Therapeutic Action and the Story of the Middle

Abstract. The work of Sándor Ferenczi anticipates various challenges of contemporary psychoanalysis—clinical, technical, and theoretical. Among the most novel is his elaboration of the concept of trauma. Ferenczi's 1930s writings were mostly read by the psychoanalysts of his time, including Freud, as a return to Freud's seduction theory. Nevertheless, in Ferenczi, there is an innovation that distinguishes him from Freud. Although today's psychoanalytic community expresses a growing interest in Ferenczi's trauma theory, the field pays less attention to his focus on the traumatic dimension of language itself and the effects language has on the subject. In fact, Ferenczi's later work uniquely explores the relationship between trauma and language. In part, what makes Ferenczi's trauma theory unique is that it anticipates Jacques Lacan's work on the traumatic dimension of language, which the French psychoanalyst referred to in his final theoretical production through the concept of lalangue.     

The Form of Play in the Shape and Unity of Self

In The Three Essays, Sigmund Freud advances a radical account of gender, sexuality, and knowledge. The power and implications of his account remain underappreciated, even within contemporary psychoanalysis. Freud portrays masculinity and femininity as equally problematic and painfully acquired social constructs. Concepts such as the unconscious and desire further undermine conventional ideas about masculinity and femininity, sexuality and rationality. Despite objectionable statements about women, Freud's ideas subvert traditional justifications for male dominance. Freud makes the equally radical claim that there is no intrinsic relationship between anatomical difference and sexual desire. Heterosexuality is neither the “natural” expression of the drive for pleasure nor a consequence of anatomical difference. Conventional gender arrangements and sexual identities reflect socially conditioned channeling of desire. Despite the supposed pervasiveness of psychoanalytic thinking, such ideas contravene conventional Western thinking. Taken seriously they undermine dominant notions of gender relations, ideologies of the family, and theories of knowledge and the mind. Such still scandalous ideas partially account for the persistent disrepute of Freud's ideas.     

“A Psychotherapy for the People”

The development of psychoanalytic technique can be traced in part to the dialogues between Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, dialogues that took place in the context of psychoanalysis's encounter with poverty and destitution in the wake of World War I. These dialogues, which served as precursors to contemporary, especially Relational, psychoanalysis, also inspired Freud's call for greater psychoanalytic engagement with the poorest and most vulnerable. This inspired the early psychoanalysts to “sharpen in all directions the sense of social justice” by engaging in political activism, experimenting with clinical technique, and by promoting short-term, more affordable treatments. The relevance of this history for clinical work with diverse populations will be discussed, and aspects of contemporary psychoanalysis (countertransference, enactment, new relational experience) will be understood in light of Freud and Ferenczi's responsiveness to the underprivileged.     

Psychoanalytic Intervention with Children

By taking a social psychological approach, this article seeks to offer an alternative perspective to the traditional psychoanalytic studies of Freud and Ferenczi's close personal and professional relationship, and the rift that occurred in the early 1930s. It is suggested that the socially constructed, divergent roles that these two men fulfilled in the psychoanalysis movement deeply influenced the dynamics of their relationship. It is further proposed that the ever-present, conflicted political interdependence that characterized Freud's and Ferenczi's home countries (Austria and Hungary, respectively) may have affected them differently, and contributed to their divergent attitudes towards power and other issues relevant to the development of psychoanalytic theory and technique, as well as how they related to one another personally.     

On a Case of Bulimia

Freud proposed two sharply contrasting conceptions of the body's place in mental structure. Both were radical departures from established views of the mind. In the first, body-based thought is rooted in the drives and instincts. It is primitive in contrast to the body-free, logical, and rational thought of maturity. Freud remained committed to this view in his formal conceptions of the mind throughout his working life. It remains the one most fully accepted in psychoanalytic thought today.

Less formally, particularly in conceptions of the “accidental” factors that structure the primary processes, “stereotype plates” that pattern our experience, thinking as “action in the mind,” and “internalizations” that form our inner worlds, he suggested an even more radical notion. In this view, “bodily” refers to the behavioral patterns (of personal motivation, action, attitude, wish, and feeling) as opposed to mental ones. Body-based patterns occur primitively, but they may also become mental and structure the mind at the highest levels of sophistication. Neither in Freud's time nor subsequently, however, has it been possible to integrate this second view of the bodily in mental functioning into the accepted psychoanalytic theory of mind.

Now, however, developing perspectives in psychoanalysis provide a framework in which this second view can be accommodated. In this model the mind is initially composed of social-emotional-behavioral patterns (in Stern's useful term, “patterns of lived experience”) established in familial life (Freud's “accidental” factors that form “stereotype plates”). These patterns, articulated and modified in the course of development, can increasingly be activated mentally with or without accompanying bodily action (Freud's “action in the mind” and “internalization”). These, rather than the rational-logical processes of traditional thought, constitute the mature mind.     

Réflexions sur les sources de la théorie freudienne : la psychanalyse et le mode de pensée talmudique

This article aims to situate psychoanalysis in relation to its possible sources related to Judaism by Sigmund Freud. For this one, which defined himself as a Jew, withdrew the religious practice of his fathers, has nevertheless always claimed his identity that placed him, as he liked to say, in the minority of the opposition which he drew energy for creativity. The Talmud, which represents the oral tradition of biblical exegesis, has its own rules of interpretation that we have attempted to compare some aspects of psychoanalytic technique. The free association of speech characterized by a certain diffluence represents a first attachment point. Like psychoanalysis, it closely links theory and practice, one enriching the other of its mutual contributions. Freud, when he speaks of tradition passed, or survival of memory traces in the archaic heredity makes the link between individual and collective psychology, and with anthropology. The therapeutic relationship based on the transference, as the relationship of students to their master, or Hasidim to their Rabbi, is based on an expectant faith that represents the basis of any self-reflection for the purpose of improvement. The talmudic spirit refers to a religious faith, while psychoanalysis is based on the discovery of unconscious thought patterns. However, it is noteworthy that Freud himself could not prevent the formation of his creation in the many chapels finally approaching in many respects concerns constituting the basis of religious belief, namely the welfare of human being and knowing one's most intimate psychic functioning.     

Review of Relational theory and the practice of psychotherapy

Reviews the book, Relational theory and the practice of psychotherapy by P. L. Wachtel (see record 2008-01938-000). Having produced important texts involving the integration of a psychoanalytic perspective with cognitive-behavioral and family systems perspectives, in the current book he turns his attention to seemingly divergent lines of thought within psychoanalysis itself. Psychoanalysis-that variegated, continually branching and diversifying body of theory and practice that started with Sigmund Freud but which has moved so far beyond its origins so as to be almost unrecognizable in some respects-is certainly Wachtel's primary home. In this book, Wachtel sets out to try and get the house in greater order, both for psychoanalytic inhabitants themselves and for visitors from other theoretical homes. The collection of psychoanalytic perspectives that have gradually taken context into account as being equally important to those factors that are internal are referred to as relational. And it is to these perspectives, which sometimes diverge in significant ways from each other and also from "one-person," internally focused perspectives, that Wachtel devotes his attention in this book. With Relational theory and the practice of psychotherapy, Paul Wachtel has written an important book, one that will be particularly stimulating and useful to graduate-level-and-above students of psychotherapy. It will also be accessible, thought provoking and clarifying to open-minded psychotherapy practitioners of all stripes, particularly those who do not identify themselves as relational, psychoanalytic, or even psychodynamic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).     

Freud et la dimension sonore du langage

Freud underwent medical training in a scientific milieu where the question of sound was repeatedly present via the angles of audition, voice and language. Freud's interest in sound may be found as early as his Contribution to the Conception of Aphasias, in the Project for a Scientific Psychology, and even in his inaugural work The Interpretation of Dreams. Thus, in the early years of Psychoanalysis a question that hinged on enunciation, and the division it entails and the loss (of the voice object) it instigates, was being constructed. Although this interest did not lead Freud to construct a theory of the voice as a drive object, it does designate a field that we find throughout the entire length of his work, and that we have chosen to dub the sound dimension of language in Freud. In this article we undertake to delineate the borders of the theoretical and clinical implications of this field of sound. Indeed the sound dimension of language is an important element in the dynamics of a psychoanalytic treatment, in particular via the opportunity it harbors to transform the language we think we possess into some surprising, alien even and, thereby, become aware that we are also, in a certain way, an effect of said language instead.     

Consciousness

For decades Allan Hobson has proclaimed Freud's dream theory as thoroughly mistaken. He has also suggested that Freud's use of the mistaken tenets of 19th-century neurology undermined not just that theory, but also the fundamental psychoanalytic propositions of Freud's (1900/1950b) mental apparatus as conceptualized in Chapter 7 of The Interpretation of Dreams. He is wrong on both accounts! Freud's theory of dreams remains an accurate general framework in which to understand and explore the origins, nature, and meaning of dreams. In addition, embodied within Freud's model of the mental apparatus are inferences about brain processes not just relevant to dreams but also to conscious perception, memory, reality testing, and creativity that are remarkably consonant with modern neuroscientific understanding.     

The Rise of Creativity: From Primary to Tertiary Process*

This discussion praises Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory by Jay Greenberg and Stephen Mitchell for the clarity with which it compares various psychoanalytic theories and their pedagogical usefulness. However, it emphasizes that the book views comparative psychoanalysis based on choices and assumptions with which many might differ. “Object relations” is only one of several possible lenses through which psychoanalytic theories might have been compared. By selecting object relations as the organizing perspective the authors ignore some important theorists such as Arlow and Brenner or Erik Erikson. It also notes that Greenberg and Mitchell view the choice of theoretical position as simply a matter of personal preference. This ignores the possibility of scientifically evaluating which psychoanalytic approach is most likely to achieve the best results.     

Freud's wife

"What do women want?" Sigmund Freud famously declared, yet Martha, his wife for over 50 years, has always received scant attention. Most biographies of Freud and psychoanalytic studies treat her as an early romantic interest and neglect her once she becomes a wife and mother. Still, if Freud's theories on everything from domesticity to sexuality were drawn partly from his own experience, Martha's personality and her interaction with her husband are significant to the history of psychoanalysis. Drawing on biographical, epistolary, and archival material, as well as Freud's own writings and the work of psychoanalytic commentators, the authors speculate on what roles Martha played and how Freud used her as a template upon which he based some of this theories about female behavior.     

Psychosis as a Disorder of Reduced Cathectic Capacity: Freud's Analysis of the Schreber Case Revisited

Approximately 100 years ago, a prominent German public figure name Daniel Schreber wrote memoirs of his experiences in asylums. His case was diagnosed Dementia Praecox at times and Paranoia at others by his treaters. Freud analyzed Schreber''s memoirs from the perspective of his “libido” theory of developmentally organized mental “cathexes” or ideational/emotional investments in self and others. Revisiting Freud''s analysis of the Schreber case suggests that it may represent the first theoretical articulation that the pathophysiologic core of psychosis is one of deficit, i.e., of diminished (organic) cathectic capacity for normal mental and affective investments in life.     

Conscience et perception : contradictions de la théorie freudienne et perte d’un héritage philosophique

This paper uses the notion of consciousness as a starting point and a guideline for a theoretical discussion aiming to demonstrate the contradictions and impossibilities of the successive representations of the psychic apparatus that are the two Freudian topics, and justifying a change in the theory: splitting the notions of perception and consciousness and, consequently abandoning the Perception-Conscious system (Pcpt-Cs), which was the central element of Freud's thinking when evolving from his first to his second topic. Freud was unknowingly referring to and rephrasing one of Descartes’ postulates, which is incompatible as such with the concept of unconsciousness. From an epistemological standpoint, it is ironical that the philosophical school of thought, which proposed, after Leibniz and before Freud, the hypothesis of an unconscious life, sustainably defended, as the very basis of this hypothesis, the principle of a separation between perception and consciousness. This is something, which Freud never realized.     

Kingsley Hall: The Politics of Madness

This article replies directly to the two cornerstones of Hobson's legendary transposition of Freud's dream theory, that is, the theory's presumed empirical untestability and its scientific obsolescence or replaceability in the scientific arena. After an outline of Freudian dream theory, empirical data coming from two research paradigms (“children's dreams” and “drug dreams”) are reported. From a theoretical-epistemological point of view, the studies show that Freud's dream theory includes clear “potential falsifiers,” that is, in Popper's terms, certain events, which if found to be true, would unequivocally show Freud to be wrong. This challenges Hobson's accusation concerning the empirical untestability of Freud dream theory. From an empirical viewpoint, these studies show that Freudian dream theory is not even remotely scientifically outdated and obsolete. The results of these studies are consistent with the cornerstones of Freudian dream theory (e.g., the hypothesis of dreams as wish-fulfillment, the disguise-censorship model) and suggest the viability and worth of further investigation in this arena. Indeed, Freud's dream theory is alive and useful in explaining the phenomenon of dreams in various fields of application. These authors believe that J. A. Hobson's dismissal of Freudian dream theory is thus misguided and premature because, to date, the findings indicate that Freud was essentially correct.     

Psychoanalysis at the millennium

This article explains and discusses the immense complexity of the psychoanalytic process as it is becoming increasingly understood at the millennium, and offers the possibility that it can be viewed from at least five channels of psychoanalytic listening. The careful ongoing examination of the transference-countertransference interactions or enactments, and their "analytic third" (32) location in the transitional space is extremely important in psychoanalytic practice. We must be careful in our interpretations of the clinical data not to stray any farther from the fundamental concepts of Freud than is necessary, lest we end up with a set of conflicting speculative metaphysical systems and become a marginalized esoteric cult. Freud's work remains our basic paradigm, the core of psychoanalysis, even though his papers on technique and his emphasis on the curative power of interpretation are from a one-person psychology standpoint and his view of psychoanalysis as just another empirical 19th-century science requires proper understanding and emendation in the light of accumulated clinical experience since his time.     

Demoniacal possession and psychoanalytic theory

Psychodynamic explanations of demoniacal possession have been based mainly on Freud's retrospective interpretation of the illness of Christoph Haitzman. Freud applied libido theory to his analysis of the case and subsequently influenced the psychoanalytic theory of paranoid symptom formation and the psychoanalytic approach to the psychoses. Fairbairn, and later Guntrip, applied an object relations theory to the case and conceptualized demoniacal possession in terms of bad internalized objects. They used the example of Haitzman to illustrate an object relations approach to the understanding and treatment of severely disturbed patients. In this paper the psychoanalytic treatment of a case of demoniacal possession is described to indicate the multiple dynamic meanings which possession may have and to demonstrate the necessity for integrating and applying aspects of libido and object relations theories. Current trends in psychoanalysis are towards recognizing the psychotic core which is frequently masked by an apparently psychoneurotic illness so that analysis must reach beyond oedipal conflicts to the primitive internalized object relations. A psychoanalytic study of demoniacal possession contributes much to the understanding of such patients but particularly to the conceptualization of borderline and psychotic states. It is in the treatment of these patients that the role of the psychotherapist is more akin to that of the exorcist.     

Oedipus in Hindu Dreams,Gandhi's Life and Erikson's Concepts

The paper engages the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, particularly his critique of ontological thought and knowing, to examine some of the basic premises of psychoanalysis. The author argues that, viewed through Levinas's notions of The Other and of ethics, traditional psychoanalysis represents an ethically problematic discursive position since it conforms unambivalently to social-knowledge-power structures. The author suggests that psychoanalysis is inherently a conflicted discourse. He traces the development of psychoanalytic awareness to the concerns of otherness in the shift from one- to two-person psychology and in the thought made possible in the relational school. Bringing together Levinas's critical-ethical considerations and contemporary psychoanalytic conceptions of subjectivity and intersubjective relations, the author argues for more awareness of the ethical implications of different aspects of analytic theory and practice, and against the limitations of Levinas's extreme ethics. He concludes in suggesting deliberate ambivalence as the best-possible theoretical and clinical position.     

Sigmund Freud and money

I have tried to clarify Sigmund Freud's attitude toward money during the different time periods of his life. Most biographers have written that Freud was born into a poor family that later was elevated to the socioeconomic middle class in Vienna. This traditional viewpoint can be supported by various of Freud's letters and writings. A very different viewpoint has been proposed by the well-known American economist, Peter Drucker. As has been noted, his parents knew the Freud family in Vienna where Drucker actually met Freud. Drucker contends that Freud unconsciously misrepresented his parents' financial situation by creating the myth that they lived in poverty. Furthermore, Freud also developed another myth that it was because of the strong anti-Semitism in Vienna that he was so delayed in being appointed a professor of psychiatry. Drucker points out that the majority of the Viennese physicians were Jewish and that Freud's becoming a professor did not entail a delay and was not affected by any anti-Semitism in Vienna. Another area of conflict between Freud and the other Viennese physicians was Freud's refusal to treat any of his psychoanalytic patients without a fee. Freud believed that treating a patient in analysis for free created a transference-countertransference problem that might doom the treatment to failure. Freud's transference explanation for not taking on charity patients did not satisfy many of his Viennese physician colleagues. They believed that Freud was given an opportunity to accept their traditional standards and turned it down. In their eyes, Freud rejected them, they did not reject him. The same reasoning applied to the Viennese physicians' request for some scientific proof of the efficacy of psychoanalysis. Freud could only provide them with anecdotal or testimonial evidence to support psychoanalytic treatment. This placed psychoanalysis in the category of a belief system and not a scientific treatment. Drucker explains Freud's "obsession" with having lived in poverty as a manifestation of his "poorhouse neurosis." According to Drucker this syndrome was frequently found among Viennese during the last quarter of the 19th century. It was an irrational and deep-seated fear that an individual and his family were on the verge of being placed in the poorhouse because they lacked any funds. Freud does not specifically mention his having this irrational fear or obsession, but he made several statements quoted here indicating such a dread. At a recent psychoanalytic meeting I asked Freud scholar John Gedo of Chicago if he thought Freud experienced a "poorhouse neurosis."(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)