Why did Mary Shelley Write Frankenstein?

Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus” is presented here as her encoded image of unconscious emotions too painful for her waking personality to deal with. Her innovative image of man-made life is taken as emerging from the confrontation of her hopes for secure love with painful events in her life with Percy Shelley. This paper proposes that her novel served as a waking expression of unconscious feelings of hurt in reaction to Percy. The monster’s role is here decoded as her way to consciously process the idea that parts of her relation to Percy were so hurtful as to deform it into a miscreant. It is further proposed that the losses and frustrations of her earliest years inclined her to accept Percy’s violations in the hope of the secure love she longed for. The answer offered to this paper’s title accounts for why “Frankenstein” is taken to refer to the unnamed monster and not its creator.Anthony F. Badalamenti is a research scientist in psychiatry. He has a private practice in psychoanalysis and works at quantifying psychiatric research with Columbia University Psychiatric Institute, The Nathan Kline Institute and The University of New England. He holds PhDs in mathematics from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and in systems from Bell Telephone Laboratories. He is a member of the Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, from whom he received a distinguished research award, the American Mathematical Society, the Society for General Systems Research and the New York Academy of Sciences. He has published over 60 papers in psychiatric research.     

Against Unconditional Love

Abstract While unconditional love is frequently regarded as the best kind of romantic commitment, our commitments in general are not thought to be unconditional. In other contexts, we think conditional commitment (commitment which can in some sense be rendered intelligible by appeal to reasons) to be superior. This paper examines the peculiar status of unconditional love in the romantic context and argues that it is unwarranted; the best kind of romantic commitment should be viewed as conditional. The first part of the paper examines and criticises those arguments which attempt to defend conditional love by appeal to the idea that love is based upon the properties of the beloved. The second part of the paper examines Harry Frankfurt's narrowly subjective conception of unconditional love and highlights certain counterintuitive consequences of it. The final section of the paper argues that the best kind of love will prompt us to adopt two perspectives with regard to the beloved. While loving does involve the narrowly subjective perspective defended by Frankfurt, it also demands that we strive for a more objective perspective, which takes into consideration the reasons we might be able to offer to render our commitment intelligible to others.     

Demeter's Compromise: Separation,Loss, and Reconnection in Mothers with Daughters Entering Adulthood

Drawing on contemporary theory of female development that focuses on the dynamics of the mother/daughter relationship regarding issues of separation and individuation, this article examines the treatment of a middle aged mother as she navigates her way through her daughter's adolescence and early adulthood. Psychoanalytic object relations, psychoanalytic relational theory, and feminist theory serve to frame an understanding of the case material in terms of developmental challenges that are uniquely female. Issues around mother/daughter attachment, separation, competition, conflict, and love are explored in the relationships between the patient and her mother, the patient and her daughter, and the patient and the therapist. The therapist's countertransference, intensified by her relationships with her own mother and daughter, suggests the possibility of both pitfalls and opportunities in the treatment. The article attempts to address a gap in psychoanalytic developmental theory, which offers little understanding of the challenges for women in midlife.     

Feedback in dynamic psychotherapy: Notes on selected clinical issues and practical applications

Conclusion In this presentation of selected clinical issues and applications of feedback in dynamic psychotherapy, I have ranged from metaphor to paradox and the sharing of the therapist’s wisdom; from feedback of silence, empathy, and memories to working through alienation from self; from feedback of the therapist’s psychophysiologic reactions during a session to feedback of the fear of separation and mortality. Believing that all too often the therapeutic process is based on linear feedback, I have focused on the circularity of interactive, interpersonal systems, suprasystems, and subsystems as well as their simultaneous, mutually influencing perception through many equally important channels of communication and levels of awareness. These serve as the ground, frame, and context for constructive feedback between therapist and patient that can promote personality reconstruction and development of human potentials. Revised from a paper presented at a scientific meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis of the Karen Horney Psychoanalytic Institute and Center on April 22, 1993. Immediate Past-President of the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis; author of many publications on verbal and nonverbal communications.     

With a Sword Pointing to the East,West, South,and North

In his In Defense of War, Nigel Biggar argues for an account of war based in Christian love. In the process, he opposes Christian pacifists, the British Left, liberal accounts of just‐war, and accounts of just‐war based on self‐defense. Although framed in terms of love, his account pivots around punishment, which is further explicated by a thorough review of the recent war in Iraq, the invasion of which he deems justified. This review compares Biggar's monograph to prior iterations of a love‐based approach to just war by Paul Ramsey and Oliver O'Donovan. Biggar's contributions regarding love, punishment, and policy analysis are recognized, as well as his attempt to carry on the tradition of the ‘mournful warrior’. As a model for the kind of scrutiny that Christian ethicists should bring to bear on serious social issues, Biggar's monograph is excellent. However, the political stance and – largely implicit and unstated – political theology operating behind this book are, in the end, disconcerting.     

On Becoming a Psychoanalyst

This article traces an intellectual journey from a university environment in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, under military dictatorship in the sixties, to becoming a training analyst of the British Psychoanalytic Society. The journey includes an M. Phil. in Social Anthropology from the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, followed by a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics. Reading the classic texts of social anthropology, as well as Latin American writers and the Jewish classics, paved the way for an understanding of the world of others. Training in family therapy and ten years of clinical work in the NHS gave the clinical foundation required for the longed-for training with the British Psychoanalytic Society. From then on, the journey to becoming a training analyst is delineated, as well as the new challenges which this new phase has brought in the last ten years.     

Psychoanalysis and national socialism

Was psychoanalysis in Germany "destroyed" or "saved" in the period 1933-1945? To this day ever new answers are given to the question, answers which depend on the time and the interests involved. This contribution seeks to reconstruct once again the steps leading to the incorporation in 1936 of the German Psychoanalytic Society (Deutsche Psychoanalytische Gesellschaft [DPG]) into the National Socialist German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy (Deutsches Institut für psychologische Forschung und Psychotherapie). This process of incorporation, which was intended as a "rescue" and led to the self-disbandment of the DPG in 1938, took place during ongoing talks between Felix Boehm and Carl Müller-Braunschweig, officials of the DPG, on the one hand, and Ernest Jones, president of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA), on the other. The process was connected to yet another desideratum: the expulsion of Wilhelm Reich from the DPG/IPA.     

Between listening and expression

This paper sets out to conceptualize what goes on in the analyst's mind as he listens—and expresses something—to the patient. Bion's ideas of approaching the patient's O, without memory and desire, are discussed. An alternate, more permissive, attitude to desire is suggested. This is based on the idea that containment, instead of denoting a dyadic interaction between mother and child, is a process which links the child to a begetting couple, thus a triad. Containing the patient corresponds, in the unconscious, to thinking about a sexual couple in a mutually beneficent interaction. Since the patient's anxiety, in his unconscious, parallels a frightening primal scene, containment is viewed as a continuous translation of a primitive primal scene into a mature act of love. A specific kind of genital desire is thus necessary for containment. This finds expression in the analyst's resonance with the patient. Clinical material from an analysis with a 7-year old boy is provided.     

The transformation of psychoanalysis in America: emigré analysts and the New York Psychoanalytic Society and institute, 1935-1961

Part I reviews the role of the Emergency Committee on Relief and Immigration of the American Psychoanalytic Association, chaired by Lawrence Kubie and Bettina Warburg, members of the New York Psychoanalytic Society, in facilitating the immigration to the United States of scores of European analysts and candidates between 1938 and 1943. The challenges facing the committee are outlined in reports written by Kubie and Warburg. In particular, the intractable problem of how to integrate European lay analysts into the American Psychoanalytic Association was an ever present problem. Part II describes the impact emigré analysts had on the intellectual life of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and considers how the psychoanalytic work of the emigrés was influenced by their move to America. The reminiscences of two emigré analysts, Peter Neubauer and Kurt R. Eissler, on their experience of coming to the United States close the paper.     

Psychoanalytic patients in the U.S., CANADA,and Australia: I. DSM-III-R disorders,indications, previous treatment,medications, and length of treatment

To determine the demographics, DSM-III-R disorders diagnosed, indications used in recommending psychoanalysis, previous treatment histories, use of medication, and length of treatment in patients in psychoanalysis in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, a mail survey of practice was sent to every other active member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and every member of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society. This supplemented an earlier survey sent to all Ontario psychoanalysts. The response rates were 40.1 % (n = 342) for the U.S., 67.2% (n = 117) for Canada, and 73.9% (n = 51) for Australia. Respondents supplied data on 1,718 patients. The employment rate for patients increases as analysis progresses (p < .0001). The mean number of concurrent categories of disorders (Axis I, Axis II, and Disorders First Evident in Childhood) per patient at the start of treatment is 5.01 (SD = 3.66; median = 4; mode = 3). There are no statistically significant differences across countries. Mood, anxiety, sexual dysfunction, and personality disorders are most common. American Psychiatric Association / American Psychoanalytic Association peer review criteria for indicating psychoanalysis are followed for 86.5% of patients. Over 80% of patients in all three countries had undergone previous treatments prior to analysis. In the U.S., 18.2% of analysands are on concurrent psychoactive medication; in Australia, 9.6%. The mean length of analyses conducted in the U.S. is 5.7 years, in Australia 6.6, and in Canada 4.8. Psychoanalytic patients in all three countries have similar rates of DSM-III-R psychopathology, and many indications of chronicity.     

In all questions, my interest is not in the individual people but in the analytic movement as a whole. It will be hard enough here in Europe in the times to come to keep it going. After all, we are just a handful of people who really have that in mind

The paper tries to deal with the difficult and at times contradictory decisions that the then leaders of the IPA, S. Freud, A. Freud, E. Jones etc. had to adopt as whether or not to clearly inform the readers of Die Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse and the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, the official scientific periodicals of the IPA, of the tragic events concerning first the German Psychoanalytic Society and then the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and the newborn Italian Psychoanalytic Society and other European psychoanalytic societies during the years 1933-1945. Because of the anti-Jewish persecution by the Nazi and fascist regimes the IPA had to face the extremely difficult task of helping its Continental Jewish members to emigrate to the USA, Great Britain and other countries in order to save their lives and to allow psychoanalysis to survive, with enormous radical consequences for the scientific and sociocultural future developments of the discipline.The following notes are dedicated to those non-Aryans and Aryans who could not find a proper rescue and whose graves became the wind which scattered the ashes of their bodies with the smoke coming out of the chimneys of the Nazi gas chambers.     

不只是“谈话疗法”：精神分析治疗中的非言语维度

精神分析治疗在很长一段时间里被视为“谈话疗法”,其治愈机制是将潜意识的内容意识化,语言解释在其中发挥关键作用。自20世纪末开始,越来越多分析师强调非言语交流在治疗中的作用。非言语交流不仅能够为咨访双方提供更丰富的交流形式,还能通过互动中的“相遇时刻”,实现对患者过去经验的重组,改变其有缺陷的内隐关系知晓。非言语交流和语言交流能够在治疗中发挥互补作用,未来的精神分析心理学要继续加强对非言语领域的研究。     

A beam of "chimeric" darkness: presence, interconnectedness, and transformation in the psychoanalytic treatment of a patient convicted of sex offenses

The paper puts forward the dimension created by analytic presence and the ensuing patient-analyst interconnectedness in the process of psychoanalytic treatment and change, particularly with more disturbed patients. Working within this dimension, at a fundamental level of contact and impact, opens up new possibilities of extending the reach of psychoanalytic treatment. The analyst's "presencing" and interconnectedness with the patient forge a living therapeutic entity that is not a one-person or two-person psychology, but an emergent two-in-one new entity that goes beyond the confines of the separate subjectivities of patient and analyst and the simple summation of the two. The paper describes the kind of knowledge, experience, and powerful therapeutic potential that comes into being through analytic "presencing" and patient-analyst interconnectedness, and particularly focuses on the chimeric element, or quality, of this interconnectedness. The term "chimera/chimerism"-chosen here for its wealth of mythological, genetic, biological, biomedicinal (chimeric proteins), and psychoanalytical associations-is used in this paper to highlight the complex quality of patient-analyst interconnectedness, especially in difficult, psychotic, psychically foreclosed, dissociative and perverse states. The author offers an extensive clinical account of psychoanalytic treatment of a patient convicted of sex offenses in order to illustrate "presencing," interconnectedness, and the extent and intricate emotional meaning of the extreme chimerism that this kind of (difficult) treatment entailed.     

不只是“谈话疗法”：精神分析治疗中的非言语维度

精神分析治疗在很长一段时间里被视为“谈话疗法”,其治愈机制是将潜意识的内容意识化,语言解释在其中发挥关键作用。自20世纪末开始,越来越多分析师强调非言语交流在治疗中的作用。非言语交流不仅能够为咨访双方提供更丰富的交流形式,还能通过互动中的“相遇时刻”,实现对患者过去经验的重组,改变其有缺陷的内隐关系知晓。非言语交流和语言交流能够在治疗中发挥互补作用,未来的精神分析心理学要继续加强对非言语领域的研究。     

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy in paediatric liaison: a diagnostic and therapeutic tool

Paediatric liaison work requires an appreciation of the interweaving of the different factors involved when a child has physical symptoms. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is usually viewed simply as a potential treatment option. This paper argues that its use is both therapeutic and diagnostic and that it should be valued for this breadth of contribution. The therapeutic process is conducted in a way that can promote an understanding of the child and their context and thus enhance the ability 9 to meet the child's needs by all involved in their care. This can be achieved without sacrificing the degree of privacy that the psychotherapist/patient relationship requires. Material is presented from the psychotherapy of a child who had an hereditary condition which moved unexpectedly into a terminal 2 phase after psychotherapy was started. Examples are given to illustrate the importance of the understanding gained from therapy and how, through an integrative process, it was used to assist the overall 4 care. The material also describes the potential diagnostic use of information from psychotherapy when this is formulated by consideration of conscious and unconscious mechanisms alongside mental state phenomenology. This has implications for the relationships between disciplines and for their training requirements.     

Introduction: babies in the consulting room: what happens when analyst, mother, and infant meet?

Analytic work with a pregnant woman may foster the psychological gestation of the self-as-mother. For the mother--as for the infant--the developmental process continues well beyond delivery. It should not surprise us, then, that many mothers continue to bring their babies to sessions after birth. Analytic work in this context can affect a patient's sense of herself, and perhaps her competence, as a mother. Yet the presence of babies in the consulting room is an underacknowledged feature of contemporary practice. For this section of JAPA, we have collected three papers that explore some of the unique challenges and opportunities that arise when a patient brings her baby to treatment. Earlier versions of each paper were first presented at a panel, "Babies in the Consulting Room," at the June 2011 meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association in San Francisco.     

Discourse and Recognition as Normative Grounds for Radical Pedagogy: Habermasian and Honnethian Ethics in the Context of Education

The idea of radical pedagogy is connected to the ideals of social justice and democracy and also to the ethical demands of love, care and human flourishing, an emotional context that is sometimes forgotten in discussions of power and inequality. Both this emotional context and also the emphasis on politics can be found in the writings of Paolo Freire, someone who has provided much inspiration for radical pedagogy over the years. However, Freire did not create any explicit ethical foundation for radical pedagogy. This paper argues that, when constructing normative grounds for radical pedagogy, Habermas’s discourse ethics can be an important source, with the caveat that discourse ethics on its own is not sufficient grounding enough where radical pedagogy is concerned. Habermasian critical theory should be supplemented with Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition, as Freire’s focus on love and human flourishing corresponds well with Honneth’s theory’s three modes of recognition: love, rights and respect (solidarity stemming from mutual relations of respect).     

Psychoanalytic Supervision in a Heterogeneous Theoretical Context: Benefits and Complications

This paper explores the influences of a heterogeneous psychoanalytic training setting, such as the Israel Psychoanalytic Institute, on the individual supervision of trainees. While this kind of institute reduces the dangers of submission, uniformity and indoctrination, it creates its own difficulties, “the perils of diversity.” The examples offered include the impact of divergent views of analyzability; aspirations encouraged by certain theoretical models, which may be frustrated in a supervision guided by different views; and controversies regarding psychoanalytic technique, which may confuse a candidate and create inconsistency vis-à-vis the analysand. The open joint exploration of such issues, and of their influence on the supervisory process, is strongly recommended.     

Übertragung von Schweigen in der psychoanalytischen Sozialisation

This work is based on two interview studies with psychoanalysts from the German Psychoanalytic Society (DPG) and the German Society for Analytical Psychology (DGAP) belonging to the war children generation. In one study the focus was on how childhood in war can be dealt with in teaching analysis and in the other, whether experience of childhood in war had contributed to choosing psychoanalyis as a profession. A theoretical overview on questions of teaching analysis and choosing psychoanalysis as a profession is given, the results of the interview studies and detailed excerpts from an interview are presented.     

Joseph Sandler's Contributions to The Concept of Countertransference

A few months before Joe Sandler's death, he participated in an American Psychoanalytic Association panel that focused on the Controversial Discussions that occurred in the British Psychoanalytic Society from 1941 to 1945. Our plan was to revisit the controversies in the context of British psychoanalysis some 50 years later. As we designed the panel, I suggested that we have one Kleinian panelist, one contemporary Freudian panelist, and a third panelist representing the Independents.