ABSTRACT
For Jacob A. Arlow, understanding unconscious fantasies was central to his clinical work. These fantasies are to be found at the core of those eruptions that break without warning into our ordinary lives, whether in the form of hysterical symptoms, daydreams or nightmares. What, however, could an unconscious fantasy be on a theoretical level, beyond a vehicle for discharge? Although partly unconscious, such fantasies are sometimes composed of fixed verbal content with a high degree of internal organisation. Unconscious fantasies therefore pose many challenges to understanding.
Subject(s)
Fantasy , Memory , Reality Testing , Unconscious, Psychology , Deja Vu , HumansABSTRACT
A pivotal turning point in contemporary psychoanalytic practice and conceptualization was the presentation by André Green at the 1975 meeting of the International Psychoanalytical Association. In his presentation Green opened new ways of thinking about non-neurotic patients based on a theory of psychosis that accounts for confusion of subject and object and a mode of symbolization derived from a dual organization of patient and analyst. Green proposed that analysts lend themselves to the fusional needs of their patients while the focus is on the force of the negative-destructive mental states where connection is superseded by disconnections that in turn lead to disorganization resulting in blank depression and negative hallucination. Green finds precedent for this viewpoint in his reading of Winnciott's work on transitional space as a developmental movement toward separation. Central to clinical work with non-neurotic patients is the analyst's use of their countertransference as a form of binding the inchoate into form built on interpreting in the transference as opposed to interpreting of the transference while titrating the degree of silence so as not to fuel the terror of too much absence.
Subject(s)
Psychoanalytic Theory , Psychoanalytic Therapy/methods , Psychotic Disorders/psychology , Psychotic Disorders/therapy , France , History, 20th Century , Humans , Psychotic Disorders/historyABSTRACT
André Green has proposed that when a failure occurs in the process of differentiating from, mourning, and symbolizing the primary object, that is, of representing it, a void is left in the place of a representation. The author considers how such a failure might manifest itself in clinical material and whether an understanding of this theoretical thinking might help us conduct our clinical work. Green's thinking on this subject is summarized, and two detailed case examples are presented to illustrate the clinical application of his ideas.
Subject(s)
Grief , Object Attachment , Parent-Child Relations , Psychoanalytic Therapy , Female , France , History, 20th Century , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Psychoanalytic Theory , Psychotherapeutic ProcessesABSTRACT
William I. Grossman's contributions to psychoanalysis have been insufficiently appreciated, perhaps because his writing is concentrated and his meaning consequently difficult to unpack. One of his most important contributions is a remarkable description of the systematic way Freud imagined, thought, and theorized, beginning long before he created psychoanalysis. This way of thinking exemplifies Freud's theories even as it organizes his thinking. It is flexible, expandable, hierarchical, and recursive. Grossman's reading provides a window into Freud's texts that yields exciting new insights, including the idea that a transformative version of translation, a perception of the way Freud thinks creatively, may help psychoanalysts of different cultures and systems of thought communicate across boundaries. André Green's concept of the pathological negative is used as an example of how Grossman's Freud can facilitate a crossing of cultural and theoretical boundaries.
Subject(s)
Freudian Theory , Psychoanalysis/history , Translating , Writing , Austria , History, 19th Century , History, 20th Century , History, 21st Century , United StatesSubject(s)
Psychoanalytic Therapy , Adult , Dreams/psychology , Humans , Male , Psychoanalytic Interpretation , Transference, PsychologyABSTRACT
The authors understand the work of André Green as addressing unresolved and uncharted issues in Freud's views on the earliest phases of development, particularly as those issues concern the evolution of psychic structure, the development of drive components, and the internalization of object representations. The authors describe Green's conceptualization of primitive conflict and its most deleterious result, absence, or the failure to represent the object. These ideas lead to an original way of imagining the analytic setting and to a modification of the classical stance of analyst with patient. Two clinical vignettes are presented.
Subject(s)
Borderline Personality Disorder/psychology , Borderline Personality Disorder/therapy , Conflict, Psychological , Narcissism , Psychoanalytic Theory , Psychoanalytic Therapy/methods , Adult , Female , France , Freudian Theory , History, 20th Century , Humans , Male , Professional-Patient Relations , Psychoanalytic InterpretationABSTRACT
A case in which the author began to understand her patient as "collapsing the space between them," rather than as continuing only to free associate, is the occasion for a contemplation of the way psychoanalytic theory effects a transition between what is inner, or lived, and outer, or experienced. Metaphor is seen as the agent of this transition. The author discusses metaphor in relation to the case described, while also examining spatial metaphors of mind in classical analysis and in Kleinian theory. It is suggested that both may be integrated in a third metaphorical-spatial construct, Green's analytic space.
