Narcissistic temptations to cross boundaries and how to manage them

The narcissism of analysts is considered here from the perspective of the narcissistic temptations of boundary crossing. The literature on boundary crossing in psychoanalysis has focused minimally on the more ordinary, nonsexual temptations analysts face with their patients. Narcissistic temptations with particularly impressive patients are explored. What analysts find impressive in their patients depends both on what patients bring and on what analysts need. This paper aims to heighten analysts' awareness of their narcissistic needs in treating patients who tempt them too much. The goal is for analysts to be able to catch and then examine their narcissistic excitement with such patients in order to avoid compromising the treatment. Danger signs and ways of managing the problems they point toward are presented.     

“Transferring” and transference

This paper is part of my research into psychotic transference and is also related to the psychotic aspect of any adult or infantile patient in analysis. In my research, I studied the origin of the concept of transference in Charcot's time before Freud, and the transformation of this concept in psychoanalysis. Freud thought that psychotic patients were not able to establish a transference relationship, but some of his early papers show the opposite. In fact, Freud himself and then several other analysts were able to develop a personal experience regarding the possibility of contact and transferring feelings and delusional experiences in a therapeutic context – individual, group, or institution. I provide some clinical examples in this paper, as well as some theoretical, personal views regarding intrapersonal and interpersonal transference. Like Freud and Melanie Klein, I believe that transference starts with life, but that in psychoanalysis it has a particular meaning.     

The dual impact of Freud's death and Freud's death instinct theory on the history of psychoanalysis

Since I have ranged over a rather large territory in this presentation I will summarize my main points. I claim that the very way Freud created psychoanalysis made it impossible for it to continue to grow and develop as a unified movement after his death. Unlike other sciences, psychoanalysis had no way of differentiating its basic findings from what is yet to be discovered. I then reintroduced my differentiation between heretics, modifiers, and extenders, claiming that after Freud’s death there was less opportunity for heretics and more space for modifiers. I assigned a crucial role to the fact that Anna Freud did not succeed in expelling the Kleinians. In the second part of the paper I presented the view of those who made use of Freud’s death instinct theory and those who opposed it. Many analysts preferred to ignore dealing with it rather than state their opposition. My presentation was biased in favor of those who chose to work with the death instinct as a clinical reality,highlighting Ferenczi’s construction. I made the claim, so far as I know never made before, that Freud’s death instinct theory had a traumatic impact on the psychoanalytic movement because it greatly limited the belief in the curative power of our therapeutic work. After his announcement of the dual-instinct theory Freud withdrew his interest in psychoanalysis as a method of cure. By doing so he inflicted a narcissistic wound on psychoanalysis. I believe that the creativity of psychoanalysis will improve if we face this difficult chapter in our history.     

Narcissistic configurations: Violence and its absence in treatment

'On narcissism: An introduction' constitutes a turning point in psychoanalysis. Although narcissism is a concept which has not been explicitly referred to by many important thinkers for decades, it could be said that there is no paper written in psychoanalysis since Freud that does not implicitly take into account the modifi cations in thinking that the work brought about. In this paper, the author contrasts two types of narcissistic confi gurations: in the fi rst, the intolerance of the other is dealt with by expulsion and violence; in the second, by withdrawal. The author contrasts patients who express manifest violent behaviour with patients for whom the violent behaviour is absent but who, nevertheless, present similar background histories, which might have led to a prediction of violence. They are also profoundly different in terms of what they provoke in the countertransference. In addition, this paper argues that the treatment of narcissistic personalities has allowed in recent years the understanding of a modality of depression. Following Green, the author argues that, instead of a fruitless debate that involves evolutionary issues around the concept of narcissism, it is necessary to distinguish the narcissistic aspect in any analytic relationship, to identify the narcissistic transference in different types of psychopathologies.     

Freud and the Psychoanalysis of Telepathy: Commentary on Claudie Massicotte’s “Psychical Transmissions”

Freud was interested in and eventually accepted the diverse forms of telepathic communication as psychoanalytic rather than occult phenomena, particularly as manifested in dreams. Massicotte revisits the topic of Freud and his interest in the occult in a manner that invites serious reconsideration of this aspect of his work, long the subject of intense controversy in the history of psychoanalysis. In my response to Massicotte’s paper I argue that Freud’s interest in telepathy or thought transference belongs to his psychoanalytic theories of the unconscious and transference. His approach to telepathy parallels his approach to religious beliefs: He accounts for both as creations of the human mind as individuals attempt to make sense and meaning of their real experiences. What Freud meant by telepathy is what contemporary psychoanalysis refers to as unconscious communication, and the strange, often inexplicable forms it takes in clinical contexts. For Freud, instances of telepathy or unconscious communication are to be understood contextually and relationally, revealing important data about the nature of affectively charged human relationships.     

Konzepte der Identifizierung

The authors investigate primary, hysterical, narcissistic identification, and introjection as conceptualised by Freud, Melanie Klein’s projective identification, and Anna Freud’s identification with the aggressor and altruistic surrender. It is pointed out that hysterical identification, narcissistic identification, and introjection are unconscious processes leading into a state of primary identification, and that they can be distinguished on a clinical level as regards the emotional meaning the object has for the subject. In hysterical identification the aspects of an object with which one identifies and all its other aspects retain their emotional meaning, in narcissistic identification these other aspects also keep their emotional meaning, but in this case the aspects with which one identifies lose their emotional meaning, and in introjection all aspects of an object lose their emotional meaning. Furthermore, it is shown that hysterical or narcissistic identifications are the mechanisms underlying the identification with the aggressor, and that—along with projections—hysterical re-identification also plays a decisive role in projective identification and altruistic surrender, whereby in these latter processes the object identifies himself unconsciously with the contents projected onto him in a hysterical or narcissistic manner.     

The deconstruction of primary narcissism

The author examines Winnicott ’s contribution to Freud ’s concept of primary narcissism. In Mourning and melancholia, Freud laid the foundations for this contribution, but it was Winnicott who turned it into a clinically useful concept. There are three of Winnicott’s ideas that can be seen as preliminary stages to his theory of transitional phenomena and illusion. They serve as an introduction to thinking about the analysis of the analysand ’s primary narcissism and the theoretical prerequisites that make the interpretation of primary narcissism possible. Through the exploration of three main points in Winnicott’s writings the author shows how Winnicott’s conceptualizations are both new and a continuation of Freud ’s thinking. His ideas are thus part of the overall theoretical pattern of Freud ’s metapsychology. The three main points are as follows: 1. In bringing maternal care and the presence of the psychic environment into the construction of primary narcissism, Winnicott made it possible to analyse narcissism. His ideas enable us to stand back from the characteristic solipsism of narcissism, which holds that everything comes from the self and only from the self. The latter concept tends to eliminate the role of the object and environment in the construction of the self. At the same time, by deconstructing the way in which the self is infiltrated by a certain number of narcissistic postulates, Winnicott made it possible to interpret the theory of narcissism itself. 2. Between the individual and the sense of self, Winnicott inserted the maternal object and her function as a mirror of affects who acts as a medium for the organization of self-identity. Primary identity is established through the construction and elimination of a narcissistic identification that becomes meaningful in the context of a primary homosexual relationship functioning as a ‘double’. 3. A process of differentiation that governs the discovery of the object is in a dialectical relationship with narcissistic identification. That process can be understood only in terms of the responses made by the primary psychic environment to the baby’s primary aggression.     

Little Hans and the thought police: the 'policeman fantasies' as the first reported supervisory transference fantasies

The ‘policeman fantasies’ in Freud ’s case of Little Hans, famous for being Freud ’s most direct evidence for specifically sexual oedipal desire by Hans for his mother, are reconsidered. The Hans case is the first recorded instance of psychoanalytic supervision, and recent studies suggest that it is common for patients in supervised treatment to experience fantasies about the supervisor. It is argued that the policeman fantasies are the first recorded instances of such transference fantasies about psychoanalytic supervision and the patient–therapist–supervisor triangle. The explanatory power of this interpretation is supported by the nuances of the features of the fantasies themselves, as well as by the context in which they occurred that might serve as ‘day residues’. Moreover, this interpretation provides an answer to the central mystery of the two fantasies, which goes unaddressed by Freud ’s oedipal interpretation: Who is the policeman?     

The role of the patient's remembered history and unconscious past in the evolution of Betty Joseph's 'Here and now' clinical technique (1959-1989)

The author historicizes one aspect of Betty Joseph's ongoing technical contributions in terms of its originating London kleinian context. Early on she drew upon both the patient's remembered history and unconscious past, linking these experiences in past-to-present transference interpretations in order to effect psychic change. In evolving the technique of 'here and now' analysis, Joseph came to emphasize a communicative definition of projective and introjective identification as well as the significance of enactments while marginalizing the use of part-object anatomical interpretative language. She gradually set aside directly linking the patient's past with the present, compelled now by making direct contact with her patients. She now tracked how difficult patients acted in and responded to interpretations from moment to moment. The author maintains that the explicit and implicit conceptual work of Wilfred Bion as well as Joseph's continuous group workshop for analysts led to an increased understanding of the patient's projective impact on the analyst's countertransference responses, and thereby increased the analyst's capacity with 'difficult to treat' narcissistic spectrum patients described by her colleague, Herbert Rosenfeld. In recent work, while Joseph continues to elucidate what patients recall about their early past, she formats her understanding in terms of a direct analysis of the structure of the patient's projected internal object relations in the transference. The analyst works with the patient's communications and enactments, with a greater emphasis on a more 'inside-to-outside' understanding of transference in contrast to the earlier 'past-to-present' work associated with both Freud and Klein. This investigation concludes with one example of Betty Joseph's significant impact on contemporary kleinian technique by taking up some of Michael Feldman's work. Now the analyst listens to the 'past presented,' the patient's projected internal world, as well as tracks how the patient hears and subtly mishears interpretations for defensive, equilibrium-maintaining purposes, as the analyst attempts to effect psychic change by widening the ego's perceiving functions.     

Psychoanalytic Identity: Charles Rycroft and the British Freudian Tradition

This paper explores Rycroft's views on narcissistic barriers to the formation of analytic identity, together with the analyst's relation to (or ablation of) his forbears. It sketches Rycroft's relation to his training analysts, Ella Sharpe and Sylvia Payne and the British Freudian tradition, delineating a line of descent running from Hanns Sachs, through Sharpe and Payne to Rycroft. Rycroft defined himself in creative dialogue with Freud and his own contemporaries within the British Freudian tradition.     

The clinical revolution of the ‘wise baby’

In an historical context focused on a close examination of the complex relationship between Freud and Ferenczi, the author shows Ferenczi's contribution to the evolution of psychoanalysis. He describes how his ideas and his therapeutic sensitivity anticipated modern clinical thought (for example, Winnicott and Bion), especially the understanding of borderline and narcissistic pathology. The paper considers the following topics: transference and countertransference; early affectivity; the different psychic trauma; phenomena connected with dissociation; the healing factor of the analysis.     

Five Issues in Training Edited by Irving R. Weschler and Edgar H. Schein

This case study illustrates how combined therapy (individual, group, and marital) by the same therapist was used to resolve a woman's narcissistic transference. The author's position is that combined therapy creates a psychologically stimulating environment, which uniquely elicits a depth and range of transference feelings, thereby generating multiple therapeutic opportunities to experience and work through transference resistance in the here-and-now. Highlights of the treatment demonstrate how the synergy of three modalities is used to elicit, modulate, and resolve positive and negative aspects of the narcissistic transference. Four guidelines are suggested for treatment of patients in combined therapy.     

The presence of Spinoza in the exchanges between Sigmund Freud and Romain Rolland1

Although Freud recognized his profound affinity with Spinoza, we seldom find explicit and direct references to the philosopher in his works. The correspondence between Romain Rolland, the ‘Christian without a church’, and Freud, the ‘atheist Jew’, is full of Spinozian reminiscences that nourish their works of this period and are underpinned by their mutual transference. The Future of an Illusion is written according to a Spinozian blueprint and aims at replacing religion, qualified as superstition, by psychoanalysis. A quotation from Heine, ‘brother in unbelief’, is a direct reference to Spinoza. Concurring with Freud’s critiques of dogmas and churches, Rolland proposes an analysis of the ‘oceanic feeling’ as a basis of the religious sentiment. Freud replies with Civilization and Its Discontents. In 1936, on the occasion of Rolland’s 70th birthday, Freud sends him an open letter, A disturbance of memory on the Acropolis, where the strange feeling that he has experienced in front of the Parthenon refers inter alia to his double culture: Jewish and German. In the light of this correspondence, the creation of psychoanalysis turns out to be a quest for the sacred that has disappeared in modernity; Freud, though, was able to find it inside man’s unconscious.     

Unconscious phantasy as a structural principle and organizer of mental life: The evolution of a concept from Freud to Klein and some of her successors

Starting with Freud's discovery of unconscious phantasy as a means of accessing his patients’ internal world, the author discusses the evolution of the concept in the work of Melanie Klein and some of her successors. Whereas Freud sees phantasy as a wish fulfilling imagination, dominated by primary process functioning and kept apart from reality testing, Klein understands phantasies as a structural function and organizer of mental life. From their very beginnings they involve object relations and gradually evolve from primitive body‐near experiences to images and symbolic representations. With her concept of projective identification in particular, Klein anticipates the communicative function of unconscious phantasies. They are at the basis of processes of symbolization, but may also be put into the service of complex defensive operations. The author traces the further evolution of the concept from the contributions of S. Isaacs, the theories of thinking proposed by W.R. Bion and R. Money‐Kyrle, Hanna Segal's ideas on symbolization and reparation all the way to the latest approaches by R. Britton, J. Steiner and others, including the understanding of transference and counter‐transference as a ‘total situation’. Points of contact with Freud are to be found particularly in connection with his concept of ‘primal phantasies’. In the author's view, the idea of the transmission and communicative potential of unconscious phantasies enabled these authors to overcome the solipsistic origins of drive theory in favour of a notion in which unconscious phantasies both set down the coordinates of the inner world and form and reflect the matrix of inter‐subjective relations.     

Neurotic and narcissistic transferences in Freud's relationship with Josef Popper.

An analysis of Freud's avoidance of meeting with Josef Popper is offered which suggests that Freud's idealization of Popper was related to an unconscious fear of being attacked by him. This view is compared and contrasted with the concept that Freud had a "mirror transference" to Popper, as proposed by Wolf and Trosman (1974). The choice of focusing on either narcissistic or neurotic mechanisms in this psychobiographical inquiry is discussed and related to similar choices that commonly occur in clinical work.     

“You touched my heart”: Modes of memory and psychoanalytic technique

Abstract

With the concept of procedural unconscious processes, contemporary psychoanalysis goes beyond Freud, who did not know of implicit memory and the resulting procedural relational dynamics. Today, lack of mentalization and symbolization is regarded as another mechanism besides repression constituting the psychodynamic unconscious. From that theoretical background, the manifestation of early pre-reflexive archaic experience can be conceptualized as procedural transference and handled in a way that takes care of the specific functioning inherent to the underlying archaic states of mind. Using material from the analysis of a narcissistic patient, the merging of episodic and procedural modes of transference and how this affected the psychoanalytic technique are demonstrated.     

Commentary on “deconstructing difference: Gender,splitting, and transitional space”;

This essay identifies Kohut's major contribution as methodological: that psychoanalytic inquiry entails the sustained empathic immersion in the patient's psychological experience. Kohut's consistent employment of this method enabled him to discover that it was not instinctual drive derivatives but selfobject needs that were central to all psychological relationships. This discovery was the basis for the transformation of analysts’ approach to the “narcissistic”; aspects of a wide variety of disorders—a transformation whose theoretical and therapeutic importance rivals the revolutionary approach taken by Freud to the vicissitudes of psychosexuality and its disturbances. The author describes the major areas of progress in self psychology—much of which centers on the growing recognition that the health and vitality of the self depend on complex relational, or intersubjective, selfobject experiences. He indicates how this recognition is changing our perspectives on transference and countertransference and is improving our ability to respond optimally to our patients. He describes how optimal responsiveness constitutes the guiding principle for therapeutic work, and how it may both constitute, and be different from, “being empathic.”;     

On Teaching Psychoanalysis in Antianalytic Times: A Polemic

The author argues that in the current attitudinal climate, characterized by significant denigration of psychoanalysis coming from biologically oriented psychiatrists, academic psychologists, pharmaceutical firms, insurance companies, managed care organizations, anxious taxpayers, and revisionist critics of Freud, psychoanalysts need to adapt their training and supervisory practices to take into account the preconceptions of many of those seeking training as psychotherapists. Specifically, we need to appreciate the nature of the transferences toward analysts and analysis that exist in the wider mental health community and in the general public. These include assumptions that analysts are cold, arrogant, rigid, and worshipful toward Freud (who is himself seen as cold, arrogant, rigid, and narcissistic), and the prevalent misconception that psychoanalysis has been empirically discredited. Analysts need to find creative and honest ways, some of which are suggested by the author, to challenge the distortions in these stereotypes and to respond nondefensively and generatively to the grains of truth they contain. The essay concludes with some reminders of the legitimate strengths of the psychoanalytic tradition that suggest that its future is not as bleak as its disparagers have assumed.     

Narcissism,psychic recognition,and affective validation: A homage to the “later Rosenfeld”

Abstract

Recalling his own participation in a daily group seminar with Rosenfeld and taking this experience as his starting point, the Author describes and discusses the later Rosenfeld’s approach to working with severely disturbed narcissistic patients. Through a detailed analysis of a supervision of a session with a psychotic patient, this paper essentially highlights how important it is to construct a (cognitive and affective) basic common ground in order to subsequently proceed to interpretations of transference. In particular, the paper brings to light those elements allowing the creation of that basic cognitive-affective ground that is necessary to profitably (in a manner useful to the patient) connect the relational events narrated and acted by the patient with the hic et nunc of analytic interaction.     

The Group Psychotherapy Literature 1958

This study applies Kohut's self-psychology toward an understanding of the self-functions that membership in a religious cult group (Divine Light Mission) provides for the narcissistic personality. It is proposed that there exists a psychosocial fit between the appeal of the cult group's structure and process and the needs of the narcissistic personality. The cult group offers reparative and substitutive functions to the follower who seeks an idealized selfobject to stabilize a defective sense of self. The special relationship of the follower to the Guru bears a close resemblance to the “idealizing transference” which arises between certain narcissistic patients and their group therapist. The therapeutic use and misuse of the “idealizing transference” in group therapy is explored and suggestions are made for its appropriate clinical management.