{"title":"Introduction to the Special Issue on “Where Do We Feel at Home? Perspectives on Belonging and Not Belonging”","authors":"M. Dobson, Eldad Iddan","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2015.1044837","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2015.1044837","url":null,"abstract":"T his is the first of two special issues of the Journal intended to celebrate the evolving tradition of having the International Association for Self Psychology’s (IAPSP) International annual conferences outside of North America once every four years. In 2010, the 33rd annual conference was held in Antalya, Turkey, and the 37th conference of 2014 was held in Jerusalem, Israel, its theme being “Where Do Feel at Home? Self Psychological Perspectives on Belonging and Not-Belonging.” In the introduction to the first special issue, dedicated to the proceedings of the Antalya conference, Marcia Dobson and Amy Eldridge (2012, p. 160) refer to Frie’s and Coburn’s 2011 synthesis, of challenges to individuality in theory and practice from philosophical, biological, cultural/political, and developmental contextual views, thereby definitively situating us in a world in which clinicians can no longer consider their patients or themselves in isolation from the contexts in which they live (Dobson and Eldridge, 2012). The Antalya conference volume continued “to expand contextual ways of thinking, affirming that psychoanalysts and psychotherapists cannot do without the concept of an individual self any more than they can the notion of that individual self as inevitably connected with others” (Dobson and Eldridge, 2012, p. 160). This reference seems beautifully suited to our present issue (and the second one that will follow), its theme, and the articles that comprise it. One of the consequences of the unrest in the complex world that surrounds us is the loss of what Heinz Kohut referred to as the essential feeling of being human among humans (Kohut, 1984). We often realize that the loss of this essential feeling of belonging underlies the suffering and distress of our patients. Socio-political polarization, immigration, religious, ethnic, and racial issues, gender and sexuality issues, all are deeply intertwined in our daily contexts, affecting our own experience and that of our patients, thereby inevitably penetrating our offices. Analysts and patients are both affected, directly and indirectly, by the political and social upheavals and inequalities","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2015.1044837","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60009131","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 Do Humans Need to Be Human? Self Psychology and the Problem of Social Justice","authors":"J. Riker","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2015.1043836","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2015.1043836","url":null,"abstract":"This article shows how self psychology can be used as a basis for social critique. It examines the inherent injustices of modern economic society and shows how self psychology can both reveal them and show the dire consequences for this systematic de-humanization. It compares humans as economic subjects with humans organized around self-structure and shows how modern economic society undermines the possibilities of developing and sustaining self-structure. Finally, it inquires as to whether the nascent program at Lod, which combines psychoanalysis and Buddhism, might represent a new vision of human ontology.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2015.1043836","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60008779","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":"Paradoxes of Belonging","authors":"G. Mann","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2015.1043844","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2015.1043844","url":null,"abstract":"“Who am I?” “Where do I really belong?” “How can I cultivate a broad perspective on immediate contradictory self-states? These are profound questions for many Israelis. Two vignettes, one of a personal account, the other of a segment from an Israeli movie, are presented to illustrate the transformation sought in order to retrieve a secure experience of belonging and connect to a non-traumatic transcended self. The importance of a sense of belonging to an ultimate reality, which goes beyond personal experience, is accentuated. The author explores the taking of a spiritual journey, which opens up the path toward compassion and understanding of the complexities of belonging and identity. Complexity theory is shown to help the comprehension and acceptance of the paradoxes of belonging.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2015.1043844","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60009372","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":"Amputated Selfhood and Phantom Selves: Musings and Reflections on Heretofore Unformulated Experience","authors":"Gita Zarnegar","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2015.1043843","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2015.1043843","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I have drawn from my personal experience of exile and my work with patients suffering from similar devastation to illustrate an understanding of traumatic loss and its long-term impact on one’s experience of being in the world. I describe the image of traumatic loss as being an amputation of one’s own experience of being in the world, analogizing that experience to the amputation of a bodily part. I am proposing as well that parts of ourselves that can no longer go on being in relationship to the absent and grieved significant others in our lives are experienced as phantom selves. Using these metaphors permits us to re-conceptualize traumatic loss, broadening our understanding of the long-term effects of grief and mourning. In this effort I am neither pathologizing the senses of amputation or phantom selves, nor am I imposing a designated healing time, or any time when healing ensues at all. Rather, I conceptualize phantom selfhood as a healthy response to trauma that engages the imagination and allows us to preserve a sense of what was lost in order that we may provide a relational continuity within ourselves. I use the term phantomization to describe an unhealthy process by which an individual who has lost a loved one, or has been traumatically displaced, lives solely in an imaginary world of being with the loved one or within the lost place. The phantomized individual is unable to be present in his life and lives predominately in a phantom or illusory world.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2015.1043843","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60009271","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":"Between Bethlehem and Jerusalem: Can Empathy Bridge the Gap?","authors":"Bella Sosevsky","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2015.1043845","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2015.1043845","url":null,"abstract":"The author, an Israeli therapist and a political activist, describes watching the controversial Israeli feature film Bethlehem with a Palestinian friend, hoping to discuss with him the complicated issues raised by the film. The dramatic incident that ensued caused the surfacing of long-standing questions in the author’s mind regarding the ways to apply Kohut’s views and self psychology’s basic tenets about essential human goodness, the sources of rage and aggression, to the turmoil of the local circumstances. Drawing from classical and contemporary self psychological contributions, as well as from other philosophical and religious writings, she discusses the question of whether empathy can bridge the gap between Palestinians and Israelis.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2015.1043845","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60009494","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":"Introductory Remarks for the Case of Lod: Self Psychology and Weakened Populations: Ethics—Theory—Practice","authors":"R. Kulka","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2015.1043838","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2015.1043838","url":null,"abstract":"One of Kohut’s main goals was to ensure the potential contribution of self psychology to the future history of human civilization, and to the ordinary people that constitute mankind. The revolutionary concept of the collective self of a group, and the empathic matrix of needed selfobjects for the psychic health and growth of nations and civilizations, are an inspiring platform for contemporary psychoanalytic thought concerning our ethical obligation for strengthening weakened populations, which suffer from various inflictions. At the same time, this ethical stance of self psychology provides us a profound opportunity to bridge, or even to dissolve, the artificial discrepancy between pure and applied psychoanalyses. Lod, a mixed Jewish–Arab town at the central part of Israel that has struggled for decades with ethnic–social–cultural problems, the city where the Israel Association for Self Psychology and the Study of Subjectivity’s home and academic-therapeutic campus is presently being built, will serve as a test-case for applying self psychology as an encompassing web for the future growth of a developing population.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2015.1043838","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60008848","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 Selfobject Function Revisited: Reaching Out Beyond the Individual","authors":"G. Mann","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2015.1043839","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2015.1043839","url":null,"abstract":"This article describes the unprecedented project being undertaken by members of the Israel Association for Self Psychology and the Study of Subjectivity, intended to reach out to weakened populations in Israeli society. To implement this, the project draws from self psychological psychoanalytic training, Buddhism, and the humanities. It is located in Lod, an underprivileged town. The whole project is based on a profound belief in contextuality and interconnectedness. In this regard, Buddhist wisdom complements self psychology and enriches it.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2015.1043839","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60008953","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":"Transformation and Meeting the Face of the Other","authors":"A. Epstein","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2015.1043842","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2015.1043842","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I present both clinical and personal examples of how “meeting the face of the Other” can enable us to transform our own personal narratives. I utilize Kohut’s notion that we may transform our personal existence to a supra-individual participation in the world, Kulka’s conceptualization of Kohut’s idealized selfobject as the agent for transformation, and Levinas’ ethical stance of responsibility for the Other, as the theoretical underpinnings for my article. Finally, I offer a literary analysis of a Biblical text that demonstrates this transformative potential on a global level.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2015.1043842","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60009102","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":"Paul Ornstein","authors":"J. Lichtenberg","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2015.1019794","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2015.1019794","url":null,"abstract":"W hen it comes to presenting and illustrating the theories of Heinz Kohut, Paul Ornstein is a “Yes, and . . . ,” I know because I am a “Yes, but. . . .” I will illustrate Paul’s skill as ambassador for self psychology through a retrospective appraisal of his 1993 article, “Chronic Rage From Underground: Reflections on its Structure and Treatment.” Paul began with a brief but erudite summary of the central dynamic of Dostoyevsky’s (1864) seminal Notes from the Underground. Here Paul, an ardent reader and scholar of the great Russian novelist, follows Freud and Kohut in drawing linkages between the insights of great creative artists and psychoanalysis. Parenthetically, in my first analysis I used Dimitri, Ivan, and Alyosha—the Brothers Karamazov—to attempt to discover and delineate who I was—emotional, intellectual, and/or spiritual? Consequently, I am an admirer of Paul and others of our colleagues who live in and with characters in literature as prototypes of living in or with the dyadic experience of analysis—the theater of two interacting minds. Paul notes: in reading or hearing the words of the protagonist in Notes from the Underground, “A whole gamut of reactions is mobilized . . . as if we were listening to a patient’s free associations. And we can completely extricate ourselves neither from the ‘underground man’s’ revelations nor from our own affect-laden reactions to them” (Ornstein, 1993, p. 143). Paul used his literary reference as prelude to his main purpose—to elucidate Kohut’s theory of narcissistic rage and illustrate the theory through Paul’s treatment of Mr. K. In Notes, the protagonist lives in a continuous altered state now regarded as a consequence of Kohut’s (1972) newly defined “narcissistic rage.” Huge investments of energy go into planning his revenge without gaining relief. “If he does act, he agonizes over having done it, and if he does not, he ends up in endless recriminations for his cowardliness. There is no escape for him from self-loathing and self-torment” (Ornstein, 1993, p. 142). Here we recognize elements of Kohut’s vision of Tragic man, of literary versions of existential anxiety, and of Sartre’s No Exit.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2015.1019794","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60008630","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 I learned From Paul Ornstein—And About Him","authors":"D. Brothers","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2015.1005804","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2015.1005804","url":null,"abstract":"In this article I describe how I have been affected by Paul Ornstein’s work and his way of being in the world. I provide an account of a memorable encounter with him involving my presentation of a paper on Kohut’s relationship with the patient he called “Mr. Z.” I also describe his touching tribute to Kohut in which he provides empathic insights into Kohut’s denial of his Jewishness.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2015.1005804","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60008596","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}