Psychoanalytic Psychology

The sadomasochistic character and borderline personality organization: Working through the underlying conflicts and defenses using transference-focused psychotherapy.
Masochism is a complex, dimensional psychological phenomenon. At the severe end of the spectrum, it is better conceptualized as sadomasochism, involving severe self-destructive behaviors driven by hidden pleasure and underlying conflicts, presenting diagnostic and treatment challenges. This article elucidates its clinical manifestations and discusses the implicated conflicts and defenses. It explores the effectiveness of transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP) in managing sadomasochistic personality, emphasizing the importance of considering the level of personality organization. Using a case example, we illustrate the potential of TFP for symptom amelioration and improvement of interpersonal relationships in individuals with sadomasochistic personalities, as well as addressing emerging resistances in treatment. Furthermore, the article underscores the imperative for further research to understand and address this intricate phenomenon. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
A multimethod examination of the validity of the Psychodiagnostic Chart–2.
The Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM; PDM Task Force, 2006) and its subsequent second edition (PDM-2; Lingiardi & McWilliams, 2017) aims to provide a “taxonomy of people” rather than a “taxonomy of disorders.” The Psychodiagnostic Chart (PDC; Gordon & Bornstein, 2012) and PDC-2 (Gordon & Bornstein, 2015) is a clinician-rated instrument designed to operationalize the PDM/PDM-2. Evidence for the PDC/PDC-2 is emerging, thus the present study sought to provide further evidence for the validity of the PDC/PDC-2 using a multimethod assessment in a sample of 40 outpatients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder who were receiving transference-focused psychotherapy. Clinicians rated their patients using the PDC-2, and results showed good convergent validity with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.) personality pathology assessed via clinician ratings and a semistructured diagnostic interview, a semistructured clinical interview assessing psychodynamic constructs (object relations, defenses), and patient self-reported interpersonal distress and general psychopathology distress. Results also pointed to potential revisions for subsequent editions of the PDM with regard to the assessment of aggression and moral functioning. Overall, the present study demonstrated that the PDC-2 is a valid instrument for assessing personality and psychopathology in a clinical sample. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Mentalizing, personality organization, and symptomatology in children and adolescents using the psychodynamic diagnostic manual.
This study aims to investigate mentalizing, personality organization, symptomatology, and their relationships in the developmental age within nonclinical and clinical samples. We compared three groups of participants, including children (8–11 years old) and adolescents (12–15 years old): a nonclinical sample (n = 79), a group diagnosed with externalizing disorders (disruptive behavior disorders, DBD; n = 31), and a group diagnosed with internalizing disorders (somatic symptom disorders, SSD; n = 50). Mentalizing was assessed using the Child and Adolescent Reflective Functioning Scale. We applied the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual, second edition to the transcripts of the Child Attachment Interview to evaluate personality organization. Symptomatology was assessed by parents using the Child Behavior Checklist. Results indicate that participants with DBD exhibit greater difficulties in mentalizing and a lower level of personality organization compared to SSD and nonclinical participants. On the other hand, SSD participants demonstrate a healthier level of personality organization and a stronger association with the ability to mentalize than their DBD peers. Regression analysis shows that, in both clinical and nonclinical samples, mentalizing play a stronger predictive role on the symptomatology than personality organization. Mentalizing confirms its key role in healthy and psychopathological development. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Pregnant mothers’ object relations predict toddler attachment and behavior problems.
This longitudinal study examined associations between object relations in pregnant women and their toddlers’ attachment security and behavior problems. The participant group comprised 84 pregnant women and their young children, who learned about the study through fliers distributed around various public locations as well as community agencies that service the low-income population. Participants completed self-report measures and were observed while interacting with their child; data were collected from the third trimester of pregnancy to 2 years postpartum. Results indicated that mothers’ healthier object relations were associated with more secure attachment and fewer behavior problems in toddlers. A stepwise multiple regression analysis indicated that the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale—Global Rating Method Emotional Investment in Relationships explained variance in toddler attachment security, above and beyond the influence of the mother’s education and family income. The Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale—Global Rating Method Affective Quality of Representations explained variance in toddler problematic behaviors. Implications of this study suggest that a pregnant mother’s object relations during her third trimester, especially her emotional investment in relationships and affective quality of representations, may have cross-generation effects on her young child’s functioning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Review of Freud and philosophy of mind, volume 1: Reconstructing the argument for unconscious mental states.
Reviews the book, Freud and Philosophy of Mind, Volume 1: Reconstructing the Argument for Unconscious Mental States by Jerome C. Wakefield (see record 2018-37987-000). Wakefield’s book is devoted to Freud as a philosopher of mind rather than Freud as the founder of a form of treatment. The main purpose of his book is Reconstructing Freud’s Argument for Unconscious Mental States, which is the book’s subtitle. Wakefield’s focus is on the descriptive rather than the dynamic unconscious. As Freud recognized, the plausibility of the concept of a “dynamic unconscious” rests on first making a convincing case for the existence of unconscious mental states. The reviewer notes that although Wakefield’s focus is on the reconstruction of Freud’s argument for the existence of unconscious mental states, his meticulous analysis of that argument generates issues and raises questions, the examination of which is central to understanding the structure of the Freudian theory of the workings of the mind. This book is also critical to understanding any conception of unconscious mental states as well as the relation between consciousness and unconscious mental states. These are additional singular contributions of Wakefield’s book. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Review of From breakdown to breakthrough: Psychoanalytic treatment of psychosis.
Reviews the book, From Breakdown to Breakthrough: Psychoanalytic Treatment of Psychosis by Danielle Knafo and Michael Selzer (2024). In this new book, Knafo, a psychoanalytic psychologist, and Selzer, a psychiatrist specializing in schizophrenia, seek to restore some of the adventurousness and creativity that were the original hallmarks of psychoanalytic practice. Like other inventive and committed clinicians before them, who sought to push against a too-comfortable and formulaic form of practice, they focus on psychotic disorders, insisting that they can be successfully treated using psychoanalytic methods, provided that the analyst understands the complexities of such work and has the patience and fortitude to persist despite its challenges. Although they acknowledge that “treating psychosis is often like entering someone else’s nightmare”, Knafo and Selzer also emphasize how richly rewarding such work can be. The process “taps into the therapist’s creativity because creation always takes place on the threshold of the unknown,” offering the potential for “one’s encounters with the world of psychosis [to provide] the same excitement one has when traveling to another land and encountering a different culture”. Knafo and Selzer have written a beautiful book, one that will resonate deeply with many readers, whether or not they themselves actually treat psychosis. For those already committed to or intrigued by the challenges of that work, their book offers an invaluable resource; whether it will persuade others to take up this task remains an open question. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Review of Someone Saved My Life Today: Collected Papers on Psychoanalysis, Literature and Philosophy of Paul Schimmel.
Reviews the book, Saved My Life Today: Collected Papers on Psychoanalysis, Literature and Philosophy of Paul Schimmel by Paul Schimmel (2022). Like psychoanalysis, Paul Schimmel’s anthology “Someone Saved My Life Today” helps its interlocutor pinpoint conversations they crave. Conversational points of departure abound in the rangy and engaging content of the Australian psychoanalyst’s collected articles on psychoanalysis, literature, and philosophy, and in the broader tensions and questions that exist in the interstitial spaces to which these texts point. Inspired by Schimmel’s work, two potential and intersecting conversation starters follow, the first on Schimmel’s work and the second on Australian psychoanalysis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Review of Colonial trauma: A study of the psychic and political consequences of colonial oppression in Algeria and Spheres of insurrection: Notes on decolonizing the unconscious.
Reviews the books, Colonial Trauma: A Study of the Psychic and Political Consequences of Colonial Oppression in Algeria by Karima Lazali (see record 2021-48403-000) and Spheres of Insurrection: Notes on Decolonizing the Unconscious by Suely Rolnik and S. Delgado Moya (2023). Colonial Trauma, authored by Karima Lazali, who practices psychoanalysis in Algiers and Paris, offers an incisive view of the psychic constriction and melancholic foreclosure that dominate the psyches of present-day Algerians, people who not only embody catastrophic colonial repression but are also subjected to ongoing political persecution under Algeria’s current totalitarian regime. Lazali illustrated how unmourned loss, erasure of memory and history, and internalization of censorship lead to a hollowed-out subjectivity and a sense of nonbelonging in her clinic patients, ultimately depriving them of the capacity to create new signifiers and to experience the possibility of “an inner revolution”. In Spheres of Insurrection, Suely Rolnik, a Brazilian psychoanalyst, took up the question of how we might decolonize knowledge-making and hence create the possibility for psychic insurrection. Taking the turn to the right under the Bolsonaro presidency in Brazil as illustrative, Rolnik showed how contemporary neoliberal racial–capitalist structures have a profoundly colonizing effect on the mind, and she offered guidelines for an emancipatory psychoanalysis that might lead to the emergence of an insurrectionary unconscious to replace the instrumental subjectivity that appears to be a byproduct of our times. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Review of Transgenerational trauma: A contemporary introduction.
Reviews the book, Transgenerational Trauma: A Contemporary Introduction by Jill Salberg and Sue Grand (2024). Transgenerational Trauma offers a brief, encyclopedic review and critique of the psychoanalytic trauma literature from a relational perspective and succeeds in stimulating questions and engagement in the reader. The reviewer envisions it proving very useful in teaching settings and greatly complementing any interested clinician’s personal library. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Review of Life after death: Surviving suicide.
Reviews the book, Life After Death: Surviving Suicide by Richard Brockman (2023). Brockman’s memoir is an extraordinary story of a person who has suffered an undeservedly hard childhood and whose early life cannot help to be a reaction to that. It is a profound tribute to the power of psychoanalysis that his life is transformed through his work with Margaret Brenman. As a memoirist, Brockman is quite discreet about what he chooses to reveal about himself, dwelling more on his reaction to things than exploring how he feels from the inside out. Overall, the memoir represents a unique and valuable contribution to the burgeoning literature on trauma and resilience, ensuring that psychoanalysis continues to have a place. It moved me to tears to realize that the memoir is dedicated to Brockman’s mother. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)

Psychoanalytic Psychology - Vol 41, Iss 4