Deconstructing the unconscious saboteur: Composing a life with ambition and desire

Abstract

This paper explores the unconscious roots of women's ambition from an object relations, developmental, and hermaneutic perspective. Three high-profile women's stories illustrate the formative and deformative power of narration: those of Hilary Clinton, Tina Turner, and the heroine of Phantom of the Opera. Each narrative reveals typical deformative constrictions to the expression of female ambition, including male abrogation of female capability and the denigration of ambition as unfeminine. Through clinical vignettes, this paper explores dynamic, developmental, and cultural forces that block female ambition's full flowering. Part of the need to keep women's ambition limited stems from the unconscious needs of the masculine psyche for superiority. This is communicated to little girls through their mothers' internalized parental imagoes, including their mothers' identification with their mothers and their own oedipal struggles. Similarly, the father's unconscious anxieties in relation to his parental imagoes, particularly his preoedipal and oedipal relations with his mother, are communicated. Another constraining dynamic relates to female conflicts around separation from the mother. Composing new narratives of women's ambition with our patients can incorporate the uniquely feminine aspects of comfort with diffusion, while weaving multiple and disparate strands laced with nurturance and aggression.

Harriet Kimble Wyre. Auflösung des unbewussten Saboteurs: Aufbau eines Lebens aus Streben nach Erfolg.

Erforscht werden die unbewussten Wurzeln des Erfolgstrebens von Frauen, aus der Perspektive der Objektbeziehungen, der Entwicklungspsychologie und der Hermeneutik. Die Erfolgsgeschichten dreier hochrangiger Frauen zeigen die aufbauende und zersetzende Kraft ihrer internalisierten Lebensgeschichten: Hilary Clinton, Tina Turner, und die Heldin aus Phantom der Oper. Die Lebensgeschichten enthüllen typische deformierende Einengungen der Einschätzung von weiblichem Erfolgsstreben. Ein Aspekt davon ist die von männern oft vertretene Aberkennung von ausserordentlichen Fähigkeiten von Frauen sowie die Ansicht von Männern, Erfolgsstreben bei Frauen sei unweiblich.

Durch klinische Vignetten werden dynamische, entwicklungspsychologische und kulturelle Kräfte erforscht, die die volle Entfaltung des Erfolgstrebens von Frauen blockieren. Begrenzt werden die Wünsche der Frauen nach Erfolg zum Teil durch die unbewussten Vorstellungen der männlichen Psyche, die männliche Überlegenheit zu bewahren. Diese Haltungen werden den kleinen Mädchen durch die Mutter, gemäss deren internaliserten Elternimagos, vermittelt. Dazu gehören die Identifizierungen der Mutter mit ihrer Mutter und ihre eigenen ödipalen Auseinandersetzungen. Auf die gleiche Weise werden die unbewussten Ängste des Vaters bezüglich seiner Elternimagos vermittelt, insbesondere seine vorödipale Beziehung mir seiner Mutter. Eine weitere einengende Dynamik ergibt sich für das Mädchen aus der Ablösung von der Mutter.

Wird mit unseren Patientinnen ein neues Verständnis von Erfolgsstreben geschaffen, breitet sich eine einmalige weibliche Ausprägung von vielseitiger Befriedigung aus, getragen vom Bedürfnis zu Ernähren und die Aggressionen konstruktiv umzusetzen.

Harriet Kimble Wyre. Deconstruyendo el saboteador inconsciente: Componiendo una vida con ambición y deseo.

Este trabajo explora el origen de las raíces inconscientes de la ambición en las mujeres desde las perspectivas de las relaciones objetales, del desarrollo y la hermeneútica. Las historias de tres mujeres de alto perfil ilustran el poder formativo y deformativo del poder de la narrativa: Tina Turner, Hilary Clinton y la heroína del Fantasma de la Opera. Cada narrativa revela típicas constricciones deformativas de la expresión de la ambición femenina, incluyendo la abrogación masculina de la capacidad femenina y la denigración de la ambición como no femenina.

A través de estas viñetas, se explora las fuerzas dinámicas, de desarrollo y culturales que bloquean el completo florecimiento de la ambición en la mujer. Parte de la necesidad de mantener la ambición femenina limitada proviene de la necesidad inconsciente de superioridad de la psique masculina. Esto es comunicado a las niñas por medio de las imagos parentales interiorizadas de la madre, incluyendo la identificación de la madre con su propia madre y sus conflictos edípicos. De manera semejante las ansiedades inconscientes del padre en relación con sus imagos parentales, particularmente sus relaciones preedípicas así como edípicas con su madre son también comunicados. Otra dinámica que constriñe se refiere a los conflictos femininos alrededor de la separación de la madre. Componer nuevas narrativas acerca de la ambición en las mujeres con nuestras pacientes permite incorporar los extraordinarios aspectos femeninos de consuelo y difusión mientras teje múltiples y dispares cabos enlazados a la crianza y la agresión.     

Adolescent Group Psychotherapy: Collaborative Opportunity for Patients,Parents, and Therapist

This brief report examines the uses of an Observation Team with a Parent Support Group. In particular, attention is placed on the idea of the Observation Team acting as a Reflecting Team in the final session of the group's life. Using the Observation Team in this manner has evolved from an amalgamation of ideas from family therapy and group therapy theory.     

Encouraging children to mentalise about a perceived outgroup increases prosocial behaviour towards outgroup members

We investigated whether encouraging young children to discuss the mental states of an immigrant group would elicit more prosocial behaviour towards them and impact on their perception of a group member's emotional experience. Five‐ and 6‐year‐old children were either prompted to talk about the thoughts and feelings of this social group or to talk about their actions. Across two studies, we found that this manipulation increased the extent to which children shared with a novel member of the immigrant group who was the victim of a minor transgression. The manipulation did not lead to greater sharing towards a victim from the children's own culture and did not influence their perception of a victim's negative emotions. These results may ultimately have implications for interventions aimed at fostering positive intergroup relations within the context of immigration.     

Impaired emotion recognition in music in Parkinson’s disease

Music has the potential to evoke strong emotions and plays a significant role in the lives of many people. Music might therefore be an ideal medium to assess emotion recognition. We investigated emotion recognition in music in 20 patients with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD) and 20 matched healthy volunteers. The role of cognitive dysfunction and other disease characteristics in emotion recognition was also evaluated.     

Long-term maintenance of immediate or delayed extinction is determined by the extinction-test interval

Short acquisition-extinction intervals (immediate extinction) can lead to either more or less spontaneous recovery than long acquisition-extinction intervals (delayed extinction). Using rat subjects, we observed less spontaneous recovery following immediate than delayed extinction (Experiment 1). However, this was the case only if a relatively long extinction-test interval was used; a relatively short extinction-test interval yielded the opposite result (Experiment 2). Previous data appear consistent with this observation suggesting that, although delayed extinction appears more beneficial in the short term, immediate extinction may have more favorable long-term effects. These observations may have important implications for attenuation of relapse in clinical situations.     

Improving performance expectancies in stereotypic domains: task relevance and the reduction of stereotype threat

The experiments presented here extend previous research on reducing stereotype threat, along with examining the mediating role of performance expectancies. Women who generated shared academic characteristics between men and women predicted higher scores for themselves on a math test compared to the baseline and those who generated shared non‐academic characteristics or shared physical characteristics. No effects were found for male participants' performance expectancies on an English test. Extending the relevance of these findings for stereotype threat research, women completing a math test, who first completed the shared academic characteristics task, both expressed higher performance expectancies and greater accuracy in math performance than participants in all other conditions. A partially mediating role of performance expectancies in relation to task and math performance was also found. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.