Some Arguments About Free Association as a Technique.

Freud, early in psychoanalytic history, modified hypnotic technique and recommended, in its stead, free association. This paper takes a close look at the theoretical foundations of that technique in light of theoretical developments over the past hundred plus years. It is argued that free association is similar to an asymptote, which is never quite reached. Moreover, it is argued that the direction to free associate is contraindicated in many, if not most, psychological disturbances. Guided association or avoidance of free association is sometimes required. For a limited group of patients, whose major ego functions (abstraction, integration, and reality testing), ego strengths (impulse control, affect tolerance, and containing primary process), object relations (capacities for empathy, trust, and closeness), and superego (shame/guilt) are intact, the direction to use the couch and attempt to free associate may still be quite useful. For most people who present for treatment, however, this approach is likely not beneficial. The complex arguments about the decision-making process regarding free association are discussed.

Psychoanalytic interpretation of superego functioning following CS readministration procedures: case illustration.

The Comprehensive System (CS; Exner, 2003) has specific procedures to address brief Rorschach protocols when the first administration yields fewer than 14 responses. These procedures involve the assessor's asking the client to retake the test by providing more responses on the second administration than the first administration. The request carries with it an implicit criticism of the client's initial effort and a mandate to improve performance on retake. The retake request, with its ambiguously worded demand for improved performance, engages the client's superego (i.e., the client feels judged) and makes it possible to study superego manifestations (e.g., guilt, shame) on the Rorschach test, using a model of (a) brief first record, (b) retake directive, and (c) second administration. We present a case that illustrates a clinical strategy, modeled on a psychoanalytic understanding of the CS retake procedure, for studying the client's superego functioning under retest conditions.

[Children's oppositional behaviour, practice of parental authority and temporal anomie]. / Conduite oppositionnelle chez l'enfant, pratique parentale de l'autorité et anomie temporelle.

OBJECTIVES: This article examines the relationship between children's oppositional behaviour and the exercise of parental authority. It seeks to explore the value of a heuristic approach to psychic temporality in exercising parental authority. The study aims to better understand the role of psychic temporality in operations producing symbolic law. It goes on to describe a disorder of temporality, known as temporal anomie, which may be involved in a child's oppositional disorders. STUDY: Psychiatric or psychological consultations motivated by oppositional disorders in children have increased steadily in the past fifteen years in France. The primary reason for consultation is in the form of difficulties for children in accepting the social rules or constraints, but also the difficulties of parenting while coping with the opposition of their children. This increase is made in connection with the works analysing the social and psychological effects imposed by modernity and its acceleration. Correspondingly, we find that some parents do not prioritize their educational requirements, do not know when or how to frustrate their child, or even if it is legitimate to expect from him/her a certain type of behaviour. They seem more preoccupied with the fear of not being loved by their child more than their duty to educate. A general trend suggests an alteration of psychological time, characterized by: a) a disinvestment of links between present and past for the enjoyment of the moment and its extension in the immediate future ; b) a difficulty in supporting educational responses causing frustration for the child ; c) a lack of continuity and constancy in educational requirements. The author proposes to define temporal anomie as the psychical time that weakens the consistency of educational responses. A link between psychological temporality and the symbolic law is discussed. Specifically, the study notes that: in intersubjective relations, mastery of psychological time by parents is an integrating factor of the law for the child. In this sense, temporal anomie can affect the child's development of superego. Anomie time is the result of a weakening of the transitional temporality. Transitional temporality provides legitimacy for educational interventions. This allows parents to support conflicts and opposition of the child. To this end, transitional temporality promotes links between past, present and future, between tradition and innovation. CONCLUSION: Psychic temporality offers a new perspective, particularly heuristic because it is undoubtedly an essential dimension involved in the process of subjectivation and socialization. The concept of anomie time enables one to better understand the fragility of parenthood frequently encountered in child psychiatric consultations and allows one to link this to the evolution of society.

The Role of Sports in the Development of the Superego of the Male Latency Child.

Psychoanalytic literature has often overlooked the child's participation in organized sports, which often can facilitate or impede not only expression of aggression and narcissism, but enhance or skew the growth of the child's superego and ego ideal. Specific outcomes are largely determined by the experience and knowledge of the parents, the coaches, and sports organizations for latency-aged youth. Sports participation facilitates a major step forward in psychic development, that is, an agreed-upon adherence to a set of rules and regulations, monitored by an official embodying the final word regarding rules and their infractions. This paper is an attempt to delineate the role of sports in the life of the latency child, the parents who become involved, the coaches who teach and supervise, and the social and individual milieu within which sports take place. All these contribute to common goals: the engendering of good sportsmanship and the encouragement of psychic growth, particularly regarding how aggression and narcissism contribute to the development of superego and ego ideals. The fate of aggression and narcissism in superego and ego ideal development is influenced to a large degree by the nature, orientation, and motivations of all involved in sports for the latency-aged.

Self and Others: Empirical and Neuropsychoanalytic Considerations of Superego and Conscience.

Freud's mature theorizing about human morality entrenched the functioning of the superego in anxiety stemming from the fear of punishment, a view with which many later psychoanalysts took issue, producing a debate as to the distinction between superego and conscience. This debate would later be mirrored more broadly in academic psychology concerning distinctions between shame and guilt. This is an area where the clinical observations and theoretical discussions of psychoanalysis have subtly guided research in cognitive psychology and the cognitive and affective neurosciences. These areas, in turn, have both clarified and supported psychoanalytic theory and practice without negating the rich phenomenological and theoretical basis on which psychoanalysis rests.

Passivity as a defence and disguised destructiveness.

In this paper, I set out to describe the different viewpoints, conceptualisations and defence mechanisms of the state of passivity; the categorisation by Freud; how the perspective of his thinking was altered by later insights and clinical observations; the close connection between the superego, passivity and masochism; the significance of the internal object world for Melanie Klein; countertransference as a means of access to masochism and destructiveness, with the aid of a short case illustration; and, finally, Betty Joseph's clinical experiences in work with her patients.

"The Ego and the Id": How and why Freud transformed his model of the mind.

This paper argues that, despite its title, "The Ego and the Id" can be seen as the book of the superego, and although it is a metapsychological work, Freud's introduction of the new conceptual tools provided by the structural model was a response to the clinical problems he faced. The implications of Freud's introduction of the superego for the analytic relationship are discussed, with an attempt to deepen our understanding of what he had in mind by reading "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego" alongside "The Ego and the Id". Finally, the paper draws on Bion to consider the implications of this remodelling of the analytic scene for listening and interpretation.

The Subject of the Dialectic: Some Consequences of Freud's Bisexuality Thesis.

On the basis of a previous reading (Olver, 2023) of Freud's work that reveals a bisexuality thesis, the author discusses several interrelated consequences of this thesis, including the nature of desire and primal unity, a restatement of shame, the semiotic model, and the emergence of society and the economy with reference to the ego and the superego. These consequences together encapsulate and describe the dialectic of the subject. The author shows how dialectic movement is arrested by various acts of nomination, most notably the nomination of heterosexuality in the forms of sexual reproduction and financial profit that become social and economic master values in modernity. Only by keeping the dialectic open can the subject do justice to its inherent and revolutionary bisexual nature, not in the sense of transgression but rather in pursuit of the nonnomination that is the permanent becoming of a dialectic self.

The Ego and the Id: Concepts and developments.

In this note I have limited myself to describing some convergent and divergent developments arising from the innovative concepts present in The Ego and the Id. It could be argued that a part of the psychoanalytic movement wished to emphasize the function of the Ego (Anna Freud, Hartmann, Rapaport), while another part (Melanie Klein and her followers) delved into the dynamics of the Superego and the Id in primitive and pathological states of mind. I will examine three themes presents in The Ego and the Id: the assertion that a part of the Ego is unconscious; the idea that the death drive becomes part of the dynamics of melancholia and its Superego; the concept of fusion and defusion of the life and death instinct. Freud's writing represents a forge of new ideas that have made psychoanalysis ever more creative and capable of understanding the complexity and mysteriousness of the human mind.

Thinking about encountering masochism/masochistic elements in analytic practice in the Kleinian tradition then and now.

Masochistic elements are puzzling entanglements for most of us in the beginning. Taking Melanie Klein's attempts to think about them thus show one way how to make sense of them. Starting from her struggles with masochistic symptoms in child analyses in the early 1920ies Melanie Klein tried to conceptualize those experiences in a way that could help to fact them in the analytic process. In this article the development is outlined, the move from thinking about them in libidinal terms to gradually grasping in greater depth their destructive quality. She speaks of an "evil principle" and then finds a conclusive solution in conceptualizing masochism as a representation of the death drive. In the next decades her followers would further work on the complexities of the countertransference issues and superego organizations in masochism in more detail as will be shown. Finally, a look in a piece of present analytic work will exemplify the clinical usefulness of the Kleinian conceptualization.

The murder of the dead father: The Shoah and contemporary antisemitism.

It is suggested in this paper that in the Shoah one is confronted with the abolition of the Law of the Dead Father and the re-establishing of the tyranny of the narcissistic father. In the extermination of the Jews of Europe in the Shoah, the aim was the destruction of the rules of genealogy and filiation to both mother and father that establish the social and give rise to personhood and are at the core of the oedipal structure. The rule of absolute power - the destruction of any sense of maternal care and paternal rules - leads ultimately to the creation of the abject.Freud distinguished between two different types of obstacles to psychoanalytic treatment that are expressions of the death drive. The first is bound and is related to the superego; it is connected to the negative therapeutic reaction, masochism, and the unconscious sense of guilt. The other manifestation of the death drive is unbound and diffuse. If the first is understandable, the second, he suggests, escapes any understanding. The paper makes use of this distinction to examine Hannah Arendt's notion of the banality of evil.

The work of Benno Rosenberg.

Benno Rosenberg's work has been little translated into English. Yet, his work on masochism is a landmark in France. He set himself the goal of deploying all the richness and implications of the second Freudian drive theory and the introduction of the death drive. He therefore returns to "the Economic Problem of Masochism" to give all its value to the drive fusion that it achieves internally and which is therefore for it "guardian of life", even if it is can also be fatal. He draws consequences on the psychic construction of the ego, the superego and on that of temporality. He also describes a "work of melancholy" which is different from mourning. Thinking it necessary to push the consequences of the new theorizing further than Freud was able to do, he revisits "Inhibition, Symptom and Anxiety" to articulate the triggering of anxiety by a libidinal demand and the threat to the unity of the ego who comes from the death drive due to conflict. Starting from the psychosomatic descriptions of Pierre Marty, whose options are specified, he also proposed a metapsychology of somatization during the overflow of the psyche by the destructiveness which will then threaten the body.

Reflections on masochism: An introduction.

Masochism is central to all pathologies and its relevance in clinical practise cannot be underestimated. The initial connection made by Freud was that masochism was a component or partial instinct, still operating within the pleasure principle. The relationship between masochism and the theory of drives marks a main theoretical difference in the different authors' explorations of this subject. The understanding of what is meant by 'masochism' gained complexity following Freud's postulation of a life and death drive (which is more or less contemporary with his 1924 paper on masochism) and the differences made by him between 'primary' and 'secondary' masochism. This introduction to the papers presented in this section will address some of these differences, as well as exploring the notions of primary erotogenic masochism, feminine and moral masochism. It will also look at the notion of binding /unbinding of the life/death drives, and the role of the superego. It will introduce the different papers by Novick and Novick, Bourdin, Frank and Persano on developmental perspectives, primary masochism, views on French analysts such as Benno Rosenberg and on Kleinian ideas on the subject as well as on the role of the body, pain and self harm.

Super-ego in patients with coronary artery disease.

In this paper, we explored the super-ego ofpatients with coronary artery disease. Research results have confirmed the initial hypothesis that a significant number of patients with coronary artery disease has rigorous super-ego. Among patients with coronary artery disease (N=50), and control group (N=50), we have found significant differences in the quality of super-ego and ego attitude towards the demands of the super-ego. The results of this research contribute to understanding the impact of psychological factors in coronary artery disease.

[Concepts of the borderline personality disorders]. / Koncepcje zaburzenia osobowosci typu borderline.

For many years, the borderline personality disorders have mainly been researched in terms of psychoanalytical theories, such as theories on relations with the object. Nowadays, there are three kinds of concepts that are distinguishable. The first ones are those which are group models, serving attempts to made characteristic sets of qualities, represented by individuals suffering from the borderline personality disorders, more precise. The remaining concepts are models of conflict and deficit, which explain complicated mechanisms of interactions of social, psychological and biological factors, and therefore, contribute to better understanding of the genesis of the symptoms of this disorder. Upon the basis of the attempts made so far in the field of describing the borderline personality disorders, one may indicate certain criteria, representative for the entire group of individuals with this diagnosis, regardless of the assumptions applicable to the genesis of the disorder and its symptoms, even though the population of the infirm suffering from the borderline personality disorders is not internally homogenous. The interest of psychologists, attempting to describe the borderline personality disorders, is focused upon certain sets of qualities, presented as the examples of descriptive models. Among the researchers, working on the issues of the borderline personality disorders in this manner, there are: Gunderson, Kernberg, Kohut, Winnicot, Guntrip, Fairbaim, Adler and Buie.

Five year olds with good conscience development.

Results from a longitudinal study on factors influencing conscience development contributed to our appreciation of the importance of moral internalization for a child's well-being. In this article we first present a summary of the research on moral development in children, including findings from infant research, with emphasis on the work of Robert N. Emde. Characteristics of classical psychoanalytic theory about superego development are compared with more recent insights. This is followed by a short description of two cheating games--as a measure of conscience development--played with 101 preschoolers. Some contrasts in our empirical data between the fair-play group and the children that cheated are presented and discussed in the light of the theoretical points of view. Finally some reflections on future research and the implications for parenting, prevention and clinical work are followed by suggestions for psychoanalytic theory.

The traumatic and the work of the après-coup in Freud's opus.

This text explores the evolution of the notion of trauma in Freud's work and of its decisive import for the organization of psychic functioning through a two-stage process called the après-coup. By following the three steps of Freud's theory of the drives, the author shows that the conception of the traumatic is gradually internalized to become a basic quality of all drives as a tendency to return to an earlier state, and ultimately an organic, inanimate state. An open question remains in Freud about this tendency's relation to Eros, and therefore to the links between Eros and the traumatic state. This question has remained latent within the psychoanalytic community. The author proposes to conceive of Eros as an infinitely extensible tendency that needs containing in order for it to contribute to evolving inscriptions. Thus is outlined one traumatic state as a return to the inorganic and another traumatic state as an infinite extensibility, both being transformed by the superego and its imperatives in order to generate all life forms.

Authority And Freedom.

Authority and freedom are connected, and both have external and internal forms. External authority, political or institutional, can impinge on internal freedom in ways that matter to psychoanalysts. Internal freedom requires an internal authority that can be trusted. The superego is an external authority masquerading as an internal one. The ego, with its compliance toward the id, the superego, and external reality, operates like a false self in the psyche. In Lacanian terms, it is of necessity alienated from itself. By contrast, the true self as described by Winnicott, and the "subject" as theorized especially in French psychoanalysis, represent an authentic conscience that allows us to become the authors of our at one's authority. This implies two sorts of freedom: freedom from narcissistic self-investment, and the forward-looking freedom of psychic growth. The latter occurs only in a context of relatedness to others, and it entails caring for the interests of others-if necessary at one's own expense. This vision of human beings as having an innate impetus toward psychic growth makes psychoanalysis a fundamentally optimistic endeavor. Clinical and nonclinical examples show, however, that it demands a perpetual readiness to let go of apparent certainties.

Some observations on the process of mourning.

The main proposal of this paper is that normal mourning is not completed after six months to a year or two as suggested in earlier literature, but may bring about a permanent alteration of psychological structures that affect various aspects of the mourning persons' lives. These structural consequences of mourning consist in the setting up of a persistent internalized object relationship with the lost object that affects ego and superego functions. The persistent internalized object relationship develops in parallel to the identification with the lost object, and the superego modification includes the internalization of the value systems and life project of the lost object. A new dimension of spiritual orientation, the search for transcendental value systems, is one consequence of this superego modification.

An interruption in unconscious communication in the analytic couple.

The authors describe an interruption in communication in the analyses of two patients, which gradually brings the analytic process to a halt/standstill. They propose several hypotheses for understanding this situation. One explanation is mutual identification of primitive superegos in the analytic couple which generates a moralizing effect thereby hindering investigation and discovery. They emphasize the importance of countertransference involvement which partly provokes this particular type of impasse. They also suggest the idea of shared acting out, with complementary participations of analyst and patient. In this way the analytic couple supports a 'bastion' which protects against the risk of breaking the omnipotence of patient and analyst or contributes to this omnipotence. Their shared unconscious phantasy feeds collusion linked to unconscious persecutory guilt. The authors also describe movements to break free from this impasse. The enclave created by the analytic couple is detected and subsequently worked through by way of the patient's contribution of dream material and the analyst's work with her countertransference.