Language and Psychoanalysis Volume 7 Issue 2 (2018) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Cognitive Sciences and Psychoanalysis: A Possible Convergence
The Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, 2003
This paper compares the psychoanalytic description of inner experience with that of the cognitive sciences, which see it in terms of information processing. The two observational standpoints relate to the same mental events. The author considers the possibility of bringing the two descriptions into line with each other and of their mutual translation. The "information" processed in the deep, unconscious, affective, internal experience of a relational context must be identified. This may be possible if a general theory of mental functioning that allows for the data of psychoanalytic observation in terms of semantics, memory, and communication can be formulated. The author examines the theoretical tradition of psychoanalysis, and draws attention to the uncertainties to which Freud's metapsychology gives rise. The energy/drive theory was not only descriptive and clinical in nature, but also had explanatory value, which put psychoanalysis in contact with the other mental sciences of the time. This explanatory value is no longer valid today, and psychoanalytic theories since Freud seem to have disregarded the aspect of "explanation," leaving a theoretical void that has isolated psychoanalysis from the other sciences of the mind. The author contends that object theories may be an appropriate starting point for the exploration of experience in terms of learning processes and of memory traces, and suggests a psychoanalytic cognitivism, coupled with a personal theory to explain the development of the mind.
The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2020
Using conversation analysis of audio recorded psychoanalytic sessions, this article investigates dream interpretation as conversational practice. We focus on the ways in which the "real world" meanings of objects or events in the dream are collaboratively created. Three routes for the meaning creation were found. (1) In plain assertions, either the analyst or the patient asserts the meaning of a dream element, for example stating that the cow in the dream means women. (2) In meaning creation through redescription, the analyst describes anew events belonging to the real world or the dream, which have been referred to in the earlier conversation. This redescription makes possible the subsequent assertion of explicit linkages between the dream and the real world. In the merging of referential worlds, the analyst extends the patient's real-world description with images that are recognisably from the dream: the world of the dream and the real world are thus momentarily merged. In discussion, we point out that in our audio recorded data, the dream interpretation does not primarily involve revealing repressed and unconscious ideas, but rather it involves reminding the patient of something that the patient already knows but is reluctant to think or talk about.
Gestalt Theory - An International Multidisciplinary Journal, 2019
The present work focuses on the transformations of the psychotherapeutic field through the relationship dynamics which occur within it. This first part of the article, authored by Gerhard Stemberger, starts with a brief outline of the Gestalt psychological understanding of the field concept, also in its application to the psychotherapeutic situation, followed by a brief review of the introduction of the field concept into the psychoanalytic theory formation. After this, the first author (Giancarlo Trombini) first presents the theoretical concept underlying a new approach he has developed for observing the relationship dynamics in psychotherapy. Mirroring a formation of both psychoanalytic and Gestalt theory of the main author, this new approach is based on the combination of psychoanalytic and Gestalt psychological concepts. According to the clinical experience and insights of the author, the phenomenological and relational approach of Gestalt theory fits well with the psychoanalytic approach; on this basis, a criterion for recording the progress of therapy can be developed. This criterion is the phenomenology of the development of the qualities of the relationships of the client, as they become visible in his dream narrations and the subsequent associations in the analysis room and continue to develop during the session and the further course of therapy. The relationship dynamics in the dream narration is thus compared with those which develop in the course of the subsequent associations.
Review of Relational concepts in psychoanalysis
Psychoanalytic Psychology, 1990
's book, Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis, is a landmark statement for psychoanalytic theory, and especially of the place of relational theory. It stands outside and above the field, viewing developments over the century since Freud began his explorations. Mitchell has his own point of view, one introduced in the earlier book he co-authored with Greenberg, Object Relations in Psychoanalysis (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983). Building on that previous scholarly statement and contrasting of the positions of many psychoanalytic theorists, he now compares each of the major positions of psychoanalytic theory specifically to the new model he proposes, which he calls a "relational-conflict model." This model is neither the "drive-conflict" model derived centrally from Freud, nor the "developmental-arrest" model that Mitchell associates with Winnicott and Kohut. Mitchell's model is closest to those proposed by Fairbairn and Racker, but he also relies heavily on Sullivan, Loewtild, Schafer, and other modern writers who have contributed to a view of the individual as centered in the human environment and interactive with it. Mitchell has put himself squarely in the middle of a position that many of us emorace. He describes the situation of many analysts who feel their work to be imprisoned in a procrustean bed of "classical theory." The theoretical bed w. 11 not stretch to fit the expanding data about human development, while the patients will not shrink to fit its limited framework. Psychoanalysis is now consumed with the task of locating a new theoretical core. Psychoanalysis struggles with whether to center on a relational core of human motivation or Requests for reprints should be sent lo David E. Scharff, MI),
Psychoanalytic Transformations
The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2007
The author describes how Bion took Freud's conception of dreams as a form of thought and used it as the basis of his theory of transformations. Bion developed an expanded theory of 'dream thought', understood as a process of selection and transformation of sensory and emotional experiences. In this theory, the work of analysis is in turn conceived as a process not only of deciphering symbols, of revealing already existing unconscious meanings, but also of symbol production--of a process for generating thoughts and conferring meaning on experiences that have never been conscious and never been repressed because they have never been 'thought'. Analysis, in its specific operational sense, becomes a system of transformation whereby unconscious somatopsychic processes acquire the conditions for representability and become capable of translation into thoughts, words and interpretations. The rules of transformation applied by the patient in his representations and those applied by the analyst in his interpretations have the same importance for the analytic process as those described by Freud for the process of dreaming. The author discusses the broad categories of transformation adduced by Bion (rigid motion, projective, and in hallucinosis) and introduces some further distinctions within them.
O manejo transferencial em Freud: Uma análise da relação entre transferência e sugestão
Ágora: Estudos em Teoria Psicanalítica, 2016
This article intends to elucidate the relationship between transference and suggestion taking Freud's production from the first and second decade as the reference, highlighting the work on psychoanalytic technique. The aim is to reveal how the management of transference would prevent the psychoanalytic clinical method from having its efficacy reduced by suggestion. From the category of transference neurosis, it is possible to think of epistemological strategies to respond to the criticisms from other areas of knowledge, which claim that psychoanalysis is a therapy that has its effectiveness guaranteed due to the phenomenon of client suggestibility faced with the figure of the analyst.
Gestalt Theory - An International Multidisciplinary Journal, 2019
The present work focuses on the transformations of the psychotherapeutic field through the relationship dynamics that occur within it. The first part of this article had started with a brief outline of the Gestalt psychological understanding of the field concept, also in its application to the psychotherapeutic situation (authored by Gerhard Stemberger), followed by a brief review of the introduction of the field concept into the psychoanalytic theory formation. After this, the first author (Giancarlo Trombini) first presented the theoretical concept underlying a new approach he has developed for observing the relationship dynamics in psychotherapy. Mirroring a formation of the main author both psychoanalytic and Gestalt psychological, this new approach is based on the combination of psychoanalytic and Gestalt psychological concepts. This approach is now demonstrated and further elaborated in the second part of this paper on the basis of a clinical case. The clinical example shows how the relationship dynamics develop in this sense in the individual therapy sessions and over a longer course of therapy. The associated transformations of the therapeutic field give a good indication of the progress of therapy. The main author gained such insights into the transformations of the therapeutic field and the progression of therapy, which are visible in the course of therapy, from the careful application of the criterion “manifest dream/associations comparison of relational dynamics”. In the specific case, there was also a high degree of correspondence between the results of the application of this phenomenological criterion and the empirical evidence of the symptom questionnaire, a self-report measure requested by the patient himself during the course of the therapy (evaluated by Anna Corazza).