Thinking Developmentally: A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspective

This article considers how using a multifaceted developmental framework can help inform the analyst’s clinical choices throughout the course of treatment. The developmental pathway toward achieving a balance between a stable sense of autonomy and individuality and a capacity for relatedness and mutuality is discussed. The building blocks of development—basic trust, the self-other boundary, object constancy, and self-esteem—are outlined, along with ways to clinically assess developmental levels. Clinical material is presented to help illustrate how a sensitivity to the array of developmental data can help the analyst flexibly adapt to the patient’s changing needs and capacities.     

Bullying at Work: A Psychoanalytic Perspective

The paper traces aspects of the history and development of work in this area. It places workplace bullying on a continuum which straddles workplace homicide, violence at work, sexual harassment and the harnessing of the aggressive instincts into effective work. Thought is given to the question of which behaviours should be considered to constitute workplace bullying. A recent example of bullying in restaurant kitchens is examined in more detail. The paper concludes by looking at issues around the responsibility of individuals and organizations to understand and manage bullying at work. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intersubjective-Systems Theory: A Phenomenological-Contextualist Psychoanalytic Perspective

In this article I outline the essentials of my phenomenological-contextualist psychoanalytic perspective as it has been applied to a wide range of clinical phenomena, including development and pathogenesis, transference and resistance, forms of unconsciousness, emotional trauma, and therapeutic change. I characterize the therapeutic comportment entailed by these formulations as a kind of emotional dwelling.     

Growing Up With Hatred: A Psychoanalytic Developmental Perspective

This article looks at how hatred affects development: how children may come to hate, the impact of hatred on a child’s development, the evolving awareness of hatred, and how we may try to insulate a child from being the object of hatred and prejudice. What is suggested is that we aid children in developing a “not REALLY me” me; one akin to the “me” that a psychoanalyst develops in response to being the object of transference.     

Psychoanalytic Considerations Regarding the Occupational Therapy Setting for Treatment of the Psychotic Patient

Occupational therapists have always been concerned with the treatment of the psychotic patient. Oddly enough, the traditional setting offered to these patients in occupational therapy has not been the object of too much thought or consideration. In order to attain a therapeutic process, the therapeutic setting must be defined furst. The need for such a measure appears essential in therapy with the psychotic patient since his/her own internal structure is impaired. To understand fully the process of the therapy one must take a look at the impact of all dimensions of the setting. This paper discusses the psychodynamic consequences of the setting in occupational therapy in the treatment of psychotic patients.     

Adult Attachment Interview and Psychoanalytic Perspective: A Single Case Study

In this single case study we present a female patient diagnosed with a narcissistic personality disorder and a borderline organization. The interplay between attachment and psychoanalytic perspective will be focused. The analyst describes his impressions of the initial interview with the patient and essential steps during treatment. The patient was interviewed with the Adult Attachment Interview and classified as “insecure preoccupied” with an “unresolved state of mind” concerning loss and abuse. The analyst was asked to comment the AAI's essential characteristics of this patient. We discuss converging and diverging aspects of clinical and attachment interpretation in this single case.     

Technical Considerations in the Psychotherapy of Traumatized Individuals: A Psychoanalytic Perspective

This paper addresses two specific aspects of clinical technique in the treatment of traumatized individuals. The first aspect involves the creation of a safe holding environment as an essential step for the emergence of trauma-related memories and the containment of the affects accompanying them. Such scenarios may appear in the clinical material only through the workings of "procedural memory." It is therefore important to contain and gradually decipher repetitive patterns of behavior and feelings of shame, guilt and rage that go with them. The second aspect examines the challenges such work poses to the analyst's containing capacities, credulousness and even his or her reality testing within a clinical situation. The resulting instability of the analyst's work ego can make it hard for him or her to remain vigilant yet empathic, and emotionally attuned but analytically skeptical. The analyst's flexibility to be utilized as a transference object, developmental object and self-object remains a critical determinant of the treatment outcome under such circumstances. The paper provides clinical material to illustrate these two aspects of clinical technique.     

The Evolving Nature of Psychoanalytic Supervision: From Pedagogical to Andragogical Perspective

In what primary ways has psychoanalytic supervision evolved over the course of its 100-year plus history? In this paper, I address that question by: (1) sketching out some of the historical differences that have been identified as characterizing the patient-centered, supervisee-centered, and relational-centered supervision perspectives; (2) placing those three perspectives within an adult education framework; and (3) considering their pedagogical (youth-focused) versus andragogical (adult-focused) nature. Based on this examination, I propose the following. Due to the infusion of interpersonal/intersubjective views into the body psychoanalytic, (1) the “maturing” of vision in psychoanalytic supervision (i.e., the movement from a youth-focused to an adult-focused approach to supervision) was made possible; (2) a shift from a supervisory “one-person model times two” to a triadic conceptualization was actuated; (3) traditional perspective on power and authority in supervision was upended; and (4) a more egalitarian, empowering, co-participative approach to supervision emerged and now endures. Attending to the six core principles of adult learning is presented as one primary way in which that “maturing” of vision is most evident in the contemporary practice of psychoanalytic supervision.     

Relational Psychoanalytic Perspective on Couples Psychotherapy

ABSTRACT

This places Relational Psychoanalysis within the pantheon of models of couples psychotherapy in psychoanalysis including those from Freudian, Object Relational, Self Psychology, and Intersubjective Systems Theory. Following a brief overview of key ideas pertinent to Relational Psychoanalysis, the article discusses the author’s Six-Step version of a relational psychoanalytic approach to couples psychotherapy.     

Analyzing Multiplicity: A Postmodern Perspective on Some Current Psychoanalytic Theories of Subjectivity

Tensions between modernism and postmodernism in psychoanalytic theory and practice are evident in the allegedly “postmodern” view of subjectivity as not unified but plural. Suggesting that a thoroughgoing postmodern clinical practice does not exist at present, I distinguish between U. S. and European models of the postmodern multiple subject and between modern and postmodern varieties of pluralism in the current psychoanalytic theorization of subjectivity in this country, proposing that all such pluralist theories are in fact mixed models. I argue that these theories do not reflect objective, essential traits of selfhood but are complexly shaped by the cultural presuppositions and intrapsychic needs of the analyst; hence attempts to theorize subjectivity with reference to science (including developmental schemas) are problematic. Because a thoroughgoing postmodern pluralism cannot accommodate such concepts as agency and authenticity or a coherent narrative of the treatment process, clinical psychoanalysis, at least at present, inevitably includes major elements of the modernist approach, in which subjectivity is seen as unified. At this time of paradigm shift between modernism and postmodernism, therefore, it is important that pluralists decenter from their theories and respect the continuing influence of modernism on psychoanalytic theory and practice.     

精神分析视角下网络游戏迷恋者的心理景观

网络游戏的虚拟特性为网络游戏迷恋者营造了一个虚拟世界,使其可以在此空间舞台上轻易地释放本我,展现现实生活中各种不被允许被压抑到潜意识的事件,从而获得生理和心理上的快感.从精神分析的视角来分析网络游戏迷恋者的心理景观.以期从根源上去探究迷恋者的迷恋症结,为治疗青少年网络游戏迷恋提供一个新的理论视角.     

Rhetoric and Psychiatry: A Szaszian Perspective on a Political Case Study

Conclusion The study of rhetoric and the assumption that rhetors generate the grounding for persuasion have been at the root of Thomas Szasz’s psychiatric critiques for almost two generations. His corpus has consistently pointed to a psychiatric rhetoric which creates, rather than discovers, “mental illnesses,” a metaphorical pseudo-medical labeling which, when accepted, confounds the attribution of adult responsibility and substitutes instead an infantilizing dependency.     

Creating and Elaborating the Cultural Third: A Doers-Doing with Perspective on Psychoanalytic Supervision

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - Although recognized as highly crucial to supervision practice (e.g., Tummala-Narra, 2004), culture has been addressed minimally in the psychoanalytic...     

Mothers and Daughters from Today's Psychoanalytic Perspective

In this paper, I review and synthesize findings that may help us remodel the way we think about the vicissitudes of the mother-daughter relationship. Although exciting new ideas are burgeoning in the literature, there seems to be a lag between discoveries and their integration into clinical practice. Older theories emphasizing separation and the girl's “change of libidinal object” from mother to father reflect linear models that do not encompass the development we observe and experience. Newer theories depict development as interactive and relational throughout the life cycle—leading not to separation but to autonomy with connectedness. Applying male models to the female superego or speaking of the “female Oedipus complex” is misleading. New myths are being proposed to describe the conflicts integral to the girl's triangular situation. Applying the myth of Persephone and Demeter has been especially instructive. Many analysts tend to pathologize or infantilize the woman's ongoing tie to her mother and tend to misunderstand the intense ambivalence between daughter and mother. Once we recognize that the course of development is not linear, we should expect to see the woman revisiting, reexamining, and resynthesizing representations of self-versus-mother and self-with-mother over her lifetime.     

The Quest for a Unified Psychoanalytic Theory: A Retreat from Uncertainty

There has been a historical shift in psychoanalysis from an earlier time of certainty to our present state of uncertainty with the coexistence of multiple theories competing for our attention. We realize retrospectively how entrenched groups ruled our institutions by maintaining faith in their authority as the keepers of “pure” psychoanalysis. Despite struggles between competing ideologies, there has been progress in integrating clinical theories. As no psychoanalytic theory or technique has been proved superior, we advocate an inclusive approach with all psychoanalysts keeping an open mind about the value of competing theories. This integration of disparate theories has led to a resurgence of interest in psychoanalytic training. Examples are given of some of the difficulties encountered when competing ideas are introduced in psychoanalytic groups.