A role-reversal in the mother-daughter relationship

Psychoanalytic theorists have noted a particular dynamic in the mother-infant relationship in which the emotional needs of the mother predominate. When this situation occurs, the emotional needs of the infant may go unmet, resulting in impaired self-development. Through an integration of the ideas of mainstream psychoanalytic theorists and feminist psychoanalytic thinkers, this paper proposes the idea that, because of the intensity of the mother-daughter relationship, this dynamic may be more prevalent between mothers and daughters than between mothers and sons. A mother-daughter relationship is described in which the mother comes to depend on her daughter for emotional attunement and response, and the mother's selfobject needs predominate. As a consequence, the daughter is unable to develop a cohesive sense of self and experiences difficulty in achieving separation. Two clinical reports are presented to illustrate the way in which this mother-daughter dynamic manifests itself in the patient's life and in the therapeutic relationship. A negative transference dynamic is described resulting from these patient's fear of duplicating their relationship with their mothers in the therapeutic relationship by having to meet the selfobject needs of the therapist.     

A sociolinguistic application of Bakhtin's authoritative and internally persuasive discourse

Through the use of two central Bakhtinian concepts, authoritative and internally persuasive discourse (word), this paper examines the tension between the ideology of linguistic hegemony as a source of power in the Greek public sphere and the condition of language shift faced by the Albanian‐speaking communities of modern Greece. I argue here that a cautious application of these two notions, which are relevant to linguistic ideology, can reveal crucial aspects of two processes: that of subordination to and that of questioning of the dominant linguistic ideology by local Albanian‐speaking communities. Thus, in language shift contexts, it is possible that no simple relations obtain that place social agents in unquestionable and easily predictable positions. Such an approach proves useful for the sociolinguistic study of threatened language communities.     

From critical sociology to public intellectual: Pierre Bourdieu and politics

By the late 1990s, Pierre Bourdieu had become the primary public intellectual of major social scientific status at the head of the anti-globalization movement that emerged in France and in other Western European countries. This article discusses how Bourdieu became a leading public intellectual, a role that seems to contrast with his early years as a professional sociologist. It explores what seemed to change in Bourdieu’s activities and outlook as sociologist and what seems to have remained constant. It identifies several institutional conditions that seemed necessary for Bourdieu to be able to play the kind of public intellectual role he did in his later years. Bourdieu’s movement from a peripheral position to a central location in the French intellectual field, the changing character of the field itself, the growing influence of the mass media in French political and cultural life, the failures of the French Socialists in power, a cultural legacy of leading critical intellectuals in France, a unifying national issue of globalization, and the political conjuncture in 1995 all intersected in ways that opened a path for Bourdieu to choose new and more frequent forms of political action. His responses to that combination of factors at different moments reveal both a striking continuity in desire to preserve the autonomy of intellectual life and a change in view and strategy on how best to do that. The article concludes with a brief evaluation of Bourdieu’s public intellectual role.     

Projective Identification as a Contributor to Domestic Violence

Many explanations have been given as to why men batter. Rarely are deep unconscious intrapsychic processes identified as contributing reasons. One way that violent men may use their partner to fill emotional needs is through the primitive defense of projective identification. Projective identification may be invoked by men to induce the other partner to carry split off threatening parts of the self that are too anxiety provoking to retain. The occurrence of projective identification could therefore be an important intrapsychic and interpersonal dynamic that contributes to the escalation of tension prior to the violent episode.