{"title":"Destruction, survival and the use of the clinician: Preserving opportunities for selfobject experience in work with challenging patients","authors":"G. Hagman","doi":"10.1080/24720038.2022.2154772","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24720038.2022.2154772","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Many patients resist engagement in the therapeutic relationship because they fear the traumatic consequences of the mobilization of thwarted selfobject needs in what they fear will be a faulty, nonempathic environment. At times this resistance is manifest in “narcissistic rage” as described by Heinz Kohut. Providing opportunities for selfobject experience in work with these patients can be challenging. In his 1971 paper The Use of the Object, D.W. Winnicott described a developmental process in which the state of omnipotent merger with important objects undergoes a transformation in which the other is increasingly recognized as not only outside the self, but also in possession of a subjectivity of its own and thus can be made use of. In work with some seriously and persistently mentally ill, the client’s capacity to make use of the clinician is poorly developed or highly conflicted. Given this the clinical process in which the client achieves the recognition of the worker and trust in their intentions—and hence can make use of them as a selfobject, is often prolonged and stormy. A case is discussed at length that illustrates this. The report documents the importance of holding, containment, management of the countertransference, and survival strategies for the clinician. It also shows the patient’s growing ability to make use of the clinician as a selfobject as she struggles to understand and cope with changes in her life world and self-experience.","PeriodicalId":42308,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalysis Self and Context","volume":"88 1","pages":"14 - 25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89050091","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Resting in uncertainty: Estelle Shane in conversation with Jill Gardner on the value of always questioning","authors":"E. Shane, J. Gardner","doi":"10.1080/24720038.2022.2147527","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24720038.2022.2147527","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42308,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalysis Self and Context","volume":"37 1","pages":"65 - 78"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79136281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reflections on Lessons Learned with Arnold Goldberg","authors":"A. Goldberg, R. Shelby","doi":"10.1080/24720038.2022.2078830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24720038.2022.2078830","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper reflects on the author’s 35 year relationship with Arnold Goldberg. It is organized around Arnold’s published works and concepts the author found iluminating. Personal life with the Goldberg family at our retreats in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore balance the professional and personal life of Arnold Goldberg.","PeriodicalId":42308,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalysis Self and Context","volume":"39 1","pages":"333 - 338"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83751283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Failed Cases","authors":"Caryle Perlman","doi":"10.1080/24720038.2022.2078827","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24720038.2022.2078827","url":null,"abstract":"When Arnold Goldberg decided to study treatment failure, he offered a seminar entitled “Failed Cases” at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. A large number of candidates, graduate analysts, and faculty quickly reworked their schedules so that they might participate. Goldberg’s reputation as a provocative, stimulating and brilliant teacher, combined with the unusual subject, encouraged a large membership. Goldberg asked Brenda Solomon and Caryle Perlman, two author participant members of the long running study group, resulting in the book Errant Selves, to help line up presenters and take notes on the seminar. Lining up presenters was not always an easy task. Most people had mixed feelings about presenting work clearly labeled a “failed case” to a group of their peers. The candidates were perhaps more willing to expose what might be a failure on the grounds of being “just a candidate so it is not surprising I have failed doing this treatment.” The participants of the seminar did not hold back in their myriad responses to the “failed cases.” Such responses ranged from blaming the analyst to blaming the patient, to thinking this was not a failure so no one was to blame, and finally to concluding that this analysis was so inappropriate that failure was inevitable from the start. Some presenters felt traumatized after presenting, even if they said it was useful, while others said it helped them look at the treatment in a completely different way. One said that the whole purpose of the group was a sado-masochistic enactment but she was still glad she had presented. Goldberg never asked for Perlman’s or Solomon’s notes. Instead, he wrote the book on his own. Perhaps he did not want to deal with the enormously time-consuming process of the study group and the multiple case presentations he had lived through. Perhaps he knew this was going to be his last major work and so wanted the liberty to write it in his own eloquent style, on his own timetable, and with his own examples. His examples are, in fact, usually not clear failures but rather demonstrate the struggle of a very experienced analyst engaged in the murky work of psychoanalysis. The book, The Analysis of Failure certainly reflects and comes from the Seminar but the content moves back and forth from the most practical to the most philosophical questions around failure and, as in his other writing, gives us a true sense of the depth of Goldberg’s mind. He utilizes material from many sources that are both close and distant from psychoanalytic thinking. He even uses a Darwin scholar as a reference. He read voraciously and deeply and plays with ideas that, while distant from psychoanalytic theory or practice, shine some light on his ideas about treatment success and failure, and all the grey in between. How are we to understand failure? Failure is the other side of the coin of greatness, the greatness that is a remnant of childhood grandiosity. We hate failure for many reasons but the most powe","PeriodicalId":42308,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalysis Self and Context","volume":"29 1","pages":"330 - 332"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91202711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Pastiche of Brief Memories of Arnold Goldberg","authors":"B. Solomon, M. Dobson","doi":"10.1080/24720038.2022.2078831","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24720038.2022.2078831","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42308,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalysis Self and Context","volume":"60 1","pages":"339 - 339"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87057487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Arnold Goldberg: Reflections on his Importance, Teaching, Irascibility, and Humanness","authors":"John Hanwell Riker, PhD","doi":"10.1080/24720038.2022.2078828","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24720038.2022.2078828","url":null,"abstract":"In empathizing with the helplessness, Arnie was able to breach the insecurity and build up organizing structures for the improvement of the patient’s self-cohesion. Through the process of psychodynamic therapy, the patient lost the need to wear diapers in everyday life, ending in a happy continuation of his marriage, which had suffered due to his pathological diaper fixation. The cure marked an effective end to the sector psychotherapy and resulted in the patient’s deeper understanding of the utility of his underdeveloped self-functions, hence a lack of a necessary need for further analysis.”","PeriodicalId":42308,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalysis Self and Context","volume":"1 1","pages":"306 - 312"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84484762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Remembering Arnie Goldberg","authors":"J. Stern","doi":"10.1080/24720038.2022.2074008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24720038.2022.2074008","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This is a remembrance of my years with Arnold Goldberg as his student, supervisee, and friend.","PeriodicalId":42308,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalysis Self and Context","volume":"23 1","pages":"313 - 316"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84266206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In Memory of Arnold Goldberg","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/24720038.2022.2078585","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24720038.2022.2078585","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42308,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalysis Self and Context","volume":"46 1","pages":"296 - 296"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89385705","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}