Articles:
Kilborne, B. (2019). On Dreams, Imaginative Knowing and Not Knowing: Appearance, Identity, and Shame. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79(1), pp. 1–16.
Abstract: This paper explores the relation of concepts of the unconscious to notions of the imagination, and both to the dynamics of shame. In this discussion dreams occupy a central place, since they are so intimately related to human relationships and to the human imagination. What is seen, not seen, concealed, relied upon for others not to understand, and what is imagined in the responses of others and of oneself—these are essentially shame dynamics, since our identity is determined by relationships.
Miller, I. S. (2019). Doublings between Bewilderment and Enlightenment: Reading Freud with Heine on the Troubled Identity of Hirsch-Hyacinth. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79(1), pp. 17–39.
Abstract: The present paper examines Freud’s collapse of Heine’s poignantly observed multi-cultural narratives in discerning the joke’s mechanism of doubling as it progresses from initial bewilderment to momentary enlightenment. In so doing, Freud opens the door to examination of the complex Jewish cultural identity he and Heine share, as represented by the fictional character, “Hirsch-Hyacinth”. Hirsch–Hyacinth is a caricature of the “marginal man” in his doubled orientation between and within conflicting aspects of self, a condition reflecting oscillation between idealization, derogation, awareness and dissociation, conditioned by internalization of societal prejudice and traumatization. Freud’s tightly focused demonstration of psychoanalytic method upon the Heine joke sample proceeds toward two forms of revelation. The first illustrates the universal applicability of psychoanalytic method. The second signals the individual’s ongoing reckoning with the particularities of subjective psychological experience as embedded in identification with large group assumptions of social reality.
Zaidel, A, (2019). Female Anatomy and Hysterical Duality. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79(1), pp. 40–68.
Abstract: This article attempts to add another layer to our understanding of the phenomenon of hysterical duality. The author postulates that hysterical duality can be explained based on the dual-aspect model of feminine sexuality, which exhibits two initially contradictory paths: one derived from primary vaginal sensations and the other from clitoral pleasure. At first, these two paths create a fundamental split between representations of internal space, containment and motherhood and representations related to auto-eroticism and the effacement of the Other’s presence and needs. The author argues that this manifest contradiction makes the attainment of integration in feminine development an intricate and protracted process, which involves an act of inversion. This inversion entails a post-Oedipal disavowal of primary vaginal sexuality, pending its rediscovery through the encounter with the Other. Hysteria is thus viewed as the result of a failure to perform this inversion and an inability to extract oneself from the position of a “Vaginal Girl”, who defines herself through the desire of the other. This pathological course of development leaves the hysteric’s sexuality in a split state and traps her in the duality of clitoral pleasure versus penetration, which unconsciously represents humiliation and exploitation.
Charles, M., Dodd, Z. and Stevens, G. J. (2019). Aggressive Enactments: Containing the “No” in Clinical Work with Survivors of Abuse. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79(1), pp. 69–93.
Abstract: Identity development depends on the ability to say ‘no.’ Setting limits enables a relationship between two separate individuals to develop. Early trauma can leave the individual so vigilant to others’ demands that internal prohibitions against intrusion remain silenced, which we conceptualize as a ‘no’ that could not be sufficiently articulated to keep the person safe. For those who have not been able to assert this fundamental limit, the consulting room provides a potential anchoring point to formulate and work through unconscious meanings. Being able to articulate and register the legitimacy of one’s own no becomes an important challenge, as tensions regarding power and powerlessness, trust and distrust, are acted out within the consulting room. Case material illustrates how psychoanalytic ideas regarding transference, countertransference, and enactment help the clinician tolerate the intrusion of past into present, inviting the type of mentalization that moves towards repair rather than merely reenacting the trauma.
Ingram, D. H. (2019). A Long-Term Case Study with Sadistically-Tinged Countertransference Elements. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79(1), pp. 94–102.
Abstract: This case report sketches the psychoanalytically-informed supportive psychotherapeutic treatment of a single man through his life challenges over a twenty-year period. The decades-long challenges arise from obsessive compulsive disorder, pathologic self-effacement with insatiable and unusual erotic components, and severe visual impairment leading to blindness. Sadistically-tinged impulses arising in the countertransference are described.
Cohen, M. (2019). Working with Religion: Often Neglected Aspects of Transference and Countertransference. American Journal of Psychoanalysis,79(1), pp. 103–113.
Abstract: The author contends that psychoanalytic theory has generally presented religious beliefs as developmentally immature or pathological. This viewpoint has resulted in a neglect of religion on the part of psychoanalysts and an avoidance of their religious life by patients. Even though there has been an evolution from the traditional Freudian foundational approach to religion as an “illusion” to the inclusion of psychoanalytical training within some Christian institutes and attributions that psychoanalysis, itself, is a religion, religious beliefs should be included in psychotherapy because they can become involved in transference and countertransference issues in ways that are ignored if religious issues are not discussed in therapy. The author presents clinical material to illustrate this problem.
Book Reviews:
Vida, M. D. (2019). Book Review. Encounters with the Irrational: My Story by André E. Haynal, with an interview by Judit Mészáros, International Psychoanalytic Books, New York, 2017, 173pp. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79(1), pp. 114–116.
Abstract: Many years ago, David Haynal, then 8 years of age, piped up to say, “Papa, you have had a troubled life, you should write about it” (p. 5).
“Papa” is André E. Haynal, MD, beloved not only to David but to followers of the so-called Ferenczi Renaissance, a European psychoanalyst with distinguished credentials in both clinical and scholarly dimensions, who has long deserved to be far better known in North America. Over a lifetime that now spans eight decades, André Haynal, born in Hungary at a critical time in twentieth century world history, studied philosophy and psychology in Budapest before embarking on a medical career in Zurich, where he trained in neurology, neurosurgery, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. As Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Geneva, he went on to hold major political and administrative offices in European psychoanalytic organizations, in addition to pursuing his own scientific work that now comprises many volumes and a…
Frankel, J. (2019). Book Review. Working-Through Collective Wounds: Trauma, Denial, Recognition in the Brazilian Uprising by Raluca Soreanu, Palgrave MacMillan, London, 2018, 247pp. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79(1), pp. 117–126.
Abstract: In 2013, in Brazil, where she was then living and working, Raluca Soreanu had the opportunity to witness, and become part of, an extraordinary mass uprising. In her deeply informed, thoughtful, and persuasive book, Soreanu brings her education and experience as a psychoanalyst, her considerable knowledge of social theory, and a capacious and creative intellect to her investigation of this uprising.
More specifically, Soreanu examines the uprising as an attempt to work through earlier societal traumas, dating back to the violence that took place under military rule. As such, she brings a psychoanalytic theory of trauma to bear on her subject matter—specifically, the trauma theory of Sándor Ferenczi, a pioneer from the early days of psychoanalysis. Ferenczi’s penetrating insights remain even today on the cutting edge of understanding trauma. Soreanu both elucidates Ferenczi’s theory with unusual depth and clarity, and brings her observations and insights about the uprising back to…
Friedman, H. J. (2019). Book Review. The W.R. Bion Tradition: Lines of Development, Evolution of Theory and Practice over the Decades, edited by Howard B. Levine and Giuseppe Civitarese, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2018. 514pp. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79(1), pp. 127–130.
Abstract: There is a Bion boom, of that, there can be little doubt. Bion, a British Kleinian with a restless nature reflected not only in his re-definition of psychoanalytic theory and technique but in his leaving Great Britain for Los Angeles, spending a decade or more there before moving on to other continents and countries, has finally, many years after his death, become a central figure in a movement that is manifest on at least three continents. Despite Bion’s declaration that no one can be a Bionian analyst because each analyst needed to be in the end his or herself, he has become a central figure to many analysts in South America, Italy, England and increasingly in the United States. Those who follow Bion appear to be devoted to him at a level that seems to reject what has come before him; they appear to accept his by now famous dictum that the analyst should approach each analytic hour without memory or desire as applying to the entire field of psychoanalysis, the implication being that…
Lewis, J. I. (2019). Book Review. Better Late than Never: The Reparative Therapeutic Relationship in Regression to Dependence by Lorraine Price, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2018, 216 pp. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79(1), pp. 131–133.
Abstract: Having taught a ten-week analytic institute course several times, entitled, “The Therapeutic Use of Regression: Ferenczi and Balint,” I believed myself to be a reasonable candidate to review this new book. Even if Price, an Irish clinician, had not set out to explain her thesis of therapeutic regression to dependency, this book could stand alone simply by virtue of her chapters summarizing the vast miasmas of theory regarding the vagaries of infancy and the vital conditions leading to either a severely bereft adult or functional individual able to navigate the challenges of adulthood. She exhibits a mastery of diverse concepts ranging from bonding, attunement, impingement, maternal-infant dyad, environmental failure-deprivation, object seeking vs. pleasure seeking, and, of course the state of total infant dependency.
Price’s conceptual focus is examining natural dependency in human infancy, and what can go disastrously wrong if not met with maternal containment, even using her own…
In Memoriam:
Rubin, J. B. (2019). Marianne Horney Eckardt, M.D. February 12, 1913–August 31, 2018. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79(1), pp. 134–137.
Abstract: There are some people who have such an amazing life force that you think—and hope—that they will live forever. If truth be told, you can’t imagine life without them. And when they die, it is as if there is a massive hole in the universe.
Marianne Horney Eckardt was such a person. Born in Berlin in 1913, Dr. Eckardt, the middle daughter of psychoanalyst Karen Horney, studied medicine at the universities of Freiburg, Berlin, and Chicago (see Eckardt, 2005; Patterson, 2006; Tait, 2010), and possessed great knowledge of psychoanalytic history. She said that psychoanalysis was part of her blood (Eckardt, 1974). When she was born, her mother was a resident in psychiatry, just completed her analysis with Karl Abraham, became an early member of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society, and later its secretary from 1915. Marianne often recalled that many of the most prominent members of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute were frequent visitors of their home (see Rubins, 1978).
She completed her…