Bennett Simon

Incest--see under Oedipus complex: the history of an error in psychoanalysis

This paper is intended as a contribution to the understanding of errors in our field. The title refers to the index entries “incest” in several classic psychoanalytic texts. In a way that is analogous to the defenses utilized by survivors of incest, psychoanalysis has both known and not known, avowed and disavowed, the traumatic impact of actual incest. It is argued that psychoanalysis erred in (a) focusing too heavily on the implications of incest for the Oedipus complex instead of its implications for every stage of development, and (b) missing out on the full and detailed description of the clinical pictures of incest victims and of treatment issues, including transference and countertransference. The author presents an overview of the history prompted by Massons original attack on Freud for abandoning the “seduction hypothesis.” Topics covered are: Freuds early papers, the Freud-Ferenczi controversy (1932), and the state of psychoanalytic awareness in the 1960s of the importance of actual incest. Certain features of our field make it all too likely that new errors can be generated that may similarly lake decades to recognize and undo. These include the politics of our discipline, and negative attitudes toward systematic gathering and assessment of evidence.

Is the Oedipus Complex Still the Cornerstone of Psychoanalysis? Three Obstacles to Answering the Question

Current controversies about the centrality of the Oedipus complex in psychoanalysis are difficult to resolve unless we address three obstacles in the way of rational examination. The first is that the Oedipus complex, Freuds “shibboleth” of psychoanalysis, is politically controversial. Second is the great difficulty in agreeing upon the definition and boundaries of the Oedipus complex, especially the necessary complexities introduced with the negative Oedipus complex, female sexuality, the nature of the preoedipal, and counteroedipal fantasies and actions. The third obstacle involves basic questions of psychoanalytic epistemology: our criteria for evidence to prove or disprove any particular proposition. I conclude that the awareness of these difficulties signifies a certain maturation in our thinking and that the complexity introduced by these obstacles can in time provide the groundwork for a set of formulations that is richer and closer to the complexities and ambiguities of the clinical situation.

In search of psychoanalytic technique: perspectives from on the couch and from behind the couch.

The authors experience as a patient in analysis with four different analysts is recounted. Similarities and differences in technique, especially with regard to overall analytic atmosphere, use of interpretation, reconstruction of childhood, dream interpretation, self-revelations of the analyst, and the way politics was discussed are compared. The author concludes that major differences in personality and temperament of the four analysts made a substantial difference in the experience of analysis. Finally, the author discusses whether such differences are indeed important, and in what sense we can speak of the place of analytic technique. Is it a body of leaching and practice that is aimed at minimizing the differences attributable to individual analysts style and temperament, or is it a body of teaching and practice, still to be elaborated, that gives us a full and flexible account of how analysts actually function?

The pacifist turn: an episode of mystic illumination in the autobiography of Bertrand Russell.

ERTRAND RUSSELL WAS WELL KNOWN for his enduring commitment to pacifism. During JVorld War I, he was willing to be B jailed for his unpopular stand against England’s involvement in the war, and later he protested vehemently America’s presence in Vietnam. His abhorrence of nuclear war, germ warfare, and the atrocities involved in all wars is common knowledge. Russell, however, was not always clearly of pacifist persuasion, as he noted in his autobiography. In fact he pinpointed the origins of his pacifism to a day in 1901 (he was 28 at the time), when he had an extraordinary experience. “Suddenly the ground seemed to give way beneath me, and I found myself in quite another region. . . . At the end of those five minutes, I had become a completely different person. For a time, a sort of mystic illumination possessed me. . . . Having been an imperialist, I became during those five minutes a pro-Boer and a pacifist” (1967), (pp. 220-221). It is our purpose in this paper to provide a psychodynamically meaningful explanation of why this “illumination” should have eventuated in a “conversion” to pacifism. The three volumes of Russell’s autobiography (1967, 1968, 1969) provide the main source of our information. Another important source is the fascinating collection of diaries and letters of Russell’s parents (The Amberly Papers) compiled by Russell and his third wife (1937).

Ezekiel's Geometric Vision of the Restored Temple: From the Rod of His Wrath to the Reed of His Measuring

In the biblical vision as epitomized in Ezekiel, the temple was destroyed and the people exiled because of Gods rage at the sins and crimes of the house of Israel. Biblical writers such as the author of Lamentations bear witness to the rod of Gods wrath. The angry and violent denunciations that permeate much of Ezekiels book give way to a final vision in a totally different mode, the language of measurement and geometry.1 In their geometric and numerical emphasis, chapters 40-48 of Ezekiel stand in striking contrast to the other chapters of the book, which are much more imagistic, poetic, and extravagant in language. These final chapters outline an ordered, systematic picture of Gods restoration. The book as a wholeas has been noted

Mind and Madness in Classical Antiquity

The history of psychiatry in Greek and Roman antiquity is the frame story for the history of psychiatry in the Western world as well as the history of that topic in a particular era and in particular places. That is, it is not only one current in the stream that becomes modern psychiatry, but it is also the caput Nili, “the head of the Nile.” The terminology, categories, and core ways of thinking about mind and its derangements that evolved in ancient Greece have left an indelible stamp on all subsequent thinking about these topics. The distinction between rational and irrational, the notion of an internal mental life, and the notion of psychic conflict and that psychic conflicts can be categorized, classified, studied, and systematically influenced are all legacies from classical Greece. The notion of the body as a system, as a balance, as a mechanism, as a hierarchy of organs, or as a parliament of organs—these underlie the medical models that arose from the fifth century B.C.E. onwards. Furthermore, the Greeks developed the idea that it is possible to understand how balances and imbalances among organs and body constituents influence mind and madness, how one central organ (at first believed to be the heart, but later the brain) is the organ of mental operations, and that that organ mediates influences from the outside world and from the internal world of the body. The articulation of a concept of body and a concept of mind and the realization that if the person is thus divided there is a need to find a way of conceptualizing the unity are Greek “discoveries” or presuppositions that have left a permanent mark on our thinking about thinking.1

Obstacles in the path of mental health professionals who deal with traumatic violations of human rights

This paper is divided into two parts. The first part, the longer, deals with obstacles in the path of mental health professionals becoming more involved in issues of human rights violations. The second part deals with a few of the increasing number of instances in which mental health professionals have become more involved. These discussions will center around issues involving children, although most of what is said applies to both children and adults. In referring to “human rights” violations, the boundaries between the devastation of large scale wars between nations and within nations (such as the Holocaust and the Cambodian genocide) and the harm done in more narrowly defined “human rights” violations (such as the arrest, torture, and often “disappearance” of thousands in Argentina and Chile) are not exactly clear. For our purposes, the rough working definition of human rights violations includes the devastation wrought by plans to persecute and destroy individuals, classes, ethnic groups or religious sects, independent of the absolute numbers involved. The involvements of mental health professionals to which I refer break down into three main categories. The first is short-term assessment and evaluation (as part of ascertaining the harm done to the victims), often performed in conjunction with human rights and legal investigations. Examples of this category include the role of psychiatrists in evaluating the claims of Holocaust survivors for reparations from the German government (beginning in the 1950s) and the role of mental health professionals in evaluating victims of torture in several Latin American regimes. The second category is the longer term assistance and treatment of victims of human rights violations. This longer term commitment entails different demands, problems, and rewards than the first sort. A third type of involvement occurs when mental health professionals assess large scale situations in which large numbers of people have been damaged. These professionals feed information to governments, relief agencies, and international agencies, hoping the information will affect policy. Examples of this are the pioneering work of John Bowlby (Bowlby, 1951) in surveying the needs of European children in the wake of World War II devastation and the work of Richard Mollica and his co-workers in Cambodian

How Law, Remorse, and Forgiveness Contribute to Psychological Repair Commentary on Gobodo-Madikizela

T his magnificent paper by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela announces in its title the notion of “repair,” repair for those suffering as victims of “gross human rights violations,” but also repair for the perpetrators of such violations. It is my understanding that, by the nature of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “repair” involves two overlapping but separable issues: (1) whether or not amnesty will be granted to confessed perpetrators, in whole or in part, for their crimes, “gross human rights violations” committed during the apartheid regime, and (2) whether or not reconciliation takes place between perpetrators and victims (often the families of victims), a process that includes “remorse and forgiveness.” The first is a legal question, complex enough in its own right. The granting of amnesty hinges on the perpetrators’ agreeing to admit completely, and publicly disclose, the acts they committed and to name others who were involved. It is my impression that the degree of remorse shown was a factor in evaluating the sincerity and hence the truthfulness of the perpetrator. But for the second issue—not strictly a legal matter but rather a process that might lead to reconciliation—remorse is vital for forgiveness to be granted, and thus for some measure of reconciliation to occur. The wish for “reconciliation and reconstruction” in the post-amble of the Interim Constitution of 1991 binds the two parts together. In this paper by Gobodo-Madikizela the main focus is on the