Experiences in difference: An exploration of the usefulness and relevance of psychoanalytic theory to transcultural mental health work

Abstract

This paper presents accounts of work with mental health service users in a multicultural residential setting and, explores some of the difficulties involved in working from a psychodynamic perspective in such a setting. It argues that a psychoanalytic understanding of the role of phantasy in the experience of difference, upon which ideas of culture and identity are constructed, can be helpful to practitioners concerned with addressing the consequences of their clients' experience of racism and other forms of discrimination. Particular reference is made to Winnicott's writings on play, transitional space and the location of cultural experience.     

Loewald's approach to psychoanalytic theory

The author suggests that part of the legacy of Hans Loewald is the nature of his approach to psychoanalytic theory. Loewald carefully considered and selectively utilized the work of theorists from a number of psychoanalytic schools of thought: id psychology, object relations theory, ego psychology, self psychology, and the interpersonal tradition. In addition, he helped pave the way for the current widespread interest in intersubjectivity, and also positioned himself in relation to those who embraced hermeneutics. Through all of this, he maintained a skeptical attitude, embodied in his belief in the complexity of the phenomena to be explored and his commitment to the perspective that psychoanalytic ideas should be open to revision.     

Anna Freud's contribution to the psychoanalytic theory of development

This paper elaborates key areas of Anna Freud's theory of development, setting these in the context of Freud's structural model and its influence on her early work. The centrality of the role of the ego and the beginnings of one of her major achievements, the elaboration of a psychoanalytic developmental psychology, are shown in evidence in 1936, in The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. The author develops this theme in an exploration of the 1965 work Normality and Pathology in Childhood, looking from the base of normal development, via defence and conflict, to regression and significant developmental factors.     

Patients reading about themselves: a stimulus to psychoanalytic work

Patients' reading of their psychoanalysts' papers about them as a vehicle for psychoanalytic work is a relatively new phenomenon in the field. Over the past five years, reports of analysts' employment of their writing in this fashion have begun to appear in the analytic literature. This paper presents clinical illustrations of this specific use of analysts' writing. These illustrations were drawn from interviews with analysts who published clinical articles in Psychoanalytic Dialogues between 1995 and 2003. The author considers some of the clinical and scientific implications of this use of papers written for publication.     

On the logic of psychoanalytic theory

Psychoanalytic theory shows some specific features and problems. It exists in a number of variations, according to different schools as well as cultural and subcultural conditions, with different understandings even of core concepts. Instead of producing definite knowledge, results remain uncertain. They vary in use and imply a permanent reworking of ideas and conceptions. This is the effect of the kind of theory psychoanalysis has to use. Since psychodynamics are a special kind of heterogeneous, changing, always different, emergent-in a word, autopoietic-reality, psychoanalysis cannot use the methods of a denotative theory (algorithmic reduction leading to strictly defined and formulated calculations) but has to use connotative theories. Connotative theories use open concepts which provide an active and flexible access to autopoietic reality. They are able to cope with the difference between singularities as well as with the distance between general logic and empirical reality. Problems tied to this possibility are structural fuzziness, a dependence on forms of use, multiple paradigms and difficulties in legitimation and balance of theories. This causes problems of institutionalisation. These problems are not a sign of immaturity but the normal way in which connotative theories appear and develop. They can therefore not be eliminated but only be treated in a better way.     

Some complexities in the relationship of psychoanalytic theory to technique

This paper considers the current fragmentation of psychoanalytic theory as a result of the illusorily close association of practice and theory. The author argues that the politically motivated assertion of a direct connection between theory and practice should be set aside and that practice should be liberated from theory, permitting theory to evolve in the context of radically modified patterns of practice. If theory were decoupled from practice, technique might progress on purely pragmatic grounds, on the basis of what is seen to work. Psychoanalytic theory of mental function could then follow practice, integrating what is newly discovered through innovative methods of clinical work. Such a pragmatic, principally action-oriented use of theory would bring psychoanalysis more in line with modern, postempirical views of science.     

Pretense, imagination, and belief: the Single Attitude theory

A popular view has it that the mental representations underlying human pretense are not beliefs, but are ??belief-like?? in important ways. This view typically posits a distinctive cognitive attitude (a ??DCA??) called ??imagination?? that is taken toward the propositions entertained during pretense, along with correspondingly distinct elements of cognitive architecture. This paper argues that the characteristics of pretense motivating such views of imagination can be explained without positing a DCA, or other cognitive architectural features beyond those regulating normal belief and desire. On the present ??Single Attitude?? account of imagination, propositional imagining just is a form of believing. The Single Attitude account is also distinguished from ??metarepresentational?? accounts of pretense, which hold that both pretending and recognizing pretense in others require one to have concepts of mental states. It is argued, to the contrary, that pretending and recognizing pretense require neither a DCA nor possession of mental state concepts.     

Identity theory and personality theory: mutual relevance

Some personality psychologists have found a structural symbolic interactionist frame and identity theory relevant to their work. This frame and theory, developed in sociology, are first reviewed. Emphasized in the review are a multiple identity conception of self, identities as internalized expectations derived from roles embedded in organized networks of social interaction, and a view of social structures as facilitators in bringing people into networks or constraints in keeping them out, subsequently, attention turns to a discussion of the mutual relevance of structural symbolic interactionism/identity theory and personality theory, looking to extensions of the current literature on these topics.