Articles:
Waska, R. (2016). The Flexible Function of the Modern Kleinian Psychoanalytic Approach: Interpreting Through the Unbearable Security of Paranoid and Depressive Phantasies. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 76(3), pp. 219–239.
Abstract: Working to establish analytic contact (Waska, 2007) with a patient involves the verbal act of interpretation. But, how one interprets and what we try to hold in words is not the same with each patient. Each patient requires, invites, provokes and responds to a unique mixture of interpretive elements or approaches. The projective identification process that is so often the bedrock of the transference, and therefore the catalyst of the counter-transference, forms the psychological climate between patient and analyst. Case material is used to explore a Modern Kleinian interpretive approach with both a very entrenched depressive position (Klein, 1935, 1940) patient and a very primitive paranoid-schizoid (Klein, 1946) patient. Both these individuals desired relief from their symptoms of anxiety, anger, emptiness, and guilt. But, their unbearable unconscious phantasies offered pathological security that they were familiar with and therefore they preferred the known internal trauma and chaos to facing the unknown and undefined reality of self and other that change, grief, and growth would bring.
Yordanova. K. (2016). Troubled Journeys: Some Motivations of Young Muslim Men to Join the Islamic State. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 76(3), pp. 240–254.
Abstract: Large numbers of young people have joined jihadists groups in the Syrian/Iraqi conflict. Why would these young people decide to become jihadist fighters? What are the representations of the West they hold and how do these representations shape their decision? Drawing on the psychotherapeutic work with Syrian and Iraqi asylum seekers, this paper seeks to explain the most intimate reasons of young Muslim would-be fighters to join the Islamic State militias.
Lindenmeyer, C. (2016). The Agenetic Body: Prosthetics or the New Promethean Ideal. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 76(3), pp. 255–265.
Abstract: In our rapidly changing world, we are often encouraged to treat our bodies as objects of constant improvement by means of various facilities and innovations. As part of this “Promethean tendency,” the present-day alliance between medicine and technology has opened up a new perspective on the ill and disabled body, by providing access to sophisticated prosthetics that are increasingly seen as ideal remedies. These devices allow patients to benefit from previously unimaginable treatments and inestimable scientific advances, yet they also create new forms of dependency that go beyond simply forming a habit. They are part of a complex process which results in the construction of a body full of paradoxes and whose effects go beyond the subject’s image construction. Based on the case of Mathilde, a little girl with a partial arm agenesis, the author traces some elements of the psychic process of constructing a body: from a congenital malformation towards a body “supplemented” by a prosthesis.
Balbuena Rivera, F. (2016). The Relevance of Arieti’s Work in the Age of Medication. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 76(3), pp. 266–280.
Abstract: This paper looks at the relevance of psychoanalysis as a treatment option for psychotic individuals at a time when psychosis is invariably considered to be a biologically-based brain disease, for which the preferred course of treatment is psychotropic medication. In recent years, the use of psychoanalysis has declined noticeably in favor of evidenced-based biomedical approaches, which rely heavily upon statistical probabilities for ameliorating specific psychotic symptoms. Well-publicized biological approaches have proliferated, often to the detriment of the psychotic individual’s general health, emotional recovery, and long-term rehabilitation. Sadly, these approaches may also be a significant factor affecting mortality rates in those suffering with psychosis, known to be about 25 years shorter, on average, than the general population.
Pinheiro, T., Verztman, J., Viana, D. (2016). Melancholia, Narcissism and Depression. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 76(3), pp. 281–294.
Abstract: This paper discusses ideas about depression as a paradigmatic symptom of contemporaneous psychological suffering and makes a comparison between depression and melancholia. The ideas we describe were stimulated by two comparative studies that were conducted based on an analysis of how depressed subjects relate to the concept of desire, their feelings of shame and their self-image in today’s age.
Book Reviews:
Schwartz, J. (2016). Book Review. The Klein-Winnicott Dialectic: Transformative New Metapsychology and Interactive Clinical Theory, by Susan Kavaler-Adler, Karnac Books, London, 2014, 290pp.American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 76(3), pp. 295–298.
There is no surprise that in Susan Kavaler-Adler’s most ambitious book to date, she focuses on the two most iconic and influential psychoanalytic developmental theorists of the mid twentieth century In her past work, such as Mourning, Spirituality and Psychic Change: A New Object Relations View of Psychoanalysis (Kavaler-Adler, 2003) and Anatomy of Regret (Kavaler-Adler, 2013), she has established herself as one of the most regarded interpretive psychoanalytic biographical theorists working today. The Klein–Winnicott Dialectic serves up an amalgam of biography, clinical case material, psychoanalytic principles and the powerful interpersonal and inter-psychological encounter of the two great minds of mid twentieth century psychoanalysis, who were locked in a battle that would define no less the future of psychoanalytic theory and practice for generations to come. Further the book reaches new understanding, dissecting the often poignant and turbulent narratives of each theorist, and how their respective psychoanalytic positions emerge from a cauldron of family secrets, strained relationships, culture and personal disposition…
Lewis, J. I. (2016). Book Review. Sabina Spielrein: Forgotten Pioneer of Psychoanalysis, 2nd Edition, edited by Coline Covington and Barbara Wharton, Routledge, London and New York, 2015, 257pp.American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 76(3), pp. 299–302.
Anyone who may have been looking for and expecting an alternative to beach or resort novels by delving into the story of one of our most illustrative and unique founders – Carl G. Jung and his sexual-romantic-intellectual involvement with Sabina Spielrein, his patient at the Burghölzli sanatorium in Zurich from August 17, 1904 to June 1, 1905 – will have wandered into a big surprise. The recently published book reviewed below, is a dense and challenging undertaking consisting of numerous documents including diary entries, correspondences, psychoanalytic papers (mostly by Dr. Spielrein) hospital records and other treasures…
Bacciagaluppi, M. (2016). Book Review. Creative Analysis: Art, Creativity and Clinical Process, by George Hagman, Routledge, London, 2015, 129pp.American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 76(3), pp. 303–305.
In the Preface (p. xii), the author describes himself as primarily a self-psychologist who also utilizes other models in exploring the subject of this book, which is analysis as a form of creativity. The book is part of the Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series, edited by Joseph Lichtenberg. As a self-psychologist, who often quotes Kohut, Hagman belongs to the relational model in psychoanalysis, as opposed by Greenberg and Mitchell (1983) to the Freudian drive model…
Platt, C. M. (2016). Book Review. Psychoanalytic Aspects of Assisted Reproductive Technology, edited by Mali Mann, Karnac Books, London, U.K., 2014, 144pp. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 76(3), pp. 306–308.
Yesterday, a striking and self-possessed woman came into my office. Within minutes, she was in tears. Despite having two sons whom she adored and a high-powered career, she desperately wanted a third child. She had suffered painful miscarriages, multiple IVF attempts, and was now considering adoption, something her husband did not want. How many times would they try for a successful pregnancy before they gave up?…
Rachmani, V. (2016). Book Reviews. Embodied Encounters, edited by Agnieszka Piotrowska, Routledge, East Sussex and New York, 2015, 323pp. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 76(3), pp. 309–312.
Psychoanalysts love film. We discuss it in conference settings; we recommend film in classrooms; we find abundant parallels to our patients, and they bring insights into sessions from the previous weekend’s film going. Some of us know French New Wave; others know the more recent and widely penetrating feminist film theories; we may be conversant in auteur theory; currently, we might read the philosopher and cultural studies icon, Slavoj Žižek, who holds sway over the latest iteration of Lacanian film studies…