Maimonides and Psychoanalysis – Maimonides' Cure of Souls: Medieval Precursor of Psychoanalysis – By David Bakan,Dan Merkur and David Weiss

This book is fascinating. For those of us for whom the study of Maimonides has been rooted in history of thought or in systematic philosophy and theology, this book provides a psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic reading of Maimonides. And, for those of us for whom study of Freud has been rooted in history of psychoanalysis, this book provides an insight into an important source for some of Freud's most radical ideas.     

U.S. Employment Service: First 50 Years, 1933–1983

This article reviews some of the landmarks and trends during the first 50 years of the U.S. Employment Service. It was originally written as the introductory chapter of a longer paper, “The Occupational Information Needs and Functions of the Employment Security-Job Service,” which was submitted at the request of the Occupational Coordinating Council, Washington, D.C., March 1980. The purpose of the chapter was to describe the role and functions of the Employment Service and to show how the service could become more relevant during an age of computerized employment service operations involving highspeed electronic communications and retrieval systems. Under the Reagan administration, much of the federal-state employment service has been systematically dismantled. The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) has been repealed and with it, large parts of the research, development, and counseling capacities have been wiped out. Only the great “supply side” depression of 1980–1983 saved the entire system from being demolished.     

Altruism and the Resolution of the Transference Resistance: Partners in Clinical Psychoanalysis

ABSTRACT

The article is devoted to the central place of altruism in clinical psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Using an experiential-subjective perspective, I demonstrate how I overcame an inhibition in utilizing altruism in my theoretical and clinical work, which then reduced barriers against working with the experience of vitality, closeness, and creativity for my patients and myself. I then could follow the importance of resolving the transference resistance against consolidating the experience and functioning of the self or person. At this time, altruism has also become a subject of interest in several fields that deal with human and animal behavior such as evolutionary science, social biology, and anthropology. Psychoanalysis, with its special subjective and experimental perspectives, can make valuable contributions in these realms of knowledge and research.     

The Nuremberg mind redeemed: a comprehensive analysis of the Rorschachs of Nazi war criminals

We examined a blind, actuarial analysis of the Rorschach data of the Nuremberg war criminals (NWC) using Exner's (1974) Comprehensive System in an attempt to prove the convergence of the NWC construct along dimensions of psychological (personality) functioning and to prove its discriminability from other appropriate psychiatric and nonpsychiatric comparison groups. The weaknesses of previous research methodologies are examined and discussed vis-à-vis the historical and theoretical developments of the concepts of authoritarianism, dogmatism, obedience to authority, and the development of the Rorschach Inkblot Technique.     

‘Translation’ and ‘transformation’ in the analytic situation: Freud – Bion – Laplanche

Following a short introduction to the core theses of Jean Laplanche’s theory of a ‘general seduction’ the author presents the resultant clinical position of the analyst. In the same way that an adult sends ‘enigmatic messages’ to the child, it is the analyst’s task to reopen this primal situation so that the patient can find new ‘translations’ for these messages. Laplanche distinguishes between the function of the analytic frame – which represents and supports attachment – and the ‘sexual’– which is the repressed and constitutes the unconscious. Only the focus on this unconscious facilitates the deconstruction of ‘incorrect’ translations. Accordingly, the analyst, says Laplanche, should not take part in construction – this is a self‐construction of the patient – but only in reconstruction. The author compares this clinical model with Freud’s notions and the ‘transformation processes’ through the alpha function as described by Bion. She illustrates Laplanche’s model and the interpretation strategy with case material.     

Rorschach records of Nazi war criminals: a reanalysis using current scoring and interpretation practices

The Nuremberg trials focused worldwide attention on 22 Nazi war criminals. Rorschach Inkblot tests were administered to these Nazi leaders in an attempt to understand the Nazi personality. Past studies which have described and interpreted these Rorschach records have made at least two types of errors in their analyses. One is that of overinterpretation and excessive inference. A second common error has been the failure to detect meaningful distinctions between protocols that represent significant differences in personality style. This latter error is shown in repeated attempts to group all Nazi protocols into one distinct "Nazi personality." This investigation attempted to quantify the analysis of these Nazi Rorschach records, specifically those Nazi leaders who were sentenced to life imprisonment or execution for their war crimes against humanity, by utilizing Exner's (1985a) standardized Comprehensive Scoring System as well as computerized objective interpretation software based on the Exner system (1986). This modern analysis of the Rorschach records demonstrates that the Nazi war criminals cannot be grouped together into one specific mental disorder that would adequately characterize these diverse individuals. The varying degrees of psychopathology of the Nazi leaders are illustrated by analyses of individual Rorschach protocols.     

The ‘mad scientists’: Psychoanalysis,dream and virtual reality2

The author explores the concept of reality‐testing as a means of assessing the relationship with reality that prevails in dream and in virtual reality. Based on a model developed by Jean Laplanche, she compares these activities in detail in order to determine their respective independence from the function of reality‐testing. By carefully examining the concept of hallucination in the writings of Freud and Daniel Dennett, the author seeks to pinpoint the specific modalities of interaction between perceptions, ideas, wishes and actions that converge in the ‘belief’ and in the ‘sense of reality’. The paper's main thesis consists of the distinction that it draws between immediacy‐testing and reality‐testing, with the further argument that this distinction not only dissipates the conceptual vagueness that generally surrounds the latter of the two concepts but also that it promotes a more precise analysis of the function of reality in dream and in virtual reality.     

‘Language of the past’ – Exploring past tense disruption during autobiographical narration in neurodegenerative disorders

Compromised retrieval of autobiographical memory (ABM) is well established in neurodegenerative disorders. The recounting of autobiographical events is inextricably linked to linguistic knowledge, yet no study to date has investigated whether tense use during autobiographical narration is disrupted in dementia syndromes. This study investigated the incidence of correct past tense use during ABM narration in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD, n = 10) and semantic dementia (SD, n = 10) in comparison with healthy older Controls (n = 10). Autobiographical narratives were analysed for episodic content (internal/external) and classified according to tense use (past/present). Across both patient groups, use of the past tense was significantly compromised relative to Controls, with increased levels of off‐target present tense verbs observed. Voxel‐based morphometry analyses based on structural MRI revealed differential associations between past tense use and regions of grey matter intensity in the brain. Bilateral temporal cortices were implicated in the SD group, whereas frontal, lateral, and medial temporal regions including the right hippocampus emerged in AD. This preliminary study provides the first demonstration of the disruption of specific linguistic constructs during autobiographical narration in AD and SD. Future studies are warranted to clarify at what point in the disease trajectory such deficits in tense use emerge, and whether these deficits are a product or contributing factor in memory disruption in these syndromes.