{"title":"Object constancy and absence in Winnicott through the lens of the piggle.","authors":"Angela Joyce","doi":"10.1057/s11231-024-09483-5","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-024-09483-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper revisits D. W. Winnicott's famous account of his patient Piggle to examine the profound nature of her response to the birth of her baby sister in the light of the concepts of object constancy and absence. The author speculates that recent scholarship revealing the mother's Holocaust family history enables us to hypothesise that Piggle's infancy might have been marked by her mother's psychic absence. This contributed to difficulties in the establishment of object constancy leaving her vulnerable to more extreme responses to later absences, such as at the birth of her sister. The focus of Winnicott's interpretations at an Oedipal level is critiqued as is the significance of the psychoanalysis-on-demand setting of the work.</p>","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"510-530"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142847458","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":"Conversation: Bion and Winnicott : Discussions with Presenters and Participants.","authors":"Jani Santamaría","doi":"10.1057/s11231-024-09490-6","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-024-09490-6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"583-610"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142808337","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":"Regression and Formlessness in the Work of Winnicott and Bion.","authors":"Rudi Vermote","doi":"10.1057/s11231-024-09486-2","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-024-09486-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper focuses on a convergence of late Bion's (1970) and late Winnicott's (1969a, b) discovery and technique. Both authors describe a special state of mind which adds formlessness, un-differentiation to regression as a major mechanism of psychic change. Bion describes this state mainly in the analyst, while Winnicott focuses on this state of mind in the patient. The combination of both approaches brings us in contact with an essential phenomenon of psychoanalysis which seems difficult to reach and contain without the psychoanalytic frame and in which both analyst and patient play a complementary role.</p>","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"560-569"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142677466","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":"Bion/Winnicott encounter: absence, failure and the negative in the work of Bion and Winnicott.","authors":"Howard B Levine","doi":"10.1057/s11231-024-09484-4","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-024-09484-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>After the death of Freud, a major thrust of the expansion of psychoanalytic theory involved the increasing recognition that the actuality of the emotional functioning of the object,-the primary objects in the infant's development, the analyst as object in the treatment process-were crucial determinants of developmental and therapeutic outcome. This recognition has been the driving force behind the evolution of various iterations of the role of interaction, inter-affectivity and intersubjectivity in two-person theories of psychic development and therapeutic action. This paper attempts to briefly trace in the work of Bion, Winnicott, Green and the Paris Psychosomatic School not only the effects of traumatic occurrences, but of their negative-i.e., the consequence of the absence of what should have been provided at crucial moments in development but was not.</p>","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"548-559"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142717541","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":"Conversation: Bion and Winnicott.","authors":"Jani Santamaría Linares","doi":"10.1057/s11231-024-09487-1","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-024-09487-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In 2023, THE A-SANTAMARIA PSICOANALISIS MEXICO ASSOCIATION planned the Online Conversations of W. Bion to generate dialogues with outstanding colleagues about the divergences and convergences of Bion with the work of André Green, Jean Laplanche, Ignacio Matte Blanco and D.W. Winnicott. The need to share thoughts about these authors' works and their links with others, facilitated widespread international dialogues about these authors and placed them all in a field of exchange, debate and challenge. The Online Conversations underlined the new dimensions in which Bion and Winnicott placed psychoanalytic theory and technique. Five outstanding presentations illustrate their understanding and grasping of these dimensions, each followed by an author exchange. These authors provide an in-depth inquiry into a wide range of topics: Angela Joyce looks at object constancy and absence through the lens of Winnicott's (1977) The Piggle; Dominque Scarfone examines the concept of contact barriers among Freud, Bion and Winnicott; Howard B. Levine discusses absence, failure and the negative in the work of Bion, Winnicott and Green; Lesley Caldwell links the works of Bion and Winnicott in addressing being alone and with others, and communicating and not communicating; finally, Rudi Vermote shows how Bion's and Winnicott's views on regression and formlessness complement each other.</p>","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"501-509"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142808476","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":"Why Ferenczi?: The Empathic Style in Psychoanalysis, by Daniel Kupermann, Blucher, São Paulo, Brazil, 2024, 202 pp.","authors":"Mariana Toledo","doi":"10.1057/s11231-024-09481-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1057/s11231-024-09481-7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142717611","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":"Rethinking the Psychoanalysis of Masculinity: From Toxic to Seminal, by Karl Figlio, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2024, 268 pp.","authors":"Rui Aragão Oliveira","doi":"10.1057/s11231-024-09476-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1057/s11231-024-09476-4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142640358","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":"The Poetry of Loss: Romantic and Contemporary Elegies, by Judith Harris, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2023, 169 pp.","authors":"Claude Barbre","doi":"10.1057/s11231-024-09477-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1057/s11231-024-09477-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142640360","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":"Fratriarchy: The Sibling Trauma and the Law of the Mother, by Juliet Mitchell, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2023, 238 pp.","authors":"Miguel Angel Gonzalez-Torres","doi":"10.1057/s11231-024-09462-w","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-024-09462-w","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"492-495"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141894852","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":"Psychoanalysis of the unspectacular.","authors":"Ariel Yelen","doi":"10.1057/s11231-024-09470-w","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-024-09470-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>From the perspective of a poet and first-year psychoanalytic training candidate, this paper develops Jeremy Safran's ideas about the dialectic between psychoanalysis and Buddhism by drawing an analogy between their processes and those of a poetry practice to define an alternative to pathological dissociation under capitalist systems of value. The paper details the writer's experience of working a day job in an office and the pathological dissociation which she subsequently attempts to overcome and critique through writing poetry. Various poems written at work are shared and analyzed as evidence. Drawing from Safran's edited volume, Psychoanalysis and Buddhism, the author then identifies aspects of Zen Buddhist meditation practice and the psychoanalytic process that focus on connecting with reality, however conflicted, as opposed to escaping it. This paper was written under the mentorship of the psychoanalyst and Zen teacher Barry Magid.</p>","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"439-453"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141894856","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}