Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse: Band 65: Manische Elemente und Wiedergutmachung

Contents:

• Michael Feldman: Covert Manic Identification (article in German)
  Abstract

  In this paper the author explores how the patient uses subtle manic mechanisms to deal with his envy, and to defend himself against anxiety. When confronted with an interpretation he finds threatening, the analyst’s work and the patient’s own understanding rapidly become mobilised to serve powerful defensive functions. The patient seems to take possession of the analyst’s words, and ideas, becoming filled with a quiet manic excitement, usually without having been able to understand or make use of the meaning of the interpretation. He does not use interpretations primarily to help him to think or to understand himself better. On the contrary, they are mainly used to gain penetrative access to the analyst’s mind, to take possession of functions which enable him to become the person who knows and understands. The patient demonstrates an impressive capacity to camouflage this organisation by appeasement, by playing down his arrogant, omnipotent and destructive phantasies, keeping the more violent and disturbed aspects of himself secret or semi-secret. This situation creates considerable emotional and technical difficulties for the analyst. Any attempt to address the process either becomes recruited into the manic process, and/or leads to the patient becoming persecuted and inaccessible. There was evidence that there were moments when the patient felt a degree of desperation about the way his mind functioned, and his difficulty in taking in anything that helped him to understand himself or others better. Part of the strain on the analyst results from the difficulty in recognising, and tolerating the extent of this man’s disturbance, and the extent to which his capacity for thinking and understanding is interfered with.
• Ursula Ostendorf: Repair or Reparation? Fluctuations between False Hope and Realistic Change (article in German)
  Abstract

  Henry Rey distinguishes between repair and reparation. While repair is associated with a paranoid-schizoid position, reparation implies an approach from a depressive position. It is this distinction that helped the author to recognize and work through her countertransference reactions. Powerful defence mechanisms of her patient – a 40 year old teacher – like projective identification, splitting and manic reparation – prompted the author to act as a »repair«-analyst at first. Subjected to diffuse atmospheric tension the analyst felt unable to offer valuable interpretations. The author’s gradual understanding of being captured by identification helped her to get more independent from the patient’s projections and thus enabled her to offer the patient a more accessible approach to understanding her psychic world as well as accepting responsibility for her destructive impulses.
• Heinz Weiß: Reparation in the Borderline Patient (article in German)
  Abstract

  Starting from Melanie Klein’s analysis of the co-evolution of ego and super-ego structures, the paper examines failing reparative attempts in borderline patients. Whereas true reparation enables the individual to acknowledge the damage that has been afflicted to the object, primitive reparative attempts are characterized by their concreteness and their failure to acknowledge separation and loss. Quite commonly they serve the purpose of controlling unbearable anxieties, finally leading to a pseudo-acceptance of internal and external reality. Instead of acknowledging the damage they often initiate endless repetitive cycles which perpetuate the damage that has been inflicted to the object. Connecting primitive reparative manoeuvres with the predominance of archaic super-ego structures, the author presents clinical material which is characterized by the predominance of grievance and wrath. In the transference the wish for reparation may be projected into the analyst, leading to a demand for reparation from the part of the analyst, who is now exposed to the same sense of failure and guilt the patient finds so difficult to bear. In this way the patient comes to stand for the analyst’s damaged internal objects, who on his part may be tempted to re-project them in the same reproachful way as they have entered his mind. Only when this experience can be tolerated and thoroughly be worked through, some movements leading to the acknowledgement of damage may become possible. To conclude, some final remarks concerning different technical and theoretical aspects of this dilemmatic situation are being discussed.
• Claudia Frank: Reparation – the Development of a New Concept from Melanie Klein’sEarly Experiences in Child Analyses (article in German)
  Abstract

  The author shows how Melanie Klein developed reparation or restitution, both colloquial terms, during her early child analyses in Berlin 1921 – 1926 into a new, specific psychoanalytic concept in the twenties of the last century. Examples from four child analyses – including some drawings – are used to demonstrate different aspects. The author’s idea is that until 1929 Klein had described the whole range of reparation – from primitive over mature forms to reparative tendencies as the basis of artistic endeavor. Thus, she laid the foundation for clinical and non-clinical applications.
• Heinrich Racker: Ethik und Psychoanalyse und die Psychoanalyse der Ethik
• Edna O’Shaughnessy: A Return to Heinrich Racker’s »The Ethics of Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalysis of Ethics« (article in German)
  Abstract

  The present paper is offered as a salutation to a paper written by Heinrich Racker half a century ago – »The Ethics of Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalysis of Ethics«. A summary of the contents of his paper is given in outline, and note is taken of how the time at which Racker was writing is unlike the present time – Racker wrote in an epoch of confidence in psychoanalysis itself and in psychoanalysis having something to offer on questions of the day, like the twin themes of his paper which charts the terrain of the super-ego, ethics, morality and criminality and still provides a very fine map for further psychoanalytic exploration.
• Hermann Beland: Basic Philophical Assumptions in Conflict with Freud’s Scientific Thinking. On Racker’s Ethics of Psychoanalysis (article in German)
  Abstract

  Racker’s »Ethic and Psychoanalysis«, his general ethic as well are part of his system of Weltanschauung. Its notions are psychoanalytical and Freud’s definition of Eros had been its central assumption, becoming the central principle of development and mankind. Comparing his position with Freud’s scientific stance and with Freud’s generally historical thinking one can see Racker’s premises quite well. His notions of psychoanalytic technique, as far as deduced systematically, are criticized, because Racker’s descriptions of understanding the split off parts of the patient were misleading. He equalized understanding to identifying, to merging into one, to loving, to uniting all separate parts, and personalities. These descriptions and demands throw undeservingly an unfavorable illusion-like light on his research on countertransference from hindsight. Comparisons with the general history of philosophical ethics, with Freud’s naturalistic type of ethics, and with Bion’s basic evidence for the ethics of psychoanalytic attitude allow for a critical discussion of Racker’s true position giving better justice to his great merits.

Wolfgang-Loch-Vorlesung:

• Erika Krejci: Formation of Psychic Structures and the Myth in the Thinking of Freud, Bion and Wolfgang Loch (article in German)
  Abstract

  When Freud after the death of his father met with the significance of the infantile phantasies about wishes for incest and death with regard to the parents and then in the Oedipus myth made out an old shaping of these unconscious conflicts, he introduced with the formulation of the Oedipus complex the myth as a category into psychoanalysis and human sciences. The great myths describe early events from the ontogenesis of the psyche that we find again in the psychogenesis of the individual. The Oedipus theory of Freud is not only necessary to understand the formation of non-psychotic structures in the personality but also of the genetic early structuring about which Melanie Klein and many others have written. With his grid Bion made possible a totally new way of marking psychic elements outside of the conceptual language, because conceptual thinking takes integration of the oedipal elements for granted. Loch follows him emphasizing that the process of oedipal integration needs requirements which often in the treatments of patients first have to be elaborated.

Karl-Abraham-Vorlesung:

• Joachim Küchenhoff: On Changeability and its Limits (article in German)
  Abstract

  The paper deals with a topic that is most relevant to the psychoanalytic cure: to what extent and how does the cure contribute to psychic change? To answer these questions, we first of all need to define what change means in psychoanalytic terms. It is not confined to a static concept of structural change of the personality. Instead, change covers the increase in potentialities of coping with psychic conflict. Then, we have to elucidate the factors contributing to change. In the paper, it is the quality of the therapeutic relationship and of the formulation of an interpretation rather than personality factors that is highlighted. As for the quality of the therapeutic relationship, it is characterised by the terms »conception« and »reversibility« meaning a passionate relationship that does not repeat known patterns but allows for new forms of personal contact. The form and effect of the psychoanalytic talk are described using the concept of »gift«: words are given as a gift that introduces creativity rather than freezing personal experiences into diagnostic or other categories. Finally, we have to take into account that there are limits to change. To accept them needs the work of mourning and, on top of that, the work of »forgiving«. – The concepts used in the paper (conception, reversibility, gift, forgiving) are defined and illustrated by case vignettes.

In memoriam:

• Hans-Jürgen Wirth: In memoriam Horst Eberhard Richter 1923–2011