The Spectrum of Analytic Interaction: A Contemporary Freudian Perspective.

The authors set forth a contemporary Freudian perspective proposing that enacted interaction be viewed as a spectrum of distinct yet overlapping clinical phenomena: acting in/acting out, transference actualization, enactment, countertransference actualization, and boundary violation. At the center of this spectrum are enactments proper, interactions in which both parties construct and sustain a process that embodies a crucial aspect of their affective relationship. By conceptualizing these interactions as a continuum that is patient-focused at one end and analyst-focused at the other, the authors delineate a range of modalities for analytic intervention. They contend that an oscillation between monadic and dyadic perspectives is integral to grappling with the interactive dimension of the analytic process.

The Organizational Structure of the American Psychoanalytic Association: The Politics of Exclusion.

This article traces the history of the American Psychoanalytic Association since its reorganization in 1945. This reorganization established the hegemony of the Board on Professional Standard and the secondary status of the larger membership. It considers the centrality of the requirement of certification for becoming a member, for running for office, and for voting on bylaw amendments, all of which have since been undone, and for training analyst appointments, which continues to this day. A context for this discussion is the decline of APsaA since the 1970s and its struggle to maintain its place in American psychoanalysis and in psychoanalytic education.

Some Thoughts on Self-Disclosure.

This paper explores the pros and cons of self-disclosure and self revelation in the analyst. It takes as its starting point a paper by Jeffrey Stern that shows a mixed but generally positive outcome of an incident of self-disclosure. The trend in more recent times has been toward somewhat more self-disclosure, with modern analysts' views on a continuum. The author discusses an example from his own practice, in which he delayed self-disclosure for some time, but did reveal facts about himself, and how this had a mostly positive outcome. He concludes by distinguishing self-disclosure that entails stating facts about self from self-revelation, when the analyst tells his feelings about some specifics from his own life or in the patient's disclosure. Such revelation is not likely to be beneficial to the therapeutic alliance in its early stages, but may be of value as the analytic relationship and trust develop over longer time.

Psychoanalysis in Crisis: The Danger of Ideology.

Psychoanalysis is in crisis. Its prestige with the public has plummeted, as well as its economic viability and even its population. There are fewer analytic candidates and fewer patients, less insurance coverage, less presence in departments of psychiatry, and less prestige among the traditional academic disciplines. Analysts are getting older, and there are fewer and fewer young ones to replace us. A once-fascinated public now distrusts analysts as unscientific, deluded, authoritarian, reactionary, arrogant, sexist, and/or passé. This paper examines some causes of this decline within psychoanalysis itself as well as possibilities for reform. The status of psychoanalysis as a science is in question, although Freud considered it as an empirical science, and modified his theories to fit new facts. In reality, however, transmission of psychoanalytic knowledge in the training analyst system has led to its perpetuation as an ideology, rather than a science, and to the formation of oligarchies in the structure of psychoanalytic organizations and some institutes. Psychoanalysis is nothing if not an exploratory endeavor, and it thrives in an open environment. Psychoanalytic theory becomes ideology when exploration, testing, and challenge are suppressed. There are many analysts for whom psychoanalysis is neither ideology or theology, but an intellectually stimulating and emotionally rewarding human and humane endeavor, where convention is enlivened by creative challenge, and innovation is disciplined by tradition. In that form, it is too valuable to lose. It is time for us to step back and reclaim our citizenship in the larger intellectual world of curiosity, creativity, and freedom.

Freud's Jewish identity and psychoanalysis as a science.

Ludwik Fleck, the Polish philosopher of science, maintained that scientific discovery is influenced by social, political, historical, psychological, and personal factors. The determinants of Freud's Jewish identity are examined from this Fleckian perspective, as is the impact of that complex identity on his creation of psychoanalysis as a science. Three strands contributing to his Jewish identity are identified and explored: his commitment to the ideal of Bildung, the anti-Semitism of the times, and his "godlessness." Finally, the question is addressed of what it means that psychoanalysis was founded by a Jew. For Freud, psychoanalysis was a kind of liberation philosophy, an attempt to break free of his ethnic and religious inheritance. Yet it represented at the same time his ineradicable relationship with that inheritance. It encapsulated both the ambivalence of his Jewish identity and the creativity of his efforts to resolve it.

Freud's free clinics: a tale of two continents.

Two important schools of thought began in the nineteenth century in Central Europe: Marxism and psychoanalysis. They had much common but there were significant differences. The Marxist influence on early psychoanalysts played out in one way in Europe and another way in the United States. Freud and his Austro-Marxist colleagues were committed to human welfare and social justice. They established a network of clinics that offered psychoanalysis to patients of limited means. The free clinics movement did not cross the Atlantic. There was a cohort of Marxists in the United States who belonged to the United States Communist Party. They were not publicly socially committed, but this paper will try to show that their Marxism influenced their psychoanalytic theory, practice, and politics.