Newirth: I think that's it. It's a silent judgment.
A. Stein: A saint and a sinner.
A. Stein: That's a terrific point.
Newirth: That's perfect.
A. Sirote: I noticed that there were different threads in each of your books.
Stein: That's still better than with the smile and a shiv, right?
A. Sirote: In Prologue to Violence, you utilize psychoanalytic models as templates for understanding murderous and violent behaviors.
A. Sirote: From an institutional point of view, do you mean training programs for this?
In addition, from the beginning, my writing has had a confessional tone and emphasized the significance of the analyst as a person.
It was the first time I even considered this and it does raise a mild concern. A number of participants at this presentation had a strong reaction to the possibility that this book might be bad for the profession.
Irwin: For me, a good example would be giving up the comfort of personal reverie when a patient is masochistically non-demanding.
They might think it is simply a self-indulgent book written by a self-indulgent analyst.
Alan: Does this work signify a return to the old classical notion of countertransference being a bad thing?
I was only beaten if I did something wrong—like not eating” (from a case file, p. 7).
Bundy volunteered at a Seattle crisis clinic and Gacy clowned for disadvantaged children.
Here she is referring to a type of dissociation different from noncommunicative self-states.
With this strategy the abused child annihilates himself to preserve a relationship. The adult felon will do to someone else, i.e., annihilate the other, in a repetition of what was not experienced by the self in order to continue to maintain security.
The reader is left tantalized with the complexity and depth of ideas without the satisfaction of a clinical working-through. What is of special interest about this book is that it raises the bar on dissociation, a psychic process it views not merely as a mental organization and a basis for enactment but also as an important phenomenon in crime and violence.
A Review of A Dream of Undying Fame: How Freud Betrayed His Mentor and Invented Psychoanalysis, by Louis Breger (2009), Basic Books, New York, 146 pages.
AlanSirote
Alan Sirote, LCSW, is on the faculty and is a supervisor at the National Institute of the Psychotherapies, Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, and the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy.
As soon as his access to fame is secured, there is no longer a need for this friend, who was now a burden.
He lived in poverty in a small, overcrowded space with a large family.
Ernest Jones (1953) embellishes the story with a jealous wife who forced a guilt-ridden Breuer to take her on a second honeymoon.
I am a descendant of children whose parents were murdered in a Christian pogrom.
Enter Mathew, a soft-spoken, swarthy complected, diminutive and a refined middle aged man on leave from a third world country who spoke a heavily accented but perfect English.
This was a, not too hot not too cold, “Goldilocks” moment in the therapy; a pivotal instant between us and a tipping point.
This is true from both a drive theory perspective and a relational one.
An eruption of erotic vitality between a male analyst and a male patient.