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The Personal is Political is Psychoanalytic: Politics in the Consulting Room
Abstract
The political is understood as an essential, irreducible aspect of our self-representations and an undeniably consequential factor in our difficulties in living. It can thus no longer be considered taboo in psychoanalytic theory and practice. I examine challenges of working with political material, especially as treatment conducted during the highly partisan, embattled Trump Era may instantiate fierce complementarity or collusive concordance in the dyad. I argue that we can neither ameliorate patients’ suffering nor widen and deepen understanding of their lives if we don’t help them discover how their (and our) embeddedness in particular historical and sociopolitical webs of competing interests hold them (and us) in place. Psychoanalysis’s disavowal of sociopolitical impacts is historicized, and its gradual theoretical relegitimization is traced. The relational turn’s emphasis on the analyst’s subjectivity, intersubjectivity, coconstruction, mutual recognition, and advances in cognizing social inequities offer theoretical scaffolding and strategies of engagement.
... What can psychoanalysis -which understands the human subject in its own particularitysay or do in the face of an epidemic of this dimension? Is there a place where psychoanalysis can possibly conceive of another angle under which it may subvert its own hegemonic arrangements (Aibel, 2018;Bellamy, 1993;Botticelli, 2004)? And in particular, what is the effect on the intra-psychic psychological development of vertically infected HIV-positive children who are located within particular raced, classed, and gendered constructions? ...
... Psychoanalytic theorists like Benjamin, Ogden, Storolow and others simultaneously widen and narrow down the intersubjective theory to ground race into the psychoanalytic canon. In doing so, we attempt in this article to further conceptualisations of the idea of a revolutionary political potential in psychoanalysis (Aibel, 2018;Bellamy, 1993;Botticelli, 2004), and show how it can possibly be used to inform interventions with vertically infected HIV-positive adolescents who have experienced multiple intergenerational forms of social marginalisation. ...
This paper explores intrapsychic life as a site of socio-political insertion from
birth. The first part of this paper engages with the psychoanalytic theory of Melanie
Klein on the notion of the dynamic unconscious and the Oedipal situation as key processes
in the development of the self. The paper goes on to discuss the critical contemporary
position taken up by scholars who have highlighted the racialisation of the Oedipus
complex and its use in justifying racial hierarchies. Furthermore, the paper engages
with the unconscious as an intersubjective organising principle. Franz Fanon's psychoanalytic
framework, that deals with colonial subjectivity, is reviewed here in order to explore
how the raced-self becomes imposed and internalised. The second part of the paper
locates this theoretical argument within the context of HIV. Intrapsychic development,
which comes to be located in our unconscious mind from birth, cannot be understood
outside of specific socio-political considerations. The unique developmental challenges
of HIV for those who are vertically infected cannot be taken for granted, and there
must be more deliberation on the ways in which intersubjective, politically aware
versions of psychoanalysis can be used to inform clinical knowledge and practice in
working with vertically infected HIV-positive adolescents in South Africa.
... In the past two years, many clinicians and researchers have described the significant and often unexpectedly overwhelming effects of the current political climate on their own and their patients' experiences and in-session discussions (e.g. Aibel, 2018;Bodnar, 2018;Coren, 2018;Davis, McCann, Goodman, & Storch, 2018;Markowitz, 2017). Farber (2018) argued that "Trump's election as president of the United States seems to have generated more in-session psychotherapeutic discussions than any political issue since 9/11," an opinion likely shared by many mental health professionals. ...
... Our findings call for greater recognition of the potential impact of the socio-political context on in-session therapeutic process and relationship. These findings suggest that as others have recently argued (Aibel, 2018; McCarthy & Saks, 2019), the political discourse is an important aspect of clinical work. The study highlight the importance of discussing therapist-patient political divergence/convergence, not only in the therapy room, but also as part of training and supervision. ...
Objective
To examine therapists’ perspectives on political self‐disclosure, perceived shared values with patients, and the therapeutic alliance.
Method
Therapists from all US states completed a structured survey (N = 268; 62% Democrats; 7% Republicans; 23% independents; 8% others).
Results
Most therapists (87%) reported they discussed politics in‐session; 63% reported political self‐disclosure (21% explicit; 42% implicit). Therapists who perceived political similarity with most patients were more likely to report political discussions and self‐disclosure. Therapists who reported shared political views with a higher percentage of patients, and those who explicitly disclosed, also reported stronger alliances. Clinton supporters reported significant observed preelection–postelection increases in political discussions, increases in patients’ expression of negative emotions, and decreases in positive emotions. Trump supporters reported the opposite phenomenon.
Conclusions
Politics play an important role in therapeutic processes as in‐session political discussions are common and perceived political similarity may affect decisions to self‐disclose and alliance quality.
... We seem to have a mandate. In both scholarly and public essays, we now not only theorize the evolving intersubjective subject (Benjamin, 1995;Ogden, 1994) as a matter of crossover between private and public, autocracy and democracy (Gentile, 2008;Gentile, with Macrone, 2016;Gilligan & Richards, 2008), but also as an explicit encounter at the horizon of the political (Aibel, 2018;Tublin, 2017) and, moreover, as inseparable from the social (Gaztambide, 2012;Gherovici and Christian, 2018;Guralnik, 2016;Khouri, 2018;Kuriloff, 2014;Rozmarin, 2009;Sheehi, 2016), if also committed to a deconstructive, emancipatory praxis (Barratt, 2019, Gentile, 2015, Gentile, with Macrone, 2016. At the same time, we're hearing more explicit calls like Stein's (e.g., Prince et al., 2012) for psychoanalysis to take itself to, to perform itself for and with, the public. ...
Alexander Stein’s essay, a provocative and performative appeal to psychoanalysts, challenges us to move beyond both our jargon-filled literature and our self-abnegating professional stance by intervening in the public realm, especially through writing. I share Stein’s appeal but also suggest that, actually, many psychoanalysts have already taken up his call, and that we are witnessing a renaissance of the public psychoanalytic essay, along with the birth of psychoanalytic podcasting. Further, beyond the solutions-focused genre of psychoanalytic writing that Stein specifically advocates, I suggest that we cultivate both scholarly and eccentric writing which aims to dislocate, by speaking not only from the mantle of power and authorized leaders but from the margins. Only then will we truly perform psychoanalysis as Freud’s plague—i.e., the “disruptive innovation” it is. Such performative interventions are urgently needed in a world reeling from its own destructive creations. These may have the added benefit of resuscitating the public perception of our field as discredited, and our own flagging and too long dispirited professional self-esteem.
... Harris, 2012;Suchet, 2004Suchet, , 2007White, 2007), the social meanings of gender and sexuality (e.g. Corbett, 1996;Goldner, 1991;Harris, 2005), political affiliations (Aibel, 2018;Samuels, 2004), historical trauma (e.g. Boulanger, 2008;Salberg & Grand, 2017), and immigration status (Boulanger, 2008;Csillag, 2017;Khouri, 2012;Rozmarin, 2017). ...
This editor’s introduction maps out the author’s reflections on the past trajectory of Psychoanalytic Perspectives while also charting out potential directions for its future. She reviews some of the influences that have helped shape the current context of contemporary psychoanalysis, and elucidates the dilemma facing the current Relational psychoanalytic moment, as she sees it. Relational psychoanalysts have been walking a tightrope, squeezed by the perils of the twin pitfalls of relativism and dogma, and the author advocates for more clarity and dialogue around the central ethics and beliefs that hold this theoretical perspective together to create a coherent Relational psychoanalytic identity.
... Clinical practice followed models of psychopathology that increasingly emphasized individual rather than sociopolitical etiological determinants (Prilleltensky, 1989;Proctor, 2005;Roazen, 2017). Correspondingly, although the subjective neutrality of the psychoanalyst was successfully problematized and challenged in recent developments in clinical psychoanalysis, such as the intersubjective, relational, and feminist approaches (Benjamin, 2013;Eagly et al., 2012;Kernberg, 2011;Mitchell & Aron, 1999;Stolorow & Atwood, 1997), the role of unconscious countertransference biases that might emanate from implicit political ideologies and prejudice has rarely become a subject of debate or concern (Aibel, 2018;Altman et al., 2004;Hollander, 2006;Hopper, 1996;Milton & Legg, 2000;Prilleltensky, 2008). ...
This overview provides a brief survey of the major psychoanalytic frameworks and concepts that were put forth throughout the years for understanding socio‐political violence and terrorism. In lieu of exhaustiveness, which is hindered by scope limitations, this overview maps the general ‘phylogenesis’, or the intellectual evolution and derivation of psychoanalytic theorizing about the subject, while putting more specific models within the context of the major developments (or splintering) in psychoanalytic theory that inspired or preceded them. Geared towards the English‐speaking reader, this overview attempts to undo some of the Americanocentric cultural bias that may still exist in the psychoanalytic literature in general and that of political violence in particular ‐ especially after 9/11. As such, it preferentially expounds upon theories that may be more popular outside the United States and/or have not yet been comprehensively translated to English, such as Marxist, post‐structuralist and ‘continental’ philosophical approaches to political violence. Further, since theories of political violence are arguably more prone to amnesia and to ‘reinvention of the wheel’ for a variety of reasons, this overview is slightly more detailed in describing early concepts and scholars that may still be useful in conceptualizing present‐day terrorism. The overview ends with a selective survey of innovative clinical and empirical approaches that allow for integration of psychoanalytic frameworks to flexibly understand political violence through cognitive products and primary sources.
Physical appearances are undertheorized in psychoanalysis. This paper discusses the multifaceted significance of appearances and the use of normative unconscious processes to think about appearances. The paper examines, moreover, how these dynamics intersect and interact with, inter alia, race, class, gender, and sexuality, and implicate politics, personal and otherwise. As psychoanalysis takes a Second Relational Turn, clinicians should consider the effects of appearances and acknowledge their impact, just as they acknowledge and explore the effects of factors such as race, class, sex, and gender; if clinicians do not explore patients’ appearances, they risk not recognizing them fully. The paper further discusses the connection between the psychic and the social in a clinical case, considering how a patient’s appearance informs her internal and external relational patterns, including how her “beauty” contributes to failures of recognition; affects her position within and among social hierarchies; and influences the transference and countertransference matrix of the therapeutic dyad.
Background: Political values are essential to our sense of self and belonging. Yet the political orientation of clinical psychologists has either been neglected in psychological research or been investigated only in the United States several decades ago. This study therefore aimed to explore political values among psychologists and how they perceive the effect of political values on therapy in Norway.
Method: Five clinical psychologists currently in active practice were recruited for semi-structured interviews.
Results and discussion: A thematic analysis yielded several distinct themes. Political beliefs appear to play a part in therapy, and may influence both what the therapist thinks about the client and the choice of therapy. Nonetheless, the informants reported that talking about political beliefs in a psychotherapeutic setting was unusual and even uncomfortable for them.
Conclusion: We therefore ask whether it is time to break the taboos associated with political values in and around psychotherapy, and conclude that further research should be devoted to this sensitive but vital topic.
Keywords: politics, values, psychotherapy, therapeutic alliance, empathy, semi-structured interviews
Background: Political values are essential to our sense of self and belonging. Yet the political orientation of clinical psychologists has either been neglected in psychological research or been investigated only in the United States several decades ago. This study therefore aimed to explore political values among psychologists and how they perceive the effect of political values on therapy in Norway. Method: Five clinical psychologists currently in active practice were recruited for semi-structured interviews. Results and discussion: A thematic analysis yielded several distinct themes. Political beliefs appear to play a part in therapy, and may influence both what the therapist thinks about the client and the choice of therapy. Nonetheless, the informants reported that talking about political beliefs in a psychotherapeutic setting was unusual and even uncomfortable for them. Conclusion: We therefore ask whether it is time to break the taboos associated with political values in and around psychotherapy, and conclude that further research should be devoted to this sensitive but vital topic. Keywords: politics, values, psychotherapy, therapeutic alliance, empathy, semi-structured interviews
In an age of striking inequality in wealth, a related phenomenon, wealth shame, has developed. A multidisciplinary exploration of such shame examines its intrapsychic, intersubjective, transgenerational, and sociopolitical roots in the U.S., as well as its multiple functions: as an ethical response to economic disparity (moral responsibility), as a manifestation of a pervasive shame pattern (moral masochism), and as a defense against pleasure, feelings of superiority, and the fear of being envied. Several clinical vignettes illustrate these themes and are followed by reflections on their clinical implications. The psychoanalytic community's conflicted relationship to social class, money, and wealth is also examined. This conflictedness may inform the analyst's countertransference to wealth shame and his or her ability to appreciate the psychic landscapes of class as they present in the consulting room.
Today’s toxic political climate has intruded into the therapeutic space. Both therapists and clients wonder about whether politics is an appropriate subject for therapy. Stronger treatment alliances were noted when clients perceived political similarity with their therapists. Inside the consulting room, polarizing political splits can occur and lead to impasses and alliance ruptures that can be difficult to bridge. Therapists, like their clients, can become overwhelmed, exhausted, and numb as they continue to listen, support, and contain political shock waves day after day. The ability to maintain empathy, think analytically and stay alert for enactments, can be difficult to sustain when politics enters the room. Various politically based countertransference reactions are addressed, and self-care and connection rather than retreat through detachment or dissociation is the desired goal.
The presence or absence of another person, and the relationship between these two contradictory and complementary relational phenomena, significantly influence people’s emotional experiences and developmental processes. These phenomena are often intertwined and in continuous dialectic with each other, thereby creating relational paradoxes in infant-parent, patient-therapist, and supervisee-supervisor relationships. Similar to other relational paradoxes, those created in supervision by supervisors’ intermittent presence, cannot and should not be resolved, but have to be comprehended and accepted by both partners, preferably through negotiating their meanings. Negotiations help supervisees to contain contradictory supervisory realities, to internalize integrated aspects of their supervisors, and to include other identification figures, thereby creating durable and resilient “internal supervisors” that mold their clinical analytic selves. Negotiations of these paradoxes also help supervisors to renounce an omnipotent and potentially destructive fantasy of being ever-present for their supervisees.
The characteristics involved in cultural competency in psychotherapy and counseling have been difficult to specify. This article describes attempts to study factors associated with cultural competency and addresses 3 questions. First, is ethnic match between therapists and clients associated with treatment outcomes? Second, do clients who use ethnic-specific services exhibit more favorable outcomes than those who use mainstream services? Third, is cognitive match between therapists and clients a predictor of outcomes? The research suggests that match is important in psychotherapy. The cultural competency research has also generated some controversy, and lessons learned from the controversy are discussed. Finally, it is suggested that important and orthogonal ingredients in cultural competency are therapists’ scientific mindedness, dynamic-sizing skills, and culture-specific expertise.
For most of the twentieth century, Jewish and/or politically leftist European psychoanalysts rarely linked their personal trauma history to their professional lives, for they hoped their theory—their Truth—would transcend subjectivity and achieve a universality not unlike the advances in the "hard" sciences.
Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Legacy of the Third Reich confronts the ways in which previously avoided persecution, expulsion, loss and displacement before, during and after the Holocaust shaped what was, and remains a dominant movement in western culture.
Emily Kuriloff uses unpublished original source material, as well as personal interviews conducted with émigré /survivor analysts, and scholars who have studied the period, revealing how the quality of relatedness between people determines what is possible for them to know and do, both personally and professionally. Kuriloff’s research spans the globe, including the analytic communities of the United States, England, Germany, France, and Israel amidst the extraordinary events of the twentieth century.
Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Legacy of the Third Reich addresses the future of psychoanalysis in the voices of the second generation—thinkers and clinicians whose legacies and work remains informed by the pain and triumph of their parents' and mentors' Holocaust stories. These unprecedented revelations influence not only our understanding of mental health work, but of history, art, politics and education. Psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, cultural historians, Jewish and specifically Holocaust scholars will find this volume compelling.
This is an accessible, lucid and stimulating account of the hidden psychology of politics and the hidden politics of the psyche. It is packed with original and imaginative ideas on economics, nationalism, “good-enough” leadership, the citizen and the state, women and men, fatherhood, and the citizen as a “therapist of the world”. Samuels offers trenchant and timely critiques of the crisis in contemporary politics. The book will be important for politicians, people in management studies and the media, members of the therapy world, and all political activists.
The idea of the “activist client” is intended to be taken both literally and metaphorically—applying to some extent to a wider range of clients than actual activists. The paper develops a set of ideas about a “political turn” in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, using the tag “the inner politician.” There is a focus on working directly with political material in the session, and the pros and cos of this practice are reviewed. Wider issues such as social responsibility and social spirituality are discussed, as well as an exploration of the limits of individual responsibility. Some specific topics covered in the paper include the political roots of depression, difficulties with the concept of the therapeutic alliance from the point of view of democratic perspectives on clinical work, and a challenge to the unquestioned valuing of empathy (based on a reading of therapy though a Brechtian lens). There are numerous clinical examples.
The psychoanalytic community is almost uniformly left-leaning. That homogeneity fosters a sense of moral community and belongingness but limits the theoretical and clinical grasp of issues with powerful emotional valence among right-leaning patients. In addition, the lack of friction within the community can discourage inquiry into the unconscious loyalties and personal experiences that shape political sentiments, both left and right. In ordinary times (anytime besides say, now or the Civil War), that limitation would invite disinterested attention to the process by which political beliefs and actions form within the individual. In the time of Trump, however, that dispassionate remove feels like moral negligence to those on the left. The tension between analysts' clinical and partisan identities therefore, clearly tilts toward the latter.
North American psychoanalysis has long been deeply influenced and substantially changed by clinical and theoretical perspectives first introduced by interpersonal psychoanalysis. Yet even today, despite its origin in the 1930s, many otherwise well-read psychoanalysts and psychotherapists are not well informed about the field. The Interpersonal Perspective in Psychoanalysis, 1960s-1990s provides a superb starting point for those who are not as familiar with interpersonal psychoanalysis as they might be. For those who already know the literature, the book will be useful in placing a selection of classic interpersonal articles and their writers in key historical context. During the time span covered in this book, interpersonal psychoanalysis was most concerned with revising the understanding of the analytic relationship-transference and countertransference-and how to work with it. Most of the works collected here center on this theme. The interpersonal perspective introduced the view that the analyst is always and unavoidably a particular, “real” person, and that transference and countertransference need to be reconceptualized to take the analyst’s individual humanity into account. The relationship needs to be grasped as one taking place between two very particular people. Many of the papers are by writers well known in the broader psychoanalytic world, such as Bromberg, Greenberg, Levenson, and Mitchell. But also included are those by writers who, while not as widely recognized beyond the interpersonal literature, have been highly influential among interpersonalists, including Barnett, Schecter, Singer, and Wolstein. Donnel B. Stern and Irwin Hirsch, prominent interpersonalists themselves, present each piece with a prologue that contextualizes the author and their work in the interpersonal literature. An introductory essay also reviews the history of interpersonal psychoanalysis, explaining why interpersonal thinking remains a coherent clinical and theoretical perspective in contemporary psychoanalysis. The Interpersonal Perspective in Psychoanalysis, 1960s-1990s will appeal greatly to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists wanting to know more about interpersonal theory and practice than can be learned from current sources. © 2017 selection and editorial matter, Donnel B. Stern and Irwin Hirsch; individual chapters, the contributors.
Interpersonal psychoanalysis is not well known outside the northeastern United States, yet it has been present since the 1930s and has influenced psychoanalysis all over the world. In this article, the origins of interpersonal psychoanalysis are described, providing at least a partial explanation for this widespread ignorance. Interpersonal psychoanalysis no longer finds much of its definition by an opposition to ego psychology, as it did in its early days. Today, instead, the more significant question for interpersonal psychoanalysis is how, and whether, it can be differentiated from relational psychoanalysis. This is especially important for those who, like me, identify as both interpersonal and relational. Interpersonal thinking was the heart of Mitchell's original conception of relational psychoanalysis. I argue that interpersonal psychoanalysis remains a coherent psychoanalytic perspective, defined by radical field theory; a deemphasis on unconscious fantasy and repressed memories as templates for conscious experience; an emphasis on fantasy as mystified experience; a correspondingly greater emphasis on the embeddedness of the past in the forms of the present; and most of all, the continuous, unconscious, mutual influence of the subjectivities of analyst and patient on one another.
Review of book: Donnel B. Stern. Unformulated Experience: From Dissociation to Imagination in Psychoanalysis. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press, 1997, 312 pp. Reviewed by Michael L. Miller.
Second only to Freud, Erich Fromm remains the most widely read psychoanalyst in history. He was, in this author’s view, a public psychoanalyst, a man who wished to address what he believed were the most pressing issues of his day, who saw psychoanalysis as a tool to explicate and interrogate contemporary society in order to change it. This paper not only seeks to restore Fromm to his place as a forefather of the relational turn but also attempts to demonstrate how Fromm’s enduring sense of hope, his radical humanism, and his call to acknowledge what unites us rather than separates us offer an implicit critique of the excesses of the politics of difference, or identity politics, that have come to define our age and fragment the public sphere.
Psychoanalysis is practiced in context. How relevant are our theories in addressing the psychological impact of disruptive, traumatizing effects of socio-cultural events? This is one of the many critical questions raised by Dr. Holmes in her very telling essay. Particularly on the question of race, Dr. Holmes outlines the shortcomings of our theories, but also challenges what she perceives as the reluctance of psychoanalytic training Institutes to address the traumas of race and racism. This discussion expands on Holmes’s position to wonder whether all psychoanalytic theories are equally remiss, and whether Institutes and psychoanalysts’ perceptions of, and responses to, social trauma are shaped by their particular theoretical orientation. Specifically, this discussion focuses on differences in orientation between Classical psychoanalysis and Interpersonal/Relational theories of mind. The author identifies Sullivan, Fromm, Ferenczi, and others as early psychiatrists and psychoanalysts for whom interpersonal and cultural contexts were central to their theories of human development.
This commentary expands on the problem of culturally imposed trauma described by Dorothy Evans Holmes. The focus on cultural trauma is both timely and necessary. I applaud Holmes’s attention to this important issue, and her clear articulation of its effects on intrapsychic and interpersonal life and the reluctance of psychoanalysis to engage with cultural trauma. My commentary explores two primary areas in an effort to further elaborate this issue: (a) The problem of defining cultural trauma as a legitimate type of trauma, and recognizing resistance to cultural trauma in psychology and psychoanalysis, and (b) the role of cultural context and narrative in addressing cultural trauma within psychoanalytic work. I aim to extend the range of questions concerning race, culture, and social class that remains to be examined in psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalysis deals with what unconsciously mediates our relationship to reality. Our “ordinary clinical terms” (Holmes, this issue) include the press of drives and its fantasy derivatives, the history of early attachment and object relations, lifetime and intergenerational legacies; these are the elements that we assume shape psychic reality. As a discipline we are less likely to interrogate the profound and ongoing ways in which we are spellbound by ideology and are less likely to address racism, homophobia, misogyny, and privilege as central. What I hope to address in this discussion is why considering the socio-political is actually quite complicated for psychoanalysis.
This paper considers the scant attention psychoanalysis gives to cultural trauma. Three contributions to this deficiency are considered: (a) the continuing identification with our psychoanalytic forefathers’ silence regarding cultural trauma, (b) the authoritarian practices in psychoanalytic institutions that keep us overly focused on standard intrapsychic formulations to the near exclusion of cultural trauma, and (c) the fact that work with cultural trauma is difficult. To do this work requires us to “buck the system.” If we do so, we expose ourselves to toxic phenomena in a world still rife with cultural trauma. This paper, which includes clinical vignettes, is an invitation to do so.
The aim of this paper is to expand the psychoanalytic critique of gender and gender identity to considerations of race and racial identity. I will argue that effective conceptualizations of race exist within a conceptual tension similar to that newly established around the category of gender in psychoanalytic gender theory (Dimen, 1991). Instead of focusing on the contents of gendered experience, these theorists understand gender to reflect a set of negotiations and relations. Many analytic theorists and clinicians unwittingly tend to gravitate to the kind of either-or thinking about race formerly associated with gender theory. This occurs when race is discussed in terms of its material reality alone or, conversely, when race is treated as referencing only social constructions. In my view, such thinking falsely simplifies the complexities of understanding the intrapsychic and interpersonal milieu in which race is complexly situated. For the theorist and the clinician, the more difficult position is to locate race within the tension between these poles. The paper will also discuss the difficulty of sustaining such a dialectic in the therapeutic process through the use of a clinical illustration.
This paper explores two dimensions of experience common to all immigrants, whether they have chosen to emigrate or external circumstances have forced the choice on them: the loss of contextual continuity and the consequences of being an outsider in the new culture. Drawing on the contemporary literature on multiple discontinuous self-states, it is proposed that for many immigrants dissociated aspects of self-experience symbolize their original culture. Whether these dissociated states are idealized and felt to be unattainable in the new culture, or denigrated and warded off in a bid to make new connections, if they are not made conscious, examined, mourned over, and reintegrated, the immigrant will experience herself like Lot's wife, turned into a pillar of salt, her gaze fixed forever on the lost world. Or alternatively, in cutting herself off from a despised world from which she fled, she will also cut herself off from valuable aspects of self-experience inadvertently discarded in the act of immigration. Extensive case material is used to demonstrate the conclusion that being an immigrant is not about assimilation, but about a process of mutual accommodation between self-states that hold different passports.
Winner of the 2012 Gradiva Award!
In 1995, Neil Altman did what few psychoanalysts did or even dared to do: He brought the theory and practice of psychoanalysis out of the cozy confines of the consulting room and into the realms of the marginalized, to the very individuals whom this theory and practice often overlooked. in doing so, he brought together psychoanalytic and social theory, and examined how divisions of race, class and culture reflect and influence splits in the developing self, more often than not leading to a negative self image of the “other” in an increasingly polarized society.
Can contemporary psychoanalysis tell us anything about sexuality that is new and clinically meaningful? It most certainly can, answers Muriel Dimen in Sexuality, Intimacy, Power, a compelling attempt to revivify Freud's core interest, in ‘sexual impulses in the ordinary sense of the term’. But there is nothing ordinary about Dimen's project. Drawing on contemporary relational theory, feminism, and postmodernism, she takes a sustained, sometimes irreverent, look at assumptions about psychosexuality. for Dimen, the shift from dualism to multiplicity that has reshaped a range of disciplines can also be brought to bear on our thinking about sexuality. She urges us to return to the open-mindedness hiding between the lines and buried in the footnotes of Freud's writings, and to replace the determinism into which his thought has hardened with more fluid notions of contingency, paradox, and thirdness.
Inspired by the progressive and humanistic origins of psychoanalysis, Lewis Aron and Karen Starr pursue Freud's call for psychoanalysis to be a “psychotherapy for the people.” They present a cultural history focusing on how psychoanalysis has always defined itself in relation to an “other.” at first, that other was hypnosis and suggestion; later it was psychotherapy. The authors trace a series of binary oppositions, each defined hierarchically, which have plagued the history of psychoanalysis. Tracing reverberations of racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and homophobia, they show that psychoanalysis, associated with phallic masculinity, penetration, heterosexuality, autonomy, and culture, was defined in opposition to suggestion and psychotherapy, which were seen as promoting dependence, feminine passivity, and relationality. Aron and Starr deconstruct these dichotomies, leading the way for a return to Freud's progressive vision, in which psychoanalysis, defined broadly and flexibly, is revitalized for a new era.
Gender as Soft Assembly weaves together insights from different disciplinary domains to open up new vistas of clinical understanding of what it means to inhabit, to perform, and to be, gendered. Opposing the traditional notion of development as the linear unfolding of predictable stages, Adrienne Harris argues that children become gendered in multiply configured contexts. And she proffers new developmental models to capture the fluid, constructed, and creative experiences of becoming and being gendered. According to Harris, these models, and the images to which they give rise, articulate not only with contemporary relational psychoanalysis but also with recent research into the origins of mentalization and symbolization.
The intellectual movement known as the interpretative turn is used to develop an understanding of relational psychoanalysis as a way of preparing patients and practitioners to resist the dominant way of being and political structures of the current era. This interpretation is explored by discussing a newly emerging configuration of the selfthe flattened, multiple selfand its connections to 1) the growing influence of neoliberal proceduralism, and 2) an increase in both political indifference and political fundamentalism in the general population. By providing a brief history of relational psychoanalysis that highlights its moral vision and political implications, and by drawing on film, television commercials, online gaming, and psychotherapy practices, it is argued that relational practice can oppose and offer an alternative to a neoliberal way of being, the political arrangements it serves, and the psychological attitudes that enable it. By explicitly recognizing some of the political meanings of relational practice it is hoped that practitioners will be helped to develop political practices within the clinical hour more directly than in the past.
Micro-trauma: A psychoanalytic understanding of cumulative psychic injury explores the "micro-traumatic" or small, subtle psychic hurts that build up to undermine a person's sense of self-worth, skewing his or her character and compromising his or her relatedness to others. These injuries amount to what has been previously called "cumulative" or "relational trauma." Until now, psychoanalysis has explained such negative influences in broad strokes, using general concepts like psychosexual urges, narcissistic needs, and separation-individuation aims, among others. Taking a fresh approach, Margaret Crastnopol identifies certain specific patterns of injurious relating that cause damage in predictable ways; she shows how these destructive processes can be identified, stopped in their tracks, and replaced by a healthier way of functioning. Seven different types of micro-trauma, all largely hidden in plain sight, are described in detail, and many others are discussed more briefly. Three of these micro-traumas-"psychic airbrushing and excessive niceness," "uneasy intimacy," and "connoisseurship gone awry"-have a predominantly positive emotional tone, while the other four-"unkind cutting back," "unbridled indignation," "chronic entrenchment," and "little murders"-have a distinctly negative one. Margaret Crastnopol shows how these toxic processes may take place within a dyadic relationship, a family group, or a social clique, causing collateral psychic damage all around as a consequence. Using illustrations drawn from psychoanalytic treatment, literary fiction, and everyday life, Micro-trauma: A psychoanalytic understanding of cumulative psychic injury outlines how each micro-traumatic pattern develops and manifests itself, and how it wreaks its damage. The book shows how an awareness of these patterns can give us the therapeutic leverage needed to reshape them for the good. This publication will be an invaluable resource for psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health counselors, social workers, marriage and family therapists, and for trainees and graduate students in these fields and related disciplines.
As theories of developmental psychology continue to define educational goals and practice, it has become imperative for educators and researchers to scrutinize not only the underlying assumptions of such theories but also the model of adulthood toward which they point. Carol Gilligan examines the limitations of several theories, most notably Kohlberg's stage theory of moral development, and concludes that developmental theory has not given adequate expression to the concerns and experience of women. Through a review of psychological and literary sources, she illustrates the feminine construction of reality. From her own research data, interviews with women contemplating abortion, she then derives an alternative sequence for the development of women's moral judgments. Finally, she argues for an expanded conception of adulthood that would result from the integration of the "feminine voice" into developmental theory.