Review of Conscious and unconscious: Freud's dynamic distinction reconsidered.

Reviews the book, Conscious and unconscious: Freud's dynamic distinction reconsidered by Patricia S. Herzog (see record 1991-97475-000). Patricia Herzog's book is a critical examination of the way in which Freud presented the conscious/unconscious distinction. Herzog is a philosopher, and she provides the careful, analysis of Freudian concepts that good philosophers can, but which is unfortunately often missing from psychoanalysis. Her concerns are not empirical or therapeutic bur conceptual: the consistencies, inconsistencies, and interrelations in the family of Freud's theoretical concepts which has conscious and unconscious as key members. Herzog has provided a scholarly, close-to-the-text treatment of Freud's conscious/unconscious distinction, most surely a central aspect of the theory of psychopathology. But her presentation makes it hard work to grasp and integrate the points, and the reader is left to struggle alone to discover the links between her critique of Freud and themes in modern psychoanalytic or other psychological theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Thoughts on Ahmed Fayek's article: "The centrality of the system Ucs in the theory of psychoanalysis": Setting the record straight.

Freud's first formulation about the structure of the mind was a tripartite theory of awareness--conscious, preconscious and unconscious--referred to as "the system unconscious." Fayek (see record 2006-00627-005) addresses the fate of this construct, pointing out that it is no longer used as Freud construed it. Fayek gives reasons for this eventuality: assertions I question. I offer an alternative explanation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Freud's legacy--is it still with us?

Unconscious processes of mind are a fact of life, both as phenomenon and as explanatory concept and were recognized before Freud. But it was Freud who not only put "the unconscious" on the map but also operationalized it in a new way--as a dynamic unconscious, laying down the foundation of a science of the unconscious, his Copernican revolution. The new science first provided a dual purpose method: investigating the emotional and ideational manifestations of disordered human behavior and psychological conflict and healing those disorders. In becoming a general psychoanalytic psychology, it played an important role in unraveling the dynamics of sexuality in the individual and society, literature and the arts, and in group dynamics in peace and war. The author emphasizes hitherto unacknowledged aspects: (1) The distinction between a theory of method and a theory of disorder; and (2) The role of interpersonal, or dyadic, dynamics in Freud's method, completing the largely monadic or intrapersonal focus in Freud. The author also discusses critiques of Freud's method both within and without psychonalysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Desire, self, mind and the psychotherapies: Unifying psychological science and psychoanalysis.

Reviews the book, Desire, self, mind and the psychotherapies: Unifying psychological science and psychoanalysis by R. Coleman Curtis (see record 2008-14956-000). It seems that the current drumbeat of attack against psychoanalysis and its contributions has, as Paul Stepansky (2009) states, put psychoanalysis “at the margins.” It is this question that has become the sine qua non. And it is this question that R. Coleman Curtis attempts to answer in her new book. For many years, Curtis has dedicated her work to the integration of psychoanalysis with other disciplines within psychology and psychotherapy. In her book, Curtis hypothesizes that advances in psychoanalysis and in the broader field of psychology make it possible to achieve common ground between disciplines. The goal of integration is clearly a passion for her, and she infuses the book with a hope that there can be mutual recognition of the contributions of psychoanalysis with the rest of the field of psychology in a way not possible before two major trends: the “affective revolution” and the recognition across disciplines of unconscious processes. She argues that this is necessary for both disciplines. Curtis’ work is an elaborate and impressively researched volume that carefully lays out the argument that psychoanalysis must abandon dated ideas and instead must present relevant science to support key suppositions. For psychology in general, she argues that acknowledging seminal findings regarding unconscious motivation and emotional processing will make the field more dynamic and relevant to people’s lives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychoanalysis beyond Freud

Since Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) formulated his first psychoanalytic theories about 100 years ago, there has been a rapid development in psychoanalytic theory and therapy. In this paper, central concepts in the four psychoanalytic "psychologies"--drive/ego psychology, object relations theory, self psychology and interpersonal psychoanalysis--are presented. Basic concepts in psychoanalysis have been under a continuous critical review, and psychoanalytic theories remain versatile. The unconscious and the exploration of subjective experience are central common themes. The role of the psychoanalyst has changed from expert to explorer, working together with the patient. At the same time, the analyst has become more active in the therapy room. The analyst's contribution to what is happening between the analyst and the patient has been increasingly emphasized. The development in psychoanalysis has parallelled both developments in the theory of knowledge as well as the change in cultural trends. Creating meaning is central to the psychoanalytic process, but there are divergent views as to how this happens: by articulating meaning, by uncovering meaning, by constructing or deconstructing meaning. The narrative tradition in which the central point is to tell stories about oneself, is discussed more thoroughly in the paper. The authors challenge the view that psychoanalysis is the work of Freud only.     

Cognition and its disembodiment: Some comments on Freud scholarship.

G. Frank's (1996) argument that instinct theory is "an untenable model from which to generate ideas about personality, psychopathology or treatment" (p. 421) and is best replaced by the construct of belief rests on a caricatured representation of Freud's instinct theory. Frank's rendering of instinct theory is bereft of complexity and is based on a selected and tilted reading of Freud. A more balanced reading of Freud, contemporary Freudians, and current views of the interface of psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and evolutionary theory yields different conclusions regarding instinct theory, the dynamic unconscious, unconscious fantasy, and their relations to treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lipot Szondi (1893–1986).

Lipot Szondi died on January 24, 1986 at age 93. In 1923, Szondi began his studies of the internal bodily secretions, described in his copious writings of that period, and became chief of the Experimentelle Psychologisches Laboratorium der Hochschule fuer Heilpedagogik in Budapest, which became an impetus for his later writings in educational psychology. Szondi early addressed the German characterologic assumption that within the frame of the total personality there is a nucleus of innate, permanent psychological features that cannot be modified by environmental factors. Space permits only a brief sketch of Szondian psychology, recorded in 25 books and tracts and 350 journal articles. In the course of the development of his basic theory of drives, Szondi discovered the familial unconscious, a construct midway between Freud's personal unconscious and Jung's collective unconscious. Szondi's four primary drives are sexual, ethico-moral, ego, and contactual, each with its antithetic components, and each component embracing a normal and morbid facet. Epochal in Szondi's career was the founding in 1958 of the Internationale Forschungsgemeinsch att fuer Schicksalspsychologie (International Research Society for Schicksal Psychology), which conducts triennial congresses in Zurich, Paris, Brussels, and Pamploma and, from its secretariat in Zurich, publishes books and tracts. Noteworthy also was the establishment in Zurich in 1961 of the Schweitzerische Gesellschatt fuer Schicksalstherapie (Swiss Association for Schicksal Analytic Therapy). At this time the Szondi Institute was also established in Zurich, where didactic and practicum training leads to a diploma. Szondi's theory of drives (Trieblehre) constitutes a complete system of psychoanalysis, translated chiefly into French, Spanish, and Japanese, whose therapeutic efficacy is suggested through its practice in many countries. It provides psychologists and psychiatrists with an additional potent analytic modality, useful in the areas of education, vocational guidance, counseling, and behavior modification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Freud's forgotten evolutionary project.

In the last decades psychoanalysis has tended to recast itself as a hermeneutic discipline geared at the retelling of human lives, and Freud is recast as a great writer in the humanist tradition rather than as the scientist as which he saw himself. Although this reconceptualization has good reasons, it tends to obscure the fact that Freud primarily saw himself as a theorist of human nature. One of Freud's deepest convictions was that psychopathology needs to be explained on the basis of evolutionary biology. This paper argues that this may have been one of Freud's greatest ideas. The reason it has been "repressed" by psychoanalysis is that Freud based it on Lamarckian principles. The current flourishing of evolutionary psychology and psychiatry may well turn Freud into one of the precursors of the psychology of the future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anna Freud (1895–1982).

Presents an obituary for Anna Freud. No one would have been more surprised than Anna Freud herself to find a memorial tribute to her in the pages of the American Psychologist. She never took a course in psychology and always referred to her field as psychoanalysis, not psychology. It is perhaps a sign of the changing face of American psychology that this obituary has been requested. Anna Freud was born on December 3, 1895, and was the last of Sigmund Freud's six children and the third of his daughters. None of the other children went anywhere near the practice of analysis. With the death of Anna Freud on October 9, 1982, at the age of 86, the last direct link to the founder of psychoanalysis has disappeared. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The anteater and the dreamer.

Reviews the book, Brain and psyche: The biology of the unconscious by Jonathan Winson (1985). Winson offers a "biology of the unconscious," based on his reading of psychoanalysis and his research in experimental neurophysiology. Given Winson's main area of professional activity, it is not surprising that the slant of this book is one of a neuroscientist. But Winson is no slouch in the Freud department either; he devotes 3 of 10 chapters to a well-expounded, somewhat selective, chronological account of the main events leading to the development of psychoanalytic thought. In tackling the challenge of such an integration, Brain and psyche makes a unique and valuable theoretical contribution. Many different types of experiences, along with their associated cognitive and emotional concomitants, will form relatively permanent traces in the brain and thus exert subsequent effects on behavior, by virtue of their being consolidated during critical periods. This is why, says Winson, so many patterns of behavior, adaptive or maladaptive, appear so fixed and immutable in an individual's personality. Dreams allow us to glimpse at the neurobehavioral process whereby, from early childhood on, behavioral strategies are laid down, modified, or consulted, a process that Winson calls the unconscious personality. But it is Winson's account of repression that is the most intriguing. Repression is a process that intervenes in the temporal space between the generation of an idea, emotional feeling, or sensory impression, and the subjective apperception of that experience. Winson makes the conceptual leap from experimental neurophysiology (he works mainly with the rat) to human psychodynamics. What seems to be missing is a middle step, some evidence from human brain research that could link the two domains. Winson has taken an important first step in bridging the chasm between laboratory and consulting room. What we need now is more data from the human side of the brain and behavioral sciences to bring these domains closer still. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Theoretical Support for Transgenerationality: The Theory of the Protomental.

Many authors, particularly in the field of psychoanalysis, have demonstrated the intergenerational transmission of fundamental characteristics of personality structure. It has been found that unconscious modes of mental functioning, rather than contents, are transmitted. The structure of the unconscious has been stated to be transgenerational. Present-day research seeks to describe how not only contents but also functional modalities--that is, mental structures--can be transmitted in parent-child relationships and, in particular, in the caregiver-neonate relationship. Current studies describe these events in clinical terms. The author illustrates how his theory of the protomental, on which he has worked for many years and is still working, can not only describe but also explain in psychophysiological terms what is transmitted, and how it is transmitted, from the mother to the fetus and to the neonate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Save angels perhaps": A critical examination of unconscious thought theory and the deliberation-without-attention effect.

Based on Unconscious Thought Theory (UTT) and a series of experimental and correlational studies, Dijksterhuis and his colleagues conclude that when making complex choices/decisions, conscious thought--deliberation while attention is directed at the problem--leads to poorer choices/decisions than "unconscious thought"--deliberation in the absence of conscious attention directed at the problem. UTT comprises six principles said to apply to decision making, impression formation, attitude formation and change, problem solving, and creativity. Because the implications of UTT for psychological research and theory are considerable, the authors critically examined these six principles (and the studies used to support them) in light of the extant scholarship on unconscious processes, memory, attention, and social cognition. Our examination reveals that UTT is a theory of the unconscious that fails to take into account important work in cognitive psychology, particularly in the judgment and decision making area. Moreover, established literatures in social psychology that contradict fundamental tenets of UTT and its empirical basis are ignored. The authors conclude that theoretical and experimental deficiencies undermine the claims of the superiority of unconscious thinking as portrayed by UTT. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Holt .45 misfires: Yet another round of lament and ridicule aimed at psychoanalytic theorizing.

Comments on R. R. Holt's (see record 1992-27289-001) criticism of S. Reisner's (see record 1992-16438-001) interpretation of an object-relational thread running through Freud's writings. According to Holt, such rereadings of Freud are a waste of time; the real problem to which analytic scholars need to address themselves is the sorry epistemic state of psychoanalytic theory. This commentary counterargues that Holt is simply one of a small, but highly visible, group of lamenters for the alleged terminal epistemic illness of psychoanalysis, a group whose modus operandi has been to ridicule anyone who sees in the traditional forms of psychoanalytic theorizing the potential to say anything useful about human psychology. Reisner has, in fact, made an interesting, exciting, and useful contribution to psychoanalytic thinking and to the wider effort of human beings to capture and accurately represent their unconscious processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Metatheoretical Shifts and Extraclinical Data: Comment on Langs (2005).

R. Langs's (see record 2005-01622-004) strong adaptive approach (SAA) represents an important contribution to psychoanalysis, with noteworthy theoretical and clinical implications. In delineating and evaluating the SAA, Langs incorporated findings from outside of psychology and from studies of analytic sessions. This response argues that a rigorous assessment of the SAA requires attention to research findings from other areas of psychology (e.g., cognitive, social) as well. Implications of these studies for Langs's conceptualization of conscious and unconscious information processing and the role of death anxiety in human mental life are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Challenge of the Strong Adaptive Approach.

This article recounts the 30-year history of the strong adaptive (communicative) approach and the accomplishments to which it lays claim. On the basis of its unique listening-formulating-validating process, the approach argues for the primacy of unconscious perception over unconscious fantasy and other inner mental trends and for a revised topographic model of the mind in lieu of the structural model. Among its avowed achievements are a formal science of psychoanalysis and human communication; an intricate, working model of the emotion-processing mind; an illuminating scenario for the evolution of this mental module; and the in-depth delineation of 3 forms of death anxiety that are believed to be the fundamental basis for both human creativity and emotional maladaptations. The article concludes with a discussion of likely reasons for the present-day marginalization of the strong adaptive approach by many practicing psychotherapists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the place of involuntary restructuring in change.

The past decade has seen much research and experimentation on the relationship between cognition and unconscious processes. The unconscious has become not only acceptable in academic and experimental studies, but has spurred much stimulation and excitement. There is a beginning rapprochement between cognitive psychology and psychoanalysis. This article provides a historical perspective to recent efforts and offers a phenomenological view of some of the concepts. It also offers insight into the creative process as it relates to the unconscious and to current findings. It is suggested that change in the course of psychoanalysis, by relating the past to the present and by using free association and dream interpretation, is fostered through restructuring of the ways in which the individual perceives himself or herself in the context of his or her primary family and his or her place in the world. As the individual revises self-percepts, the entire psychological field undergoes revision. The place of affects in fostering restructuring is discussed. Clinical examples are used, followed by a discussion of the relationship between cognitive and psychoanalytic psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychoanalytic theory in the context of contemporary psychology: The Helen Block Lewis memorial address.

This article represents a tribute to the late Helen Block Lewis's commitment to integrating psychology and psychoanalysis. The current status of the formal structure of psychoanalytic theory was reviewed in relation to recent developments in general psychology. Specific attention was paid to the psychodynamic or motivational perspective, the structural perspective, and the genetic or developmental perspective as proposed by Rapaport. Following an examination of current trends in psychoanalysis and of the shift from a drive-, hydraulic energy model toward a relational model, specific proposals were made about the role of emotions as motives, and the implications of the tension between attachment or affiliation versus autonomous or self-esteem needs. In the structural perspective it was proposed that, as in social psychology, emphasis has shifted from the id, ego, superego model to a more specific focus on self schemas and belief systems. The recent emphasis in cognitive and social psychology on out-of-awareness processes suggests a new interest in the so-called topographical model of conscious and unconscious processes. At the developmental level the dominance of the object relations model meshes well with recent child research... (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychoanalysis as a natural science.

Despite Freud's unwavering intention that psychoanalysis should conform to the requirements of a natural science, this aim has not been realized. Some analysts hold the aim to have been mistaken. Others believe it can and should be achieved, proposing that traditional metapsychology be replaced by a new conceptual framework utilizing modern concepts not available to Freud. Utilizing data obtained from current findings in developmental psychology based on direct observation of parent-child interaction as well as from therapeutic sessions, a possible framework is sketched using principles derived from ethology, control theory, and human information processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Wise Baby and the Wild Analyst.

Sandor Ferenczi was Freud's most brilliant disciple, reevaluated after his historical eclipse and later idealization. As a "wise baby," he demonstrated extraordinary clinical acuity as well as a propensity for wild analysis. Despite his confusion regarding conscious confabulation versus unconscious fantasy, he illuminated critical issues of reality-fantasy and objectivity-subjectivity in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. Ferenczi significantly contributed to present concepts of psychic trauma, countertransference, empathy, and the analyst as participant-observer. Ferenczi illuminated the relationship between perpetrator and victim of child sexual abuse but regarded the child as blissfully innocent. The Freud-Ferenczi relationship is important to the history of psychoanalysis and the evolution of psychoanalytic thought. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The death of desire. A study in psychopathology.

Reviews the book, The death of desire. A study in psychopathology by M. Guy Thompson (1985). Thompson has written an amiable book, filled with the spirit of ecumenism. A practising clinical psychologist, his thesis is that desire is the "foundation of the human subject," that it is "located in the heart of the unconscious," that, if once "situated in phenomenology," this unconscious can reveal "the nature of intersubjective relations." Accordingly, pathological phenomena would be attributable to the deadening of this desire—hence, the book's title. Thompson clearly intends a dialogue between phenomenology and psychoanalysis. The result is an attempt at synthesis that takes R. D. Laing on the one hand and Jacques Lacan on the other—two rather strange bedfellows—as his chief sources of inspiration. Taken as a whole, this book's reach outstretches its grasp. It really does not offer a cogent, coherent synthesis of phenomenology and psychoanalysis but seems rather to offer a congenial amalgam of the many insights experienced by a highly intelligent, versatile and sensitive man during the long, fecund years of his training. As such it is endlessly stimulating, if never quite convincing, and offers singular promise for the future work of its author. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)