Critical Transference in a Case of Severe Epilepsy

In this paper, the author presents a summary of a brief treatment with a young woman, suffering from severe epileptic illness, which describes the mutuality of cross-transferences of deep and intense feelings and the unorthodox way to receive, to take in persons affected with critical phenomena. This treatment was deeply influenced by the traumatic triad, borrowed from Ferenczi: "amnesia, anaesthesia, aboulia," the ways of forgetting (or erasing) the past/the present/the future. The investigation led us to clarify, on the one hand, the incestophilic-or perhaps incestuous-source in the family, and on the other, the burdensome and tragic genealogy and history of each parent. At the end of this short treatment, which took place at a frequency of one session a week (with the patient sitting, standing, lying on the floor; with sometimes severe fits, deliria, threats; bringing of letters, texts, drawings; and a few phone calls), there was an alleviation of the critical phenomena and revival.     

The role of negative affectivity and negative reactivity to emotions in predicting outcomes in the unified protocol for the transdiagnostic treatment of emotional disorders

The present study aimed to understand the contributions of both the trait tendency to experience negative emotions and how one relates to such experience in predicting symptom change during participation in the Unified Protocol (UP), a transdiagnostic treatment for emotional disorders. Data were derived from a randomized controlled trial comparing the UP to a waitlist control/delayed-treatment condition. First, effect sizes of pre- to post-treatment change for frequency of negative emotions and several variables measuring reactivity to emotional experience (emotional awareness and acceptance, fear of emotions, and anxiety sensitivity) were examined. Second, the relative contributions of change in negative emotions and emotional reactivity in predicting symptom (clinician-rated anxiety, depression, and severity of principal diagnosis) reductions were investigated. Results suggested that decreases in the frequency of negative emotions and reactivity to emotions following participation in the UP were both large in magnitude. Further, two emotional reactivity variables (fear of emotions and anxiety sensitivity) remained significantly related to symptom outcomes when controlling for negative emotions, and accounted for significant incremental variance in their prediction. These findings lend support to the notion that psychological health depends less on the frequency of negative emotions and more on how one relates to these emotions when they occur.     

Empathy Deficit in Antisocial Personality Disorder: A Psychodynamic Formulation

Empathic difficulty is a highly consequential characteristic of antisocial personality structure. The origin, maintenance, and possible resolution of this profound deficit are not very clear. While reconstructing empathic ability is of primary importance in the treatment of antisocial personality, not many proven procedures are in evidence. In this article, the author offers a psychodynamic formulation of the origin, character, and maintenance of the empathic deficiency in antisocial personality. The author discusses some of the treatment implications from this dynamic formulation.     

How Does Neurobiological Research Influence Psychoanalytic Treatments?—Clinical Observations and Reflections From a Study on the Interface of Clinical Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience

One of the counterarguments against empirical research in psychoanalysis is that research negatively influences the treatment situation. In this paper, the impact of a neurobiological study on psychoanalytically oriented treatments is presented from three different perspectives: patients' views, a study group of participating psychoanalysts and a clinical case example. Twenty chronically depressed patients, 20 healthy controls and 16 psychoanalysts participated in the project on research. Results show a clear influence of the neurobiological study on the course of treatments. Patients consistently reported that study participation had a positive impact on their treatment experiences. However, study participation was conflictual for the psychoanalysts and forced them to carefully reflect on their unconscious and conscious involvement to establish a psychoanalytic stance independent from empirical research.     

Rankian Will

Otto Rank (1884–1939) served as Freud's closest partner in the psychoanalytic movement from 1906 to 1926. From 1923 on, Rank, initially with Ferenczi, focused on making analysis more therapeutic, emphasizing current experience in the session over historical exploration and interpretation. Rank settled on will as a missing factor, and wrote extensively about it after the break with Freud in 1926, when he moved to Paris. He emphasized the here-and-now, redefined “resistance” as a positive aspect of counter-will, and suggested a time limit for analysis. Ousted from analytic circles in 1930, he eventually moved to New York, continuing to treat patients and teach until his unexpected death at 55 in 1939. After decades of obscurity, Rank has gained readers and therapists whose orientation is interpersonal, client-centered, relational, humanistic, or existential. His influence on post-Freudian ego-psychology is finally being acknowledged as are his ideas about creativity, will, life-fear and death-fear, guilt, and ethics.     

The Rank–Ferenczi Relationship,as Seen from France

Seen from France, where Rank's “American” work is not well known, the Rank–Ferenczi relationship does not allow to state that the two learned colleagues were the best friends. Rank met Ferenczi in 1908, but their most valuable and fruitful working relationship is limited to the 1922–1924 time period. Their working relationship must be read in light of the unique transference links of each to Freud, and in light of the tormented history of the analytic movement, especially after the First World War. The sensible reader will not forget that after the fast extinction of their short collaboration they continued their own works in their own ways, Otto Rank in Paris and in America and Sándor Ferenczi in Budapest. No more friends, nor enemies, but both, in a different style, brave and creative analysts.     

Confusion of Wills: Otto Rank’s Contribution to an Understanding of Childism

Drawing from Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's psychological and psychodynamic study of prejudice as a starting point, this paper explores the phenomenon of childism—namely, the prejudice again children—from a Rankian psychodynamic perspective. Young-Bruehl argues that childism is comparable to prejudices such as anti-Semitism, sexism, and racism, and serves such purposes as the elimination of an individual's personhood, sexual exploitation, and the erasure of identity. Adding to Young-Bruehl's analysis of the social and psychological causes and effects of prejudice against children, this paper will examine the nature and dangers of childism explicit and implicit in the writings of Otto Rank. We will examine the development of creative will in child maturation—a development that childist forms of prejudice may obstruct, inhibit, and compromise. We will see that Young-Bruehl's foundational writing on childism echoes many of the observations and writings of Otto Rank in regard to the prejudice against children, and how such prejudice deeply diminishes, undermines, and fractures our unfolding lives and creative will in a shared world.