American Journal of Psychoanalysis最新文献

The term developmental trauma (DT) refers to the impact of stressful events which occur cumulatively within the child's relevant relationships and contexts, and usually early in life. According to several authors, DT depends on the caregiver's inadequate intersubjective recognition of one or more aspects of the evolving individual's identity. In the clinical and empirical literature, the study of therapists' developmental trauma, and how it might constitute a relevant variable in the clinical exchange, seem to be underrepresented. In this paper, through the analysis of the supervision process of a clinical case, we show how the therapeutic relationship may implicitly take the form of a "dance" between the patient's and therapist's DT, that prevents the therapist from intersubjectively attuning with the patient; and how a supervision process peculiarly focused on the therapist's DT can effectively promote this attunement and a good clinical outcome.

This paper attempts to deal with a specific kind of pathological identification-"raw object identification"-which tends to appear as concrete physiological phenomena, trying to escape meaning and integration. These somatic manifestations stem from early traumatic experiences with a meaningful object and entrap-as revealed through analysis-specific significant qualities of that object. A massive splitting ensues between body and mind, self and object, relation and identification. Certain properties of the object are then experienced as a foreign body in the subject and are defensively identified with. Thus, raw object identification is often manifested in stubborn bodily symptoms.

In hopes of contributing to the developing self-critique of relational analysis, I offer a case that illustrates a modified approach, one informed by current dialogue. The patient described had considerable unmet selfobject needs and a schizoid sensitivity to intrusion, engendering the question explored: How do two minds meet if one is largely relationally dissociated and acutely vulnerable when integrated? A premature emphasis on intersubjectivity would have obscured the patient's narcissistic needs and reinforced her tendency to retreat. Suspending the goal of intersubjectivity allowed for a regressive process to occur, and for contact to become safe before analyst and patient paved the way for future mutual relatedness.

The author proposes that group identifications have been under-appreciated by individual psychodynamic psychotherapists in their conceptualization of normative individual development. He identifies the routes by which the child begins to internalize small and large groups during the early years of identity formation. Through individual therapy vignettes, the author suggests modifications to customary technique so that developmental shortcomings in group attachment security can be shored up. He offers some guidelines for the individual therapist so that group experiences are accounted for as the clinical narrative is written. Finally, he distinguishes patients who may require additional group-level interventions to address their avoidance of group participation.

This article explores psychic aspects of abortion, from the fixity of beliefs over its legalization, to conscious and unconscious fantasies related to the fetus, children, parenting, fertility, and so on. Generally speaking, the field has shown less direct interest in abortion per se than might be surmised, particularly given the centrality of sexuality and procreation in psychoanalysis. The recent legal changes may initiate more psychoanalytic interest in the topic. The current writing studies a possible strand of fantasy in which conscious and unconscious wishes for an unending, idealized, and blameless child-object are displaced onto a fetus or fetal imago. Speculations and suggestions are drawn from casework with an individual which points to a possible channeling or avoidance of unprocessed grief when the seeming perfection of childhood ends abruptly, almost without transition, with the imposition of adolescent personality development.