Reminiscence,Ritual, and Beyond Working Through: Commentary on Papers by Joyce Slochower and by Laura Impert and Margaret Rubin

The author examines, contextualizes, and elaborates upon Slochower's psychoanalytic exploration of commemorative rituals and, more specifically, the Jewish tradition of Yitzor as well as upon Impert and Rubin's understanding of embodied nostalgic reminiscences, considering them within a therapeutic context for the mourner entering into the clinical situation. Slochower's experience with commemorative rituals as facilitating environments for the restoration or support of potential space and memorial activity suggests that they can aid in the re-construction and re-shaping of emotional memory, going beyond a notion of “working through.” Impert and Rubin suggest that generative nostalgic reminisces, a soma-sensory based form of memory that holds the potential for activating arrested mourning, may be clinically usefully in awakening dormant or dissociated grief so that patients can access mourning. Extending upon these contributions, the author further considers the possibility that mourning might be more usefully conceived as processes of transformational work for which a fixed resolution or outcome is neither proscribed nor prescribed. This transformational work may be seen, in part, as ongoing cycles of self-surrender to the mourner's swirling constructions of attachments lost, re-found, re-remembered, and re-conceived.     

Ferenczi and Winnicott: Why We Need Their Radical Edge: Commentary on Paper by Michael Parsons

Parsons's paper, “An Independent Theory of Clinical Technique,” is discussed. Agreement is expressed with many of the theoretical points made by Parsons, and the creative and freeing historical role of the British Independent tradition (recently attacked by Kleinian authors such as Segal) is praised. However, the author sees some of the clinical examples in the paper as expressing a traditionalist conception of psychoanalytic practice, with a strong one-sided emphasis on the analyst as a knowledgeable expert offering deep interpretations. Parsons does not question the nature of the actual intersubjective relationship in each dyad, with its fluctuations and its subtle nuances, which can go far beyond the proclaimed roles of the two partners, at times even reversing them. More radical points of view can be found in the work of Ferenczi and Winnicott, two authors who are significant both for Parsons and for the author; for example, Ferenczi's emphasis on the patient's capacity to interpret the analyst's countertransference, and the experiments with the setting both made in their search for an adaptation to the unique ‘analysand's needs. In conclusion, the paper calls for continued departure from standard techniques of any kind, critically deconstructing all traditional assumptions regarding the analytic process.     

Desire,Domination, Sadism,and the Degradation of Love: Reply to Commentaries by Joyce Slochower and Christopher Bonovitz

In her response to commentaries by Joyce Slochower and Christopher Bonovitz, the author further clarifies her understanding of countertransferential sadism and how it compares to other enactments. She addresses Slochower’s concern about psychoanalytic restraint in the relational frame. The author responds to Bonovitz, who used a Fairbairnian perspective to comment on the clinical material she presented, and she considers how Fairbairn’s concepts of the libidinal ego, the rejecting object and the internal saboteur apply to analytic sadism. Finally, she contemplates whether the sadistic enactments described in her paper can be viewed as a prelude to the expansion of analytic love.     

Commentary on Paper by Hilary Hoge

In this discussion the author raises the question of the analyst's freedom to sustain paradoxical viewpoints, specifically with regard to dream interpretation and related links to internal objects and the self as they appear in the transference. Paradox allows for the creation of multiple, coexisting meanings that can be played with by patient and analyst. Paradox also makes possible an experience of decentering and destabilization pursuant to Bion's catastrophic change. The risk inherent in the emotional experience of catastrophic change may limit and at times foreclose both patient's and analyst's freedom to tolerate and sustain the effects of paradox.     

Commentary on Paper by Michael Parsons

A range of clinical psychoanalytic approaches in the United States is considered as they may parallel Parsons's presentation of an “independent” orientation in Britain.

Attention is paid in particular to the analyst's sense of outsiderness and concern for otherness, along with their moral implications for clinical work. In addition, the limitations of theory and defensive misuse of theory are also addressed.     

Commentary on Paper by Steven Cooper

In this discussion of Steven Cooper's paper, it is argued that, although Cooper's desire to hold himself “accountable” in his work with patients is laudable, the “pluralistic third” approach that he employs gives rise in his doing so to several difficulties in the way that it is described in the paper. The vivid clinical material that Cooper provides to illustrate his approach is used as a starting point to offer an understanding of what transpired between analyst and patient, which although convergent with Cooper's formulations in some respects nevertheless follows a very different line of thinking in other areas. Broadly speaking, it is suggested that although these divergences arise from many sources—a discussion of which is beyond the scope of this contribution—one particular issue involved is a rather different understanding of the role of early internalized object relations in the patient's psychic life and the way these get lived out at many levels in the treatment situation. It is further argued that Cooper's conceptualization of the approaches of schools different from his own appears somewhat circumscribed and this detracts from his desire to make an authentic comparison between his way of working and those of other schools, something that is called for by his proposed pluralistic third method of keeping himself accountable. This is not considered surprising given the difficulties inherent in our becoming adequately familiar, in more than just an intellectual way, with the approaches of schools different from our own, especially when wide divergences are involved between schools.     

Commentary on Paper by Julie Gerhardt

This review discusses factors producing excessive envy in some personalities innate, environmental and developmental. He agrees with Julie Gerhardt that envy is not atomic but molecular and evoked in triangular situations. However he suggests that factors that may manifest themselves in the earliest infantile stage can contribute to its later development and agrees with Gerhardt that the earliest mother infant interaction is crucial.     

Commentary on Paper by Terry Marks-Tarlow

This discussion of the paper merging and emerging: A nonlinear portrait of intersubjectivity during psychotherapy focuses on how the original paper demonstrates the usefulness of the concepts of nonlinear dynamics systems theory (NLD) to clinical psychoanalysis. Diagnosis conceptualize in NLD terms successfully resists the pressure to reduce complex situations to overly simple few word phrases. The phenomena of transference and repetition are redescribed as resulting from an iterative process that is evident in complex adaptive systems. The model of psychoanalysis in terms of coupled oscillators is demonstrated to be clinically useful as is the concept of emergence which overcomes some of the less useful aspects of the reductionist program. The idea of studying boundaries per se, as opposed to their function of separating individuals, arises naturally from the study of fractals and promises to clarify the oversimplified discussions of these matters in the psychoanalytic literature. The original author has successfully demonstrated how useful NLD conceptualizations can be to the clinical psychoanalyst.     

Commentary on Paper by Danielle Knafo

The author discusses the importance of Knafo's rich paper on the often neglected subject of solitude but argues for a clearer demarcation of the multifarious states of aloneness, solitude, loneliness, and isolation. While solitude constitutes a state of plentitude, demonstrating an ability to be alone in the company of an Other, loneliness, in contrast, conjures up a sense of dread and despair, foreseeing no link to an Other. Hence, an artwork can fulfill radically different aspects of the various states of aloneness, it can be a product emerging out of a full sense of solitude, or it can function as a forceful shield against the unbearable sense of loneliness.     

Commentary on Paper by Ken Corbett

A report on the third analysis of a 41-year-old man who had been a feminine boy is used as a vehicle to describe the idiographic aspects of this way of being as well as to specify the input of the environment—parents, analysts, community. The role of self with mother, self with father, and self with mother and father together representations is explored and Zadie Smith's concept of dual citizenship and multiple internal voices is featured as an integrating and explanatory concept. The ways in which each analysis highlights different aspects of the patient's conflicts and dilemmas and reflects successive intrapsychic organizations is also explored.     

Commentary on Paper by Debra Rothschild

In my response to this paper, I begin by appreciating Debra Rothschild's relational approach and pointing to the links with our work at the Clinic for Dissociative Studies. For example, we all respond differently to child alters/states than to adult ones, consider the attachment relationship to be the crucial tool, do not like to see distancing mechanisms privileged by abusing the original concept of “neutrality,” and consider honesty and authenticity are essential when working with extreme trauma. In this we agree with Bass (2007) Bass, A. 2007. When the frame doesn't fit the picture. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 17: 1–27. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] that one size does not fit all. We consider patients need to choose between integration or separateness. Where integration is sought we speak of “merger not murder.” I express concern at the prevailing idea that a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder needs safety, stabilisation, and symptom reduction initially when the most needy clients are those who will never be safe. I also raise issues around secondary traumatisation to the therapist, the meaning of self-injury, and the language used to describe the angry alter.     

Realities in Dialogue: Commentary on Paper by Stephen Hartman

Stephen Hartman's paper is a very stimulating contribution to the psychoanalytic debate on the interpretation of cyber reality. In my commentary I address some of the conceptualizations introduced by Hartman: different realities (conventional, psychoanalytic, internal, external, Reality 1.0, 2.0, 1.1,1.2. … etc.), infinite access, cybermourning, and loss. Starting from the personal and clinical histories presented by Hartman (I refer to them as “names”), I discuss some more or less embodied aspects of virtual life, such as gender, online romances, betrayal, privacy, multiple settings. Leaning on the concepts of psychic retreat, transitional area, and psycho(patho)logical use of the object I try to put realities in dialogue, persuaded that different realities are always connected or embedded.     

Stained Hands: Commentary on Paper by Gillian Straker

I attempt, in this discussion, to deconstruct the jouissance present in the witnessing of a deliberate annihilation of a human being. I propose that the crisis in the analyst's subjectivity is linked to an unconscious identification with that which is most abhorrent and unacceptable. The unknowability of trauma ensures that its presence will be enacted in a complex system of mutual influence between analyst and patient in which the roles of victim, perpetrator and bystander oscillate between and within the participants. Taking the discussion to the broader sociopolitical level, I make an analogy between the destructiveness of the South African regime under apartheid and the current destructiveness of the U.S. engaging in a pre-emptive war. In a similar way to how Straker may feel contaminated by her patient's complicity in annihilation, so too are we contaminated by the atrocities perpetuated in the name of our country, even if they are policies we condemn.     

More Metaphor: Commentary on Paper by Ken Corbett

Beyond the inevitability of countertransference feelings is the question of countertransference enactments. From a two‐person, participant‐observer or observing‐participant perspective, enactments are inevitable. The analyst becomes influenced by the patient (and influences the patient as well) and enmeshed in the patient's internalized interpersonal configurations. Analysis works not by avoiding such action but by analyzing from within the interactional system. Analysts who are different from one another become engaged in different ways, since the person of the analyst is a significant variable. This article, using case examples, explores two analyst‐related variables, age and family configuration, to expand the examination of countertransference enactments and some effects on the analytic process.     

Crossing Boundaries: Commentary on Paper by Sarah Hill

This commentary focuses on two aspects of Hill's presentation. First, it addresses the critical role of repetition compulsion in carrying into analytic enactments the patient's early, unsymbolized traumas. This discussion addresses, furthermore, Hill's reference to her early, preverbal, experience with an African nanny, as this resonated with some of the author's personal experiences. It is suggested that, particularly in American culture, the identities of white children who experience extended care by black nannies must be regarded as multiply determined, race being a critical determinant. How this aspect of white identity is negotiated in a culture bounded by established racial dichotomies is regarded as critical to analytic inquiry, regardless of the racial makeup of the analytic dyad.     

Backing Into the Fray: Commentary on Paper by Katherine Oram

The following is a discussion of a case presentation by Katherine (Kate) Oram in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. The discussion focuses on the issue of aggression expressed by the patient and the analyst from the perspective of interpersonal theory. How aspects of unspoken anger and resentment are woven through an abiding connection and development of trust is addressed. The relevance of aggression to the particular features of this case's termination and posttermination phase are explored as well.     

Commentary on Paper by Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg

In this discussion, I stress two points. First, I have underlined the powerful understanding Dr. Zornberg brings to her exegesis of the book of Jonah via her competence as Biblical scholar, literary critic, and master of psychoanalytic theory. In her hands, Jonah becomes a fully minded person, not just a moral icon. Second, I have focused on her major thesis, that Jonah's need to escape, his repeated going down into and away from himself, evolves from his putative trauma, which is comprised of not only the horror of near death but also the shock of survival.