A Candidate's Perspective: A Review of Impossible Training: A Relational View of Psychoanalytic Education by Emanuel Berman

The author reviews Emanuel Berman's book Impossible Training from the perspective of a candidate in psychoanalytic training at The William Alanson White Institute in New York. The author relates aspects of her training experience to issues Berman raises in his article, focusing on and expanding a discussion of key problematic aspects of psychoanalytic training.     

Containment Through Relationship: A Review of Impossible Training: A Relational View of Psychoanalytic Education by Emanuel Berman

Psychoanalytic education is undergoing probably the greatest scrutiny in its history. Emanuel Berman brings the relational point of view to this discussion. Through both content and process, he shows how relationships and dialogue have the power to contain training while preserving individuality and creativity better than rigid structure, whether theoretical or administrative.     

In the Name of Psychoanalysis: Persistent Controversies and Evolution in Psychoanalysis: A Review of Impossible Training: A Relational View of Psychoanalytic Education by Emanuel Berman

In his book Impossible Training, Emanuel Berman stresses the historical roots of current standards of psychoanalytic training and demonstrates the persistence of controversies that have been present in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic training from their inception. This perspective, of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic education as evolving, encourages candidates and practitioners to be participants and creative voices in an evolving field rather than rote followers learning a trade. The author proposes ways that the transference of educators to the younger generation of psychoanalysts can facilitate or interfere with the training of candidates. Berman is applauded for shedding light on current controversies in psychoanalytic education by showing their roots in historical controversies. However, the author points out Berman's tendency to overvalue his side of the controversy rather than embrace controversy itself as in the best interest of the evolution and development of the field.     

A Relational Psychoanalytic Model for Case Management: A Literature Review

Abstract

Relationship building is critical in case management with the seriously mentally ill. A theoretical framework, such as relational psychoanalytic theory, with a strong integrative emphasis provides a structure for the complex interplay of internal and external factors/forces in case management. The purpose of this paper is to provide a literature review in the area of case management: relational psychoanalytic theory, relationship building and psychodynamic theory. The review concludes outlining the appropriateness of this theoretical framework for case management.     

The Experience of the Holy: A Relational Psychoanalytic Analysis

The title of this paper, The Experience of the Holy is a direct reference to Rudolf Otto's book Das Heilige. The paper begins with Otto because he lays out many of the important issues involved in a psychological investigation of the experience of the holy, especially the question of whether the sacred is a unique object of experience, or a characteristic of our experience of ordinary objects. The paper then discusses three contemporary relational psychoanalysts (D.W. Winnicott, Hans Loewald, and Christopher Bollas), and the ways in which their theorizing illuminates the psychology of the sacred.     

Symposium on Psychoanalytic Training and Education: Editors' Introduction

This paper offers an intimate account of a long-term analytic process and a detailed presentation of one pivotal session to illustrate and explore the issues of love, dissociation, and discipline in a therapeutic relationship. Organized around the concept of impasse, this paper presents a relational perspective on the potential in transference and countertransference love to facilitate or curtail the forward progress of therapeutic work. Love may bring life or impasse to a person in analysis. One key to the dynamics of therapeutic love and impasse is the problem of weak dissociation (Stern, 1997) and the impact of the analyst's noticing, or not noticing, a moment in the onrush of familiar clinical process that is ripe for questioning. A new concept is introduced and elaborated in this paper that relates to the resolution of preoedipal and oedipal transference love: The paradoxical analytic triangle.     

Supervision and Analysis at a Crossroad: The Development of the Analytic Therapist: Discussion of Papers by Joan Sarnat and Emanuel Berman

This discussion of papers by Sarnat and Berman on psychoanalytic supervision explores the complex nature of the contemporary psychoanalytic supervisory relationship. It considers how developments in psychoanalytic theory and practice, reflecting relational, intersubjective, attachment, and field theory influences over the past 30 years, have changed the ways in which many analysts practice and theorize supervision. Contemporary supervisors attend not just to the patient being presented, or to the therapeutic dyad, but to the supervisory relationship itself as part of the clinical/supervisory frame of reference. Similarities and differences between therapy and supervision are considered.     

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.     

The Impossible Ideal: A Patient-Oriented Therapy

Abstract

Langan R. Proteus Reprised. Int Forum Psychoanal 1997;6:45-49. Stockholm, ISSN 0803-706X.

Proteus was the mythical Greek sea-god able to change his shape at will. In the Odyssey, King Menelaos manages not to release his wrestler's hold on the mercurial trickster, and theory can, at last, return home. The myth has sundry and changing applications to the living experience of what goes on between patient and psychoanalyst. In one sense, the analyst's job is to be like Proteus, escaping the transferential grip whereby the patient tries to pin the analyst into characterological shapes of the past. In another sense, the patient is Proteus, and the analyst's job is to hold firmly to the process of future change, refusing to settle for one fixed version of selfhood. In yet another sense, both patient and analyst become Proteus, experiencing fluidly present senses of self as an inner subjective “I,” as an intimately relational “Thou” with “Thee,” and objectively, as one Other among others. Additionally, the myth insinuates within the psychoanalytic situation a potential transcendence of time.     

The Development of a Personal View of the Psychoanalytic Field

This paper summarizes the development of my professional identity as psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. It describes the influences on my dedication to the study of severe personality disorders, namely, the training experiences I had under the guidance of Ignacio Matte-Blanco, in Chile; the research team of Jerome Franck at Johns Hopkins; the work in the Psychotherapy Research Project of the Menninger Foundation under Robert Wallerstein, my personal working relationship in New York, with Edith Jacobson, Margaret Mahler, the introduction to British Psychoanalysis by John Sutherland, and to French analysis in sabbatical times in Paris. I conclude by a brief overview of my theoretical orientation, combining ego psychological, object relations, and Kleinian approaches in the development of a synthesis that inspired my present research on the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of severe personality disorders.     

Structure and Individuality in Psychoanalytic Training: The Israeli Controversial Discussions

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

关系精神分析的心身障碍治疗观

关系精神分析的临床治疗范围已涉及心身障碍患者。不同于古典精神分析的心身二元论, 关系精神分析的心身观认为心理与身体是一个统一体, 两者相互作用并紧密联系。关系精神分析师阿隆认为, 心身障碍患者的主要特征是分离现象, 分离现象有三种层次。关系精神分析以关系性的视角看待心身障碍, 认为其病因在于创伤性事件与养育失败, 其病理表现为身心不协调, 情感淡漠及躯体症状等。分析治疗的目标在于通过在共同参与的分析情境中, 建立分析师与患者安全与信任的关系, 提高患者自我反思能力、情感调节能力, 从而修复心身关系。