Review of toward a unified psychoanalytic theory: Foundation in a revised and expanded ego psychology.

- Philip Ringstrom proposes a couples therapy model based on the intersubjective and relational paradigm whose goal is to enable two "‘real selves' to intimately connect under that same roof", and at the same time the partners become able to repair the inevitable ruptures and to overcome the mismatches that arise from both the similarities and the differences between two subjects in a relationship. Ringstrom's treatment model is organized in six non-linear steps, like Escher's ascending and descending staircases. It is outlined in three basic points: - self actualisation; - mutual recognition; - the development of a relational mind of its own. Ringstrom's Conjoint treatment also shows us the progress of psychoanalytic theory beginning with Freud (where there is Es, there will be Ego), through Ego Psychology (where there is Ego, there will be objects), until Benjamin's latest formulations (where there are objects, there will subjects).

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The Function of Metapsychology – Study of an American Controversy, 1970s–1980s

Psychoanalysis and History ◽

10.3366/pah.2021.0369 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 23 (1) ◽

pp. 75-100

Author(s):

Manuel Batsch

Keyword(s):

Clinical Evidence ◽

Psychoanalytic Theory ◽

The Other ◽

The Unconscious ◽

The Subject ◽

The One ◽

Ego Psychology

This article explores the controversies triggered by Freud's metapsychology, specifically the American critiques of the 1970s – Heinz Hartmann, Merton Gill and David Rapaport, Robert Waelder, and Lawrence Kubie for ego-psychology, leading into Roy Schafer, George Klein and again Merton Gill for hermeneutics, Emmanuel Peterfreund and Charles Brenner for positivism, before concluding with a summary of more inventive engagements with metapsychology including that of Joseph Sandler and André Green. The article argues that in the name of empirical or clinical evidence, the American critiques tried to reintroduce a subjectivity made of data into the heart of psychoanalytic theory and as a result, replaced the subject of the unconscious with a new figure of the subject not only transparent to itself, but also transparent to two main forms of discourse: the hermeneutic discourse, on the one hand, and the positivist discourse, on the other.

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