Random Thoughts on Couple Therapy in a Postmodern Society

The postmodern period in psychoanalysis has had a considerable impact and influence on the psychotherapeutic process in both psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. The paradigm shift, reflected in the work of the intersubjectivists, rationalists, and social constructivists, has shifted emphasis from a one-person psychology to a two-person psychology. Implications for treatment are numerous. The change in emphasis affects not only how individual treatment is conducted but also couple therapy and group therapy. In considering the impact of these recent changes, the author notes the wide range of influences that inform her couple and group therapy. Although the current paradigm shift offers much, it seems to be an extension of earlier influences from self psychology, motivational systems, and attachment theory and of findings from neuropsychology. The author concludes that her couple work has also been intuitively informed by the implicit experience of the intersubjective field of group therapy.     

Psychoanalysis and Family Systems Revisited: the Old,Old Story?

This paper explores some commonalities in the current state of psychoanalysis and family therapy in Britain. It argues that there have been social changes within Britain that have increased the popularity of the practices and concepts of psychotherapy and counselling. The methods and ideas of psychoanalysis seem to be the major influence in this process which is manifest, for the most part, within private therapy and counselling and in the universities. It appears that family therapists and the institutes of psychoanalysis act as if unaware of this pragmatic acceptance of psychoanalytic thinking. The two disciplines of family therapy and psychoanalysis remain organizationally and conceptually disassociated from each other despite the two subjects having considerable overlap, plying adjacent trades and using theoretical ideas which show considerable parallels. The paper proposes that postmodern thinking is, potentially, an evolving link between the two forms of thinking and therapy but that the theories of both psychoanalysis and family therapy require empirical evaluation.     

Psychoanalysis and family therapy: Freud's Dora case reconsidered

Freud's Dora case is considered from the perspective of family therapy. Her illness is homeostatic; it holds two disturbed fractured families together. Freud considered his analysis a failure; from a systems point of view it was a partial success. His challenging technique is similar to that of modern family therapists. The theories of change underlying family therapy and psychoanalysis are compared. There are many similarities. They are mutually compatible disciplines, working at different levels.     

精神分析在日本的传播与发展

综述了精神分析在日本的传入与发展。包括:(1)精神传入日本的历史轨迹,如心理学、精神医学、文化学视角的传播;(2)精神分析在日本的发展,如精神分析疗法的推广,精神分析理论的运用;(3)日本对精神分析的评价。     

Why do schools of thought fail? Neo-Freudianism as a case study in the sociology of knowledge

A full account of the social production of knowledge requires an understanding of how schools of thought fail, as well as succeed. This paper offers a sociology of knowledge analysis of the collapse of neo-Freudianism as a separate school of psychoanalysis and influential intellectual current. While the existing literature stresses personal conflicts between Karen Horney, Erich Fromm and Harry Stack Sullivan as a major cause of the failure of cultural psychoanalysis, my analysis highlights the sect-like nature of Freudian institutes, the professionalizing dynamics of American psychoanalysis, the contribution of the celebrity-dominated book market and culture, and the highly controversial nature of Erich Fromm's writings and intellectual activity. Neo-Freudianism is conceptualized as a hybrid system that is a combination of a literary phenomena, intellectual movement, faction of a sect, theoretical innovation and therapy. This analysis of hybrid intellectual systems raises larger sociology of knowledge questions about schools of thought and intellectual movements. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Therapeutic technique in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

As the distinctions between what we consider to be psychoanalysis and what we consider to be psychoanalytic psychotherapy have become more uncertain and more blurred, it follows that it is equally difficult to designate the techniques that would be appropriate and specific for each modality. The problem has been compounded by the fact that in recent years psychoanalysis in the United States has become considerably less homogeneous than in the past and the ego-psychological structural model is no longer the only point of view in the psychoanalytic marketplace. Further, with alterations in the criteria for analyzability, cases which, generally, had not been viewed as suitable for analysis, have been appearing with increasing frequency on psychoanalysts' couches. We have also recognized that the degree of congruence between our expectations from and the results of psychoanalytic treatment was often less than anticipated. It appears that analysts have become considerably less arbitrary about what psychoanalysis is and how a psychoanalysis can be carried out. The author is unable to delineate one technique that is intrinsic to and limited to psychoanalysis. There are, however, differences in degree and emphasis in the ways in which various techniques are applied in the therapy of psychoanalysis as compared to the therapy of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Special attention is given to the role of a psychoanalytic process and the central place the analysis of resistance plays in psychoanalytic therapy.     

Symposium on The Ego and the Id after fifty years. Clinical formulations and research.

The Ego and the Id has served as an organizing model which has advanced psychoanalysis as a science and as a therapy. The paradigm offered by the structural formulations provided a framework for many developmental and clinical studies as well as an approach to a general psychology of human behavior. Therapeutic advances have been made, but the art of therapy has not kept pace with the scientific advances. Dissatisfaction with psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory is discussed. Theories have become too far removed from their clinical base; a changing sociologic climate that has reduced the impact of the rational attitude offered by psychoanalysis and the failure of psychoanalytic therapy to cure all ills have contributed to the dissatisfaction.     

Group therapy and complexity theory

Complexity theory, also called dynamical self-organizing systems theory, is a new scientific way of viewing the natural world. It is being applied to a vast range of multiply determined systems, as well as to created systems including psychoanalysis, and in this article to analytically informed group therapy. Examples of prominent features of group therapy lend themselves to comparison with outstanding features of complexity systems, including nonlinear determinism, self-organization, coevolution, and disequilibrium conditions for change and growth. Examples are used throughout to illustrate inferred processes called cascading, multisubjectivity, and asynchronous change processes. Therapist role indications are in the direction of implementing the group's own processes of creating change, at close range in the sessions.     

Wisdom won from illness: The psychoanalytic grasp of human being

From its inception psychoanalysis claimed not merely to be an effective therapy for psychological suffering, but to shed light on the human condition. But what kind of insight does psychoanalysis offer? This paper locates psychoanalysis in the western philosophical tradition, arguing that psychoanalysis provides not only theoretical wisdom about the human, but practical wisdom of a peculiar kind. The human mind, through its self‐conscious understanding can be immediately and directly efficacious in shaping its own structure.     

Relational Psychoanalysis Potential Usefulness with Black South African Clients

The aim of this article is to suggest that relational psychoanalysis may be a useful approach for working with clients from indigenous African cultures. In particular, the article considers the utility of relational psychoanalysis to understanding and enacting the therapeutic relationship with clients from an indigenous African cultural background. The notion of “we” self from the perspective of African cultures is a case in point for possible compatibility between relational psychoanalysis and black clients who come from background that place a high value on communal or “we” selves. An integrative therapy that combines African worldviews and relational psychoanalysis is possible.     

Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and Family Therapy: Reflections on Telos

Two of the most significant developments in family therapy since 1980 are the emergence of the feminist critique, and the rediscovery of psychoanalysis as a conceptual source for family therapy. The author has been working to combine the contributions of both feminism and psychoanalysis (particularly object relations therapy) and offers case examples of her clinical work. Telos – an often overlooked aspect of theory – is argued to be the locus of the feminist difference. A call is made for dialogue between feminists and psychoanalytic thinkers within family therapy.     

Freud's “A Case of Successful Treatment by Hypnotism (1892–1893)”: An Uncommon Therapy?

Freud's first reported successful treatment by hypnosis included suggestions that have much in common with some recent developments in family systems therapy. The case is discussed within the context of the evolution of psychoanalytic and family systems theories with the view that intrapsychic and contextual forces are not mutually exclusive. The author agrees with Haley in his recent book, Uncommon Therapy, regarding the value of viewing psychiatric symptoms as manifestations of a disturbance in family relations, occurring especially at transitional stages of family development. However, the emphasis on behavior change and symptom removal restricts the potentiality of the family approach to that of psychoanalysis in 1895, when it was a naive, simplistic, and mechanistic therapy.     

Aaron T. Beck's drawings and the psychoanalytic origin story of cognitive therapy

In this essay the author challenges the standard origin story of cognitive therapy, namely, that its founder Aaron T. Beck broke with psychoanalysis to pursue a more pragmatic, parsimonious, and experimentalist cognitive model. It is true that Beck broke with psychoanalysis in large measure as a result of his experimental disconfirmation of key psychoanalytic ideas. His new school of cognitive therapy brought the experimental ethos into every corner of psychological life, extending outward into the largest multisite randomized controlled studies of psychotherapy ever attempted and inward into the deepest recesses of our private worlds. But newly discovered hand-sketched drawings from 1964 of the schema, a conceptual centerpiece of cognitive therapy, as well as unpublished personal correspondence show that Beck continued to think psychoanalytically even after he broke with psychoanalysis. The drawings urge us to consider an origin story much more complex than the one of inherited tradition. This new, multifaceted origin story of cognitive therapy reaches beyond sectarian disagreements and speaks to a broader understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of cognitive therapy.     

Towards a common ground in psychoanalysis and family therapy: on knowing not to know

In this paper a common ground between psychoanalysis and family therapy is discussed in terms of postmodern theorizing in both disciplines. Recent systemic, narrative or social constructionist thinking in psychoanalysis and a psychoanalytic turn in family therapy offers the possibility of a shared epistemology. This is described in terms of a critical not-knowing stance which allows for the therapist's/analyst's contribution of meaning, interpretation and knowledge in therapeutic conversation. Here the holding of not knowing and knowing together provides a narrative container for personal meaning and thinking to develop. This 'knowing not to know' is what a postmodern psychoanalysis has in common with family therapy: both are ways of being with persons to help them develop and hold their own knowing. This therapeutic process is illustrated in a clinical vignette of narrative child family therapy.
For what one knows does not belong to oneself.
(Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past , p. 898)     

Evidence-based medicine,psychoanalysis and psychotherapy

SUMMARY

The scientific status of psychoanalysis is a matter of importance to both theorists and clinicians in psychiatry. The empirical evidence for both the theory and the practice of psychodynamic practice is much greater than is generally recognised. There is strong evidence for the effectiveness of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically oriented therapy. the future of psychoanalysis depends on this evidence. We will discuss both the evidence and reasons why it is overlooked in certain quarters, and review the developing neuro-cognitive understanding of the mechanisms that underlie psychoanalytical processes.     

Observations on the utility of couples therapy conducted by a psychoanalyst--transference and countertransference in resistance to analysis.

This paper explores the premise that conviction concerning the therapeutic efficacy of psychoanalysis combined with a flexible attitude toward the structure of the analytic situation and the parameters of its techniques facilitates the acceptance of psychoanalysis in suitable cases as the treatment of choice. Clinical data from therapy with couples are presented in support of this premise.     

Rules of clinical understanding in classical psychoanalysis and in self psychology: a comparison

This paper compares the rules that govern clinical understanding in classical psychoanalysis and in self psychology. The rules of understanding in the two systems are fundamentally different. Self psychology interprets causes and relies on interpretive rules similar to those used in allegory. Classical psychoanalysis investigates reasons and seeks to uncover the patient's own interpretive system. Self psychology refinds its own theory in the relation between elements disguised in the manifest content of patients' productions. Classical psychoanalysis seeks to open up manifest content. Where self psychology reiterates theory in its interpretations, classical interpretations move away from theoretical generalizations toward specific fantasy-memory constellations. Theory, in self psychology, organizes directly the content of interpretations; theory in classical psychoanalysis organizes a technique of exploration and furnishes general sequences according to which data can be understood. This paper also suggests that the differences in the rules of clinical understanding have potential consequences for psychoanalysis which manifest themselves in psychoanalytic training and in the capacity for self-analysis.     

Der Weg der Psychoanalyse nach Japan

The establishment of psychoanalysis in Japan was a consequence of opening the country to the influence of the western world by the Meiji restitution of 1868. Thus western psychological thought was also spread to Japan. On this basis, psychoanalysis developed through personal contacts and experiences of individuals and infiltrated into intellectual circles and finally into psychiatry. The establishment of two psychoanalytical societies, one for analysts and one where also lay people had access led to a specific and unique organizational structure. The ??Japanese way?? of psychoanalysis is on the one hand characterized by the confrontation with Buddhism and on the other by specific applications which reflect a certain reserve in the Japanese society to the ??standard procedure?? of psychoanalytic therapy. In this way psychoanalysis in Japan implants a diversity into the international discourse which opposes the current trend towards general homogenization.     

The Expanding World of Edward Tronick

Edward Tronick operates at the interface of empirical analysis of mother–infant communication, systems theories, and psychoanalysis. He has been a leader in the articulation of the implications of systems views for child development research. Systems views of mother–infant interaction, and of development more broadly, increasingly provide one theoretical underpinning for psychoanalysis. His work has enriched our understanding of interactive models of the dyad, of development, and of the mind. He has made a pivotal contribution to the development of a relational systems approach to infant research and its implications for adult treatment.     

Feminism and Family Therapy

Feminism has had a profound effect on contemporary culture and on thinking in most academic fields, including psychoanalysis. Interestingly, until very recently it had made virtually no impact on the theory and practice of family therapy. This paper proposes an explanation for this peculiar phenomenon and argues that family therapy has been considerably handicapped by its insularity from the feminist critique. Utilizing feminist scholarship in psychoanalysis, history, and sociology, the paper analyzes the structural contradictions in family life that family therapists have essentially ignored and then outlines their clinical implications. Key points in the discussion include the argument that systems theory is an inadequate explanatory matrix from which to build a theory of the family, that the archetypal "family case" of the overinvolved mother and peripheral father is best understood, not as a clinical problem, but as the product of a historical process two hundred years in the making, and that power relations between men and women in families function in terms of paradoxical, incongruous hierarchies that reflect the complex interpenetration between the structure of family relations and the world of work. This conceptual model then provides the basis for an analysis and critique of sexual politics as they emerge in the prototypical clinical situation.