The Psychoanalytic ‘Laboratory’

Descriere

In recent years, psychologists and anthropologists integrate in their research designs psychoanalytically informed methods in order to address the unconscious forces and motivations that provide a deeper understanding of individual experience and a better image of the research environment. Also, psychoanalysts used their psychoanalytic knowledge to design a specific methodology for the study of unconscious phenomena outside the clinical setting. The Psychoanalytic ‘Laboratory’ offers a new perspective on psychoanalytically informed researched interview as an experimental situation, that offers the possibility to test psychoanalytic theories, not only to illustrate them.

Simona Reghintovschi has a PhD in psychoanalytic studies from University of Essex, Great Britain. She teaches Projective Methods and Applied Psychoanalysis at Titu Maiorescu University in Bucharest. She is psychoanalyst, full member of Romanian Society of Psychoanalysis, and co-founder of Insight Association dedicated to the advancement of psychoanalysis.

Cuprins

Foreword
Introduction

Part I . The psychoanalytic ‘laboratory’

Chapter 1. From Anxiety to Method in Social Sciences Research
1.1. Searching for a scientific method in the social sciences
1.2. Dealing with anxiety — neutrality or complementarity?
1.3. Levels of countertransference
1.3.1. Individual level — countertransference as observer’s transference
1.3.2. Social level — Elicited countertransference as ‘complementary role’
1.4. Complementary role as receiver’s side of projective identification
1.4.1. The projector’s side — The Sedang head-hunters and their Shamans
1.4.2. The receiving end of the projection — the observer
1.4.3. Projective identification and the social container

Chapter 2. Psychoanalytically informed research interview
2.1. Quantitative vs. Qualitative method in the study of
2.2. Qualitative research interview
2.3. Psychoanalytically informed research interview
2.3.1. What is to be noticed and why?
2.4. Main features of psychoanalytically informed interview
2.4.1. Free associations
2.4.2 Transference and Countertransference in the Interview Relationship
2.4.3 How can we interpret what we notice?
2.4.4. How can we know that our interpretation is the ‘right’ one?
2.4.5. Analysis of the psychoanalytically informe dresearch interview
2.5. Limitations

Chapter 3. Using psychoanalytically informed interview as an experimental situation
3.1. The psychoanalytic session as an experimental situation
3.2. Psychoanalytically informed interview as an experimental situation

Part II. Inside the lab

Chapter 4. Conflict and Schism in the Psychoanalytic Institutions
4.1. The psychoanalytic ‘family’
4.1.1. The ‘good’ family — hatred held in check
4.1.2. The ‘bad’ family — The ‘primal horde’ in psychoanalytic institutes
4.1.3. The complex family — Lethal sibling jealousy
4.2. Emotional ‘radioactivity’ in psychoanalytic institutes
4.3. Psychoanalytic institution as ‘secret society’
4.4. The dynamics of political power 7
4.5. Narcissism of minor differences in the psychoanalytic establishment
4.6. Freud as a leader and organizational culture
4.7. Conflicts and schism as institutional symptom

Chapter 5. The research design
5.1. The setting
5.2. The logic
5.3. Discussion

Appendix. The ‘Story’ of Countertransference
1. Countertransference as analyst’s neurotic reaction
1.1. Freud’s recommendations on psychoanalytical technique
1.2. Analyst’s feelings as neurotic symptom

2. Countertransference as an expression of ‘being human’
2.1. Ferenczi against the myth of "impersonal analyst"
2.2. Michael Balint — the ‘correct method’ versus analyst’s personal technique/tension at an optimal level

3. Countertransference as danger and instrument
Heinrich Racker — countertransference as a danger and a guide in understanding the patient

4. Countertransference as ‘objective’ feelings
4.1. D. W. Winnicott: ‘objective’ feelings of the analyst
4.2. Margaret Little’s response to Winnicott — The hall of subjective mirrors

5. Countertransference as creation of the patient
5.1. Paula Heimann: neuter, neutral or natural analyst
5.2. Betty Joseph — countertransference as a guide in the transference

6. Countertransference as containment
6.1. Roger Money-Kyrle — Finding a reference point
6.2. Bion and containment

References