The Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis最新文献

There is great interest in brain function as a result of the new laboratory and imaging techniques in the neurosciences. Psychoanalysis has embraced these contributions without adequate assessment of whether they bridge the mind/brain divide and provide answers to the questions psychoanalysts ask. A review and critique of the biological theories of dreaming highlights their limitations and points out they do not address the semantics, meaning, and content of dreaming nor the pragmatics of dreaming, its function. At best these theories attempt to provide the syntax of dreaming, the form dreaming takes. Brain biology cannot provide the transduction rules to go from neuronal firing to the psychological experience of dreaming or other mind states.

In this article, the author touches on a variety of threads relevant to a psychoanalytic approach to terrorism. He begins with a personal September 11 recollection, and then goes on to share some thoughts about terrorism from the vantage point of a citizen who retired from active military duty a little over a year ago. He then speculates about a possible psychoanalytic understanding of terrorists and their motivation, while acknowledging that terrorists too are individuals, and that no hypothesis can apply to an entire group, across the border. To illustrate his points, the author shares some vignettes from literature, biography, and philosophy. He then reflects on our post-September 11 roles as psychoanalysts or psychodynamic psychiatrists, but also as Americans.

Walter Bonime's contributions to the understanding and interpretation of dreams highlight collaboration and creative effort as essential to achieve appropriate attunement and effective emotional growth. The authors incorporate the theoretical constructs and technical recommendations of Bonime into their clinical work with artists. They describe how creative psychoanalytic work with artists' dreams can promote productivity, spontaneity, emotional growth, and facilitate conflict resolution, functional regression, and affective regulation. Psychoanalytic theories on creativity and the creative personality are reviewed and case material is presented to illustrate some of the technical aspects of the collaborative interpretation of artists' dreams. The authors propose that the process of dream interpretation may also foster the functional regression characteristic of creative work and motivate artists to more freely create works of art. The critic's transference is defined, and with examples the authors show how the exploration of this transference may lead to decreased resistance by allowing a reparative experience to exist within the analytic setting.

From a detailed view of the myth of the binding of Isaac, a speculation emerges that Isaac may have had incest with his mother, Sarah. This would explain the death of Sarah shortly thereafter, his absent virility for twenty years, and his blindness. The commonalities with the Oedipus myth are outlined, along with the themes of filicide, patricide, guilt, punishment, and expiation. This suggests that they are the same myth, with some slight variations. The continued interest in both myths may be due to their utility as cautionary tales to teach control of hostile impulses in parents and children. While the outcome in the Oedipus myth is tragic, it is hopeful in the Isaac myth.

The article addresses the psychodynamic issues that influence the psychiatric treatment of women with PTSD. The focus is on the patient's response to the physical and nonverbal elements of treatment including hands-on touch and providing oral medications. The purpose is to help psychiatrists better understand and care for women with PTSD and the better manage the existing barriers to effective treatment. The neuroanatomy and neurobiology of PTSD will be discussed to illustrate the interface between: (1) the neural correlates of physical and sexual abuse and the presence of PTSD in adult women, and (2) the neurophysiologic pathway for healing through therapy aimed at empowering the trauma patient to take constructive action.

The experience of many patients with borderline personality is intense and kaleidoscopic. These qualities may be represented in film in ways that reflect and convey their essential features that are less readily captured in words. Quentin Tarantino has produced a trilogy of films that bring to light and to life the borderline experience. We use these movies to illustrate and discuss five key borderline themes: the fluid nature of drive derivatives, the discontinuous experience of time and space, the coniflicted search for an idealized parent, antisocial distortions of the superego, and the organizing and stabilizing function of a central romantic fantasy.