Reformulated Object Relations Theory: A Bridge Between Clinical Psychoanalysis, Psychotherapy Integration, and the Understanding and Treatment of Suicidal Depression

In contrast to the fruitful relationship between psychoanalysis/psychoanalysts and the humanities, institutionalized psychoanalysis has been largely resistant to the integration of psychoanalysis with other empirical branches of knowledge (infant observation, psychotherapy research, psychological and neurobiological sciences), as well as clinical ones [primarily cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)]. Drawing from two decades of theoretical and empirical work on psychopathology, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis, the author aims to show how a reformulation of object relations theory (RORT) using (neuro-)psychological science may enhance a clinical-psychoanalytic understanding and treatment of suicidal depression, which constitutes one of the most formidable health challenges of our time. Specifically, he rewrote the notion of Melanie Klein positions—primarily the depressive position—using extant knowledge of structure of emotions, the centrality of mental representations of the future (“prospection”) and the toxic nature of criticism-based emotions. This reformulation enables a dialog between clinical psychoanalysis and other therapeutic schools of thought and sheds light on the understanding and treatment of suicidal depression.

psychoanalytic theory of anxiety and defense

The chronological development of Freud’s theories of anxiety is reviewed in connection with the series of infantile danger-situations, the distinction between traumatic and signal anxiety, and the defenses evoked by the latter to avoid the former. The central defense of turning aggression away from the object and back against the self, thus generating the hostile superego, is emphasized. A critique of Freud‘s one-sided conception of danger as loss of the good is offered in light of Melanie Klein’s recognition of the danger constituted by the presence of something bad. In light of the shift from topographical to structural theory additional types of anxiety are distinguished: instinctual anxiety experienced by the ego in the face of the Id; Reality anxiety in the face of the external world; moralistic anxiety in the face of the superego. While Freud failed to distinguish persecutory and reparative anxiety and guilt, Klein and her followers posited two fundamentally different layers or positions in the mind, the paranoid-schizoid and depressive or reparative positions characterized by these two types of anxiety and guilt respectively. There has been a good deal of confusion due to the widespread failure to distinguish depressive anxiety from depression: there is no depression in the depressive position because the splitting involved in depression is a paranoid-schizoid phenomenon. The existentialists remind us that not all anxiety and guilt is neurotic.

Psychological Transformation: Convergent Themes in Jewish and Psychoanalytic Thinking

The potential for psychological transformation is fundamental to psychoanalytic theory and therapy and to Jewish belief and practice. While Freud's rejection of religious experience as a manifestation of personal and cultural pathology had a long-reaching effect in the history of psychoanalysis, the theoretical extensions and advances of some of his followers have made it possible to view religious experience through a different lens. The author explores the convergence of Jewish ideas about the process of repentance (teshuvah) and the integration of psychic polarities conceptualized in the psychoanalytic literature, namely, love and hate in the shift from the paranoid-schizoid to the depressive position (Klein) and separation and reunion in the establishment of the self and the development of sublimation (Loewald).

From conscious to unconscious and back. Remarks on Melanie Klein’s interpretation of Magic Word

The paper examines fluctuations between conscious and unconscious modes of mind functioning as outlined in Melanie Klein’s interpretation of Magic Word (Klein, 1929/1948), using the double lens of psychoanalytic and semiotic concepts of symbol. The study aims to explore the process of transformation that takes place in conscious and unconscious parts of the mind, when the mind overcomes maniac defences and is confronted with core depressive recognition: a truth about separateness of individual, and all anxieties it arouses. The examination of conscious aspects of depressive position will be performed through the prism of Charles Peirce (1998) semiotic, while unconscious content will be explored according to Melanie Klein psychoanalysis. The results of the study reveal, that employment of psychoanalytic and semiotic perspective simultaneously, when examining dynamics of psychic position, allows to break down the process to smaller, but still explorable sequences. Such approach allows not only to study most distinctive elements of the position but also to track dependencies that occur between them in time on both conscious and unconscious level. Moreover breaking down depressive dynamic to the smaller sequences facilitates more careful monitoring of the disturbing influence of unconscious to consciousness when psychotic response picks up. Similarly, sequential view enables more precise identification of the point when triangle space returns, and so facilitates analysis of conditions associated with that important change.

Sfumato De Las Imágenes De Mundo En Su Dinámica Actual. Contribuciones Humanísticas Para Una Suturación Narrativizante De La Coexistencia

This article presents an eidetic investigation that aimed at the production of a narrativizing sense of the coexistence, which is presented as a humanistic contribution to the suturing of the conjunctural emptiness of it. For this, six eidetic dimensions were brought to the front that are part of the shared objective world, and therefore are repetitive structures that make up the underlying continuity of the interruption of coexistence, aspecting the latter. Such dimensions, in the mode of eidetic succession-tension between Apollo-Dionysus, rational thought-magic thought, paranoid schizoid position-depressive position, polis-urbs, death-birth and leisure-weariness, are made up of various eidetic conjunctions-disjunctions developed in the text, and they emerge from the continuity-dispute between images of the technical and psychic-cultural world with its correlative mass society and urban tribal society.

Between thought and action: symbolization in depressive position and its external expressions

Aim. The paper will revisit nature of symbolization in depressive position with respect to its realization in external reality. Base for the analysis will be Hanna Segal paper Delusions and artistic creativity: some reflections on reading “The Spire” by William Golding (Segal, 1974/1988), enriched with findings she presented in her later paper Acting on phantasy and acting on desire (Segal, 1992/2007), context for the analysis will be provided by Kleinian psychoanalytic framework. Methods. Psychoanalysis core interest is thinking and thought formation. In the paper I will try to move this emphasis on examining pure thinking into exploration of mixture that thought and action create. I will therefore analyse on what tokens mind content can be put into action, and conversely how action is being incorporated into thought. I will perform the study using Hanna Segal interpretation of The Spire by William Golding, which she issued on 1974. I will also reach out to her other papers to broaden the interpretation, including the paper she wrote almost twenty years later on Festschrift for her colleague, philosopher Richard Wollheim (Segal, 1992/2007), that actually proposes the solid linkage between thinking and its expressions in the world. The study will be performed with reference to Kleinian psychoanalytic framework, it will be centred around object relation and anxieties the object arouses (paranoid schizoid and depressive positions), with respect to their impact on thought formation (symbolization, sublimation). Results and conclusions. Analysis of relationship between symbolisation and action enhances understanding of two main responses to depressive position: sublimation and maniac defences, for it explores the extent to which ego benefits/refuses to benefit from internal and external reality. While the rereading Segal interpretation of The Spire allows to spot how creative act enables capturing most difficult internal and external truths, it also reveals – when put in context of Wollheim’s concept of acting on phantasy and acting on desire- that maniac response is less a form of protection and more a direct attack on receptivity and penetrating exploration for their associations to primary scene. Cognitive value. Studying depressive symbolization as a vehicle for acting on either phantasy or desire reveals, that employment of behavioural component forces to revisit maniac defences in light of their actual aftermath in external world. Such refined view onto depressive defences further contributes to improved differentiation of symbolization in depressive position, for it puts under scrutiny relation between ego and performed action. It allows to recognize that in addition to symbol proper (formed by anxiety for object) and symbolic equation (defined by anxiety of object), there is also partly malformed form of symbol shaped by maniac defences (and so by absence of anxiety for object), which disfiguration is best examinable in changes to external reality it makes.