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Biomedical subjects

R D Stolorow

Publications and source records attributed to R D Stolorow.

16 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1979

Psychosexuality and the representational world.

The sensual experiences, fantasies and enactments that occur in the course of normal development are seen as psychic organizers which contribute vitally to the structuralization of the representational world. In the sexual perversions which occur in structurally deficient, developmentally arrested individuals, this function of early psychosexual experiences has been retained and is regressively relied upon in order to restore or sustain the cohesion and stability of crumbling, fragmenting or disintegrating self and object representations. Analytic exploration of the details of perverse fantasies and acts, their origins and functions, reveals the particular ways in which they compensate for specific structural weaknesses in patients' representational worlds. Some clinical illustrations and therapeutic implications of these formulations are briefly presented.

Fantasy↗
PubMed1979

Defensive and arrested developmental aspects of death anxiety, hypochondriasis and depersonalization.

The theoretical distinction between psychopathology based on intrapsychic conflict and psychopathology rooted in a developmental arrest is applied to an analysis of death anxiety, hypochondriasis and depersonalization. The defensive functions of these states are contrasted with instances in which they are symptomatic of interferences with the consolidation of a structurally cohesive and temporally stable self representation. Clinical material is presented to demonstrate that, in their arrested developmental aspects, death anxiety, hypochondriasis and depersonalization are closely related to one another along a continuum of narcissistic decompensation and signal varying degrees or stages of self-fragmentation.

Anxiety↗
PubMed1978

The developmental prestages of defenses: diagnostic and therapeutic implications.

In the interest of clarifying the distinction between psychopathology based on structural conflict and psychopathology rooted in an arrest in ego development, the hypothesis is offered that there is a developmental line for each defensive process and that a defense mechanism represents the endpoint of a series of developmental achievements. Clinical material is presented to demonstrate the decisive diagnostic and therapeutic consequences of distinguishing between the defenses of projection, incorporation, and splitting, on the one hand, and their specific developmental prestages, on the other.

Adult↗
PubMed1976

Idealization and grandiosity: developmental considerations and treatment implications.

Analysis of patients with narcissistic pathology offers an opportunity to study the development of specific distortions of self and object representations. Two cases are presented illustrating the development of idealizations and grandiosity. For one patient these were manifestations of a developmental arrest; for the other, defenses against object-instinctual conflict. Differences in the function of idealizations and grandiosity in the two patients are attributed to the role of aggression and to the degree of separation-individuation attained. Treatment implications with references to the works of Kohut and Kernberg are considered.

Adult↗
PubMed1975

Early object loss and denial. Developmental considerations.

The psychoanalytic treatment of a young woman whose father had been killed in a concentration camp when she was four years old serves to illuminate certain aspects of libidinal and ego development, particularly as it touched on the effects of losing one's father just before entering the oedipal phase and on the defensive use of denial in lieu of mourning. Further consequences of the patient's loss are seen in the extent to which it influenced the self-image, sexual identity formation, and superego functioning, especially with regard to the role of guilt.

Adult↗