The Contribution of Creative Responses to the Experience of Shame in Couple Psychotherapy

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amita Sehgal
Keyword(s):  
Object Relations ◽  
Couple Therapy ◽  
Object Relations Theory ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Core ◽  
Developmental Significance ◽  
The Relationship

This paper describes how the emotional states of shame and humiliation are interconnected. Recent neurophysiological findings are drawn on together with an appreciation of the developmental significance of shame in mother–infant interactions in the first two years of life to explain the importance of the application of these concepts to couple therapy. Object relations theory is also cited to explore some of the unconscious dynamics that might be operating in couples where shame and humiliation form the core of their relational dynamic. This is followed by the description of how partners can be helped to manage the other's shame effectively and, in so doing, give rise to a novel and much longed-for experience within the relationship. Finally, the clinical challenges of working with shame and humiliation in couple psychotherapy are considered.

Exploring the relationship difficulties of Iranian adolescents with conduct disorder: a qualitative content analysis

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryam Salmanian ◽  
Bagher Ghobari-Bonab ◽  
Seyyed-Salman Alavi ◽  
Ali-Akbar Jokarian ◽  
Mohammad-Reza Mohammadi
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Conduct Disorder ◽  
Object Relations ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Integrative Model ◽  
Object Relations Theory ◽  
Male Adolescents ◽  
Internal Working ◽  
Attachment Problems ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Background: Conduct disorder is characterized by aggressive behaviors, deceitfulness or theft, destruction of property and serious violations of rules prior to age 18 years. The object relations theory provides an integrative model to understand the problems of conduct disorder, and proposes that child-caregiver relationships develop the internal working models of self and others. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship difficulties of Iranian adolescents with conduct disorder. Methods: This study was a qualitative directed content analysis research. The in-depth interview was conducted with nine male adolescents aged 12–17 years who had conduct disorder with or without substance use disorder at the reformatory in Tehran. All tape-recorded data were fully transcribed and analyzed. Results: The relations with different objects including parents, siblings, relatives, friends, peers, teachers, other school members, colleagues and employers were analyzed, and four themes were extracted: 1) Object relations based on insecurity and fear; 2) Object relations based on inability and abjection; 3) Object relations based on pessimism and mistrust; 4) Object relations based on non-maintenance of boundaries and limits. Conclusion: The importance of object relations and attachment problems in adolescents with conduct disorder, and their need to participate in special intervention programs should be reconsidered.

Keen for the First Object

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lana Lin
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
Object Relations ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Social Pressure ◽  
Object Relations Theory ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Racial Hatred ◽  
Breast Prosthesis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Lost Object

This chapter interprets Audre Lorde’s experience of cancer and racial injury through psychoanalyst Melanie Klein’s theories of sadistic aggression, mourning, and psychic reparation. Drawing on Klein’s theories of the maternal breast as the first part-object, the original lost object that initiates a cycle of destruction and reparation, the chapter considers the psychic consequences of losing the breast through the traumatic processes of weaning and invasive carcinoma. For Lorde, illness, racism, sexism, and homophobia are conjoined as objectifying forces. The chapter inquires into how psychoanalytic object relations theory contends with objectification—becoming the object of a fatal disease, racial hatred, or sexist assault. Indicating how destruction can play a part in reparation, Lorde described her own mastectomy as breaking off a piece of herself to make her whole. She rejects the breast prosthesis on the grounds that it enforces objectifying gender norms. Lorde’s critique of the “prosthetic pretense” is applied to contemporary breast cancer culture. The chapter proposes that one of the unconscious motivations behind the social pressure to reconstruct the breast stems from a fetishism of the first object.

Viewing the Absence of Sex from Couple Relationships Through the "Core Complex" Lens

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amita Sehgal
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Couple Relationships ◽  
Core Complex ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Principal Problem ◽  
The Core ◽  
Assessment Interview ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Clinical Cases

This paper attempts to understand the absence of sex in intimate couple relationships from a pre-oedipal perspective, using Glasser's (1979) concept of the "core complex". It draws on two clinical cases, one where the couple named lack of sex as the principal problem during their assessment interview, and another where the partners' sex was absent from their long-standing relationship once therapy was well underway. These two clinical cases are thought about using a contemporary Freudian perspective, where the anxieties that arise in the earliest relationship between infant and mother are believed to contribute to the claustro-agoraphobic anxieties in adult relating. Additionally, the unconscious dynamics that may be operating in couple relationships in which sex is absent is explored in the context of the relationship where partners seem intently caught up in the struggle of balancing their need for intimacy alongside preserving their sense of self.

scholarly journals The possible impact of animals on Job’s body image: A psychoanalytical perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Van der Zwan
Keyword(s):  
Body Image ◽  
Object Relations ◽  
Significant Others ◽  
The Body ◽  
Object Relations Theory ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Cultural Aspect ◽  
The Subject ◽  
External Stimuli ◽  
The Relationship

The body plays an important role in the book of Job – as do animals. According to psychoanalytical specifically object-relations theory, a subjective body image was partly constructed through the internalisation of external stimuli from significant others who mirrored the subject through their feedback or through their own bodies, which served as an ideal or critique to the subject. Amongst the external stimuli, animals constitute such significant others. Animals could therefore have impacted Job’s subjective body image, particularly as their bodies were described in detail by God as a response to Job’s complaints and searching.Contribution: Two theoretical and interrelated problems were acknowledged although they cannot be satisfactorily solved: the cultural aspect of the body image and the relationship to animals.

Anger and Aggressiveness in Couple Therapy: Some Clinical Considerations from an Intersubjective Perspective

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Monguzzi
Keyword(s):  
Couple Therapy ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Clinical Considerations ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Triadic Relationship

The purpose of my paper is to deal with the significant aspects related to engaging and treating couples with high levels of aggression and violence. In particular, the main focus of my work is to examine closely the traits and characteristics of the field that is created by the convergence of the respective subjectivity of partners and therapist from a relational and intersubjective perspective. The violence that penetrates the triadic relationship during the session is observed in its formational aspects in the here and now, as well as actualisation of traumatic events suffered by one or both partners. Rage and aggressiveness can be understood more clearly and treated like emerging emotional states, with the aim of increasing the transformative potential. These emotional states are reactivated by the relationship that is co-created by the components of the triadic relationship. Particular attention will be placed on countertransferential receptiveness, on the manner in which the therapist comes into contact with the often extreme and primal emotional states of the couple, on the impact and the effect that these have on his mind, on how they can be recognised and understood in the context of projective echoes, and, last, traced back to their historical significance. By means of these procedures, a solid therapeutic alliance may be developed with the couple. It is an alliance that becomes a fundamental reorganisation element of healing aspects, belonging to both the individual Self and the conjugal Self.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lana Lin
Keyword(s):  
Object Relations ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Object Relations Theory ◽  
Audre Lorde ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Psychic Life ◽  
The Core ◽  
Eve Sedgwick ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
Lost Object

The Introduction lays out the key terms, organization, and methodology of the book. It details how Freud’s Jaw relies on psychoanalytic object relations theory—in particular theories on part-objects, attachment and dependency (anaclisis), mourning, melancholia, and fetishism. These psychoanalytic concepts are mobilized to probe the psychic life and death of human and nonhuman objects and to throw light upon how illness initiates processes of objectification. Each chapter focuses on a different type of object, which bears a relation to the psychoanalytic lost object: the prosthetic object, the “first object” (the breast), love objects, and reparative objects. Through its examination of autopathographies, including the author’s own autopathographic observations, the book fleshes out a “subjectivity of survival.” For Sigmund Freud survival entailed maintenance and adjustment of his oral prostheses; for Audre Lorde it was bound up with a politics of self-preservation; for Eve Sedgwick it was explicitly a reparative project. The chapter explains how cancer carries psychoanalytic meaning, confirming that death has always occupied the core of psychoanalysis as a tragic discourse.

Moments of Loneliness: A Shared Experience of Learning from Impasse in Couple Therapy

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Alperovitz
Keyword(s):  
Young Child ◽  
Object Relations ◽  
Couple Therapy ◽  
Family Therapist ◽  
States Of Mind ◽  
Shared Experience ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Clinical Vignettes ◽  
Infant And Young Child ◽  
Child Observation

In this paper, the author describes how she works with two theoretical ideas not commonly referred to by couple therapists: Klein's views on loneliness and Bion and O'Shaughnessy's concept of the absent object. She also weaves in Winnicott's theory of how the baby develops the capacity to be alone. Theoretically, her ideas are embedded in the British Object Relations School as well as her experiences as a couple and family therapist, a teacher of the Tavistock model of infant and young child observation, and day-to-day practice as a psychoanalyst. The author illustrates how she works within the transference-countertransference matrix to detect and name disturbing moments of loneliness. Clinical vignettes show how couples are assisted in uncovering the unconscious phantasies that push them into mutually hostile states of mind and which, in an instant, destroy feelings of goodness within and between them. While the author focuses on her work with couples, the approach is applicable in many clinical situations.

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