Deepening Psychoanalytic Listening: The Marriage of Buddha and Freud

Freud (1912) delineated the ideal state of mind for therapists to listen, what he called “evenly hovering” or “evenly suspended attention.” No one has ever offered positive recommendations for how to cultivate this elusive yet eminently trainable state of mind. This leaves an important gap in training and technique. What Buddhism terms meditation—non-judgmental attention to what is happening moment-to-moment—cultivates exactly the extraordinary, yet accessible, state of mind Freud was depicting. But genuine analytic listening requires one other quality: the capacity to decode or translate what we hear on the latent and metaphoric level—which meditation does not do. This is a crucial weakness of meditation. In this chapter I will draw on the best of the Western psychoanalytic and Eastern meditative traditions to illuminate how therapists could use meditation to cultivate “evenly hovering attention” and how a psychoanalytic understanding of the language and logic of the unconscious complements and enriches meditative attention.     

Psychoanalytic ethics: Edoardo Weiss, Freud, and Mussolini.

This paper examines Edoardo Weiss's correspondence with S. Freud regarding Concetta Forzano's analysis and Forzano's efforts to intercede with Mussolini on Freud's behalf after the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938. Freud's reliance on Mussolini can be explained by traditional Viennese attitudes toward Italy, the Duce's protectiveness about Austrian independence, and the relatively benign attitude of the Fascist regime towards Jews.     

Human Foibles and Psychoanalytic Technique: Freud,Ferenczi, and Gizella Palos

This paper explores relations between human conundrums and psychoanalytic technique and theory through the relationship between Freud and Ferenczi. Rather than vilify (or lionize) either figure, the paper seeks to see into their struggles and conflicts, and to draw from correspondence and writings a portrait of a relationship. The paper describes not two dusty figures drawn from the closet of history but rather two live, flawed, and struggling human beings whose rational ideas about what they were doing could never keep step with their emotions. There is therefore much to be learned from their relationship: about transference and countertransference, about boundaries and friendship, about rivalry and despair, and about shame.     

Hypoactive Sexual Desire in Heterosexual Women:

The problem of hypoactive sexual desire is the most common sexual problem that heterosexual couples and individuals present to sex therapists. Often it is a woman who reports that she has the problem, or her male partner brings her to therapy believing she has hypoactive desire. The treatment literature describes a variety of causes that contribute to the disorders of sexual desire. However, most of the literature looks primarily at the causes within an individual's history of within a couple's relationship. There does not seem to be adequate consideration given to the social and cultural limitations that have defined and prescribed a sexual role for women that is primarily oriented to the service of male needs rather than female sexual pleasure. This article will analyze some of the social and cultural forces that limit female sexual expression, and are a neglected factor when causes for low sexual desire in heterosexual women are given.     

The Self in Post-Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory

This article relates a theory of the duplex self constituted by consciousness and experienced as I and me to the various post-Freudian interpretations of the self.     

Strategies and Techniques to Maintain Sexual Desire

The new mantra in sex therapy is desire, pleasure, eroticism, and satisfaction. There is growing acceptance that the prime sexual factor influencing the couple’s relationship is sexual desire. This conceptual/clinical paper explores two core concepts for maintaining sexual desire in committed, long-term relationships: (1) Establishing a comfortable, functional couple sexual style which balances each person’s sexual autonomy with being an intimate, erotic team and (2) adopting the Good Enough Sex model which promotes a variable, flexible sexual repertoire and recognizes the value of both mutual (synchronous) and asynchronous sexual experiences.     

The Products of the Imagination: Psychoanalytic Theory and Postmodern Literary Criticism

This article considers some of the affinities between postmodern literary theory and the psychoanalytic theories concerned with intersubjective phenomena. Postmodern literary theory is described briefly, and it is argued that one of its major concerns is the nature of, and the political and cultural influences on, subjectivity and identity. Despite that, postmodernism generally, and literary postmodernism in particular, can be said to lack a theory of the psychological and interpersonal dimensions of the experience of self. This article contends that the more relational schools of psychoanalytic theory can provide an example of the construction of selfhood that is of importance to contemporary and postmodern literary criticism. The academy has, to a considerable extent identified psychoanalysis with the work of Jacques Lacan, but since the 1980s the work of such theorists as Jane Flax and Jessica Benjamin, building on the work of Nancy Chodorow, have increasingly opened up the possibilities of relational and object relations theory for literary studies. The relational psychoanalytic theories operate in the same epistemological universe as postmodern literary criticism, congruent with the postmodern idea of truth as constructed and relational, and selfhood as shifting, contingent, and always-in-process. Particular attention is paid to the work of Wilfred Bion, whose understanding of self provides an account both of the failure of meaning, and of the development of mind. Some examples of a relational approach to literary analysis are provided.     

Sexual Desire and Depression Following Spinal Cord Injury: Masculine Sexual Prowess as a Moderator

Men’s adherence to masculine norms stressing sexual prowess may contribute to their adjustment to changes in sexual functioning following spinal cord injury. The authors test this hypothesis by examining the moderating role of men’s conformity to gender norms for sexual prowess on the relationship between sexual desire and depression. One hundred and sixteen male citizens of the United States with spinal cord injuries were recruited for participation in the internet-based survey. Results indicated that participants with strong sexual desire evinced higher rates of depression when they conformed to masculine norms emphasizing sexual prowess. Men with little reported sexual desire, by contrast, demonstrated lower rates of depression when they endorsed norms for prowess. Directions for future research and treatment interventions are offered.     

Intersubjective-Systems Theory: A Phenomenological-Contextualist Psychoanalytic Perspective

In this article I outline the essentials of my phenomenological-contextualist psychoanalytic perspective as it has been applied to a wide range of clinical phenomena, including development and pathogenesis, transference and resistance, forms of unconsciousness, emotional trauma, and therapeutic change. I characterize the therapeutic comportment entailed by these formulations as a kind of emotional dwelling.     

Pathologies of Desire and Duty: Freud, Ricoeur, and Castoriadis on Transforming Religious Culture

This article emphasizes an underappreciated aspect of Freud’s critique of religion taken up in the writings of Ricoeur and Castoriadis: the degree to which pathologies of desire and duty imbue our relation to shared cultural forms, i.e., narratives, ideals, and values. Both thinkers find in Freud’s anti-religious polemic a valuable attempt to address the intransigence, fanaticism, and violence that can result from an unreflected affirmation of Tradition. Alongside developing a respect and acceptance of other cultures, they argue for the need to establish a critical relation to ‘sacred’meaning structures, one that mirrors interpretive strategies within the psychoanalytic process. Ricoeur and Castoriadis critique Freud’s accentuation of neurosis while extending his thinking into personal-philosophical and social-political contexts.

The Quest for a Unified Psychoanalytic Theory: A Retreat from Uncertainty

There has been a historical shift in psychoanalysis from an earlier time of certainty to our present state of uncertainty with the coexistence of multiple theories competing for our attention. We realize retrospectively how entrenched groups ruled our institutions by maintaining faith in their authority as the keepers of “pure” psychoanalysis. Despite struggles between competing ideologies, there has been progress in integrating clinical theories. As no psychoanalytic theory or technique has been proved superior, we advocate an inclusive approach with all psychoanalysts keeping an open mind about the value of competing theories. This integration of disparate theories has led to a resurgence of interest in psychoanalytic training. Examples are given of some of the difficulties encountered when competing ideas are introduced in psychoanalytic groups.     

Freud,the Serpent and the Sexual Enlightenment of Children

Abstract

This paper examines Freud's interpretation of the myth of the Fall, which he sent to Jung in December of 1911. After a textual-historical exegesis of the Genesis narrative, I argue that many features of the myth, which Freud construed in Oedipal terms, are more intelligible in light of his theories of infantile sexual researches, which he abandoned in 1910. The etiological shift away from infantile sexual researches (and the consequent Oedipalization of analytic theory) were 1) not prompted solely by clinical considerations, and 2) heralded dramatic changes in attitudes toward children and the rejection of paternal authority in Freud and his circle, and 3) corresponding changes in the structure and organization of the psychoanalytic movement itself, creating an orthodoxy or “party line”.

The term “orthodoxy” means “uniformity of belief”, and is usually applied to religious groups, whose dogmatic emphasis on a specific body of doctrine serves to define the group's membership and boundaries, and to exclude “unbelievers” from its midst. In this sense, Freud's style of leadership was distinctly “religious”. Due to deep seated resistances in the analytic world, it is possible that disparities between Freud's earlier and later attitudes toward children will never be thematized and explored with the attention and seriousness they deserve. But the attempt must be made, and by exploring the Genesis narrative, we can grasp the personal and political motives that molded Freud's theory of religion, and glimpse the outlines of paths not taken in the clinical theory.     

An Integration of Feminist and Psychoanalytic Theory

No abstract available for this article.