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Silence and Silencing in Psychoanalysis: Cultural, Clinical, and Research Perspectives, edited by Aleksandar Dimitrijevi ć and Michael B. Buchholz, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2021, 386 pp.
(Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis)
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - July 21, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Projective Identification: A Contemporary Introduction by Robert Waska, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2022, 121 pp.
(Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis)
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - July 21, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

W. R. Bion ’s Theories of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction by Annie Reiner, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2023, 84 pp.
(Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis)
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - July 21, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

What might be in so close that as psychoanalysts we miss it?
AbstractWhat if the author were to position herself as a liar?  Not of conscious lying, but an ignorance of what is so close to our collective noses that as psychoanalysts we miss it. Drawing on Harari’s (2011) description of liberal ideology, the author suggests that our contemporary psychoanalytic focus on feelings, countertransference, and intuition is more determined by our cultural era than generally recognized. It is suggested that prevailing ideology may at times serve a defensive function. The author discusses a 1970s clinical seminar in which Bion observes that the presenting analyst ’s attention to feelings...
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - July 19, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Fetal Fantasy and the Perfect Child: How Certain Challenges of Adolescence may Inform Aspects of the Abortion Debate
This article explores psychic aspects of abortion, from the fixity of beliefs over its legalization, to conscious and unconscious fantasies related to the fetus, children, parenting, fertility, and so on. Generally speaking, the field has shown less direct interest in abortionper se than might be surmised, particularly given the centrality of sexuality and procreation in psychoanalysis. The recent legal changes may initiate more psychoanalytic interest in the topic. The current writing studies a possible strand of fantasy in which conscious and unconscious wishes for an unending, idealized, and blameless child-object are d...
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - July 19, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Focusing the Clinical Supervision on the Therapist ’s Developmental Trauma: A Single Case Study
AbstractThe term developmental trauma (DT) refers to  the impact of stressful events which occur cumulatively within the child's relevant relationships and contexts, and usually early in life. According to several authors, DT depends on the caregiver’s inadequate intersubjective recognition of one or more aspects of the evolving individual’s iden tity. In the clinical and empirical literature, the study of therapists’ developmental trauma, and how it might constitute a relevant variable in the clinical exchange, seem to be underrepresented. In this paper, through the analysis of the supervision process of a clinical...
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - July 13, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Intricacies of Relational Intimacy: Approaching the Invasive Edge with a Schizoid Patient
AbstractIn hopes of contributing to the developing self-critique of relational analysis, I offer a case that illustrates a modified approach, one informed by current dialogue. The patient described had considerable unmet selfobject needs and a schizoid sensitivity to intrusion, engendering the question explored: How do two minds meet if one is largelyrelationally dissociated and acutely vulnerable when integrated? A premature emphasis on intersubjectivity would have obscured the patient ’s narcissistic needs and reinforced her tendency to retreat. Suspending the goal of intersubjectivity allowed for a regressive process ...
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - July 13, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Resilience and Survival: Understanding and Healing Intergenerational Trauma, by Clara Mucci, Confer Books, London, 2022, 212pp.
(Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis)
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - July 12, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Remembering Jimmy Carter and his Contribution to the Role of Psychoanalysis in World Affairs
AbstractIn February 2023 98-year-old former President Jimmy Carter entered hospice care and began spending his remaining time at home with his family. This paper describes his personal, and The Carter Center ’s financial, support for applying psychoanalytic approaches to understanding and calming large-group conflicts in Estonia and Albania and helping to enrich psychoanalytic knowledge oflarge-group psychology. (Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis)
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - May 31, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Canaries in the Mind: Reflections on Paul Lippmann and the World of Dreams
AbstractNowhere do we see the beauty of our struggles so clearly as in the world of dreams. This past year saw the passing of one of our most creative and inspiring poets of the world of dreams, Paul Lippmann. In this paper, I speak from and about the world of dreams, recognizing ways in which they call to our attention aspects of experience which, unparsed, leave us caught emotionally. Considered will be the dream itself, its forms and functions, ways in which our emotional tangles within the dream space become visual pictograms. Bion suggested that the purpose of psychoanalysis is to enhance the capacities for feeling, t...
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - May 24, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Ferenczi ’s variations on the death drive
We present a brief history of the use of the term death drive among the first psychoanalysts and argue that, as early as 1913, the notion is used by Ferenczi and serves as a conceptual background for his thinking. During the 1920s, Ferenczi revisits part of this concept, focusing on what he identifies as a primacy of self-destruction. The destructive drive gains an adaptive character responsible for the mortification of parts of the individual, in exchange for the survival of the whole. In this variation, the tendency to regress also arises as the self-destruction drive and th e acceptance of unpleasure involves a psychic ...
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - May 22, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Friendship, Creativity and Dispute in the Freud-Fliess and Ferenczi-Groddeck Letters
AbstractIn this paper we examine the different transferential relationships that occurred between two sets of friends: Freud-Fliess and Ferenczi-Groddeck; consider the impact of these variables on their productivity, creativity, and friendship; and review historical literature to analyze how the nature of their bonds shaped very different personal destinies. Freud and Fliess greatly admired each other, and expressed reciprocal support, trust, and idealization but their underlying dispute over the paternity of certain ideas ultimately led to a bitter end. Essentially, their transference can be characterized as paternal-fili...
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - May 22, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

A People ’s History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology by Daniel José Gaztambide, Lexington Books, Lanham, Maryland and London, 2019, 229 pp.
(Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis)
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - May 22, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Affect, Representation and Language: Between the Silence and the Cry by Howard B. Levine, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2022, 155 pp.
(Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis)
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - May 22, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

From the Abyss of Loneliness to the Bliss of Solitude: Cultural, Social and Psychoanalytic Perspectives, edited by Aleksandar Dimitrijevi ć and Michael B. Buchholz, Phoenix Publishing House Ltd, Bicester, Oxfordshire, 2022, 347 pp.
(Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis)
Source: The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - May 12, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research