Biomedical subjects

D Quinodoz

Publications and source records attributed to D Quinodoz.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1996

An adopted analysand's transference of a 'hole-object'.

The author describes the vicissitudes of the transference and countertransference in cases where the internal object transferred by the patient on to the analyst is experienced by the former as non-existent. A case history involving a 'hole-object' of this kind is presented, the patient concerned having been adopted at the age of six months and having the fantasy that she did not exist before her adoption. The hole-object is created by the patient to defend against psychic suffering and aggressive drives towards the object. A careful distinction is made between the hole-object, which is defined in terms of its non-existence, and the absent object, the 'psychic hole', the melancholic object and the bad-breast feeling, all of which exist or have existed at some time. The author describes the 'double transference', in which she represented both the idealised albeit well cathected adoptive parents and the disavowed, abandoning biological parents; in the latter case indifference took the place of love and hate in the transference. The analyst in this situation must in the author's view interpret his transference role as a hole-object so as to confer existence on this object and make it representable, and for this purpose a vital role falls to the countertransference. The split between the abandoning and the adopting aspects of the parents can then be resolved, giving rise to a single identificatory parental image.

Adoption↗

PubMed1994

Interpretations in projection.

The author uses the term 'interpretations in projection' to denote a form of interpretation which the analyst can use in extreme situations when he feels that he can no longer get through to his patient. This technique is particularly indicated with patients who resort to massive projective identification. The aim of interpretation in projection is to allow the patient to rediscover the bond of identity with the part of himself projected into the analyst. It falls into two stages, in the first of which the analyst becomes the spokesman for the 'healthy' part which the patient has projected into the analyst so as to protect it from the invading introjected object with which it is for the time being merged. In a second stage, the analyst may, where appropriate, give a complementary interpretation in which he addresses the analysand by his own name in order to interpret the relationship expressed in the transference through projection and introjection. The author gives some clinical examples of interpretations in projection.

Adult↗

PubMed1992

The psychoanalytic setting as the instrument of the container function.

Different settings reveal the operation of different psychical mechanisms; for this reason I try in this paper to take a fresh look at the psychoanalytic setting which underlies the specificity of what we psychoanalysts call psychoanalysis and helps to distinguish it from other forms of therapy--in particular, psychotherapy. In my view, the analyst's creative container function is expressed particularly through the setting. This setting is not an inert vessel, a mere juxtaposition of rules, but an active container which interacts dynamically with the process. Observance of the conditions of the psychoanalytic setting seems to me important if what comes to life is intended to be a psychoanalytic process; the analysand's (or analysand-to-be's) pressures on the analyst to abandon aspects of the setting can then sometimes be interpreted as unconscious attacks on the creative container function of the analyst and on that of the patient himself. A number of clinical examples are given, showing that, like 'Donkey Skin', the analysand may sometimes demand not only pieces of gold from psychoanalysis but also, unconsciously, its skin.

Defense Mechanisms↗

PubMed1990

Vertigo and object relationship.

Vertigo appeared to me in analysis to be an expression of separation anxiety; we can observe the vicissitudes of the object relationship by way of the development of this symptom in the treatment. I identify different forms of vertigo according to the particular stage reached by the patient, from fusion-related vertigo via vertigo about being dropped, vertigo associated with aspiration, vertigo connected with the alternation of prison and escape and vertigo related to the attraction of the void, to competition-related vertigo which appears in an oedipal context. They correspond to different moments in the constitution of relational space: first, the two-dimensional world in which even the void is inconceivable; then, the sensation of the void manifesting a disavowal of the absence of relationship; next, the constitution of a three-dimensional space in which the patient initially feels carried by the object but then discovers that he can carry himself; and, finally, the constitution of the internal space which allows internalization of the feeling of 'buoyancy'.

Adult↗