Birth—From Metaphor to Reality in Jewish Literature and Psychoanalysis: Discussion of Lewis Aron’s Paper “With you I’m Born Again”

In his innovative paper, Lewis Aron discusses narratives of his own “metaphorical birth” as a psychoanalyst, through the years of working with his first analysand and by way of his encounters with four different supervisors. Aron suggests varied psychoanalytic perspectives and dialogical readings of the essence of birth in mutual relations and of its presence in the analytic dyad.     

“With you I’m Born Again”: Themes and Fantasies of Birth and the Family Circumstances Surrounding Birth as These are Mutually Evoked in Patient and Analyst

Themes of birth and rebirth, being born and born-again, can be readily observed in clinical psychotherapy and psychoanalysis even as they remain undertheorized. A clinical case is presented that traces the first four years of an analysis as seen through the lens of four consecutive supervisory experiences. This paper explores the central importance of fantasies and narratives of one’s origins and birth and the observations, fantasies, and expectations generated by one’s family circumstances at the time of birth. The paper examines birth narratives, fantasies, and myths of origination by following a clinical case across four supervisions. The patient’s birth-related fantasies are shown to interact with the analyst’s concordant and complementary fantasies as the analyst interacts with a series of supervisors in the process of being born as an analyst. The analyst’s personal birth narrative is linked to his fantasies about being born professionally as an analyst, and these are shown to interact with the patient’s birth fantasies. The paper suggests the ongoing significance of unconscious fantasy within the framework of contemporary relational psychoanalysis.     

The Castration Complex

ABSTRACT

Theoretical formulations of the castration complex have changed as psychoanalytic theory has developed. The author briefly reviews the literature and asserts that analyzing the set of fantasies related to potential or imagined castration continues to be clinically quite important. Understanding these unconscious fantasies provides a window into the individual's experience of his or her body in relation to those of important others throughout development. A case is provided to illustrate this, and to discuss the ways in which several different ways of thinking about castration fantasies contributed something essential to this analysis.     

A Country of Two: Race and Social Class in an Immigrant Therapeutic Dyad

This paper explores some of the ways in which social structures and fantasies organized around race and social class emerge in the intersubjective space created by a patient and a therapist who emigrated from the same country. Incorporating some of his own experiences of identity and otherness, the author discusses, through the lens of his countertransference, how communicating with the patient in their native language allowed for access to early internal object-relations, unconscious threats to his sense of belonging, racialized self-states, and feelings of shame associated to some of these dissociated self-states rooted in historical oppression and trauma. The author suggests that the “country of two” populated by patient and therapist is a dynamic co-created space, that emerges from the dialectic interplay of sameness and difference along the lines of race, social class, and culture.     

All holes are the same: Emerging from the confusion

The author describes a type of mental development in which the primitive libidinal value of faeces and urine is kept unaltered all through adulthood. In this instance, individuals harbour fantasies of projective identifi cation with the internal parents, denying their real dependence, which leads to a pseudomaturity. These fantasies are usually accompanied by anal and genital masturbation and have intense aggressive content. Furthermore, there is a signifi cant confusion among all body orifi ces, leading to an inability to distinguish the self from the object, the inner world from outside reality. Individuals with this type of development can only maintain limited object relations and have highly erotized excretory activities. Manipulation of faeces may occur. This structure works as a defence against breakdown, but may also provide pleasure as it gives the illusion of omnipotent control of the object, as typical in pathological organizations. The author presents clinical material and discusses the diffi culties of the analysis, in which the patient tries to seduce the analyst into colluding with his mental functioning, primarily as a means of communication as well as a projection of his despair and his disbelief in the analyst's ability to help him.     

Discussion of Lewis Aron’s Paper for Dialogues

Lewis Aron’s creative paper is a psychoanalytic version of a Picaresque tale. Lew, a newly born psychoanalyst, and Al, his analysand companion, go their way together from birthday to birthday. On the journey they meet up with gurus from diverse places and theories. Each meeting adds the birth of a new perspective. My discussion takes up the richness and depth of Lew’s passage through life as the analyst of Al and Al’s passage through analytic insight.     

“Generative Co-Constructions”: An Exploration of the Analyst’s Influence and Desire: Commentary on Paper by Richard Almond

In this commentary on Almond’s (this issue) paper, in which he asks us to consider ways in which his personality/history/psychodynamics played a significant role in his younger women patients becoming pregnant, the author questions Almond’s premise that we can know what “real-life effects” we have on our patients, when so much that occurs in psychoanalysis happens in mutually unconscious and procedural realms. In addition, the author critiques Almond’s archaic and reductive conceptions of gender and sexuality, which feel particularly problematic as they interpenetrate with his fantasies of his impact and pivotal role in their pregnancies.     

Procedures for obtaining separate set and content components of a test score

Using two distinct models, several formulas for obtaining separate set and content components of a test score have been derived. Comparisons among the methods are made algebraically and through their application to a set of test data apparently affected by response sets.The author wishes to thank Dr. Norman Frederiksen, who brought this problem to his attention, and Drs. Ledyard R Tucker and Frederic M. Lord, who suggested three of the procedures. All have contributed materially to this paper through many helpful suggestions and criticisms.This paper was written while the author was an Associate in Research at the Educational Testing Service, Princeton, New Jersey.     

HER SON,THE ATOMIC SCIENTIST: MIRRA BIRENS,YULI KHARITON,AND MAX EITINGON'S SERVICES FOR THE SOVIETS

New evidence sheds fresh light on the decades-long controversy whether Dr Max Eitingon, a pioneer of psychoanalysis in Europe and Palestine, collaborated with Soviet intelligence. This paper focuses on the hitherto overlooked figure and connections of his wife Mirra, and especially the impact of her son Yuli Khariton's career as a top nuclear physicist in the USSR's scientific and defence establishment.     

Cognitive support for the career choices of college women

The career aspirations of 50 female college seniors of lower- and middle-class backgrounds was assessed by a questionnaire and tape-recorded interview. Using a fourfold classification contrasting career choice with career commitment, the women were classified as innovative career oriented, innovative noncareer oriented, traditional career oriented, and traditional noncareer oriented. The career aspirations of these women, however, were not related to maternal employment patterns as previous studies have indicated. Rather, the perceived attitudes and direction of the parents was found to be a significant correlate of career choice and career commitment. It was concluded that maternal employment as a modeling variable may be unimportant for women of lower- and middle-class backgrounds.This article is based on a dissertation which was submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree in the Graduate Center, City University of New York. The author expresses appreciation to Dr. Florence Denmark for her continuous support throughout the entire study and also thanks Dr. Bernard Seidenberg for his valuable suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.     

Response to Aron and Atlas: Cooking Up a Storm—Together

The author agrees with the approach taken by Aron and Atlas in which they utilize the idea of the prospective function to emphasize the positive aspects of enactment that can be understood to promote symbolization much as dream work does. She welcomes their appeal to the future as an important aspect of intersubjectivity. The commentary on the case of Sophie aims to show the importance of the patient’s activity in collaborating with the analyst as another way that mutuality and play expand the notion of the creative illusion first offered by Winnicott. She also shows how this approach fosters a different idea of the Third than that used by neo-Kleinians, a point first made by this author and Aron. Finally, she suggests ways this idea of the prospective function can be integrated into our understanding of the Third.     

Understanding and Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disturbances

The author discusses how sexuality on the one hand develops and changes during childhood, but on the other hand, holds onto the old residues of different, earlier phases. In adult sexuality, there always remain enigmatic, regressive, even borderline emotions and feelings from earlier experiences. These residues make sexuality incomprehensible and primitive, but also offer possibilities for dreams, fantasies and creativity later in life. Autoerotic fantasies, object fantasies, enigmatic knowledge, sexuality fantasies and creative thinking are realised via these developmental residues.     

Sex must be a four-letter word

The author has previously proposed that the Catholic church reconsider its opposition to artificial methods of birth control in light of the growing threat of global overpopulation. He defends himself against the ensuing criticism of Andrews and Donahue. Andrews and this author share positions against the church's stand on birth control and its role in maintaining the status quo in collaboration with geopolitical power elites. It is clear through her critique that Andrews is angry at the church. This author wonders, however, why given Andrews' strident feminist stance she would be angry with him. He is generally perplexed by her response and does not think that it has much to do with his article. Andrews' article is less of a reaction to this author's original article than it is a position paper triggered by his article. Donahue's analyses of the author's points, however, are so flawed that they are laughable. Donahue argues that since there are other causes of overpopulation, one should not call for institutional change in the church. His efforts to obscure and deflect attention from the Catholic church are morally and intellectually irresponsible. This author offers a few thoughts on why it is hard to engage in scholarly, dispassionate discussions in psychology of religion.     

Freud's Ironically Jewish Science: Commentary on Paper by Jill Salberg

In his commentary on Jill Salberg's integrative and contextualizing article, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Freud's Jewish Identity Revisited,” Aron examines several ideas related to Freud's ironically “Jewish science.” First, this commentary takes up the question of what it has meant to speak of a “Jewish science” historically, and what it might mean today. Shockingly, Aron shows that the rise and fall of psychoanalysis has been traced to Jewish influence. He then expands on Salberg's article by reviewing the relationship between circumcision and castration and considers the impact of Freud's Jewish identity and his anxiety about anti-Semitism on the structure of the psychoanalytic method and specifically on Freud's discovery of the “royal road.”     

The Vanishing Mother: Reply to Commentaries

In this response to discussions by Aron and Boyarin I draw attention to the instability of the figure of the mother within Freud's presentation of his life, as well as within psychoanalysis. I link this instability to the figure of a “spectral” mother and perhaps subversive aspects of femininity. Whereas Aron links castration anxiety with prevailing anti-Semitic ideas, I look to the Jewish ritual of the Brit Milah and the laws of Niddah, which further reveal attempts to control and contain femininity. Boyarin raises a concern between historicizing and psychoanalyzing Freud that I consider a misreading. I believe my hybrid method of moving between historical, cultural, religious, and psychoanalytic planes, as lived by Freud within his family, is not so different from Boyarin's own approach.     

The Body and Mind (Including of the Analyst) in the Treatment of a Psychotic State: Some Reflections: Commentary on Paper by Riccardo Lombardi

Riccardo Lombardi's paper is considered from a British (Independent) object relations perspective. Although the paper deals with the experience of shame and its relationship to fantasies about sex and death and how these are experienced (including in the body), shame is also a profoundly object related mental state, perhaps one of the most damaging when suffered in infancy, leading to reflexive functioning. The nature of shame is touched upon and its impact on personality development, and how this is handled in the transference and countertransference by Riccardo Lombardi with his particular patient. Although the patient's struggle to own his own hate is Lombardi's principal focus in the clinical account, this author suggests that Lombardi was attuned primarily to the patient's developmental failings due to the impact of shame and, by working primarily in the countertransference, was able to facilitate growth of certain personality functions for the first time.     

Fantasies that Light Up Reality: Keeping the “Old Flame” Lit: Reply to Commentaries

In response to Foehl's phenomenological perspective that an underlying unity and interconnectedness does away with the need for any kind of distinction between reality and fantasy, the author argues for maintaining this very distinction. The author then uses his notion of fantasy in revisiting Hirsch's treatment of Angela and makes the case that the absence of desire on the analyst's part and the impasse that persisted is partially a result of not sufficiently reviving, altering, and joining the respective fantasies of analyst and patient that existed in isolation of each other throughout the analysis.