Another Kind of Evidence: Studies on Internalization, Annihilation Anxiety, and Progressive Symbolization in the Psychoanalytic Process

by Norbert Freedman, Jesse D. Geller, Joan Hoffenberg, Marvin Hurvich, Rhonda Ward

Overview

In our current professional climate, with calls for 'evidenced-based treatment', and in light of the prestige accorded to this emblem, we can ask: for what purpose do we seek evidence? For our students? For the public at large? For an inner sense of feeling supported by science? Most disciplines are concerned with cumulative knowledge, aimed toward self-affirmation and self-definition, that is, establishing a sense of legitimacy. The three parts of this volume are directed toward the goal of affirming a public and private sense of the legitimacy of psychoanalysis, thereby shaping professional identity. In each contribution we adhere to the precepts of 'scientific inquiry', with a commitment to affirming or disconfirming clinical propositions, utilizing consensually agreed upon methods of observation, and arriving at inferences that are persuasive and have the potential to move the field forward. Beyond this, each part of this book describes distinct methodologies that generate evidence pertaining to public health policy, the persuasiveness and integrity of our psychoanalytic concepts, and phenomena encountered in daily clinical practice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781855758520
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/31/2011
Series:	CIPS (Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies) Boundaries of Psychoanalysis
Pages:	380
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Norbert Freedman is a Training and Supervising Analyst and former President at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR). He is an Adjunct Clinical Professor and Supervising Analyst at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and former Director of Clinical Psychology, SUNY Downstate Medical Center. He is the author of numerous publications on the clinical and empirical study of symbolization and transformations in the psychoanalytic process.

Table of Contents

CIPS , Series Editor’s Preface , Preamble , How Therapy Lives On , Foreword , The effectiveness of psychoanalytic psychotherapy: the role of treatment, duration, frequency of sessions, and the therapeutic relationship 1 , Patients’ representations of the therapeutic dialogue: a pathway towards the evaluation of psychotherapy process and outcome , The RTD Coding System and its clinical application: a new approach to studying patients’ representations of the Therapeutic Dialogue , Representations of the therapeutic dialogue and the post-termination phase of psychotherapy , Reminiscing and recollecting , Commentary , Three Pathways Towards The Modification of Annihilation Anxiety , Foreword , The Propositional Method for the study of psychoanalytic concepts , Meet Mohamed and the method implemented , Annihilation Anxiety and its transformation during early transference engagement: sessions 3 and 4 , Termination crisis and a panic attack: sessions 41 and 42 , Transformations in long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy: the case of Ms K 3 , Severely traumatized patients’ attempts at reorganizing their relations to others in psychotherapy: an enunciation analysis , Commentary , A Specimen of Working Through , A very broad concept seen through a very narrow lens , Method and findings: the case of Ms Y: the patient and her analyst within the context of a recorded psychoanalysis , The induction of transference regression during the symbolizing phase: sessions 232 to 243 , The emergence of nodal moments during the desymbolizing phase: sessions 245 to 249 , The enactive phase: sessions 252 to 255 , The cycle and the spiral during the re-symbolizing phase: the erotic transference, the extraordinary countertransference, and the preservation of the analytic process: session 257 , Nodal moments and the essence of Progressive Symbolization , Postscript

Editorial Reviews

Another Kind of Evidence is a most important, excellent contribution to contemporary psychoanalysis in the times of ‘evidence based medicine’. The authors summarize their extensive and intensive research within the IPTAR Program of Research in Psychoanalysis. Their papers aim ‘toward the goal of affirming a public and private sense of the legitimacy of psychoanalysis, thereby shaping professional identity’. The researchers present different and innovative research methods in order to study the outcome, the process, and the micro-world of the therapeutic interactions within psychoanalytic sessions. In each of the three sections of this book, the authors present a new instrument for studying the psychoanalytic process and its outcomes: the Representation of the Therapeutic Dialogue, the Propositional Method, and Sequential Specification. This book is a must for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and clinical researchers.

Prof Dr Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber

Another Kind of Evidence is an important statement of the best sort of psychoanalytic research. The authors combine clinical perspectives and clinical insights, supported by computer-generated empirical documentation. The research presented here is what, in the best of hands, we psychoanalysts can do, and must do in order to maintain ourselves in the world of clinical healing and scientific advance. This book is a strikingly accessible and lucid accounting of the theoretical and empirical psychoanalytical research by Norbert Freedman and his associates at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR), a New York IPA component society, that really lives up to the ‘R’ in its name. What we discover in reading this work is a compelling description of a research methodology for psychoanalysis and its clinical application. Here is a combination of persuasive clinical observation and generalization (qualitative) and computer-generated documentation which advances knowledge and capability in our field. This book and the research elucidated will resonate helpfully with each of us, clinician and/or researcher.

Robert S. Wallerstein

Tragically few contributions to the analytic literature represent truly original work, even fewer are leaps forward in the empirical study of psychoanalytic process. Freedman and his colleagues provide us with a genuinely novel way of examining psychoanalytic concepts, rooted in clinical practice. It is a massive contribution that repays careful study and opens a new vista on psychoanalytic research, retaining the highest standards of empirical and clinical rigor."

Professor Peter Fonagy

Tragically few contributions to the analytic literature represent truly original work, even fewer are leaps forward in the empirical study of psychoanalytic process. Freedman and his colleagues provide us with a genuinely novel way of examining psychoanalytic concepts, rooted in clinical practice. It is a massive contribution that repays careful study and opens a new vista on psychoanalytic research, retaining the highest standards of empirical and clinical rigor."

“Another Kind of Evidence is an important statement of the best sort of psychoanalytic research. The authors combine clinical perspectives and clinical insights, supported by computer-generated empirical documentation. The research presented here is what, in the best of hands, we psychoanalysts can do, and must do in order to maintain ourselves in the world of clinical healing and scientific advance. This book is a strikingly accessible and lucid accounting of the theoretical and empirical psychoanalytical research by Norbert Freedman and his associates at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR), a New York IPA component society, that really lives up to the ‘R’ in its name. What we discover in reading this work is a compelling description of a research methodology for psychoanalysis and its clinical application. Here is a combination of persuasive clinical observation and generalization (qualitative) and computer-generated documentation which advances knowledge and capability in our field. This book and the research elucidated will resonate helpfully with each of us, clinician and/or researcher.”

“Another Kind of Evidence is a most important, excellent contribution to contemporary psychoanalysis in the times of ‘evidence based medicine’. The authors summarize their extensive and intensive research within the IPTAR Program of Research in Psychoanalysis. Their papers aim ‘toward the goal of affirming a public and private sense of the legitimacy of psychoanalysis, thereby shaping professional identity’. The researchers present different and innovative research methods in order to study the outcome, the process, and the micro-world of the therapeutic interactions within psychoanalytic sessions. In each of the three sections of this book, the authors present a new instrument for studying the psychoanalytic process and its outcomes: the Representation of the Therapeutic Dialogue, the Propositional Method, and Sequential Specification. This book is a must for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and clinical researchers.

From the Publisher