Journal

The Assembly of Delegates in Stockholm (August 1991) decided to start a new international psychoanalytic journal, The International Forum of Psychoanalysis (IFP). It is meant to be a meeting place for all psychoanalysts, independent of international affiliation and theoretical orientation. The journal promotes articles demonstrating clinical experience and interest in revising or expanding psychoanalytic theory. The IFP is issued quarterly and the first issue appeared in June 1992. Subscriptions are also available for interested professionals outside of the IFPS (Subscriptions, distribution and back issues: orders@tandf.co.uk )

Contents of issues:

Vol 12: 2 June 2003

Vol 10: 1 March 2001

Vol 9:3/4 October 2000

International Forum of Psychoanalysis (IFP) Home Page: http://WWW.tandf.no/ifp

Editor-in-Chief:

Christer Sjödin (Sweden) e-mail: sjodin.christer@telia.com

Marco Conci (Germany and Italy) e-mail: MarcoConci@aol.com or mconci@tin.it

Publishing Editor: 

Elisabeth Alexis Medin (Sweden) Email: Elisabeth.Alexis-Medin@se.tandf.no

Assistant Editors:

Maarit Arppo (Finland) e-mail: maarit.arppo@pp.inet.fi

Carlo Bonomi (Italy) e-mail: mail@bonomicarlo.191.it

Per Binder (Norway) e-mail: per.binder@psykp.uib.no

Corresponding Editors:

Christopher Bollas (UK)

Per Magnus Johansson (Sweden)

Luis Eduardo Prado Oliveira (France)

Regional Editors:

Central Europe (German): Michael Ermann (Germany)

Southern Europe (Roman languages): Rómulo Aguillaume (Spain)

Northern Europe: Christer Sjödin (Sweden)

North America: Valerie Tate Angel (USA)

South America: Eliana Rodrigues Pereira Mendes (Brazil).

Book Review Editor: Maarit Arppo (Finland) Email: maarit.arppo@pp.inet.fi

CONTENTS OF VOL 12: 2, JUNE 2003

EDITORIAL: Lothane, Z. Power Politics and Psychoanalysis -- an Introduction

ARTICLES AND ABSTRACTS:

Nitzschke Bernd. Psychoanalysis and National Socialism. Banned or Brought into Conformity? Break or Continuity?

Was psychoanalysis in Germany “destroyed” or “saved” in the period 1933-1945? To this day ever new answers are given to the question, answers which depend on the time and the interests involved. This contribution seeks to reconstruct once again the steps leading to the incorporation in 1936 of the German Psychoanalytic Society (Deutsche Psychoanalytische Gesellschaft [DPG]) into the National Socialist German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy (Deutsches Institut für psychologische Forschung und Psychotherapie). This process of incorporation, which was intended as a "rescue" and led to the self-disbandment of the DPG in 1938, took place during ongoing talks between Felix Boehm and Carl Müller-Braunschweig, officials of the DPG, on the one hand, and Ernest Jones, president of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA), on the other. The process was connected to yet another desideratum: the expulsion of Wilhelm Reich from the DPG/IPA.

Reich Rubin L. Wilhelm Reich and Anna Freud: His Expulsion from Psychoanalysis.

This article describes the growth of hostility to Wilhelm Reich in the psychoanalytic community over his Marxist ideology and activism as well as disagreements over the death instinct. It describes the behind the scenes political manipulations between Ernest Jones and Anna Freud to effect the expulsion of Reich both from the Vienna and Berlin local psychoanalytic societies and from the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). It describes Reich’s reactions to these events. Further it describes the pressure placed on other psychoanalysts to stop supporting him and also to the revision of history about the expulsion. It discusses the use of the term “crazy” as it was used in the psychoanalytic movement. Further the article discusses personality attributes of Anna Freud leading to counter-transference possessiveness to children and women especially patients. And briefly touches on the attitudes of both Sigmund and Anna toward sex and how this furthered the clash with Reich. It discusses similarity between Anna’s actions toward the Burlingham children and what happened to the children of Reich.

Reichmayr J, Mühlleitner E. Psychoanalysis in Austria after 1933/34. History and Historiography.

Our essay focuses on major developments of the history of psychoanalysis during the fascist and National Socialist years in Austria and sheds light on the re-establishment of psychoanalysis after World War II. With the consolidation of National Socialism in Germany in 1933 and Austrofascism in 1934, any psychoanalytical reflection that was critical of political and cultural trends was extinguished. Vienna – once again – became the center of the psychoanalytical movement in Central Europe, taking over the role Berlin had played during the twenties. But, during the Austrofascist system, psychoanalysis was isolated from an important part of its public. Psychoanalysts reacted by adopting an attitude of political abstinence, accompanied by self-censorship, they concentrated on training and clinical work, or they went into exile. Austria’s Anschluß to the National Socialist Third Reich led to the final destruction of psychoanalysis. Nearly all Viennese analysts were affected by the anti-Jewish measures of the National Socialists and almost all of them fled the country. During the war years, a small group of people under the leadership of August Aichhorn tried to continue psychoanalytic training. Its members refounded the Viennese Psychoanalytical Society in early 1946. But, scientific traditions were broken and tendencies of anti-enlightenment, especially clerical and catholic prejudices, had continued from the time of Austrofascism and Nationalsocialism. The last chapter of our essay summarizes the research topics and the main historiographical studies done in the field.

Stroeken H. Psychoanalysis in the Netherlands during WWII

To understand what happened in the psychoanalytic world in Holland during the German occupation (1940-1945) we must have knowledge of the conflicts within the Dutch Society for Psychoanalysis in the nineteen-thirties. Those conflicts mainly deal with the subject of lay analysis, the compulsory training analysis and in general if compliance with foreign, with IPA rules was advisable. These differences of opinion reached their peak when four Jewish psychoanalysts arrived from Germany in 1933. The Dutch Society broke up in two parts, but was reunited in 1938. During the German occupation the training was finally regulated according to the IPA rules. This lead to a new splitting in the world of Dutch psychoanalysis that has not been healed to date.

de Mijolla A. Psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts in France between 1939 and 1945

France was affected by a deep psychoanalytic silence, both in theoretical and clinical fields, throughout the four years of German occupation. The psychoanalytic Institute closed its doors and the Revue française de Psychanalyse interrupted its publication as soon as the armistice was declared in 1940. Some people, e.g. Rudolf Loewenstein or Princess Marie Bonaparte emigrated, others fought, for instance, Sacha Nacht or Paul Schiff. Daniel Lagache went on with his researches under the auspices of the University of Strasbourg which had sought shelter in Clermont-Ferrand. René Laforgue cooperated with the German occupier; after the Liberation of France in 1944 he was discarded from a group in which, a few years before, he may have entertained the hope of playing an outstanding role. Quite a few of those he analysed remained faithful to him – which was to have an important bearing on the evolution of the psychoanalytic movement in France after 1945. In 1945, indeed, the new generation emerging from the last convulsions of the war, were to gather around the most influential potential leaders: Sacha Nacht and Jacques Lacan. Only after the latency of those silent years, only after those years of violent struggles and cowardice, would the psychoanalytic elaboration appear, along with the institutional feuds to which they gave rise – in a conflictual climate amounting to the scission of 1953.

Johansson PM. Fleeing from one place, searching for another.

The history of psychoanalysis also tells the story of how individuals were uprooted. Oppression and persecution forced Jewish psychoanalysts into exile during the interwar period and the Second World War. An account of the history of psychoanalysis in a particular country is also bound to mirror international conditions. This article tells the life story of a psychoanalyst of Jewish descent. However, it also tells another story, namely the painful history of psychoanalysis. The life of the Jewish psychoanalyst, Lajos Székely (1904-1995), who found his way to Sweden in May 1944, summarises and distils the destiny of other Jewish psychoanalysts. The article describes the life of a psychoanalyst, but is at the same time about what he represents in a more general sense. It is about the many Jewish psychoanalysts who were forced to flee and who, although the flight was finally over, still uprooted, were compelled to seek a place and a purpose in a new social environment.

Gifford S. Emigré Analysts in Boston, 1930-1940.

A brief history of the European analysts who settled in Boston during the first decade of the newly re-organized Boston Psychoanalytic Society/Institute, as part of the great intellectual migration fleeing from Hitler Germany and Austria. The term émigré was chosen as more inclusive, since not all were refugees forced to emigrate. The sequence of each analyst’s arrival is traced, and their reasons for choosing Boston are identified, whenever possible.

BOOK REVIEW

Marco Conci: Goggin JE, Brockman Goggin E. Death of a 'Jewish Science'. Psychoanalysis in the Third Reich

CONTENTS OF VOL 10: 1 MARCH 2001

Trauma – Life and Death: A Transcultural Approach

EDITORIAL: Trauma – Life and Death: A Transcultural Approach

ARTICLES AND ABSTRACTS:

Lussana Pierandrea. Sincerity at Risk: Psychoanalysis Applied to the Child and to Art or Dedicated to Extended Metapsychology?

Sincerity: A Study in the Atmosphere of Human Relations, a previously unpublished book, appearing in D. Meltzer’s Collected Papers, explores The Dwarfs, The Birthday Party and The Homecoming by Harold Pinter, both the capacity to communicate genuine emotion and its limitation by the subject’s inability to say-what-he-means, because of rigidity and coldness, and to mean-what-he-says, because of an integrated narcissistic structure. That the language of dreams is perhaps the lingua franca of emotionality and the key to aesthetics is the book’s conclusion, with a clear indication of the books to come. This article surveys the relevance of the notion of sincerity in Meltzer’s further work, in its clinical and metapsychological aspects.

Landerholm Lotta. The Experience of Abandonment and Adoption, as a Child and as a Parent, in a Psychological Motivational Perspective

The adopted child has experiences of loss, changes of goals for attachment, and of being biologically separate in the family, which are similar to the experiences of adoptive parents who are infertile. In this paper, the correspondence of experiences between the adopted child and the infertile adoptive parents will be examined with the motivational system theory constructed by Joseph Lichtenberg. This theory is based on psychoanalytical knowledge as well as on infant research. It comprises five motivational systems, all existing from the beginning of life, which promote the fulfilment and regulation of: 1. the need for psychic regulation of physiological requirements, 2. the need for attachment and later affiliation, 3. the need for exploration and assertion, 4. the need to react aversively through antagonism or withdrawal (or both) and 5. the need for sensual enjoyment and (later) sexual excitement. In regard to these basic needs, infertile parents have certain experiences that correspond to and correlate with those of the abandoned child. This implies a risk for the development of the adoptive family as well as a possibility for growth. The author suggests potential healing factors that may exist within an infertile couple regarding meeting and understanding an abandoned child.

Lindbom-Jakobson Marika and Lindgren Lena. Integration or Sealing-Over

A Pilot Study of Coping Strategies of Severely Traumatised Patients

To improve the initial decision about recommended treatment strategies for patients who have experienced political persecution and torture we needed an instrument that could help us observe patients’ coping styles. In order to assess coping style the Integration/Sealing-over Global Scale was adapted for man-made traumatic experiences. A semi-structured interview-guide regarding crucial psycho-dynamic aspects relevant to these experiences was created. In order to try out the interview-guide, interviews were conducted with four former patients. Whether psychoanalytical psychotherapy can influence the patient’s coping style is also discussed.

Thome Astrid. The Symbiosis between a Mother and Her Schizophrenic Son in a Group Therapeutic Process

This paper deals with the unconscious symbiosis between a woman and her grown up son, which has been maintained for a long time although the son is already grown up. The son had been diagnosed as schizophrenic for quite some time. The mother attends group psychotherapy together with patients with different diagnoses. The son underwent intense inpatient psychotherapy but subsequently refused treatment in an ambulant therapy. Nevertheless he improved and took responsibility for his own life (profession, partnership) in the same measure as his mother used the group psychotherapy for herself, learned to experience her own suffering and initiated her own separation process. The author presents material from the mother’s group psychotherapeutic process as well as the development of her dreams with additional dream reports and statements from her son with regard to specific interview questions. The author examines the hypothesis that there is a direct synergetic relation of unconscious processes between mother and son.

A MEXICAN – FINNISH SEMINAR

Barroso Ana Maria. In The Theater of Confusion: Mourning and Its Consequences for a Four-Year-Old Child

The way in which the parent’s conscious and unconscious fantasies are transmitted to the infant has been an intense object of study. The author discuses the influence of those parental mental representations on a child, even after the mother’s death, specifically focusing on the consequences of the child’s unresolved bereavement.

Bustamante Juan José. Understanding Hope. Persons in the Proces of Dying

This article describes the experience of dying, shared in the therapeutic process by the psychoanalyst and patients suffering from incurable or terminal illness. Chronic illnesses and the possibility of death places the patient and the family in a disturbing and stressful situation, that requires not only continued medical care but also sensible listening to the patients’ needs, to prevent harmful and unnecessary interventions. When disease is in an advanced stage, and death is inevitable, high technology medicine must be avoided and the intimacy of the person must be the highest and most important issue in the relation. The clinical material of this article describes the psycho-social stages that patient and family go through during the process and also how understanding hope could be a universal clinical strategy that creates a therapeutic bond, offering the patient and the analyst the alternative of meaningful experiences.

Sánchez Guadalupe. Mother as Messenger of Love and Death

For mothers, the act of giving birth also brings them close to death as well as other human experiences. The mother represents the dual structure of life and death in the mind. It was this unconscious convergence that stirred the interest in reconsidering the subject of the loss of children and its effect on individual development. This article demonstrates what happens when death triumphs over life chronologically close to birth. The author presents a clinical report on a six-year-old girl, Dinah, who suffered the effects of the mother’s mourning. She illustrates the therapeutic approach to mourning over time, at moments in which the shadow of pain is more clearly present. These are moments when the loss must be brought to consciousness, because of the unconscious effects it has on the survivors. Dinah’s problems were not caused by the loss itself, but rather the fact that the loss occurred in a phase of her emotional development when she was only a baby an unable to react in a mature manner.

Sierra Carlos A Story Of Losses And The Creation Of An Alternate World

The author presents a clinical case to illustrate the consequences of a history of loss, beginning with the early death of the mother. The creation of a complex defensive system based on internal division and manifested through the existence of an alternate world is analyzed. The author stresses the importance for the patient to re-experience the sense of emptiness within an analytical setting and to learn to tolerate it thanks to dependence on the auxiliary self of the analyst. D.W. Winnicott’s suggestion of a relationship between the experience of emptiness and the fear of breakdown are also discussed.

DEBATE ARTICLES

Robbins Michael. Comments on ‘Little Jeremy’s Struggle with Autism’ by Eduardo Prado de Oliveira

Prado de Oliveira Luis Eduardo. Response to Dr. Robbins’ Commentaries

THEATRE REVIEWS

Lindell Juhani. The Visitor: Freud Meets with the impossible

Sjödin Christer. A Discussion of Development and Stagnation Based on Eugene O’Neill’s Play ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’

BOOK REVIEW

Ferro Antonino. Piovano B. Parallel Psychotherapy with Children and Parents

REPORTS AND BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS

Carola Mann. In Memoriam: Gerhard Charzanowski 1913 – 2000

CONTENTS OF VOL 9: 3-4 OCTOBER 2000

Erich Fromm: “Center to Center” Relatedness.

EDITORIAL: Conci Marco. Erich Fromm, a Rediscovered Legacy

ARTICLES AND ABSTRACTS:

Fromm Erich. The Social Determinants of Psychoanalytic Therapy

This is the first English translation of a pioneering paper by Erich Fromm (1935). Fromm sums up, and criticizes, Freud’s views on the genesis of neurosis and its treatment in psychoanalytic therapy, with special emphasis on the underlying “patricentric” character of both Freud’s personality and his theory, hidden by the bourgeois concept of “tolerance.” By contrast, Fromm presents the differing positions taken by Georg Groddeck and Sándor Ferenczi, positions that would point into the right direction but would lack scientific rigor (Groddeck) or would not go far enough (Ferenczi).

Fromm Erich. Dealing with the Unconscious in Psychotherapeutic Practice. (3 Lectures 1959).

Introduction to Erich Fromm’s Lectures by Rainer Funk

The following paper was presented in May 1959 at the W.A. White Institute in New York. So far the paper has not been published in English, but only in a German translation in volume 7 of the posthumously published writings entitled “Gesellschaft und Seele”, 1992; in Italian in “Anima e Societá”, (Milano 1993) and Spanish in “Espíritu y sociedad” (Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Mexico City 1994). Title and headings were added by Rainer Funk, the editor and literary executor of Erich Fromm.

Funk Rainer. Erich Fromm’s Role in the Foundation of the IFPS. Evidence from the Erich Fromm Archives in Tübingen.

First the role us discussed that Erich Fromm played in the foundation of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) according to the documents and correspondence kept in the Fromm Archives in Tübingen (Germany). In the second part the perhaps more interesting question is discussed of what personally motivated Fromm to initiate and to establish a federation of psychoanalytic societies outside of the International Psycho-Analytical Association (IPA). Although the reasons and motivations for Fromm’s initiative are in the first line historical they nevertheless have some impact on the present. Therefor, in a final section, Fromm’s understanding of psychoanalysis is discussed as a challenge for the IPA as well as for the IFPS.

Mann Carola. Fromm’s Impact on Interpersonal Psychoanalysis: A Well Kept Secret

Erich Fromm was one of the founders of the William Alanson White Institute in New York City and an important contributor to the development of the interpersonal approach to psychoanalysis. Many of Fromm’s ideas about psychoanalysis have found their way into the mainstream of analytic thinking. Much what he taught in supervision and in his lectures had to do with the role of the analyst, the analyst’s use of himself in the analytic process and the necessity that the analyst experience what his patient is experiencing. Fromm did not necessarily use terms like projective identification but his understanding presaged much of what analysts talk about today. Fromm himself did not write much about clinical practice. And while he repeatedly expressed his respect for Freud he was explicit in his disagreements. Fromm rejected the notion of the analyst as a blank mirror. Instead, analysis requires a passionate wish for truth both in the analysand and the analyst. Fromm calls this passion biophilic, implying that the unconscious does not only harbor destructive drives that need to be tamed; it also harbors creative drives which, while also irrational, are constructive and need be liberated through the analysis.

Millán Salvador, Gojman Sonia. The Legacy of Fromm in México

Erich Fromm’s fortuitous visit to Mexico in 1949, and his meeting with a group of Mexican psychiatrists was the beginning of a working relationship that lasted for over 25 years. It left its mark on a number of community-oriented institutions, professional societies and publications, which are alive even today. This article describes some of the many activities in which researchers, psychoanalysts, medical doctors, psychologists, social workers, sociologists, anthropologists and religious scholars were involved over those 25 years, and the continuing importance of those initial projects and institutions today.

Biancoli Romano. Istituto Erich Fromm di Psicoanalisi Neofreudiana

Report on how the Institute has taken up Fromm’s psychoanalytic teachings and on the terms in which it conceives Fromm’s contribution to psychoanalysis

The Institute intends to contribute to the formation of a Frommian research tradition and to its development in Italy. During his lifetime Fromm carried out a daily clinical work on which he based all his theories. The Institute is interested in collecting this wealth of clinical experience through study and research. On the subject of technique, written and recorded documents consist of valuable notes, which are found in various books, and of posthumous works and recorded seminars and interviews. After a brief historical note on the Institute, the Frommian perspective is presented at length with a view to understanding how psychoanalysis reacts to the radical humanism. Emphasis is placed on the idea that Fromm’s thought orientation is not an organized school of psychoanalysis but an open and critical contribution. This view offers an explanation of Fromm's abstention to codify a psychoanalytic technique to be applied in a standardized way. Although this report regards above all the clinical psychoanalysis, we must remember great thinkers such as Meister Eckhardt and Spinoza, who inspired Fromm's perspective and gave strength to it.

Biancoli Romano. On Impediments to the Process of Individuation.

A clinical case is presented at length with a view to understanding how the healthy fear of incest, which favors the process of individuation, may come into conflict with the fear of leaving childhood and becoming adult. Among the consequences of this conflict is a sort of paralysis or impediment to living which may be converted into hate. The inquiry mainly regards anxiety, fear, hate and aggression as factors which conspire in holding an individual back from his path in life. The affects are taken into consideration in accordance with Fromm’s theory of aggression and his “syndrome of decay” diagnostic scheme, which results from the confluence and interaction of incestuous symbiosis, narcissism and destructiveness. Emphasis is placed on mechanisms of repression and splitting of hate not employed in aggression. Repressed and split hate may sustain para-hallucinatory symptoms and produce terror. This view offers an explanation of the perturbing symptomatology that afflicted the patient presented here and also shows the power of hate as a bond, as concomitant cause of the mother fixation and as obstacle to the process of individuation.

Roazen Paul. Fromm’s Escape from Freedom and His Standing Today

Fromm remains singularly neglected today as a psychoanalytic thinker, despite his once grate success as a popular writer.

McLaughlin Neil. Revision from the Margins: Fromm’s Contributions to Psychoanalysis

Fromm’s important contributions to the modern development of psychoanalytic thought are often ignored and frequently misunderstood. An early proponent of revisions of psychoanalytic theory and therapy similar to recent trends in object relations, self-psychology and interpersonal psychoanalysis, Fromm was a visionary for a Freudian theory built upon orthodoxies of the past but going beyond them. It is argued here that Fromm’s unique role in helping create a new version of psychoanalysis for the 21st century was as sociological as it was intellectual. Fromm’s contributions were intimately linked to his institutional positioning close to the center but on the relative margins of the discipline. This paper will outline how sociological dynamics shaped Fromm’s revision of psychoanalysis. We will conclude by discussing how Fromm was able to have a more dramatic influence than other Freudian revisionists who were less favourably positioned.

Important Dates in the Life of Erich Fromm

Fromm Erich. Autobiographical Sidelights by Erich Fromm

BOOK REVIEW

Ortmeyer Dale H. Strolling through the Life of Erich Fromm (1900-1980)

REPORTS AND BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS

Biancoli Romano. Bestsellers in Psychoanalysis-Italy

Conci Marco. Report on the XI IFPS Forum, New York May 2000

Scientific Activities in the Swedish Psychoanalytical Association in 1999

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