Must the Reality of Death Be Unspeakable? Blair-Neff, Tenille; Danielsen, E Francisco; Pierre, Grégoire
The Psychoanalytic review (1963)
111, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Attention to the manifestations of death anxiety in the clinical context is often absent in the discourse of psychoanalytic training. This exchange addresses some of the causes of such an absence: a ...fraught relation between privacy and secrecy, primacy of psychic reality and interpretation, and cultural underpinnings of sanitization of death.
I use the clinical example of a traumatized adolescent to talk about how a transference experience creates the frame where the analytic work occurs. Out of the external boundaries of the ...relationships with an object, the internal frame, the womb of transformation processes, is created. The analyst's capacity to wait is essential for the transformation that creates and shapes the transference experience, which, like playing, becomes the matrix of the frame where it happens as it happens. As the traumatic experiences find their place in the transference and begin to be integrated, the adolescent becomes more present and real in the session.
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Reviews the book, Moving Images: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Film by Andrea Sabbadini (see record 2014-05131-000). Sabbadini, a psychoanalyst practicing in London, has written a short but ...stimulating survey of some films that have “moved” him. He freely admits that his choices are highly personal and hence arbitrary. Moving Images is broken into six chapters, each one devoting several pages to three, four, or five individual films. On the one hand, this is a highly random sampling of films from four different countries and four different eras. On the other hand, each of these films allows the author to explore a different aspect of Freud’s legacy. Throughout the book, Sabbadini follows Freud in peppering his prose with references to significant works of art, virtually all of them from Freud’s time or before. This is an enlightening book, granting us many brief glimpses into how Freud’s legacy can be put to use for the study of good films from a variety of cultures. Sabbadini's choices of films are often surprising, but his analyses are always valuable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)
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24.
Interpretation as Hypothesis Davids, M. Fakhry
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association,
12/2023, Volume:
71, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Two distinct spaces can be seen as operating in a session—a private one in the analyst’s mind, where formulations take shape, and one shared between patient and analyst, in which interpretations are ...offered. By maintaining a focus on the here and now in the latter space, taking care to protect it from intrusions from the analyst’s theory except as hypotheses (in the form of interpretations derived from those formulations) aimed at eliciting unconscious responses that further the analytic inquiry, a basis for analytic work is established that aligns with ordinary scientific processes: theory is generated in the mind of the researcher, and hypotheses derived from it are tested systematically in a laboratory setting. Self-understanding that develops out of such an arrangement can then be seen as based on evidence, minimizing the role of suggestion. This line of thinking is illustrated with excerpts from the beginning of the analysis of a depressed patient. In developing areas of theory, when reliable evidence is particularly important, this way of working holds promise. In this case evidence was systematically gathered that led to the formulation of a model of internal racism.
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25.
Interpreting Interpretation Eagle, Morris N.
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association,
12/2023, Volume:
71, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Interpretation of the latent meaning of manifest content is the core of the traditional approach to psychoanalytic treatment. The main purpose of such interpretation is to enhance the patient’s ...self-knowledge, in particular his or her awareness of unconscious wishes and their embeddedness in inner conflicts. An assumption of classical psychoanalysis is that veridical interpretations—as Freud put it, interpretations that tally with what is real in the patient—will be especially effective therapeutically. These basic assumptions have been called into question, as reflected in such concepts as “narrative truth” and the overriding importance of the patient’s “assured conviction” regarding interpretations. Also called into question is the therapeutic value of “deep” interpretations intended to uncover repressed impulses. To an important extent, these have been replaced by interpretations of defensive processes just below the surface of consciousness, and interpretations that make connections among different experiences, both of which are intended to help the patient understand how his or her mind works. There is also an increased emphasis on nonsemantic aspects of interpretation, as well as some degree of skepticism toward the therapeutic value of interpretation itself, along with an increased emphasis on the implicit interpretive aspects of the therapeutic relationship. Finally, representative research is presented on the relation between transference interpretation and therapeutic outcome.
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26.
Interpretation: Voice of the Field Stern, Donnel B.
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association,
12/2023, Volume:
71, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
To patients, the most memorable moments in psychoanalytic treatment are seldom the contents of the analyst’s interpretations, but the feeling of being understood. Interpretations are most meaningful ...not because of what they say but because each one is evidence that the analyst, who generally becomes someone of great significance to the patient, knows the patient more than before the interpretation was made. As a result of this process of “witnessing” patients not only know and feel—they also “know and feel that they know and feel.” They can feel their roles in authoring their own experience. Therapeutic action results: patients “come into possession of themselves.” Interpretations are the outcome of shifts in the interpersonal field, which reveal this new freedom to think and feel. This new freedom allows the creation of the analyst’s interpretations, which therefore serve as a sign of a new way of being in one another’s presence that has now become possible between analyst and patient. Field shifts are jointly created, without conscious intention, and interpretations arise from these shifts. Thus, interpretations are not really created independently by the mind of the analyst, but are instead the voice of the field. A clinical vignette illustrates these ideas.
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The act of interpretation in psychoanalysis has a distinct character due to the discursive structure of the psychoanalytic setting. The discourse that issues from the interplay of the fundamental ...rule and evenly suspended attention is a reflection on reflection. The result is that interpretation instead of being a device for inquiry is itself the object of inquiry. Psychoanalysis does not use interpretation. It is about interpretation itself. This perspective sheds a certain light on longstanding questions about the form and effects of psychoanalytic interpretation.
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This paper explores the notion of proof in clinical psychoanalysis by reconsidering an argument Freud made concerning the relation between successful psychoanalytic treatment and truth, dubbed the ..."Tally Argument" by the philosopher Adolf Grünbaum. I first reiterate criticisms of Grünbaum's reconstruction of this argument, which bring out the degree to which he has misunderstood Freud. I then offer my own interpretation of the argument and the reasoning that underlies its key premise. Drawing from this discussion, I explore three forms of proof, each inspired also by analogies with other disciplines. Laurence Perrine's "The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry" stimulates my discussion of inferential proof, the relevant form of which involves proving an interpretation through a strong enough Inference to the Best Explanation. Mathematical proof stimulates my discussion of apodictic proof, of which psychoanalytic insight is a fitting example. Finally, holism in legal reasoning stimulates my discussion of holistic proof, which provides a reliable means by which therapeutic success can verify epistemic conclusions. These three forms of proof can play a crucial role in ascertaining psychoanalytic truth.
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This paper explores the contribution of the psychoanalytic paradigm to Christian anthropology. In three thematic units, the author explores how certain classical psychoanalytic phenomena and concepts ...can contribute to a better understanding of growth and development in Christian maturity. In the first part of the article, the author interprets the instance of the unconscious within the psychic apparatus, with particular emphasis on the analysis of untapped potentials, repressed abilities, and conflicts that can obstruct growth in evangelical values. Since the imbalanced psychic structure can affect the spiritual dimension and impede its authentic growth and development, the contribution of psychoanalytic theory, which enters into deep dynamic and motivational categories, has a significant role in pastoral activities. Therefore, the second part of the paper focuses on the differential picture of the application and understanding of the psychoanalytic model of the unconscious in the pastoral context. In the third part, from the perspective of Christian anthropology, the author elaborates through the analysis and presentation of specific clinical cases how psychological maturation, which inevitably leads to a re-examination of motivational forces, can prepare the ground for a "dark night of the soul", after which a person, with the action of grace, can experience a qualitative leap of faith, and turn a psychological struggle into a spiritual struggle. In the concluding part, the author emphasizes the importance of integrating the natural and the supernatural dimension, and concludes that the psychoanalytic model and Christian anthropology should not be viewed from an exclusive "or-or" perspective, or through a model of identification, but rather that these two autonomous areas should be viewed in a dialogical and cooperative relationship.
Heather Macdonald’s H is for Hawk Chaplan, Rebecca
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association,
02/2016, Volume:
64, Issue:
1
Book Review, Journal Article
Peer reviewed
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