The Achilles Heel of Psychoanalysis: Meditations on Motivation: Commentary on Paper by Robert P. Drozek

In discussing Robert P. Drozek's “Intersubjectivity Theory and the Dilemma of Intersubjective Motivation,” I consider the challenges inherent to general theories of motivation in contemporary psychoanalysis, challenges that are further complicated by our multiple theories of intersubjectivity. While I agree with Drozek that individuals can be motivated by aspects of others' subjective experience I would not raise this phenomenon to a general theory of motivation. I explain why I feel that motivation is a fraught topic in contemporary psychoanalysis, and I suggest reasons that relational authors have often addressed this topic only obliquely. I also take issue with Drozek's claim that, to date, psychoanalysis has no motivational theory that addresses both the intrapsychic and the intersubjective realms. In reviewing the ideas of several authors whose theories Drozek rejects because he believes their work reduces motivation to the intrapsychic, I find that these authors have addressed the intersubjective and intrapsychic aspects of motivation far more adequately and complexly than Drozek has recognized. Thus while I admire the energy and logic—even at times the eloquence—with which Drozek presents his ideas, I question whether psychoanalysis needs a new motivational theory at this point in time.     

Alcohol Reverses Religion's Prosocial Influence on Aggression

The relationship between religion and violence is controversial. Discrepant findings exist between survey studies and the limited number of experimental investigations of religiosity's influence on aggressive behavior. We have attempted to resolve this discrepancy by addressing previous limitations in the literature and assessing a heretofore‐untested moderator of religiosity and aggression: alcohol intoxication. This investigation included a community sample of 251 men and 269 women randomly assigned to either an acute alcohol intoxication condition or a placebo condition. Participants completed a series of questions drawn from standardized instruments of religiosity and spirituality prior to competing on an aggression laboratory paradigm in which electric shocks were received from, and administered to, a fictitious opponent under the guise of a competitive reaction‐time task. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed a significant beverage‐by‐religiosity interaction. Religiosity predicted lower levels of aggression for participants in the placebo group and higher levels of aggression for intoxicated participants. Results indicated that high religiosity coupled with alcohol intoxication may be a risk factor for aggression. This novel finding may help to clarify previous discrepancies in studies of religiosity and aggression.     

Psychoanalysis, the Anxiety of Influence, and the Sadomasochism of Everyday Life

After reviewing recent upheavals within psychoanalytic institutions and our diminished status in the worlds of academia, psychiatry, and the media, this essay turns to the historical trends that led to the current state of siege in which psychoanalysis finds itself—trends most clearly manifested on the East Coast institutes of the United States. I hypothesize that a legacy of arrogant entitlement on the part of the founding fathers made for an abiding institutional authoritarianism. This hierarchicalism fostered a loss of self-determination and individuation, negative Oedipal submission, identifications with the aggressor within psychoanalytic organizations, and a pseudospeciation with regard to potential critics in the outside world. Promising in many respects, nonetheless many of the current changes in psychoanalytic education and theory inevitably represent a positive Oedipal rebellion against the generation that had oppressed the one now in ascendancy and, more insidiously, a means of containing the candidates now in our charge. Finally, I argue that our future depends on our ability to embrace unwanted and disavowed truths about the history of our field and thereby to reclaim both our idealism and our credibility.     

The Influence of Joseph Sandler's Work on Contemporary Psychoanalysis

This overview stresses Joseph Sandler's integration of classical ego psychology with contemporary object relations theory. As part of this integration, Sandler clarified the origins and internal structure of the superego as a consequence and development of the representational world. The representational world, in turn, derives from the internalization of significant self- and object representations in the context of affect activation as fundamental motivational factors. Sandler described the transformation of internalized object relations into an unconscious template, expressed in repetitive behavior patterns, and the reactivation of its constituent object relations in the transference. In differentiating the present and past unconscious in the transference, Sandler described the role responsiveness of the analyst in the psychoanalytic situation as a specific countertransference reaction that facilitates the analysis of the object relationships activated in the transference. Sandler also explored the relationship between affects and drives and the neuropsychological capacities represented by affective and cognitive developments that jointly determine the structural characteristics of the mental apparatus.     

Notes on Psychoanalysis,Psychotherapy and Methodology

Abstract

Technical innovations always carry with them clinical and scientific challenges. The aim of this paper is to provide a context for exploring the consequences of technical innovations for psychoanalysis as an interrelated method of observation, treatment, and body of knowledge about mental functioning. The problems are approached from a methodological perspective because scientific progress requires methodological clarity. The inquiry begins with a methodological investigation of the technical and theoretical consequences of first principles, that is, the consequences of the assumptions and methods we adopt for the kind of data that are obtained by their application and for the theory required to understand and unify the resulting observations. The conclusion suggests that if one organizes a doctor-patient relationship around the clinical-historical and free-association methods with the aim of removing all obstacles to communication, if the understandings that emerge include a full range of dynamic, structural, genetic and adaptive propositions, one is engaged in psychoanalytic inquiry. The circumstances under which Rothstein's technical recommendations enable such understandings to develop are an important topic for future research.     

Dale S. Wright,Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

暴力视频游戏中不同攻击动机对玩家攻击性的影响

分别采用词汇按键反应任务和EAST范式测查了攻击性认知的流畅性和内隐攻击性评价,旨在考察游戏中攻击动机对攻击性的影响,结果发现：暴力视频游戏的影响效应不仅与暴力内容有关,还受制于攻击动机和玩家的暴力游戏经验;且长期玩暴力游戏会使被试对暴力产生脱敏,表现为攻击性认知的流畅性低,对攻击的评价更积极。本研究表明,暴力视频游戏对个体攻击性的影响需综合考虑多种因素。     

Psychoanalysis,man, and value

Psychology does not seek to correlate independent happenings, but to discern in the manifold of a unique life, or of a unique culture, the pervasive sense or meaning which the life or culture expresses. The method is appropriate to the subject: a human being is not a string of lawfully connected events but an embodied meaning, an incarnated value. Psychology is therefore less like physics than it is like the critical interpretation of a work of art. It is psychoanalytical. Some of the traditional objections to psychoanalytic theory disappear in the light of this conception. Others vanish when it is realized that the analytic situation, being personal encounter as well as interpretative analysis, to some extent creates the being it analyzes.     

Reflections on Psychoanalysis,Peer Review and Evidence

During these times, when society wants "evidence" that treatments are effective, ethical and cost effective, quality assurance and evidence-based medicine have become catchwords. The powers that be place their hopes on them when they find that they have to prioritize forms of treatment. There are different attempts to define these concepts and there are different approaches, most of them based on quantitative studies. This article describes a different approach. It also discusses how you can use the model for peer review among psychoanalytical colleagues as a qualitative study and a base for both quality assurance and a learning process. It also has its place in any formulation of 'evidence' for psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.     

Aggression,defense, and coping in humans

One way of identifying emotional behaviors across species, language, and cultures is to describe the “instrumental” effects of each particular behavior. Since aggression and defense may be instrumental they also represent coping behavior. The term coping is being used partly to indicate whether or not the behavior is successful and partly to describe how a situation is being handled (coping strategies). This review deals with how these behaviors are observed and quantified in humans and how they are linked to physiological changes. The internal state of the individual is decided by the expectancy of the outcome of a given situation, but each behavior strategy may have specific links to particular brain mechanisms and particular physiological effectors. © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.