Psychoanalytic Psychology

Reppen, Joseph

doi: 10.1037/0736-9735.24.4.589pmid: N/A

Bornstein, Robert F.

doi: 10.1037/0736-9735.24.4.590pmid: N/A

Psychoanalytic theory's roots (in the clinic rather than the laboratory), and aims (depth understanding of the individual) have led to the development of a theoretical perspective that relies primarily on idiographic data and case material to derive and test psychoanalytic hypotheses. In this article, I describe nomothetic psychoanalysis–a framework for conceptualizing and evaluating psychoanalytic ideas that complements and enriches the traditional idiographic approach. Guidelines for conducting nomothetic studies of psychodynamic constructs are provided, and five principles are offered for implementing nomothetic psychoanalysis to maximize its heuristic value and clinical impact.

Botstein, Leon

doi: 10.1037/0736-9735.24.4.603pmid: N/A

One of the dramatic consequences of Sigmund Freud's work is its seminal role in the search for valid answers about the nature of the human mind and individual personality. His search for a scientific basis for understanding undercut nineteenth-century traditions that placed emphasis on primitive conceptions of race. Central to Freud's work is the theory of language and its function in the mind of the individual and in society. Using the historical contexts surrounding the evolution of Freud's theories from The Interpretation of Dreams to Civilization and Its Discontents, his self-conception as a Jew, and the dynamics of Viennese society and politics, this essay explores the conflicts and correspondences between Freud's theories and the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, his near-contemporary and fellow Viennese, on questions of mind, language, and identity. Freud's legacy will be assessed not in the fields of psychology, neuroscience, or hermeneutics, but explored instead in terms of its importance in politics and ethical and social theory.

Pincus, David; Freeman, Walter; Modell, Arnold

doi: 10.1037/0736-9735.24.4.623pmid: N/A

Transference is a key concept in psychoanalysis, distinguishing the analytic treatment from other forms of psychotherapy. In this essay, the authors place transference into the context of a general psychology of human functioning and link it to the neurobiology of perception. The authors briefly review the literature within and outside of psychoanalysis, define transference through the lens of perception, and propose that it is ubiquitous in humans. When not impaired, transference is an adaptive ego function that emerges, along with countertransference, in the context of any interpersonal situation of significant emotional import. The authors draw on W. Freeman's (2003, 2004) research on olfaction, which has since been replicated in other sensory modalities, for a neurodynamic basis for their model of perception and describe how transference may be thought of as an evolved form of it. The authors' view is that transference is a hierarchically integrated perceptual modality of a higher order, although it depends on the same neurodynamic processes as those found in each sensory modality.

Pytell, Timothy

doi: 10.1037/0736-9735.24.4.641pmid: N/A

This article describes the psychological theories of the Holocaust survivors Bruno Bettelheim and Viktor Frankl. Both Bettelheim and Frankl claimed that their peculiar forms of psychotherapy, in the case of Bettelheim mileau therapy, and Frankl, logotherapy, were based on their survival. However, their radically different forms of psychotherapy, when at least elements of their camp experience was similar, suggests that their psychotherapies were based more upon the worldviews before their interment along with their need to work over the humiliation and profound victimization they experienced in the camps.

Kirsner, Douglas

doi: 10.1037/0736-9735.24.4.658pmid: N/A

The new translations of Freud into English highlight the question as to the nature of Freud's quest and achievement. They show a livelier Freud than the Strachey translations (Freud, 1953–1974), who used everyday language in his work instead of trying to establish a new technical vocabulary for an esoteric new discipline. However, with the new Penguin editions thus far, fresh Freud is no longer lost in translation. The Standard Edition was created importantly to create an authoritative international trademark and was made more natural “scientific” in appearance. The fresh translations show a Freud in tune with Karl Popper's (1976) approach in his later work that viewed science as essentially problem solving. The example of “Mourning and Melancholia” (Freud, 1917/1964, 1917/1981, 1917/2005) is discussed as an exercise in exploration, conjectures, criticism, construct formation, and problem solving. Translation issues are discussed. Instead of being a particular trade mark, the very fact of there being new and different translations opens Freud's works to further questioning about their meanings and intents in the marketplace of ideas and practices.

Brandchaft, Bernard

doi: 10.1037/0736-9735.24.4.667pmid: N/A

This paper is an attempt to investigate certain structures of subjectivity laid down in development by processes of pathological accommodation. These emerge when the child is required preemptively to adhere to the needs of its primary objects at the expense of its own psychological distinctness. By repetitive patterning of the child's first reality, an immutable product is created and emerges in the form of fixed belief systems. Systems of pathological accommodation are responses to the trauma of archaic object loss and designed to protect against intolerable pain and existential anxiety. These structures are reactivated in analysis in the context of reciprocal, mutually influencing structures operating unrecognized in both patient and analyst. When they are not addressed, they represent a formidable source of resistance to the analytic process.A review of pathological accommodation in the history of psychoanalysis itself is provided.

Lothane, Zvi

doi: 10.1037/0736-9735.24.4.688pmid: N/A

With the spread of Freud's psychoanalytic movement, in numbers as well as in ideas, there came a time when what used to be informal “training,” in the course of peripatetic or brief analyses with the master, was bureaucratized as a tripartite training system consisting of training analysis, didactic instruction, and analytic work under supervision. This was codified in the first official psychoanalytic institute, established in Berlin, that superseded the earlier tradition of Freud's Vienna. This development created a perennial tension between the goals of training and of treatment, with blurring of boundaries and creation of insurmountable ethical conflicts. The crux of the conflict is that the vested interests of the training analyst hamper the spirit of a good-enough treatment analysis: freedom of choice, suitable analysand–analyst fit, and more. This article is an analysis of these ethical conflicts and a plea for reform.

Cogan, Rosemary; Cochran, Bradley S.; Velarde, Luis C.; Calkins, Heather B.; Chenault, Natalie E.; Cody, Dana L.; Kelley, Matthew D.; Kubicek, Steven J.; Loving, Adam R.; Noriega, Jose P.; Phelan, Kathleen A.; Seigle, Sarah C.; Stout, Troy I.; Styles, Jared W.;

Reppen, Joseph

doi: 10.1037/0736-9735.24.4.701pmid: N/A

This review of Owen Renik's Practical Psychoanalysis for Therapists and Patients focuses on the author's invitation for contemporary clinicians to consider the role of therapeutic ambition, accountability and effective practice. The paper also explores the importance of learning through cases as foundational to the development of expertise and the capacity for innovation.