The Depressive Position and the Birth of the Historical Subject

2018 ◽  
pp. 67-99
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Ogden
Keyword(s):  
Depressive Position

Some Reflections on Reparation in Post-Apartheid South Africa, using a Couple Therapy Intervention as a Microcosm of South African Society

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Hill ◽  
Sylvia Poss
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Couple Therapy ◽  
South African Society ◽  
Depressive Position ◽  
Central Hypothesis ◽  
Transference And Countertransference ◽  
Constructive Engagement ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Therapy Intervention

The paper addresses the question of reparation in post-apartheid South Africa. The central hypothesis of the paper is that in South Africa current traumas or losses, such as the 2008 xenophobic attacks, may activate a ‘shared unconscious phantasy’ of irreparable damage inflicted by apartheid on the collective psyche of the South African nation which could block constructive engagement and healing. A brief couple therapy intervention by a white therapist with a black couple is used as a ‘microcosm’ to explore this question. The impact of an extreme current loss, when earlier losses have been sustained, is explored. Additionally, the impact of racial difference on the transference and countertransference between the therapist and the couple is explored to illustrate factors complicating the productive grieving and working through of the depressive position towards reparation.

Psychoanalyse im Turm zu Babel

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Heim
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Melanie Klein ◽  
Depressive Position

In fiktionaler, zuweilen humorvoller und kritischer Weise bringt Robert Heim drei ikonische Gestalten der Psychoanalyse nach Freud miteinander ins Gespräch: Melanie Klein, Wilfred R. Bion und Jacques Lacan. Ob Kleins paranoid-schizoide und depressive Position, Bions Container oder Lacans Begehren und Genießen – mittels einer komparatistischen Methode eröffnet der Autor neue Perspektiven auf grundlegende Begriffe und zentrale Bereiche der Psychoanalyse. Neben theoretischen und behandlungstechnischen Fragen widmet er sich auch aktuellen gesellschaftlichen Themen wie der Klimakrise.

The psychoanalytic background

2016 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
R. Peter Hobson
Keyword(s):  
Therapeutic Relationship ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
States Of Mind ◽  
Clinical Issues ◽  
Developmental Potential ◽  
Psychoanalytic Therapy ◽  
Depressive Position

The aim of this chapter is to set out the psychoanalytic ideas and clinical principles on which Brief Psychoanalytic Therapy is founded. Topics include the centrality of intersubjective knowledge, the pivotal notion of transference, and the various ways in which a patient may affect a therapist’s emotional state. The clinical issues addressed range from varieties of communication and defence, contrasts between paranoid-schizoid and depressive position functioning, and the roles of countertransference and containment in the therapeutic endeavor. Overall, the chapter is concerned with the developmental potential of a therapeutic relationship in which the therapist is emotionally available and able to reflect upon the patterns of relatedness that a patient attempts to introduce into the therapeutic relationship, in part to avoid states of mind that are painful or conflictual.

Character Types: The Foolhardy and the Cautious

2016 ◽  
pp. 273-278
Author(s):  
Donald W. Winnicott
Keyword(s):  
Infant Development ◽  
The State ◽  
Early Infant ◽  
Central Depression ◽  
Manic Depressive ◽  
Depressive Position ◽  
Character Types

Winnicott’s notes on Balint’s paper. Winnicott discusses Balint’s premise that character patterns during thrill situations are related to the state of regression. Winnicott explores the effect of his own ideas of early infant development, and of dependence and independence on such patterning. He proposes that the tendency to manic-depressive swing certainly resembles the alternation of denial of dependence and exaggerated dependence (clinging) on not-me objects. Balint’s alternatives in this case both avoid the anxieties belonging to the establishment of the central i am state and the central ‘depression’ or concern, or sense of responsibility, belonging to the depressive position.

The Depressive Position in Normal Emotional Development

2016 ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Donald W. Winnicott
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Emotional Development ◽  
Depressive Mood ◽  
Oedipus Complex ◽  
Depressive Position ◽  
Healthy Infants ◽  
Weaning Age ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
The Individual

This paper is Winnicott’s account of the Depressive Position as a normal stage in the development of healthy infants, an achievement mostly belonging to the weaning age. It does not mean healthy infants pass through a stage of depression. Emotionally unhealthy, depersonalized babies lack the preconditions for this achievement. The mother holds the situation in time, so that the baby may experience ‘excited’ relationships and meet the consequences. Integration in the child’s mind of the split between the child-care environment and the exciting environment (the two aspects of mother) depends on good-enough mothering and the mother’s survival. The baby experiences this while the mother is holding the situation and the infant realizes that the ‘quiet’ mother was involved in the full tide of instinctual experience, and has survived. Instinctual experience brings anxiety and guilt but clinically children are sometimes without a sense of guilt, although they can go on to develop it. In the inner world of the individual who has achieved the depressive position there is on balance a reduced depressive mood and their reaction to loss is grief, or sadness. Where there is some degree of failure at the depressive position the result of loss is depression. The child who has reached the depressive position can get on with the problem of triangular interpersonal relationships: the classical Oedipus complex.

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