American Journal of Psychoanalysis最新文献

Martin Bergmann demonstrates different aspects of what is very distinctively, a psychoanalytic orientation of mind in extension of viewpoint and value, having no equal in our postmodern world. Unselfconscious in forthright use of the analyst's personality in demonstration of psychoanalytic thinking, Bergmann's 1963 paper "The Place of Paul Federn's Ego Psychology in Psychoanalytic Metapsychology" presents a Rosetta Stone for discerning the Jewishly inflected and particular cultural presence of Bildung (Mosse, 1985; Sorkin, 1983, 1987), the Enlightenment practice of self-development, in the textual history of psychoanalysis.

This paper elucidates the subjective experience of 'deadness.' Categorizing it into melancholic (due to pervasive ego inhibitions secondary to guilt) and schizoid (due to the internalization of profound early neglect) types, the paper describes the manifestations of deadness in the realms of self-experience, interpersonal relations, and attitudes towards life and death. It also outlines therapeutic strategies to ameliorate 'deadness.' These include (i) maintaining awareness of the patient's 'alive' parts, (ii) holding and containing the patient's 'dead' parts, (iii) staying responsive to non-human transferences, (iv) drawing conjectures and interpretations from countertransference, and (v) translating 'nothingness' into 'no-thingness.'

This article examines the history of psychoanalysis through the lens of disavowal, focusing on the case of Karen Horney, a prominent second-generation psychoanalyst whose contributions were largely excluded from the official history. By analyzing Freud's institutional and theoretical dominance, the article explores how dissenting voices like Horney's were marginalized through mechanisms akin to Ferenczi's concept of disavowal. The discussion highlights how the exclusion of Horney and others shaped the development of psychoanalytic theory and practice, particularly regarding gender and authority within the field. The article advocates for recognition of these disavowals, to improve understanding of the internal resistances within psychoanalysis, and their impact on its history and development.

Karen Horney's masterful pieces "The Dread of Women" (1932) and "Flight from Womanhood" (1926) influenced not only psychoanalysts but students of culture in general. On the eighty-fifth anniversary of the journal she founded, we can look both back at these pieces and consider how dread and envy of women might be affected by the changes in gender identities, developments that Horney would have eagerly followed. In the decades since she described dread and envy of women, feminism has been unable to dislodge the basic binary, indeed hierarchy, of male/female. Trans and non-binary identities are toppling many standard ways of thinking about sexuality and gender. Are we entering a new age when repressive boundaries of gender and sexuality will be overthrown, or as psychoanalysts, should we be focusing on the always enigmatic core of sexuality, where Horney's dread of women will continue to flourish?

When there are obstacles in the way of being prepared for birth or psychological birth, whether in a perinatal situation or in the analysis of an adult, the analyst must create the conditions in which parents, baby and patient can realize their potentiality for developing. The analyst is bearer of hope in what can feel to be a hopeless world. We offer two clinical vignettes to show the importance of respect, timing and tact in the process of facilitating the freedom to move on towards a creative future. Both vignettes illustrate unconscious communication in action.

Psychoanalytic ethicists identify caring as the deepest virtue in our work, but what is our capacity for caring at the collective level? Beyond our "groupish" nature (Bion, 1961) and our collective unconscious (Jung, 1926), the author considers an emerging collective conscience, in our theories and practices. Freud (1930) believed that our post-oedipal superegos, through the sacrifice of individual instincts, builds civilization-the "power of a community" larger than each of us. By basing his theory on one intrapsychic actor in the tragic myth of Oedipus, Freud left out a whole cast of characters who Oedipus treated as outcasts. These strangers, and those he estranged, offered a community of care to the oedipal triad. In our time the Oedipal complex has transformed into oedipal complexity; individual Oedipus at the crossroads now encounters sociocultural intersectionality. Grounded by our phylogenetic, ontogenetic, and sociogenic beginnings to bond in groups through the ethic of caring, the author tracks the longer road we travel on towards the ethic of fairness.

This paper explores Carl Gustav Jung's groundbreaking contributions to psychiatry and psychotherapy, with a particular focus on his humanistic approach. Jung emphasized the profound influence of both the clinician's and patient's personal histories and personalities in therapeutic outcomes, propelling a shift from a "monopersonal" to a "bipersonal" perspective in therapy. He stressed the crucial role of the transference-countertransference dynamic, accentuating mutual influence within the clinician-patient relationship. Moreover, Jung's approach to psychotic symptoms as inherently meaningful and communicative, rather than simply concealment, opened new possibilities for psychotherapeutic treatment methods. This investigation illuminates Jung's substantial influence on the humanization of psychiatry, highlighting his unique creativity and originality in the clinical and theoretical landscape.