International Journal of Psychoanalysis最新文献

The paper attempts to answer a key question: does the concept of projective identification (PI) still have a place in the metapsychology of post-Bionian analytic field theory (AFT)? Over time, PI has been characterized as increasingly interpersonal, especially as revised by Bion and Ogden. Beginning with the Barangers, writers on AFT have also spoken about what might best be called "crossing" PI as the foundation of the analytic field. However, on the one hand, they have understood this intersection negatively, as the basis of paired bastions or collusions; on the other hand, with Bion, they have always maintained a certain unidirectionality in writing that the flow of PI normally goes from the patient to the analyst, and can only occasionally be reversed. Strictly speaking, this notion clashes with the radically intersubjective idea that every fact of analysis is unconsciously co-created and represents a "character" in the analytic field or an affective hologram of the couple. The author suggests that this apparent contradiction can be resolved and, if properly rethought, PI can retain an important place in the metapsychology of AFT. If we consider the dialectic of recognition to be at the centre of therapeutic action, PI is the concept in psychoanalysis that best describes it. In order to highlight this theoretical and heuristic value of PI, the proposal is to re-read it in the light of some of Merleau-Ponty's concepts (chiasmus, entanglement, intercorporeality, flesh of the world, etc.) that emphasize the essentially social and embodied texture of subjectivity.

The introduction of remote communication technology in psychoanalytic practice and training raises multiple psychoanalytic, clinical, and ethical issues that require qualitative and empirical process and outcome research, careful psychoanalytic reflection, and open but transparent searching dialogue between practitioners.

Describing countertransference feelings and conflicts towards end of treatment is difficult for analysts and the literature on termination tends to focus on what should happen not what does. The inherent incompleteness and inevitable frustrations of patient's and analyst's wishes can throw both into confusion at the very point when the wish for certainty and completion is heightened. This paper describes a case where patient and analyst repeatedly felt thrown into doubt about whether and how analysis should end. The analyst came to think that, unconsciously, the doubts related to the patient's position with the internal parental couple. As the patient struggled with feelings of disintegration and exclusion the analyst experienced periods of theoretical confusion, which stood for her relationship with her analytic parents. The analyst came to see these periods of disintegration, situated within the transference-countertransference field, as crucial to the developmental process, pushing the analytic couple away from what could have become false "depressive" coherence towards more truthful encounters. She views the patient's capacity to bear this as a sign of readiness for termination. Retrospectively she finds helpful light can be thrown on this experience by Britton's concept of post-depressive paranoid- schizoid position, synthesizing Bion's extension of Kleinian theory and Steiner's concept of pathological organisations, but she places more emphasis than Britton does on describing the countertransference struggle. Ultimately, the author argues, the patient can be helped to achieve fuller integration if the analyst can tolerate some disintegration, repeatedly losing and regaining an internal parental couple.

The author describes how he first applied psychoanalytical ideas in his political leadership of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, particularly in the Irish Peace Process. He then took the lessons learnt from the negotiation of the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement with him in addressing the conflict in Israel/Palestine. The paper pays particular attention to the moral dilemmas for the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States of America as they try to square the military response of their ally, Israel, to the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, with their other international commitments and with the traditional requirements of "just war" theory.

To what extent are dreams dreamt by the psychotic or non-psychotic parts of the personality? And what significance does this have for the treatment technique? Based on Bion's theories of dream function and the differentiation between psychotic and non-psychotic personalities, these questions are examined. Theoretically, reference is made to the significance of the body and body image with regard to both psychotic structure and dream function. Using a countertransference dream by Winnicott and material from psychoanalytic treatments with patients suffering from psychotic disorders, the above ideas will be discussed.