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The role of the father in child development: a review of the literature.
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The radical faction of women's liberation a psychodynamic assessment.
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Dynamic patterns for failure in college students. Some further reflections on success neurosis.
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Erotic transferences.
Erotic transferences occur on a spectrum reflecting the ease or difficulty of their management. They represent sexualized re-enactments of important childhood relationships. This phase in psychotherapy may be a transient developmental feature or in some instances, assume a formidable resistance to further insightful work. Two case illustrations are given to indicate the breadth of this spectrum. Reasons are discussed for such differences in erotic transferences and their resolutions.
L'Oedipe Africain, a retrospective.
L'Oedipe Africain is a vital text from the early years of postcolonialism and transcultural psychiatry. Psychologist Marie-Cécile Ortigues and her philosopher husband, Edmond Ortigues produced this study after 4 years of clinical work (from 1962 to 1966) at the Fann Hospital in Dakar, Senegal. These were years of intense creativity at Fann, as Dr Henri Collomb set in motion a series of innovations that transformed a classical asylum into an open-door, culturally sensitive therapeutic center. L'Oedipe Africain confronts the transcultural project in the early post-colonial era with such candor and insight that it continues to speak to the profession today. The discussion of transference in situations of racial and cultural difference, and the theorizing of the cultural and universal dimensions to the psyche, emerge as enduring contributions of this text. The assumptions about history, tradition and modernity, and the gloss on female patients prove less durable.
Psychoanalysis.
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Activating posthypnotic conflict: emergent uncovering psychopathology repression, and psychopathology.
An attempt was made to observe the process of repression and symptom formation. Emergent uncovering techniques were used to weaken a spontaneous repression that was produced by the posthypnotic activation of sexual impulses stemming from an implanted oedipa paramnesia. Twelve hypnotic and ten simulating subjects were used in a modified real-simulator design. Although it was not possible to 'lift' the spontaneous repression of derivatives of oedipal strivings in the course of uncovering via visual imagery, a wide variety of spontaneous symptoms were produced in the hypnotically conditioned subjects. The type of symptom was shown to be related to the degree of repression. Simulating subjects produced only a few symptoms. The manifestation of a symptom was concomitant with an increase in the GSR, but not the blatancy of drive representation. These findings were consistent with the phenomena observed using free imagery in emergent uncovering psychotherapy.
A neurotic lawyer: AIDS or Oedipus?
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Psychoanalytic theory and affirmation of the gay lifestyle: are they necessarily antithetical?
This article explores a conflict between the American psychoanalytic community and the American gay community which has played itself out in this country's mental health system for most of this century. The roots of the conflict are traced back to the American conception of diagnosis, as well as a lack of adequate developmental studies focused on the nature of homosexuality. The current psychoanalytic stance is presented as inimical to the stance Freud took, and an exploration of ways to ameliorate the conflict between American psychoanalytic thought and affirmation of homosexuality as an alternative healthy lifestyle is undertaken.
Using Sexton to read Freud: the pre-oedipal phase and the etiology of lesbianism in Sexton's "Rapunzel".
In her poem "Rapunzel," Anne Sexton maps out a model of lesbian etiology that at once parodies the model proposed by Freud and significantly amends it. Freud's famous model for female development, as he articulates it first in "Some Psychological Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction Between the Sexes," and later in "Female Sexuality," may be profitably compared to the model implied by Sexton's poem. The female pre-Oedipal phase is crucially at stake in such a comparison, as Sexton's account suggests that the pleasures of the pre-Oedipal mother-daughter dyad are dangerously strong for the girl child, and seem to be the force that compels the majority of girls into the rechanneling of libidinal desire from the mother to the father. Sexton's poem emphasizes the continuous pressures exerted by the pre-Oedipal phase upon the psyche of the developing girl. Sexton's emphasis on the pre-Oedipal phase, and her depiction of heterosexual love, in "Rapunzel" and elsewhere, as regressive, suggests that the "normal" heterosexual female, who seeks a father figure in order to save herself from re-absorption into the primal mother-daughter dyad, is actually acting out an infantile fantasy of the devouring mother. The morbid irony of Sexton's "Rapunzel" stems from its depiction of a young woman who flees the boundary-less world of the pre-Oedipal state, only to resurrect the infantile fantasy of the devouring mother in the arms of a father substitute.
Homosexuality: coming out of the confusion.
The author asserts that earlier theoretical assumptions contribute to the conceptual confusion about homosexuality in much contemporary psychoanalytic research. Bergeret's article, recently published in this Journal, is exemplary of this confusion. The author refutes his contention that homosexuality is not 'true' sexuality but merely a defensive, narcissistic fixation away from, or a nearly psychotic denial of, heterosexuality. He then clarifies specific areas of conceptual confusion regarding homosexuality still prevalent in psychoanalytic discourse that derive from earlier theoretical premises. These areas of confusion include manifest versus latent homosexuality, narcissism and bisexuality, oedipal dynamics and development, and transference and technique.
Countertransference and the female triangular situation.
This paper represents an attempt toward reconciling contemporary changes in psychoanalytic understandings of female development, particularly in respect to separation issues, with their clinical applications to female patients. Psychoanalytic thinking typically has categorized separation conflicts as pre-oedipal, but the authors suggest that these are an integral part of the triangular situation of the girl. The authors argue that an allegiance to erroneous theory and/or individual blind spots have led to the infantilization, pre-oedipalization or cultural stereotyping of females, which constrains the effectiveness of their analyses. The authors present a selected review of the literature on gender-based countertransference biases in both male and female analysts, with reference to female 'oedipal' material. Analytic case material of two women is presented which demonstrates how theoretical misperceptions and countertransferences to triangular separation conflicts can produce an impediment to progression in analysis.
'Not something destroyed but something that is still alive': Amores Perros at the intersection of rescue fantasies.
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The cause is worse: remeeting Jocasta.
This is paper will help bring Jocasta, a figure relatively neglected by psychoanalytic theory, whose lens upon her son has left her to the side, into greater focus. It is not that Jocasta is completely ignored but rather that, when studied, she appears as the dangerous, castrating, forbidden woman to be placated or avoided at all cost. So, although she stands at center stage as the fulcrum of Oedipus's destruction, it is never as a mother longing for her son. The author contends that Jocasta is the personification of an ongoing developmental need on the part of all mothers to separate from their children coupled with a universal longing for reunion. As with Oedipus, Jocasta--a character in a play--is an example of the perverse outcome of forbidden gratifications; but also, as with Oedipus, she is the figurative presentation of normal variations on a theme.
Hans Loewald: a radical conservative.
Hans Loewald's work was relatively marginalized in its day and it is little known outside the United States. It is, however, assuming increasing importance in American psychoanalysis. Loewald's attractiveness as a theoretician is due, in no small part, to his rigor and synthetic reach. He is able to accomplish the difficult feat of remaining non-sectarian and systematic at the same time. Indeed, Loewald's work contains an integrative vision that is unusual in today's fragmented psychoanalytic world. This author tries to show how Loewald attempts to reconcile many of the rigid oppositions that often become reified in analytic controversies: structural theory versus relational psychoanalysis, traditionalism versus revisionism, oedipal versus pre-oedipal, modernist versus postmodernist and hermeneutical versus scientific. The article examines how Eros, understood in terms of the psyche's synthetic strivings, plays a major role in Loewald's theory. The author also situates Loewald's position within contemporary psychoanalytic discussions of epistemology. These discussions tend to criticize the objectivism of modern science-and analysis in so far as it models itself on science-and stress countertransference and the subjectivity of the analyst. Loewald's argument, however, runs in the opposite direction. Because of his concern with the autonomy and individuality of the patient, he is concerned with the clinical dangers rising from an overemphasis on the subjectivity of the analyst.
The shaping of masculinity: Revisioning boys turning away from their mothers to construct male gender identity.
This paper offers an understanding of the nature of the internalization processes involved in the shaping of male gender identity founded on the boy's unique struggles in separating from his mother. The underpinning for the initial development of a sense of masculinity is reconsidered as the author questions the widely held idea of Greenson and Stoller that a boy normatively has to 'dis-identify' from his mother to create his gender identity. Import rather is placed on the conscious and unconscious aspects of the mother's (and father's) pre-oedipal and oedipal relationship with their little boy in order better to understand the nature of the boy's unique identifications and subsequent sense of masculinity. Both the security of the boy's attachment to his mother, in providing the foundation for a transitional turning to an 'other', and the mother's capacity to reflect upon and recognize her own, as well as the father's and her son's, subjectivity and maleness, are crucial in comprehending boys' 'attachment-individuation' process. Likewise, the unconscious paternal and maternal imagos and identifications of both the boy's mother and father, as well as the father's pre-oedipal relationship with his little boy and the boy's mother, are extremely significant in shaping a son's gender identity. The author argues that these early maternal (and paternal) identifications live on in every male and continue to impact the sense of maleness in a dialectical interplay throughout the life span. A maturing gender identity develops from integrating these early, pre-oedipal maternal identifications that no longer need be repudiated nor defensively organized as polarized gender splitting.
On: Homosexuality: coming out of the confusion.
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