Tuesday, June 30, 2009

For this blog today I have decided to write some about an interesting man who goes by the name of Ernest Jones. Jones was a Welsh, neurologist, psychoanalyst and Freud's official biographer. Jones was the first English-language practitioner of psychoanalysis and the President of the British Psycho-Analytical Society and the International Psychoanalytic Association in the 1920's and 30's. Through Jones connection with the surgeon Wilfred Trotter Jones recalled first coming across Freud's work since Jones and Trotter both worked together as surgeons at University College Hospital. Jones was upset at what he came to see of institutionalised treatment of the "insane" and so he started experimenting with hypnotic techniques in his clinical work. Upon attending a congress of neurologists in Amsterdam in 1907 Jones met Carl Jung and obtained a good look at an account of the work of Freud and his circle in Vienna. Jones went along with Jung by joining with him in Zurich to plan the inaugural Psychoanalytic Congress, which was was the place were Jones met Freud for the first time. Jones then Travelled to Vienna for more discussions with Freud and for the meeting of the members of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, which helped to create a positive personal and professional relationship between Freud and Jones. Jones took up teaching duties in 1908, at the Department of Psychiatry of Toronto University. Jones also maintained a private psychoanalytic practice and worked as a pathologist for the Toronto Asylum and as Director of its psychiatric outpatient clinic. After further meetings with Freud in 1909 at Clark University, Massachusetts Jones went out and tried to establish strong working relationships with the American psychoanalytic movement by giving some 20 papers or speeches to American professional groups in places like Boston and Chicago. In 1910, Jones co-founded the American Psychopathological Association and the following year the American Psychoanalytic Association where he became the first secretary up until the time of 1913. Jones also found the time in his career eventually for a rigorous programme of writing and research, which helped create the first of what were to be many important gifts to psychoanalytic literature. A number of these writings were published in German in the big time periodicals published in Vienna and they helped to lock in Jones status in Freud's close circle. "As Jones became closer to Freud he initiated with him the creation of a Secret Committee of loyalists to safeguard the theoretical and institutional legacy of the psychoanalytic movement". In 1913, Jones went to London and set up a practice as a psychoanalyst and established the London Psychoanalytic Society as he also lectured and wrote about psychoanalytic theory. Some papers of Jones appeared as papers on Psychoanalysis and the first comprehensive account of psychoanalytic theory and practice published in English. By 1919, Jones established the British Psychoanalytical Society and held the post as President until 1944. Jones also created funding for and supervised the creation in London of a Clinic that offered subsidised fees and he also helped establish an Institute of Psychoanalysis for those in the field. Jones served two periods as President of the Psychoanalytic Association from 1920 to 1924 and 1942 to 1949. In 1920, Jones also founded the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and worked as the editor until 1939. The following year Jones established the International Psychoanalytic Library, which in return helped published some 50 books under Jones editorship. Jones was a great influence on the British Medical Association decision of officially recognizing psychoanalysis in 1929. In return from this move by the Association the BBC decided to remove Jones from a list of speakers declared to be dangerous to public morality and in the 1930's Jones made a series of appearances on the radio speaking about psychoanalysis. While Hitler took control of Germany Jones aided many displaced and at risk Jewish analysts to resettle in England and other countries. After Anschuluss of March 1939, Jones flew to Vienna bravely to help negotiate and organise the emigration of Freud and his circle to London. After the war Jones slowly ceased the continuing of his posts, while continuing his psychoanalytic practice, writings and lecturing. Jones most major accomplishment of his final years of work was the publishing to widespread notoriety of three volumes about Freud's life and work. Jones was proud of his Welsh origins in his life and was a member of the Welsh Nationalist Party Plaid Cymru. Interestingly to me the successful Jones was also made a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1942 and Honorary President of the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1949 and an Honorary Doctor of Science at Swansea University in 1954. What I found most interesting about Jones from conducting this blog entry was how influential and prominent he was through all his establishments and how significant his relationship to Freud was in the field of psychology.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Melanie Klein was a Austrian born British psychoanalyst who helped formulate new therapeutic techniques for children and she had a significant influence on child psychology and modern psychoanalysis. Klein had questioned some of the groundwork assumptions of Freud but Klein always thought of herself as a faithful follower to Freud's ideas. Klein was innovative with her work and interestingly she also was the first person in the field to apply traditional psychoanalysis upon young children. Klein was well opinionated and demanding of loyalty from those who followed her work and Klein was able to create quite the influential training program in psychoanalysis. Klein is also considered to be one of the co-founders of object relations theory. "Klein's theoretical work in time became more focused on speculative hypothesis and was eventually accepted by Freud, which actually stated that life may be a delicate occurrence, that is drawn to an inorganic state and therefore, in an unspecified sense, withholds a drive towards death". "Also put in another fashion of psychological wording Eros (properly, the life instinct) is thereby presumed to have a companion force, Thanatos (death instinct), which allegedly attempts to terminate and disintegrate life. "Klein and Freud both felt that biomental forces were the foundation of the mind". "Freud and Klein never went astray from terms of theirs or conceptualizations although there were protests and controversies by followers, especially now". Klein was innovative in working with children directly often at the age of only two years old and she saw children's play as the main mode of emotional communication as she attempted to interpret emotional meanings of play. Klein realised that parental figures had a important role in the child's phantasy life and she considered that the timing of Freud's Oedipus complex was not fully clear. In contrast to Freud, Klein concluded that the superego was around a much longer time before the Oedipal phase. "After looking into ultra-aggressive phantasises related to hate, envy and greed in young ill children Klein came up with a model of the human mind that connected significant oscillations of state, with whether the postulated Eros or Thanatos instincts were in the fore". "She named the state of the mind, when the sustaining principle of life is in power, the depressive position". "The psychological state corresponding to the disintegrating tendency of life she called the paranoid schizoid position". Klein's feelings on regarding aggression as a significant influence in its own right when evaluating children stirred up some conflict with Anna Freud, a big time child psychotherapist who was working in England at the time. At current times Kleinian psychoanalysis is one of the big schools within psychoanalysis and Kleinian psychoanalysts are also members of the International Psychoanalytic Association. Kleinian psychoanalysis is claimed to be the most significant school of psychoanalysis in Britain, in much of Latin America, and with the possible exclusion of Lacanianism, in much of continental Europe. In the USA, the Psychoanalytic Center of California is the most key training center that follows the ideas of Melanie Klein's work. Kleinian psychoanalysis with adults consists of a very traditional method that applies using an analytic couch and meeting four to five times a week. Kleinian analysis focuses on the comprehension of very "deep" and primitive emotions and phantasies. So just from this blog entry I can see it is obvious that Melanie Klein was brillant and I found it interesting how much of what she did reminds me of the psychoanalyst Margaret Mahler.


Thursday, June 18, 2009

Today I have chosen to blog about Margaret Mahler a fairly familiar name to me especially when I hear of related talk to Sigmund Freud's research. Mahler was a Hungarian physician who later on became interested in psychiatry and she was a key figure on the topic of psychoanalysis. Mahler was mostly interested in normal child development and she spent much time with understanding children and how they arrive at the self. Through Mahler's studying she developed the Separation-Individuation theory of child development. Mahler worked as a psychoanalyst with young troubled children and in 1950 herself and Manuel Furer established the Masters Children's Centre in Manhattan. There Mahler developed the Tripartite Treatment Model, in which the mother was involved in the treatment of the child. Mahler helped bring about a more constructive exploration of serious troubles in childhood and emphasized the importance of the environment and it's influences on the child. Mahler especially was curious of the mother-infant duality and carefully recorded the influence of early separations of children from their mothers. This recording of separation-individuation was her most important aspect she offered to the development of psychoanalysis. Mahler helped to explain the normal and abnormal features of the developmental ego psychology. Mahler worked with psychotic children, while psychosis had not been involved in psychoanalytic treatment yet. Symbiotic child psychosis interested Mahler and her most important work is "The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant:Symbiosis and Individuation, written in 1975 with Fred Pine and Anni Bergman. Interestingly to me in Mahler's Separation-Individuation Theory of Child Development Mahler's theory of development takes place in phases and with several sub phases which consist of the following:
"Normal Autistic Phase - First few weeks of life. The infant is detached and self absorbed. Spends most of his/her time sleeping. Mahler later abandoned this phase, based on new findings from her infant research She believed it to be non-existent. The phase still appears in many books on her theories."
"Normal Symbiotic Phase - Lasts until about 5 months of age. The child is now aware of his/her mother but there is not a sense of individuality. The infant and the mother are one, and there is a barrier between them and the rest of the world."
"Separation-Individuation Phase - The arrival of this phase marks the end of the Normal Symbiotic Phase. Separation refers to the development of limits, the differentiation between the infant and the mother, whereas individuation refers to the development of the infant's ego, sense of identity, and cognitive abilities. Mahler explains how a child with the age of a few months breaks out of an “autistic shell” into the world with human connections. This process, labeled separation-individuation, is divided into subphases, each with its own onset, outcomes and risks. The following subphases proceed in this order but overlap considerably.
Hatching – first months. The infant ceases to be ignorant of the differentiation between him/her and the mother. "Rupture of the shell". Increased alertness and interest for the outside world. Using the mother as a point of orientation."
"Practicing – 9-about 16 months. Brought about by the infant's ability to crawl and then walk freely, the infant begins to explore actively and becomes more distant from the mother. The child experiences himself still as one with his mother."
"Rapproachement –15-24 months. In this subphase, the infant once again becomes close to the mother. The child realizes that his physical mobility demonstrates psychic separateness from his mother. The toddler may become tentative, wanting his mother to be in sight so that, through eye contact and action, he can explore his world. The risk is that the mother will misread this need and respond with impatience or unavailability. This can lead to an anxious fear of abandonment in the toddler. A basic ‘mood predisposition’ may be established at this point. Rapproachment is divided into a few sub phases:
Beginning - Motivated by a desire to share discoveries with the mother.
Crisis - Between staying with the mother, being emotionally close and being more independent and exploring.
Solution - Individual solutions are enabled by the development of language and the superego."
"Disruptions in the fundamental process of separation-individuation can result in a disturbance in the ability to maintain a reliable sense of individual identity in adulthood."
"And this is also Object Constancy the phase when the child understands that the mother has a separate identity and is truly a separate individual. This leads to the formation of Internalization, which the internal representation that the child has formed of the mother. This Internalization is what provides the child with an image that helps supply them with an unconscious level of guiding support and comfort from their mothers. Deficiencies in positive Internalization could possibly lead to a sense of insecurity and low self esteem issues in adulthood." So it is quite intersting to read more about and blog of another in depth researcher in psychology who studied the development of children and who has such a big impact on this topic like Jean Piaget or Eric Erikson.
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