Published in The American Journal of Psychoanalysis
The author contends that psychoanalytic theory has generally presented religious beliefs as developmentally immature or pathological. This viewpoint has resulted in a neglect of religion on the part of psychoanalysts and an avoidance of their religious life by patients. Even though there has been an evolution from the traditional Freudian foundatio...
Published in The American Journal of Psychoanalysis
This paper explores the relation of concepts of the unconscious to notions of the imagination, and both to the dynamics of shame. In this discussion dreams occupy a central place, since they are so intimately related to human relationships and to the human imagination. What is seen, not seen, concealed, relied upon for others not to understand, and...
Published in The American Journal of Psychoanalysis
Published in The American Journal of Psychoanalysis
This case report sketches the psychoanalytically-informed supportive psychotherapeutic treatment of a single man through his life challenges over a twenty-year period. The decades-long challenges arise from obsessive compulsive disorder, pathologic self-effacement with insatiable and unusual erotic components, and severe visual impairment leading t...
Published in The American Journal of Psychoanalysis
Published in The American Journal of Psychoanalysis
Published in The American Journal of Psychoanalysis
Published in The American Journal of Psychoanalysis
Identity development depends on the ability to say ‘no.’ Setting limits enables a relationship between two separate individuals to develop. Early trauma can leave the individual so vigilant to others’ demands that internal prohibitions against intrusion remain silenced, which we conceptualize as a ‘no’ that could not be sufficiently articulated to ...
Published in The American Journal of Psychoanalysis
Published in The American Journal of Psychoanalysis
The present paper examines Freud’s collapse of Heine’s poignantly observed multi-cultural narratives in discerning the joke’s mechanism of doubling as it progresses from initial bewilderment to momentary enlightenment. In so doing, Freud opens the door to examination of the complex Jewish cultural identity he and Heine share, as represented by the ...
