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Large-Group Psychology: Racism, Societal Divisions, Narcissistic Leaders, and Who We Are Now , by Vamik D. Volkan, Phoenix Publishing House Ltd, Oxfordshire, UK, 2020, 139 pp.
(Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis)
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - May 7, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Further thoughts on trauma, process and representation*
AbstractBeginning with Freud, throughout his work and in most if not all psychoanalytic formulations, the concept of trauma has been associated with the disruptive effects of excess excitation on psychic regulatory processes and psychic development. Foremost among these are the capacities for emotional containment  and representation. The restoration, strengthening or acquisition for the first time of these capacities can take place intersubjectively in a successful analytic therapy and lies at the heart of the therapeutic action. (Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis)
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - May 5, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Trauma, prejudice, large-group identity and psychoanalysis
AbstractEscaping Nazi annexation of Austria, Sigmund Freud and his family left there in 1938 to live the rest of their lives in exile in the house now known as the Freud Museum in London. This paper is based upon the author ’s Holocaust Day Memorial Lecture delivered virtually at this museum on January 27, 2021, which marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. Besides remembering those who were lost during World War II, the content of this paper includes a descri ption of different types of massive traumas, with a focus on disasters at the hand of the Other, and thei...
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - May 5, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Discussion of howard b. levine ’s paper, further thoughts on trauma, process and representation*
(Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis)
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - May 3, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

No Words To Say It: Trauma And Its Aftermath*
AbstractTrauma survivors suffer from unmediated access to primal undifferentiated positions of the psyche. This access, unmediated by symbolic representation, but represented in the body, disrupts the normal trajectory of development and of relationship. Survivors have no words to communicate this experience. Without words, trauma torments them, because it cannot be borne, grieved, and released. Without access to the usual defenses against unpleasant feelings and ideas, survivors are left isolated and confused, unable to enjoy their lives. These primal states are an aftermath of trauma resistant to treatment because they a...
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - April 30, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

No Word To Say It: Trauma And Its Aftermath*
AbstractTrauma survivors suffer from unmediated access to primal undifferentiated positions of the psyche. This access, unmediated by symbolic representation, but represented in the body, disrupts the normal trajectory of development and of relationship. Survivors have no words to communicate this experience. Without words, trauma torments them, because it cannot be borne, grieved, and released. Without access to the usual defenses against unpleasant feelings and ideas, survivors are left isolated and confused, unable to enjoy their lives. These primal states are an aftermath of trauma resistant to treatment because they a...
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - April 30, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

The Problems and Contradictions Inherent in Analytic Training and the Ultimate Requirement: Working with Uncertainty
AbstractIn this essay, the author ’s aim is to outline the specifics of psychoanalytic intervention and its current relevance. She explores the boundaries of the clinician’s identity, (whether psychotherapist or psychoanalyst), examines the training itself, as well as how and where one can develop the skills necessary to engage in this profession. She specifically assesses the Italian situation. For the construction of the identity of the therapist/psychoanalyst it is fundamental to learn how to tolerate uncertainty, seen here as a value, not a limitation, in contrast with the certainties which characterize other fo...
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - March 8, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

On Difference and the “Beyond Psychotherapy” of Psychoanalytic Method: The Pivotal Issue of Free-associative Discourse as De-repressive Praxis
AbstractIt is argued that, in the course of the history of psychoanalysis since 1914 or thereabouts, the clinical and theoretical interests of psychotherapy have occluded our comprehension of the radicality of the free-associative method that is special to psychoanalysis. Setting aside the entirety of the range of endeavors that we might call “psychotherapy,” this essay defines critically the practices of “psychoanalytically-informed therapies” and distinguishes them from Sigmund Freud’s “analysis” that is tied to the unique method by which he discovered the inherent repressiveness of self-consciousness. This...
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - March 8, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

What Language Are We Speaking? Bion and Early Emotional Life
AbstractBion (1970) saw his concept of ‘O’ as the central psychoanalytic perspective. It is a waking dream state, seen also as an essentially “religious” or spiritual perspective. While religious ideas may seem far afield in a discussion of fundamental elements of psychoanalysis, the word “spiritual” here refers simply to met aphysical matters of the spirit, mind, or personality, three terms used interchangeably by Bion. This essential experience of ‘O’ is seen as a selfless state, which the author clearly distinguishes frompathological states of selflessness, mindlessness, or nothingness often seen in pati...
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - March 5, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

In Memoriam
(Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis)
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - March 5, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Dissociation vs Repression: A New Neuropsychoanalytic Model for Psychopathology
AbstractRecent research on trauma, attachment and neuroscience point at a clear divide in psychopathology between disorders based on repression, (as in Freud's repression model) and psychopathologies structured on dissociative mechanisms, a response to severe interpersonal trauma. Pathologies based on repression are typical of a neurotic structure, (with better developmental outcome), while pathologies based on dissociation are of more severe, often borderline nature, as in Otto Kernberg ’s borderline organization (1975). Neurobiology of attachment and affect regulation theory (Allan Schore), developmental psychopatholog...
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - February 26, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Histories, Traumas, and Emotional Foreclosure from Manhattan to Dublin and Back
AbstractThe present paper begins with the particulars of clinical practice in Ireland. Through clinical example, it examines the emotion ofshame, widely paired withblame, as a socially acceptable admission of psychological functioning, both in exercising and in denying the communication of more profound feeling. As a necessary emotional outlet, shame authorizes aggressions both large and small. Shame demands that certain acts, often seemingly random and subjective, are to be judged disgraceful in others. Shame demands that someone, everyone, endures hurt, at least through social judgement. Passing through the armoring of s...
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - February 25, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Balancing the general with the particular in psychoanalysis
(Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis)
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - February 17, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

The Mindbrain and Dreams: An Exploration of Dreaming, Thinking, and Artistic Creation , by Mark J. Blechner, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2018, 343 pp.
(Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis)
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - February 12, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Core concepts in contemporary psychoanalysis: clinical, research evidence and conceptual critiques , by Morris N. Eagle, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2018, 244 pp
(Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis)
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - February 12, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research