Psychoanalysis and Campaign 2008

Rupture and Repair and the 2008 Presidential Campaign

Kim Vaz, Ph.D., Chair of the Womens Studies Dept. at the University of South Florida, and advanced candidate in psychoanalytic training at the Tampa Bay Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies, shared with me recently some interesting insights about the presidential campaign, and about one candidate in particular, Barack Obama.

Noting that our nation is in a crisis of identity, confronted by otherness, she sees parallels between Obama's stance and that of the analyst: If our nation is in a crisis, having to integrate the multiple selves/identities that are Americans--no longer the faceless of Montana or West Virginia--then Obama, Vaz says, asks us to look to him to "hold'' these "multiple identities that have fomented his imagination and his life of public service."

Obama tells us, as an analyst would, there will be 'ruptures.' And, like an analyst, Vaz notes, Obama tells us that though, 'not a perfect man, nor born of a perfect man, he will be, unlike his father, there, to listen, to learn, to lead, to fulfill promise.' "In other words," says Vaz, "there will be repair."

Vaz further notes that the 2008 campaign brings the "outsider identities of gender, age, and race" center stage. She expects, "We will need all our identities, foreign and U.S. born; male and female; old and young; black, white and brown, to solve the complex global problems America faces."

In Memorium

Remembering Charles Brenner, M.D.

It was with great sadness that I read of the death of Dr. Charles Brenner on Monday, May 19, 2008. Dr. Brenner was my first supervisor during my training at NYPI. He was gentlemanly and generous, and he modeled for me the interminable patience that psychoanalytic work requires.

He was, as a supervisor, neither didactic nor pedantic. Instead, he patiently listened to me week after week, year after year, describe to him my first control case. He saw within two weeks the analysand's developing erotic transference. But he did not push the point. He wanted me to grow to see what was in the analysand's material (just as the analysand must develop readiness to see), and it took me --for whatever reasons--six months. It was an invaluable lesson. By his example, I learned to wait with my patients.

And he was unflappable. He listened with great equanimity. With both of those traits as a guidepost I live daily in my consulting room. While more contemporary thought informs me today, Br. Brenner's example remains with me, the foundation for listening to the narrative. His memory is cherished by me, and he will be missed by many.

Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society Hosts Nancy Goodman, Ph.D.

On April 26, 2008, Nancy Goodman, Ph.D. spoke to the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society about "Love that Hurts: When Sadomasochism Organizes the Psyche." What was clear is that Goodman experienced the analysand's detachment and silences as sadistic; she felt "tortured." What was not clear was why this was theorized as an anal fixation or even as an intent to treat the analyst sadistically. It is true that the analysand had early childhood experiences that centered around the alimentary canal (power struggles: 'forced' feedings and enemas), but the connection between these early experiences, the material, and the theory was not made clear.

What was truly refreshing was the subsequent discussion, and the presentor's graciousness regarding genuine openness to other perspectives. The attendees seemed to emphasize the early misattunement between mother and child. Mother's controlling and intrusive behavior may have led the small child, who later appears "autistic" as an adult analysand, to detach, not as a sadistic manuever to control the object, but as a self-preservation to contain unbearable affect (Lewis Aron, who, by the way, will visit Tampa October 17, 2008). Goodman herself recognized that a fetish (she proposed that the object-relationship was itself a fetish in this case) was an attempt to "keep away disorganizing terror." [I do acknowledge the defense of 'turning the tables,' (or as a colleague once cogently slipped, "What comes around, goes around"), that this analysand's behavior could communicate to and engender in the analyst the feelings he had felt as a child vis a vis his mother. But I wondered, as did others, what participation by the analyst helped entrench for so long this dynamic between them?]

The audience also noted that when a mother treats a baby not as a baby, but as an object, this may be indicative of the mother's inability to participate in reverie and to hold the baby in her mind (Thomas Ogden), a problem noted in the analysis: it was as if the analyst did not feel held in the analysand's mind and felt objectified. Detachment was also considered by some attendees, not as anally sadistic, but instead as anaclitic, a reaction of depression from an infant whose needs are so ignored, or misunderstood.

Goodman repeatedly evoked disavowal ("a desire to disavow difference") but did not explore that this disavowal may have been a co-creation, e.g. when an analyst can not allow certain topics or affects to be explored because of her own discomfort, a discomfort which the analysand implicitly perceives through tone, facial expression, body language, etc. (Goodman did evoke Wilfred Bion's concept ("alpha" function), but did not connect it to the material presented, nor to recent research on right brain communication and implicit knowing.)

Christopher Bollas, referring to Freud's early cases, speculated that the erotic transference may have been an attempt to enliven the analyst (out of the stance of abstinence). If indeed sadistic, could there not also have been in this presented case the additional possibility that an analysand uses sadistic behavior as an attempt to search for the surviving other (D.W.Winnicott; Jessica Benjamin), an attempt to break through to the other (analyst)? The turning point in the analysis was seen to be when the analyst spontaneously expressed "shock" that the analysand was quitting treatment. Could this have been pivotal, in part, because the analysand could now perceive an (affective) effect on the analyst?

On a more personal note: When a presentation allows for such lively, interesting, and fun discussion, I applaud the group's ability to sustain the tension between differing ideas. Perhaps the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society possesses within it, after all, the ability to refrain from privileging one theoretical perspective as more refreshing than other equally evocative and useful ones. I also applaud Goodman's ability to be open to do so.

Online Interactive Series "Evolving Clinical Practice"

The Tampa Bay Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies Presents

Tradition and Change:
Evolving Clinical Practice

An interactive online series featuring a paper by
Arnold Schneider, Ph.D.

CLICK HERE to read paper "Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy"


How can psychoanalytic practitioners from diverse theoretical backgrounds
make use of new or different perspectives?

Dr. Arnold Schneider, an experienced psychoanalyst trained in the tradition of ego psychology, leads off this online series by inviting us to join him in his “work in progress.”

His engaging and insightful paper, written as an introductory presentation on psychoanalytic psychotherapy, highlights the basic phases and elements of the process using the lens of the traditional model that has formed the foundation of his practice. Only four years after writing it, Dr. Schneider takes the unusual and challenging step of using a forum like this to announce changes in his view of the analytic process. He welcomes us into a dialogue about possibilities for integrating contemporary approaches with traditional concepts and challenges us to think with him about what it means to evolve our psychoanalytic practice.

Interactive Online Series:

During the next several weeks,

responses of all kinds from various analytic therapists will be posted online.

We want to hear your thoughts about what additions, deletions, changes, etc. you'd make to the paper ---

all clinical and theoretical views welcome!

Make comments or share your experiences – anonymously or owned – simply by clicking on the “COMMENTS” link at the end of each post. At the conclusion, the faculty of TBIPS will offer a summary of the dialogue and compile an outline for a new "co-created" paper.

ADD YOUR THOUGHTS TO OUR PROJECT!

Click here to read "Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy" and then post your comments to help us integrate this ego-psychological paper with other contemporary approaches.

If Unconscious is in the Right Brain, why is analysis in the Left Brain?

There is something extremely puzzling to me. My hope is that, through discourse, I can come to better understand this question about analysis in the left brain (verbal, symbolization via language, logic-of sequence, explicit, etc) when growing evidence seats the Unconscious in the right brain (nonverbal, emotional-affective, bodily-based, relational, implicit). This 'crisis of faith' (really, of emphasis, or privileging of what is mutative) was triggered by my attendance at the American Psychological Association, Division 39 (psychoanalytic) over the weekend in NYC. Though I attended over 30 hours of presentations and discussions, I was most 'blown away' by the 50 minute lecture of Allan N. Schore, Ph.D. [of UCLA, author of "Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self" and "Affect Regulation and the Reparation of the Self"] on April 12, 2008 entitled, "The Paradigm Shift: the Right Brain and the Relational Unconscious."

Schore is a neuropsychologist, so he talked about the brain. The most ancient part, the brainstem, oversees the automomic nervous system (think "automatic:" breathing and heart rate, fight-flight responses, etc), arousal, and pain. It interfaces with the limbic system (the seat of our emotions and libidinal and aggressive motivations), which, in turn, interfaces with the Right hemisphere. The right brain is bodily based, nonverbal, ultra-rapidly integrative of emotion, affect, facial expression, auditory prosodic, gestural, and other relational data, and is so rapid that this information processing is truly unconscious! It is the seat of implicit memory. In turn, the right brain interfaces with the left hemisphere, where explicit, verbal communication originates.

Early interactions between infant and caretaker regulate affect and self. The primary care-giver regulates the infant's bodily-based, affective arousal (the mind is not separate from the body). The infant brain actually develops according to relational, two-person, intersubjective experience! As most regulation is going on at the unconscious level, Schore recommends that analysis focus on recovery of affect-laden infantile experience, even dissociated affects.

As Schore states that 60% of communication is non-verbal (facial expression, posture, gestures, tone, prosody, pitch, inflection, etc), it makes one question how did psychoanalysis come to privilege left brain (explicit, verbal) communication? Because it is easier to quantify and understand consciously? [Some, including Lew Aron, who will visit us in Tampa October 17, 2008, and Jessica Benjamin theorize that the repudiation of feminity - designated as that which is relational and right brain, while language is designated masculine (think Lacan) - had something to do with the eschewing of right brain communication.]

I have to rethink how I will define psychoanalysis. Will my definition remain left brain lop-sided, privileging the revealing of the unconscious through reading between the (verbal) lines, or will I have to learn to value and make use of right brain communications? And am I doing that unconsciously already, unconscious to unconscious? Can this use of right brain unconscious even be taught or is it dependent on the infantile development of my own brain? Something besides insight from interpretation must be mutable, too, but how do we define it, learn it, understand it? Let me know what you think. I am grateful to Schore for giving me a basis to understand the clinical value of the elegant and painstaking research of Beebe and Lachmann on speech patterns and facial expression of the analyst. My children are grateful for any information that helps me pay more attention to tone.

Norman Holland: We Understand Our Perception of Literature

CLICK HERE

to read an interview with the

University of Florida's

Professor Norman Holland

by Ismail salami, Press TV

'We Understand Our Perception of Literature'

February 10, 2008

From www.presstv.ir

"Norman Holland has, over a long career, explored how the human mind relates to literature."

"He is best known for his books concentrating psychoanalytic and cognitive psychology on literary questions: Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare (1966); The Dynamics of Literary Response (1968); Poems in Persons (1973); 5 Readers Reading (1975); Laughing (1982); The I (1985); The Brain of Robert Frost (1988); Holland's Guide to Psychoanalytic Psychology and Literature-and-Psychology (1990); and The Critical I (1992), an interrogation of contemporary literary theory through what we think we know about the way our minds work. "

Source: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=42514&sectionid=3510302

Professor Holland is also moderator of the online discussion group PSYART http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/psyart.htm

Review of American Stage's Hamlet

The Tampa Bay Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies arranged for about thirty friends and colleagues to attend, then discuss, on March 15th, The American Stage Theater's production of Hamlet. While our group very much delighted in Todd Olson's enjoyable version, many of us were surprised by the depiction of Hamlet, not as a melancholic, but, instead, as a manic. The removal of Horatio from the script had the effect of leaving Hamlet with no trustworthy ear into which he could pour his angst. Consequently, the sense of tragedy (though all main characters are dead in the end) was lost, and, with the notable exception of the very effective rending of garments by Ophelia, Hamlet played almost entirely humorously.


In this quite truncated and up-dated version of Hamlet [perhaps necessarily so in order to appeal to modern day audiences who demand video-game/sit com/internet fast pace with little time devoted to reading], what was more noticeably lost was the beauty of Shakespearean meter, prose and poetry. The love of language is lost here.



Peter Rudnytsky, in his inimitable scholarly fashion, pointed out the use by Shakespeare of doubles and tragic ironies (e.g. that Hamlet is born on the day his father the King has killed King Fortinbras of Norway, only to have the kingdom of Denmark go to the son Fortinbras once Prince Hamlet, et al, are dead), many of which were lost by this shortened version. Please refer to the writings by Rudnytsky for further scholarship about this timeless play.

The Ides of March, Day at the Arts in Tampa Bay

The Ides of March, Day at the Arts In Tampa Bay

Film and Theater

FILM: Idlewild

Idlewild (2006,http://www.idlewildmovie.net/), written and directed by Bryan Barber, his first feature link film, will be shown on Saturday, March 15, 2008 at 9:00 a.m. in the Memorial Hospital's Auditorium (located in South Tampa on Swann Avenue, between Armenia and MacDill) by the local Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society. Following the film, Drs. Kim Vaz, Lycia Alexander-Guerra, and John Hartman, who have written a paper on the film about sadism, misogyny, and gang participation, will give a brief psychoanalytic presentation before leading a discussion of the film with attendees.

Idlewild stars Andre Benjamin and Antwan Patton, aka Andre 3000 and Big Boi of the hip-hop group Outkast, whose music videos Barber directed, as Percival and Rooster, respectively. Idlewild follows these two boyhood friends, both motherless, into adulthood in the small, Prohibition-era, town of Idlewild, GA. While Rooster has a surrogate father in Spats (Ving Rhames), a wealthy bootlegger who values Rooster's mathematical acumen and street smarts, Percival, son of Percy Jenkins, the town's well-to-do mortician, goes unacknowledged by his father except as a needed domestic at home and apprentice in the family business where the dead are to be made to look "peaceful, not happy."

But Percival received piano lessons from his strict aunt, and it is, in adulthood, music which is the common ground shared by Percival and Rooster. Rooster, bootlegger by day, sing and performs at the town's popular speak easy, ironically called "Church," where Rooster carouse with women (much to the dismay of Zora, his wife and mother of his daughters). Percival, mortician by day, plays piano at "Church" by night, where he, like the knight at King Arthur's court, keeps his distance fom the "floozies" there, and is, consequently, ridiculed by the other men.

Rooster is caught up in the gangsta scene, but has found a mother in Zora. Percival falls for Angel Davenport, a singer, and shares his original songs with her. (It is interesting to note that none, save Percival, use their real names, but instead go by Ace or Trumpy or Spats or Monk or G.W.)

One of the many treats of this film is its use of multiple segue as it parallels the lives of Percival and Rooster; e.g. Angel knocks at Percival's door and then Rooster walks through Rose's door; or Angel walks to the cab, then Rose gets into the cab; or Percival is saying 'hello' and Rooster in another scene says 'goodbye.' Percival literally saveds Rooster's life, and then Rooster saves Percival's.

Another jewel in Idlewild is the weaving of symbols which are multiply determined in meaning, e.g. the use of a butterfly: To demonstrate how Percival longs to be free of Idlewild, a butterfly travels from his mother's sunlit headstone, across the idyllic cemetary, and onto the window sill of the room where young Percival is imprisoned for piano lessons. Later, when Percival kisses Angel and they make love, 'hey, butterfly' plays on the soundtrack.

Percival has his Angel, and Rooster has his own angel in Mother Hopkins (Cicely Tyson). Both angels serve to free/redeem the men, one, from inhibition to success away from Idlewild, the other, from a life of disrepute back to legitimate business and family.

The psychoanalytic jewels will be elaborated at the discussion on March 15th. Dr. Vaz will talk about male appropriation of the maternal, Dr. Alexander-Guerra, about the loss of the maternal, and Dr. Hartman, about the dream sequence (a kind of dream within a dream, or, as in Hamlet, a play within a play). Speaking of Shakespeare, Percival's recurring refrain as narrator is "All the world's a stage..." (from As You Like It).

And after Idlewild, another psychoanalytic organization, the Tampa Bay Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies contines a day at the arts across the bay with Hamlet.

THEATER: Hamlet
http://tbips.blogspot.com/2008/02/afternoon-at-theatre.html

Though March 15th is the Ides of March, the Tampa Bay Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies will be sponsoring an outing, not to Julius Ceaser, but to Hamlet. After the 3:00 p.m. matinee of Hamlet at the American Stage Theater (see reviews in local St. Petersburg Times and Tampa Tribune by John Bancroft and Kathy Greenberg, respectively), at 211 3rd Street South, in St. Petersburg, FL (727-823-PLAY, Click Here for Directions), interested parties will continue at the nearby Parkshore Grill for discussion and dinner with Peter Rudnytsky, Ph.D., Shakespearean Scholar at University of Florida, Gainesville, and Editor of Imago.

To whet your appetite for the psychoanalytic discussion, consider some of the following musings:

We are all familiar with Freud's idea that Hamlet hesitates to avenge his father's death because Claudius' acts have rekindled Hamlet's own infantile (Oedipal) wishes to kill his father and marry his mother. (He is freed to act after Gertrude dies.) Is Hamlet's infantile fear of the abandoning or engulfing mother not also reawakened by absence of his father and by confrontation with Gertrude's otherness as a sexual being? Must he remake his mother as a 'good lady' without sexuality to restore the lost parents?

Must Hamlet split or distort his parental objects to maintain narcissism, with its conflict of passage of authority from the dead father's generation to that of the son's? Is the universal experience of disappointment in the imperfect parent and the discovery of the subjectivity of the object such that the parents of the imagination must die a violent death?

Does Hamlet, having idealized his biological parents and internalized these idealized objects to solidify his own identity, now struggle with confusion, self-revulsion, and guilt when forced to confront the bad objects of his parentage? And to regain the good object mother, must he incorporate Claudius in order to wrest her from Claudius, or, to regain Gertrude, must he merge with the maternal object in death? (death by poison is, after all, a death from the inside)

Is the murdered king's Ghost a projection of disavowed parts of Hamlet's self, allowing voice to Hamlet's ambivalence about his mother and uncle?

Does Hamlet project his aggression onto others (e.g. Ophelia and Polonius) in his creulty?
Does he struggle for his own agency, instead of impotent words, when condemning Ophelia to a nunnery or joining her in her grave? Does Ophelia, now dead, serve as a projection of others with the capacity to arouse fear as the uncanny/able to see what could not be seen?

Does Gertrude, in violating mourning with the festivities of a marriage, seem, to Hamlet, to legitimize Claudius, thus barring Hamlet's agency, and violating his father's legacy? Does Gertrude, outside the patriarchal order, in death, free Hamlet, while Denmark falls into enemy hands? Is Gertrude the object of desire or the cause of it?

Would the Jungians see Polonius as an archetype of the wise old man or an ambitious fool. Both Polonius and Hamlet, in death, are sacrificed/scapegoated.

Has the death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern symbolized Hamlet's attempt to kill off his childhood and take on manhood? Is he calm at play's end because he has recognized this sought after agency? Or, as structural psychology might dictate, is Hamlet calm because his superego has now taken revenge on Hamlet's ego/self?

Just a few thoughts before we enjoy the production. Post your musings, anonymously or owned, by hitting 'comments' at the end of this article.

Division of Psychoanalysis (39) 28th Annual Spring Meeting
April 9-13th, 2008
The Waldorf Astoria Hotel
New York, NY

Click here for full program booklet

Keynote Speakers:
Philip Bromberg, Ph.D.,
“The Nearness of You”: Navigating Selfhood, Otherness, and Uncertainty

Arnold Modell, MD
“The Unconscious as a Knowledge Processing Center”

~ Note from TBIPS ~
Our Tampa Bay area community may be interested to know that the
Division 39 Spring Meeting speakers will include such familiar faces as
Nancy McWilliams, Donna Orange, Frank Summers,
Jessica Benjamin, Elliot Jurist, Otto Kernberg, Isaac Tylim,
Albert Brok, Maurine Kelly, Janice Lieberman,
and more....

It's Not Incompatible After All!
Using Theoretical Differences

A Commentary on Susan Sands' article, "Self Psychology and Projective Identification - Whither Shall They Meet?"

By Jacqueline Roller, PsyD


Susan Sands identified herself as a relational clinician whose work is grounded in self psychology. I was impressed with her ability to examine how self psychology may fall short of understanding some patients. I had been drawn to self psychology because it purports an empathic immersion with the patient. I previously understood this empathic stance as one of the most mutative elements of analysis. Her article made a sound argument that the empathic immersion is with the patient’s ego (concordant identification). Sands cautioned that self psychology is at risk of missing an important aspect of the patient’s internal world, namely the internalized objects (complementary identification). This article challenged me to re-examine my previous theoretical stance in order to more fully understand the patient.

Sands argued that the analyst may miss the countertransference in the empathic immersion. The analyst may be blinded from recognizing when the identification is with the patient’s internal objects (complementary identification) rather than the patient’s ego (concordant identification). The article emphasized that patients have a desire to be fully understood; including their disavowed affective experiences. Sands contends that empathic immersion promotes understanding only one aspect of the identification.

After consideration of the article, I continue to believe empathic immersion is a helpful tool for concordant identification with the patient. With this immersion I can gain greater understanding of the patient’s ego. However, I am left without an understanding of the patient’s internalized objects, namely complementary identification. This article challenges me to receive the patient’s experience of disavowed affect in order for complementary identification to occur. I believe projective identification is a useful tool for receiving the experience. The transformative element will occur when I can receive the projection, contain the experience, survive it, and then offer something different to the patient. The article builds a strong case for using the empathic immersion of self psychology while maintaining an open container for receiving the projection. If I offer a space that allows for both concordant and complementary identification there is a greater chance that the treatment will be mutative.

References
Sands, S.H. (1997). Self Psychology and Projective Identification—Whither Shall They Meet? A Reply to the Editors (1995). Psychoanal. Dial., 7:651-668


Jacqueline Roller, PsyD attends the New Directions program in psychoanalytic writing at the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis in Washington D.C. and is in private practice in Sarasota, Florida.