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It is suggested in this paper that in the Shoah one is confronted with the abolition of the Law of the Dead Father and the re-establishing of the tyranny of the narcissistic father. In the extermination of the Jews of Europe in the Shoah, the aim was the destruction of the rules of genealogy and filiation to both mother and father that establish the social and give rise to personhood and are at the core of the oedipal structure. The rule of absolute power - the destruction of any sense of maternal care and paternal rules - leads ultimately to the creation of the abject.Freud distinguished between two different types of obstacles to psychoanalytic treatment that are expressions of the death drive. The first is bound and is related to the superego; it is connected to the negative therapeutic reaction, masochism, and the unconscious sense of guilt. The other manifestation of the death drive is unbound and diffuse. If the first is understandable, the second, he suggests, escapes any understanding. The paper makes use of this distinction to examine Hannah Arendt's notion of the banality of evil.

This text explores the evolution of the notion of trauma in Freud's work and of its decisive import for the organization of psychic functioning through a two-stage process called the après-coup. By following the three steps of Freud's theory of the drives, the author shows that the conception of the traumatic is gradually internalized to become a basic quality of all drives as a tendency to return to an earlier state, and ultimately an organic, inanimate state. An open question remains in Freud about this tendency's relation to Eros, and therefore to the links between Eros and the traumatic state. This question has remained latent within the psychoanalytic community. The author proposes to conceive of Eros as an infinitely extensible tendency that needs containing in order for it to contribute to evolving inscriptions. Thus is outlined one traumatic state as a return to the inorganic and another traumatic state as an infinite extensibility, both being transformed by the superego and its imperatives in order to generate all life forms.

In this paper fascination phenomenologically is described as a state of radically being captured by an imposing object. What is left of the impoverished and paralysed subject clings to the exclusive fascinating object. Fascination is the eye of the storm of extreme ambivalence towards an exclusive object: being the only remaining object it is necessary for living in an object world, but at the same time it is threatening to life by absorbing the subject totally. So the subject is sucked in by a yet frightening object. From a metapsychological point of view fascination is understood as the congealed result of excessive projective identification and a strong confusional state connected with it: the subject empties itself so much in the object that it comes to stand for the subject. The fascinating object embodies in a condensed way - as a special form of a bizarre object - split off unconscious threatening material. So fascination is linked to the Kleinian theory of anxiety. Two clinical vignettes illustrate how states of fascination can be understood as an ultimate defence against unconscious menacing material welling up. The hypothesis is developed that fascination points to a revelation of fundamental psychic truth that promptly cramps the subject because the reintegration of it is felt as annihilating. In the vignettes this takes the form of a 'transformation in hallucinosis'. Fascination is at the same time 'the moment of truth' and possibly a serious obstruction of the analytic process. This unconscious truth seems to concern primitive 'superego violence'. The challenge consists in thawing the frozen fascinating object by linking it to other material., (Copyright © 2016 Institute of Psychoanalysis.)

In this paper we follow the development and transmission of moral learning from Adam Smith's impartial spectator to Sigmund Freud's superego and then to contemporary psychoanalysis. We argue that defenses are an integral component in the acquisition of any moral system. Elaborating on this argument, we assert that there is a progression from defensive systems that are "closed" to defensive systems that are "open," as defined in a recent work by Novick and Novick. The former system is "static, avoids reality, and is characterized by power dynamics, sadomasochism, and omnipotent defense." The latter, on the other hand, is a system that allows for "joy, creativity, spontaneity, love and it is attuned to reality." Furthermore, while Smith and Freud's systems are more one-person systems of defense, contemporary psychoanalysis has moved to more of a two-person system.

With the help of attachment theory and research, the paper attempts to broaden and build on classical and current views on the superego. Attachment theory's epigenetic approach and the concept of the subliminal superego are described. The superego, it is argued, is as much concerned with safety as sex. The superego is 'heir', not just to the Oedipus complex or Klein's pre-oedipal constellation, but also to the attachment relationship. Under favourable developmental conditions a 'mature superego' emerges, facilitating, in the presence of an internal secure base, maturational boundary crossings towards adult sexuality. In the light of the above, the paper reviews Lear's updating of Strachey's model of psychic change and explores the concept of transgression in relation to the 'professional superego', its development and maturation. Theoretical arguments are illustrated with clinical examples., (Copyright © 2011 Institute of Psychoanalysis.)

Even an originally revolutionary movement like psychoanalysis can become conservative and can take refuge, at last, in reactionary acquiescence. Many revolutionary minds, fighters of yesterday, are tired and now rest their cause on dogmas and preconceived ideas. The progress of science does not tolerate such refuge. The shape of psychoanalysis around the year 2000 of our era will be very different from the concept of the New York Psychoanalytical Society of 1945. No prophetic gift is needed to predict that it will be much more occupied with the total human personality than with the sexual components. The picture of psychoanalysis in the year 2000 will, I am sure, be nearer to that which neo-psychoanalysis sketches then to that of libido theory. It will be recognized then that the crude sex-drive cannot have the power attributed to it by Freud and that early mixtures of sexual and non-sexual urges are clearly to be observed in those very phenomena which impress us as "purely" sexual." (Reik, 1945).

The repetition compulsion-the propensity to repeat formative early life experiences, for good or ill-is one of psychoanalysis's most important contributions to the understanding of human nature. However, its broader applications to psychodynamic psychiatry and psychotherapy have received little attention. In fact, it is a concept widely applicable to the understanding and treatment of psychiatric disorders, since maladaptive or self-defeating repetitions are the stuff of psychopathology. This article will discuss the repetition compulsion as a core concept of psychodynamic psychiatry. Principles of the compulsion to repeat will be applied to the dynamics of personality disorders, and will be illustrated by discussion of its usefulness in understanding and treating several common and representative psychiatric conditions: reactive depression, punitive superego function, and traumatic neurosis. These conditions illustrate the reparative, retributive, and restorative functions of the compulsion to repeat.

This paper aims to analyze Jean Laplanche's revision of Freudian metapsychology, which emerged from a critical return to Freud's officially abandoned seduction theory of 1895-1897. Where Freud gradually replaced the model of traumatic seduction with a theory of infantile sexuality and its drives, Laplanche articulates both trauma and sexual drive in a new theory of primal seduction, the fundamental anthropological situation in which human subjectivity is formed. The author concludes by considering Laplanche's modeling of the psychoanalytic situation and his reformulation of transference in relation to mourning and sublimation within the framework of the general theory of seduction.

A cental thesis of Paul Gray's work is that a "developmental lag" pervades modern psychoanalysis in its failure to assimilate and apply knowledge gained about the role of the unconscious ego in intrapsychic life. But Gray himself, it is proposed, has become a victim of a new "developmental lag," of his own construction. As he somewhat single-mindedly pursued the ramifications of his "developmental lag" concept, Gray may have foreclosed on some noteworthy ideas developing around him. The most important example is his claim--herein refuted--that proper interpretive technique can avoid being infused with transference. He also seems to have rejected the theoretical importance of the internalization of the analyst and the clinical usefulness of countertransference. While emphasizing defense analysis, he ignores defenses such as splitting, denial, and disavowal as substantive problems for his technique of close-process attention. Gray's "undoing" of the rapprochement between "ego analysis" and "id analysis" by viewing the matter as an either-or proposition undermines the very real value of his contribution to the field.

The author uses the life and personal history of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, as revealed through her diaries and letters and in biographies, to illustrate a particular type of psychoanalytic patient. Such patients are resistant to change, particularly when it involves letting go of the internalization of early parental figures. Although some of these patients fail to achieve successful analytic outcomes, Millay is an example of someone with similar circumstances who nevertheless made significant creative contributions.

The author's intention is to contribute to the study of the structure of the self, both discussing the different processes of interiorisation and identification that play their parts in this development, and looking into the role played by the objects, and especially the superego. Interiorisation (the choice of this word is explained) is seen as a broad concept that covers incorporation, internalisation, introjection and introjective identification, and the dynamic of each of these mechanisms is discussed, along with its influence in the development of the structure of the self and of its constituent elements. Taking these concepts as a theoretical base, the author goes on to consider the field of 'pathology of defect' compared with the more classical pathology of conflict. Starting from the findings of different authors, especially Fairbairn and Kohut, he enlarges upon theoretical aspects of this 'pathology of defect' and its close relationship with Kohut's theories of narcissism, emphasising that, apart from other factors, an essential element in understanding this pathology is the development of the superego. Clinical material is presented to illustrate the theory.

This paper presents a view of the etiology of narcissistic personality disorder which, while not new, is at variance with the commonly held position that this disorder is the outcome of the insufficient gratification of the normal narcissistic needs of infancy and childhood. The contrary thesis is presented: that narcissistic personality disorder is the outcome of narcissistic overgratification during childhood. A fixation to this overgratification interferes with the normal maturation and integration of the superego, leading to difficulties in self-esteem regulation and to a tendency to massive externalization. Clinical material is presented to support this view.

Aggression continues to be a problematic, ill-defined concept for most contemporary analysts. Questions about the nature and origin of aggression remain unanswered. On the one hand, aggression is conceived of as an instinctual drive; on the other, it is thought to originate as an instrument of reaction to external sources of frustration and environmental failures to meet developmental needs. Aggression has also been dichotomized as either the benign activity of assertiveness, or the darker destructive force of hostility, believed by many to arise from separate motivational systems. There is a problem with the view of aggression as largely an ad hoc reaction to deprivation or other environmental shortcomings leading to disappointment and frustration. This view understates the importance of the original expansive demands for pleasurable satisfaction made by the individual upon the environment. Desire itself seems to be responsible for an inward vulnerability to external sources of disappointment and frustration, so that what is not desired cannot be effectively frustrated. Though the prototypical object of aggression is taken to be an external source of frustration, danger, and narcissistic injury, the mobilization of aggression more accurately reflects a susceptibility to the disturbing pressure of psychic stimuli that are the inner desire for satisfaction. Aggression contributes its force to various constructive or destructive purposes, from love to mastery to vengeance. Its most immediate aims, primarily narcissistic, are not concerned with the needs of others. Aggression also makes important contributions to maintaining psychic equilibrium, to the psychic organization's stake in instinctual gratification, to ego function, and to superego operation.

Bridging concepts of aggression, affect, and attitude, hate emerges during the process of separation-individuation concurrent with ego development and persisting intrapsychic conflict and fantasy. Rage precedes hate developmentally, though later the two are amalgamated both developmentally and clinically. Hate is the negative pole of ambivalence and is a component of all self- and object representations and object relationships. When excessive and unmodulated, hate interferes with object relations and personality development. Paradoxically, hate may also subserve adaptation and personality organization. Transference hate is often a greater problem for the psychoanalyst or psychotherapist than is transference love. Transference hate threatens the analyst's narcissism and neutrality and tests the analyst's tolerance and patience. The patient's intense hate is often experienced as a direct assault on the analytic relationship and the analytic process. Countertransference hate and the need to defend against it are of great clinical importance. Because it runs counter to analytic ideals and values, the analyst's hatred of the patient may be denied, minimized, rationalized, enacted, or vicariously gratified and may occasion great resistance to analytic self-scrutiny. Countertransference hate is often an unrecognized determinant in cases of analytic and therapeutic impasse. A classic contribution by D.W. Winnicott to the recognition and elucidation of countertransference hate is reevaluated.

The concepts of safety and danger as they pertain to the psychoanalytic situation are examined, with a special interest in casting aside familiar unquestioned presumptions about the therapeutic effects of the analyst and the setting as safe and therefore facilitating of self-disclosure, insight, and change. The merit of viewing the situation as in itself neither safe nor dangerous is argued, and problems are noted in the uncritical acceptance of the illusion of safety and attempts to use it for therapeutic purposes. Such an illusion denies the psychological and biological vulnerability of all human beings, especially in relation to aggression. In the clinical setting, working from an unexamined presumption of safety interferes with full transference expression and the analysis of aggression, often in the service of sparing the analyst from fully experiencing the analysand's adult aggressive potential. Contemporary interest in the analyst's authority, particularly efforts to undo it, can profitably be viewed as helping to maintain an illusion of safety during treatment in order to avoid the real dangers that are experienced as present and that are therefore available for exploration and mastery.

Divisions in the field of the psychoanalysis of children can be traced to a dispute over the infantile super-ego between the theorists Melanie Klein and Anna Freud beginning in 1927. These divisions are understood within the analytic world as the result of scientific disputation between alternative valid theories. An examination of the language, claims, and epistemology of Klein's and Freud's publications in 1927 that marked the public commencement of the conflict, reveals a personalized discourse in which authority was derived from the allegiance, experience, and personal analytic standing of the contestants as much as from theoretical insight. The structure and rhetoric of the debate suggest that, rather than terminating the dispute, the publications of 1927 served to encourage professionalization in child analysis and establish Anna Freud and Melanie Klein as authoritative alternative theorists.

This paper is an inquiry into the close association of anal and genital functions in women and the background and meaning of that association. Excerpts from the analyses of two women with sexual and intellectual inhibitions illustrate aspects of erotic life deriving from anal-phase development, and the unconscious fantasy of an inner, erotic, and powerful "organ." Along with the lifting of their inhibitions, both analysands achieved integration of anal-sadistic and incorporative wishes with vaginal receptivity. Female anatomy and physiology are so arranged that the action of perineal and sphincter musculature also stimulates the genital. This fosters overlapping mental representations of vagina and rectum which in turn affect body image and unconscious fantasy in women. The experience of perineal contraction acquires complex psychic meanings with both libidinal and aggressive charge. The libidinal aspect is the largely covert erotic sensation that informs the mental representation of the genital and is destined to be integrated into female sexuality. The aggressive component may present as an unconscious fantasy of possessing an inner, powerful, and dangerous organ--a focus for conflict between anal-sadistic wishes and early elements of the superego.

The author discusses the ways in which psychoanalytic theories, like other theories, attempt to systematise the understanding of observations. Freud remarked that systems also have unconscious meanings. The author discusses these unconscious vicissitudes of psychoanalytic theories of both clinical and more abstract kinds, at various levels of psychological function. Learning psychoanalysis repeats in some respects the developmental processes of learning about 'reality'. The role of authority and superego function in learning and utilising theories is emphasised. The enduring unconscious relationship of theory to authority contributes to adherence to, misapplications of, and rejection of theories, as well as to anti-theoretical attitudes. The concept of an 'analysing instrument' illustrates the way in which a useful exploratory idea may acquire prescriptive and constrictive implications. Analysis of the analyst's attitudes towards theory and its applications is an aspect of countertransference analysis.

Love means the ability to combine idealization and erotic fulfillment and to establish a profound object relation. The author examines the clinical features of erotic desire, its ecstatic and aggressive aspects and the way they are bound up with transcending the limits of the self, its genetic roots and the unconscious object relations underlying the sexual couple. In Kernberg's view, embarking on the adventure of a love relationship involves both identifying with and overcoming the oedipal parent-couple at one and the same time. He sees breaches in love relationship as stemming from the discontinuity of the relation between mother and child. A mature super-ego, developing from a transformation of primitive constraints and guilt feelings as a result of aggression, is conducive to love and emotional commitment to the love object, while a sound ego-ideal is a fundamental requirement for the ability to fall in love. The article concludes with a discussion of the relationship between couples and groups.

There is a tendency in psychoanalysis to seek ever earlier determinants of pathology. One effect of this search is to relegate adult memories of latency and adolescence to serving mainly a defensive screen function. Psychoanalytic material from child and adolescent cases is used in this paper to illuminate postoedipal developmental transformations. These findings are applied to the understanding and technique of work with adults. Alertness to latency elements can affect the timing of interpretations, the understanding of neurosogenic factors, and the forces for health available in the patient's personality. Alertness to adolescent phenomena highlights the adult patient's difficulty in integrating adolescent realities with childhood fantasy solutions to preoedipal and oedipal conflicts. We conclude that no one phase has preeminence over others, that earlier is not necessarily more important, and that there cannot be pure recapitulation, revival, or "reanimation" (Freud, 1925) of the past in the present. However, knowledge of the transformations appropriate to each phase in the past gives us additional access to the determinants and functions of the patient's pathology in the present, increases the specificity of genetic interpretation, and gives both patient and analyst greater conviction about the accuracy of the essential analytic work of reconstruction.

Libido theory and the idea of an innate matrix of bisexuality are an inadequate basis on which to understand female psychology. Rather, it is the mutual influence of sexuality, aggression, object relations, and a superego that inherits the object-related conflicts of early childhood, intertwined as these are with gender issues, that determine the way a woman experiences herself. A woman can have a basically confident, narcissistically valued sense of femaleness and at the same time be troubled by intense feelings of inadequacy and deprivation. Instead of arbitrarily attributing these feelings to penis envy and a sense of castration, based on the idea of bisexuality as bedrock, this paper suggests that we consider primary femininity as bedrock, but that the superego, as heir to unresolved preoedipal and oedipal object-related conflicts, functions to maintain these painful emotions. Clinical material illustrates the utility of these ideas.

Just as the couple becomes the repository of both partners' conscious and unconscious sexual fantasies and desires, and of their consciously and unconsciously activated internalized object relations, so does the couple activate both partners' conscious and unconscious superego functions. The interaction of the partners' superego over time results in the forging of a new system, which I am calling the couple's superego. The functions of the couple's joint superego structure is described, as are the symptoms of superego pathology in the couple's love life. The vicissitudes of gratitude and guilt, of stereotyping and conventionality, of deceptiveness and long-range destructive and self-destructive scenarios, are explored in the context of a spectrum reflecting the severity of joint superego pathology. A clinical case vignette illustrates some of these developments in a couple's life.

This paper discusses the ego functioning and self psychological aspects of falling in love and passionate love. These universal and extraordinary phenomena are conceptualized as representing the activity of the creative imagination in solving problems related to coping with intense narcissistic and libidinal pressures. The work of other authors is reviewed and recast into a metapsychological framework involving ego and superego contributions to the experience, and focused on self cohesion. An illustrative clinical psychotherapy case is presented in an effort to understand what has traditionally appeared to be a mysterious and disjunctive life experience, and to explore the creative surge that can be generated by falling in love both in and out of the transference.

I describe the connexion between the failure of the procedures of adolescence and the establishment of a psychical economy dominated by the repetition compulsion. The concept of the repetition compulsion appears as early as in 1914, in 'Remembering, repeating and working-through', but is not clearly specified as a characteristic of instinctual functioning until 1919 and 1920, in 'The "Uncanny" and 'Beyond the pleasure principle'. In these two works, Freud presents what amounts to a model of the disorganization of the mental apparatus observed in 'breaks' in the adolescent process when the capacity to bind instinctual excitation in the primary process is swamped. Decompensation is precipitated by the change in the reality principle (de facto infantile impotence becoming adult potency). The repetition compulsion, in the strict sense of the term, is a matter of 'crude', unbound instincts. Moreover, the idea emerges from Freud's two texts that the instinctual demand manifested through the repetition compulsion is the persistence of the incestuous and parricidal wish. This is borne out by my analytical experience, as the two treatments I adduce to illustrate the theory show.

Identification with the victim is a sadomasochistic compromise formation which defends against feared or forbidden destructive-libidinal wishes as it simultaneously gratifies and punishes one for having such wishes. The process involves doing to oneself what one would do to others (or, alternately, inviting or letting others do to oneself what one would do to them). People with certain symptomatic and characterologic traits seem especially prone to this. It is hypothesized, however, that identification with the victim is an essential component of all masochism, including the normal masochism of normal superegos, and is therefore ubiquitous.

When James Strachey defined the mutative interpretation, he did not have defense interpretation in mind, but a few years later Anna Freud opened the door to new ways of making small-scale non-transference and transference interpretations that alter superego functions. Using her model and a special mode of listening, the authors suggest an updated technique of intervention with resultant superego change, which qualifies for consideration as a later version of the mutative interpretation.

The therapeutic relationship frequently comes under a strain during the course of an analysis. At these times, the analysand perceives and reacts to the analyst as if the analyst were a critical or seductive archaic object. When this occurs, the analyst has the choice of interpreting the unconscious source of the analysand's non-therapeutic reactions or of interacting with the analysand in a manner which re-establishes and potentially strengthens the therapeutic relationship. Interpretations during the early phases of an analysis are unlikely to mitigate the strain until the therapeutic relationship has become stronger and until considerable reality testing has promoted a context which allows the analysand to understand and to tolerate her or his unconscious wishes.

An outline is given of the varied uses and meanings attributed to the term "ego ideal" in the current literature. The concept is clarified and defined, with special attention to its historical origins. The locus of the ego ideal is placed in the superego, and its structure and function are integrated with those of the superego. Criteria for differentiating superego precursors from superego proper are given, and the importance of the distinction is stressed. The clinical usefulness of these issues is illustrated by clinical examples. In addition, "narcissism" as it pertains to the ego ideal is explored, and there is a discussion of the distinctions between shame and guilt.

Superego precursors appear in the latter part of the first year, concomitant with the behavioural control necessitated and made possible by ego development, particularly of intentionality, communication, and mobility. During the second year of life wilful strivings intensify, complicated by the power struggles of the rapprochement crisis. A subtle process of negotiation accompanies the learning of parental rules and regulations, and the infant also learns that some rules and limits are non-negotiable. The development of the superego depends not only on 'identification with the aggressor' and self-directed aggression, but on positive identifications and internalizations of approval. While the real attitudes of the caregiver are communicated and are important, superego precursors, because of the infant's drives, defences, and ego immaturity, may be far removed from the reality of the caregiver's attitudes and intent. The parents' and infants' inter-identifications and empathy for each other contribute to the capacity for self-criticism, guilt, and remorse, attributes of the developing superego.

Although the intriguing question of whether the division into two viewpoints within the structural theory is a theoretical convenience or whether it mirrors fundamental psychobiological truths is not capable of full resolution at the moment, fortunately that resolution is not required for our usual clinical purposes. I believe that analytic work presents us with data readily conceptualized now from one, now from the other, viewpoint, so that analytic understanding benefits from the analyst's shifting his frame of reference from moment to moment in listening and associating to the patient's material. I believe that in every event within the analytic situation or in a person's life, our understanding is deepened and made more complete by approaching the phenomena from both vantage points, bearing in mind that the same ego we conceptualize as testing, assessing, and evaluating emergent drives is also assessing the congruence or discrepancy between the wished-for and perceived states of the representational world. These processes are occurring both in the analysand and in the analyst who is attempting to resonate with and understand the intrapsychic functioning of his patient. They constitute two observational vantage points within the structural theory, organizations of motives (Friedman, 1980) either of which may offer the most immediate access to understanding a particular segment of clinical material. I believe our understanding is most often deepened, however, by subsequent scrutiny in the light of the other model. I have tried here to supplement my previous exposition of a representational world point of view (J.G. Jacobson, 1983) by providing some of its developmental, ethological, and psychophysiological landmarks and underpinnings.

This paper extends a recent line of research by correlating Piaget's theory of cognitive development with several psychoanalytic perspectives on development during the second and third years of life. The concrete, imagistic, unintegrated nature of mental representations associated by Mahler and Kernberg with this period, along with the mental operation of splitting, are related to preconceptual representation, a cognitive mode described by Piaget. Psychoanalytic perspectives on the body ego and object world associated with the anal period are also seen to involve concrete, unintegrated representations which show correspondence with preconceptual cognition. Parallels are explored between cognitive stages and the psychoanalytic understanding of ego and superego development. While psychoanalysis is not a cognitive psychology, aspects of its theory are concerned with cognitive structure and are enriched by a consideration of cognitive development.

The superego is not, as psychoanalytic theory asserts, primarily heir to the oedipus complex. Freud proposed two theories of identification and superego formation, only one of which is widely known and accepted. The first, which he abandoned, argues for the genesis of conscience as compensation for lost narcissism. The second explains superego formation as a response to object loss and fear of castration. The latter view faces a number of anomalies, including the occurrence of preoedipal and postoedipal identifications unrelated to the castration complex, and the difficulty in providing a cause for female superego development. An alternative theory is proposed that returns to Freud's first theory of identification, arguing that gender-specific explanations are inappropriate for a phenomenon such as conscience, which occurs in both sexes. Prototypical male and female cases are presented alongside a general model of the development of ego processes and object relations. Case material is briefly examined, and the argument is made for conceptualizing psychosexual development as a developmental line rather than as the core of character formation.

The author analysed the structure of grown-ups with organic brain damage in early childhood. The study was based on psychoanalytical exploration or treatment of three patients. Typically the patients showed a "schizoid" defect of perception, which was compensated by strong compulsive mechanisms. The genetic, adaptive and structure aspects were discussed on psychoanalytical point of view.