The Therapeutic Space of Psychoanalysis

International Journal of Psychoanalysis

… to preoccupy oneself with the dream-material to the exclusion of a pressing transference re-enactment would merit a certain amount of self-inspection, on the grounds that the seemingly impersonal nature of dream-production may afford the analyst the same respite from unpleasantness as it does the patient (Glover, 1927, p. 505). The starting-point of this paper is Kleinian and the 'street-map' of contemporary schools of psychoanalysis revealed in this paper inevitably reflects this personal view. I start with Klein, and move to the nearest comparisons, other objectrelations views developed in British psychoanalysis.

The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2012

The author discusses adolescent and preadolescent development as a transformative experience. The role of the ego ideal in this process, as distinct from the ideal of the ego, is highlighted, and idealization, narcissism, and symbolization are also discussed. Changing representations contribute to what the author describes as a process of subjectivization. An illustrative clinical vignette is presented: that of a 12-year-old girl who developed neurological symptomatology during a crucial period of psychosexual transformation, and whose symptoms rapidly receded after only a few psychoanalytically oriented treatment sessions. The author emphasizes his view of preadolescence as an important passage for the individual's knowledge of the plurality that characterizes him, noting that the recognition of one's own internal multiplicity is characteristic of the psychoanalytic process.

Journal of Clinical Psychoanalysis, 1992

It is now widely acknowledged that Freud was, among many other things, a master storyteller , and that psychoanalysis is, by and large, a discipline in which "one achieves a narrative redescription of reality" (Schafer, 1980, p. 50). But the resonance between literary and psychoanalytic discourse does not end here; for, as scholars have noted, yet another order of narrative activity is entailed when the analyst seeks to redescribe this redescription by writing a psychoanalytic case history-a particular kind of story capable of reframing and reconstructing the patient's account of his illness together with the analyst's interpretation and retelling of it. The originator of this genre was, of course, Freud; in his hands, as Steven Marcus (1974) notes, the case history "became something that it never was before" (p. 264). Inevitably, Marcus's observation prompts the question of what, in fact, the case history was before Freud took it in hand. How were patients with mental disorders, particularly those with hysteria, conceptualized and constructed as "cases"? What traditions of inquiry, representation, and authorship did Freud inherit from psychiatrists and neurologists, and how indeed did he depart from them?

Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 2002

This article underscores and expands on a contextualist, complexity theory perspective in conceptualizing the organization of personal, subjective experience and the therapeutic process. It emphasizes that one's personal, lived experience originates and continues to evolve from within a relational matrix, with affect as its primary currency, and reevaluates what, exactly, is being analyzed and potentially transformed in the clinical setting. An extension of intersubjective systems theory, this article focuses on two complementary themes: the concept of the interpenetration of multiple worlds of experience and the idea of systemically derived organizing principles. These ideas enhance our understanding of the positive transformation of subjective experience and expand our perspectives about therapeutic change in psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 2011

Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 2016

In this article I describe one dimension of the reverie phenomenon, which I term the "musical reverie," whereby the therapist experiences a kind of daydreaming that includes songs with both lyrics and tunes. In early development , the reverie function permits a transformation of the baby's unprocessed and unmetabolized materials within the mother's psyche, so that once they are returned to the infant, it will be possible to contain them in a manner that neither overwhelms nor fragments the child. Likewise, this may operate in psychoanalytic treatment. This article suggests that the auditory dimension, where lyrics and tunes exist successfully, captures both the symbolic and the presym-bolic, and bridges the two. I further suggest that the music serves the analyst in early, hopeless, and fragmented moments as a companion to reignite the psychic movement that has halted in both the patient's and the analyst's mind. The therapist's ability to process beta elements-the unmetabolized (unprocessed af-fective experience)-into alpha elements (thoughts that can be thought by the thinker) will enable the renewed movement and rehabilitation of the mind, even in barren, dead areas.

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1521 Prev 2008 95 4 541, 2008

I start this difficult paper on the accident of gender with a novel, because sexuality and gender unfold in novel ways, resisting and revealing assumed origins as fragile attempts to settle desire. Like a novel, in which pages are read to capture essences that words cannot grasp, gender hints at trauma that has no origin but is rather the result of the struggle to capture this very unknown, which one can only brush against through terms such as drive and desire. One cannot enter the novel's narrative armed with the right knowledge to ...

Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2004

The therapist's use of self, much debated in psychotherapy with adult patients, has received little explicit consideration in discussions of clinical work with children. In this clinical essay, I describe a style of working with children and early adolescents in psychotherapy that makes liberal use of the therapist's “self,” both in the narrow sense of the therapist's self-disclosure and in the broader sense of the use of the therapist's personality, intuition, and affective expressiveness. My discussion focuses on two facets of therapeutic work with children: (a) the use of self in the engagement of children in the treatment process and (b) the child therapist as a source of emotional support. Although not without some risks and limitations, and always accompanied by a necessary appreciation of the unique temperament and character of each child, talking personally to children fosters the child's openness in talking with us. At moments of acute distress, many children also derive immediate, visible emotional support—and, one hopes, some lasting increment of self-acceptance —from the child therapist's generative and humanizing expressions of self.

2018

This paper summarizes the developments of group psychotherapy practice and training in Israel as a reflection of society. It describes the main relevant characteristics of the Israeli society, focusing on its being a regressed–traumatized large group, the accelerated development of group psychotherapy in Israel, exhibited by the spread of training programmes, and groups that are more unique to Israel, such as groups dealing with loss and trauma and dialogue groups. On the surface, the expansion of training programmes and openness to new approaches is a sign of multicultural awakening in Israel. Deeper exploration reveals a covert encapsulation according to Hopper’s fourth basic assumption (Hopper, 1997).

IJP-Open, 2021

It can be said that from centuries before Hesiod tells us about Cronus (the god of time), the human being was concerned about the discovery of the riddle of the time. He has always entertained himself with different means and has created various ways to overcome the difficulty of passing through time. I, in my two previous papers, have tried to depict a new theory about the origin of the sense of time in the human psyche. For this and with the help of Winnicott’s transitional objects and phenomena, I have proposed two new concepts of transitional time objects and phenomena, which are different from Winnicott’s concepts, however similar. In this paper, after pointing to these notions, I try to illustrate them from economic, topological, and dynamic aspects and their functions as the most eminent and fundamental components of our mental life. Also, with the help of Otto Rank’s Trauma of Birth and its importance for beginning the sense of time, I try to answer the queries that may arise in many people’s minds such, as why people fly from being alone and why some patients are afraid of silence. Finally, based on our new findings on the origin of the sense of time, a new understanding of the death drive has been suggested.