American Journal of Psychoanalysis最新文献

An earlier essay (Spero, 2025) regarding the phrase "gathering the transference" focused on the etymological roots of the words "gathering" and "harvesting" in Greek, English and Hebrew. The author acknowledges overlooking the expression "taking the transference" used by Neville Symington, M. Gerrard Fromm and Judith Mitrani, and highlights subtle differences and similarities between "gathering" and "taking."

The paper aims to present Jacques Lacan's study on the theoretical foundations and clinical implications of the use of knot topology in the psychoanalytic context. The configuration of the Borromean knot-namely an interlacement consisting of three rings whose bond is based on a global triadicity-lends itself to offer an important support for thinking about the intertwining of the three registers of human experience: the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. These three registers represent fundamental aspects of human life, and the Borromean knot allows us to consider the forms and dynamics of their reciprocal and global interaction. Finally, Lacan introduces the need for a fourth ring, the so-called sinthome, which performs a substitute function to hold together the undoing of the Borromean knot. The sinthome (unlike a medicalized vision of the symptom) represents an element of singularity that a subject identifies in her history to continue living and be able to face the disquieting experience of the Real and its impossibility to be represented.

This paper describes and demonstrates the Modern Kleinian approach to psychotherapy treatment. An easy way to conceptualize a three-step process of projective identification integration through containment, interpretation, and integration is to describe them as name it, claim it, and tame it. This process can lead to change in unconscious object relational conflict states and to shifts in interpersonal patterns.The concept of projective identification is at the foundation of Modern Kleinian psychotherapy (Waska, 2021). Therefore, theoretically and clinically, Modern Kleinian therapy focuses on how projective identification is often part of the core conflict in patient's psychic struggles. Within the treatment process, integration, acceptance, loss, and containment are often some of the main elements that emerge. Numerous case reports are used to illustrate this journey from the paranoid/schizoid position (Fairbairn, 1940; Klein, 1946) towards the depressive position (Klein, 1935). The challenge towards the depressive position. The challenge of change and the clinical method needed to engage that challenge are demonstrated with case material.The clinical reports are disguised for confidentiality but show the reader how projective identification manifests in individuals and how it colors the transference. The clinical material illustrates how the therapist can make interpretations towards a gradual taming of conflict, cultivating more integrated and balanced ways of experiencing self and other.

This paper explores the relationship between childhood trauma, creative vitality, and mass media film. Looking back on an earlier period of my career, I offer an account of my work with a father and his 5-year-old child traumatized by violence in the home and by separations from a primary caregiver. The child's capacity to enlist creative expression to represent traumatic material was initially inaccessible, fused through parental identifications to an acute and fearful sense that affective vitality brings disintegration and loss. Creative expression and affective vitality are herein considered inseparably bound. I provide a retrospective account of the significance of the film Frozen for this child and our work together. I then offer theoretical considerations about the function of film for traumatized individuals, binding traumatic residues, as well as accessing, stimulating, and engaging creative-expressive and meaning-making capacities. I consider how the screen is experienced in unconscious fantasy as a face, a transitional object, and interface, which provides creative, meaningful contact and subjective coherence. Finally, with the help of more recent clinical vignettes, I limn three qualities of object relations pertaining to mass media of the screen-the good, the bad and the ugly.

The concept of the unconscious is at the heart of psychoanalytic study and practice since its beginnings. A human being's awareness is bounded, and the deeper layers of the mind are mostly inaccessible. Sensations, emotions, dreams, symptoms or creative work may give us a glimpse of the landscape and mediate our relationship with the forgotten, the unknown and the unknowable. The mind has its ways to remain organized and balanced through the development of barriers or shields. However, overwhelming emotional experiences may break through and confront us with the unbounded, infinite and chaotic nature of the unconscious. Resorting to Matte-Blanco's bi-logical theory, this paper aims to explore the effects of trauma on the mind, both as a disruption of psychic barriers and as an unbearable emotional experience of infinity within.