George E. Atwood

Deconstructing the myth of the neutral analyst: an alternative from intersubjective systems theory.

A critique is offered of four conceptions of neutrality that have been prominent in the psychoanalytic literature: neutrality as (1) abstinence, (2) anonymity, (3) equidistance, and (4) empathy. It is argued that once the psychoanalytic situation is recognized as an intersubjective system of reciprocal mutual influence, the concept of neutrality is revealed to be an illusion. Hence, interpretations are always suggestions, transference is always contaminated, and analysis are never objective. An alternative to neutrality is found in the investigatory stance of empathic-introspective inquiry. This mode of inquiry is sharply distinguished from the prescribing of self-expressive behavior on the part of analysis, and the distinction is illustrated with a clinical vignette.

Credo and Reflections

This paper offers a series of reflections on 50 years of experience as a psychotherapist. The topics covered include recollections of working with the most severe psychological disturbances, the risks and rewards of clinical practice, the indispensable importance to the clinician of self knowledge, and the ways that psychotherapy transforms not only the patient but also the therapist. The most significant future directions of work in the field of psychoanalytic psychotherapy are also discussed.

Walking the Tightrope of Emotional Dwelling

This essay seeks to characterize an active, relationally engaged form of therapeutic comportment called emotional dwelling. Distinctive features of this mode of comportment are identified by contrasting it with corresponding formulations appearing in other theoretical viewpoints, including those of Freud, Ferenczi, Sullivan, and Kohut. Central in emotional dwelling is the therapist’s capacity to enter into a patient’s reality even while simultaneously holding to his or her own.

The demons of phenomenological contextualism: a conversation.

Over the course of some 40 years, our work has been centrally devoted to liberating psychoanalytic theory and practice from various forms of Cartesian, isolated-mind thinking (Descartes, 1641/1989) en route to a post-Cartesian psychoanalytic perspective. We would characterize the essence of a post-Cartesian psychoanalytic framework as phenomenological contextualism (Atwood, 2011; Stolorow, Atwood, & Orange, 2002). The framework is phenomenological in that it investigates and illuminates organizations or worlds of emotional experience. It is contextual in that it holds that such organizations of emotional experience take form, both developmentally and in the psychoanalytic situation, in constitutive relational or intersubjective contexts. Why phenomenological contextualism? The way we see it is that our original studies of the subjective origins of personality theories in Faces in a Cloud (Atwood & Stolorow, 1993; Stolorow & Atwood, 1979) put us on a lifelong path of rethinking psychoanalysis phenomenologically, hence our early proposals for a “psychoanalytic phenomenology.” Our unwavering dedication to phenomenological inquiry, in turn, led us inexorably to the context-embeddedness of all emotional experience—hence our contextualism. It strikes us that our path from phenomenology to phenomenological contextualism mirrors that taken in the movement from Husserl’s still-Cartesian phenomenology to Heidegger’s phenomenological contextualism (Stolorow, 2011). A contextualist viewpoint actually was implicit in our thinking from the beginning, in that we always have tried to under

The Abyss of Madness: An Interview

A transcribed interview with a psychiatrist, Dr. E, is presented, focusing on the understanding and treatment of psychotic states. Dr. E, a dedicated clinician who has devoted much of his long career to the study of the psychoses, prefers anonymity in order to be able to speak freely. The topics covered include annihilation states, hallucinations and delusions, the origins of psychotic states in the failure of sustaining human relationships, and considerations regarding psychotherapeutic intervention in the psychoses.

The Phenomenological Circle and the Unity of Life and Thought

This paper describes the important role of our deep immersions in philosophy in the development of our phenomenological-contextualist approach to psychoanalysis. Influenced most particularly by the phenomenological movement, our collaborative dialogue over more than four decades has led us to a shared commitment to reflection upon the philosophical underpinnings and constitutive contexts of origin of all our theoretical ideas. The growth of our thinking follows an endlessly recurring phenomenological circle joining theoretical perspectives with the inquirers from whose emotional worlds they arise.

THERE MUST BE BLOOD

It is argued that in the effective psychotherapy of patients suffering with severe trauma, there is always blood that is shed. This blood may be metaphorical but is often literal. In its absence, it is unlikely that anything of real value has occurred.

Varieties of Mind-Body Disunity

This chapter is a phenomenological study of varied forms of lived mind-body disunity. Two broad types of such disunity are envisioned—those mediated by concrete bodily symbols and those that might be characterized as failures to symbolize. The first type includes hysterical conversion symptoms, hypochondriacal anxieties, and certain severe dissociative states, whereas instances of the second can be found in psychosomatic disturbances. Clinical examples of each are presented.

Experiencing Selfhood Is Not “A Self”

Kohut’s lasting and most important contribution to psychoanalytic clinical theory was his recognition that the experiencing of selfhood is always constituted, both developmentally and in psychoanalytic treatment, in a context of emotional interrelatedness. The experiencing of selfhood, he realized, or of its collapse, is context-embedded through and through. The theoretical language of self psychology with its noun, “the self,” reifies the experiencing of selfhood and transforms it into a metaphysical entity with thing-like properties, in effect undoing Kohut’s hard-won clinical contextualizations. The language of such decontextualizing objectifications bewitches intelligence in order to evade the tragic dimension of finite human existing.

Commentary on “Impasse-able”

This commentary on Melanie Suchet’s “Impasse-able” acknowledges the success of the clinical work described, but is critical nevertheless of certain of the author’s assumptions which, it is argued, made the treatment more difficult than it had to be. Central in the criticism were two points: (1) Suchet seems to have confused a protective system created by her patient with a so-called pathological introjection deriving from severe child abuse; and (2) A Cartesian view of her patient as “psychotic” (out of contact with the externally real) haunts the clinical descriptions and appears to have hindered the therapeutic process for a long period. These difficulties notwithstanding, the therapy convincingly eventuates in a healing experience. This paper is an important contribution to the literature on impasses in psychotherapy.