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“Thus, the shadow of the object fell upon the ego, and the latter could henceforth be judged by a special agency, as though it were an object, the forsaken object. In this way, an object-loss was transformed into an ego-loss, and the conflict between the ego and the loved person into a cleavage between the critical activity of the ego and the ego as altered by identification.” (S. Freud, 1917, Mourning and Melancholia)
“In teaching, as in the feeding of a child, the capacity to use objects is taken for granted, but in our work it is necessary for us to be concerned with the development and the establishment of the capacity to use objects and to recognize a patient’s inability to use objects, where this is a fact. … It is in the analysis of the borderline type of case that one has the chance to observe the delicate phenomena that give pointers to an understanding of truly schizophrenic states.
By the term ‘a borderline case’ I mean the kind of case in which the core of the patient’s disturbance is psychotic, but the patient has enough psychoneurotic organization always to be able to present psychoneurosis or psychosomatic disorder when the central psychotic anxiety threatens to break through in crude form. In such cases the psychoanalyst may collude for years with the patient’s need to be psychoneurotic (as opposed to mad) and to be treated as psychoneurotic. The analysis goes well, and everyone is pleased. The only drawback is that the analysis never ends.” (D. W. Winnicott, 1969, The Use of an Object)
In Freud’s (1937) last clinical paper, Analysis Terminable and Interminable, he restates the concept of the altered ego as an ego which “approximates to that of the psychotic.” In this course, we will do a close reading of both Mourning and Melancholia and The Use of an Object, looking at Winnicott’s reformulation of Freud’s journey in recognizing the role of unrecognized ‘madness’ in analysis, interminable and at an impasse. The object, the lost object, which the psychotic approximate and the borderline patient cannot use – is the analyst.
We will look at Winnicott’s clinical recommendations and students will use clinical vignettes to experiment with interventions with patients who cannot use the analyst as an object existing independently of the patient in time and space.
Readings will be provided by email.
Visit https://events.orinyc.org/mourning-melancholia-and-the-use-of-an-object-a-freud-winnicott-dialectic-on-madness-and-object-loss/ for more information and to register.
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ENACTMENT(S): THEORETICAL AND CLINICAL ASPECTS
(BASED ON THE ENTRIES IN THE IPA’S ENCYCLOPEDIC DICTIONARY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS)
Course Instructor: EVA D. PAPIASVILI, PHD, ABPP
Date: APRIL 15th & APRIL 29th (Saturdays, 9:30AM — 2:30PM EDT/NYC), 2023
Location: Virtual Live
Continuing Education Information: 14.5 CEs
awarded to NYS Psychologists, NYS Social Workers,
most of Mental Health Practitioners outside of NYS – covered by APA.
See details here
To Register for this course, please visit
https://events.orinyc.org/enactments-theoretical-and-clinical-aspects/
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ENACTMENTS carry potentially significant developmental and dynamic meanings. Listening to, working with, understanding and interpreting enactments, can increase therapeutic effectiveness, and can minimize the incidence of unsymbolized somatic expression and of acting-out by the patient in the psychoanalytic situation and in his or her every-day life.
Following the use of the term in a title of a paper by Theodore Jacobs (1986), enactment has often been thought of as a North American concept. However, in contemporary North American psychoanalytic literature, there is no single concept of enactment. Rather, there is a group of such concepts, closely related, but also quite different from one another.
- Transference/Countertransference enactments (Jacobs 1986), where analyst and/or analysand express transference or countertransference wishes in action, rather than reflecting on and interpreting them. This use of the term was further expanded by McLaughlin (1991) to include ‘evocative-coercive transferences of both patient and analyst’ and yet further developed by Chused (1991, 2003) as ‘symbolic interactions’ with unconscious meaning for both participants, potentially extending beyond the analytic situation. This phenomenon could be viewed as a version of ‘acting out’ or ‘acting in’ (Zeligs, 1957), extended to both participants.
- The analysand’s unconscious induction of the analyst to live out the analysand’s unconscious fantasies. This idea is akin to ‘projective identification’ and/or ‘role responsiveness’ (Sandler 1976).
- ‘An embedded series of often subtle, unconscious, interactive, mutually constructed dramas that are lived out’ (Loewald, 1975). Here, ‘enactment’ is being used to name a kind of intersubjectivity since the analyst is seen as a co-creator of what happens between the two parties.
- Any dramatic expression of transferential/countertransferential rupture of a fluid analytic containing exchange, potentially extending beyond the psychoanalytic situation (Chused, Ellman, Renik, Rothstein, 1999), communicated nonverbally or verbally (Steiner, 2006).
In Latin America this conceptual plurality has been reduced, owing to the additional historical influences of authors like Racker (1988), Grinberg (1962), and Baranger & Baranger (1961–1962/2008), and the further contemporary studies of Cassorla (2005, 2008, 2012, 2013), Sapisochin (2013) and others.
- The predominant contemporary understanding of enactment in Latin America concerns phenomena where the analytical field is invaded by discharges and/or behaviors that involve both patient and analyst. Enactments arise from mutual emotional inducement without the members of the analytical dyad clearly realizing what is happening. Enactments reflect back to situations where verbal symbolization was impaired and, when words are available, they are used in limited and concrete ways. Enactments are ways of remembering early relationships through behaviors and feelings that are part of defensive organizations (as in chronic and acute enactments).
European understanding of the term is closer to the Latin American than to the North American version because the concept is rather exclusively confined to the analytical setting (Steiner 2006). However, for some European analysts it differs from the Latin American version in that enactment is not so much a co-creation of patient and analyst, but rather the result of the interaction between them.
The course will proceed from the historical roots in Freud’s conceptualizations on transference, countertransference, repetition-compulsion, and defenses (1905, 1910, 1914, 1920, 1923), and continue with a thorough exposition of further developments across the three psychoanalytic continents and across the plurality of psychoanalytic perspectives, including prominent influences of object relations (Winnicott 1963, 1974), and field theories perspectives, among others.
The theoretical presentation and discussion will be complemented by clinical material from the instructor’s own practice (Papiasvili 2016) and further discussion of the examples of the participants’ clinical work.
Readings will be provided by email.
Visit https://events.orinyc.org/enactments-theoretical-and-clinical-aspects/
for more information and to register.
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