Chiara S.

Can we just skip to that part right away? That sounds fun.

He seems to be a rising star in some Dutch psychoanalytic circles. Might have to put him on the list, right after finishing Bion. In 2525.

Seriously, what is with this sudden rise of Laplanche? And why does he seem just as confusing as Bion? 🤣

But if I download *enough* PDF’s, then maybe…

#omnipotentcontrol

Helping the patient is a vehicle for regulating her own sense of helplessness, and the helplessness of her own internal objects, projected onto the patient.”

- Mitchell, S.A. (1993). In: Hope and Dread in Psychoanalysis.

2/2

“The analyst’s investment in her own therapeutic powers probably inevitably always functions partly to help the analyst heal herself.

1/

“Being the analyst is never simple; when it seems to be, there is something wrong.”

- Mitchell, S.A. (1993).

Freud (1917) on the existence of unconscious mental processes and the importance of drives:

“With two of its assertions, psychoanalysis offends the whole world and draws aversion upon itself. One of these assertions offends an intellectual prejudice, the other an aesthetic-moral one.”

- Freud, S. (1917). Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.

3/3

We hold before him the difficulties of the method, its length, the exertions and sacrifices which it will cost him; and, as to the result, we tell him that we make no definite promises, that the result depends on his conduct, on his understanding, on his adaptability, on his perseverance.”

2/

“Usually when we introduce a patient to a medical technique which is strange to him we minimize its difficulties and give him confident promises concerning the result of the treatment. When we undertake psychoanalytic treatment with a neurotic patient we proceed differently.

1/

Terrible things happen in life - but it is possible to recover from them We go to all sorts of lengths, often unconsciously, to hide from what has hurt us. But only by attuning to pain can we hope to heal

“Feeling your pain is what makes movement possible, while turning away from it ensures you will stay stuck in it. Perhaps this is what the psychoanalyst Bion was exploring when he wrote that good therapy should ‘increase the patient’s capacity for suffering’”.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

“Ideally, the process of training should educate but not indoctrinate, and encourage freedom of thought within a psychoanalytic framework without espousing any one variety of psychoanalysis.”

- Bateman, A.W., Holmes, J., & Allison, E. (2022).

“There is an inherent tension in psychoanalysis between the need for creative uncertainty, and the search for safe footholds in the uncharted terrain of the mind. The former can all too easily degenerate into muddle and mystery, the latter into dogmatism.”

- Bateman, Holmes & Allison. (2022).

even if we agree in theory that knowing more about what shapes and motivates us might be a good thing.".

- Bateman, A.W., Holmes, J., & Allison, E. (2022). Introduction to Psychoanalysis: Contemporary Theory and Practice.

2/2

"[Freud] became more and more convinced that our thinking is influenced by processes of which we are not consciously aware, that we are actively invested in remaining unaware of these processes, and that we will resist efforts to make us aware, (…)

1/

“The point of his work and my own, is that our true reasons for being therapists are mostly unconscious (although capable of being brought into awareness) and have historically been ignored as a subject of scrutiny - even in personal analysis”.

- Maroda, K.J. (2022).

2/2

If true, it’s probably true for all therapists. Especially the psychoanalytic ones 🤣.

“He [Michael Sussman] notes that if you ask therapists why they chose their profession, you will get generic answers about wanting to help people, doing something to change the world, wanting to solve problems, and making money.”

1/

a young man in a blue jacket is asking " did i do that " ALT: a young man in a blue jacket is asking " did i do that "

Greenson (1967) on defenses:

“Let us take as an example the patient who reads books and articles on psychoanalysis in an attempt to discover things for himself and thus avoid the surprise of coming upon the material unprepared.”

“Why does the patient go on being worried by this that belongs to the past? The answer must be that the original experience of primitive agony cannot get into the past tense unless the ego can first gather it into its own present time experience and into omnipotent control now.”

- Winnicott, D.W.

“I contend that the clinical fear of breakdown is the fear of a breakdown that has already been experienced. It is a fear of the original agony which caused the defence organization which the patient displays as an illness syndrome.”

- Winnicott, D.W. (1974).

Can I join? 🤣

That’s a great one! 🙏🏽

What is the most inspiring psychoanalytic paper you’ve ever read, and why?

“It [working through] refers in the main to the repetitive, progressive and elaborate explorations of the resistances which prevent an insight from leading to change.”

- Greenson, R.R. (1967) in: The Technique and Practice of Psycho-Analysis.

That’s a great line! I’ve been super intrigued lately by all books, papers and theory about what might be “known” but has never been put into words. Maybe by casting light where shadow once reigned, we can put words to what was previously unknown and no longer be haunted -as much- by its shadows.

The work of a clinical psychoanalysis will be partly preoccupied with the emergence into thought of early memories of being and relating.”

- Bollas, C. (1987). The Shadow of the Object.

2/2

“The object can cast its shadow without a child being able to process this relation through mental representations or language. While we do know something of the character of the object affects us, we may not have thought it yet.

1/