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Biomedical subjects

W W Meissner

Publications and source records attributed to W W Meissner.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

The concept of the therapeutic alliance.

Certain conceptual aspects of the therapeutic alliance are considered. Although therapeutic alliance, transference, and the real relation are intermingled and intertwined in the actuality of the analytic relationship, they remain distinguishable and open to differentiating analysis. The distinctions between the therapeutic alliance and transference, and between alliance and the real relation, are explored and their differences clarified, including the difference between therapeutic misalliances and transferences. Some of the component dimensions of the therapeutic alliance are explored, including empathy, the therapeutic framework, responsibility, authority, freedom, trust, autonomy, initiative, and ethical considerations including values and confidentiality. Further exploration of these and other dimensions of the therapeutic alliance is called for, especially the extension of these dimensions to their practical clinical application.

Empathy↗
PubMed1991

The phenomenology of religious psychopathology.

Patients with firmly established belief systems frequently enter analysis. The analyst must determine the extent to which neurotic and therefore analyzable components are involved in the patient's beliefs as such, as opposed to how the beliefs are embraced and adhered to as expressions of personal neurotic symptom formation or character pathology. The author discusses typical patterns of neurotic religious involvement as they are expressed clinically in hysterical, obsessional, depressive-masochistic, narcissistic, and paranoid modes and styles. He illustrates the manifestations of these patterns with clinical examples drawn from psychoanalytic experience.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Foundations of psychoanalysis reconsidered.

Grünbaum's approach to psychoanalysis suffers from several difficulties. It imposes a standard of logical reductionism and methodological purity that not only violates the nature of psychoanalytic knowledge, but imposes an invalid standard of verification and scientific confirmation. It utilizes a brand of dichotomous reasoning that forces psychoanalytic propositions into artificial positions that do not reflect the actuality of analytic practice. It imposes a standard of verification that is impossible for psychoanalysis, along with all forms of psychological knowledge, to reach. It visualizes psychoanalysis as encompassing only one form of knowledge of human psychic life, forcing it into a model that eliminates other aspects of the psychoanalytic process, so that psychoanalysis is subjected to criticism only on one dimension among several--a kind of psychoanalytic straw man. The psychoanalysis that is so impaled often is difficult for the psychoanalytic practitioner to recognize. To the extent that Grünbaum's skillful and highly informed criticism of the philosophical bases of psychoanalysis encounters these difficulties, the value of his argument falls short of providing a useful basis for advancing psychoanalytic knowledge and particularly for promoting the quest for pertinent standards of validation within psychoanalysis.

Follow-Up Studies↗
PubMed1979

Studies on hysteria--Katharina.

Freud's account of his meeting with the country maid, Katharina, is re-evaluated from a contemporary psychoanalytic perspective. Freud's original explanation of Katharina's hysteria was based on a set of quantitative-economic assumptions and a psychic model based on conflict and defense. A modern analytic perspective would shift the emphasis from the economics of discharge to the aims and objects of sexual activity. The understanding of sensual pleasure focuses more specifically on the related complex of intentions, purposes, meanings, and motives, as well as on the qualities, characteristics, and patterns of interaction with important objects.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1979

Critique of concepts and therapy in the action language approach to psychoanalysis.

Critical evaluation is made of the attempts to reformulate basic psychoanalytic concepts in terms of a theory of action language. The criticism focuses on issues of the scientific status of psychoanalytic knowledge, the role of experience as the basis of psychoanalytic knowledge, the role of metaphor in the formulation of psychoanalytic theory (focusing particularly on the issue of anthropomorphism and the forms of acceptable metaphor in the theory), and the problem of levels of abstraction in theoretical conceptualization. Particular issues in the action language approach, which are challenged from a more traditional process-oriented psychoanalytic perspective, are the notion of action; the status of mind; the specific formulations and conceptualizations of drives and motives, conflicts, resistance, affects, and internalization; the nature of the concepts of self and identity. The critique developed in these areas is then utilized as the basis for assessment of clinical implications, particularly their application in specific psychoanalytic contexts.

Affect↗
PubMed1977

Psychoanalytic notes on suicide.

The typology of and theories on suicidal behavior are reviewed to integrate various points of view in terms of the paranoid process. Freud's theory of internalized aggression, the relation of suicide impulses to depression, the operation of narcissistic components in the complex motivation of suicide are related to the concept of the victim-introject as central to the pathology of suicide. Suicidal patterns play out the dynamics inherent in the victim-introject and its correlative component the aggressor-introject. The victim-introject serves as the core internalization around which a false-self system is organized; the suicide represents the attempt to destroy the false-self as a means of realizing the dynamic purposes of the victim-introject. The concept of the victim-introject integrates previous psychoanalytic formulations of suicide and provides a template for the development of a therapeutic rationale. Implications for therapeutic response are considered, particularly in terms of the need to undermine the patient's attempts to maintain and reinforce his victimization.

Aggression↗
PubMed1976

Psychotherapeutic schema based on the paranoid process.

A psychotherapeutic schema is proposed based on the analysis of the paranoid process. The paranoid process involves a paranoid construction of the patient's view of reality and his environment, particularly the social environment. The paranoid construction sustains and makes sense out of the patient's projective system. These projective elements reflect and are derived from the introjects--the internalized objects around which the patient's inner world and his experience of himself are organized. The schema aims at focusing the therapy on these introjects as central to the psychopathology. The following steps of the schema are outlined and discussed: establishing the therapeutic alliance, defining the projective system, testing reality, clarification of the introjects, derivation of the introjects, motivation of the introjects, mourning of infantile attachments, emergence of transference dependence, transference resolution, and termination.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1976

A note on internalization as process.

To the view of internalization as fantasy, there is counterposed the view of internalization as process. The philosophical roots and basic argument of the "fantasy" view are evaluated, particularly in reference to the position of metaphorical terms in psychoanalytic theory. Especially confusing is the literal interpretation of metaphors of spatialization distinguishing the inner dimensions of psychic experience from external referents. The persistent theoretical need is to translate metaphorical usage into meaningful and consistent theoretical terms. The organization of introjects cannot be reduced to memory elements, object representations, or fantasy products. Internalization as process refers to a series of real psychological events whose specific delineation and description has not been accomplished.

Fantasy↗
PubMed1975

Psychoanalysis as a theory of therapy.

The development of psychoanalytic theory is traced from its origins in Freud's early thinking in terms of his advancing clinical experience. While the influence of clinical experience on the modifications of theory has long been accepted, little attention has been paid to the broad spectrum effects of changing theoretical perspectives on the technique of clinical psychoanalysis. This development is traced through the emergence of ego psychology and the dominance of the structural theory to more current developments having to do with object relations and the theory narcissism. The residual theoretical ambiguities and clinical perplexities are illustrated in two clinical cases. The development of psychoanalytic theory and the correlative aspects of technique are seen as manifesting an organic developmental process which has led to an increasing sophistication of analytic intervention and a broadening capacity for dealing with increasingly difficult and less classical types of cases. The conclusion is drawn that therapeutic lestening is equivalently an informed listening, and it is theory that lends understanding and sensitivity to the hearing process. It is theory that is to be put in the service of listening, rather than listening to be put in the service of theory.

Abreaction↗