New medical advances and options for transitioning along with an array of gender representations have provided gender diverse children and adolescents liberating possibilities. The transitioning youth's demands for recog...New medical advances and options for transitioning along with an array of gender representations have provided gender diverse children and adolescents liberating possibilities. The transitioning youth's demands for recognition and/or support for initiation of medical intervention pushes against the analyst's theories of gender and challenges conservative understanding of sexual identity, moving it closer to the multidetermined nature of dreamwork. In this article, the author traces recurrent metaphors in discussions about gender transitioning with a focus on selected articles recently published in the , particularly an essay authored by David Bell (2020) entitled "First Do No Harm." The author focuses on three images-contagion, the naturality of gender, and amputation-to ask, what do these apparently disparate signifiers reveal about the anxieties in the field?
The author describes how the parasitic coronavirus encircled and disrupted the analytic frame and situation, activating anxiety in both therapist and patient. A patient is described with core intimacy difficulties whose...The author describes how the parasitic coronavirus encircled and disrupted the analytic frame and situation, activating anxiety in both therapist and patient. A patient is described with core intimacy difficulties whose primitive anxieties manifested in him the dis-regulation of the too-far (agoraphobic), too-near (claustrophobic) intimacy dialectic. Drawing on Winnicott, the author describes how these increased dialectic tensions, when contained, created a potentially transformational transitional space that helped to enhance the patient's mental and symbolizing capacity, that is, a capacity to make more from less.
Recognizing somatic countertransference reactions is an essential tool for the psychodynamic clinician. Although the analyst's bodily reactivity has been written about throughout the history of our field, contemporary ne...Recognizing somatic countertransference reactions is an essential tool for the psychodynamic clinician. Although the analyst's bodily reactivity has been written about throughout the history of our field, contemporary neuroscience, multiple code theory, and nonlinear system dynamics provide scientific buttressing to understand embodied phenomena. Patients often speak with and about their bodies, and the clinician who pays attention to these communications, as well as those emanating from his or her own body, has an additional resource to help the patient. Elvin Semrad's classic but largely unremembered "tour of the body" is one tool that can assist clinicians in how to receive and process body reactions that may be unconsciously split off, consciously withheld, or felt dangerous or beguiling. Three examples are used to illustrate embodiment and somatic countertransference as important clinical guides. An argument is made that these concepts should be taught and integrated into psychodynamic curricula.
The author endeavors to reassess how metaphor functions psychoanalytically by distinguishing it from more inclusive conceptualizations of symbolism and metaphor, and from the idea of metaphor as a primary cognitive struc...The author endeavors to reassess how metaphor functions psychoanalytically by distinguishing it from more inclusive conceptualizations of symbolism and metaphor, and from the idea of metaphor as a primary cognitive structure. The author adapts aspects of Ricoeur's metaphor theory, and explores metaphor as organized around tensions of similarity and difference, and of something "being and not-being" simultaneously. Such a model anchors metaphoric meaning in the subject's capacity for metaphoric experience and its relation to unrealized unconscious meaning. The author suggests that this perspective on metaphor-which connects it experientially to mature transitional experience, sublimation, play, and mourning-helps us understand how metaphoric experience functions as our most potent agent of intrapsychic change.
Moment-to-moment dialogue between analyst and patient opens themes relating to psychic depths, inhibitions, and support for a need to grow. The therapy partners grow together as they engage psychic contact and explore el...Moment-to-moment dialogue between analyst and patient opens themes relating to psychic depths, inhibitions, and support for a need to grow. The therapy partners grow together as they engage psychic contact and explore elements that previously forced the patient to be hospitalized. A result is appreciation for ways contact with the depths can aid more playful, caring, and resourceful ways of being together and working with oneself.
It is always hard for psychoanalysis to connect free associations and action. With Freud, action could be interpreted only when it referred to the transference; otherwise, action was a resistance to the possibility of fr...It is always hard for psychoanalysis to connect free associations and action. With Freud, action could be interpreted only when it referred to the transference; otherwise, action was a resistance to the possibility of free association. Unlike Freud, Ferenczi recognized the importance of the analyst's acting-out as the patient's unconscious request for experiences of trauma to be mobilized. By presenting a clinical case, the author offers the analyst's error as the mobilization of a traumatic block. The error activates a "Process of enactment," whereas if the is not considered positively, it is simply a or the loss of a creative opportunity.
The author, an African American, reflects on what it means to be a psychoanalyst and the effectiveness of psychoanalytic thinking in response to the racial dilemma in the United States. The current climate is a result of...The author, an African American, reflects on what it means to be a psychoanalyst and the effectiveness of psychoanalytic thinking in response to the racial dilemma in the United States. The current climate is a result of longstanding inequality of the races and reflects the social unrest prompted by the Black Lives Matter movement and the police killings of unarmed Black people. Three poems are also presented expressing some of the ideas discussed in the meditation.
Historically, the psychoanalytic profession has been populated by white analysts. That has been changing as more people of color have enrolled in analytic institutes. But more is needed for institutes to truly be inclusi...Historically, the psychoanalytic profession has been populated by white analysts. That has been changing as more people of color have enrolled in analytic institutes. But more is needed for institutes to truly be inclusive. White analysts need to be more sensitive to the experience of colleagues and candidates of color. They need to be aware of the dynamic known as White privilege, and how their own White privilege may affect their interactions with people of color. Institutes need to look at their curricula and how they teach candidates to analyze. The early generations of psychoanalytic theorists including Freud worked with White patients. The theories they wrote-and that are still being taught-have led to many analysts knowing how to work with White people, but not necessarily people of color.
During the past 2 years our American collective has seen a return to political demonstrations and increased activities towards a deepening consciousness related to raciality. This article asks that we look at racism with...During the past 2 years our American collective has seen a return to political demonstrations and increased activities towards a deepening consciousness related to raciality. This article asks that we look at racism within the contexts of our collective American psychology and our personhood. This perspective considers Jungian psychology and its influences on the development of this form of psychoanalysis in America. Is this the work of psychology-to increase understanding and compassion among individuals of different ethnicities? The article explores the grievous and grief that is a necessary aspect of racial suffering for individuals of color. The individuation that Jungian psychology oftentimes references can be applied to the individual personhood of those within an Africanist cultural group. Discussion in the article acknowledges this inclusion as well as the idea of furthering a consciousness of Africanist people as valued members of American society.
The author uses the work of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben to reimagine the meaning and dynamics of trauma, as well as psychoanalysis as a process that remedies, in part, traumatic experiences. More particularly, tr...The author uses the work of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben to reimagine the meaning and dynamics of trauma, as well as psychoanalysis as a process that remedies, in part, traumatic experiences. More particularly, trauma is conceptualized in terms of Agamben's notions of potentiality, singularity/suchness, and inoperativity, although these are inflected from psychosocial developmental and political perspectives. This provides a way to bridge the idea of individual trauma with the larger political milieu's apparatuses that can be systemically traumatizing, as seen in the social death of racism. This reframing of trauma leads to reconceiving the process of therapy as rendering inoperative memories of trauma and, in some cases, traumainducing apparatuses, while, in part, mending the dialectical and paradoxical tension between potentiality and actuality that is necessary for socialpolitical agency and experiences of singularity.
This article is an account of a pioneering multifamily group for transgender adolescents. Meetings were conducted in a Sexual Identity Consultation Service in a Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department in Paris. In add...This article is an account of a pioneering multifamily group for transgender adolescents. Meetings were conducted in a Sexual Identity Consultation Service in a Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department in Paris. In addition to enabling both teenagers and their parents to escape a certain form of isolation, this novel mental health care setting also reinforced the ability of participants to free associate and to cathect substitute objects. The author highlights specific characteristics of transference movements and countertransference reactions of the therapists in this framework. An additional goal is to promote these innovative groups and to recommend similar groups for transgender adolescents and their parents.
Drawing on Ferenczi's "confusion of tongues" paradigm, the author argues that the internalization of the supervisor's superego has the potential not only to expand the supervisee's ego (introjection), but also to repress...Drawing on Ferenczi's "confusion of tongues" paradigm, the author argues that the internalization of the supervisor's superego has the potential not only to expand the supervisee's ego (introjection), but also to repress their idiosyncratic functions and attack their thinking activity (intropression). To illustrate this argument, the author recounts his own supervised treatment of a transgender patient during which the supervisor-supervisee transference lapsed into a sadomasochistic dialectic and a folie à deux, leading to the premature termination of both the therapy and the supervision. While the initial interpretation of this experience underscored the supervisor's transphobia, the après-coup of writing up the case has revealed more complex thinking. Accordingly, the countertransference madness to which the author succumbed with his supervisor can now be understood as the unbinding of repressed infantile sexuality and the reenactment of paradoxical scenarios that the patient experienced with his parents.
In France, transsexualism was introduced in psychoanalysis through the mediation of medicine. The statements of psychoanalysts on transgender people are considered as offensive by the people concerned. Since the 1970s, t...In France, transsexualism was introduced in psychoanalysis through the mediation of medicine. The statements of psychoanalysts on transgender people are considered as offensive by the people concerned. Since the 1970s, trans∗ people have refused to be objectified as "clinical cases" and have decided to "zap" psychoanalysis, the vehicle for a violent, discriminatory rhetoric redolent of psychiatry. Is a critical debate between the knowledge derived from the Freudian field and from the gay, lesbian, and trans∗ field possible in order to revamp the questionings on gender and sexuality? Can psychoanalytical theory and practice overcome their political-psychiatric origins by taking into account the knowledge and theories of ("transgaylesbian" or "queer")?
The author analyzes a research study of trans∗ women and their surgeons, conducted before and after vaginoplasty in a French public hospital service. The essay is an examination of countertransference in three research f...The author analyzes a research study of trans∗ women and their surgeons, conducted before and after vaginoplasty in a French public hospital service. The essay is an examination of countertransference in three research frameworks: (1) working with a research team; (2) taking part in a peer group, facilitated by a psychologist, a surgeon, and a secretary, bringing together women who had already undergone surgery and those awaiting it; and (3) research interviews with Lara, a 64-year-old trans∗ woman. The author emphasizes the importance of taking into account gender countertransference-that is, the disruptive effects of the encounter with trans∗ people and their desires, paying specific attention to what the encounter with trans∗ femininities has stirred or revealed in terms of the author's own relationship to the body and to cisgender femininity.
The authors examine the impact of countertransference in two clinical cases of transgender patients treated by two cisgender analysts who are accustomed to receiving nonconforming gender patients in France and Brazil. Th...The authors examine the impact of countertransference in two clinical cases of transgender patients treated by two cisgender analysts who are accustomed to receiving nonconforming gender patients in France and Brazil. The context is that of contemporary views of transphobic countertransference reactions, specifically the work of Griffin Hansbury, who describes these reactions in terms of "unthinkable anxieties." Like other theorists with expanding notions of countertransference, the authors view transphobia in analysis as an "instrument of research" and consider how taking responsibility for the transference is particularly relevant in respect to clinical cases that also reflect societal changes. Following the authors' case presentations, they identify four different fantasies and countertransferential reactions that sprang from their efforts to be or, in other words, analysts concerned about the perpetuation of discrimination, violence, and oppression that may have guided their work.
Deleuze and Guattari crafted the concept of "becoming" as a way of theorizing the rampant chimerization and polymorphism of identities in today's world. They used Kafka's work to show how the frequent use of metamorphosi...Deleuze and Guattari crafted the concept of "becoming" as a way of theorizing the rampant chimerization and polymorphism of identities in today's world. They used Kafka's work to show how the frequent use of metamorphosis in his stories prefigures this widespread phenomenon of hybridization of identities. The frequency of such hybrid becomings raises questions about the very foundations of modernity's subjective construct. Does this proliferation reflect new configurations of desiring activities, or is it the result of early interference in what Melanie Klein conceptualized as "primary confusion"? The author will use Klein's notion to show how, early in life, envy of the breast and primary confusion can blur the organization of binary logic essential to establishing the ability to judge and the activity of primal symbolization.
Ferenczi's reveals an exceptional analyst who honestly and bravely documented radical clinical experiences and theoretical insights about the tragic impacts of trauma. The author follows Ferenczi's thinking from his fal...Ferenczi's reveals an exceptional analyst who honestly and bravely documented radical clinical experiences and theoretical insights about the tragic impacts of trauma. The author follows Ferenczi's thinking from his falling out with Freud and his view of the classical psychoanalyst's objectivity and emotional detachment as triggers of the original trauma, through the use of the countertransference to lay bare trauma, eventually issuing in his radical experiment in mutual analysis. The 's fate in the history of psychoanalysis reflects that of its thinking on trauma: Beginning with Ferenczi's decades-long silencing and exclusion from the main psychoanalytic community, together with the silencing of actual trauma, this history evolved into the revival and dissemination of Ferenczi's thinking and the reappraisal of the role of actual trauma.