unbehagen in der Kultur und der Beobachtungen Bions in Gruppen sieht er den Einzelnen in einem Spannungsfeld zwischen individuellem und kulturellem über-Ich. Unbehagen entspringt daraus, dass die Entwicklung des Einzelnen mit den Fortschritten der Kultur nicht Schritt h?lt. Hinzu kommen die Verhei?ungen von Glück und Allmacht, die die Kultur an die Stelle Gottes gerückt hat, und die im Alltag entt?uscht werden. Die Psychoanalyse ist an der Entwicklung des Unbehagens nicht unbeteiligt. Sie strebt nach gesellschaftlicher Anerkennung und steht dadurch in Gefahr, das Unbewusste als ihr Zentrum aufs Spiel zu setzen. Ob sie überleben wird, h?ngt davon ab, ob es ihr gelingt, aus einer Randposition heraus hilfreich für den Einzelnen und die Gesellschaft zu sein.

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Freud today

Abstract On occasion of the 150th birthday of Sigmund Freud the author elaborated the position of psychoanalysis in the present culture and society in a lecture in the University of Munich. On the Basis of Freud’s “Civilisation and its Discontents” and of Bion’s “Experiences in Groups” he regards the individual within a discrepancy and tension between the personal and the cultural superego. Discomfort arises when the development of the individual subject is no longer in line with the progresses which occur in culture. In addition, the omnipotent promises of happiness and grandiosity, by which culture has replaced God and which are disappointed in the every day life, contribute to contemporary discontents. Psychoanalysis has participated in the development of discomfort and supported it. It has aspired for cultural acceptance and attractiveness and gets by this into danger to loose the unconscious as its center. Whether it will survive depends on whether it is successful in returning to a cultural boundary position where it can be of help for both—the subject and the civilisation.

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Münchener Freud-Symposion, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t München, 5. Mai 2006. Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Wolf Kohl und Michael Ermann, München. Dieser Beitrag erscheint in ver?nderter Fassung auch in Ermann M (Hrsg) Was Freud nicht wusste. Neues in der Psychoanalyse. Brandes und Apsel, Frankfurt aM (In Vorb.).     

Transference and katharsis,Freud to Aristotle

Aristotle's theory of tragic katharsis is the most ancient and debated theory of the effect of the theatrical experience on the audience. It affirms that tragedy effects the katharsis of fear and pity, engaging readers with the controversy whether by katharsis Aristotle meant purification of the emotions (i.e. their perfection within the mind) or purification of the mind from the emotions (i.e. their abreaction from the mind). In this paper I will explore how Freud's theory of transference can suggest a new interpretation of Aristotle's tragic katharsis. Transference allows for the representation and expression of repressed emotions through the re‐enactment of past relational dynamics. Although this process is essential to the psychoanalytic method, it is the subsequent analytic endeavour which allows for the “working through” of repressed emotions, bringing into effect the transference cure. I argue that the dynamic between emotional arousal in re‐enactment and emotional distancing in analysis offers an effective parallel of the dynamic between katharsis of fear and katharsis of pity in Aristotle's theory. Such interpretation of tragic katharsis suggests that the theatrical effect in audiences may be an opportunity for self‐analysis and the ‘working through’ of unconscious psychic dynamics.     

John Watson's paradoxical struggle to explain Freud

John Watson was fascinated by the discoveries of psychoanalysis, but he rejected Freud's central concept of the unconscious as incompatible with behaviorism. After failing to explain psychoanalysis in terms of William James's concept of habit, Watson borrowed concepts from classical conditioning to explain Freud's discoveries. Watson's famous experiment with Little Albert is interpreted not only in the context of Pavlovian conditioning but also as a psychoanalytically inspired attempt to capture simplified analogues of adult phobic behavior, including the "transference" of emotion in an infant. Watson used his behavioristic concept of conditioned emotional responses to compete with Freud's concepts of displacement and the unconscious transference of emotion. Behind a mask of anti-Freudian bias, Watson surprisingly emerges as a psychologist who popularized Freud and pioneered the scientific appraisal of his ideas in the laboratory.     

Sigmund Freud

Ohne Zusammenfassung