Finding Unconscious Fantasy in Narrative, Trauma, and Body Pain

A Clinical Guide

Paula L. Ellman, Nancy R. Goodman, Paula L. Ellman, Nancy R. Goodman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317355694
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Finding Unconscious Fantasy in Narrative, Trauma, and Body Pain: A Clinical Guide demonstrates that the concept of the unconscious is profoundly relevant for understanding the mind, psychic pain, and traumatic human suffering. Editors Paula L. Ellman and Nancy R. Goodman established this book to discover how symbolization takes place through the "finding of unconscious fantasy" in ways that mend the historic split between trauma and fantasy. Cases present the dramatic encounters between patient and therapist when confronting discovery of the unconscious in the presence of trauma and body pain, along with narrative.

Unconscious fantasy has a central role in both clinical and theoretical psychoanalysis. This volume is a guide to the workings of the dyad and the therapeutic action of "finding" unconscious meanings. Staying close to the clinical engagement of analyst and patient shows the transformative nature of the "finding" process as the dyad works with all aspects of the unconscious mind. Finding Unconscious Fantasy in Narrative, Trauma, and Body Pain: A Clinical Guide uses the immediacy of clinical material to show how trauma becomes known in the "here and now" of enactment processes and accompanies the more symbolized narratives of transference and countertransference. This book features contributions from a rich variety of theoretical traditions illustrating working models including Klein, Arlow, and Bion and from leaders in the fields of narrative, trauma, and psychosomatics. Whether working with narrative, trauma or body pain, unconscious fantasy may seem out of reach. Attending to the analyst/ patient process of finding the derivatives of unconscious fantasy offers a potent roadmap for the way psychoanalytic engagement uncovers deep layers of the mind.

In focusing on the places of trauma and psychosomatic concreteness, along with narrative, Finding Unconscious Fantasy in Narrative, Trauma, and Body Pain: A Clinical Guide shows the vitality of "finding" unconscious fantasy and its effect in initiating a symbolizing process. Chapters in this book bring to life the sufferings and capacities of individual patients with actual verbatim process material demonstrating how therapists and patients discover and uncover the derivatives of unconscious fantasy. Finding the unconscious meanings in states of trauma, body expressions, and transference/countertransference enactments becomes part of the therapeutic dialogue between therapists and patients unraveling symptoms and allowing transformations. Learning how therapeutic work progresses to uncover unconscious fantasy will benefit all therapists and students of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy interested to know more about the psychoanalytic dialogue.

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Contents

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Notes on contributors

Acknowledgments

1 Finding unconscious fantasy

PAULA L . ELLMAN AND NANCY R . GOODMAN

2 The “Finding Theater”: a schema for finding unconscious fantasy

NANCY R . GOODMAN

3 Finding unconscious fantasy: contact and therapeutic action

PAULA L . ELLMAN

4 The psychoanalytic treatment of an adult patient traumatized in early childhood

WERNER BOHLEBER

5 The impossible and the possible: finding unconscious fantasy dimensions in Werner Bohleber’s case of Mr. A.

NANCY R . GOODMAN

6 Unconscious phantasy: discussion of Werner Bohleber’s case

ELIAS M. DA ROCHA BARROS AND ELIZABETH L . DA ROCHA BARROS

7 A Soma case of pain

PAULA L . ELLMAN

8 Painful transference and pains of transference: discussion of Paula Ellman’s case

MARILIA A ISENSTEIN

9 Discussion of Dr. Paula Ellman’s case

BATYA R . MONDER

10 Babette, interrupted

IRENE CAIRO

11 Discussion of Dr. Irene Cairo’s case: Babette, interrupted

HARRIET I . BASSECHES

12 Noises and voices: discussion on Babette, interrupted

CATALINA BRONSTEIN

13 Not quite a princess

JANICE S . LIEBERMAN

14 Mirror, mirror on the wall: who’s the fairest of us all?: Comments on Janice Lieberman’s case: “Not quite a princess”

CAROLYN S . ELLMAN

15 The broken doll: discovering the unconscious fantasy in the case of Karen

ILANY KOGAN

16 Unconscious traumatic fantasy

DORI LAUB AND NANETTE C . AUERHAHN

17 The dawn of unconscious phantasy

ROBERT OELSNER

18 Fantasy and trauma

ARLENE KRAMER RICHARDS

19 Searching unconscious phantasy

ROGELIO SOSNIK

Index

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Contributors

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Editors

Paula L. Ellman, Ph.D., ABPP, is a Training and Supervising Analyst in the Contemporary Freudian Society (CFS) and the IPA, Vice President of the CFS Board, past institute director of the Washington Program of CFS, a Member of the Committee on Women and Psychoanalysis of the IPA (COWAP) and a Board Member of the North America Psychoanalytic Confederation (NAPsaC). She is Visiting Professor at the Sino-American Continuing Training Project for Wuhan Hospital for Psychotherapy, Wuhan China. She has written and presented in the areas of female psychology, enactment, terror, sadomasochism, and unconscious fantasy. Recent publications include: “Donald Winnicott Today: Book Review” (co-authored with Nancy Goodman) Division Review (2014); Battling the Life and Death Forces of Sadomasochism: Clinical Perspectives (co-edited with Harriet Basseches and Nancy Goodman, Karnac, 2013); and Courage to Fight Violence Against Women: Psychoanalytic and Multidisciplinary Perspectives (co-edited with Nancy Goodman in the Psychoanalysis and Women series (Karnac, 2017)). She has a psychoanalytic practice in North Bethesda, Maryland and Washington, DC.

Nancy R. Goodman, Ph.D., is a Training and Supervising Analyst with the CFS and the IPA. She is on the permanent faculty of the CFS and has served as Institute Director of the CFS Washington, DC Program. She writes on female development, analytic listening, Holocaust Trauma, enactments, sadomasochism, and unconscious fantasy. Her most recent publications include: “Donald Winnicott Today: Book Review” (co-authored with Paula Ellman) Division Review (2014); Battling the Life and Death Forces of Sadomasochism: Clinical Perspectives (co-edited with Harriet Basseches and Paula Ellman, Karnac, 2013); Psychoanalysis: Listening to Understand, Selection of Readings of Arlene Kramer Richards, ed. Nancy R. Goodman (IPBooks, 2013); The Power of Witnessing: Reflections, Reverberations, and Traces of the Holocaust – Trauma, Psychoanalysis, and the Living Mind (co-edited with Marilyn B. Meyers, Routledge, 2012); and Courage to Fight Violence Against Women: Psychoanalytic and Multidisciplinary Perspectives (co-edited with Paula Ellman, in the Psychoanalysis and Women series (Karnac, 2017). She is Director of The Virtual Psychoanalytic Museum (www.virtualpsychoanalyticmuseum.org, IPBooks). Dr. Goodman has a psychoanalytic practice in Bethesda, Maryland.

Contributors

Marilia Aisenstein is a Training Analyst with the Hellenic Psychoanalytical Society and the Paris Psychoanalytical Society. She has been President of the Paris Society and the Paris Psychosomatic Institute, member of the editorial board of the Revue Française de Psychanalyse, and co-founder and editor of the Revue Française de Psychosomatique. She has been Chair of the IPA’s International New Groups. She was the European representative to the IPA’s Executive Committee and to the Board. She presently works in private practice and gives seminars in both the Hellenic and the Paris Societies and is the President of the Executive Board of the Paris Society’s Psychoanalytical Clinic. She has written chapters and books on psychosomatics and hypochondria, and numerous (150) papers in French, Greek, English, Spanish, and Portuguese in international reviews. She received the Maurice Bouvet Prize in 1992.

Nanette C. Auerhahn, Ph.D., is a Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst in private practice in Beachwood, Ohio. She has taught at Stanford University, the California School of Professional Psychology in Berkeley, and Case Western Reserve University and is the author of numerous articles on trauma.

Harriet I. Basseches, Ph.D., ABPP, is a Training and Supervising Analyst in the Contemporary Freudian Society (CFS). She was a Trustee on the Board of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), the North America Chair to the Program Committee for the 2015 IPA Congress. She is currently serving on the Task Force for IPA and Constituent Organizations, and on the IPA Education and Oversight Committee. In 2014, she received the American Psychoanalytic Presidential Award for service to the IPA. Formerly, she served as: President, the New York Freudian Society, President of the Independent Psychoanalytic Societies of the IPA in North America (CIPS), and Chair of the North American Psychoanalytic Societies Confederation of North America (NAPsaC). She was a board member of ABPsaP, and held numerous positions in the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association (Division 39). Dr. Basseches was also on the editorial board of the APsaA Newsletter, The American Psychoanalyst (TAP). She has studied and written on the subjects of femininity, psychoanalytic listening, and response to terror, and has written book reviews for TAP and publications of Division 39. In 2013, she, Paula Ellman and Nancy Goodman edited: Battling the Life and Death Forces of Sadomasochism: Clinical Perspectives (CIPS Book Series, Karnac).

Werner Bohleber, Dr. Phil, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Frankfurt and a Training and Supervising Analyst. He was former President of the German Psychoanalytical Association (DPV) and a former member of the Board of Representatives of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). He served as editor of the German psychoanalytic journal Psyche and was a recipient of the Mary S. Sigourney Award 2007. Dr. Bohleber is the author of several books and numerous articles. His most recent book in English is Destructiveness, Intersubjectivity, and Trauma. The Identity Crisis of Modern Psychoanalysis (Karnac, 2010).

Catalina Bronstein, MD, is visiting Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London. She is a Fellow and Training and Supervising Analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She trained as a child psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic and as an analyst at the British Psychoanalytical Society. She works as a child, adolescent, and adult psychoanalyst in private practice and also at the Brent Adolescent Centre. She is on the Board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (IJP), and until recently she was the London Editor of IJP. She lectures in Britain and abroad, and has written numerous papers, chapters in books, and monographs on a wide variety of topics. She edited Kleinian Theory: A Contemporary Perspective (Wiley, 2001) and co-edited The New Dialogues Klein-Lacan (2015, Karnac). With Edna O’Shaughnessy she has co-edited Attacks on Linking Revisited (Karnac, in press). She is the current President of the British Psychoanalytical Society.

Irene Cairo, MD, received her medical training in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is a board certified psychiatrist in New York State. She is a member, Training Analyst and faculty of the Contemporary Freudian Society, and is a graduate, member, and faculty of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. She is the author of “My Colleague, that Other” (Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 2005). She has published a chapter in Immigration in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2015), and a chapter in The Bion Tradition (Karnac, 2015). For the past 20 years Dr. Cairo has co-chaired with Rogelio Sosnik a discussion group on the work of Bion, at the biannual meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association, where she also coordinates a clinical workshop on process and technique. She has participated in many meetings devoted to Bion both nationally and internationally. She is currently the North American Chair of the Ethics Committee of the International Psychoanalytic Association. She is in private practice in New York.

Carolyn S. Ellman, Ph.D., is a Training and Supervising Analyst (Fellow) at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR) and the Contemporary Freudian Society. She is also an Adjunct Clinical Professor and Supervising Analyst at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and a Clinical Associate Supervisor at the City University Clinical Psychology Department. She is the senior editor, with Joseph Reppen, of Omnipotent Fantasies and the Vulnerable Self (Aronson, l997) as well as The Modern Freudians: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Technique (with Stanley Grand, Mark Silvan, and Steven Ellman) (Aronson, l999). She has co-edited with Andrew B. Druck, Aaron Thaler, and Norbert Freedman, A New Freudian Synthesis: Clinical Process in the Next Generation (Karnac, 2011). She has written several articles and taught and lectured extensively on the topic of envy.

Ilany Kogan, MA, is a Training and Supervising Analyst of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society. She works as a teacher and supervisor at the Generatia Center in Bucharest, Romania, and in various places in Germany, especially in Munich and Aachen. For many years Dr. Kogan worked extensively with Holocaust survivors’ offspring, and published papers and books on this topic. She was awarded the Sigourney award (2016) and the Elise M. Hayman Award for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide (2005). She is author of The Cry of Mute Children (Free Association Books, 1995); Escape from Selfhood (IPA Publications, 2007); The Struggle Against Mourning (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); and Canvas Of Change – Analysis Through the Prism of Creativity (Karnac, 2012).

Dori Laub, MD, was born in Cernauti, Romania, on June 8, 1937. He is currently a practicing psychoanalyst in New Haven, Connecticut, who works primarily with victims of massive psychic trauma and with their children. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and co-founder of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. He obtained his MD at the Hadassah Medical School at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, and his MA in Clinical Psychology at the Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. He was Acting Director of the Genocide Study Program (GSP) at Yale in 2000 and 2003. Since 2001, he has also served as Deputy Director for Trauma Studies for the GSP. Dr. Laub has published on the topic of psychic trauma, its knowing and representation in a variety of psychoanalytic journals and has co-authored a book entitled Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History with Professor Shoshana Felman (Routledge, 1992).

Janice S. Lieberman, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. She is a Training and Supervising Analyst, faculty member at IPTAR (Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research) where she teaches a course on The Contemporary Dream. She has served on the Editorial Boards of JAPA, the PANY Bulletin, and The American Psychoanalyst. She chairs an annual discussion group on Masculinity at the winter meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association. She has written two books: The Many Faces of Deceit: Omissions, Lies and Disguise (with Helen Gediman)...

Table of contents

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