Weaving Child Psychoanalysis: Past, Present, and Future
2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 67; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00797308.2014.11785493
ISSN2474-3356
Autores Tópico(s)Child Therapy and Development
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsPaul M. BrinichPaul M. Brinich is Clinical Professor (Emeritus) in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He serves on the faculty of the Psychoanalytic Education Center of the Carolinas and is a past president of the Association for Child Psychoanalysis.NotesI am an admirer of Fred Pine's (1990) approach to our field and his flexible, multimodal approach to clinical phenomena.“It seems to me that where the object at stake is the obtaining of a clear general view of the mental evolution of the child, that takes place simultaneously along a number of lines of which the speech development represents but one, it is better not to emphasize the latter predominantly, but, rather, taking a hint from nature herself, to recognize the active interests definable as nursing, play and study, as dividing up the whole course of childhood into a number of periods of which these activities are mainly characteristic” (Hug-Hellmuth 1913/1919), p. xi).A particularly dramatic instance of this kind of observation, involving Freud's follower Wilhelm Stekel and the eventual Nobel laureate Nikos Kazantzakis, can be found in Kimon Friar's “Introduction” to Kazantzakis’ (1960) slim spiritual testament, The Saviors of God.MacLean and Rappen's (1991) brief biography of Hug-Hellmuth describes the complications of Hug-Hellmuth's relationships with her older half–sister, Antoine, and with Antoine's son, Rudolf. Hug-Hellmuth had based some of her earliest psychoanalytic writings in part upon her observations of Rudolf's childhood development. His claims to have been her analytic patient have not been confirmed. There is, however, no doubt that Rudolf and Hug-Hellmuth had a highly ambivalent relationship that ended with Rudolf ‘s murder of his aunt (supposedly when she would not give him money that would make it possible for him to marry). Writing in the Bulletin of the International Psycho-Analytical Association, Siegfried Bernfeld (1925) had this to say: “On September 9, 1924, in her fifty-third year, Frau Dr. Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, a member of the Vienna Society, of whose services, especially in the field of child-psychology, our readers need no reminder, was murdered by her eighteen-year-old nephew, Rudolph Hug. In a will made a few days before her death, she expressed a desire that no account of her life and work should appear, even in psychoanalytical publications.” Hug-Hellmuth's wish to be unmentioned, odd in both its timing and content, was assiduously honored by the members of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society, who understandably wished to avoid the scandal that surrounded her murder.I do not remember Hug-Hellmuth's name being mentioned during my years in London. MacLean and Rappen's (1991) brief biography and republication of her work has illuminated a previously neglected corner of our history.Anna Freud's colleague, student, and analysand.Anna Freud did not endorse Erikson's broadening of the psychoanalytic perspective. She was concerned that it would lead to a neglect of her father's fundamental insights regarding individual intrapsychic phenomena.This line of work first appeared in a paper entitled “Measuring the Ghost in the Nursery” (Fonagy et al. 1993) and continues to the present, with applications into areas such as clinical work with so-called “borderline” personalities (Allen, Fonagy, and Bateman 2008) as well as with children (Verheugt-Pleiter, Zevalkink, and Schmeets 2008).My London colleague Sandra Ramsden Hatfield, responding to an earlier draft of this paper, suggested that it would be important to include trauma among the strands.Although Kohut's The Analysis of the Self was published as Monograph No. 4 of The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child in 1971, it was ignored during my years in London.Such conflicts antedate the institution of both certification (that most APsaAspecific method of hara-kiri) and the Training Analyst system.The fact that early analysts sometimes analyzed their own children may have created a kind of scotoma that made it difficult for analysts to address this issue.According to Danto (2005), every member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society was expected to devote at least two hours of each working day to pro bono treatment. Those who (like Sigmund Freud) could attract patients from abroad, with their ability to pay high fees in hard currencies, were expected to contribute the fees from two such patients to the commonweal by supporting the expenses of the Ambulatorium, the free clinic sponsored by the society. At that time the usual work week was six days.When I was faced with a choice between the Tavistock training or Hampstead's, the offer of a W. T. Grant Foundation fellowship made a huge difference. This covered my personal analysis (at the munificent rate of five pounds sterling per session) and my supervision expenses for four years. There was no tuition charge, so all I had to pay for were my books, housing, food, clothing, transport, and so forth.In his Heauton Timorumenos.Robert Waelder (1936) used a different but quite similar metaphor, suggesting that psychoanalysis should provide “a kind of polyphonic theory of psychic life in which each act is a chord, and in which there is consonance and dissonance” (pp. 83–84).
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