American Journal of Psychoanalysis最新文献

Psychoanalysis had its origins in an era when feelings that could not be recognized by the mind were being manifested in the body. Psychoanalysis works towards resolving this type of split by recognizing the existence of a dual language structure that includes both body and mind as constituents of the fabric of embodied meanings. The field of psychosomatics helps to provide keys to this language, marking the essential, patterned truths that are recognized at very basic levels and increasingly organize our perceptions as we make sense of the world. In disrupting the integration of embodied meanings, trauma impedes identity development. For some patients, learning to make meaning from somatic symptoms is an important adjunct to coming to know their own embodied experience. Two cases will be offered in which somatic symptoms provided important information that was channeled through the analytic experience as a way of making sense of what otherwise remained unknown.

This paper presents and discusses two sets of theories concerning trauma. The first involves a contemporary social theory of "cultural trauma" and the second refers to psychoanalytic theories on psychic trauma. We argue that these two groups of theories have some relevant elements in common, despite social theorists' critique of psychoanalytic understanding on the matter. In our view, the most important meeting points between these groups of theories concern (a) the possibility to think that trauma is not welded to events but has a formation process, one of attribution of meaning, (b) that this process has a temporality of its own, and (c) that the environment (the objects, actors, and agents that compose it) has a fundamental and determinant role in trauma formation. Further, we suggest that trauma is still an open concept in psychoanalysis.

The outsider phenomenon is an existential pathology interrelated with the need to belong. It is a group related experience that has developmental foundations. W. R. D. Fairbairn (1952), was one of the first psychoanalysts who systematically challenged Freudian theory, and located the human experience within social relationships. Fairbairn (1935) suggested that the family is the first social group, leading to affiliations with important groups external to the family. This paper extrapolates from Fairbairn's ideas about schizoid character, which is an interpersonal experience, to group experiences in a family and with identity groups. Fairbairn's notions about the unavoidable activation of schizoid processes may help us understand what makes the outsider experience so pervasive.

After briefly explaining the concepts of dissociation and repression and discussing the new interest that the concept of dissociation has acquired within the actual psychoanalytic panorama, the author explains the concept of a dissociative continuum and presents Peter Goldberg's theory on somatic dissociation. Starting from this model, she proposes an interpretation of the use of technology, and especially of the internet, as a dissociative modality that helps separate the mind from the body, one that allows the maintenance of personal security-a concept dear to Sullivan-through physical distance. The implications of this point of view are discussed.

This paper explores how at-one-ment and twoness interact in the clinical setting. Namely, how the unconscious mode of knowing the other intuitively from the inside, by becoming at-one with them, interacts with the conscious-rational mode of knowing about the other from the outside; how experiencing the other's experience as one's own, rather than like one's own, informs (and is informed by) the common clinical stance of twoness, in which analyst and patient meet as separate persons. Through clinical illustrations, I argue that these are complementary (rather than contradictory) modes of knowing, communicating and being and that, paradoxically, twoness is essential for the emergence of at-one-ment, even though the latter is inadvertent.

This paper explores the contemporary trend towards relativization and perversion of truth increasingly prominent in American culture, which, in Bion's terminology (1970), has become an ever more hospitable "home to the lie." The anti-COVID vaccine movement emerging in the United States in 2021, and its related network of conspiracy theories, is presented as an example. To make sense of these phenomena the author presents clinical vignettes illustrating (1) Bion's (1970) notions of catastrophic change, the lie/thinker relation, and the messianic idea; (2) Freud's (1921) thinking on group leaders; and (3) Matte-Blanco's (1975) bi-logical theory of mind. According to Bion, the lie is mobilized to avoid the psychological upheaval associated with catastrophic change. The author suggests that developments in American life experienced as threatening catastrophic change provide a hospitable environment for the lie, making the recognition of truth more elusive. In line with Matte-Blanco's bi-logical theory, the author suggests that creation of opportunities for dialogue giving weight to both conscious and unconscious ways of thinking is necessary for re-establishing a culture of truth.

When reality is too much to bear, bodymind unity can fracture, creating self-deceptions, distortions, and disguises of emotional experience that amount to unconscious lies. Without clarity regarding what is real and what is imaginary, emotional truth is difficult to discern. Lies disrupt the development of a subjective sense of self, making it difficult to trust sensations, emotions, or thoughts. In the absence of this trust, a patient may form a delusion that they do not exist. Working psychoanalytically with patients traumatized in infancy and early childhood requires the analyst to experience a somatic link between herself and the patient, thereby enabling a process that was inhibited and, in some cases, nearly aborted to resume functioning. Clinical material is presented illustrating a negative hallucination of not existing following an emotional experience that could not be borne as well as bodymind dissociation that separated the patient's psychic pain from her childhood narrative. The author concludes that these methods of coping with trauma prevent the grieving necessary for truth to become bearable and the mind to grow.