Articles:
Akhtar, S. (2024). Soft Diamonds: Poetic Sentiment, Poetic Speech, and Poetic Specimen in the Clinical Hour. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 84(1), 1–15.
Abstract: Three links between poetry and psychoanalysis are highlighted in this paper. These refer to the presence, in the clinical hour, of (i) poetic sentiment, (ii) poetic speech, and (iii) poetic specimen. Each is elucidated in detail and with the help of socio-clinical vignettes. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate that, through the affirmative holding and partial unmasking of the instinctual-epistemic conflation in verse and free- association, both poetry and psychoanalysis seek to transform the private into shared, the hideous into elegant, and the unfathomable into accessible.
Amid, B. (2024). At-one-ment and Twoness Are Not Opposites. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 84(1), 16–41.
Abstract: This paper explores how at-one-ment and twoness interact in the clinical setting. Namely, how the unconscious mode of knowing the other intuitively from the inside, by becoming at-one with them, interacts with the conscious-rational mode of knowing about the other from the outside; how experiencing the other’s experience as one’s own, rather than like one’s own, informs (and is informed by) the common clinical stance of twoness, in which analyst and patient meet as separate persons. Through clinical illustrations, I argue that these are complementary (rather than contradictory) modes of knowing, communicating and being and that, paradoxically, twoness is essential for the emergence of at-one-ment, even though the latter is inadvertent.
Aviram, R. B. (2024). The Outsider Phenomenon and the Need to Belong. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 84(1), 42–56.
Abstract: The outsider phenomenon is an existential pathology interrelated with the need to belong. It is a group related experience that has developmental foundations. W. R. D. Fairbairn (1952), was one of the first psychoanalysts who systematically challenged Freudian theory, and located the human experience within social relationships. Fairbairn (1935) suggested that the family is the first social group, leading to affiliations with important groups external to the family. This paper extrapolates from Fairbairn’s ideas about schizoid character, which is an interpersonal experience, to group experiences in a family and with identity groups. Fairbairn’s notions about the unavoidable activation of schizoid processes may help us understand what makes the outsider experience so pervasive.
Charles, M. (2024). Somatization and Symbolization. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 84(1), 57–78.
Abstract: Psychoanalysis had its origins in an era when feelings that could not be recognized by the mind were being manifested in the body. Psychoanalysis works towards resolving this type of split by recognizing the existence of a dual language structure that includes both body and mind as constituents of the fabric of embodied meanings. The field of psychosomatics helps to provide keys to this language, marking the essential, patterned truths that are recognized at very basic levels and increasingly organize our perceptions as we make sense of the world. In disrupting the integration of embodied meanings, trauma impedes identity development. For some patients, learning to make meaning from somatic symptoms is an important adjunct to coming to know their own embodied experience. Two cases will be offered in which somatic symptoms provided important information that was channeled through the analytic experience as a way of making sense of what otherwise remained unknown.
Dal Molin, E. C. (2024). Trauma: Open Concept. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 84(1), 79–93.
Abstract: This paper presents and discusses two sets of theories concerning trauma. The first involves a contemporary social theory of “cultural trauma” and the second refers to psychoanalytic theories on psychic trauma. We argue that these two groups of theories have some relevant elements in common, despite social theorists’ critique of psychoanalytic understanding on the matter. In our view, the most important meeting points between these groups of theories concern (a) the possibility to think that trauma is not welded to events but has a formation process, one of attribution of meaning, (b) that this process has a temporality of its own, and (c) that the environment (the objects, actors, and agents that compose it) has a fundamental and determinant role in trauma formation. Further, we suggest that trauma is still an open concept in psychoanalysis.
Schellekes, A. (2024). Stations Along the Via Dolorosa Towards Good-Enough Endings. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 84(1), 94–110.
Abstract: This article focuses on the prevailing aspiration to reach a “good-enough ending” in analysis, a concept that is partly realistic and partly illusional. I discuss some of the obstacles that interfere with achieving this yearned for goal, and lead to endings that are far from the misleading illusion of the good-enough termination, that many of us believe we have achieved and are many more than it is commonly reported. I describe characteristics, obstacles, blockages, dreads within the analysand, within the analyst and in the space in between, which lead to endings which are far from good enough, by any criteria we might choose. These obstacles include the failure to distinguish between “real” versus “similar to”; emotional excess; emptying out of internal resources and toxemia of therapy/analysis; a fascination with certain levels of mind versus a neglect of others; osmotic pressure for oneness and the terror of perfection; and malignant nostalgia. Reflecting on such complex facets in the analytic process is relevant not only for a deeper understanding of illusions that we and our analysands hold with regard to endings, but also, implicitly, to the understanding of illusions, beliefs, and myths we and our patients have regarding beginnings.
Musicò, A. (2024). “Masked dissociation”: The Many Faces of Technology. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 84(1), 111–118.
Abstract: After briefly explaining the concepts of dissociation and repression and discussing the new interest that the concept of dissociation has acquired within the actual psychoanalytic panorama, the author explains the concept of a dissociative continuum and presents Peter Goldberg’s theory on somatic dissociation. Starting from this model, she proposes an interpretation of the use of technology, and especially of the internet, as a dissociative modality that helps separate the mind from the body, one that allows the maintenance of personal security—a concept dear to Sullivan—through physical distance. The implications of this point of view are discussed.
Book Reviews:
Teusch, R. (2024). Book Review: Climate Psychology: A Matter of Life and Death, by Wendy Hollway, Paul Hoggett, Chris Robertson, and Sally Weintrobe, Phoenix Publishing House, Bicester, Oxfordshire, 2022, 142 pp. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 84(1), 119–123.
Wendy Hollway, Paul Hoggett, Chris Robertson and Sally Weintrobe, eminent British climate psychology thinkers, share in this book their cutting-edge reflections about the current state of our world characterized by the calamitous eco-psycho-social crisis of the climate emergency. They advocate for and explore the emerging field of climate psychology designed to raise awareness of our current maladaptive cultural assumptions and help find more reality-based, integrated, connected, and less binary ways of living, being, and acting in the world. They maintain that the age of Modernity with its beliefs in individualism, technological fixes and exploitation of earth’s resources without limits to satisfy our need for progress is coming to an end leaving behind significant and irreversible devastation evidenced in extreme climate instability, pandemics, genocidal and eco-cidal assaults. A new Climate Psychology is needed that transcends the binary thinking of Modernity, i.e. individual/social, human/environment, natural/cultural, thinking/feeling and allows for an eco-psycho-social interconnectedness and linkage (p. 5).
Friedman, H. J. (2024). Book Review: The Analyst’s Vulnerability: Impact on Theory and Practice, by Karen J. Maroda, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2022, 215 pp. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 84, 124–129.
An advantage of books about psychoanalysis written by experienced psychoanalysts like Karen Maroda is that it allows for a detailed presentation of their vision of psychoanalysis that has been evolving over many decades of practice. Publishing a full- length book, such as this one, allows the author far more freedom than publishing a paper in one of the prominent psychoanalytic journals where editors have a controlling input into the content of what gets printed and may actually prevent the publication of ideas and theories that are contrary to the guiding sensibilities of the editors. Hence, traditional journals like the Psychoanalytic Quarterly and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association have been known to exclude, for many decades, the papers of interpersonal or relational school authors who had to create their own journal, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, in order to see their ideas in published papers. With the changing guard of editors, over time, some of these segregating and excluding practices may have diminished or even disappeared but the practice of reviewing papers for publication and asking the author to make changes in order for the paper to be published definitely continues to dominate the world of referred journals. The situation regarding books is quite different; book publishers are attempting to publish books that not only inform but will attract enough attention to inspire psychoanalytic readers to purchase them because they are strong enough in their opinions and well enough written to attract reviews that will be published and invite readers of the review to purchase the book. As a reviewer of this important, detailed to a granular level, book I hope that I can inspire psychoanalysts to buy it and add it to their canon of books they use to teach candidates about Maroda’s view of relational psychoanalysis in theory and practice.
Koritar, E. (2024). Book Review: Peter Pan: The Lost Child, by Kathleen Kelley-Lainé, Phoenix Publishing House, Bicester, Oxfordshire, England, 2023, 149 pp. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 84(1), 130–133.
Fairy tales are a popular form of narrative since Aesop began storytelling over 2500 years ago. Their continuing effect on children, is significantly made powerful through allegorical allusion to real life experiences, Adults continue to be stimulated by the metaphorical translation of life’s experiences, reflected in the stories. Analysts and their patients are allegorically informed by myth as metaphor; for example, Freud’s use of the narrative of the Oedipus myth as metaphor of the conflicts of early love and hate in the triadic relationship between a child and his or her parents. Jacob Arlow (1979) states that metaphor is used by the analyst to help the patient have insight into unconscious fantasy. Mythic images emerge in the analyst’s mind “….represents the analyst’s perception of an inner communication of his grasp of the patient’s unconscious fantasy” (p. 371). The association to mythical images represents the analyst’s intuitive understanding of the analysand in the analyst’s mind. Jacob Arlow cites G. Victor (1978) who proposes that analysts go one step further and do as poets to stimulate the patient’s associations by using metaphorical expressions or narratives as would a poet to touch a deep affective chord of a reader.
Eichen, A. (2024). Book Review: Psychoanalysis and Maternal Absence: From the Traumatic to Faith and Trust, by Ofrit Shapira-Berman, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2022, 156 pp. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 84(1), 134–138.
Philosophers, anthropologists, and storytellers have long demonstrated an awareness of the profound impact that mothers have on their offspring’s psychological development and well-being. When psychoanalysis arrived at the turn of the 20th century, Freud contributed a refinement of this knowledge with his exquisite theories of the mind – its conscious and unconscious structural design, conflict and defense, and especially the relevance of childhood psychosexual development. However, Freud’s exclusive reliance on male psychology and his focus on the Oedipus left the task of developing a universal theory of the mind to later theorists. In the mid to late 20th century, theories addressing female development, the infant-mother dyad, development through the life span, and the relevance of intersubjective experience, emerged. And, not surprisingly, psychoanalysts turned their attention toward understanding the complex, psychological reverberations that occur when our mothers go missing – literally and/or figuratively. The body of work that addressed the psychological impact of maternal absence grew during this time (Bowlby, 1958, 1969; Furman, 1981; Silverman & Worden, 1993). By the end of the 20th century, after two world wars and the women’s movement, the field’s focus shifted toward understanding trauma. With that shift, psychoanalysis moved into the 21st century with a renewed interest in the traumatic impact of maternal absence.
Kelley-Lainé, K. (2024). Book Review: From Budapest to Psychoanalysis: Three Portraits and Their Analytic Frames, by Veronica Csillag, Katalin Lanczi and Julianna Vamos, edited by Veronica Csillag, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2023, 256 pp. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 84(1), 139–145.
Leaving the mother, the motherland and the mother tongue takes courage. The confrontation with a “foreign” reality requires stamina, becoming an immigrant necessitates bravery. This book is a narrative in three voices told by three women from Budapest, Veronica Csillag, Katalin Lanczi, and Julianna Vamos, former schoolmates, who decide to tell the story of their emigration from Hungary. The narratives of a trio provide the reader with an interesting perspective enriched by the unique subjectivity of each author. The last part of the title to Psychoanalysis suggests from the outset that this adventure was not easy and each one reached out for the support of a psychoanalyst. Psychoanalysis, a path to self-knowledge, became essential for all three of them to navigate as “foreigners” in a new land.