Forum der Psychoanalyse: A journal documenting the “normalization” of the psychoanalytic field in Germany

Abstract

Forum der Psychoanalyse, which holds a firm place in the German-speaking world today, was founded in 1984 in a rugged landscape of psychoanalysis in Germany that was the consequence of the malignant group processes that had occurred between psychoanalytic societies after World War II. The Forum's foundation was guided by the idea of creating a constructive climate between the rivalrous groups and moderating the gap between them, given the increasing recognition of the shared history of psychoanalysis in Germany that had started to take root in the 1980s. Emphasizing the common ground in psychoanalytic theory and practice, the Forum is open to all psychoanalysts, to discussions of the various psychoanalytic trends, and to contemporary interdisciplinary dialogue. It promotes exchanges between psychoanalytic societies, and is also meant as a bridge to the development of psychoanalysis abroad.     

Ajātasattu and the future of psychoanalytic anthropology. Part I: The promise of a culture

Conclusion Thus, we can see that Obeyesekere’s notion and usage of some psychoanalytic concepts is at variance with Freud’s formulations and with those of standard psychoanalytic theory. This divergence is also evident in Obeyesekere’s formulation of the concept of disconnection, which is arguably the most important construct in the first chapter of The work of culture. Space constraints prevent us taking-up this concept here. So let me now conclude this first part of the essay, and begin part 2 with an examination of ‘disconnection’ in the context of a discussion of Obeyesekere’s accounts of two South Asian ecstatics.     

Has the ship sailed? The causes and consequences of school dropout from an ecological viewpoint

Social Psychology of Education - The purpose of this study is to determine the factors relating to school dropout from the perspective of dropout students, their teachers, and their parents. It...     

Like a Phoenix from Its Ashes? On the Fate and Future of the International Association for the Psychology of Religion

This paper provides some information on the International Association for the Psychology of Religion (IAPR, Internationale Gesellschaft für Religionspsychologie, founded 1914), especially on its recent organization and on its revitalized yearbook Archiv für Religionspsychologie (Archives for the Psychology of Religion). The present self-understanding of the IAPR is presented, its interdisciplinary character is discussed and some suggestions for practical aims are provided.     

You can't miss what you've never had: Can you?: The challenges and struggles of single parenthood from a psychoanalytic perspective

The issue of the growth of single-parent families has been in the forefront of political, social and moral debate in recent years. Children from single-parent families tend to be over-represented in clinic populations. Yet this state of My being may be no more potentially pathological than the nuclear family, which can become conceptually idealized The aim of this paper is to look behind the statistics and examine the impact on children of life in a single-parent family, to explore how this may be managed, and to look for potentiating factors which can enable good-enough development to unfold. Case material is used to illustrate the theme.     

Supervision as oversight: A new era in the history of psychoanalytic practice and training?

Taking its cue from Ekstein's analysis of the history of supervision (1960), this article proposes that there is a new historical era emerging in Britain, a phase that could be characterised as the ‘regulatory phase’. It is argued that in the future the clinical supervisor of psychoanalytic work will be positioned as ‘overseer’, with the consequence that what might be overlooked/not seen in the new regulatory climate is the notion of a psychoanalytically informed practice as a practice of the questioning of knowledge and its effects. Further, it considers how the effect of the proposed regulatory framework for psy-practice in the UK elides the current distinction between ‘practitioner/analyst’ and ‘trainee/candidate’. Thus psychoanalytically informed practitioners are re-positioned as candidates for authorisation as state licensed psy-practitioners. A clinical example, based loosely on Freud's account of his analysis of the young female homosexual, draws attention to the specifics and problematics of the competencies for analytic work and its supervision proposed by the Health Professions Council, Skills for Health and research for University College London, which envisages a future role of supervisors as the overseers of standardised interventions.     

“Containing the Uncontainable”: The Return of the Phantom and its Reconfiguration in Ethnonational Conflict Resolution

A phenomenologically informed psychoanalytic praxis for framing and conducting ethnonational conflict resolution in fractured communities is presented. When conducted with care, it begins with the polarization of each side in the conflict and continues into a second phase where the antagonism changes into the negotiation of paradox, irony and multiplicity of positions. Third, the crossing of mental borders with trepidation follows. Fourth, an ethic of responsibility, where common ground is sought brings closure to the process. A plea for humility, however, is required of practitioner scholars of conflict resolution because there is invariably a phantom that threatens to be resurrected to derail what at one time looked like success long after the work is formally completed. The return of the phantom requires practitioners to seriously consider implications for follow-up.     

The dual aspect of fantasy: Flight from reality or imaginative realm? Considerations and hypotheses from clinical psychoanalysis1

This paper discusses the view that fantasizing, understood as a flight into fantasy, belongs to a type of mental functioning distinct from imaginative fantasy. From this the idea emerges, proposed by Winnicott, that withdrawal into fantasy assumes a dissociative quality, which is formed early on as a defensive solution following the loss of hope in object relations. Such a defence becomes the foundation for a dangerous enclave in which the individual ends up enclosing himself, experiencing an illusory self-sufficiency. In this perspective, the author maintains that the flight into fantasy must be understood as a risk factor for the draining of the self or for a crystallization into psychopathological structures, becoming an automatic activity of 'non-thought' that substitutes for the working-through processes necessary for the development of the mind. The paper investigates this psychopathological dynamic, which was already present in Breuer and Freud's writings, examining subsequent contributions of various authors. Clinical material (of both children and adults) illustrates how the flight into fantasy may take the form of an anti-relational realm of the mind, compromising the operations necessary to the integration of psychic life. There is also a discussion of which therapeutic tools may help the patient to gradually abandon the withdrawal in favour of an authentically nourishing relational nature.     

Faqir or faker?: The Pakpattan tragedy and the politics of Sufism in Pakistan

On the night of April 1, 2001, over a hundred devotees were crushed to death in a mob stampede during the annual pilgrimage at the shrine of Pakistan's most famous Sufi saint, Baba Farid ad-Din Ganj-i Shakkar. This article explores this tragedy as a case study of the politics of Sufism. In today's Pakistan, Sufism remains an emotive, multi-valent and highly contested symbol—a lightning rod in the contestation over Islamic identity, authority and authenticity. While most Pakistanis view Sufi saints as the embodiment of Islamic virtue—true faqirs (‘impoverished ones’) committed to a life of piety, self-sacrifice and public service—the detractors of the tradition dismiss them as fakers. Faqir or faker? The opposing answers to this question reveal how the Sufi tradition is argued and debated in Pakistan and throughout the modern Muslim world. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I examine the differing responses of the state, the shrine custodians and a group of Chishti Sabiri Sufi disciples to the Pakpattan tragedy of 2001. Focusing on the response of Sufi participants, I trace how a story of personal loss and national trauma was transformed into a narrative of sacrifice and sacralisation, with Sufism framed as Islamic orthodoxy.     

The Combined Effect of the Severity and the Certainty of Threatened Penalties: Additive or Interactive?

Research carried out to date has yielded inconsistent results regarding the manner in which the severity and certainty of threatened penalties combine to affect deterrence. While some studies presented evidence showing an interactive combination, others yielded an additive pattern. The present study tested and supported the proposition that the process whereby the two variables combine depends on the type of penalty with which a person is threatened. In the case of penalties the severity of which can be psychologically weighed in interval values, the combined effect is multiplicative or interactive. On the other hand, when the severity of a penalty can be expressed only ordinally, the combined effect is largely additive.     

Agency or constraint? The mutual shaping of control beliefs and working lives in East Germany after 1989

The situation in Eastern Germany after 1989 brought about a dramatic change in the opportunities for continuing the existing lifepath, and also for pursuing new life goals. In this article, interdependencies of events in the working life on the one hand and control beliefs on the other are investigated. Specifically, the question is addressed as to whether the conditions of an abrupt and sudden system change allowed for differences in these beliefs to become accentuated and more important for successes and failures in working life. Empirical analyses rely on data of the three birth cohorts of 1939–1941, 1951–1953, and 1959–1961 of the East German Life History Study. Results show, first, that control beliefs were strongly influenced by labour market mobility over all the different periods of the East German transformation, but not by all types of labour market mobility in the same way. Second, in the other direction, only a rather limited impact of perceived control on working lives was observed. For a situation of abrupt social change this is a rather astonishing result, which is obviously due to a closure of structural opportunities despite an opening of institutional barriers.     

Ethics: universal or global? The trends in studies of ethics in the context of globalization

The article discusses how theory and practice in global ethics affect each other. First, the author explores how the study of ethics has changed in the era of globalization and ponders what the role of the field of study of global ethics is in this context. Second, she wants to show how the logical fallacies in widening study field of ethics produce false polarizations between facts and value judgements in social ethics made in various cultural contexts. She further elaborates how these false polarizations prevent constructive cross-cultural and transnational discussions on ethical guidelines and principles that are needed to produce joint action (plans) to deal with serious ethical issues globally and nationally. Finally, the paper argues that in order to find a way to solve our shared complex ethical problems in global context, we need to get back to basics by focusing on the method of ethics, that is, self-critical and logical analysis of sound argumentation and justification of our values and moral principles.     

The Role of Gender Identification in Social Dominance Orientation: Mediating or Moderating the Effect of Sex?1

Previous research has shown that people's gender identification correlates with their social dominance orientation (SDO). A question is whether gender identification mediates or moderates the effect of biological sex on SDO. We examined the correlations of sex and gender identification with SDO using the Bem Sex Role Inventory in Study 1 and a gender diagnostic measure in Study 2. Both studies showed that gender identification was significantly associated with SDO. In Study 1, gender identification partially mediated the effect of sex on SDO; and in Study 2, this mediation was complete. There were no indications that gender identification moderated the effect of sex on SDO. The results are discussed against the background of the gender invariance hypothesis of SDO.     

The Spiritual,the Cultural and the Religious: What can we learn from a study of boy choristers?

This article reports on a study of the boys in a major city centre church choir. It is treated as a case study of the potential confusion between the spiritual, the cultural and the religious. The study shows that the performance of religious rituals might, for many of the boys, be more accurately described as a cultural phenomenon. A deep appreciation of music, with evidence of 'peak experiences', describes a reality which has been called 'spiritual' in humanistic phenomenological writings. All the boys in the study were found to be 'spiritual' in that they loved and were moved by the music they sang in church, but few perceived their singing as a form of religious ministry. Religious commitment and faith development was found to range from piety to atheism, with an increasing tendency towards Enlightenment scepticism amongst the older boys. The boys could be identified as a social group by their shared love for music, but not by a shared religious faith. Discussion is developed about the reality of the spiritual with and without a religious commitment, in which credal literalism is seen as cultural rather than spiritual. A call for greater recognition of the significance of the cultural and social is made.     

The importance of social structure and social interaction in stereotype consensus and content: is the whole greater than the sum of its parts?

This paper addresses the hypothesis derived from self‐categorization theory (SCT) that the relationship between groups and stereotyping will be affected by the social structural conditions within which group interaction occurs. A mixed design experiment (n=56) measured low‐status groups' stereotypes and preferences for conflict with a high‐status outgroup prior to and after within‐group discussion across varying social structural conditions. Over time, participants in [open] conditions consensualized around positive conceptions of the outgroup and endorsed acceptance of their own [low status] position. However, in [closed] conditions participants consensualized around positive conceptions of the ingroup, negative conceptions of the outgroup, and tended towards preferences for collective protest. It is argued that the data support S‐CT's contention that stereotyping and group processes are fundamentally interlinked and that neither can be properly understood in isolation from the dynamics of the surrounding intergroup context. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.