Discussion: The Analyst's Involvement in the Creative Aspect of Analysis

Recent formulations on the psychology of creativity in the analytic context, such as Albert Rothenberg's “homospacial thinking,” Arnold Modell's “unconscious metaphoric thought,” and Thomas Ogden's “transformational thinking,” are discussed. These concepts enable previously unconnected experiences to be combined within the mind, while emphasizing interpersonal imaginative processes such as identification and empathic knowledge; the dual cognitive features of these formulations permit awareness of the complexity of feelings in oneself and others, essential for psychoanalytic creativity. Further, the articles in this issue are synthesized, highlighting the importance of the analyst making creative (new and valuable) use of his or her entire life experience, feelings, attitudes, and fantasies in treatment. From this dicussion, it is evident that the analyst's creative use of self should be more systematically incorporated into psychoanalytic theory of technique.     

The Analyst's Secret Delinquencies

Despite a burgeoning literature on major analytic boundary violations, there has been little investigation of what might be called analytic delinquencies or misdemeanors—the small and virtually ubiquitous ways in which analysts deliberately withdraw from the therapeutic endeavor. I consider the impact of professional misdemeanors on patient and analyst and compare both with more serious analytic “crimes” and enactments. Professional delinquencies may reflect a therapeutic reenactment, an expression of the analyst's split-off or disavowed need, or an unconscious attempt to self-regulate or to negotiate space within the constraints of the treatment setting. Because the professional ideal leaves so little room for the analyst's humanity, it is often difficult for us to address and work with evidence of our own need when it clashes with what we regard as the analytic contract.     

The Analyst's Bad-Enough Participation

The term “bad-enough” participation refers, in a general sense, to the inevitable ways that all analysts cause their patients to suffer and, more specificaelly, within each analysis, to the ways in which the analyst's participation confirms some version of the patient's worst fears. These manifestations of “badness,” as long as they are honestly considered and creatively used, are expectable, and even therapeutically essential, aspects of analytic relatedness. Frequently, however, an analyst's bad-enough participation, despite its ubiquity and transformational potential, is attenuated or selectively overlooked. As a result, the therapeutic possibilities of analytic work may be compromised. In this paper the analyst's bad-enough participation is considered conceptually, and an argument is advanced for its therapeutic salience. Two cases are discussed, the first involving a treatment impasse, and the second, the beginning phase of a long-term treatment.     

The Analyst's Necessary Vertigo

The euphemistic phrase “the difficult to reach patient” often refers to work with patients who have serious difficulties relating. The author examines the basic construct of “reach,” its pitfalls, and potentials. In the author's view, often we are talking about patients who do not fully experience their own subjective existence or the existence of others. This requires unusual efforts to “reach” the patient in order for the patient to consolidate a sense of self and other, creating the possibility of reflective relating. In contrast to views that see such psychoanalytic “reach” as associated primarily with the analyst's needs or pathology, the author views the analyst's extraordinary efforts as responsive to the patient's need to move the analyst into the foundations of the analyst's own being.     

The Analyst's Participation in the Process

Using a clinical vignette, in which self-disclosure appears as a starting point, the authors investigate the connection between method and techniques. As the recent literature on the subject generally maintains, the classical analysts' neutral position can no longer be accepted. Analysts are always fully engaged in the intersubjective relationship and pass their values on to their patients through their professional roles - which can be understood as self-disclosure in a wider meaning. However, self-disclosure, and in more general terms the analyst's participation in the process, need technical criteria of reference. By deepening the relationship between method and techniques, established by Rapaport, the authors maintain that method is determined by theory and in turn gives meaning to techniques. As a consequence, techniques play a minor role with regard to theory and method. The opening of psychoanalysis to the relational perspective is bringing about the decrease of technique as an absolute value in favour of a greater self-awareness of the analyst who, following the method related to his/her theory will be able to better cope with techniques.     

Multiple Imputation for Multivariate Missing-Data Problems: A Data Analyst's Perspective

Analyses of multivariate data are frequently hampered by missing values. Until recently, the only missing-data methods available to most data analysts have been relatively ad1 hoc practices such as listwise deletion. Recent dramatic advances in theoretical and computational statistics, however, have produced anew generation of flexible procedures with a sound statistical basis. These procedures involve multiple imputation (Rubin, 1987), a simulation technique that replaces each missing datum with a set of m > 1 plausible values. The rn versions of the complete data are analyzed by standard complete-data methods, and the results are combined using simple rules to yield estimates, standard errors, and p-values that formally incorporate missing-data uncertainty. New computational algorithms and software described in a recent book (Schafer, 1997a) allow us to create proper multiple imputations in complex multivariate settings. This article reviews the key ideas of multiple imputation, discusses the software programs currently available, and demonstrates their use on data from the Adolescent Alcohol Prevention Trial (Hansen & Graham, 199 I).     

Four Pedagogical Mistakes: A Mea Culpa

Abstract. The theological pedagogies which dominate degree‐granting schools originated in the courses of study and graduate programs of the teachers. These pedagogies foster a deep rift between theology as an academic or scholarly discipline (science?) and the situations and interests of students. Students are taught to imitate what scholars do: interpreting texts, making formal arguments, and writing essays. Accordingly, theology recedes from the present and future of students including future clergy, having little to do with their religious life or career. By defining theology as scholarship, academic pedagogy obscures its primary meaning, the critical and creative thinking of the situations of life and world under the perspective of the Gospel. If theology's primary meaning is scholarly knowledge and its preoccupation with text interpretation and doctrinal exposition, the result will be to ignore religion's actual practices, especially its idolatrous tendency to literalize its own language and absolutize its institutional mediations. A pedagogy that reflects theology's primary meaning will focus on contemplation, reflection, and thinking and thus order methods, texts, and doctrines to that.     

The Analyst's Anticipatory Fantasies: Aid and Obstacle to the Patient's Self-Integration

In this paper I explore instances of enactment related to the analyst's feelings and fantasies about how analysis will proceed. As I discuss a patient who was developing a new capacity to experience conflict, I explore how the analyst's fantasies about the impact of his interpretations may be utilized in helping him to elaborate and understand the patient's unconscious fantasies and identifications and unintegrated feeling states. In so doing, we sometimes discover how we are unwittingly influencing or avoiding understanding our patient's own version of their psychic catastrophe. As we develop language where there was previously no integrative language for the patient's internalized and interactive version of catastrophe, we always project particular kinds of expectations into the therapeutic situation.     

The Story of the Self in the Aftermath of Crisis: A Case Study

Adopting a dialogical framework, a case study is presented that explores the story of the self in the aftermath of crisis. An analysis and interpretation of the case study leads to the hypothesis that integration and dialogue through promoters, coalitions, and cooperation are needed in the process of reconstructing the story and the self. A cultural narrative may facilitate such a process. It is proposed that during these developments a new core position may arise that has the capacity to unite and reconcile the self while promoting growth in the aftermath of crisis. Future research is encouraged that examines this hypothesis more broadly.     

The Analyst's Uses of Theory and the Theory the Analyst Uses: Reply to Commentary

Where Slochower focuses her discussion on the analyst's multiform uses of theory, I focus my response on how the theory we each use informs a quite different way of understanding what is at issue for my patient in the apparent disengagement that marks her quest for help. More broadly, I consider how the theoretical perspective Slochower brings to her rendering of my clinical understanding and position makes for a reading that diverges significantly from my own view of what transpired in the treatment process I present.     

Visions of the Future: The Analyst's Expectations and their Impact on the Analytic Process

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Visions of the Future: The Analyst's Expectations and Their Impact on the Analytic Process

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

The Effects of Terrorism: The Aftermath of the London Terror Attacks1

The July 2005 London bombings highlight prevailing terrorist threats to the UK. The present study addressed the psychological response of a community indirectly exposed to the attacks. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), specific hypotheses examined associations between coping mechanisms (resilience, religious faith), emotions, and risk outcomes. Qualitative content analysis demonstrated the complexity of responses to terrorism. SEM analysis showed that resilience helped attenuate the effect of negative emotions; negative emotions heightened risk judgments; and respondents higher on religious faith displayed more positive emotions regarding the attacks. The content analysis supplemented quantitative results. Combined, these results highlight the importance of conveying accurate risk appraisals proportionate to the threat, as well as consideration of psychological operations, including resilience and religious faith.