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"It's A Long Way ... " to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Training Experience in Self Psychology, Intersubjectivity, and Relational Psychoanalysis.
The successful experience with a Jungian analyst, research work on international economic interdependence, and the failure of a classical analysis were the preliminary steps toward the discovery of Kohut's self psychology. The comparison of epistemological principles in Jung and in Kohut and the discovery of the relational nature of experience formed the background of my professional attitude as an analyst. After an unsatisfactory, but "orthodox" supervision, training in self psychology, intersubjectivity, and relational psychoanalysis at Isipsé made it possible to integrate all previous experiences in a complex and, at the same time, clinically coherent framework.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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"That's Not Analytic": Theory Pressure and "Chaotic Possibilities" in Analytic Training.
Hoping to create my own analytic voice, I experienced complex pressure to conform to the venerated rules of American ego psychology. I could find myself looking over my shoulder, and my training could become saturated with received ideas. Using complex systems theory as a ground, I contrast the constricting pressure to conform that I experienced with three supervisors with the openness that I found with my fourth. I propose that analytic training is a nonlinear, complex developmental process that occurs in a space of "chaotic possibilities" (Glatzer-Levy, 2004)ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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"Wondering" and Beyond: Discussion of Arietta Slade's "Reflective Parenting Programs".
Arietta Slade describes the development of two reflective parenting programs that are based on Fonagy's and his colleagues' construct of reflective functioning. The merits of focusing on a defined theoretical construct are that it enables the conceptualization of the parent and child experiences that should be targeted and outlined in an intervention program. The discussion questions the extent to which parents, and in particular those with difficult histories, can be open to this intervention. The psychoanalytic literature has shown that parent--child interactions are affected by parents' past experiences that might be projected or attributed to their children. It is suggested that the intervention program should also address the parent and his or her past. Helping parents to arrive at a more integrated understanding of their own development could help them to be more open to the experiences of their children.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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A Fundamental Polarity in Psychoanalysis: Implications for Personality Development, Psychopathology, and the Therapeutic Process.
Interpersonal relatedness (attachment) and self-definition (separation) are fundamental psychological dimensions that are central to psychoanalytic thought, beginning with Freud, as well as in a wide range of nonpsychoanalytic formulations. These constructs provide a theoretical matrix that facilitates identifying continuities among personality development, variations in normal personality or character formation, concepts of psychopathology, and mechanisms of therapeutic action. The identification of these continuities enables us to consider many forms of psychopathology, not as diseases with assumed but as yet undocumented biological origins, but as distortions that derive from variations and disruptions of normal psychological development. Likewise, the identification of these continuities enables us to consider the relationship of mechanisms of therapeutic action to psychological development more generally. Validation of aspects of these formulations have been found in studies of depression and personality disorders as well as in systematic investigations of therapeutic change.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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Artistic Creativity and the Healing Process.
After a brief review of the literature regarding the healing potential inherent in creative activities, the article focuses on art that was created in concentration camps during the Second World War. The healing potential appears to be related to the vitalizing selfobject functions that creative activity and the writing of memoirs provide. The discussion of post-Holocaust literature is divided between authors who survived the camps and nonsurvivor authors with attention to fictionalized documentaries, a point at which historical truth and artistic imagination meet.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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Attachment, Resilience, and Psychoanalysis Commentary on Hauser and Allen's "Overcoming Adversity in Adolescence".
Hauser and Allen present a novel technique for describing the narratives of resilient adolescents based on their observation of factors associated with resilience and the role of attachment theory in understanding the quality of resilience-promoting relationships. This contribution is discussed in light of their previous work in the field and current resilience research. Contemporary lessons from developmental research and psychotherapy process research are also described in the context of this article. An integration of narrative techniques for hypothesis generation, quantitative measures for hypothesis testing, attachment research, and theories of mechanism of action in psychodynamic psychotherapy is proposed.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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Commentary: "A Fundamental Polarity in Psychoanalysis: Implications for Personality Development, Psychopathology, and the Therapeutic Process" by Sidney J. Blatt.
A commentary on Dr. Sidney J. Blatt's article, "A Fundamental Polarity in Psychoanalysis: Implications for Personality Development, Psychopathology, and the Therapeutic Process" is presented by articulating Dr. Blatt's significant contribution to psychoanalysis, developmental and attachment theory, and therapeutic process research. According to Blatt's theory, normal maturation involves a complex reciprocal transaction between two developmental lines throughout the life cycle: (a) the establishment of stable, enduring, mutually satisfying interpersonal relationships and (b) the achievement of a differentiated, stable, and cohesive identity. He has applied this theory to understand both normal and pathological psychological phenomena, the latter resulting from disruptions in these developmental lines, resulting in an overemphasis on relational (anaclitic) or self-definitional (introjective) issues. Further, Dr. Blatt has evaluated his theoretical model through empirical study and demonstrated that relationally oriented and self-definitionally oriented persons have differential responses to psychotherapy. Finally, areas of question and potential for future research are outlined. Specifically, it is argued that although anaclitic and introjective configurations are easy to discuss as distinct types, relevant evidence from attachment, theory raises the issue of whether these types may be better conceptualized as dimensions, with different configurations located within two-dimensional space. Further, findings of a group evidencing mixed anaclitic and introjective features raise additional questions about how these configurations relate to one another, and evidence from the attachment literature is used to shed light on this issue.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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Egon Schiele: Expressionist Art and Masculine Crisis.
Egon Schiele (1890–1918) was a leading figure of second-generation Viennese modernism. Appreciated in his time as an extraordinary draughtsman, he was also notorious for the blatant eroticism of his young female nudes and the ruthless honesty of his tortured self-portraits. A historically informed psychoanalytic approach reveals both the intrapsychic and psychohistorical significance of his work. Schiele's explorations in portraiture were partly the product of internal conflicts on many levels. But they were also refracted through a turn-of-the-century crisis in European masculine identity. The crisis was born of social and political developments that worked to undermine middle-class males' sense of power and self-esteem, among them the woman's movement and a new cultural awareness of the psychological power of mothers and of female sexuality. These factors were especially powerful in the psychology of artists, who often felt both marginal and effeminate in a culture that valued the manly virtues of the warrior and the entrepreneur. Their effects are reflected in the fragmented self-images, overpowering mothers, and seductively self-certain girls and women of Schiele's paintings.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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Epilogue.
The epilogue to the November-December 2006 issue of "PSYCHOANALYTIC INQUIRY" is presented.
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Epilogue.
The article presents a short passage relative to breadth and scope of the articles within the issue. The author describes two clinical experiences that illustrate how psychic reality and aesthetic values combine into one. Illustrations are presented, however, neither of the examples is at all unusual, but they exemplify how clinical material is mixed with aesthetic properties.
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Finding a New Voice.
This article describes a clinical moment in the analysis of a traumatized woman, in which specifically identified, subjectively felt pressures and analytic considerations, informed by the maturation process of analytic training, resulted in a change in my theoretical orientation. It may be surmised that this changing of theories is a process that applies not only to candidates but also to mature analysts, as new theories continue to emerge and develop in the psychoanalytic field. A serious confrontation with a theory … awakens a … subjective resonance in the individual, and his eventual attitudes toward the material will be profoundly affected by its degree of compatibility with his own personal reality [Stolorow and Atwood, 1978, p. 19].ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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Fons et Origo:A Darwinian View of Selfobject Theory and the Arts.
Four important themes in self psychology as developed by Heinz Kohut are remarkably congruent with current theoretical constructs in the field of evolutionary (Darwinian) psychology: (1) the concept of narcissism, (2) the claim for the innate human capacity for empathy, (3) the recognition of the importance of group cohesion, and (4) the belief that individual psychological distress is produced by a changed environment rather than a dysfunctional self. By recasting Kohut's themes in a Darwinian framework and interpreting them with personal views of the phylogenetic origin and nature of the arts (Dissanayake, 2000), I describe and make clear the central importance of art experience to the developing selfobject relationship as well as to the evolution of the human species.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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Getting in Tune: Songs of My Experience in Psychoanalytic Training.
I use the metaphor of music and dance to explore cognitive, affective, and liminal elements of my training experiences in the New York University Post doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis. I highlight experiences with supervisors and patients, which shaped the development of my identity as an analyst, and the emergence of my analytic voice within a relational paradigm.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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Group Process as a Holding Environment Facilitating the Development of the Parental Reflective Function: Commentary on the Article by Arietta Slade.
The author reflects on the article of Dr. Arietta Slade which describes two programs about parental reflective functioning. He stresses that based on Dr. Slade's observation, early intervention programs are effective to the degree which they successfully enhanced parental reflective functioning. He also emphasizes that Dr. Slade's ideas are significant in the development of effective interventions with parents.
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How Resilient Are Our Attempts to Explore the Mind of Another? Commentary on Dr. Karlen Lyons-Ruth's Article.
This article discusses whether attachment experiences may shape the quality and consistency of individuals' attempts to explore the minds of significant others, a process Dr. Lyons-Ruth refers to as intersubjectivity. Specific commentary focuses on whether individuals with an insecure or disorganized attachment organization continue to engage in intersubjective processes over the lifespan. To help illuminate these questions, the work of the University College London group on reflective functioning is discussed and directions for future research are suggested.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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Mentors Enhance Resilience in At-Risk Children and Adolescents.
Mentors can play an important role in promoting resilience among at-risk children and adolescents. Nonparental adults who serve as mentors can provide reliable support, communicate moral values, teach information and skills, inspire, motivate, enhance interpersonal relatedness, and foster self-esteem. A number of researchers have reported that at-risk children who have mentors, especially nonparental kin, exhibit fewer problem behaviors, more positive attitudes towards school, greater school efficacy, less marijuana use, less nonviolent delinquency, and lower levels of anxiety and depression. The most successful mentors are those who invest time and energy and have frequent and prolonged contact with the children they guide. The relationship between mentoring and resilience in at-risk children and adolescents may best be understood from psychological, social, and neurobiological perspectives. As described and recommended by Allen and Hauser, the in-depth analysis of narratives provided by at-risk children and adolescents, particularly over the course of their development into young adulthood, will undoubtedly help researchers to isolate specific features of mentoring that are critical for fostering resilience.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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My Terrible Muse: Cohesion and Fragmentation in the Creative Self.
This article takes a new look at the self-experience of creative artists. A five-step model of the creative process is put forth: preparation, inspiration, realization, completion, and objectification. The vicissitudes the creative self undergoes in each step are described, as well as the selfobject experiences needed to sustain the self through each phase. Of particular interest in this regard are the roles of the ‘muse’ and of the artistic community. The article then describes three pathologies that the creative self is particularly prone to: addictions, vertical splits, and depression/isolation. The article concludes with a case example of a female patient who brought her paintings and stories into therapy.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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Newly Discovered Lands: An Experience of Psychotherapy Training Within ANZAP.
In Australia, training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy differs greatly from psychological training. Within the Australian and New Zealand Association of Adult Psychotherapy, the training process allows for a more comfortable mix of art and science, as well as clinical theory. It is also experiential and has a deeply relational style. This article elaborates on the breadth and depth of newly discovered psychic landscapes that result from this particular psychodynamic training. The aim is to illuminate how the training enables the trainee to empathize and converse with clients for transformations to occur.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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On Knowing and Using Myself: Reflections on an Analyst's Subjectivity, Intersubjectivity, and Psychoanalytic Change.
In this article I describe my journey to become a psychoanalyst, which includes discovering my resonance with the ideas and clinical approaches of a contemporary self psychological relational approach. I also reflect on a clinical vignette that I see playing a crucial role in my development as a psychoanalyst and consider analytic change processes in both implicit and explicit realms.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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On My Becoming a Psychoanalyst.
I describe my experience of becoming a psychoanalyst in Germany between 1997 and 2002. The article combines my personal criticism of certain aspects of institutionalized psychoanalysis and some established procedures within psychoanalytic training, which underline the need for more evaluation and more transparency within the institutes and associations.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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Overcoming Adversity in Adolescence: Narratives of Resilience.
Our overarching goal is to understand the unfolding of resilient development. Our person-based approach is based on a follow-back design, enabling us to examine previously recorded adolescent clinical and adult attachment interviews of now-competent young adults who experienced significant adversity during their adolescent years. In their adolescent years, these young adults encountered three serious misfortunes. Between 13 and 16 years old (middle adolescence) they were sent to live in a psychiatric hospital, from 2 to 12 months. Their physical home ties with their parents and community friends were abruptly severed, as they lived full-time in High Valley Hospital. In addition, experiencing a serious psychiatric disorder leading to hospitalization, regardless of how time limited, can markedly change the experience of self, often leading to lowered self-regard and lowered personal competence. The label of psychiatric patient is made even more indelible by living in a psychiatric hospital. Their third serious misfortune was trauma. Many of the young adults previously reported serious child and adolescent physical abuse at the hands of immediate family members or other close relatives. Using a profile definition (ego development levels, attachment coherence, close relationships, and social competence), we identified nine young adults who were now functioning in the upper 50th percentile of all former patients and same age high school nonpatient adolescents. After being identified, our intensive study of the narratives embedded in earlier interviews revealed key themes for these resilient young adults--including agency, reflectiveness, relationship recruiting--differentiating them from contrasting young adults, who were also former patients. We illustrate these differences through narratives of two resilient young adults.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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Preface: In Memory of Carl Rotenberg, M.D.
A preface for the July 2006 issue of the "Psychoanalytic Inquiry" is presented.
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Prologue.
A prologue to the November-December 2006 issue of "PSYCHOANALYTIC INQUIRY" is presented.
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Prologue.
The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Sidney Blatt on traditional polarity in psychoanalysis between individuation and object relations and another by Kenneth Levy and Kevin Meehan on developmental psychopathology.
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Prologue.
The article discusses various articles published within the issue, including one by Ellen Dissanayake on the theory of the origin of art and aesthetic feeling in the elaboration of the earliest forms of human intimacy, and another by Steven Knoblauch on the exploration of how taking an aesthetic point of view can demonstrate the importance of nonverbal, formal, and tonal qualities in the clinical exchange.
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Psychopathology: A Simple Twist of Fate or a Meaningful Distortion of Normal Development? Toward an Etiologically Based Alternative for the DSM Approach.
In this comment, I focus on a central issue that spans the entirety of Sidney Blatt's research career, namely his contributions to the development of a theoretically consistent and clinically relevant classification system of psychopathology. First, I discuss empirical evidence concerning the key assumptions underlying the currently dominant classification system of mental disorders, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Second, I compare these assumptions with assumptions underlying Blatt's categorization of psychopathology based on his distinction between two developmental lines, that is, self-definition and relatedness, together with a discussion of recent research on these two developmental lines in the context of the development of a more etiologically based classification system of depression and other disorders. Finally, I argue that research concerning Blatt's model of normal and pathological development--aside from direct contributions--may also inform empirically derived criteria for the development of a theoretically consistent and clinically useful way of classifying psychopathology.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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Reflections on a Contemporary Classical Psychoanalytic Training.
A personal narrative is presented which describes the author's classical psychoanalytic training experience.
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Reflective Parenting Programs: Theory and Development.
Recent research has indicated that parental reflective functioning or mentalization plays a crucial role in the development of a range of healthy adaptations in both parent and child. While many parenting interventions developed over the course of the last 20 years have implicitly attempted to enhance mentalization in parents, this article describes an effort to directly intervene with parents to enhance or encourage the development of reflective capacities. In this article, the broad outlines of a reflective parenting approach are described. Two reflective parenting programs are then considered, one a group intervention designed for low-risk parents, the other a home visiting intervention designed for high-risk parents and children.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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Restoration of Hope: The Creation of a Dance.
Combining a psychoanalytic and personal perspective, I discuss my choreographic process during the creation of my solo Splinter of Hope. I explore the impact of my subjective relationship to my embodied aesthetic, family, and cultural history, and Anna Ornstein's book My Mother's Eyes: Holocaust Memories of a Young Girl. I show how the choreographic journey is analogous to Daniel Stern's descriptions of ‘present moments,’ ‘now moments,’ and ‘moments of meeting.’ Significantly, my feelings of trauma in response to the horror of the Holocaust and my quest for the hope of restoration are addressed through artistic processes, exploring joy, trauma, and the transformation of ugliness into beauty through integration.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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Self and Talent-Treatment Considerations.
The clinical pursuit of patients' experiences of talent, in their current life and in their developmental years, has broadened the clinical field considerably and provided more lanes and latitude in the ‘royal road to the unconscious.’ Interest in patients' talents has been experienced as an invitation to bring in their created works, not just as a display of aesthetic interest but, much more importantly, as another pathway through which the analyst can access an understanding of the deepest and most meaningful levels of self-experience. This article explores some of the meanings of talent for the self and suggests that there is a developmental line for the maturation of one's relationship to one's talent. I provide discussion that illustrates the co-extensiveness of the inner experience of talent with the selfobject surround throughout growth and maturation. Finally, I provide illustrations of how talent can be experienced and how exploration of experiences of talent can play a quintessential role in psychoanalytic treatment.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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The Apollonian Eye and the Dionysian Ear.
A comparison of the aesthetic underpinnings of psychoanalytic praxis is undertaken using Nietzsche's distinction between Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies. Drawing from Nietzsche, Freud, Lacan, Jung, and Stephen Mitchell as well as research and theory from the study of infant-parent interaction, the author offers a clinical case to illustrate a perspective that gives more emphasis to Dionysian forces in psychoanalytic activity than in traditional case reporting, thus illustrating the utility of such an expansion of underlying assumptions for psychoanalytic praxis. The perspective highlights the importance of attention to ‘faintly conscious stimuli’ on nonsymbolized embodied registers of interaction for their significance in the communication of affective meanings.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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The Emotional Gains of Aesthetic Shock.
Samvega is the Pali word denoting the shock or wonder felt when a work of art becomes a serious perceptual experience. It implies a change from a ‘state of distress’ involving awareness of the ‘eight emotional themes’ (birth, old age, sickness, death, and four kinds of suffering) to a state of enlightened gladness, involving awareness of the Buddha, Eternal Law, and Communion or community. The idea of aesthetic shock seems useful for an understanding of aesthetic experience and the experience of insight that occurs within the context of clinical psychoanalysis.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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The Importance of Emotion Regulation in Understanding Attachment and Intersubjectivity: A Comment on Lyons-Ruth.
This discussion provides a commentary on Lyons-Ruth's article examining the interface between attachment and intersubjectivity. First, this commentary posits that it may be useful to conceptualize proximity-seeking behaviors more broadly in order to encompass the types of communicative bids observed in the affective face-to-face interactions of parents and infants. Such a revision to this concept underscores the similarity between primitive proximity-seeking behaviors and the drive for intersubjectivity, which may fundamentally constitute part of the same motivational system. Finally, this article argues that both Lyons-Ruth and others have discussed the role of the attachment relationship as promoting the regulation of affects of all valences as opposed to just distress and that the augmentation and regulation of positive affect within the attachment relationship may be a promising direction for future research and theory.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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The Interface Between Attachment and Intersubjectivity: Another Contribution from Karlen Lyons-Ruth.
Karlen Lyons-Ruth's latest very important article places the mechanisms of attachment in a new, intersubjective context against a background of evolutionary biology. The present discussion adds a further way to think about Lyons-Ruth's discussion of intersubjectivity, relating it to the work of the Hungarian developmentalists Csibra and Gergely, Their theory makes the intersubjective processes highlighted by Lyons-Ruth central in human evolution and individual development. The human mind is unique in that it learns about the meaning of the external world--especially the social and emotional world--through another subjectivity; that means that the other person must be available to "teach." Lyons-Ruth's findings are compatible with the prediction, from Csibra and Gergely's theory, that the withdrawal of the caregiver would be crucial to later pathology. It means the absence of the essential source of information both about the self (through contingent mirroring) and about loved others and the rest of the world. Because the study sample size is small, the finding of an absence of interaction between genes and environmental influences cannot be conclusive.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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The Interface Between Attachment and Intersubjectivity: Perspective from the Longitudinal Study of Disorganized Attachment.
This article considers the interface between the concepts of attachment and intersubjectivity in light of accumulated research on infant development. Both Tomasello (1999) and Hobson (2002) have argued persuasively that the flexible human capability for sharing mental states with others reframes and revolutionizes our older, more highly channeled primate biological heritage. In contrast to this emphasis on discontinuity from primate to human evolution, attachment theorists have stressed the continuities between human attachment and attachment in other primates. The implication of new work on infant intersubjectivity for reframing aspects of attachment theory is first explored. By the same token, however, the extent to which the infant-caregiver attachment relationship functions to maintain positive engagement and regulate the infant's fearful arousal will have escalating consequences over development for the organization of intersubjectivity. Therefore, attachment research has much to offer in understanding the development of joint attention and the sharing of mental states under conditions of increased emotional arousal. The potential contributions of attachment research for understanding the development of intersubjectivity are discussed in light of recent work from the author's lab on forms of young adult symptomatology associated with deviance in the early intersubjective dialogue between mother and infant. The clinical implication emerging from all these diverse areas of research is that fostering more collaborative forms of communication may lie at the heart of evolutionary change, developmental change, and changes resulting from psychodynamic psychotherapy.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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The Write of Passage From Candidate to Analyst: The Experience of Writing Analytic Process.
This article describes my experience of learning to write analytic process. It illustrates how the depth of understanding I achieved from learning to write transparently about analytic work was instrumental in the consolidation of my analytic training and my development of an analytic identity. Practicing analysis requires letting our minds function at multiple levels-integrating, synthesizing, free-associating, attending, and maintaining our own reverie-simultaneously. This is a large task for any analyst, much less a beginning analyst. Writing about this process necessitates not only understanding what has transpired in our offices with our patients but also developing the ability to explain that intimate and unique interpersonal dyad to our peers. Learning to do analytic work is not the same as learning to write about it; and writing about psychoanalytic process is very different from participating in it (Reiser, 2000). The goal of writing analytic process is not primarily to tell the story of the patient but to demonstrate our thinking, experience, and understanding as analysts. To do this requires both a depth of understanding of what we do and a mastery of analytic process. While there may be different ways to synthesize and integrate our analytic training and to accomplish the significant task of progressing from candidate to analyst, learning to write analytic process was pivotal for me. It was a "rite of passage," culminating in the development of an increased sense of identity, maturity, and confidence as an analyst. Precious Auntie came back into my mind. She'd taught me that everything, even ink, had a purpose and a meaning. You cannot be an artist if your work comes without effort. That is the problem with modern bottled ink. … But when you push an ink stick along an inkstone, you take the first step to cleansing your mind and your heart. You push and you ask yourself, what are my intentions? What is in my heart that matches my mind [Tan, 2001, p. 105].ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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Violations of Expectations in Creativity and Perversion.
Expectations and violations of expectations provide an entry into creativity and into perversions of aggression in the form of violence. Both creative works and perversions are co-created by a violator of expectations and one whose expectations are violated. The life of Kip Kinkel, a fifteen-year-old mass murderer illustrates the reciprocal violation of expectations between Kip and his parents leading to his increasingly perverse ways of asserting his presence in a world that was slipping from his grasp. Whereas the histories of some violent persons are replete with violations of expectations of living in a safe, predictable, affectively responsive world, a number of creative people (Stravinsky, Chagall, Wagner) began life as violators of the expectation of their families. They were stillborn or became so sick that they were not expected to survive, but they did. In their paintings and operas the theme of being violators of expectations then became dominant.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.
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