Taking the Transference, Reaching Towards Dreams: Clinical Studies in the Intermediate Area

241 Pages·2012·0.89 MB·English

by  M. Gerard Fromm

CHAPTERTITLE I
TAKING THE TRANSFERENCE,
REACHING TOWARD DREAMS

TAKING THE
TRANSFERENCE,
REACHING TOWARD
DREAMS
Clinical Studies in the
Intermediate Area
M. Gerard Fromm
First published in 2012 by
Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2012 to M. Gerard Fromm.
The right of M. Gerard Fromm to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
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A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78049 056 4
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CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
ABOUTTHEAUTHOR ix
INTRODUCTION:Intermediate space xi
CHAPTER ONE
Impasse and transitional relatedness 1
CHAPTER TWO
What does “borderline” mean? 20
CHAPTER THREE
Disturbances of self in the psychoanalytic setting 34
CHAPTER FOUR
The hope in hopelessness 53
CHAPTER FIVE
Something opened up 68
v
vi CONTENTS
CHAPTER SIX
From bodies to words 81
CHAPTER SEVEN
Illusion and desire 92
CHAPTER EIGHT
Unconscious creative activity and the restoration of reverie 102
CHAPTER NINE
Taking the transference 123
CHAPTER TEN
Psychosis, trauma, and the speechless context 133
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dreams represented in dreams 150
CHAPTER TWELVE
Interpretation in psychoanalysis 171
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The therapeutic community as a holding environment 187
REFERENCES 205
INDEX 217
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Some of the chapters that follow have been previously published in
slightly revised form elsewhere. I am grateful to the publishers for
their permission to include them in this volume.
Chapters One, Three and Eleven were previously published under
the same titles in The Facilitating Environment: Clinical Application of
Winnicott’s Theory, which I edited with Bruce L. Smith in 1989. They are
reprinted here with the permission of International Universities Press.
Chapter One was first published in Resolving Treatment Impasses: The
Difficult Patient, edited by Theodore Saretsky in 1981. Permission for
reprinting here comes from Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.
Chapter Two first appeared in Psychoanalytic Psychology, 12, in
1995. It is being reprinted with the permission of the American
Psychological Association. Chapter Six was first published in The
Embodied Subject: Minding the Body in Psychoanalysis, edited by John
Muller and Jane Tillman in 2007. It is being reprinted here with the
permission of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. Chapter Nine
first appeared in The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 59, in 1999. It
is being reprinted here with the permission of Springer Netherlands.
In Chapter Four, extensive quotes from Mehler and Argentieri’s
paper, “Hope and Hopelessness: A Technical Problem”, published in
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 70, in 1989, are reprinted
with the permission of John Wiley & Sons Ltd. In Chapter Eight,
extensive quotes from Marion Milner’s 1957 On Not Being Able To
Paint are included with the permission of International Universities
Press. Lyrics to Van Morrison’s 1991 song “See Me Through, Part II”
from Hymns to the Silence, quoted in Chapter Twelve, are included
with the permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
The clinical work reported here draws on years of both presenta-
tion and attendance at the extraordinarily rich case conferences of the
Austen Riggs Center and on years of conversation with teachers and
colleagues at the Center. Their names are too numerous to mention
but I do want to recognise the mentorship of Ess White and Martin
Cooperman, the clinical leadership of Edward Shapiro and James
Sacksteder, the scholarship and inspired teaching of John Muller, and
both the brilliance and the friendship of Francoise Davoine and Jean-
Max Gaudilliere. I am extremely grateful to have travelled this path
with all of them.
I also want to thank Lee Watroba, Executive Assistant of the
Erikson Institute, for her ever upbeat support and ever careful project
management. I especially thank Maryjane Fromm, whose good sense
about life, whose care and understanding of me, and whose honesty
and sophistication about people have made her my best supervisor
over the years. Finally, I am enormously indebted to my patients for
joining me in such difficult but intimate work and allowing me to
learn and grow along with them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M. Gerard Fromm, PhD, is currently the Evelyn Stefansson Nef
Director of the Erikson Institute for Education and Research at the
Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, MA. He also directed the
Therapeutic Community Program at Austen Riggs for many years,
where he is a senior psychotherapist and supervisor. He is certified in
psychoanalysis, and is on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute
for Psychoanalysis, and the guest faculties of a number of other
psychoanalytic institutes. He is also on the faculty of Harvard Medical
School and the Yale Child Study Center, and is past President of the
Center for the Study of Groups and Social Systems and President-
Elect of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of
Organizations. Dr Fromm is a member of the Academy for Critical
Incident Analysis and the International Dialogue Initiative. He has
presented and published widely, including the edited volumes The
Facilitating Environment: Clinical Applications of Winnicott’s Theory, with
Bruce L. Smith, PhD, and Lost in Transmission: Studies of Trauma Across
Generations.
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