The couch and the clinic The cultural authority of popular psychiatry and psychoanalysis

This paper examines the discourse produced by psychiatrists and psychoanalysts who wrote for non-professional audiences. As professionals who reached out beyond their professions, their writing raises questions about the authority they invoked. The two factions in this popular psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis, staked out cultural authority using systematically different types of appeals. The psychiatric approach involved a ‘pure’ professionalism, invoking psychiatry’s similarities to medicine. The psychoanalytic approach involved an explicit dissociation from medical authority, and claimed a difference from medical expertise as a mark of intellectual transcendence. What becomes clear is that these standpoints were constructed through discourse as types of strategic positionings. Concluding notes address the idea that Antonio Gramsci’s labels of ‘organic’ and ‘traditional’ are not only types of intellectuals; they are also stakes in the game amongst competitors for cultural authority. This insight is then applied to broader considerations regarding public intellectuals.     

Can Anyone Here Know Who I Am? Co-constructing Meaningful Narratives With Combat Veterans

The discourse on psychosocial reintegration of combat veterans in the United States has largely been confined to discussions of the best treatment for those diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. Yet analysis of the data indicates that all combat veterans are changed by their experience. It also indicates that the current medical model of treatment is insufficient. The author suggests that another model is called for; one that benefits from psychoanalytic insights on war and violence. A model that supports veterans’ experience of changed consciousness might best help them form a coherent narrative that connects their past lives and combat experience to their lives going forward. She argues that this approach may not have been taken because the same mental processes that cause combat veterans to split off their experiences also cause society as a whole to distance itself from them. Clinicians can be most effective when they create a link to the veteran by acknowledging the veteran as part of society, not a split off aberration, and recognizing the universal role of aggression within and without in creating the war that the veterans fought, and shaping the social response to their return. Literature drawn from psychoanalysis, cognitive neuroscience, and clinicians from the global south is combined with that of military psychiatry and global relief and development to support these positions.     

Emergent Subjectivity: The Parallel Temporalities of Psychoanalysis and Social Theory

Kirsten Lentz uses Preciado’s Testo Junkie (2013) as an occasion to explore the rivalry between psychoanalysis and social theory in their attempts to account for human subjectivity. Although a commonsense view holds that the 2 fields have completely different relationships to temporality—psychoanalysts fix their gaze to the past, whereas social theorists imagine radical futures—the distinction is more complex than it appears. The analyst does not lead the patient toward the past but holds and guards the place of futurity so that new experiences of subjectivity eventually become available. Like “theory,” then, psychoanalysis tries to make room for “emergent subjectivity,” for ways of being in the world that have not yet been imagined or formulated, that have not yet been born in the mind of culture. Lentz thus insists that the radical critique of gender can and should be understood as fundamental to the work of psychoanalysis.     

Inside the Revolution: Power,Sex, and Technique in Freud’s “‘Wild’ Analysis”

ABSTRACT

This essay situates Freud’s “‘Wild’ Analysis” in its local and global histories, even while reading it for what it can tell us about psychoanalysis now. Even as it is taken on its own terms, this essay serves also as a means to consider psychoanalysis as host to crucial tensions, its ideas and their relation to technique, its traffic in power, and sexuality and the primal crime. Using a clinical vignette, the essay argues the heterogeneity and multiplicity inherent to psychoanalysis are a gift to later generations, even if they made trouble for Freud. In celebration and critique, it examines, in effect, where Freud was and where psychoanalysis is now.     

To Whom Does the Subject Speak? Between the Relational and Lacanian Schools of Psychoanalysis: A Conversation With Adrienne Harris and David Lichtenstein,Moderated by Chris Christian

Relational psychoanalysis is a relatively new but increasingly present school in contemporary psychoanalysis. Lacanian psychoanalysis is a dominant presence in France and South America but far less so in the English-speaking clinical world. And there is little contact between them. Adrienne Harris, one of the founders of relational psychoanalysis, and David Lichtenstein, a prominent New York-based Lacanian-influenced psychoanalyst, came together in the spring of 2012 for a rare conversation about the differences, similarities, and potential meeting points between these two psychoanalytic movements. The conversation spanned a wide psychoanalytic landscape from the origins and influences of these two movements to their conceptualization of basic psychoanalytic notions such as the unconscious, the self, the process and purpose of the psychoanalytic project, the nature of trauma, the work of interpretation, and the role of the analytic relationship. Ferenczi, Winnicott, and Bromberg offered common theoretical ground for this comparative conversation.     

Integration and alternatives: Some current issues in psychoanalytic theory

The first great bridge between psychoanalysis and social work came with the concepts of ego psychology which provided a synthesis between the worlds of the social order and the psychological depths. Current psychoanalytic theorists now question whether any one psychological theory is sufficient to describe the complexity of human experience, and suggest that each theory has a piece of the truth because it states something that is correct about the patient at a particular time in the treatment. Adherence to multiple theories makes a complex problem for the clinical practitioner, who must decide from which perspective to respond to the clinical material of the moment. Psychoanalytic theorists are also questioning the degree to which it is actually the content of the therapist's interpretations which brings about change in the patient. This article suggests that these developments in psychoanalysis, with their emphasis on therapeutic flexibility and the importance of the relationship will renew and reinvigorate the bridge between psychoanalysis and clinical social work.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the First Clinical Conference of the National Federation of Societies for Clinical Social work.     

Bourdieu and psychoanalysis: an empirical and textual study of a pas de deux

This paper aims to elucidate some of the similarities between the Bourdieusian and a psychoanalytical approach to understand the individual and the social, and to describe Bourdieu's relation to psychoanalysis. The paper begins by reflecting upon the way a research on anorexia was received and perceived by some psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. Such a case study puts into light several analogies between Bourdieu's theoretical position, his epistemological style and psychoanalysis. Then, some texts by Bourdieu, especially a discussion with the psychoanalyst and sociologist Jacques Maître, are analysed in order to further explore Bourdieu's position vis‐à‐vis psychoanalysis and to assess the influence of psychoanalysis on his conception of the individual habitus. Finally, the paper discusses the possible contradictions arising between these borrowings and the principles of Bourdieusian epistemology. The paper thus suggests that the Bourdieusian approach is better analysed as a ‘sociologization'of psychoanalysis rather than as an approach complementing or integrating psychoanalysis.     

Discharge Planning Process on a General Psychiatry Unit

Abstract

This study investigates the discharge-planning process and short-term outcomes for 100 patients discharged from a general psychiatry unit. The contributions of functional/illness factors, personal factors, and family factors to communication of the plan, length of stay, and satisfaction with discharge-planning process were investigated. Findings indicate that both the process and short-term outcomes of discharge planning are affected by factors that can be addressed in interventions with patients, families and the social environment. This research suggests that discharge planning without attention to psychosocial factors will fail to address issues relevant to patient well-being.     

Factors Associated with Business and Family Success: A Comparison of Single Manager and Dual Manager Family Business Households

The purposes of this article are: (1) to identify internal/micro-level factors associated with perception of family and business success, and (2) to compare single manager and dual manager family business households with respect to factors that contribute to their perceptions of business and family success. The data are from a nationally representative sample of 673 family business households. Using a two-stage least squares regression procedure, the results show a unique relationship between family success and business success. Family success positively impacts business success, but not vice versa, and predictors of family and business success vary widely between household types.     

American Moralism,the Good,and Psychoanalysis

This brief comment introduces a panel on Abelove’s classic contribution to psychoanalysis. The papers were recruited for the journal following a heated discussion between panelists and audience debating whether their psychoanalytic work could be considered free of ideas of the Good, or Ideology.     

Fathers Don’t Cry: On Gender,Kinship, and the Death Drive

ABSTRACT

A while ago, I was asked whether psychoanalysis had anything special to say about tears. Thinking through this question, it became clear to me that we cannot think about tears in psychoanalysis without thinking about gender—more specifically, the particular view of gender that psychoanalysis has been built upon, and for the most part retains, because this particular view solves for psychoanalysis some basic problems that it does not have the conceptual repertoire to address. This article goes on a journey through the story of boys, Samson from the Hebrew bible, a young New York boy who falls of his bike, Freud’s three sons and his theoretically adoptive son Karl Abraham, and one of my patients. It is a journey through the civilization-long prohibition on parents and boys to attach, a prohibition that I argue serves the arch-value of sacrifice by which patriarchy is driven. I also trace in this journey the story of the controversial and powerful analytic concept of the death drive. And I argue that this concept, born during and after World War I, bears the mark of the frightened, homo-attachment-phobic impulse that has taken over a psychoanalysis unable to cope with the madness of a world war without blaming the victim. I offer toward the end a glimpse of an alternative.     

Child Psychiatry in the Chinese Setting

This article introduces the history and social background and describes the present situation of child psychiatry in China. Certain Chinese social, political and cultural issues are explored, as the one-child policy and the Chinese family structure. Numerous currents of thought coexist in Chinese child psychiatry. Four examples of mental health disorders in child and adolescent psychiatry and their treatments in the Chinese public health care system are described (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anorexia nervosa, posttraumatic stress disorder and internet addiction).     

El Miedo y El Hambre: Understanding the Familial,Social, and Educational Realities of Undocumented Latino Families in North Central Indiana

This study explored how different ecological factors, within and outside the family, affected the educational success of the children of undocumented families. The sample consisted of 63 immigrant Latino parents (40 families) who resided in North Central Indiana. This study utilized an ethnographic research design. Findings demonstrated that immigration laws were affecting the educational success of the children of undocumented families. Most parents expressed lack of familiarity of the American educational system and that they had culture and language barriers. Findings also demonstrated that undocumented families were adapting to their realities, as a result of the resiliency in their families and communities. Implications for practice and future research were provided.     

The Economimesis of New Historicism (Or How New Historicism Displaced Theory in English Literature Departments)

The form of historicism that has had most impact in the context of literary theory in the Anglophone academy is new historicism. The label new historicism was applied to an initially American mode of literary study that emerged in the late 1970s in the context of “heated discussions” surrounding theorised forms of literary study like Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, post‐structuralism and deconstruction. Having emerged in this context, however, new historicism — and the more broader forms of historicist study that have migrated across a variety of disciplines in the arts and humanities — has thrived in the Academy while interest in “theory” has declined since the 1990s. In this article I propose to look closely at the reasons for the survival and success of new historicism, even as other, more radical modes of analysis have become unfashionable.     

The Relationship Between Social Work and Psychoanalysis: The Future Impact of Social Workers

Because social workers are likely to have a more expanded role within organized psychoanalysis than previously, it seems timely to consider the numerous challenges and opportunities ahead with respect to social workers’ impact on the practice of psychoanalysis. For those who become social work psychoanalysts, in particular, a pivotal issue is the degree to which they retain their core identity as clinical social workers. It is important for them to integrate and balance the diverse aspects of their dual identity, to participate in our social work organizations, to contribute to developing psychoanalysis, and to work to keep the teaching of contemporary psychoanalytic theories alive in social work education.

The Family Movement,Bowen Theory,and Theoretical Medicine: A View from the 21st Century

Important changes have occurred in the family movement in the United States since it emerged in the mid‐1950s. Psychiatry supported the movement in its early years, but that changed as psychiatry abandoned the biopsychosocial model and adopted the biological paradigm through the 1970s. This development pushed family and other therapies to the periphery of the discipline. Medicine is dominated by the biological paradigm and cause‐and‐effect thinking. The roots of the medical model go back to Pasteur. In contrast, psychiatry in the United States had been dominated through the 20^th century by psychoanalytic thinking, which rendered the discipline a step‐child to medicine. This and other factors pushed psychiatry to get biological. The change generated a ‘failure of nerve’ in the family movement, abandoning the role of the family in schizophrenia in the face of psychiatry's assertion that all serious mental illnesses had nothing to do with the family. Other important changes separating the family movement from psychiatry occurred as well. Bowen theory is anchored in biology and evolution, but it is not a biological paradigm. Maintaining solid connections to the scientific disciplines are important for keeping the theory an open system. The recent emergence of systems biology and systems medicine could challenge psychiatry's allegiance to the biological paradigm and bring family systems theory centre stage in the discipline. These new disciplines may also arrive at a systems theory of the individual that can be integrated with family theory, powering a paradigm shift in medicine as a whole.     

Love Has No End: Ghada Amer

Art, like psychoanalysis, is a site for cultural transmission and its critique. The work of Ghada Amer, an Egyptian living in New York, speaks to issues that beleaguer contemporary psychoanalysis, particularly the relationship between individuals and their cultural/political surrounds. Her gorgeous paintings, often combining brushwork and embroidery, are infused with concerns such as the submission of women to the tyranny of domestic life, sexuality and pleasure, and the incomprehensibility of love. Amer tackles in a candid and personal way the mystique and impasse between the Western gaze and Islam, inviting us to examine the foolishness of war and violence. The different elements in Amer's paintings speak to the multiplicity of identities that confuse our postmodern existence. They share a life on the canvas, creating a sequence of interpellations, each hailing a different self-state yet allowing us to examine how ideologies work to imprison us.     

Playstation and the Power of Unexpected Consequences

It has been suggested that research business strategy is like studying specimens on a wall. By examining successful stories, one can easily identify the strategic factors responsible for such a success, and the greater the success, the more evident those factors are. Timing, strategic positioning, pricing policies, lead-time - everything goes back to the place where it fits best, like a beautiful mosaic. Even competitors' mistakes become more evident, their dull misunderstanding of what the winner was planning as every successful move leads to an even more successful one. The case of Sony PlayStation, the most successful digital games console ever, is no exception and the temptation to explain the rationale behind such an achievement is almost irresistible. As this paper tries to suggest, sometimes ex- post rationalizations hide or avoid part of the truth. Despite PlayStation's success, Sony's strategic choices were, on more than one occasion, driven more by lucky coincidence than by long-range planning. Furthermore, this paper shows how some of the strategic factors behind PlayStation's winning run sprang from decisions taken by lack of alternatives, and that only in the very end was Sony able to understand their full profit potential.     

The impact of expert evidence on care proceedings

There has been an increased demand for expert child psychiatric opinion in child care cases where social services have instigated care proceedings under the Children Act 1989. However, there has been little evaluation of this work in terms of whether such a referral changes the care plan of the referring social work agency or the outcome for the child. This article examines the contribution to care proceedings of assessment reports completed by a child and adolescent forensic psychiatry team in respect of 37 consecutive child care cases. All of the assessments were presented to court and the information was collated once the proceedings were completed. Our findings indicated that the court followed the recommendations of the child psychiatric report entirely in 73% of cases. In addition, in 86% of cases the social service departments reported that they had gained confirmation of their professional opinion. In only 10% of cases did they change their care plan in response to the child psychiatric assessment. In conclusion, the results suggest that in most cases social service departments are using child psychiatry expert evidence merely to validate and/or lend support to their original care plans. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.