Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity and Difference: Navigating the Divide

233 Pages·2016·1.762 MB·English

by  Brent Willock, Lori C. Bohm, Rebecca Coleman Curtis

Psychoanalytic Perspectives
on Identity and Difference
Every day, clinicians encounter challenges to empathy and communication while
struggling to assist patients with diverse life histories, character, sexuality, gender,
psychopathology, cultural, religious, political, racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Most writing pertaining to ideas of similarity, discrepancy and ‘the Other’ has
highlighted differences. Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity and Difference:
Navigating the Divide offers a different focus, emphasizing points of contact,
connection, and how divisions between people can be transcended.
In-depth case material, astutely elucidated by diverse theoretical approaches,
furnishes stimulating ideas and valuable suggestions for facilitating a meeting of
minds and psychological growth in patients who might otherwise be dif(cid:2) cult or
impossible to engage. Exploring how psychoanalysts can navigate obstacles to
understanding and communicating with suffering individuals, topics covered
include internal experience of likeness and difference in the patient and in the
analyst, and how analysts can (cid:2) nd echoes of themselves in patients.
Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists will appreciate the importance and value
of this wide-ranging, groundbreaking exploration of these insuf(cid:2) ciently addressed
dimensions of human experience.
Brent Willock is President of the Toronto Institute for Contemporary
Psychoanalysis, Board Member of the Canadian Institute for Child and Adolescent
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and on the faculty of the Institute for the
Advancement of Self Psychology.
Lori C. Bohm is Supervising Analyst, Faculty and former Director at the Center
for Applied Psychoanalysis and Intensive Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Programs at the William Alanson White Institute. She is Psychotherapy Supervisor
in the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program at the City University of New York.
Rebecca Coleman Curtis is Professor of Psychology at Adelphi University,
Faculty and Supervisor at the William Alanson White Institute and Supervisor at
the National Institute for the Psychotherapies.
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Psychoanalytic Perspectives
on Identity and Difference
Navigating the Divide
Edited by
Brent Willock, Lori C. Bohm
and Rebecca Coleman Curtis
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 selection and editorial matter, Brent Willock, Lori C. Bohm, &
Rebecca Coleman Curtis; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of the editor to be identifi ed as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Willock, Brent, editor. | Bohm, Lori C., editor. | Curtis,
Rebecca C., editor.
Title: Psychoanalytic perspectives on identity and difference : navigating
the divide / edited by Brent Willock, Lori C. Bohm and Rebecca
Coleman Curtis.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2016022515 | ISBN 9781138192546 (hardback : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9781138192539 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315543857
(e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Identity (Psychology) | Difference (Psychology) |
Psychotherapy. | Psychoanalysis.
Classifi cation: LCC BF697 .P754 2017 | DDC 155.2--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022515
ISBN: 978-1-138-19254-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-19253-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-54385-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Contributors xi
Introduction 1
LORI C. BOHM
PART I
The internal experience of likeness and difference
in the patient 9
1 Identifying/disidentifying 11
BRENT WILLOCK
2 Negotiating the different/alike divide in the treatment of shame 22
GLADYS GUARTON
3 The transition from adolescence to adulthood in psychotic
patients and their families: a framework for assessing recovery 28
BARRI BELNAP
4 Neuroticism is the way home 48
MARK EGIT
5 An unpublishable paper 59
HARRIETTE KALEY
vi Contents
PART II
The work of the therapist to find him or herself
in the patient 67
6 Reluctance to (cid:2) nding myself in the other:
treating an alleged paedophile 69
SUSAN KOLOD
7 On intersubjective (cid:2) rsts in the analytic third:
becoming a subject in the presence of the other 76
IONAS SAPOUNTZIS
PART III
Cultural, racial and cognitive/emotional divides 85
8 Our not-so-hidden shame: lack of ethnic diversity in the
(cid:2) eld of psychoanalysis 87
JOHN V. O’LEARY
9 Finding their way home: the struggle of the Australian
Aboriginal people to become one people within one nation 95
JANICE A. WALTERS
10 The autistic core in Aboriginal trauma:
breaking down or breaking out of the autistic defence 105
NORMA TRACEY
11 A bicultural approach to working together:
conversing about cultural supervision 118
TRUDY AKE AND SARAH CALVERT
12 Identity amongst differences: a personal account of a
pakeha psychologist working in a New Zealand
M(cid:407)ori Mental Health Service 128
INGO LAMBRECHT
13 The good son: psychotherapy with a 65-year-old man
with the diagnosis of Asperger syndrome 136
SUSAN ROSE
Contents vii
14 Creativity, identity and social exclusion:
working with traumatized individuals 144
MARILYN CHARLES
PART IV
Internal experience of likeness and difference
in the therapist 163
15 An autobiographical account of the analysis of an analyst
who endured complex childhood trauma 165
JOHANNA TIEMANN
16 Same old story? Consistency and change in the analyst’s work
over time 171
MICHAEL STERN
17 The analyst as patient: working from both sides of the divide 179
EMILY FUCHECK
18 The contrapuntal play of paradox: likeness and difference
in the theories of Otto Rank 192
CLAUDE BARBRE
Conclusions:
The universal and the particular in the therapeutic encounter 208
REBECCA COLEMAN CURTIS
Index 212
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Acknowledgements
This book’s inspiration emerged from creative brainstorming and much hard work
by Dr Michael Stern (The Psychoanalytic Society of the New York University
Postdoctoral Program), Professor Michael O’Loughlin (Adelphi Society for
Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy), Dr Lori C. Bohm (William Alanson White
Psychoanalytic Society), Professor Ionas Sapountzis (Adelphi Society for
Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy), Professor Rebecca Coleman Curtis (William
Alanson White Psychoanalytic Society), Dr Rhonda Sternberg (Psychoanalytic
Society of the New York University Postdoctoral Program), Margaret Pearl
(Aotearoa New Zealand Chapter of the International Association for Relational
Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy) and Dr Brent Willock (Toronto Institute for
Contemporary Psychoanalysis). On to the thematic tree – Identity and difference
– that evolved, our wonderful authors put magni(cid:2) cent leaves. Kate Hawes (Senior
Publisher), Kirsten Buchanan (Senior Editorial Assistant), Aiyana Curtis and
Charles Bath (Editorial Assistants), Nigel Turner (Cover Designer) and the rest of
the outstanding staff at Routledge made this vision a reality.
We thank the following publishers and authors for their kind permission to
quote passages from their (cid:2) ne publications: In Chapter 1, W.W. Norton’s Identity
and the life cycle by Erik H. Erikson; in Chapter 4, a selection from The Pisan
Cantos, copyright ©1948 by Ezra Pound, is reprinted by permission of New
Directions Publishing Corp.; in Chapter 9, thanks to Monica Brown and
Emmaus Productions for their kind permission to reprint the lyrics to ‘One people,
one land’, all rights reserved, ©2001; in Chapter 13, a passage from W.W.
Norton’s The history of love by Nicole Krauss (2005).