Psychoanalytic Theory and the Rorschach (Book)

The purpose of this study was to explore how Mexican American adolescents (N = 120) would perform on the MMPI-A given that Hispanic adolescents were seriously underrepresented in the national norming sample during the development of the MMPI-A. The participants completed the MMPI-A, a short demographic questionnaire, and a 5-item version of the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans. Results indicated that the present sample of Mexican American adolescents' performance on the Validity, Clinical, and Content scales differed minimally from the national norming group's performance, and their performance varied as a function of their levels of acculturation and socioeconomic status. Implications of these data are discussed.     

Psychoanalytic observation in community and primary health care education

Summary

This paper describes a psychoanalytic observation seminar that was set up as part of an MA in Community and Primary Health Care programme. The seminar was intended for senior professionals outside psychotherapy trainings, drawn from the health and social-care fields. The author outlines the way in which a conventional infant-observation model was adapted for this group, enabling the students to observe both individual subjects and also diverse primary-health and community-care settings. The advantages of such a learning experience are discussed; and also the inevitable anxieties stirred by it. Several examples of observations are provided, showing how students were helped to negotiate and explore challenging primary-health and community-care settings.     

The Importance of Gender in the Psychoanalytic Relation (Discussion)

Abstract

The Importance of Gender in Psychoanalytic Relations (Discussion). Int Forum Psychoanal 1992;1:32-36. Stockholm. ISSN 0803-706X

Patients assimilate the analyst's gender, appearance, age and the prevailing cultural climate into the transference. Differences in gender between analyst and patient may stir up a variety of social conventions, stereotypes and characterological ways of relating to same or different gendered people. Analytic inquiry must focus on the patient's invariant organizing principles, the themes along which a person organizes his or her experience. Two papers presented at the August, 1991 meetings of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies, that addressed the effect of the gender of each of the participants in the analyst-patient relationship are discussed.     

On the Importance of Gender in the Psychoanalytic Relation (Discussion)

Abstract

Brenner H. On the Importance of Gender in the Psychoanalytic Relation (Discussion). Int Forum Psychoanal 1992;1:29-3 1. Stockholm. ISSN 0803-706X

In the discussion of the contributions by Alan Grey and Ann Turkel, the author compares their findings with her own, both on the theoretic and practical levels. While the question of gender evidently plays a role, its importance seems to differ depending on the traditional attitudes of society, with changes becoming apparent in line with feministic trends, but varying from one culture to the next, and also from one therapist to another depending on her/his own personal history. In conclusion, Heidy Brenner answers the question posed at the beginning, also in the sense of Alan Grey, that it is to a large extent a matter of the therapist's personal maturity whether a patient—male or female—feels comfortable with him or her; that the required openness is possible; and that the necessary frustration tolerance can be achieved, so that the patient need not hide behind a falsely understood identity with the analyst.     

Psychoanalytic education in the twenty-first century: a syllabus for all seasons

I am suggesting that psychoanalytic training facilities restructure their curriculum to include opposing views, in an effort to avoid the inevitable disintegration of the field at large. Without a sense of requirement for any particular viewpoint, I have suggested the model of class modules, usually based around three differing positions, be applied in as many classes as possible. This method enhances the very nature of psychoanalysis while it extends the educational provenance of each separate institute, and specifically each teacher of psychoanalysis. In so doing, candidates across the board will feel and think in a more collegial manner, and may find that learning psychoanalysis is to learn something new and exciting.     

Alter(ING) Potential Space: Personalization and Community in Psychoanalytic Therapy

In this paper, I use the notion of alterity to amend Winnicott's view of potential space. I suggest that the parent's potential space—omnipotent recognition and treatment of the baby as person—makes possible the baby's belief in and experience of omnipotence, which is manifested in his/her omnipotent recognition and treatment of objects in terms of utility, pleasure, and function. This early manifestation of potential space gives way to recognition of objects as proto-persons, which accompanies the child's illusion that the (transitional) object recognizes him/her as a person. Here the child learns to surrender to the object's omnipotent constructions and, in these moments, there is a proto-communion—an illusory experience of mutual joining together as persons. This eventually gives way to a potential space wherein two or more people mutually and omnipotently construct and surrender to each other as persons, subordinating pleasure, function, and utility to the recognition of the Other as person. This depiction of potential space can serve as a framework for understanding the process of therapy as a struggle not simply of reality and illusion, but one of recognition and treatment of Others as persons and the possibility of communion and community.     

Function(s) of Religion in the Contemporary World: Psychoanalytic Perspectives

With respect to our psychoanalytic frame of reference allowing us to study the extent of the hypotheses concerning the religious phenomenon as formulated by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, in the context of a cross approach between the accuracy of the concept of conversion and of psychic mechanisms or phenomena at stake within conversions, and based on the testimonials of subjects acknowledging themselves in the experiment of conversion, we try to understand if and how religion is anchored in our cultural era through subversive effects it may have on the subject.