A Mind of One's Own

by Caper, Robert A.

• ISBN13: 9780415199117
• ISBN10: 0415199115
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-12-09
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This collection of papers, written over the last six years by Robert Caper, focuses on the importance of psychological development of distinguishing self from object, and the central role that this difficult psychological disentanglement plays in the therapeutic effect of psychoanalysis. In doing so, the author explains what differentiates the practice of psychoanalysis from psychotherapy; while psychotherapy aims to ease the client towards "good mental health" through careful suggestion and manipulation of the client's character, psychoanalysis attempts the more radical task of allowing the client to discover who he/she is and isn't. In particular, it seeks to allow the client to see the internal and external reality, clear of fantasies, with the self wholly distinguished from other people and other objects.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	x
Introduction	1	(8)
Psychoanalysis and suggestion: reflections on James Strachey's `The nature of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis'	9	(10)
Does psychoanalysis heal? A contribution to the theory of psychoanalytic technique	19	(13)
Introduction
Projective identification in the analytic process
Origins of the analyst's need to cure
The emotional difficulties of psychoanalysis for the analyst
The psychoanalyst as a real object
Technical considerations
Conclusion
On the difficulty of making a mutative interpretation	32	(13)
Introduction
The interplay of transference and countertransference
Clinical examples
Discussion
Strachey's `auxiliary superego'
The group superego
The superego and containment
Conclusion
What is a clinical fact?	45	(14)
Introduction
Evidence of psychoanalysis
Isolation within an intimate relationship
The aesthetic conflict
Psychic reality
Discussion
Psychic reality and the analysis of transference	59	(11)
Psychic reality
Transference
Clinical example
Transference analysis
Analysis of the archaic superego
Psychopathology and primitive mental states	70	(14)
Primitive mental states
Abnormal mental states and the failure to learn from experience
Unconscious delusions and unconscious phantasies
Clinical illustration
A theoretical fallacy
Psychoanalytic reconstruction
Summary and conclusions
Play, creativity and experimentation	84	(11)
Introduction
Playing and experimentation
Experimental play in psychoanalysis
Experimental disasters in psychotic states
Experimentation and sexuality
Symbol formation and creativity
Conclusion
Internal objects	95	(16)
Unconscious conceptions
Paranoid-schizoid internal objects
Depressive internal objects
Clinical example
Recapitulation
The internal world and the Oedipus complex
A mind of one's own	111	(16)
Introduction
Narcissistic aspects of the transference
Non-narcissistic aspects of the transference
Oedipal aspects of the transference
Clinical illustration
Discussion
On alpha function	127	(11)
Introduction
Alpha elements
Beta elements
Beta elements and countertransference
A theory of the container	138	(18)
Introduction
Freudian repression and Kleinian splitting and projection
The theory of the container
Urgent and aggressive projective identification
Alpha function and beta elements
Synthetic alpha function
The role of unconscious phantasy in the sense of reality
Anti-alpha function
Analytic alpha function
Clinical illustrations
Containment, security and insecurity
Bibliography	156	(5)
Index	161