Citations
349 | Civilization and its discontents. - Freud - 1930 |
197 | Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego - Freud - 1951 |
28 |
On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement.
- Freud
- 1914
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Citation Context ...g from dark to light, our sense of ourselves has similar difficulty adjusting to the shift from being in-the-office to being in-the-broad-world. It is easy to forget to leave behind the asymmetry of the analytic partnership when we move from behind the couch, easy to fall back to that clinical asymmetry of the office when we feel challenged outside the office. In dialogues with our colleagues, discussions best held on level ground, we retreat too readily to the sense of superiority that can attach itself to an interpretive position. Perhaps unaware how often he, too, fell short of this ideal, Freud (1914, p. 49) warned: ‘‘Analysis is not suited … for polemical use; it presupposes the consent of the person who is being analysed and a situation in which there is a superior and a subordinate. Anyone, therefore, who undertakes an analysis for polemical purposes must expect the person analysed to use analysis against him in turn, so that the discussion will reach a state which entirely excludes the possibility of convincing any third person’’. The air of superiority spreads broadly. It is evident in collegial consultations when a supervisory tone replaces mutual respect (Gabbard, personal Problems... |
4 |
The taboo of virginity. (Contributions to the psychology of love
- Freud
- 1918
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Citation Context ... the hunger for pride of place. Every editor has painfully learned that even most senior contributors can quickly become childishly graceless when something in a manuscript is questioned. Also I remind us of Wheelis’s (1956, p. 172) observation that analysts ‘‘frequently describe one or another of their colleagues as rigid, dogmatic, and authoritarian; yet no analyst ever so describes himself. The inescapable inference is that some of us have taken refuge in dogma without knowing we have done so’’. The painfully familiar ‘narcissism of minor differences’ is so apparent and so everlasting that Freud (1918, 1921, 1930) returned to it repeatedly at different stages across his thinking. Indeed, knowing the regularity with which this self-love recurs, he remarked: ‘‘One is tempted to ascribe [to it] an elementary character’’ (1921, p. 102). Of course, curiosity not fed by personal investment and desire for success would be a weak mover indeed. Personal ambition cannot be denied or willed away. Instead narcissistic intensity needs taming, vanity needs to mature, if ambition is to contribute to progress. Mature love for the other, even for knowledge as an ideal other outside oneself, implies a matur... |
3 |
The invention of love.
- Stoppard
- 1997
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Citation Context ...parochialism of partial interests. With no choice but to think of a piece at a time, we should be wary about taking possessive pride in personal positions, keeping ‘‘a lively appreciation of how people get stuck with a view because it has become their identity’’ (James, 2007, p. 601). Rightfully proud of what we add to what was known Problems of collegial learning in psychoanalysis: Narcissism and curiosity 251 ª 2009 IPA Trust Ltd Int J Psychoanal (2009) 90 before, we are reminded by history that it is also right to remember that others will come to change and add to what we contribute. As a Stoppard (1997, p. 53) character commented: ‘‘Every age thinks it’s the modern age, but this one really is’’. One antidote to such allegiance to fragments is to recontextualize what is newly learned, placing fresh observations back into the open field of accumulated experience. Such recontextualization is essential even as we recognize that the very acts of abstracting and then recontextualizing themselves alter actuality, as we have learned in clinical practice. Despite the appeal of parsimoniousness, single explanations rarely suffice. Occam’s razor often cuts too close. On guard against single views, so ... |
3 | The vocational hazards of psycho-analysis. - Wheelis - 1956 |
2 | Bound in a nutshell’: Thoughts on complexity, reductionism, and ‘infinite space’. - Gabbard - 2007 |
2 |
Cultural amnesia.
- James
- 2007
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Citation Context ...opment of radical schools, the competitiveness between schools). The contribution of cultural influences and the multiply determined uses of language are also highlighted. The core sense of smallness in the strangeness of the universe and in the presence of others is seen as a common thread. Keywords: collegial communication, curiosity, dualistic thinking, insularity, narcissism, reciprocal learning, open-minded, parochialism, problems of language, radical schools, scientific competition, strangeness of otherness Nothing creative should be excluded for the sake of any other conviction. (Clive James, 2007) Once more we gather from the wide reaches of the psychoanalytic world to meet in biennial congress and share what we have learned since last we met, to compare notes on our experiences and to see what together we can discover. It is a fitting task but it is also fitting to ask ourselves how well we actually proceed with that task. After a century of such convening, how well do we learn from each other, how well talk, and how well listen? We may have limited cause for pride of success in this collegial task. Too often, like characters in an Edward Hopper painting, we occupy the same space but ... |
1 |
Psychoanalytic disagreements in context. London: Aronson. Freud S
- Boesky
- 2008
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Citation Context ...pecificity weaken with age, often corrupting into polemical code words. With that complication present in shared words, how optimistic can we be when using words that name newly recognized phenomena? Difficulty is compounded when we talk with colleagues outside close circles, even those within the same analytic society. Communication becomes yet more complicated when we speak with analysts rooted in other analytic 258 W. S. Poland Int J Psychoanal (2009) 90 ª 2009 IPA Trust Ltd cultures. Then, na"vely, we act as if we speak the same language because we sound as if we are using the same words. Boesky (2008) has described the impossibility of finding a Rosetta stone for our Babel of pluralism. At times we use language to expose and at times to hide. At times we create new words to give newly recognized phenomena new names; at times we press into service old names for new ideas. In addition, at times we use different words for the same phenomenon, and at least equally troublesomely, at times we use the same word when we refer to a different set of forces with a different set of implications. Difficulties abound. The temptation to coin new words for theory is always risky, and one risk is that it h... |
1 |
Unpublished discussion at Estates General,
- Shevrin
- 2000
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Citation Context ...nitary in the process of creating meaning. Satisfaction for one’s own sake and reaching outward, curiosity about the world beyond oneself, can never be fully divided. How does this apply to our problems with collegiality, and how does it apply to our desire both to share and to learn so that psychoanalysis is advanced? Mature narcissism’s love of curiosity gives one entry into our universal conversation. Experience and maturity teach us that we are heard best when we ourselves can hear best. Indeed it is as we can regard the other most openly that we become most fully defined as ourselves. As Shevrin (2000) so aptly put it: ‘‘If Descartes were alive today, he would say, ‘I listen, therefore I am’ ’’. We also learn that we must live with irony, with the poignant awareness that growth implies loss. As the secure child grows more aware of the outer world, that knowledge brings awareness of finiteness, ultimately of mortality. But sufficient security allows acceptance, the self-respecting modesty based on a center that does hold. Recognition and regard, one’s seeing oneself as seen and respected by another, are equally essential along with basic security, holding, and containment for narcissism to m... |