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Biomedical subjects

D L Raphling

Publications and source records attributed to D L Raphling.

12 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1998

Aggression: its relation to desire and self-interest.

Aggression continues to be a problematic, ill-defined concept for most contemporary analysts. Questions about the nature and origin of aggression remain unanswered. On the one hand, aggression is conceived of as an instinctual drive; on the other, it is thought to originate as an instrument of reaction to external sources of frustration and environmental failures to meet developmental needs. Aggression has also been dichotomized as either the benign activity of assertiveness, or the darker destructive force of hostility, believed by many to arise from separate motivational systems. There is a problem with the view of aggression as largely an ad hoc reaction to deprivation or other environmental shortcomings leading to disappointment and frustration. This view understates the importance of the original expansive demands for pleasurable satisfaction made by the individual upon the environment. Desire itself seems to be responsible for an inward vulnerability to external sources of disappointment and frustration, so that what is not desired cannot be effectively frustrated. Though the prototypical object of aggression is taken to be an external source of frustration, danger, and narcissistic injury, the mobilization of aggression more accurately reflects a susceptibility to the disturbing pressure of psychic stimuli that are the inner desire for satisfaction. Aggression contributes its force to various constructive or destructive purposes, from love to mastery to vengeance. Its most immediate aims, primarily narcissistic, are not concerned with the needs of others. Aggression also makes important contributions to maintaining psychic equilibrium, to the psychic organization's stake in instinctual gratification, to ego function, and to superego operation.

Aggression↗
PubMed1997

Interpretation as comparison.

Analytic subjectivity may not be the problem it seems. What is crucial for patients is not that analysts possess the objective truth, but that patients see a truth for themselves. How they accomplish this may depend on the analyst's showing them a view of themselves that differs from their own and can be compared to it. Each aspect of experience is defined by its relation to another reference point. I propose that the interpretive process is a medium for knowing one's mind in relation to that of another. This has implications for issues of analytic authority and autonomy.

Humans↗
PubMed1995

Interpretation and expectation: the anxiety of influence.

Interpretations go beyond assigning unconscious meaning to analytic material. They inevitably communicate the analyst's assessments of the patient's present and past conflicts, and his expectations for their future resolution. The analyst's estimation of a patient's potential, as well as his personal investment in helping the patient realize that potential, is embedded in the interpretive process. Although careful analysis of unintended interpretive influences on a patient's transference and resistance is required to assure relative neutrality, there remains a residual conditioning effect of interpretations that catalyzes the analytic process and reinforces a patient's efforts to change.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

A patient who was not sexually abused.

Analysts are encountering increasing numbers of patients who suspect or believe that the ills for which they seek analytic treatment as adults are due to having been sexually abused as children. A patient whose claim of childhood sexual abuse was not substantiated on analysis is the subject of a clinical report. Psychodynamic factors responsible for the appeal of the idea of sexual abuse are explored.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

The analyst's mistakes.

The analyst's mistakes are an inevitable aspect of his conduct of psychoanalysis. They result from the inherent uncertainties and ambiguities of the analytic process itself, and from the continuing effect upon analytic technique of the analyst's unresolved conflicts, as manifested in countertransference attitudes and enactments. Variables of clinical experience, skill, and the vicissitudes of the analyst's life also contribute to the susceptibility to error. When the analyst's mistakes result from his active engagement in the psychoanalytic process, they yield important clues for understanding clinical material as well as present potential obstacles to analytic progress.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Some vicissitudes of aggression in the interpretive process.

Interpretation is a product of compromise formation that requires optimal use of the analyst's aggression to be an effective analytic intervention. Aggressive aims useful for the interpretive act are problematic for analysts and have led both to clinical difficulties and to various theoretical reactions against considering interpretation essential for analytic progress. In analysis, diverging aims of analyst and patient are highlighted in connection with the analyst's function as interpreter. The interactions between patient and analyst pertaining to interpretation provide insights into the patient's intrapsychic conflicts that may be less apparent in other material.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Fetishism in a woman.

Fetishism is generally considered to be a perversion occurring only in males. In this paper a clinical illustration of an adult woman with a fetishistic perversion is offered and considered within the context of the classic concept of fetishism originally described by Freud. Similarities and differences between male and female fetishism are discussed, with attention given to the greater complexity of the perversion as it occurs in a woman. The clinical example confirms the existence of fetishism in women and suggests that subtle forms of the perversion may go unnoticed and be more prevalent than previously realized.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Transference across gender lines.

Four clinical examples of oedipal-based transference across gender lines are presented with the aim of illustrating (1) its existence, (2) the defenses against its emergence, and (3) the use of the analyst's gender as both an organizer of and resistance to certain transference manifestations. Factors that contribute to the availability for analysis of cross-gender transference are discussed, as are the resistances and other obstacles to its actualization.

Adult↗