Review of The Theater of Trauma: American Modernist Drama and the Psychological Struggle for the American Mind, 1900-1930.

Reviews the book, The Theater of Trauma: American Modernist Drama and the Psychological Struggle for the American Mind, 1900-1930 by Michael Cotsell (2005). For most of the 20th century, psychoanalytic theory and its myriad offshoots so pervasively influenced literary criticism in the United States that for many it is difficult to imagine examining American literature of that era through any other psychological lens. In his new book The Theater of Trauma: American Modernist Drama and the Psychological Struggle for the American Mind, 1900-1930, Michael Cotsell alerts us to the existence of an alternate psychological perspective that dominated the American landscape before Freudian analysis gained widespread acceptance on this side of the Atlantic--dissociationism. He makes a compelling case that from the waning years of the 19th through the early decades of the 20th century American modernist drama was primarily shaped not by psychoanalytic thought, but by dissociationist psychology. Cotsell argues that it is dissociationism that informed and sustained the modernist sensibility in American drama, and that once dissociationist psychology was eclipsed by psychoanalytic theory, the demise of modernist playwriting was inevitable. Despite the breadth of this book, it is no more realistic that a single work could provide the last word on the relevance of dissociationism to drama than that one volume could offer a comprehensive discussion of the pertinence of psychoanalytic theory to the theater. Cotsell reminds us of the existence of a conceptual framework that carries tremendous explanatory power in its capacity to cogently link the realm of the psychological and personal to that of the social and political. The continued ubiquity of trauma and dissociation in contemporary life render the dissociationist perspective as relevant today as it was in the modernist epoch. Consequently, the significance of The Theater of Trauma extends well beyond the specific territory it covers; it lies in its potential to open new vistas for psychology, for literary criticism, and a wide spectrum of other disciplines concerned with the interface between society and individual experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychoanalytic boundaries and transitional space.

The blurring of the distinction between language and action in contemporary psychoanalytic theories expands the traditional boundaries of psychoanalytic therapy. The current article delineates a conceptualization of psychoanalytic boundaries based on D. Winnicott's (1971) concept that transitional space defines the psychoanalytic process. It is proposed that D. Winnicott's (1971) concept shifts the psychoanalytic paradigm to adaptation, rather than interpretation, as the overriding analytic task. The analyst's adaptation and its limitations define the psychoanalytic dyad, and psychoanalytic boundaries, from this viewpoint, are expressions of the analyst's subjectivity. The clinical implications of this concept of psychoanalytic boundaries are demonstrated in the treatment of a severely regressed patient. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social psychoanalytic research and the twenty-first-century family: Comment on Wallerstein and Lewis (2007).

Seligman regards Wallerstein and Lewis' paper (see record 2007-10890-004) as an exemplary piece of social-developmental psychoanalytic research, finding it accessible, activist and empirical. He admires Wallerstein and Lewis' careful attention to the influence of social reality on the development of the internal worlds of both children and adults, following a psychoanalytic tradition which has been neglected recently. Since actual family configurations are changing so rapidly in the current American situation, analysts should develop new theoretical and research approaches that reflect these changing realities. Seligman highlights two specific implications of such adaptive shifts: the de-centering of the Oedipus complex as the standard form of psychosocial-family organization of the personality, and increased attention to the role of sibling relationships in development. He calls for more analytic clinical research efforts that will apply the substantial potentials of social-psychoanalytic research in service of the varying groups of children who are suffering in the midst of the array of psychosocial strains in the contemporary culture. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Homophobia and psychoanalysis: A reply to Roughton.

Replies to R. E. Roughton's (see record 1994-27310-001) response to D. K. Flaks's (see record 1993-23357-001) article on homophobia and the psychologists's role in psychoanalytic training institutes. Flaks commends attempts by the American Psychoanalytic Association to combat homophobia within the organization but notes potential problems that might limit its success. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Across civilizations: Psychoanalytic therapy with Asians and Asian Americans.

This article addresses issues of psychoanalytic therapy with Asian North Americans both from their standpoint and the Euro-North American therapist. The latter are often unaware of deeply embedded cultural assumptions of individualism in their psyches and in psychoanalytic and psychological theories and norms. This can result in psychopathologizing Asian North Americans or seeing them as inferior. The most difficult part of doing psychoanalytic therapy with them is first learning a different normality/psychopathology continuum from Euro-North Americans, and then ascertaining where a patient's psychopathology is on this different continuum. The nature of the therapy relationship is related to three psychosocial dimensions of Asian hierarchical relationships. Anger, communication, the bicultural self, the magic-cosmic and spiritual self, and trauma and immigration are then delved into. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What are little girls made of?

Research is presented that supports the thesis of the special significance of bonding for females. Although investigators of neonatal behavior have written of the importance of bonding for both male and female infants, there are data suggesting that its salience is more compelling for female infants. Neonatal bonding is more immediate and sustaining and allows for interactive experiences earlier and more frequently in females than males. The research findings cited are considered in relation to Freud's developmental views of women and his psychoanalytic writings on penis envy, the Oedipus complex, and object relations. The concept of autonomy in psychoanalysis is also considered from the vantage point of female development. It is argued, in this context, that the powerful bonding proclivities of females often have been viewed as a developmental failure that serves as a constraint on psychoanalytic theorizing about females and that can handicap women in psychoanalytic treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The therapeutic alliance--a proteus in disguise.

The therapeutic alliance is a vital component of not only the psychoanalytic relation but of all therapeutic encounters between psychotherapist and patient. Despite the universal application and realization of the alliance concept in therapeutic endeavors, it is often ignored as an operative concept in the therapeutic theoretical armamentarium or is formulated in alternative terms. It also comes into play implicitly, even when the concept is formally dismissed as irrelevant. This discussion addresses the meaning and variations of expression of the alliance in the clinical setting and focuses particularly on ways in which the alliance is actually formulated in alternate terms that usually address some partial aspect of the alliance without acknowledging its relevance or importance in the therapeutic relationship and interaction between therapist and patient. I conclude that even when its role in therapy is ignored, minimized, or denied, the alliance continues to play a vital role that requires therapeutic attention and processing in its own right. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The playground of psychoanalytic therapy.

Reviews the book, The playground of psychoanalytic therapy by Jean Sanville (see record 1991-98946-000). Sanville studies psychoanalytic therapy and uses play and playing as the focal point, the pivotal organizing concept. She reviews the theory of psychoanalytic development and the dynamics of clinical intervention, and she attempts to integrate the contribution of her favorite authors, such as Winnicott, Stern, Kohut, and as always, Freud. Thus, the book is a textbook of Sanville's vast theoretical clinical experiences with the motive to document that play is the essential organizing and integrating mental activity. A book rich in considering the fabric of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with its broad frame of reference must greatly limit the ideas of the author, and I wish that there could be a more complete integration of her propositions. It is a pleasure to follow Sanville's case vignettes and to observe her gift and sensitivity with which she tunes into the inner life of her patients. Sanville's book explores a new metapsychological dimension embedded in object relation propositions. The reader will find unexpected rewards. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The foundations of psychoanalysis: A philosophical critique.

Reviews the book by A. Grünbaum, a work of importance in the current, apparently ever-widening, debates about the "scienticity" of psychoanalysis. Grünbaum makes it clear that the inquiry moves toward a verdict of unproven with respect to the scientific claims of psychoanalytic clinical theory, perhaps even the stronger verdict of unprovable in the terms in which it is traditionally cast. Yet Grünbaum is not hospitable to the promiscuous reconstructions that set psychoanalysis apart from the mainstream of scientific endeavor, whether on subjectivist or phenomenological or hermeneutical grounds. As Grünbaum sees it, Freud rightly claimed that psychoanalysis was to be judged as a science in its study of human processes. Grünbaum's respect for Freud is given body by examining how Freud at various stages of his development formulated the logic of his own position and the structure of objections which he was setting out explicitly to answer. The first third of the book deals with broader philosophical foundations, the remainder with the specific critique of psychoanalytic clinical theory. Grünbaum's critique taps the deeper issues of the comparison of the sciences of nature and those of man, of the relation of science and the humanities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Self-Relations in the Psychotherapy Process.

Reviews the book, Self-Relations in the Psychotherapy Process by J. Christopher Muran (see record 2000-16556-000). The self is alive and well and living in psychology, at least if the contributors to J. Christopher Muran's stimulating volume, Self-Relations in the Psychotherapy Process, are to be taken seriously. The self is a central construct in psychoanalytic, humanistic, and cognitive-behavioral theories, but nowadays even some radical behaviorists find the self to be an important concept. Thus, the present is a propitious time for a book that presents the major theoretical approaches to the self in psychotherapy and, fortunately for us, Muran, by gathering the views of leading psychodynamic, humanistic, cognitive-behavioral, and radical behavioral thinkers, has assembled a volume of almost uniformly high quality. Inspired by postmodernism, especially by the growing popularity of dialogic and perspectival epistemologies, Muran has a constructed this book as a set of six dialogues among contributors of varying theoretical persuasions, and although I doubt that dialogic and perspectival epistemologies are necessarily postmodern, I nevertheless find that this volume's dialogic structure makes for interesting reading and adds to its intellectual contributions. Because Muran's contention, with which I agree, is that the self is not an isolated entity but rather part of a relational matrix, it is perhaps necessary for this book to be structured dialogically. Whether postmodern or not, this book is an important one, one that conveys a great deal about what it means to be human as we enter the 21st century. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The challenge of the borderline patient: Competency in diagnosis and treatment.

Reviews the book, The challenge of the borderline patient: Competency in diagnosis and treatment by Jerome Kroll (see record 1988-97021-000). In this new volume on borderline psychopathology, Jerome Kroll has some axes to grind-of the kind found in DSM-III, that is. He offers a refreshing perspective on this popularized topic and casts a healthy skepticism on the current trends and trendiness reflected in the literature. Unique in its back-to-basics, common-sensical approach to diagnosis and treatment, the book, in its essence, aims at demystifying and debunking the aura that surrounds this field. Kroll's volume spans the three predominant areas of inquiry that constitute most of the published works on borderline personality disorders, namely: 1) empirically rooted efforts to establish its construct validity as a diagnostic entity, 2) psychotherapeutic strategies that are primarily enmeshed in larger, unresolved theoretical controversies between the object relations versus self psychology factions within contemporary psychoanalytic thinking, and 3) the search for the magical psychopharmacological bullet that will eradicate borderline symptomotology. For both novice and experienced clinician, this book serves as a useful counterpoint to the current directions in empirical and theoretical work on borderline pathology, a reminder of the potential dangers of getting caught up in methodological precision or overelaborated theory or high-technology psychopharmacology and, as a consequence, of losing sight of the individual, whole patient. It is supportive therapy of the best kind for those of us who face the challenge of treating the borderline patient. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The adaptive design of the human psyche: Psychoanalysis, evolutionary biology, and the therapeutic process.

Reviews the book, The adaptive design of the human psyche: Psychoanalysis, evolutionary biology, and the therapeutic process by Malcolm O. Slavin and Daniel Kriegman (see record 1992-98703-000). The authors have been "absorbed and possessed" for some 25 years by "vexing questions...about whether psychoanalytic notions about the seemingly irrational, conflict-filled nature of the human mind could be reconciled with the Darwinian search for the fundamentally adaptive designs that govern all living creatures" (p. vii). They are knowledgeable and sophisticated psychoanalytic theorists eminently qualified to address such questions, experienced and insightful clinicians, and deeply informed students of modern evolutionary knowledge and theory. This book records their current thinking; their passionate quest for answers continues. This review discusses three significant contributions this book makes to psychoanalytic thought: (a) Slavin and Kriegman's discussion of how evolutionary biology is relevant to psychoanalytic discourse, (b) their analysis of the underlying assumptions of two main psychoanalytic narratives--the classical and the relational--and their integration of these narratives into a new synthesis informed by evolutionary biology, and (c) their exploration of the hidden adaptive dimensions of familiar psychodynamic processes when these processes are viewed in an evolutionary context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Questioning the couch: Historical and clinical perspectives.

Since the beginning of the last century, when Freud introduced the couch in the psychoanalytic room, a number of “objects” have been removed or renovated, yet the couch has almost always remained in place, at least officially. This article has two distinct aims. The first is to offer a reconstruction of the psychoanalytic history of this element of the setting. The second is to rethink the couch, saving it from being reduced to a mere icon. Recent contributions coming from affective neurosciences, infant research, and psychotherapy research seem to question the utility of this element and the nature of the very mechanisms of its therapeutic action. The authors wonder whether the use of the couch is primarily protective for the therapist rather than necessarily helpful for all patients. Taking into account these observations implies bringing the couch out from a silent dimension and reflecting on its role in the conception of therapeutic action and mental functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Dictionary of analytical psychology.

Reviews the book, Dictionary of analytical psychology by C. G. Jung (1987). It is unusual for an author to publish a dictionary based entirely upon the concepts in his or her own work, but that's precisely what this volume is. Given the title, there is an uncomfortable structure to the volume because the first half is a prose introduction to the "extroverted" and "introverted" types, with a detailed account of the thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting characteristics of these two personalities, while only the second half is in a traditional dictionary form. It is this moiety that catches the reader's interest and makes this publication particularly valuable. Central Jungian terms are described, with definitions averaging about a page in length each, long enough to provide some substantial information about each concept. Reading through the dictionary is a sentimental experience, revealing how much the philosophical tradition mastered by Jung has now been lost in developmental and psychoanalytic thought. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Other times, other realities: Toward a theory of psychoanalytic treatment.

Reviews the book, Other times, other realities: Toward a theory of psychoanalytic treatment by Arnold H. Modell (see record 1990-97902-000). This book is addressed to the psychoanalytically sophisticated reader. Its introduction and 10 chapters take the reader through a history of ideas that have been postulated to explain why psychoanalysis works. Interspersed are valuable comments by Modell that include his own original contributions to the discussion. Chapter 1 revolves around Freud and Nachtr?glichkeit. Chapter 2 illuminates the paradoxical relation between reality and illusions that is manifested in the analytic setting. The concept of reality and its various levels are examined in chapter 3. Chapter 4 discusses the neurobiological theories of Edelman, who postulates that memory is not isomorphic with past experience but a recategorization. Modell sees different levels of reality as corresponding to different forms of transference. He relabels transference neurosis as iconic/projective transference and the transference derived from the setting as dependent/containing transference. Chapter 5 amplifies his remarks on linear and cyclic time. Chapter 6 discusses interpretation and chapter 7 examines the concept of resistance. Other chapters deal with the patient's use of the therapist, with paradox and therapeutic dilemmas, and with various theories of psychoanalytic treatment. Modell tries to classify contemporary theories of psychoanalytic treatment but recognizes such attempts as little more than convenient fictions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The analyst's vision of the patient and therapeutic action.

As psychoanalytic therapy shifts from a conflict resolution theory to a model of self-realization, the analyst's vision of the patient takes on a more prominent role in the process. This article builds on H. Loewald's (1960/1980) concept of the analyst as "behind" because he or she can only build from the patient's spontaneous productions and yet "ahead" in that the analyst goes beyond the patient's material to construct an image of who the analysand can become. In this way, the future becomes a prominent component of the analytic process. The famous case of Anna O. is used to demonstrate the deleterious effects of failing to include the analyst's vision in the treatment process. This case is contrasted with the contemporary treatment of a young woman, a case that illustrates the use of the analyst's vision in the conduct of psychoanalytic treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)