“In everyman, there is one part which concerns only himself
and his contigent existencw, is properly unknown to anybody but himself, and
dies with him. And there is another part through which he holds to an idea,
which is expressed through him with an eminent clarity and of which he is a
symbol.” wilhem von Humboldt autobiographical fragments 1816
Anna Freud, in The Ego and The Mechanisms
of Defence (1946), formulates the hypothesis that what the ego fears most
is the return to a previous stage of fusion with the id, in case repression
fails or instincts are too intense. In order to ensure the maintenance of the
level of organization achieved, the ego has to protect itself from the invasion
of instinctual demands (drives) of the id and from the return of the repressed
contents.
In
fact, in the chapter "The Ego's Dependent Relations", in The Id
and the Ego (1923), Freud says: "psychoanalysis is the instrument to
enable the ego to achieve a progressive conquest of the id".
Psychoanalysis aims at transforming greater amounts of what once
belonged to the id into acceptable possessions of the ego, along with its main
purpose of turning unconscious contents into conscious ones. Thus, the mind can
find solutions that were previously unattainable to the immature ego.
My long term client Sonia, who is suffering
from Schizoid effective disorder is particularly skilful at many of the following.
She seeks to play off the psychiatric social worker against myself. If I
challenge her on this she merely replies…well, we were not getting on well. If
she is depressed see will use reaction formation for example to get angry with
me to lift her mood using the angers as a means of transformation. I now can
predict by her voice and general approach which of the basic five defence
mechanisms she will use.
The
major defence mechanisms are the following:
1. Repression - the withdrawal from
consciousness of an unwanted idea, affect, or desire by pushing it into the
unconscious part of the mind.
2. Reaction formation - the fixation
in consciousness of an idea, affect, or desire that is opposite to a feared
unconscious impulse.
3. Projection - unwanted feelings
are attributed to another person.
4. Regression - a return to forms of
gratification belonging to earlier phases, due to conflicts arising at more
developed stages.
5. Rationalization - the
substitution of the true, but threatening cause of behaviour for a safe and
reasonable explanation.
6. Denial - the conscious refusal to
perceive disturbing facts. It deprives the individual of the necessary
awareness to cope with external challenges and the employment of adequate
strategies for survival as well.
7. Displacement- the redirection of an
urge onto a substitute outlet.
8. Undoing - is achieved through an
act, which goal is the cancellation of a prior unpleasant experience.
9. Introjection - intimately related
to identification, aims at solving some emotional difficulty of the individual
by means of taking into his personality characteristics of someone else.
10. Sublimation - part of the energy
invested in sexual impulses is shifted to the pursuit of socially valuable
achievements, such as artistic or scientific endeavour
Just
as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naïvely suppose that
people are as we imagine them to be. … All the contents of our unconscious are
constantly being projected into our surroundings, and it is only by recognizing
certain properties of the objects as projections or images that we are able to
distinguish them from the real properties of the objects. and we always
see our own avowed mistakes in our opponent. Excellent examples of this are to
be found in all personal quarrels. Unless we are possessed of an unusual degree
of self-awareness we shall never see through our projections but must always
succumb to them, because the mind in its natural state presupposes the
existence of such projections. It is the natural and given thing for unconscious
contents to be projected. [“General Aspects of Dream Psychology,” ibid., par.
507.]
Projection means the expulsion of a subjective content into an object;
it is the opposite of introjection. Accordingly, it is a process of
dissimilation, by which a subjective content becomes alienated from the subject
and is, so to speak, embodied in the object. The subject gets rid of painful,
incompatible contents by projecting them. [“Definitions,” CW 6, par. 783.]
Projection is not a conscious process. One meets with projections, one
does not make them. The general psychological reason for projection is always
an activated unconscious that seeks expression. [“The Tavistock Lectures,”
CW 18, par. 352.]
It is
possible to project certain characteristics onto another person who does not
possess them at all, but the one being projected upon may unconsciously
encourage it. This frequently happens that the object offers a hook to the
projection, and even lures it out. This is generally the case when the object
himself (or herself) is not conscious of the quality in question: in that way
it works directly upon the unconscious of the projection. For all
projections provoke counter-projections when the object is unconscious of
the quality projected upon it by the subject. [“General Aspects of Dream
Psychology,” CW 8, par. 519.]
Through projection one can create a series of imaginary relationships
that often have little or nothing to do with the outside world. The effect of
projection is to isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of a
real relation to it there is now only an illusory one. Projections change the
world into the replica of one’s own unknown face. In the last analysis,
therefore, they lead to an autoerotic or autistic condition in which one dreams
a world whose reality remains forever unattainable. [“The Shadow,” CW 9ii, par.
17.]
Projection also has positive effects. In everyday life it facilitates
interpersonal relations. In addition, when we assume that some quality or
characteristic is present in another, and then, through experience, find that
this is not so, we can learn something about ourselves. This involves
withdrawing or dissolving projections.
So
long as the libido can use these projections as agreeable and
convenient bridges to the world, they will alleviate life in a positive way.
But as soon as the libido wants to strike out on another path, and for this
purpose begins running back along the previous bridges of projection, they will
work as the greatest hindrances it is possible to imagine, for they effectively
prevent any real detachment from the former object. [“General Aspects of Dream
Psychology,” CW 8, par. 507.]
The need
to withdraw projections is generally signalled by frustrated expectations in
relationships, accompanied by strong affect. But Jung believed that until
there is an obvious discordance between what we imagine to be true and the
reality we are presented with, there is no need to speak of projections, let
alone withdraw them.
Projection … is properly so called only when the need to dissolve the
identity with the object has already arisen. This need arises when the identity
becomes a disturbing factor, i.e., when the absence of the projected content is
a hindrance to adaptation and its withdrawal into the subject has become
desirable. From this moment the previous partial identity acquires the
character of projection. The term projection therefore signifies a state of
identity that has become noticeable. [“Definitions,” CW 6, par. 783.]
Jung
distinguished between passive projection
and active projection. Passive projection is completely automatic and
unintentional, like falling in love. The less we know about another person, the
easier it is to passively project unconscious aspects of ourselves onto them.
Active projection is better known as empathy – we feel ourselves into
the other’s shoes. Empathy that extends to the point where we lose our own standpoint
becomes identification. The projection of the
personal shadow generally falls on persons of the same sex. On a
collective level, it gives rise to war, scapegoating and confrontations between
political parties. Projection that takes place in the context of a therapeutic
relationship is called transference or countertransference, depending
on whether the analysand or the analyst is the one projecting.
In
terms of the contra sexual complexes, anima and animus,
projection is both a common cause of animosity and a singular source of vitality.
When animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima
ejects her poison of illusion and seduction. The outcome need not always be
negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love. [“The Syzygy: Anima
and Animus,” CW 9ii, par. 30.]
For
Melanie Klein two positions are both crucial and relevant to this essay.
The term 'paranoid-schizoid position' refers
to a constellation of anxieties, defences and internal and external object
relations that Klein considers to be characteristic of the earliest months of
an infant's life and to continue to a greater or lesser extent into childhood
and adulthood. Contemporary understanding is that paranoid-schizoid mental
states play an important part throughout life. The chief characteristic of the
paranoid-schizoid position is the splitting of both self and object into good
and bad, with at first little or no integration between them.
Klein has the view
that infants suffer a great deal of anxiety and that this is caused by the
death instinct within, by the trauma experienced at birth and by experiences of
hunger and frustration. She assumes the very young infant to have a rudimentary
although unintegrated ego, that attempts to deal with experiences, particularly
anxiety, by using phantasies of splitting, projection and introjection.
The infant splits both
his ego and his object and projects out separately his loving and hating
feelings (life and death instincts) into separate parts of the mother (or
breast), with the result that the maternal object is divided into a 'bad'
breast (mother that is felt to be frustrating, persecutory and is hated) and a
'good' breast (mother that is loved and felt to be loving and gratifying). Both
the 'good' and the 'bad' objects are then introjected and a cycle of
re-projection and re-introjection ensues. Omnipotence and idealisation are
important aspects of this activity; bad experiences are omnipotently denied
whenever possible and good experiences are idealised and exaggerated as a
protection against the fear of the persecuting breast.
This 'binary splitting'
is essential for healthy development as it enables the infant to take in and
hold on to sufficient good experience to provide a central core around which to
begin to integrate the contrasting aspects of the self. The establishment of a
good internal object is thought by Klein to be a prerequisite for the later
working through of the 'depressive position’. A different kind of splitting,
'fragmentation', in which the object and/or the self are split into many and
smaller pieces is also a feature of the paranoid-schizoid position. Persistent
or enduring use of fragmentation and dispersal of the self-weakens the fragile
unintegrated ego and causes severe disturbance. Sonia is continually splitting
both myself and the psychiatrist. Whenever I try to help her have insight into
her psychosis she will reply by telling me that the Psychiatrist knows more
than I do. She does the same in reverse.
Klein considers that both
constitutional and environmental factors affect the course of the
paranoid-schizoid position. The central constitutional factor is the balance of
life and death instincts in the infant. The central environmental factor is the
mothering that the infant receives. If development proceeds normally, extreme
paranoid anxieties and schizoid defences are largely given up during the early
infantile paranoid-schizoid position and during the working through of the
depressive position.
Klein holds that
schizoid ways of relating are never given up completely and her writing gives
the impression that the positions can be conceptualised as transient states of
mind. The paranoid-schizoid position can be thought of as the phase of
development preceding the depressive position as a defence against it and also
as a regression from it.
Winnicott sees the ego as arising out of primitive
threats to existence and developing a 'continuity of being', as afforded by
the good-enough
mother.
"The first ego organization comes from the
experience of threats of annihilation which do not lead to annihilation and
from which, repeatedly, there is recovery." (Winnicott, 1956)
"With the care that it receives from its
mother each infant is able to have a personal existence, and so begins to build
up what might be called a continuity of being. On the basis of this continuity
of being the inherited potential gradually develops into an individual infant.
If maternal care is not good enough then the infant does not really come into
existence, since there is no continuity of being; instead the personality
becomes built on the basis of reactions to environmental impingement."
(Winnicott, 1960)
Aggression in the child is seen as a natural
part of development as they test out the limits of their personality. They kick
and scream in rage. People who have not extended so in childhood may be
repressed. Aggression also tests their environment and helps them to relate to
it. Thus we may consider anti-social behavior and the blaming of refugees and
the scrounger as a means of being noticed and almost is a cry to be held safe
in a secure environment that the other is already seen to have.
"(1) Subject relates to object. (2) Object
is in process of being found instead of being placed by the subject in the
world. (3) Subject destroys object. (4) Object survives
destruction. (5) Subject can use object."
(Winnicott, 1969)
When the object is the mother, this is a very
trying time for her. She acts as a 'container' for the child's aggression and,
if maintaining calm, helps the child to get over the aggression.
Winnicott, and Klein
Klein saw psychic states operating at the level of unconscious phantasy and hence disconnected from the outside world.
Winnicott took the view that you cannot consider the development of the child
without taking into account the external environment, in particular in the
varying interactions with parent figures.
He considered the
detail of how the infant transitions from undifferentiated unity to
independence and realization of the mother as a separate person. This is
similar to Klein's depressive
position. We may consider
Klein`s position to be a more individual aspect of the more collective position
of Winnicott, Sonia fears the world, she wishes both myself her Psychiatrist
are both 2good enough parents” whom she plays against one another,
Transference as defence
The
term "transference" as a meaning of resistance was firstly employed
by Freud in 1985.1 It
was considered an obstacle to the analytical process that prevented the access
to residuals of the childhood sexuality that remained linked to "erogenous
zones"; in a normal evolution, such links should be already disconnected.
Some
years later, in the classic Dora's case,2 Freud pointed out that the
patient does not remember anything that is forgotten or repressed, but act it
out, reproducing the repressed not as a recall, but as a repetitive and
unconscious action. In the post-scriptum of this work, Freud3 conceptualizes
transference saying that transferences "are new editions or facsimiles of
the impulses and fantasies which are aroused and made conscious during the
progress of the analysis; but they have this peculiarity, which is
characteristic for their species, that they replace some earlier person by the
person of the physician. To put it another way: a whole series of psychological
experiences are revived, not as belonging to the past, but as applying to the
person of the physician at the present moment. Some of these transferences have
a content which differs from that of their model in no respect whatever except
for the substitution. These then - to keep to the same metaphor - are merely
new impressions or reprints. Others are more ingeniously constructed; their
content has been subjected to a moderating influence - to sublimation, as I
call it - and they may even become conscious, by cleverly taking advantage of
some real peculiarity in the physician's person or circumstances and attaching
themselves to that. These, then, will no longer be new impressions, but revised
editions." So far, transference had been seen as a clinical phenomenon
that could be an obstacle to treatment, later on, however, Freud4 referred
to transference for the first time as a therapeutical agent, and observed that
transference was not always an obstacle, it could have an important role in the
process of understanding patients.
The
specific qualities of transference were assigned an additional meaning when the
concept of "transference neurosis" was introduced.5 This
concept emphasized the way how past relationships, which compose the neurosis,
affect the patient's feelings towards the therapist. This concept was later
widened, when Freud6pointed out that "the patient is compelled to repeat
repressed contents as something from the present, instead of, as the physician
should realize, remember it as something from the past". The theme of such
reproductions, which arise with great and undesirable exactness, is some part
of the children's sexual life and invariably is expressed through transference
that takes place between patient and therapist. When one reaches such phase, we
can say that the previous neurosis is replaced by a new one, the
"transference neurosis." Repeating the past through transference is a
consequence of the "repetition compulsion." The transference itself
is only a fragment of repetition, which is a transference of the forgotten past
not only from patient to therapist, but to all the other aspects of the
present.
The
understanding of transference as a source of unconscious communication was very
well developed by Melanie Klein.7 According to her, when the therapeutic
relationship is set, the patient recalls feelings, conflicts and defences he or
she experienced in the original situation. Klein understood transference as a
reproduction of all primitive objects and objects relations internalized in the
patient's psychology, followed by drives, unconscious fantasies and anxieties.
According to Dewald,8 transference is defined as the displacement
to an object from the present moment of all impulses, defences, attitudes,
feelings and responses experienced with the first objects in life. Transference
would be a repetition of situations whose origin rely in the past. Greenson9 defines
transference as an unconscious process, as a repetition of an object
relationship that took place in the past, usually with people who were
important for the child's in his/her first years of life, unconsciously
transferred to figures from the present.
Therefore, by analysing the concept of transference under the light of
different authors, it can be defined
as a set of unconscious expectations, beliefs and emotional responses that a
patient carries to the therapeutic setting. Such responses are not necessarily
based on who the therapist is or how he or she really acts, but on the
persisting experiences that the patient has during his life with other
important figures from the past.
In
1915, Freud10 referred
to the "transference love" as a serious difficulty in psychoanalysis
as a very frequent situation in which the patient declares love for the doctor.
Freud points out that the doctor must recognize that the patient's falling in
love is not to be attributed to the charms of his own person. Freud intends to
demonstrate how much the powers of nature are present in the transference
phenomenon and also to call the doctor's attention to what he or she is
managing, using the erotic transference to better understand the patient. In
this work, Freud classified transference both as positive and negative. The
positive transference is then referred to all drives and derivatives related to
libido, especially feelings of affection and care, including erotic desires,
provided that they have been sublimated under the form of non-sexual love and
do not persist as an erotic link. On the other hand, the negative transference
concerns the presence of aggressive drives and their derivatives, such as envy,
jealous, voracity, destructiveness and intense erotic feelings.
When
approaching special types of transference, Sandler11 reported that there are
patients who develop erotic transference and refuse to go on with the usual
therapeutic treatment, they can reject interpretations that relate current
feelings to the past and do not search further explanations for the meaning or
cause of symptoms they had complained before. Sessions are used to express
their love, gratification in the presence of the beloved, and pledges for
having their "love" corresponded. Even though Freud10 acknowledged
the resistance of transference, he warned therapists not to confound this
reaction with true love, and at the same time he warned them against their
attempts to repress patients' love. He said that "to urge the patient to
suppress, renounce or sublimate her instincts the moment she has admitted her erotic
transference would be, not an analytic way of dealing with them, but a
senseless one. It would be just as though after summoning up a spirit from the
underworld by cunning spells, one was to exorcize them down again to hell
without having asked him a single question." This means it would be as
disastrous for the patient to have her love fulfilled as suppressed.
Erotic
transferences can be manifested in different ways, following both the neurotic
and psychotic patterns. Different authors have differentiated several forms of
erotic transference. Bolognini12 described four types of erotic
transference, with their respective dynamic origins and repercussions in the
analytical relationship. The erotised transference would be predominantly based
on a psychotic modality. The underlying fantasy in the transference erotization,
which would have a defensive function, would be the fantasy of separation and
abandonment, which will be an attempt to restore that state of narcissist
fusion with the mother. The erotic transference would be based on a neurotic
modality, and loving and affectionate transferences would be clinical
manifestations that would correspond to a healthier and ameliorated behaviour.
For many authors, the erotised transference is typical from borderline
patients, very disturbed; in the erotic transference there is an excessive
anguish to be loved by the analyst, with manifest and conscious demands of
sexual gratification, which are direct, exaggerated and persistent.13,14 It
expresses a very primitive mental functioning, in which the object is highly
idealized and persecutory.
According to Teixeira da Silva,15 and Blitzen, the erotised
transference is a reflex of pre-genital conflicts in which aspects such as
intense violence, fragility of the self and loss of the notion "as
if" are predominant; the therapist is not "as if" he or she were
the father or mother, the therapist is the patient's father or mother. There is
a loss in the capacity of symbolizing, and the intensity of this loss shall
represent the level of patient's regression. In the erotic transferences, the
capacity of fantasizing is not lost, and the erotic demands remain in the level
of fantasy, the analyst is an object of the patient's fantasy, different from
the erotised fantasies, in which the therapist is a concrete object. Saul16 discusses
the role of latent aggressiveness in situations of erotic transference. He
points out that this type of transference is associated to real frustrations in
relationships that took place in the early years of life, suggesting that
hostility and rage triggered by such frustrations could be repeated in the
relationship with the therapist. Transference love would be a way of protecting
the physician from hostile feelings.
Zimerman17 considers
that two risks may follow the installation of erotised transference in the
analytical field: one is that when the patient's demands are not satisfied by
the therapist, the patient acts outside the analytical situation, sometimes
acquiring some severe traces of malignity. The second possibility is equally
malignant, it is when the therapy can end up perverting the transference,
including the possibility of the therapist being involved in it.
in the
management of erotic transference, one should take into account that new
editions of infantile conflicts result from unfulfilled desires that try to be
accomplished in the context of the psychoanalytical treatment. It is the
therapist's responsibility to show the reality to the patient, which can be
made through a detailed analysis of transference/countertransference feelings
of the dyad patient-therapist. When the therapist makes his or her
interpretation, putting unconscious emotions into words, he opens the passage
to the symbolic. When interpretation makes the unconscious conscious, it allows
the libido to be at the self-disposal for healthier investments. It puts the
patient in contact with reality and not with the fulfilment of a desire, as the
patient requires. Moreover, if interpretation is employed correctly, it frequently
reduces the desire and resistance inherent to the erotic transference.18 Elaborating
the transference love implies elaborating the renouncement and the grief that
usually follow the resolution of an oedipal situation. At the same time, the
patient must learn that searching for the oedipal object would be a permanent
aspect in all his or her love relationships. This does not mean do understand
all future love relationships as resulting solely from the oedipal situation,
but that the oedipal structure is present and affects the framework of love
experiences.
Freud,10 however,
pointed out that there is "one class of women with whom this attempt to
preserve the erotic transference for the purposes of analytic work without
satisfying it will not succeed. These are women of elemental passion who
tolerate no surrogates." He goes on saying that "with such people one
has the choice between returning their love or else bringing down upon oneself
the full enmity of a woman scorned. In neither case can one safeguard the
interests of the treatment. One has to withdraw, unsuccessful; and all one can
do is to turn the problem over in one's mind of how it is that a capacity for
neurosis is joined with such an intractable need for love."
For
Kernberg,19 the
most important technical issues in the management of erotic transfer are: first
of all, tolerance with the development of sexual feelings towards the patient,
either homosexual or heterosexual, which requires doctors' internal freedom so
that they can use their psychological bisexuality. Then, the importance of
systematically analysing the patient's defences against the complete expression
of sexual transference, and the risk of becoming invasive through seduction;
and finally, the physician's capacity of analysing the expression of
transference love and his or her reactions to frustration, which will
inevitably occur. The therapist's task would be to avoid talking about his
countertransference feelings and integrate the understanding obtained with his
or her countertransference with transference interpretations about the
patient's unconscious conflicts.
Initially, countertransference was also treated as an undesirable
phenomena of the psychoanalytical treatment, just like transference. Freud20 coined
the term countertransference defining it as a phenomenon that arises in the
physician "as a result of the patient's influence on his unconscious
feelings." As in the transference, Freud's first reaction was to consider
it as something inadequate and disturbing that should be avoided. He says, with
relation to the doctor, that "we are almost inclined to insist that he
shall recognize this counter-transference in himself and overcome it."
Later, Freud21 was already aware of the potential value of
countertransference and recommended: The therapist "must turn his own
unconscious like a receptive organ towards the transmitting unconscious of the
patient ... so the doctor's unconscious is able, from the derivatives of the
unconscious which are communicated to him, to reconstruct that unconscious,
which has determined the patient's free associations."
However, it was after the studies developed by Racker22 and
Heimann23 that
countertransference became an additional factor in the process of understanding
the therapist's work. Racker22 considered countertransference as a set of
therapist's images, feelings and impulses during the session that could happen
in three different ways: a) as an obstacle; b) as a therapeutic instrument; and
c) as a "field" in which the patient can really acquire a live
experience, different from that he had originally. He also described two types
of countertransference reactions: the complementary countertransference, when
the analyst takes on the role of the patient's object; and the concordant
countertransference, when the analyst takes on an aspect of the patient's
personality (self, id and superego). Heimann23 describes the
countertransference as the set of all physician's feelings towards the patient.
He points out that the therapist can use the emotional responses to the
patients' projections to understand them. For that end, the therapist must be
able to keep his/her feelings for himself/herself, instead of discharging them
as does the patient.
Erotic
transference usually causes some countertransference reactions in the
therapist, and examining such reactions is important to understand the patient.
Krenberg19 considers
it is useful that the therapist is able to tolerate his/her sexual fantasies
towards the patient, and must let an imaginary sexual relation happen in the
narrative, mentally following the patient's erotic transference. This will
allow him to progressively realize the ant libidinal, ant destructive and
rejecting aspects that can be hidden in the patient's explicit erotic
manifestation. According to this author, the analyst that feels himself/herself
free to explore, in his/her own mind, the sexual feelings towards the patients
will be able to assess the nature of the transference development and, thus,
avoid the defensive negation of his own erotic response to the patient. The
analyst must, at the same time, be able to examine the transference love
without acting his countertransference out in what may be configured as a
seductive approach.
Teixeira da Silva15 draws attention to the role of the therapist's own
treatment. He says that the "analyst's ideal didactic analysis would be
that in which he/she could analyse with detail his/her pre-oedipal and oedipal
aspects and overcome them to develop a natural and true relation with
himself/herself. All this would be complementary to practice and theory. This
author claims that there is no ideal analysis and that we must understand our
work and clinical experience as an endless source of knowledge and development.
There
is a growing tendency in the psychoanalytical literature of works considering
that transference and countertransference are influenced by the gender and
vital cycle of the dyad involved in the analysis. The analyst's and patient's
sexual identity does not only stimulate but create specific transference and
countertransference resistance and difficulties.24 As to the erotic transferences,
this is not different. Note, for example, that most of the psychoanalytical
case reports involving erotic and erotised transferences is about female
patients with male therapists.
Teixeira da Silva,15 points out that both male and female therapists meet
difficulties to realize transferences in which they have the role of the
opposite sex. This author listed the different characteristics of transference
in the therapeutic dyads according to the respective genders. In the male
therapist and male patient dyad usually predominates, in the oedipal transference,
the situation of an aggressive competition with the father, and, in general,
the heterosexual impulses are not realized because they are displaced to
external objects. The passive homosexual impulses, when aroused, are sources of
great transference and countertransference resistances. In the female therapist
and female patient dyad, the arousal of an intense erotization is more
frequent, because the woman regresses more easily to a situation of fusion with
the phallic mother, once the therapeutic situation corresponds to the original
situation of the girl's development, in which she must firstly solve her erotic
and homosexual development with her mother, then enter the positive oedipal
phase, elaborate the Oedipus complex and establish her sexual identity. In the
male therapist and female patient dyads the erotic transferences - or erotised
transference - are more intense. In this situation, the therapist may find
difficult to differentiate when the patient projects the rivalry and hostility
against the oedipal mother of an anal regression against the frustrating
object, that is, against the oedipal mother. In those dyads, when there is a
homosexual desire towards the mother, it will be difficult for the therapist to
identify it and separate it from the heterosexual desires concerning the
father. In the female therapist male patient dyad, there would have an absence
of erotised transferences due to the fear of the powerful pre-oedipal mother
that generates anguishes of castration that interfere in the development of
strong erotic desires for the oedipal mother.
There are
a number of other authors that also made important contributions for the
understanding of the issue. Lester,25 for example, stressed that the male
patient anxiety towards the female therapist as a phallic pre-oedipal powerful
and castrating mother can blur and inhibit the expression of sexual feelings
towards the therapist as an oedipal mother, which will account for the few
cases reporting this situation in the dyad female therapist and male patient.
The author also observed that the passivity engendered by regression in the
analytic therapy is dystonic to his active male sexual role. Such point of view
was not corroborated by
Gornick.26 He
thought that, for certain male patients, it would be much more difficult to be
passive and dependant than expressing sexual feelings, which would make men to
defend themselves from such feelings, developing erotic feelings towards the
therapist in an attempt to restore the sense of male domination.
Pearson27 points
out that the erotic transference is more frequent in women as a form of
transference, while men would resist against any form of conscience of an
erotic transference. Usually, men would displace their erotic feelings towards
the therapist to a woman out of the therapy setting, because recognizing such
desires would threaten his sense of autonomy. Person also considers that the
erotic transference in women is more frequently a desire for love, whilst in
men it is a sexual desire.
The
management of erotic transference can pose some difficulties, which can be
compared to hostile and paranoid transferences, once they can block the
therapist's analytical capacity, at least temporarily.
According to Meurer,28 such situations challenge the therapist's
capacity, demanding a high level of integration with the self, free fluctuating
attention and free perceptive sensitivity to be able to detect, acknowledge and
interpret what happens in the transference and countertransference. In the
erotic transference, the patient is expected to externalize once more his or
her intense infantile desire of loving and being loved, and his or her
permanent neurotic willingness to fulfil oedipal love frustrations and
obtaining unrestricted and exclusive love from the mother-father therapist. A
delicate issue is the possibility, and even necessity, of using
countertransference to identify the nature of feelings and fantasies present in
the transference. Thus, countertransference does not need to arise as an
obstacle but as a factor to understanding. As a consequence, the patient's
transference will not be only resistance and drawback, but also a valuable form
of communication, which will bring contributions to treatment.
Wallerstein,29 in an analysis of the "Observations on transference
love"10 stresses
that Freud: 1) Identified the high prevalence of erotic feelings evoked in the
psychoanalytic treatment and the "dangers" of such feelings; 2)
observed that a small part of patients would develop a form of transference
love that would act as very intense resistances and could not be analysable;
and 3) established the main technical foundations to cope with such
transferences, as the rule of abstinence and neutrality.
The
fact that erotic transference is a common process that can cause technical
difficulties when being managed was always stressed in the psychoanalytical
literature. Following the basic principles of psychoanalysis postulated by
Freud, acknowledging the phenomenon of resistance and adequately using countertransference
are necessary conditions for understanding and solving it, which brings
precious benefits for the patient's treatment.
The
therapist's personal treatment is a fundamental instrument, which can make him
able to understand his own psychological functioning and the processes that
take place in the patient's mind, as well as the mechanisms that influence the
erotic transference and countertransference phenomena. Other required resources
can be learning through clinical and theoretical seminars, selected readings
and individual supervising.
According to Zimmerman,17 although the patient has an absolute
conviction and determination in his game of seduction, in his or her inner deep
he is afraid the analyst makes some mistakes, as remaining cold, indifferent
and distant from the patient's appeals and erotic fantasies; getting disturbed
and defensively replacing interpretation by criticisms, accusations, moral
lessons and apology to good behaviour; the patient can even have repressive
actions that include the fear of having the treatment interrupted, use of
medication or being referred to other professional; and the real possibility of
the therapist getting involved in a sexual intimacy, which would characterize a
total perversion of transference and of the psychoanalytical process.
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Melanie Klein Bibliography
1921 Klein, M. 'The development
of a child'. Suggestion that the child protectively splits off an
unwanted part of the mother.
1926 Klein, M. 'The
psychological principles of early analysis'. This paper and the one
above describe the child's oral and anal sadistic attacks on the mother as
resulting in a persecutory superego (internal mother imago).
1929 Klein, M. 'Personification
in the play of children.'
1930 Klein, M. 'The importance
of symbol formation in the development of the ego'. This paper and
the one above explore the child's use of splitting into good and bad and the
use of projection as a defence and as a means of working through internal
conflicts and anxieties.
1932 Klein, M. The
Psychoanalysis of Children. Klein adopts Freud's concepts of the
life and death instincts, the deflection of the death instinct and introduces
the idea of splitting the id.
1933 Klein, M. 'The early
development of conscience in the child'. The splitting of the id is
elaborated (later to become splitting of the ego).
1935 Klein, M. 'A contribution
to the psychogenesis of manic-depressive states'. The framework of
'positions' is introduced, the depressive position is contrasted with the
earlier paranoid phase and a differentiation made between part- and whole-object
relating.
1940 Klein, M. 'Mourning and its
relation to manic-depressive states.' Manic defences of
idealisation and denial are elaborated.
1946 Klein, M. 'Notes on some
schizoid mechanisms'. The definitive paper in which the
'paranoid-schizoid' position is introduced and its anxieties and the defences
against them are set out.
1952 Klein, M. 'Some theoretical
conclusions regarding the emotional life of the infant'. Good
summary of both paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. Increasing emphasis
on importance of securely established good object.
1955 Klein, M. 'On
identification'. Continued emphasis placed on the importance of a
securely established good object. Projective identification is illustrated.
1957 Klein, M. 'Envy and
gratitude'. An expanded description of both the depressive and the
paranoid-schizoid positions; envy is introduced as the expression of the death
instinct.
1963 Bion, W. Elements
of Psychoanalysis. Heinemann. Ch. 8. Fluctuation between
paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, symbolised as Ps<–>D.
1987 Steiner, J. 'The interplay
between pathological organisations and the paranoid-schizoid and depressive
positions', International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 68: 69-80;
republished in E. Spillius (ed.) _Melanie Klein Today, Vol. 1. Routledge
(1988). Movement between the two positions explored.
1998 Britton, R. 'Before and
after the depressive position; Ps(n)–>D(n)–>Ps(n+1)'. Belief
and Imagination: Explorations in Psychoanalysis. Routledge. Importance of
capacity to fluctuate between the two positions is emphasised.
Kristeva, J. Powers Of Horror: An Essay On Abjection. Columbia University
Press, 1982
Jung on
the dream Bibliography
Edinger, Edward (1995), The Mysterium Lectures.
Toronto: Inner City Books.
Hannah, Barbara (1976), Jung: His Life and Work, A
Biographical Memoir. New York: G.P. Putnam.
Jung, C.G. (1960), “The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche,”
CW 8. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1959), “The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious,”
CW 9i. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1959), “Aion,” CW 9ii. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
________ (1970), “Civilization in Transition,” CW 10.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1969), “Psychology and Religion: East and West,” CW
11. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1953), “Psychology and Alchemy,” CW 12.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1976), “The Symbolic Life,” CW 18.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Meier, C.A. ed. (2001), Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung
Letters 1932-1958. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pauli, Wolfgang (1955), “The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on
the Scientific Theories of Kepler,” The Interpretation of Nature and the
Psyche. New York: Pantheon Books.
Rudhyar, Dane (1973), An Astrological Mandala. New
York: Vintage Books.
Sparks, Gary (2010), Valley of Diamonds: Adventures in Number
and Time with Marie-Louise von Franz. Toronto: Inner City Books.
von Franz, Marie-Louise (1980), On Divination and
Synchronicity. Toronto: Inner City Books.
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Jung references on the
dream
[1]Collected Works 8, ¶356, note 24.
Hereafter Collected Works will be abbreviated CW.
[2] Ibid., ¶870.
[3] CW 18, ¶461.
[4] Sparks (2010), 15.
[5] Hannah (1976), 41.
[6] Sparks (2010), 13-14.
[7] Ibid., 14.
[8] World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary
II, 1328.
[9] CW 8, ¶356.
[10] Ibid., ¶871.
[11] Ibid., ¶965.
[12] Ibid., ¶870.
[13] CW 18, ¶461.
[14] CW 8, ¶870.
[15] Jung described himself as an empiricist; for
more on this, see the blog essay “The Psyche is Real: Materialism, Scientism
and Jung’s Empiricism,” archived on this blog site.
[16] Sparks (2010), 61.
[17] Ibid., 61-62.
[18] CW 9i, ¶679.
[19] Ibid. By “incorporeal intelligences,” Jung
might have been referring to the vix mediatrix naturae, the healing
force of nature that lies within each of us that knows how to heal us.
[20] CW 11, ¶180.
[21] CW 9i, ¶679.
[22] Ibid.
[23] CW 10, ¶692.
[24] CW 12, ¶313.
[25] CW 8, ¶870.
[26] Ibid., ¶871.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Ibid., ¶356, note 24.
[29] Ibid., ¶871.
[30] Ibid., ¶870.
[31] I.e. in symbolic, non-rational or
mysterious ways that the logical ego mind cannot always grasp. Ibid.
[32] Ibid., ¶870.
[33] Symbols, in Jung’s definition, can never be
fully grasped or defined; for more on Jung and symbols, see the essay “A Way
into Mystery,” archived on this blog site.
[34] CW 8, ¶965.
[35] CW 10, ¶778.
[36] CW 8, ¶356.
[37] Sparks (2010), 15.
[38] E.g. von Franz (1980) and Edinger (1995).
[39] Sparks (2010), 15.
[40] Rudhyar (1973). My students tell me this is
now out of print.
[41] CW 8, ¶870.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Ibid.
[44] CW 10, ¶778.
[45] Sparks (2010), 15.
[46] CW 8, ¶870.
[47] Quoted by Jung, CW 8, ¶943.
[48] CW 10, ¶778.
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