{"title":"From Self-Protection to Relational Protectiveness: The Modification of Defensive Structures","authors":"R. Geist","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2016.1213102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2016.1213102","url":null,"abstract":"Kohut was instrumental in shifting our attention from the removal of individual defenses in the service of making the unconscious conscious to emphasizing the importance of empathically understanding the healthy, self-protective usefulness of defenses, both developmentally and during the therapeutic process. Despite this pivotal change in reactive tone toward defenses, there have been few experiences near attempts to describe how we help patients to modify characterological defenses that interfere with the healing process. In this article, I suggest that one of the most important but unrecognized ways we work through these resistances is by facilitating a shift in the patient from the need for self-protective defensiveness to a felt relational protectiveness. Verbatim clinical examples illustrate a protective attitude and explain how relational protectiveness is actualized when dealing with characterological defenses.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2016.1213102","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60012414","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":"From Theory to Clinical Practice: Psychoanalytic Complexity Theory and the Lived Experience of Complexity","authors":"Margy Sperry","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2016.1213096","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2016.1213096","url":null,"abstract":"Psychoanalytic complexity theory expands our understanding of the psychotherapeutic process and action, as many others have demonstrated, but it also enhances our grasp of the phenomenology of complexity, that is, the feeling of living in and with the irreducible complexity of human experience, of being open to novelty, and of embracing the vulnerability that our human existential uncertainty entails. In this article, I contend that the clinical value of psychoanalytic complexity theory is intertwined with the theoretical description of complexity. I describe the ways that my technical theoretical awareness of complexity supported my work with a challenging patient—ultimately promoting a relational process that supported our ability to live at “the edge of chaos” and enabling the patient to embrace formerly unrecognized life possibilities.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2016.1213096","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60012643","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":"Thinking About Change: Discussion of Margy Sperry’s “From Theory to Clinical Practice: Psychoanalytic Complexity Theory and the Lived Experience of Complexity”","authors":"Carol O. Mayhew","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2016.1213099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2016.1213099","url":null,"abstract":"In this discussion, I examine and elaborate on ideas about change as they relate to complexity theory and to the case presentation described in Margy Sperry’s article.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2016.1213099","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60012703","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":"Racializing Kohut’s “Guilty Man” and “Tragic Man”: Serious Play in the Service of Inclusiveness","authors":"L. Jacobs","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2016.1213093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2016.1213093","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on history, philosophy, and complexity thinking, I address some limitations and possibilities in our theory for tackling the thorny and stubborn problem posed by White-centeredness. Although this article is written largely with White U.S. culture in mind, that situation is a fulcrum for explorations of inclusion and exclusion more generally.1","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2016.1213093","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60011952","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 Self as a Process of Transformation","authors":"S. Gerzi","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2016.1213103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2016.1213103","url":null,"abstract":"The present article conceives the self as a perpetual flowing process. The self is best illustrated by comparison to a flowing river that whoever dips in would experience as different at any given point in time. It may, at the same time, be observed from above—not only from within the water. Psychoanalysis as a flowing process is illustrated through a clinical example of a self who is “stuck” and the work accomplished by analyst and patient together to renew motion. The presentation focuses on the moments of intervention on the part of the analyst as exemplifying the point in time of reviving the process. These moments are open to diverse interpretations to which varied psychoanalytical schools contribute. The variety of interpretations of the analyst’s interventions and the patient’s responses, as well as of the factors that contribute to the transformation of the self, corresponds to the concept of the self and of psychoanalysis itself as multifaceted processes.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2016.1213103","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60012594","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 End of Comparative Psychoanalysis? Blurring the Boundaries Between Contemporary Theories","authors":"J. G. Teicholz","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2016.1213091","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2016.1213091","url":null,"abstract":"This article suggests that late 20th and early 21st century research in several academic disciplines is slowly eroding many of the distinctions that once divided contemporary psychoanalytic theorists, such as interpersonal and relational analysts, intersubjective-systems theorists, and self psychologists. The research points to complexity, unpredictability, and randomness in human minds and relationships—now seen by many analysts as nonlinear dynamic systems. The article outlines a few of the historically more divisive concepts and selectively reviews recent research findings that tend to bring the earlier competing theories more closely into alignment.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2016.1213091","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60012187","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 Novelist’s Sensibility in Chris Jaenicke’s The Search for a Relational Home: An Intersubjective View of Therapeutic Action","authors":"Joye Weisel-Barth","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2016.1213104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2016.1213104","url":null,"abstract":"T he relational shift in psychoanalysis has given us wonderful and strange new ideas about the intersubjective processes that advance the development of mind and emotional balance in analysis. In accretion, these ideas imagine the relational processes by which we become most human. Identifying and exploring the complex functioning of empathy, mentalization, emotional resonance, and enactments in the therapeutic encounter have also stimulated new clinical strategies. Yes, these ideas have captivated the world of contemporary psychoanalysis. But—and here’s the big “but”—illustrating relational ideas in all their interactional nuances has been problematic. So often, after reading a fascinating theoretical offering, I have been disappointed with the accompanying clinical examples. They often seem to fall back on familiar one-person presentations, skimping on the analyst’s interactional contributions and failing to capture the nuts-and-bolts processes that create unpredictable and ineffable meetings of subjectivities. It is almost as though one needs a novelist’s sensibility, specificity, and skill to express adequately the complex intersubjective experience. Enter Chris Jaenicke in his newest book The Search for a Relational Home: An Intersubjective View of Therapeutic Action (2015). Jaenicke, an adherent of intersubjectivity systems theory, practices and writes in Berlin and writes, I will add, with a","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2016.1213104","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60012661","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":"Opening Our Tent Flaps to Broaden the Reach of Psychoanalysis? Some Musings on Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy Integration: An Evolving Synergy, Edited by Jill Bresler and Karen Starr","authors":"J. G. Teicholz","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2016.1178053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2016.1178053","url":null,"abstract":"W hile reading Bresler and Starr’s (2015) edited book about integrating into relational psychoanalysis various methodologies from the cognitive, behavioral, and bodily based psychotherapies, I could almost imagine the book’s 19 authors as “boots on the ground,” fighting on behalf of Orange’s (2015) plea for opening the tent flaps of psychoanalysis. In Chapter 2 of this book, Safran and Messer propose an ideal stance for psychology practitioners, a stance they call “engaged fallibilistic pluralism” (p. 29) to which they add contextualism as well. They recommend this stance, which is paradoxically both skeptical and embracing as part of their postmodern critique of psychotherapy integration. But","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2016.1178053","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60012043","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":"What Is a Life Well Lived? A Review of Looking Back: Memoir of a Psychoanalyst by Paul Ornstein With Helen Epstein","authors":"Joye Weisel-Barth","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2016.1178049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2016.1178049","url":null,"abstract":"A t the High Holiday service last fall, the new Jewish Reform prayer book, Mishkan HaNefesh, changed a central ancient prayer. Instead of the original plea, “Inscribe me in the Book of Life,” it now reads, “Inscribe me in the Book of Life Well-Lived.” On first hearing this I wondered, “How does one begin to identify and evaluate a well-lived life?” I thought again of this question as I read Paul Ornstein’s lovely and surprisingly profound memoir titled simply Looking Back: Memoir of a Psychoanalyst. If you want to know what a life well lived looks like, read this book. Still the book raises many questions for me. What are the ingredients of a welllived life? From our own lives, from our history as psychoanalysts, from analytic theory, and from child and family literature, we have gleaned ideas about the foundational experiences that inform positive human functioning. Selfobject experience, affective attunement, mentalizing experience, and positive parental vision—we are persuaded that these foster in children conditions for psychological growth and development and a solid sense of self. Yet, how do these ingredients combine with experience, and what are the quickening agents that propel a person toward a well-lived life? That is, what is the mysterious alchemy that transforms these ingredients into a realized life? Finally, how as analysts do we foster such a process in the adult lives of our patients? Although we have some directions here, this terrain is still somewhat murky. Using Paul Ornstein’s story, this review will inquire into these questions.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2016.1178049","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60011359","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}