We analyzed the contemporary empirical and theoretical literature concerning the two predominant approaches for scoring formal thought disorder on the Rorschach, the Comprehensive System special scores, and the methodology of Rapaport, Gill, and Schafer (1946/1968). The psychoanalytic research related to selected special scores is reviewed, and some linkages to psychoanalytic developmental theo...

Psychoanalytic treatment of addiction is often ineffective because therapists fail to recognize addiction as a discrete disorder. The author reviews psychoanalytic theories of addiction and presents an alternative concept comprising biological, behavioral, and psychological characteristics. She compares the structural similarities between addiction and perversion and describes the use of the ad...

Most of the literary theorists and critics of classical antiquity who are still studied today – Plato, Aristotle, ‘Longinus’, and a few others – are Greeks. The Romans, who by reputation came late to literature and lacked a theoretical cast of mind, are not generally accorded a prominent place in the development of this discourse. Indeed, few surviving Roman texts address as their main topic th...

Out of our work over the years on child development, clinical technique, and sadomasochism, we have begun to formulate a model of development that describes two possible ways of responding to feelings of helplessness in the face of the challenges of internal and external experience. Any psychoanalytic model has implications for how we think about technique and can be tested on the basis of its ...

T HE AIM of this paper is to examine the psychoanalytic concept of feminine passivity as described by Freud and to review challenges of this concept by feminists and other psychoanalysts. The concept of feminine passivity is, as will be demonstrated later in this paper, dependent upon two other psychoanalytic concepts related to women: (1) penis envy and (2) that the clitoris is an inadequate a...

Standing at the center of some of the greatest shifts in psychoanalysis, for the past 60 years, Leo Rangell has witnessed and contributed to the great debates of our time. His contributions span a staggering seven books and over 450 articles, which tackle a vast array of topics from metapsychology to applied psychoanalysis. His insights have remained a cut above the rest. This may be due to his...

I A CLEAR CONCEPTUALIZATION of the therapeutic process and of what in a relationship contributes to therapeutic outcome, remains somewhat elusive and certainly controversial in the psychoanalytic literature. Despite Sullivan's note that interpersonal acts are "reciprocal" and "transformative" (Mullahy, 1945), Laing, Phillipson, and Lee (1966) remark that "Psychoanalytic theory has no constructs...

PROF. MARTIN S. BERGMANN Master Teacher, supervisor, author and editor of The Anatomy of Loving, The Hartmann Era, The Evolution of Psychoanalytic Technique Understanding Dissidence and Controversy, In the Shadow of Moloch, Generations of the Holocaust as well as hundreds of scientific papers. He is also the inaugural recipient of The Oscar Sternbach Memorial Award. Professor Bergmann’s first p...

For many people, psychoanalysis conveys the image of a patient lying on a couch, speaking endlessly (that is, session after session, and for many years) about dreams and sexual fantasies to a bearded and elderly psychoanalyst who remains relatively silent, except for an occasional oracular comment known as an interpretation. For those who have been superficially exposed to Freud in undergraduat...