Toward a psychoanalytic iconography

In describing the principles of psychoanalytic iconography, I follow a historical approach, pointing out that the rudiments of such an interpretive mode are present in Freud's works on Leonardo and on the Moses of Michelangelo and reach a classical expression in Kris's paper on Messerschmidt. Some recent scholarly studies of works of art rest on the incorporation of psychoanalysis into contemporary views of the nature of man, thus permitting a level of analysis of art not previously attained. The interface between a psychoanalytic understanding of the artist's life and preoccupations and the unconscious content present in the work itself continues to offer an opportunity for refining the analytic tool as an instrument for understanding aesthetic response and creativity.     

Toward a definition of psychoanalytic neutrality

The word and concept of neutrality play an important but confusing role in the history of psychoanalysis. Does neutrality imply indifference? The origin of this ambiguity is traced to the fact that Freud himself never used the word "neutrality" (Neutralitaet) in his own writings. (His term Indifferenz was translated as "neutrality" by Strachey.) The essence of the controversy that has simmered in the psychoanalytic literature ever since is contained in the question: "Is remaining true to the concept of neutrality somehow antithetical to the analyst's genuine involvement with the patient?" In this paper, I examine the feeling and power aspects of the word and suggest that the concept of neutrality becomes clinically useful when the analyst asks himself the question, "Neutral to what?" The analyst's awareness of his motives for recognizing and addressing certain conflicts and for overlooking others is heightened. With three clinical vignettes as illustrations, I explore the role of the concept of neutrality in deepening our understanding of (1) the analytic relationship; (2) The influence, on the conduct of the treatment, of the analyst's goals and theoretical persuasion regarding how the goals are to be achieved. As examples, I use the current debates over the relative value of the analyst's focusing his attention on: (a) the patient's mind in the hour rather than his life outside the hour and, (b) transference over nontransference interpretation. Finally, I emphasize the far-reaching implications of adding an explicit concept of "external reality" to A. Freud's exclusively intrapsychic definition of the "objective" analyst's position of neutrality as equidistant from id, ego, and superego. The addition of this fourth point to the analyst's "compass" widens the analytic field toward which the analyst is neutral. The concept of neutrality with respect to specifiable conflicts is thereby also broadened to include (a) interpersonal conflict within the psychoanalytic relationship and (b) conflict within the analyst. With these explicit additions, the concept of neutrality with respect to conflict becomes congruent with the current emphasis on the nonauthoritarian two-persons aspects of the psychoanalytic relationship, without detracting from the primary analytic goal of deeper understanding of intrapsychic conflict.     

Toward a reorientation of research on aggression

A number of studies are reported which sustain the importance of individual differences in the study of aggression. Irritability, emotional susceptibility, dissipatio—nrumination, tolerance toward violence, and proneness to guilt feelings provide a better understanding of the various forms of aggression. Prosocial behaviour, emotional instability, and physical and verbal aggression proved to be important indicators to children's more general adjustment. To go beyond the traditional paradigm of research on aggression a structural and interactive—interpersonal analysis of aggression is recommended. Aggression as a unitary phenomenon is called into question. Instead, it is stated that the various facets of aggression find an explanation and acquire meaning within the context of global personality development and functioning.     

Toward a research-informed,evidence-based psychoanalytic supervision

The first paper on the subject of an analyst's pregnancy appeared more than 50 years ago, and was followed by a complete silence on the subject for the following 17 years. Slowly, a few substantial papers began to emerge, and there has been a gradual expansion in this area of the psychoanalytic literature particularly over the past 25 years, so that by now we have at least 60 papers on the subject, several chapters in books, and at least one complete book that I am aware of. There is of course a substantial separate literature on the subject of pregnancy itself, which is of direct relevance to an understanding of the subject of the analyst's pregnancy. In addition, the literature on special events in the course of therapy is pertinent to the subject too. I have limited my own review of the literature specifically to that related to the analyst's pregnancy but I have included all the references I could trace in the bibliography at the end of this issue.

I have grouped the papers to some extent around key areas of interest as they emerge from the whole literature. In particular, I have noted that the earliest papers began to outline some generic responses to the analyst's pregnancy, ranging in intensity from supposedly minor turbulence in men to intense transference storms in women. The early papers seem to have regarded pregnancy solely as an interference in the treatment process. Later papers began to place more emphasis on the analyst's countertransference response and to acknowledge that the therapist herself is confronted at this time with issues involving her own identity, integration of new roles, maternal identification and redefinition of important relationships in her own life. At the same time she is having to find a way of functioning as an analyst in the face of intensified transference reactions. If the analyst can negotiate the challenges to her own pre-existing psychological equilibrium which pregnancy confronts her with, she will be better placed to address the stormy period in therapy which her pregnancy is likely to provoke in her patients, and some therapeutic gains can be made over this phase of the analysis.

Later papers attempt to differentiate male from female responses to the pregnancy, and the demarcation is not surprisingly found to track psychosexual development along familiar gender lines. Examination of responses of homosexual patients, whether male or female, emphasizes the point. In addition, attempts to differentiate responses to the event according to the core psychopathology in the patient, confirm the pattern of anxieties and defences to be expected in particular configurations.

A few papers examine the responses of patients to the therapist's pregnancy in different treatment modalities, and although there is some evidence to suggest that patients having group treatment are more likely to present with issues of sexual curiosity, sexual identity, or sibling rivalry, compared with patients in individual therapy, in the final analysis all patients confirm a core complex of fear of abandonment and feelings of loss of the fantasized exclusive mother-infant relationship.

There is very little discussion in the literature on the impact of an analyst's absence due to unsuccessful pregnancies and it is postulated that this remains an area of great difficulty for the patient and the analyst, to the extent that it is almost obliterated. I can find only three papers on this topic. However, a few papers are published on the patients' responses to an analyst who has had two pregnancies. While this constitutes a particularly complex challenge to both patient and analyst, the overview suggests that there are additional therapeutic gains to be made in terms of working through, in the course of the second pregnancy.

Numerous authors address the subject of the inevitable changes in technique that follow from the fact of the analyst's pregnancy. Some of these changes are felt to be directly related to the physical and psychological changes with which the therapist is confronted at this time, and by association so is her patient. The more these changes can be acknowledged by the therapist, within herself, the more likely it is that she will be able to continue to function as an analyst. It is also apparent that the role of the supervisor is of particular importance during and immediately following this life-changing event (Imber 1995 Goldberger, M, Gillman, R, Levinson, N, Notman, M, Seeling, B and Shaw, R. 2003. On supervising the pregnant psychoanalytic candidate. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 72: 439–463. [Taylor &; Francis Online] , [Google Scholar], Goldberger et al. 2003) and this is described in some detail in these two recent papers.     

Toward a psychoanalytic theory of violence,fundamentalism and terrorism

Abstract

Why would a group of people behave in ways that appear to us as moral nihilism, such as the events of 9/11? One cause is an affective one that underlies all violent behavior, namely, narcissistic injuries severe enough to threaten the survival of the self or of the group with which the self identifies, in the absence of non-violent means of maintaining or restoring individual or collective self-esteem. But there is also a uniquely modern cognitive reason for this uniquely modern form of violence, and of the apocalyptic fundamentalism that legitimizes it: namely, that terrorists see themselves as destroying the nihilism that they perceive as coming from us, that is, from the modern Western scientific mentality that destroys the credibility of the traditional sources of moral, legal and political authority and legitimacy, God and religion. Fundamentalism originated in the United States and has spread throughout the world as a rebellion against modernity. This suggests means of curing it: by facilitating access to modern education, psychological awareness, socio-economic equality and political democracy, to help protect all societies from the affective threats of shame and humiliation, and the cognitive threats of nihilism, anomie and anarchy (and their alternatives, nationalism, dogmatism and theocracy).     

Developmental assumptions in literary criticism and their implications for conceptions of continuity and change in literary creativity

With 2 critical readings of William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood," this article presents contrasting assumptions of the literary critic about the development of artistic creativity and relates them to the issue of continuity and change in literary expression over the life span. The unveiled assumptions parallel the "hard" (structuralist) and "soft" (life-span) conceptions of human development prevailing in contemporary psychology. A better understanding of creative development may be reached by superimposing the principles derived from the soft metatheoretical orientation on those of the hard theory.     

Six types of fallaciousness: Toward a realistic theory of logical criticism

I begin by formulating the problem of the nature of fallacy in terms of the logic of the negative evaluation of argument, that is, in terms of a theory of logical criticism; here I discuss several features of my approach and several advantages vis-à-vis other approaches; a main feature of my approach is the concern to avoid both formalist and empiricist excesses. I then define six types of fallaciousness, labeled formal, explanatory, presuppositional, positive, semantical, and persuasive; they all involve arguments whose conclusion may be said not to follow from the premises, that is, they involve the logical evaluation of relationships among propositions. I also provide a set of data consisting of four historical cases or nine specific instances of fallacious arguments; these all pertain to the Copernican controversy about the earth's motion in the seventeenth century. I end with a discussion of further problems and inquiries that deserve attention.