Passion, Shame, and the Freedom to Become: Seizing The Vital Moment in Psychoanalysis
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This paper explores the foundational status of the concept of human dignity in relational thought. The author highlights the importance of dignity in everyday clinical work, as well as the role this notion has played in inspiring what has been called the "relational turn" in psychoanalysis. Utilizing concepts from ethical theory and current analytic ideas regarding the multiplicity of self-states, the author sketches a model of psychic experience in which dignity plays a defining role. This model emphasizes the ongoing dialectic between dignity-based processes (in which Self and Other are experienced as unconditionally valuable) and processes in which we experience Self and Other as only conditionally valuable, or in many cases of pathology, unconditionally bad. A dignity-based vision of analytic process is proposed, wherein analyst and patient are engaged in the co-construction of an intersubjective space that is progressively more consistent with their intrinsic worth as human beings. It is suggested that, by explicitly affirming human dignity as an overarching value of relational thought, we would be encouraging continuous revision of our theories in order to further reflect the worth of the human subject, a process that could lead to more humane theories of analytic work.
In this essay, Winnicott states that the basis for a study of actual aggression must be a study of the roots of aggressive intention. The main source of aggression is instinctual experience. In the stage of what Winnicott calls Pre-Concern , aggression is a part of love. If it is lost at this stage of emotional development there is some degree of loss of the capacity to love; to make relationships with objects. During the Stage of Concern there are innocent aggressive impulses towards frustrating objects, and guilt-productive aggressive impulses towards good objects. With the phase he describes as the Growth of Inner World , the child becomes concerned with the effect on his mother of his impulses, and the results of his experiences in his own self. A complex series of defence mechanisms develops, which should be examined in any attempt to understand aggression in a child who has reached this stage. A state of what looks like delusional madness easily appears through the child’s projection of inner world experience out onto his objects. All being well through these stages, aggression then can come to have social value.
In this paper on the subject of the parent-infant relationship given at an IPA congress, Winnicott looks at actual infancy, as against the psychoanalytic study of primitive mental mechanisms. He asserts that dependence is the key factor in infancy. This dependence needs the ‘holding environment’ of the mother/parental couple. Infancy is enabled by good maternal care and equally may be distorted by inadequate maternal care. The ego of the infant, weak to begin with, is strengthened if all goes well, and he sees the mother-father couple as innately capable of adapting to the infant, although pathology may yet arise in this stage. Winnicott illustrates how strength or weakness of the meeting of dependency in the infant by the parents may then be accessed (or not) in the analytic setting.
In this paper Winnicott describes a state following the birth of a child for every mother which he terms primary maternal preoccupation. He considers that in this post partum state the mother of an infant becomes biologically and psychologically conditioned for special orientation to the needs of her child. He notes that there are psychological differences between the mother’s identification with the infant, and the infant’s helpless dependence on the mother. Maternal failure can produce an experience of impingement which interrupts the ‘going on being’ of the infant. However if a mother is sensitized she can empathise with and meet the infant’s needs. In this early stage of development for the baby there is an ego-relatedness between both mother and child, from which the mother recovers, and the infant may then build the idea of a person in the mother. The mother’s failure to adapt in the earliest phase can be experienced as an annihilation of the infant’s self. However, what the mother does well is not apprehended by the infant at this stage.
For Winnicott the antisocial tendency in the human being is different from delinquency. He considers that the antisocial tendency may be found at all ages and stages in childhood. A child may become a deprived child when deprived of essential features of home life. Lack of hope is then a basic feature, but the antisocial act is an expression of that hope, and needs to be thought of in this way in treatment. The child who steals, for example, is not looking for the object stolen but the mother over whom he or she has rights . These rights derive from the fact that (from the child’s point of view) the mother was created by the child. It is therefore a picture of the child’s unconscious omnipotence and control over the mother that has led to the stealing of the object. The child’s greediness, manifest in stealing, is part of the early infant self’s compulsion to seek for a cure from the mother who caused the initial deprivation. At the basis of the antisocial tendency is a good early experience that has been lost.
In this essay, Winnicott describes clinical examples illustrating fantasies and possible memories of the birth experience. In many child analyses birth play is important. The clues to the understanding of infant psychology, including birth trauma, come through psychoanalytic experience where regression is a feature. When birth material turns up in an analysis in a significant way, the patient is showing signs of being in an extremely infantile state. A child may be playing games that contain birth symbolism, and an adult reports fantasy related consciously or unconsciously to birth. This is not the same as the acting out of memory traces derived from birth experience, which provides the material for study of birth trauma.
In this essay, Winnicott describes the interstices between illusion and reality. He focuses his discussion on the soft objects used by an infant, what he calls a transitional object. He says transitional objects involve the nature of the object, the infant’s capacity to recognize the object as ‘not-me’ and yet to feel paradoxically that he has created that object. Through the attachment to the transitional object the infant initiates an affectionate type of object relationship. Winnicott emphasises the importance of this transitional object to the infant, and how parents respond to it. The transitional object belongs to the realm of illusion, which is at the basis of initiation of experience. An infant’s transitional object ordinarily becomes gradually decathected as cultural interests develop.
Winnicott summarises the conscious and unconscious to and fro between a mother and her baby who has as yet no separate conscious and unconscious. The baby, he writes, communicates creatively and in time becomes able to use what has been found so that the mother is found and used. Winnicott sums up the process in a poetic final statement. The preliminary notes for this lecture are also included.
In this paper, Winnicott elaborates on a concept that occupied him in various forms and formulations towards the end of his life: the capacity of the self to relate to the object (or other) in such a way that the object (or other) is recognized as having a place outside the subjective experience of self. Winnicott refers to this as a sophisticated use of reality. He elaborates on this subject using his extensive clinical experience with patients in primitive and less primitive stages of emotional development.
In this paper, Winnicott takes the subject of the mother’s face for the baby as the precursor of the mirror in the child’s emotional development. He explores the normal and pathological aspect of this idea, also referring to the work of Lacan on ‘Le Stade du Miroir’. Winnicott writes that, if all goes well, the baby gets a reflection of himself and his state by looking at the mother’s face, and if he does not, the baby withdraws from exploring himself in the mother. Clinical cases are described.
In this article, I describe how the interchange of giving and receiving is centrally implicated in the developmental/ethical journey from holding on to oneself toward a receptive embrace of a different Other. Since people’s lives are shaped by an inherent passion of offering one’s expressive contributions to the larger world, the challenge of the ethical turn requires a generous humility of receiving what others have to offer. When an individual has attained a sense of belonging because of being received himself/herself by significant persons, he/she is better able to mobilize the graciousness of welcoming the gifts of others. Finally, I emphasize the clinical import of the therapist being sufficiently open as a person so as to provide the patient with the opportunity and dignity to give of himself/herself as well.
In this book, first published in 2000, Stephen Pattison considers the nature of shame as it is discussed in the diverse discourses of literature, psychology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, history and sociology and concludes that 'shame' is not a single unitary phenomenon, but rather a set of separable but related understandings in different discourses. Situating chronic shame primarily within the metaphorical ecology of defilement, pollution and toxic unwantedness, Pattison goes on to examine the causes and effects of shame. He then considers the way in which Christianity has responded to and used shame. Psychologists, philosophers, theologians and therapists will find this a fascinating source of insight, and it will be of particular use to pastoral workers and those concerned with religion and mental health.
Søren Kierkegaard's proposal of "repetition" as the new category of truth signaled the beginning of existentialist thought, turning philosophical attention from the pursuit of objective knowledge to the movement of becoming that characterizes each individual's life. Focusing on the theme of movement in his 1843 pseudonymous texts Either/Or, Repetition, and Fear and Trembling, Clare Carlisle presents an original and illuminating interpretation of Kierkegaard's religious thought, including newly translated material, that emphasizes equally its philosophical and theological significance. Kierkegaard complained of a lack of movement not only in Hegelian philosophy but also in his own "dreadful still life," and his heroes are those who leap, dance, and make journeys-but what do these movements signify, and how are they accomplished? How can we be true to ourselves, let alone to others if we are continually becoming? Carlisle explores these questions to uncover both the philosophical and the literary coherence of Kierkegaard's notoriously enigmatic authorship.
One of the most persistent and poignant human experiences is the sensation of longing-a restlessness perhaps best described as the unspoken conviction that something is missing from our lives. In this study, Drew M. Dalton attempts to illuminate this experience by examining the philosophical thought of Emmanuel Levinas on longing, or what Levinas terms "metaphysical desire." Metaphysical desire, according to Levinas, does not stem from any determinate lack within us, nor does it aim at a particular object beyond us, much less promise any eventual satisfaction. Rather, it functions in the realm of the infinite where such distinctions as inside and outside or one and the other are indistinguishable, perhaps even eliminated. As Levinas conceives such longing, it becomes a mediator in our relation to the other-both the human other and the divine Other. Dalton follows the meandering trail of Levinas's thought along a series of dialogues with some of the philosophers within the history of the Western tradition who have most influenced his corpus. By tracing the genealogy of Levinas's notion of metaphysical desire-namely in the works of Plato, Heidegger, Fichte, Schelling, and Otto-the nature of this Levinasian theme is elucidated to reveal that it is not simply an idealism, a "hagiography of desire" detached from actual experience and resulting in a disconnect between his phenomenological account and our own lives. Rather, Levinas's account of metaphysical desire points to a phenomenology of human longing that is both an ethical and religious phenomenon. In the end, human longing is revealed to be one of the most profound ways in which a subject becomes a subject, arising to its "true self," and hearing the call to responsibility placed upon it by the Other. Throughout, Dalton explicates the nuance of a number of key Levinasian terms, many of which have been taken from the Western philosophical tradition and reinscribed with a new meaning. Eros, the "Good beyond being," shame, responsibility, creation, the trace, the il y a, and the holy are discovered to be deeply tied to Levinas's account of metaphysical desire, resulting in a conclusion regarding longing's role in the relationship between the finite and the Infinite.
This founding work of the history of religions, first published in English in 1954, secured the North American reputation of the Romanian émigré-scholar Mircea Eliade (1907-1986). Making reference to an astonishing number of cultures and drawing on scholarship published in no less than half a dozen European languages, Eliade's The Myth of the Eternal Return makes both intelligible and compelling the religious expressions and activities of a wide variety of archaic and "primitive" religious cultures. While acknowledging that a return to the "archaic" is no longer possible, Eliade passionately insists on the value of understanding this view in order to enrich our contemporary imagination of what it is to be human. Jonathan Z. Smith's new introduction provides the contextual background to the book and presents a critical outline of Eliade's argument in a way that encourages readers to engage in an informed conversation with this classic text.
The field, as Steven Cooper describes it, is comprised of the inextricably related worlds of internalized object relations and interpersonal interaction. Furthermore, the analytic dyad is neither static nor smooth sailing. Eventually, the rigorous work of psychoanalysis will offer a fraught opportunity to work through the most disturbing elements of a patient's inner life as expressed and experienced by the analyst - indeed, a disturbance in the field. How best to proceed when such tricky yet altogether common therapeutic situations arise, and what aspects of transference/countertransference should be explored in the service of continued, productive analysis?
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.
Tentative pour preciser le concept de reddition, etude de ses relations ou masochismes et a la soumission. Le masochisme en tant que perversion de la reddition le sadisme en tant que perversion de l'usage de l'objet (Winnicott). Quelques applications possibles du concept de reddition
Van Gennep was the first observer of human behaviour to note that the ritual ceremonies that accompany the landmarks of human life differ only in detail from one culture to another, and that they are in essence universal.
I Beginning with Morgenrötbe and Nietzsche's self-conscious divorce and opposition to Schopenhauer, the problem of Mitleidbecame a recurring theme in Nietzsche's writings. 1 Although he borrowed freely from Kant, Spinoza, and Laßochefoucauld, Nietzsche's analyses of the psychological dynamics and moral value of Mitleid transcended the more modest work of these theorists. Especially fecund and illuminating were the connections Nietzsche drew between the cultural success of Mitleidas a moral value and the general problems of cultural decadence, pessimism, and nihilism. When Nietzsche bothered to identify the theoretical loci of the advocates of Mitleid, he named two sources: Chistianity, the Religion des Mitleidens, and Schopenhauer's moral philosophy, the Mitleids-Moral. 2 He even viewed Schopenhauer's atheistic philosophy in general, and his ethical theory inparticular, as psychologically and intellectually continuing the life-denying projects of Judeo-Christian morality and furthering the moral perspective of the weak, common, and herd. 3 Inthis paper I willconcentrate narrowly on a part of Nietzsche's criticisms of Schopenhauer's Mitleids-Moral,ignoring the greater cultural problems which served as a basis for a number of Nietzsche's polemics against Schopenhauer. I shall argue that, despite the correctness of Nietzsche's critique of Mitleid, the reasons he uses to criticize Schopenhauer's Mitleids-Moral fail. I willshow that this paradoxical situation results because Schopenhauer and Nietzsche refer to two different emotions by the German noun "Mitleid"; that it is best to understand Schopenhauer's conception of "Mitleid" as "compassion" and Nietzsche's as "pity".I shall argue that compassion is significantly (and morally) different from pity in ways that make Schopenhauer's Mitleids-Moral immune to this element of Nietzsche's critique.