Psychoanalytic Review最新文献

A research adventure on closeness and separateness in psychoanalysis is presented. The theme is explored through the author's daydreams evoked by clinical encounters. These are analyzed and metaphorically illustrated with psychoanalytical theories in dialogue with Tove Jansson's Moominland Midwinter. Closeness is likened to "mother's house" and separateness to "midwinter." Vacillation between and balancing of "mother's house" and "midwinter" following the patient's and the dyad's unique needs are suggested as pivotal for psychic development and creativity. A conclusion is that the author's practice can be enhanced by letting the cool winds and the mysteries of "midwinter" in.

Bion's notion of the contact-barrier formulates a semipermeable membrane responsible for preserving the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious. However, the question of how a newly established contact-barrier manifests itself in dreams remains unanswered. The author proposes that one such manifestation occurs when a patient sees themself asleep in a dream. A case of a severely traumatized woman who had difficulty thinking and being close to others is used to explore these clinical ideas. The author, in response to his reveries in a session, introduced a playful dream-like dialogue between a playwright and his reader. The nature of the communication, in functioning as a barrier, served to protect the patient from a tyrannizing reality: the therapist's sexuality. This intersubjective barrier helped the patient to contact dissociated and damaged parts of herself, and it also facilitated her ability to dream a sense of her own boundaries, femininity, and sexuality.

Social media has profound impact on how we experience the world and interact with others. Rapidly advancing technology has created platforms that have become increasingly image-based and emotionally manipulative. Do the new patterns of communication change patients' mental processes? Is free association becoming more imagistic? Contemporary clinical settings invite new perspectives on the intersections between the social and individual realms, patients' modes of expression, and analysts' interpretations.

The author depicts, relying on several of Giorgio Agamben's philosophical concepts as well as a psychoanalytic developmental perspective, the origins and features of inoperative love and spaces, especially as they pertain to oppressive situations wherein social, political, and economic apparatuses undermine the psychosocial well-being of individuals, families, and communities. In addition, the author conceptualizes psychoanalytic therapy as an inoperative space wherein patients actualize their capacity for impotentiality and experience singularity and rapport.

This article exemplifies Reik's use of surprise in his psychoanalytic technique. Reik maintained that analysts should allow themselves to be surprised at times by their response. Such a reaction can offer new possibilities of deepening the treatment. An example is presented of such a nonstandard intervention that proved helpful in resolving the patient's difficulties with communicating.

From a self-psychology perspective, the profound disruption of the will to exist physically and psychically in patients suffering from anorexia can be seen as a primary impairment of the selfobject's capacity to make space for them within itself. Kohut viewed the primary phase of the baby's existence in the mother's mind as its "virtual conception." On this foundation, the author uses the notion of "virtual selfobject" to understand the impaired will to exist in patients with anorexia and describes how the therapist may embrace a standpoint that creates a space-for-being for the patient, facilitating the reactivation of self needs in the transference. The notion of virtuality thus entails a future perspective, which ostensibly foretells or creates the potential future emergence of the patient's self. This conceptualization and its application are illustrated through a life-restoring therapy with a patient hospitalized with a life-threatening eating disorder.

The author focuses on bisexuality in a continued analysis of Freud's radical sexual theory. A close reading of texts from Freud's work, in particular "The Ego and the Id," demonstrates how Freud puts forward a bisexuality thesis in parallel and as an alternative to his thesis of the Oedipus complex. This bisexuality thesis is premised on the mechanism of object cathexis and identification by which the ego and superego are formed. The textual excavation is extended back to earlier material by Freud and other authors (Trigant Burrow, Isidor Sadger) to reveal the foundational bedrock of the bisexuality thesis in primary identification. This line of investigation boldly confirms not only Freud's view of the fundamental centrality of bisexuality to human sexuality but also its main consequence, which Freud himself implicitly recognizes, namely, the negation of the Oedipus complex. This argument has ramifications for the theory and clinical practice of psychoanalysis.

A central role of supervision is to help the supervisee develop the self-as-therapist by internalizing analytic theoretical convictions and clinical practices and creating an individualistic professional identity. Supervisors can help this process by viewing some of the supervisees' narrated therapeutic impasses as manifestations of creative rebellion. This creative rebellion helps them exercise their freedom of choice and become who they are as therapists. The creative rebellion metaphor can sometimes explain disruptions to the therapeutic process without threatening the cohesion of the supervisee's professional self and the integrity of the supervisory process.