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Biomedical subjects

L Shengold

Publications and source records attributed to L Shengold.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1989

Further thoughts about "nothing".

Some meanings of "nothing" are delineated according to their acquisition, confluence, and transformation in the course of the child's development of drives, the ego, and object relations. This sketch is illustrated mainly from King Lear.

Child↗
PubMed1985

The effects of child abuse as seen in adults: George Orwell.

The author presents the case of a patient who showed the massive defensive effects seen in people who were abused in childhood. These effects are similar to those described in George Orwell's 1984 and in his autobiographical writings: denial and "doublethink"; masochistic submission to the tormentor; turning of anger against the self and loving "Big Brother"; identifying with the abuser and tormenting others; a burgeoning of anal mechanisms and obsessive phenomena that results in a massive isolation of affects; excessive emotional control alongside outbursts of rage. The interference with memory and emotions compromises identity and humanity. The unforseeable evolution of innate gifts in a child sometimes permits a partial transcendence of these crippling defenses, as Orwell partially transcended what appears to have been the emotional deprivation of his childhood and what he felt to have been the abuse of his schoolboy years.

Child↗
PubMed1985

Defensive anality and anal narcissism.

This paper aims at demonstrating a currently beleaguered assumption: the central importance, the continuing vitality, and the appropriate complexity of Freud's theory of the drives and of his idea of the primacy of the body ego. It is not enough to consider man a thinking machine or a social being; his animal nature must be given a central place in psychology. The paper postulates that 'anal or sphincter defensiveness' is one of the precursors of the repression barrier. Anality has been comparatively neglected in recent psychoanalytic literature, and so has its explorer, Karl Abraham. The paper's thesis is that there is a special defensive importance to anal erogeneity and libido, and to those aspects of ego and superego that are functionally operative (as the 'sadistic-anal organization' (Freud, 1917)) during the so-called 'sadistic-anal' developmental phase. Any of the psychic danger situations can evoke regression to manifestations of 'anal narcissim'--an attempt to master overwhelming feeling by a kind of emotional sphincter action, narrowing down the world to the controllable and the predictable. The basic assumption here is Fliess's idea that the attainment of anal sphincter control functions--with, as-it-were, 'psychic resonance'--as a means to master primal (murderous, cannibalistic) affect. For optimal psychic development, a proper balance must be attained between anal control of, and anal expression of, instinctual derivatives--especially of affect laden with aggression.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

A patient who had trouble with geography.

Aspects of geography are important in relation to the establishment of body ego, since they inevitably supply from the external world the early symbols that represent in the mind the basic elements of infantile experience in regard to body parts, functions, and relationships with primal objects. The accretional inter-twining of all subsequent psychic conflicts can therefore be expressed in symbolic geographic terms. These conflicts center on the developmentally evolving meanings of the mother's body as epitomized in the riddle of the Sphinx. Illustration of the concepts includes a brief clinical report and selected literary and mythological examples.

Ego↗
PubMed1982

The symbol of telephoning.

Two clinical excerpts illustrate the patient's use of telephoning as an equivalent for and a symbol of masturbation. Some of the many and multidetermined latent meanings of telephoning are indicated.

Anxiety↗
PubMed1982

Anal erogeneity: the goose and the rat.

A case is presented in which the patient's traumatically derived intense anal erogeneity (associated with traumatic anxiety as well as with castration anxiety) inhibited his phallic sensations and potency and also his power to sustain productive thought. His passive cravings were disguised and reacted against in his compulsive-exhibitionistically phallic role of a Don Juan. He described at least two levels of anal feelings: a dangerous but exciting, tolerable or even pleasurable tension associated with the imago of the goose; and an unbearable, terrifying overcharged level embodied in the imago of the rat. (He had read of, and had felt himself identified with, Freud's Rat Man.) Contrasts are presented with François Rabelais' account of the instinctual development and anal training of Gargantua, in which the connotations of the goose lead to a happy anal, phallic and intellectual control. Generalizations are ventured about the crucial attainment of command over the anal sphincter for the taming of 'primal affect'(Fliess). With early psychopathology there is a defensive overcathexis of anal control (and of anal mechanisms and character traits) to try to contain over-stimulation. In contrast true anal mastery contributes to the acquisition of optimal genital feelings and functioning and to the capacity for sustaining integrative thinking so necessary for 'owning' one's affects and impulses, and therefore for a feeling of identity. Finally, some remarks of Freud on Rabelais are reviewed in relation to levels of urethral erogeneity, seen as developmental way stations between the anal and the phallic, and partaking of both.

Adult↗
PubMed1980

Some reflections on a case of mother/adolescent son incest.

A rare case of mother/adolescent son incest is presented. The son, treated in analysis, was not psychotic. Questions are raised about why father/daughter incest appears to be much more common than mother/son incest. Part of the answer, I speculate, has to do with the special psychic dangers for both mother and son, perhaps phylogenetically-based, which attach to the fantasy and the possibility of impregnating the mother. Where the incest taboo is violated, the primary responsibility would appear to be the parent's; the parent is frequently motivated by a compulsion to repeat his or her own incestuous past. In the case presented the probably psychotic mother had raised her son to look like a girl for several years, and he had been the victim of a homosexual assault at the age of 6. The incest at puberty seems to have helped him reverse a psychic position of subjection to the pre-oedipal mother, to have modified his rage and reinforced his masculinity. It also produced some of the arrogance, alongside a need for failure and punishment that evoke the legend of Oedipus. The mother, fearful of the possibility of getting pregnant, had abruptly stopped the incest. It had been repressed, and became conscious again when the son entered analysis. He then left his treatment without being able to work through much of the terror consequent to the consummation of incest, and with some of the feeling of oedipal triumph retained.

Adult↗