The psychoanalytic vision of Hans Loewald

Hans Loewald is a comprehensive and original theorist on a par with any major post-Freudian thinker, yet neither his ideas nor his person have become the basis for a Loewaldian school or approach, and he is not as well known as other innovators of comparable quality. In this paper the author attempts to characterize the scope and depth of Loewald's theory-his vision of the psyche and psychic life, or metapsychology, his characterization of the psychoanalytic process, and his vision of the clinical and human goals of psychoanalysis. She suggests that Loewald holds in all of these realms, and without apparent contradiction, a doubled-emphatically ego-psychological and emphatically object-relational-perspective, and an equal commitment to both the first topography and the structural theory. His views throughout are undergirded by a bi-directional developmental view that centers on differentiation and integration. The paper includes brief reflections on how to assess psychoanalytic theories, like Loewald's, developed before empirical research that seems to challenge them.     

The authentic function of psychoanalytic theory: an overview of the contributions of Hans Loewald

Loewald believes that psychoanalytic concepts can be redefined and reinterpreted, seen anew in the face of new data and ways of seeing, thus becoming transformed and transformative. Although he anticipated much of what is new in psychoanalysis in the last thirty years, he also anticipated a more recent integrative trend and a return to classical theory--a return to Freud. This paper summarizes and discusses Loewald's major writings, and argues that his work demonstrates the authentic meaning of psychoanalytic metapsychology.     

Ongoing change in psychoanalytic theory implications for analysis of religious experience

Hans Loewald (1980) once made the distinction between ghosts and ancestors, the former always wanting to return to the land of the living, the latter being able to rest in peace and live forth through their progeny in the present generation. Extending this metaphor, Stephen Mitchell (1991) has noted that the intellectual integrity and vitality of psychoanalysis depends on our shifting our view of Freud from an unburied ghost who haunts us to an honored ancestor. I argue that perhaps nowhere is Freud's enduring presence greater than in psychoanalytic perspectives on religion, and it is often as an unburied ghost. Ongoing change in psychoanalytic theory, however, affords respectful amendment to his work in a way that allows Freud to be a dearly honored ancestor from whom we are all psychoanalytic descendents. Three developments in psychoanalytic theory have special implication for the analysis of religious experience. These areas of change pertain to contemporary understanding of illusion, narrative, and social constructivism. I offer in conclusion seven points for further consideration.     

An Overview of Joseph Sandler's Key Contributions to Theoretical and Clinical Psychoanalysis

Joseph Sandler was instrumental in bringing about what Ogden (1992) has termed the “quiet revolution” in psychoanalytic theory over the past several decades. His accomplishments reflected his capacity to combine empirical research skills with the highest order of understanding of psychoanalytic theory. From the more traditional frame of reference acquired through his analytic training, Sandler gradually evolved a complex integration of ego psychology and object relations theory that has become increasingly dominant. Throughout this process, Sandler strove to keep theory tied to clinical activity. While most analysts pay lip service to the intimate relationship of theory and practice, Sandler, using the Hampstead Psychoanalytic Index as his framework, researched the applicability of psychoanalytic concepts to the clinical setting. This resulted in reconceptualizations of some of the basic building blocks of psychoanalysis. His training as an experimental psychologist gave him a fresh perspective on traditional concepts, which he supported and altered on the basis of empirical research. His immersion in child development at the Anna Freud Centre also influenced his intellectual development.     

Thinking Developmentally: Perspectives Following Loewald and Klein

In this article, I explore two perspectives on development that are central to how I think and work as an analyst, one drawn from the work of Hans Loewald and one from Melanie Klein. Loewald turned the usual psychoanalytic way of thinking, rooted in the past, on its head when he theorized that development proceeds by internalization of the parent’s future vision of the child and, by corollary, the analyst’s future vision of the patient. Using a vignette from Klein’s work with 10-year-old Richard, I show how the analyst’s image of the patient’s potential can facilitate growth and development. Melanie Klein also introduced a radical reordering of traditional psychoanalytic theory when she theorized that the mind develops and is structured as positions, not as successive phases. For Klein, the mind is organized in groupings of anxieties, defenses, and object-relations that are in a continuous state of oscillation throughout life independent of chronological age. Through a clinical vignette, I illustrate how one understands a patient differently when development is seen as occuring in momentary shifts between different levels of the personality rather than as stages over time.     

Countertransference and the theory of technique: discussion

Historical, clinical, and conceptual remarks are presented regarding countertransference and the theory of psychoanalytic technique, preliminary to and in the context of discussing the contributions to the panel, "Countertransference in Theory and Practice" (Tyson, 1984; Loewald, 1984; Jacobs, 1984; Dewald, unpublished). In addition, special emphasis is given to problems of countertransference in training and supervision which may be prototypes for later difficulties in analytic work.     

Hans Loewald: A radical conservative

Hans Loewald's work was relatively marginalized in its day and it is little known outside the United States. It is, however, assuming increasing importance in American psychoanalysis. Loewald's attractiveness as a theoretician is due, in no small part, to his rigor and synthetic reach. He is able to accomplish the difficult feat of remaining non-sectarian and systematic at the same time. Indeed, Loewald's work contains an integrative vision that is unusual in today's fragmented psychoanalytic world. This author tries to show how Loewald attempts to reconcile many of the rigid oppositions that often become reified in analytic controversies: structural theory versus relational psychoanalysis, traditionalism versus revisionism, oedipal versus pre-oedipal, modernist versus postmodernist and hermeneutical versus scientific. The article examines how Eros, understood in terms of the psyche's synthetic strivings, plays a major role in Loewald's theory. The author also situates Loewald's position within contemporary psychoanalytic discussions of epistemology. These discussions tend to criticize the objectivism of modern science-and analysis in so far as it models itself on science-and stress countertransference and the subjectivity of the analyst. Loewald's argument, however, runs in the opposite direction. Because of his concern with the autonomy and individuality of the patient, he is concerned with the clinical dangers rising from an overemphasis on the subjectivity of the analyst.     

A tale of four countries: How Bowlby used his trip through Europe to write the WHO report and spread his ideas

Attachment theory, developed by child psychiatrist John Bowlby, is considered a major theory in developmental psychology. Attachment theory can be seen as resulting from Bowlby's personal experiences, his psychoanalytic education, his subsequent study of ethology, and societal developments during the 1930s and 1940s. One of those developments was the outbreak of World War II and its effects on children's psychological wellbeing. In 1950, Bowlby was appointed WHO consultant to study the needs of children who were orphaned or separated from their families for other reasons and needed care in foster homes or institutions. The resulting report is generally considered a landmark publication in psychology, although it subsequently met with methodological criticism. In this paper, by reconstructing Bowlby's visit to several European countries, on the basis of notebooks and letters, the authors shed light on the background of this report and the way Bowlby used or neglected the findings he gathered.     

"I no longer believe": did Freud abandon the seduction theory?

Recent accounts of the seduction theory and the question of its abandonment have emphasized the continuity of Freud's work before and after the seduction theory, claiming that Freud did not abandon his concern with the event of seduction but rather came to appreciate that an understanding of fantasy was also essential. This claim is challenged. It is shown that Freud did abandon the passionate concerns of his seduction theory for the most part; that he left behind his early interest in reconstructing unconscious infantile incest and focused instead on later, conscious seduction; that he at times clearly reduced apparent paternal incest to fantasy; that he turned away from the phenomenology of incest he had begun to develop; and that he theoretically nullified the value of the difference between real and fantasied seduction. It is also shown that, contrary to a persistent concern in psychoanalytic history, attention to actual seduction need not detract from the essential psychoanalytic concern with fantasy and infantile sexuality. Thinking about incest specifically illuminates the capacity for fantasizing, the core of the Freudian psyche. In this way the intuition of the seduction theory that there is something of distinctive psychoanalytic significance about incest finds support.     

Using Narrative Theory and Self Psychology Within a Multigenerational Family Systems Perspective

This paper illustrates how a process of psychoanalytic psychotherapy can be enhanced and extehded by combining ideas from narrative theory and self psychology within a multigenerational family systems perspective. The illustration is based on a summary and discussion of a satisfactorily completed thirty-session psychotherapy for an adult man who sought therapy for relief from his depression.     

Serendipity in the Theater: Maude Adams as James M. Barrie's American Muse

A special niche in theatre history is addressed to begin to fill a void in the contemporary creativity literature. The present essay focuses on Maude Adams and James M. Barrie in an attempt to demonstrate that, serendipitously, Adams initially impacted Barrie's creative process, and thereafter became his platonic source of inspiration for the plays he created for her, meriting the belated title of muse. Set change theory is underscored as a plausible cognitive explanation for Barrie's illumination. The psychoanalytic theory of transference is proposed as an underlying mechanism for facilitating the change of mental set during the incubation stage. A brief discussion on a selective theoretical integration from the fields of cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience is followed by conclusions.     

Hartmann on adaptation: an incomparable or incomprehensible legacy?

Hartmann's essay sets forth ideas of incomparable value as well as incomprehensible density. While he developed many important concepts which have far-ranging clinical utility even today, his attempt to extend psychoanalysis into a general psychology back-fired because it separated psychoanalytic concepts from analytic data. Because of his lack of clinical material or anecdotal illustration, Hartmann's theoretical scaffolding has been frequently misunderstood and misapplied. This paper re-examines Hartmann's essay in light of current clinical and metapsychological issues, and illustrates some of his more important ideas.     

Sullivan und die intersubjektive Sichtweise

The author sees H.S. Sullivan??s (1892?C1949) interpersonal theory as the best theoretical framework for the contemporary intersubjective perspective in psychoanalysis and presents it in its pluridimensional articulation. After having extended Freud??s therapeutic approach to psychotic patients, Sullivan developed both a developmental psychology and a psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic technique based on the ??interpersonal field?? as the basic unit of study. To the pluridimensional character of his theory also belongs its application to the cultural and social aspects of our personal identity. Because the contemporary psychoanalytic authors who shaped the intersubjective perspective limited themselves to the clinical dimension, Sullivan??s interpersonal theory can still provide the theoretical framework which any psychoanalytic perspective needs.     

Credo: My Psychoanalytic Adventure—A Quest to Conceptualize Therapeutic Efficacy

The author warmly invites colleagues to accompany him as he revisits his unique psychoanalytic journey that led him to develop the concepts of specificity theory.     

A Buddhist contribution to the psychoanalytic psychology of self

The author attempts to integrate the concepts of self used in psychoanalytic theory with the understanding of the nature of self as explained within the Buddhist meditative tradition. He divides different concepts of self in psychoanalytic theory into three major levels of consciousness and abstraction: self as experience, representational self and self as system. The representational level is defined as consisting of unconscious organizing structures of interaction: the system level is a hierarchically higher organization of representations, while the experiential level consists of the moment-to-moment flow of consciousness. He argues that for the sake of theoretical clarity these levels should be differentiated in discussions of self. He then describes the Buddhist psychology of self and tries to show how this perspective can enrich psychoanalytic understanding of the experiential self and of narcissism, which in Buddhist language would be described as clinging to (seeking or avoiding) images of self that arise in the mind. Last, he describes a model of therapeutic development using different levels of self and the interrelationship between them, showing how psychoanalytic psychotherapy and Buddhist insight meditation emphasize different levels of self using complementary rather than mutually exclusive methods.     

Jung,Winnicott and the divided psyche

In his review of Memories Dreams Reflections, Winnicott diagnosed Jung as suffering from a psychic split, and characterized the content and the structure of analytical psychology as primarily moulded and conditioned by Jung's own defensive quest for a ‘self that he could call his own’. This pathologizing analysis continues to be endorsed by contemporary Jungian writers. In this paper I attempt to show that Winnicott's critique is fundamentally misguided because it derives from a psychoanalytic model of the psyche, a model that regards all dissociation as necessarily pathological. I argue that Jung's understanding of the psyche differs radically from this model, and further, that it conforms by and large to the kind of dissociative model that we find in the writings of Frederic Myers, William James and Theodor Flournoy. I conclude that a fruitful relationship between psychoanalysis and analytical psychology must depend upon an awareness of these important differences between the two psychic models.     

The superordinate self in psychoanalytic theory and in the self psychologies

The concept of the self has been used in several attempts to resolve the epistemological problems of what is subjective and what is objective, what is personal and what is organismic. In addition, it has been used to mediate between the hermeneutic and natural-science approaches to psychoanalytic explanation, between the motivational and causal dimensions of our theory and experience. In the case of Kohut, the self was initially invoked to deal with clinical difficulties associated with the analysis of patients with narcissistic personality disorders more recently, it has become the central article in a "self psychology" that addresses presumed deficiencies in the traditional psychoanalytic picture of psychopathology. But the concept of the self is not suited to be a panacea for resolving theoretical or clinical difficulties. The self as person refers to an entity that is both enduring and changing; it describes continuity in the face of change and change in the face of continuity. Abend (1974) comes closest to capturing this attribute of the self in his image of the tidal beach with a configuration that changes but an essence that remains the same. Eisnitz (1980) evokes something similar in his figure-ground conception of the self-representation. The crux of the matter is that the notion of self-experience includes a variety of phenomena that cannot be contained within a single self-construct--be it normal pathologic, grandiose, or otherwise. As a result of these considerations, I have argued against the use of the self as a superordinate concept in psychoanalytic theory and have focused on the shortcomings of three self psychologies that use the self in this way. I believe that Klein, Gedo, and Kohut all offer the self as a kind of conceptual tranquilizer for the philosophical, theoretical, and clinical dualities that are inherent in psychoanalytic work. Grossman addressed himself to these dualities as far back as 1967 and elaborated on the problems with Simon (1969) in a pathbreaking paper on anthropomorphism in psychoanalysis. Grossman and Simon contended that the controversy about anthropomorphism in psychoanalytic theory pertains to the basic confusion in psychology between meaning and causality. They submitted that until this confusion was dispelled and until some superordinate concept was found that could "encompass both kinds of discourse", attempts to transform psychoanalysis into a general psychology would result in failure.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)     

Technique and final cause in psychoanalysis: Four ways of looking at one moment

This paper argues that if one considers just a single clinical moment there may be no principled way to choose among different approaches to psychoanalytic technique. One must in addition take into account what Aristotle called the final cause of psychoanalysis, which this paper argues is freedom. However, freedom is itself an open‐ended concept with many aspects that need to be explored and developed from a psychoanalytic perspective. This paper considers one analytic moment from the perspectives of the techniques of Paul Gray, Hans Loewald, the contemporary Kleinians and Jacques Lacan. It argues that, if we are to evaluate these techniques, we must take into account the different conceptions of freedom they are trying to facilitate.     

Wilhelm Reich Revisited: The role of ideology in character analysis of the individual versus character analysis of the masses and the Holocaust

Abstract

One of the most controversial members of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and Freud’s intimate for many years, Reich is known not only for his seminal contributions to therapeutic and social psychoanalysis in his 1933 classic Character analysis, but also for his notoriety as a discoverer of an energy he named orgone. This paper is devoted to Reich the psychoanalytic sociologist and reformer, with special prominence given to his other, now somewhat forgotten, 1933 book The mass psychology of Fascism.