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PubMed2000

Teaching Freud to undergraduates: a case report.

The authors describe their experience teaching 'The Writings of Sigmund Freud' to undergraduates at Columbia College over a three-year period. The course focused on Freud's developing theory of the mind, his application of psychoanalytic theory to the study of culture, and the autobiographical and historical context in which the texts were written. The students entered the course intrigued by the controversy surrounding Freud. They immersed themselves in the intellectual task of understanding Freud's work while at the same time discovering its power to speak directly to their personal concerns. The students found in Freud a companion in the search for personal meaning in the 'great books' of the western canon. At a deeper level, they found in Freud an ally in the drama of coming-of-age, experienced in terms of separation and loss, concerns about normality and sexuality, the quest for autonomy and the search for identity. While interested in Freud's ideas about infantile sexuality, for the most part, they rejected the concept of the Oedipus complex. The authors present excerpts from the students' written work and classroom discussion. Their responses are explored in relation to the developmental tasks of adolescence.

Attitude↗
PubMed2001

Loving them to death: the anorexic and her objects.

The author suggests that eating disorders function to reinforce phantasies of control of the internal parents, a feature of Klein's view of the manic defence. Using this hypothesis, she attempts to differentiate between anorexia and bulimia. It is argued that in anorexia objects are felt to be permanently in thrall, suspended or frozen, whereas in bulimia they are attacked in a frenzied and intermittent way. Using case material from three seriously ill patients, the author draws attention to some important differences between them. Two of the patients were treated in psychoanalysis, while the third was seen for an extended consultation and once-weekly treatment thereafter. It is suggested that the nature and degree of the murderous attack on the internal couple may determine the severity of the illness as well as the patient's capacity to benefit from treatment. The conclusions drawn are discussed in relation to some contemporary views on eating disorders as well as writings on the difficulties of working through the Oedipus complex more generally. The author suggests that eating disorders may represent a special case of oedipal illusions.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Some reflections on identification.

The author presents a view of identification based on a rereading of two of Freud's key texts and an approach derived from an academic interpretation of Hegel dating from the 1930s. These aspects are considered at length. The importance of the human and anthropogenic element is stressed. The human subject is presented as coming into being through language; being called upon to be what he is not and not to be what he is, the subject appears as wishful in nature, desiring the wish of the other at the same time as he desires the object of the other's wish. The author argues that identification as a problem arises only in a human being who speaks or has received an injunction to speak; this raises the question of who or what he is and of being as such. Analytic treatment may in his view therefore proceed in one of two directions, one based on the interplay of projection and introjection with identification as an end, and the other on resistance and repression where the Oedipus complex is seen as the nuclear issue. Identification is seen in terms of overcoming the negative identity of not being all other subjects, and identity is found to be a conscious response that might even have a political element.

Ego↗
PubMed1985

Parameters and the analytic process: a contribution to the theory of the "mature transference".

This case presentation deals with a patient whose preoedipally and oedipally determined deficit in directing libido and aggression toward the world, and resulting resistance to the analytic process, required the use of a "reducible" parameter designed to help him harness libido and aggression in the service of intellectual interest. The peculiar conformation of the patient's Oedipus complex, superimposed on a developmental deficit, led to profound resistance to genetic oedipal and preoedipal interpretations of the paternal and maternal transferences, respectively. The resistance took the form of an avowed lack of intellectual interest in the analytic work which paralleled his lack of interest both in his career and in his interpersonal relationships. The use of a technical parameter involving the provision of advice on an issue of pressing concern and a subsequent "preinterpretive enactment" dealing with the nature of psychoanalytic interpretation were instrumental in securing a "mature transference" (Stone, 1961) and in controlling the resistance-based regression. Via the instrumentality of the parameter, the case provides a concrete exemplification of Kanzer's (1975, p. 49) claim that "even the patient's antagonism toward therapy. . . may play a constructive part in the treatment."

Adult↗
PubMed1986

The father's role in the child's development of the capacity to cope with separation and loss.

Following a brief survey of the history and evolution of parental roles in Western society, early psychoanalytic concepts about the father's role are presented. Freud noted two opposing paternal images in the young boy's mind, namely how love for father and reverence for his power clash with hostility towards the father who is feared as a rival. Freud's personal family history, his self-analysis and the climate of his times led him to formulate the oedipus complex and to propose its role in personality development and pathology. After examining the earlier analytic formulations, more recent related theories are noted. For a period of time, a shift in emphasis from paternal influence to maternal role accompanied the concern with childhood developmental psychology. Following this downplaying of the father's importance, nowadays there is increased appreciation of the influence of both parents and the significance of their relationship with one another upon their children's emotional growth. The final portion of this paper deals with a contemporary view of the specific roles of the father in the child's capacity to mature and separate.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1987

The mother not the father.

Otto Rank pioneered in regarding the mother's place as paramount in the emotional life of the child, even when he was enveloped in Freudian orthodoxy, but expanded his viewpoint after he had left the Freudian ranks. His more mature views were to stress separation and individuation as lifelong dilemmas because they were in tension with our urges to seek oneness and to merge with others and not to regard that struggle as a dialectic that got worked through or transcended in an early, pre-Oedipal stage. He believed that fusing and individuating were lifetime issues for all, in or out of their psychoanalyses. Rank showed radical feminist attitudes far ahead of his time, contending that the female is central and superior to male existence, and that women need a psychology that is not warmed-over male biases but truly a "female psychology." He foreshadowed later writers who emphasized the motherly warmth and caregiving of psychotherapists. He regarded many of his technical innovations as ways to heighten the reexperiencing of early child-and-mother interactions and thought of the analytic setting itself as being akin to the mother-child relationship. Among psychoanalysts of all colorations respecting their Freudian orthodoxy, there is a special mystique and nostalgia around the Oedipus complex and paramountcy of the father in a child's mental life; but Otto Rank took a militant, yet reasoned, stand against such patriarchal biases.

Austria↗
PubMed2001

Honor your father and your mother.

While on the one hand there is much mutual love and care in the relationship between parents and their offspring, there may, on the other hand, be also much mutual 'sound and fury', which sometimes is far from 'signifying nothing' (William Shakespeare, Macbeth). Indeed, from conception on, individuals are confronted with parent-offspring conflicts of all kinds. Initially these conflicts concern physiological matters (implantation, nutrition, weaning, etc.), but later in life the accent is on psychological ('you must this', 'you must that', 'don't do that' etc.) and social affairs, and phenomena such as child abuse, infanticide and incest may occur. It is, therefore, certainly not self-evident that children honor their parents. To reinforce their position, parents (societies) may appeal to a 'divine' commandment which helps them make their children suppress any tendency to conflict toward them (and hence to their culture), so that children conform to their parents' norms and values. When such psychological and sociological parent-offspring conflicts are not resolved satisfactorily, it can be suggested, children may (consciously or unconsciously) have aggressive feelings toward their parents: Freud's 'Oedipus complex'. This complex, it is argued, can also be seen as a parent-offspring conflict. Given their biological basis, parent-offspring conflicts can hardly be considered as abnormal. Conflicts between adults and their offspring have always existed and will always exist, simply because it is inherent in our genetic make-up: parents and offspring of sexually reproducing species--humans included--are only about 50% genetically related and hence have different interests at all levels of being. Indeed, parent-offspring conflicts are such stuff as we are made on, and our little life is rounded with its consequences (adapted from William Shakespeare, The Tempest).

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The concept of identity: developmental origins, phenomenology, clinical relevance, and measurement.

The aim of this paper is a thorough explication of the concept of identity. We have synthesized the scattered psychiatric and psychoanalytic literature on the topic to shed light on the historical origins, development, phenomenology, clinical relevance, and methods of assessing identity. Our review revealed that: (1) The concept of identity has persisted over eight decades. (2) Identity originates in the earliest interplay of the infant's temperament with the mother's attitude, gains structure from primitive introjections, refines itself through later selective identifications, acquires filiation and generational continuity in passage through the Oedipus complex, and arrives at its more or less final shape through synthesis of contradictory identifications and greater individuation during adolescence. It remains subject to further refinements during young adulthood, midlife, and even old age. (3) A cohesive identity comprises a realistic body image, subjective self-sameness, consistent attitudes, temporality, gender, authenticity, and ethnicity. (4) Disturbance of identity suggests psychopathology, with greater identity disturbance being associated with more-severe conditions (e.g., severe personality disorders, multiple personality, psychosis). (5) Clinical and psychometric assessment is therefore relevant and might indicate treatment strategies and outcome expectations. Findings from the literature are elucidated, and areas needing further research are identified.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1976

A potential young murderer.

Longitudinal study of six people who committed homicides or exhibited a potential for homicidal behavior was undertaken over a period of ten years. The data were obtained through psychiatric interviews, psychological testing, and examination of all available records. The material thus obtained was analyzed from the psychoanalytic point of view. Three specific points were identified as being common and applicable to a lesser or greater degree in all six cases studied. First, as children each of these six people suffered actual physical abuse perpetrated by their parents. Second, they actually saw during childhood violent and destructive behavior by their parents. Third, the sequelae of such exposure to violence interfered with the phase specific resolution of the basic conflicts of childhood, specifically Oedipus complex. These traumata of violence set up a predisposition for regression to the preoedipal levels of psychic organization and functioning. From the structural point of view, ego functions of impulse control were lacking due to profound states of regression whenever these patients experienced extreme anger, which in turn would precipitate homicidal behavior. None of the patients had childhood history of pyromania, enuresis, nor cruelty to animals. On the basis of the aforegoing material, one may conclude that in some instances it is possible to establish "homicidal proneness" as a clinical entity. Homicidal proneness can be anticipated in people who as children suffered from physical and emotional abuse, witnessed violence, and were sexually traumatized through incestuous experiences or their equivalents.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[The beginnings of child analysis].

The notions hitherto existing of the beginnings of child analysis have to be rectified. The meaning of childhood neuroses within the scope of scientific theory, i.e. the sexual genesis of the neuroses can no longer be maintained. The approach of distinguishing between the latent period and the Oedipus complex as the two phases of sexual development can nowadays be considered to be refuted. The personality of the first children's analyst--Hermine Hug-Hellmuth--needs to be redescribed. She fell victim to her father-transference and deceased murdered by her nephew with the help of whom she had satisfied her own scientific ambitions.

Child↗
PubMed1991

Treatment techniques in evolution.

In response to Gabbard's paper, "Do We Need Theory?" the author disputes the suggestion that his early therapeutic successes were theory-specific. He also takes issue with the view that "the analyst's personality is a constant," emphasizing instead the continual fluidity of an effective analytic relationship. While agreeing that atheoreticism is itself a theory, the author differentiates between the universal presence of content as defined by formal psychoanalytic metapsychological theory (e.g., primary instinctual envy, the Oedipus complex) and the centrality of affect attunement that illuminates developmental processes. He cautions therapists to guard against believing that they know "objective reality," and he urges them to assume a "know-nothing" position conducive to eliciting each patient's psychic reality.

Disruptive, Impulse Control, and Conduct Disorders↗
PubMed1989

Female homosexual patients in psychoanalysis.

There are few psychoanalytic publications on female homosexuality, but those that do exist have each contributed to our knowledge not only of homosexuality in women but also of femininity. Homosexuality in women is a defence acting in two directions: against going backwards (out of fear of psychical fragmentation) and against going forwards (and working through the Oedipus complex). Identification with the father's penis is generally regarded as characteristic of female homosexuality, but my experience suggests that it is not always present, because, where sexual differentiation is less well established, identification with the baby predominates. While some patients break off their analysis prematurely out of fear of psychical fragmentation and the depressive position, other patients manage to overcome their anxieties and repeat and then work through in the transference the early object relations contained in their homosexual fixations, so that they can find their way back to a better established female identity.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

The place of Germanic language and culture in Freud's discovery of psychoanalysis between 1895 and 1900.

Freud's self-analysed dreams between 1895 and 1900 point out: His attachment to his German mother tongue and the use of its peculiarities to represent certain polymorphous perverse fantasies of childhood (voyeurism, masochistic mostly); the recourse to living foreign languages (English and French mostly) to name the parts of the self both left alive and foreign to the consciousness; the use of Latin and Greek words to constitute one scientific universal language fitting to the knowledge of the unconscious. For Freud, the German culture is the culture to which he belongs; the antique Mediterranean culture being the culture of reference. It allows him to get free from the motherly symbiosis and to discover the Oedipus complex. The variety of languages and cultures is necessary to the preconscious activity of the psychoanalyst to whom it provides 'intermediate ideas'.

Austria↗
PubMed1987

"I want to be a daddy!": meanings of masculine identifications in girls.

This paper suggests revisions in our understanding of feminine identity formation, the girl's negative oedipus complex, and masculine identifications in girls. Analytic material from the cases of three girls is used to explore the various origins and intrapsychic functions of masculine identifications at each phase of the girl's development. Accounts of feminine development based on such concepts as castration shock, primary femininity, primary identification with mother, or core gender identity are seen as oversimplified. Feminine and masculine identifications are neither primary nor secondary, but the product of a long line of development, of ongoing conflict resolution, and of defensive transformations.

Child↗
PubMed1983

[Sigmund Freud and cocaine].

The basic tenet proposed by J. V. Scheidt states that the narcotic drug, cocaine played a role in the development of psychoanalysis which has been underestimated up to the present day. It is a fact that Freud himself took cocaine (in small doses) for about two years, and that he began his dream interpretation approximately ten years later. Scheidt believes that a long, unconscious conflict related to the cocaine-induced states of euphoria (ten years later) suddenly led to the beginnings of dream interpretation. The question to be answered now is: Why did this happen precisely in 1895? The foundations of psychoanalysis had already been laid, the application of the new method to the treatment of nervous disorders (heart complaints, train phobias, etc.) was certainly obvious. During this self-analysis it became necessary, first of all, to come to terms with the self-reproaches-which lay on the surface and were more accessible to consciousness-related to Freud's cocaine period (Fleischl-Marxow becomes addicted to cocaine, the most terrible night ever experienced, death of this friend, Freud's warning came too late). It was only when Freud has come to terms with this phase of his life that the road to the deepest part, the discovery of the Oedipus complex in the fall of 1897, was cleared.

Austria↗
PubMed1981

Narcissism and adaptation to indignity.

Having initially briefly reviewed and then compared and contrasted the contributions of Kernberg and Kohut to the theory and treatment of narcissistic problems, the attempt was then made to evaluate critically their merits and possible short-comings. It was felt that in pushing back the frontiers of pathology to earlier and earlier developmental phases there has been an associated tendency to postulate "essentially preverbal unconscious communication' between therapist and patient where empathy tends to minimize or replace free association and other secondary process communication as the analytic therapeutic tool. The view was put forward that both Kernberg and Kohut emphasized the countertransference dangers involved in treating patients with narcissistic problems at the expense of recognizing the communicative, adaptive aspects of the feelings evoked and provoked by such patients. There was the question raised whether new self psychologies were required or merely the modification of existing theories. This was especially relevant to proposed changes in viewing the place of drives and the Oedipus complex. Finally, an attempt was made to show that along with object-related developmental conflicts and traumas, life presents us all with a series of indignities related to narcissistic traumas that we must cope with from infancy to senescence, and not least among these traumas are those related to being an analytic patient.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1980

Symposium on object relations theory and love. Object concept and object choice.

Any considerations of object relations theory and love requires a clear understanding of how the term, object relations, is used. In this contribution the concept of the object as a mental representation is emphasized. Developmentally, the evolution of the object cannot be separated from the vicissitudes of the drives. Sensorimotor experience is metaphorically assimilated in terms of pleasure-unpleasure components. Since the object concept develops in this context, it is inextricably linked to the vicissitudes of the drives. In later experience, these become organized in terms of persistent unconscious fantasies that ultimately affect object choice and patterns of loving. These are multiple determined and are influenced by contributions from all levels of development, predominantly integrated under the aegis of the oedipus complex.

Aggression↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The significance of Kleinian contributions to psychoanalysis II. Freudian and Kleinian conceptions of early mental development.

This paper discusses and compares Freudian and Kleinian conceptions of the development of early mental life from the vertices of the genetic hypothesis (and reconstruction), the infantile neurosis, the conception of the evolution of the infant, the issue of reality, and the oedipus complex. In so doing, some of the newer findings of infant development are considered. We can now correlate Kleinian conceptions of early infantile reconstruction in light of these new developments; this paper seeks further to demonstrate that the classical notion of primary narcissism, which is laterally known as the conception of the self-object representation, is incompatible with notions of infantile psychology and therefore leaves the classical conception of early mental life in an ambiguous state. An attempt is made to redress this by reconciling the classical and Kleinian notions via a "dual-tract" theory.

Child Development↗