Whose Resistance is it Anyway?

In considering the three papers that are unified under the umbrella of how to think about the concept of “resistance” in contemporary psychoanalysis, it is through my lens as a developmental psychoanalyst that their discussion unfolds. The papers, each from a different theoretical position, can be considered together if one looks at them from the perspective of the evolution of Self and how it plays out in the clinical exchange with psychoanalysts of different theoretical persuasions. Each of the authors presents a point of view that has resonance with aspects of what facilitates and what interferes in the development of Self. The forces and counter-forces in treatment mirror those forces in development. This paper was first presented at the Spring meeting of the Division of Psychoanalysis in 2014 in New York City as part of a panel entitled: “If it is Not Resistance, What is it?”     

Suicidal Behaviors among Clients at an Outpatient Psychology Clinic versus the General Population

ABSTRACT: The focus of this paper is on the comparison of suicidal behaviors among two populations in the same geographical area: clients at a psychology clinic vs. individuals from the general population sampled at an area shopping center. In both samples, 10 percent of the individuals reported prior parasuicidal behavior; the two populations were also quite similar on reports of prior suicidal ideation: 31 percent in the clinical and 24 percent in the general population reported never, or only briefly, considering suicide at any point in their lives. Suicidal behavior was related to sex and income in the general population.     

Sequencing in social repair: A Markov grammar of children's discourse about transgressions

A Markov grammar was developed to account for the sequence of conversational moves in discourse about transgressions. This discourse interrupts ongoing activity and functions to repair the social fabric when inappropriate or awkward behavior has attracted the attention of interactants. A corpus of 1248 such interchanges, obtained in 90 hr of observation in kindergarten through fourth grade classrooms, was the basis of the grammar. Beginning with theoretical assumptions about the canonical form of these interchanges, the process of grammar development was explicitly described and the direction given by pragmatic considerations (such as attaining a balance between parsimony and accuracy) was discussed. The resultant grammar accounted for 83% of the corpus and served as a framework within which age and context effects on the discourse were explored. Loglinear analyses of multiway contingency tables at each transition point in the grammar revealed that the presence vs absence of an adult in the interchange affected the relative preferences for different alternatives at one juncture, but that subjects' ages did not influence the sequencing of discourse as described by the model. The overall approach was considered in relation to the more traditional uses of Markov models and its strengths, weaknesses, and future promise for discourse analysis were discussed.