The oceanic feeling and a sea change: Historical challenges to reductionist attitudes to religion and spirit from within psychoanalysis.

Three waves of challenges may be perceived from within psychoanalysis to its reductionist attitude to religion and spirit. These historical challenges from within psychoanalysis are an important context for reading the many papers now being published on spirituality and psychotherapy, and increasingly, spirituality and psychoanalysis. The 1st wave began with some of Freud's contemporaries, among them his friend, the psychoanalyst and pastor Oscar Pfister; the Nobel Laureate Romain Rolland, and the poet T. S. Eliot. Challenges continued after Freud's death: In Britain from psychoanalysts such as Rickman and Guntrip, and in America initially by the European immigrants, Erikson and Fromm. British independent psychoanalysts initiated what may be considered to be the 3rd wave, whose momentum is now swelling to a sea change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Freud and sociobiology.

Discusses comments made by M. Eber (see record 1984-00023-001) and E. I. Pollak (see record 1984-00042-001) on a synthesis of Freudian psychoanalysis and sociobiology by the present authors (Leak and Christopher; see record 1982-29262-001). Eber writes from the psychoanalytic perspective and criticizes the stress on the biological/scientific aspect of Freud's work. Pollak takes a more sociobiological approach and criticizes the present authors' article for stressing those aspects of sociobiological theory that place greater emphasis on biological determinism as opposed to behavioral plasticity. The present authors reply that (1) the original Freudian conception of psychoanalysis is the version that offers valuable insights for mainstream scientific psychology, and (2) many of Freud's notions are quite similar to contemporary sociobiological concepts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On history and psychoanalysis.

Freud claimed that psychoanalysis represented a major assault on human narcissism. This view is only partially correct for it is largely ahistorical. Freud's view must now be balanced against the historians' perspective on psychoanalysis, which in its turn represents a potential narcissistic blow to psychoanalysis, so long as psychoanalysts isolate themselves from fuller recognition of the sociocultural matrix of Freud's work. This article, by a psychoanalyst, presents some of the newer perspectives of historians on the development of Freud's work against the background of late 19th century Austrian and German political, cultural, and social history. Through understanding this past, we are better able to understand the present dilemmas of psychoanalysis, in particular the relevance of social forces in the development of emotional disorder. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Freud, civilization, religion, and stoicism.

Freud's debt to stoicism has been seldom discussed. His attitude toward science had a distinct ethical slant taken from the ancient world, via Freud's humanistic education. Freud's method involved detachment but did not imply moral coldness and indifference any more than stoicism did. The stoics wanted to be therapists of the mind just as physicians cared for the body. For both Freud and the stoics, reason was in battle with the passions and required clear sight to have a chance of prevailing over them. In contrasting religious worldviews with the scientific approach, Freud failed to see his own approach as ethical. Freud made extensive forays at individual and collective levels but in the years since Freud's death, the psychoanalytic vision has narrowed. At 150 years after his birth, the authors can still admire Freud's exceptional ethical courage and recognize that if psychoanalysis is to survive, it needs to regain his cultural range and spirit of critical inquiry. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Motivation and explanation: An essay on Freud's philosophy of science.

Reviews the book, Motivation and explanation: An essay on Freud's philosophy of science by Nigel Mackay (1989). The book under review is not only an essay on Freud's philosophy of science (as the subtitle has it) but more particularly, a determined attack on the "separate-domain" thesis. This thesis asserts that psychoanalysis belongs to "a domain of explanation separate from explanations of nonhuman phenomena." In refuting this claim, Mackay argues that psychoanalysis falls clearly within the domain of normal science and, by implication, deserves all the rights and privileges of other established disciplines. We hear the echo of Freud when he wrote that "I have always felt it as a gross injustice that people have refused to treat psycho-analysis like any other science." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Freud's relevance for contemporary psychoanalytic technique.

It is argued that Freud's influence on contemporary technique is best seen by separating Freud as a hermeneuticist from Freud as a natural scientist. Freud's hermeneutic work is elucidated by a depiction of his earliest model of technique and its application in The Interpretation of Dreams. The division of the latter work into the first 6 chapters as a hermeneutic and the last chapter as a metapsychology is used to show not only the split but the conflict in Freud between his hermeneutic of the mind and his attempt to found psychoanalysis as a natural science. It is shown that the shift in analytic thinking from the primacy of drives to the growth and transformation of the self has maintained interpretation as a necessary, although insufficient, condition for the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis and that interpretation continues to bear the stamp of Freud's hermeneutic of the mind. (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)     

A draft of Lethe: A neglected statement from the works of Sigmund Freud.

The myth of Oedipus plays an important role in psychoanalysis. Freud's relationship with his mother influenced his theoretical insights and the development of his approach to analysis. But a careful reading of Freud's letters to Wilhelm Fliess shows that it is highly probable that it was not Freud's mother, but his father who was the decisive factor in his life and works. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Happiness and Chance: A Reappraisal of the Psychoanalytic Conception of Suffering.

Freud's allusion to the goal of analysis as that of transforming neurotic misery into common unhappiness implies that the outcome of treatment is not concerned with happiness but with the reduction of suffering. In fact, there is no single standard for happiness but many, some of which bear Freud's thesis out whereas others contradict it. The author examines Freud's views about happiness and compares them with other conceptions of it from antiquity that influenced Freud's distinction between pathological and ordinary suffering. It is argued that psychoanalysis is indeed concerned with the pursuit of happiness but is obliged to treat it in Zen-like fashion because of the typical analysand's resistance to enduring the sacrifices that the pursuit of happiness entails. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Freud's memory erased.

In the past 20 years, much has been written about the death of psychoanalysis and, along with it, its founder, Sigmund Freud. In this article, it is argued that a great deal of what has been erased is Freud's thinking on the importance of memory and the uncovering of repression for the therapeutic process and for mental health. From the beginning of his psychoanalytic writings, Freud was interested in the function that memory played in psychoanalysis, both as theory and as therapeutic technique. Although he continued to develop and revise his theory well into his eighties, Freud never ceased to believe in the utmost significance of uncovering repression for the human psyche. The aim here is to revive what is believed to be some of Freud's most important contributions on the subject of memory and to offer some suggestions as to why these intellectual gems have been neglected in recent years or, when not neglected, divorced from their originator. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Freud's unwritten case.

Discusses Freud's unpublished 5-yr treatment of the male patient "E.," whose therapy provides numerous examples of Freud's developing theories of psychodynamics and the role of infantile sexuality. The resonances between E.'s therapy and Freud's self-analysis suggest a number of conjectures about the role of oedipal and pre-oedipal issues in the construction of psychoanalysis. The use of material from E.'s therapy in The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900) links E.'s therapy to Freud's own anxiety-neurotic difficulties in the late 1890s and to the nascent theories of neurotic etiology, psychoanalytic interpretation, and transference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory.

The reviewer contends that this book deserves admiration for its masterly review of historical events in the development of psychoanalysis. It should be read by psychoanalysts not only for its enormous fund of skillfully assembled information about the formative years of Freud's thinking, but for its story of how new information was treated by some leaders of the psychoanalytic establishment. In the guise of protecting psychoanalysis, this information was dismissed as harmful. It is precisely such a well-meaning upholding of psychoanalytic doctrine that can throttle its growth. Although some of Masson's interpretations are made in the best Freudian style, Lewis remains unconvinced that, in what Masson calls a "failure of courage," Freud suppressed the truth. Nor did Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory lead to the present-day "sterility" of psychoanalysis, as Masson believes. Rather, the spurious need to defend psychoanalysis that Masson encountered during his investigations has also made many institutes sterile places. Masson thus confounds the limitations of some parts of the psychoanalytic establishment with the future of psychoanalysis itself. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The therapeutic experience of psychoanalytic inquiry.

Even from so brief an outline, as background for this review, it is possible to see why the continued effort to defend Freud's metapsychology and extend it into the present, has fallen on hard times. The first, Ferenczi's Diary, is, in my opinion, of critical historical importance; the second, Edelson's Theory in Crisis, is clearly rooted in that history, continuing Freud's heavy emphasis on sex into contemporary psychoanalysis; the third, Goldberg's Fresh Look, represents an effort to do psychoanalytic therapy with a group of patients that is explicitly excluded from it by classical diagnostic metapsychology; and the fourth, R. Marshall and S. Marshall's Transference-Countertransference Matrix, presents an original contemporary paradigm for joining together the study of transference, first noticed by Freud after his 1900 work with Dora, with the study of countertransference, first directly explored by Ferenczi in 1931-1932 with R. N. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Wolf Man's subjective experience of his treatment with Freud.

Little is known about how Freud actually conducted a treatment. However, from Serge Pankejeff's (the Wolf Man's) subjective experience of his treatment with Freud, as reported in his memoirs and published interviews, one can gain a unique perspective on Freud's technique and the therapeutic action of this technique. The purpose of this article is to extract from Pankejeff's subjective experience of Freud those aspects of their work together that were most memorable and meaningful for the patient. Freud's work with Pankejeff has been severely criticized for breaching his own technical recommendations. However, the authors suggest that, in fact, it was these very controversial interventions that were experienced by Pankejeff as most therapeutic. Furthermore, the authors propose that Freud extracted from Pankejeff's symptoms those features that confirmed his theory of infantile sexuality and, in so doing, overlooked Pankejeff's grief and depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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)     

The mind of a rationalist: German reactions to psychoanalysis in the Weimar Republic and beyond.

In this article, the author seeks to trace the various attempts on the part of well-known German psychologists in the Weimar Republic to emphasize the rational side of psychoanalysis. In doing so, the author tries to demonstrate that the early reception in this period often resembled a critique of Freud's rationalism. It is possible to discern one particular form of criticism that emerged time and again, namely the association of psychoanalysis with the rationalist mind. If researchers wish to pinpoint further what lay beneath this purported connection, then it is possible to perceive a pronounced desire to prevent analysis of what many deemed to be sacred and beyond scientific scrutiny: the soul. It is precisely this discontent with Freud's thought that survived well into the Federal Republic, when other forms of critique had been discredited or no longer commanded serious attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

John Watson's paradoxical struggle to explain Freud.

John Watson was fascinated by the discoveries of psychoanalysis, but he rejected Freud's central concept of the unconscious as incompatible with behaviorism. After failing to explain psychoanalysis in terms of William James's concept of habit, Watson borrowed concepts from classical conditioning to explain Freud's discoveries. Watson's famous experiment with Little Albert is interpreted not only in the context of Pavlovian conditioning but also as a psychoanalytically inspired attempt to capture simplified analogues of adult phobic behavior, including the "transference" of emotion in an infant. Watson used his behavioristic concept of conditioned emotional responses to compete with Freud's concepts of displacement and the unconscious transference of emotion. Behind a mask of anti-Freudian bias, Watson surprisingly emerges as a psychologist who popularized Freud and pioneered the scientific appraisal of his ideas in the laboratory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Techniques of Working With Resistance.

The editors of this book (see record 1987-97162-000) provide an excellent selection of writings ranging from the early seminal chapters to modern views. Freud's early formulation of resistance as being all those forces within the patient that oppose the treatment process was quite clear and direct. The writings sampled in this volume suggest that although we have not really gone beyond the essence of that statement, the elaborations and detailing add significantly to the clinical theory and practice of psychoanalysis. The selections are entirely clinical in nature, which calls attention to a foundational fact of life for psychodynamically oriented treatment that has received almost no systematically controlled research within psychoanalysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A response to Grünbaum's refutation of psychoanalysis.

Comments on the original article by Adolf Grünbaum (see record 2006-05420-004) regarding the relevance of Freud's psychoanalytic edifice to the 21st century. Adolf Grünbaum has been a staunch critic of psychoanalysis for over three decades. The general thrust of his attacks are unwavering in content and focus and regurgitate the redundant point that psychoanalysis is not a true science. I wish to offer a modest defense of psychoanalysis as a human science and argue that Grünbaum commits a category mistake in comparing psychoanalysis with the physical sciences, thus he upholds a standard of scientific inquiry that cannot be applied to our field. As a philosopher, he furthermore lacks a proper epistemology of knowing how to appropriately evaluate the validity of clinical data and focuses on select aspects of Freudian theory he uses as a straw man to unjustly refute the whole discipline of psychoanalysis itself. (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)