DOCSLIB.ORG

Fragment of an Analysis of the Mother in Freud

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Fragment of an Analysis of the Mother in Freud Fragment of an Analysis of the Mother in Freud A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychoanalysis and Gender Studies in the University of Canterbury by Karyn Leona Stewart University of Canterbury 2012 I am compelled to go my own way, often a roundabout way, and that I cannot make any use of ideas that are suggested to me when I am not 1 ready for them. 1 Freud in a letter to Fritz Wittels in E. Freud, 1960: 346. Contents Acknowledgements i Abstract v A Note on Abbreviations and the Word Mother vii Prologue: ‘Prelude for the Reader’ viii Chapter One: Freud and the Mother 1 Chapter Two: Feminism and Freud 21 Chapter Three: Freud 67 Chapter Four: Freud, Rank’s Anxiety 130 Chapter Five: The Clowning Mother 171 Appendix 1. 205 Appendix 2. 209 Bibliography 212 Acknowledgements ‘Everything would be all right were it not for this and that and t’other’ (Freud in Jones, 1957: 496). Acknowledgements are funny things somebody or something always gets left out. And given that this is a thesis engaged with psychoanalysis and therefore the unconscious, one wonders if the leaving out is deliberate. The journey of this thesis has been rather long and somewhat arduous. Less dream journey and royal road and more nightmare and deserted thoroughfare, in the sense that thoroughfare gives as a ‘rite’ of passage. And while Freud’s dream journey and his theory in general seems to be stopped by a ‘burning bush’ and the biblical reference to Moses is deliberate, my travails have been held up by life. But as Freud puts it ‘we must live in the world after all’ (SE 20: 203). As I said, a long journey with few open spaces and quite a lot of falls, metaphoric as well as literal. This has been a journey accompanied by two little boys, born at the onset and ready to see this ‘thing’ depart. But they have had a ‘good enough mother’ who turned away from her thesis to mother them and then back again when she could. Add two ‘sometime’ daughters, grown now and left the nest and perhaps an understanding towards the length and winding road of this thesis becomes clearer. But it also had its own problems, less a metamorphosis and more a mutation. I began this thesis with Dr. Victoria Grace, who at the end of this thesis is now a Professor. Initially a different thesis entirely but she realised my heart wasn’t in it and told me to go away and write what it was I wanted to think and write about. Even at this early stage she stressed the journey of a thesis and the need then to write about something that you were passionate about. I came back with something so different to my initial inquiry Victoria had to ‘depart’. So it was that I was looking for another supervisor. Here then Associate Professor Rosemary du Plessis stepped in. Warmed by her encouragement I wrote a proposal and handed it in as my sons reached their six- month mark. My supervisor taking a good look at me, declared I needed to be kind to myself, to not imitate superwoman and go home, be a mother as she sensed that was i what I wanted to be. And it was, and for a time I enjoyed that role, adding in teaching at the University and time went on. But always those scratches in my mind, the wayward thoughts, the ‘what ifs’. … So I began again and as I started to write I realised that where I thought I wanted to go was not where I wanted to go at all. Telling me that talking to me was like having Julia Kristeva and I on one side of the room, a compliment as I saw it, and her on the other, Rosemary also had to leave. Psychoanalysis was not an interest for her, maybe the mother but definitely not psychoanalysis. I was told several times by several people that the thesis I wanted to undertake was unpopular – the mother – and unfashionable – psychoanalysis. And then Dr. Nabila Jaber stepped in. I had taught in her classes for several years and had a rapport with her – my academic mother I sometimes called her. And she has been with me ever since. I’m not sure that I can express the gratitude of having someone who just wanted me to finish and believed that I could. Victoria came back briefly and I thank her also, because on her return she bought with her a new, well perhaps enlarged, interest in psychoanalysis. It was lovely to have someone at last that I could talk to about the theory of psychoanalysis even if she was a Lacanian and I a Freudian (a bigger difference than you can imagine). We also parted but I think of that time fondly (mostly) because it was here, in conversation with Victoria that I began to get a sense of what this project could mean. But I can go no further without thinking back to that brief period of a group of us, a coven really, a solid group of four that opened up to others as they passed through the corridors. For a small amount of time we worked and ‘lived’ together on the fourth floor of the History building. Allowed to develop undisturbed we shared crisis, crunch-times and ideas. But more than that, we had a sense, as four PhD’s of companionship and of a knowledge of what doing a PhD entailed. The University broke us up, restructuring they called it and ‘our’ floor was given over to another department and we were spread far and wide. Sharon and Tanja have finished now with only Sally and I, almost in conjunction, to complete our theses. To all three I owe gratitude; on the ‘Kant’ floor we learnt the strength of each other and the knowledge that we would all get there in the end. Freud once said that the Interpretation of Dreams was written in ‘splendid isolation’. And I could say the same with this thesis, but without the splendid, mostly the ii isolation. Because it is to be isolated to be doing something that has no department or school or people that you can discuss ideas with or to wonder where the ideas are going and what do they mean. And the people around me…well, ‘Freud is just that man that talked about sex wasn’t he’? And the mother, well she is such a loaded term, concretised and ephemeral at once, how could we ever untangle or even think such a concept. To quote Freud once again, ‘we must live in the world after all’ (SE 20: 203). And as a mother, however the term is loaded, however the world of theory and also the lived world, the everyday world judges you, you just keep going. My biggest companion throughout this thesis has been Freud himself. I saw a commona lity between us from the start. Perhaps small commonalities, but then psychoanalysis is about the small, the insignificant, the forgotten. His migraines, his fear of poverty, his abhorrence of authority – he has ‘a learnt expression to it’ he says. Freud told Fliess that regarding poverty, he had a ‘constant fear of it’, having known ‘it’ and compared poverty to the ‘certain nervousness’ that one has for life. I understand then when Freud says that his state of mind depends on his earnings – ‘a certain prosperous livelihood improves his style!’ But for some reason, one of those unknown quantities in life, Freud reminds me of my mother. Reading Freud I hear my mother. Now I would not be so bold to confess that a small amount of Jewish blood may offer an inherited tendency towards some kind of knowing, an understanding perhaps. But I would ask, how big is small? And how strong are inherited, perhaps archaic knowledges? On the closing of these acknowledgements (of this thesis really) I thank my family who wondered ‘why’ more than once I am sure. To Brent, who hasn’t been here for a lot of it but who has the ability to make me smile, to make me laugh. To my funny little boys, with their quirky senses of humour and there often direct, more often that not complex way of looking at the world. They were born at the onset of this thesis and it was their growth that let me see the stages Freud wrote of, from the ‘bundle of id’ upwards. Of course Freud’s writing ‘out’ of the mother will be addressed in the following thesis but I still remember the little boy who wanted to find something similar about us (he’d tired of seeing if I had a penis), who finally said, with great relief and real excitement, ‘we both have hands’. iii And finally, in the context of last but not least, my mother. This thesis would never have been written without my mother, in the sense as Freud wrote it that we owe a depth of gratitude to the mother, after all she bought us into the world. But also my way of thinking, my ways of being really, mirror my mother a great deal. Acknowledgments are in some ways a place to reflect on how this project got to where it was and who helped to get it there. And when I say whom, I wonder about the possibility of the other, perhaps archaic voices that exist in the unconscious.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Locations of Motherhood in Shakespeare on Film
    Volume 2 (2), 2009 ISSN 1756-8226 Locations of Motherhood in Shakespeare on Film LAURA GALLAGHER Queens University Belfast Adelman’s Suffocating Mothers (1992) appropriates feminist psychoanalysis to illustrate how the suppression of the female is represented in selected Shakespearean play-texts (chronologically from Hamlet to The Tempest ) in the attempted expulsion of the mother in order to recover the masculine sense of identity. She argues that Hamlet operates as a watershed in Shakespeare’s canon, marking the prominent return of the problematic maternal presence: “selfhood grounded in paternal absence and in the fantasy of overwhelming contamination at the site of origin – becomes the tragic burden of Hamlet and the men who come after him” (1992, p.10). The maternal body is thus constructed as the site of contamination, of simultaneous attraction and disgust, of fantasies that she cannot hold: she is the slippage between boundaries – the abject. Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject (1982) ostensibly provides a hypothesis for analysis of women in the horror film, yet the theory also provides a critical means of situating the maternal figure, the “monstrous- feminine” in film versions of Shakespeare (Creed, 1993, 1996). Therefore the choice to focus on the selected Hamlet , Macbeth , Titus Andronicus and Richard III film versions reflects the centrality of the mother figure in these play-texts, and the chosen adaptations most powerfully illuminate this article’s thesis. Crucially, in contrast to Adelman’s identification of the attempted suppression of the “suffocating mother” figures 1, in adapting the text to film the absent maternal figure is forced into (an extended) presence on screen.
    [Show full text]
  • Mother Trouble: the Maternal-Feminine in Phallic and Feminist Theory in Relation to Bratta Ettinger's Elaboration of Matrixial Ethics
    This is a repository copy of Mother trouble: the maternal-feminine in phallic and feminist theory in relation to Bratta Ettinger's Elaboration of Matrixial Ethics. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/81179/ Article: Pollock, GFS (2009) Mother trouble: the maternal-feminine in phallic and feminist theory in relation to Bratta Ettinger's Elaboration of Matrixial Ethics. Studies in the Maternal, 1 (1). 1 - 31. ISSN 1759-0434 Reuse Unless indicated otherwise, fulltext items are protected by copyright with all rights reserved. The copyright exception in section 29 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allows the making of a single copy solely for the purpose of non-commercial research or private study within the limits of fair dealing. The publisher or other rights-holder may allow further reproduction and re-use of this version - refer to the White Rose Research Online record for this item. Where records identify the publisher as the copyright holder, users can verify any specific terms of use on the publisher’s website. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Mother Trouble: The Maternal-Feminine in Phallic and Feminist Theory in Relation to Bracha Ettinger’s Elaboration of Matrixial Ethics/Aesthetics Griselda Pollock Preface Most of us are familiar with Sigmund Freud’s infamous signing off, in 1932, after a lifetime of intense intellectual and analytical creativity, on the question of psychoanalytical research into femininity.
    [Show full text]
  • Ruth Mack Brunswick Papers [Finding Aid]. Library of Congress. [PDF
    Ruth Mack Brunswick Papers A Finding Aid to the Papers in the Sigmund Freud Collection in the Library of Congress Prepared by Margaret McAleer Manuscript Division, Library of Congress Washington, D.C. 2001 Contact information: http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/mss/address.html Finding aid encoded by Library of Congress Manuscript Division, 2009 Finding aid URL: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms009276 Collection Summary Title: Ruth Mack Brunswick Papers Span Dates: 1921-1943 Bulk Dates: (bulk 1926-1938) ID No.: MSS62037 Creator: Brunswick, Ruth Mack, 1897-1946 Extent: 200 items; 2 containers; .6 linear feet Language: Collection material in English and German Repository: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Abstract: Psychoanalyst. Correspondence, patient files, writings, a student training certificate, a concert program, and a newspaper clipping documenting Brunswick’s contributions to psychoanalytic theory including her treatment of Sergius Pankejeff, a former patient of Sigmund Freud referred to as the “Wolf Man” in Freud’s case study, and her work on the pre-Oedipal phase of libido development. Selected Search Terms The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Library's online catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically therein. Personal Names Brunswick, Ruth Mack. Freud family--Correspondence. Freud, Anna, 1895-1982--Correspondence. Freud, Martha, 1861-1951--Correspondence. Hendrick, Ives, 1898-1972--Correspondence. Pankejeff, Sergius, 1887-1979--Correspondence. Pankejeff, Sergius, 1887-1979. Pankejeff, Sergius, 1887-1979. Sergius Pankejeff papers. Subjects Dreams. Oedipus complex. Psychoanalysis. Administrative Information Provenance: The papers of Ruth Mack Brunswick, psychoanalyst, were given to the Library of Congress by the Sigmund Freud Archives between 1960 and 1987.
    [Show full text]
  • When Throne and Altar Are in Danger: Freud, Mourning, and Religion in Modernity Diane Jonte-Pace Santa Clara University, [email protected]
    Santa Clara University Scholar Commons Religious Studies College of Arts & Sciences 2010 When Throne and Altar are in Danger: Freud, Mourning, and Religion in Modernity Diane Jonte-Pace Santa Clara University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.scu.edu/rel_stud Part of the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Jonte-Pace, Diane. "When Throne and Altar Are in Danger: Freud, Mourning, and Religion in Modernity." Disciplining Freud on Religion: Perspectives from the Humanities and Social Sciences. Ed. Gregory Kaplan and William Barclay Parsons. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2010. 59-83. Copyright © 2010 Rowman & Littlefield. All rights reserved. Please contact the publisher for permission to copy, distribute or reprint. This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts & Sciences at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Religious Studies by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CHAPTER TWO When Throne and Altar Are in Danger: Freud, Mourning, and Religion in Modernity Diane ]onte--Pace Psychoanalysis and Religion: Asking Questions about Life, Theory, and Culture What can be said about the complex relationship between psychoanalysis and religion?1 I've found it useful to address this question from three perspec, tives: life, theory, and culture. These are inevitably intertwined, but can be separated, at least heuristically. The "life" perspective focuses on the founder of psychoanalysis, examining Freud's Jewish background, the significance of his Catholic nanny, the meaning of his beloved collection of antiquities (the gods and goddesses of the past), the impact of Viennese anti,Semitism, and the sources of his personal rejection of religious belief.
    [Show full text]
  • Discovering the Lost Race Story: Writing Science Fiction, Writing Temporality
    Discovering the Lost Race Story: Writing Science Fiction, Writing Temporality This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The University of Western Australia 2008 Karen Peta Hall Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Discipline of English and Cultural Studies School of Social and Cultural Studies ii Abstract Genres are constituted, implicitly and explicitly, through their construction of the past. Genres continually reconstitute themselves, as authors, producers and, most importantly, readers situate texts in relation to one another; each text implies a reader who will locate the text on a spectrum of previously developed generic characteristics. Though science fiction appears to be a genre concerned with the future, I argue that the persistent presence of lost race stories – where the contemporary world and groups of people thought to exist only in the past intersect – in science fiction demonstrates that the past is crucial in the operation of the genre. By tracing the origins and evolution of the lost race story from late nineteenth-century novels through the early twentieth-century American pulp science fiction magazines to novel-length narratives, and narrative series, at the end of the twentieth century, this thesis shows how the consistent presence, and varied uses, of lost race stories in science fiction complicates previous critical narratives of the history and definitions of science fiction. In examining the implicit and explicit aspects of temporality and genre, this thesis works through close readings of exemplar texts as well as historicist, structural and theoretically informed readings. It focuses particularly on women writers, thus extending previous accounts of women’s participation in science fiction and demonstrating that gender inflects constructions of authority, genre and temporality.
    [Show full text]
  • The Evolution of Sherlock Holmes: Adapting Character Across Time
    The Evolution of Sherlock Holmes: Adapting Character Across Time and Text Ashley D. Polasek Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY awarded by De Montfort University December 2014 Faculty of Art, Design, and Humanities De Montfort University Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... v INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1 Theorising Character and Modern Mythology ............................................................ 1 ‘The Scarlet Thread’: Unraveling a Tangled Character ...........................................................1 ‘You Know My Methods’: Focus and Justification ..................................................................24 ‘Good Old Index’: A Review of Relevant Scholarship .............................................................29 ‘Such Individuals Exist Outside of Stories’: Constructing Modern Mythology .......................45 CHAPTER ONE: MECHANISMS OF EVOLUTION ............................................. 62 Performing Inheritance, Environment, and Mutation .............................................. 62 Introduction..............................................................................................................................62
    [Show full text]
  • Jacob's Ambivalent Legacy
    Joel Whitebook 139 JOEL WHITEBOOK Jacob’s Ambivalent Legacy This paper elucidates Freud’s ambivalent and complex relation to Judaism, tracing it to the “break with tradition” that ran through the center of his father’s life. Jacob Freud was a conflicted and tran- sitional figure, with one foot planted in the parochial world of Jewish traditionalism and the other in the cosmopolitan world of European modernity. And he wanted his son to partake of these two legacies in equal degree. But Sigmund found the conflict untenable and chose in favor of science, atheism, and the Enlightenment. The point to be appreci- ated, however, is that he did not see his choice of the Aufklärung as a simple rejection of the Jewish tradition. Rather, by construing Moses as an Aufklärer, he was able he was able to define his project as an inner transformation of the Jewish tradition so that he could thereby to be “a godless Jew,” thereby confirming both his atheism and his cultural heritage. 1 What are we to make of Freud’s provocative idea of a “godless Jew”? Is it simply a contradiction in terms that he uses to patch over an irresolvable and fundamental rift in his character and outlook? This is the position of those champions of Enlightenment universalism who want to inoculate Freud’s science against any taint of ethnic particularity. They argue that the godlessness ought to be retained and the Judaism discarded. This is also the position of certain Jewish thinkers when they want to claim Freud as a prodigal son who ultimately returned to the tribal fold.1 In this case, the idea is to drop the godlessness—or at least radically attenuate it—while holding onto the Judaism.
    [Show full text]
  • Maryland Historical Magazine, 1946, Volume 41, Issue No. 4
    MHRYMnD CWAQAZIU^j MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY BALTIMORE DECEMBER • 1946 t. IN 1900 Hutzler Brothers Co. annexed the building at 210 N. Howard Street. Most of the additional space was used for the expansion of existing de- partments, but a new shoe shop was installed on the third floor. It is interesting to note that the shoe department has now returned to its original location ... in a greatly expanded form. HUTZLER BPOTHERSe N\S/Vsc5S8M-lW MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE A Quarterly Volume XLI DECEMBER, 1946 Number 4 BALTIMORE AND THE CRISIS OF 1861 Introduction by CHARLES MCHENRY HOWARD » HE following letters, copies of letters, and other documents are from the papers of General Isaac Ridgeway Trimble (b. 1805, d. 1888). They are confined to a brief period of great excitement in Baltimore, viz, after the riot of April 19, 1861, when Federal troops were attacked by the mob while being marched through the City streets, up to May 13th of that year, when General Butler, with a large body of troops occupied Federal Hill, after which Baltimore was substantially under control of the 1 Some months before his death in 1942 the late Charles McHenry Howard (a grandson of Charles Howard, president of the Board of Police in 1861) placed the papers here printed in the Editor's hands for examination, and offered to write an introduction if the Committee on Publications found them acceptable for the Magazine. Owing to the extraordinary events related and the revelation of an episode unknown in Baltimore history, Mr. Howard's proposal was promptly accepted.
    [Show full text]
  • Sigmund Freud’S Impact on How We Think, and How We Think About How We Think, Has Been Enormous
    WHY FREUD? Sigmund Freud’s impact on how we think, and how we think about how we think, has been enormous. The twentieth century has been called the Freudian century, and whatever the twenty-first century chooses to believe about the workings of the human mind, it will be, on some level, indebted to Freud (of course, this may be a debt that involves reacting against his ideas as much as it involves subscribing to them). Freud’s theory, psychoanalysis, suggested new ways of under- standing, amongst other things, love, hate, childhood, family relations, civilisation, religion, sexuality, fantasy and the conflicting emotions that make up our daily lives.Today we all live in the shadow of Freud’s innovative and controversial concepts. In their scope and subsequent impact Freud’s writings embody a core of ideas that amount to more than the beliefs of a single thinker. Rather they function like myths for our culture; taken together, they present a way of looking at the world that has been powerfully transformative. The poet W.H.Auden prob- ably put it best when he wrote of Freud:‘if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd,/to us he is no more a person/now but a whole climate of opinion/under which we conduct our different lives’ (‘In Memory of Sigmund Freud’,Auden 1976: 275). But what is this strange ‘climate of opinion’, psychoanalysis? How did a turn-of-the-century Viennese doctor, who may now seem to us often wrong and sometimes absurd, become so central to our vision of 2 WHY FREUD? ourselves as thinking, feeling beings in the twentieth century? And if psychoanalysis really is ‘often wrong and sometimes absurd’, why read it at all? While providing a compact introduction to Freud’s life, impor- tant concepts and key texts, this study also aims to offer some answers to these wider questions.
    [Show full text]
  • Marie Bonaparte Papers [Finding Aid]. Library of Congress. [PDF Rendered
    Princess Marie Bonaparte Papers A Finding Aid to the Papers in the Sigmund Freud Collection in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Library of Congress Washington, D.C. 2011 Contact information: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mss.contact Additional search options available at: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms016046 LC Online Catalog record: http://lccn.loc.gov/mm82013169 Prepared by Grover Batts Revised and expanded by Margaret McAleer with the assistance of Marjorie Torney and Carolyn Ray Collection Summary Title: Marie Bonaparte Papers Span Dates: 1889-1962 Bulk Dates: (bulk 1913-1961) ID No.: MSS13169 Creator: Bonaparte, Marie, Princess, 1882-1962 Extent: 6,300 items ; 33 containers ; 13 linear feet Language: Collection material in French, German, and English Location: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Summary: Psychoanalyst and author. Journals, correspondence, drafts of writings, notebooks, legal records, obituaries, genealogical notes, photographs, watercolor drawings, and printed matter relating to Bonaparte's involvement in the field of psychoanalysis. Selected Search Terms The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Library's online catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically therein. People Allendy, René, 1889-1942--Correspondence. Bibring, Edward, 1894-1959--Correspondence. Bibring, Grete L. (Grete Lehner), 1899-1977--Correspondence. Bonaparte, Marie, Princess, 1882-1962. Bonaparte, Marie, Princess, 1882-1962. Cinq cahiers écrits par une petite fille entre sept ans et demi et dix ans et leurs commentaires. 1939-1951. Bonaparte, Marie, Princess, 1882-1962. Mémoire des disparus.
    [Show full text]
  • “Twin One, Twin Too” What Does It Mean to Be a Twin? a Psychoanalytic Investigation Into the Phenomenon of Twins
    “Twin one, twin too” What does it mean to be a twin? A psychoanalytic investigation into the phenomenon of twins. By Emer Mc Cormack The thesis is submitted to the Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI) for the degree of MA in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from Dublin Business School, School of Arts. Supervisor: Dr. Gráinne Donohue Submitted: July 2015 Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 4 ABSTRACT 6 CHAPTER ONE 7 Twin mythology Twin mythology & identity 9 Twinship 11 CHAPTER TWO 13 (Identity formation) Jacques Lacan and Melanie Klein Jacques Lacan The mirror stage Jacques Lacan: The family complexes: intrusion. Melanie Klein: Depressive position & schizoid mechanism CHAPTER THREE 23 Identity formation in twins Melanie Klein 23 Dorothy Burlingham 25 Anna Freud & Dorothy Burlingham: Hampstead Nursery’s. 27 Alessandra Piontelli 28 Sigmund Freud 30 Wilfred Bion 31 Death of a twin CHAPTER FOUR 34 Conclusion BIBLOGRAPHY 38 2 Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without the love and support of a number of incredibly special people. First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Grainne Donohue, whose expertise, understanding and patience, added considerably to my experience of writing this piece of research. A very special thank you to my class mates Laura- Mai, Hugh, Valerija, Mary and Simona “we have made it” it has been a pleasure working alongside you all over the last three years a beautiful friendship has developed between us so here’s to our further plans together. I must also acknowledge some of my very dear friends Jamie, Davina and Rachel you have all been absolute rocks to me over the last few years.
    [Show full text]
  • Melanie Klein's Concept of Counter-Transference Taken From
    7 Melanie Klein’s Concept of Counter-Transference Taken from Unpublished Material Esmeralda Macedo, Carlos Amaral Dias In this essay we discuss the concept of counter-transference based on some of Melanie Klein’s unpublished notes from the archives in the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, in London. Hence, the discussion here incorporates material that has never been published be- fore1. Until 1950 the most commonly accepted conception of counter- -transference was that of Freud, who saw it as an obstacle that should be removed. When Paula Heimann’s ideas became widely known this mechanism started to be seen as an important aid to understanding the patient. Klein always rejected that perspective and remained close to Freud’s ideas. In the 1960s, the works of Bion and Money-Kyrle show that, along with the concept of projective identification, counter-transfe- rence was a valuable tool for understanding the patient in both its patho- logical and benign forms. What we show in this article is that in spite of not having conceptualized her ideas about the subject, Klein’s approach to it was very much in accordance with those authors with respect to the vicissitudes of the therapeutic relationship. 1 Researched by Emeralda Macedo for her PhD thesis prepared under the supervision of Professor Carlos Amaral Dias and Professor Rui Aragão Oliveira (Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada/Universidade Nova de Lisboa, February 2007). Interações número 19. pp. 7-21. © do Autor 2010 8 Interações SOME PERSPECTIVES OF COUNTER-TRANSFERENCE One of the most important conceptions of counter-transference was Paula Heimann’s formulation, published in 1950.
    [Show full text]