Search

This paper asserts the current age as perverse, a social paradigm facilitated by explosive technological progression that is rapidly altering the erotic and social dimensions of human relationship. The author employs psychoanalytic and evolutionary theories to explain the ease with which we humanize machines and dehumanize people. The quest and need for love, which combines both discovery and invention, is framed within Winnicott’s concept of the transitional object. A detailed case is presented of a man who lived with a high-end love doll. The case illustrates his simultaneous need to dehumanize women and humanize the doll, as well as his use of the analyst to help him transition from being with a doll to being with a human partner. Questions regarding technology’s growing impact on the future of relationships are surfaced.

This discussion speaks to the creative dimension in the clinical encounter described by Levine in her paper. In particular, it addresses the creativity necessary to move beyond impasses in the treatment. The positive and negative associations to enactments are discussed as well as the creative possibilities offered in dreamwork and the analytic relationship.

This discussion responds to questions and comments made by Stefanie Solow-Glennon and Jean Wolff Bernstein. Here I further clarify different types of solitude and their connection to creativity and pathology. Many solitary individuals, creative and otherwise, are involved in a project that for them may be their most significant relationship. I speak about how culture shapes attitudes of aloneness and relationship, and I give examples from art (Frida Kahlo) and therapy (Morita Therapy) to illustrate the various functions of solitude. Finally I address ways that solitude works in therapy and how the necessary power differential places the analyst in a special place of aloneness.

This paper examines aspects of solitude in relation to creativity and personal transformation, especially as it pertains to artists and their objects. It argues that solitude is a core feature of the human condition and that it is inseparable from relatedness. Both solitude and relationship are layered and dynamically interactive states. The paper also considers the relational needs that art objects serve for their creators and specifically addresses the uniqueness of women's solitude. Finally, a clinical case is presented to illustrate the interplay between solitude and relatedness in psychoanalysis.