Psychoanalysis is a theory and field of research developed by Sigmund Freud. It describes the human mind as an apparatus that emerged along the path of evolution and consists mainly of three functionally interlocking instances: a set of innate needs, a consciousness to satisfy them by ruling the muscular apparatus, and a memory for storing experiences that arises during this. Furthermore the theory includes insights into the effects of traumatic education and a technique for bringing repressed content back into the consciousness, in particular the diagnostic interpretation of dreams. Overall, psychoanalysis is a method for the examination and treatment of mental disorders.
Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development relating to the practice of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. First laid out by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century, psychoanalytic theory has undergone many refinements since his work. The psychoanalytic theory came to full prominence in the last third of the twentieth century as part of the flow of critical discourse regarding psychological treatments after the 1960s, long after Freud's death in 1939. Freud had ceased his analysis of the brain and his physiological studies and shifted his focus to the study of the psyche, and on treatment using free association and the phenomena of transference. His study emphasized the recognition of childhood events that could influence the mental functioning of adults. His examination of the genetic and then the developmental aspects gave the psychoanalytic theory its characteristics.
Integrative psychotherapy is the integration of elements from different schools of psychotherapy in the treatment of a client. Integrative psychotherapy may also refer to the psychotherapeutic process of integrating the personality: uniting the "affective, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological systems within a person".
In philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, intersubjectivity is the relation or intersection between people's cognitive perspectives.
Relational psychoanalysis is a school of psychoanalysis in the United States that emphasizes the role of real and imagined relationships with others in mental disorder and psychotherapy. 'Relational psychoanalysis is a relatively new and evolving school of psychoanalytic thought considered by its founders to represent a "paradigm shift" in psychoanalysis'.
Stephen A. Mitchell was an American clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. His book with Jay Greenberg, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory (1983), became a classic textbook in graduate schools and post-graduate institutions, providing a general overview and comparison of several psychoanalytic theories. He was considered a leader of relational psychoanalysis. Mitchell helped to create the Relational Track of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis.
Medard Boss was a Swiss psychoanalytic psychiatrist who developed a form of psychotherapy known as Daseinsanalysis, which united the psychotherapeutic practice of psychoanalysis with the existential phenomenological philosophy of friend and mentor Martin Heidegger.
Vamık D. Volkan, M.D., DFLAPA, FACPsa, is a Turkish Cypriot born American psychiatrist, internationally known for his 40 years work bringing together conflictual groups for dialogue and mutual understanding. Among his many other honours, he is the president emeritus of International Dialogue Initiative (IDI).
Harold Frederic Searles was one of the pioneers of psychiatric medicine specializing in psychoanalytic treatments of schizophrenia. Searles had the reputation of being a therapeutic virtuoso with difficult and borderline patients; and of being, in the words of Horacio Etchegoyen, president of the International Psychoanalytical Association, "not only a great analyst but also a sagacious observer and a creative and careful theoretician".
Affect consciousness refers to an individual's ability to consciously perceive, tolerate, reflect upon, and express affects. These four abilities are operationalized as degrees of awareness, tolerance, emotional (nonverbal) expression, and conceptual (verbal) expression of each of the following eleven affect categories:
The term "intersubjectivity" was introduced to psychoanalysis by George E. Atwood and Robert Stolorow (1984), who consider it a "meta-theory" of psychoanalysis. Intersubjective psychoanalysis suggests that all interactions must be considered contextually; interactions between the patient/analyst or child/parent cannot be seen as separate from each other, but rather must be considered always as mutually influencing each other. This philosophical concept dates back to "German Idealism" and phenomenology.
Philip M. Bromberg was an American psychologist and psychoanalyst who was actively involved in the training of mental health professionals throughout the United States.
Lewis Aron was an American psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, teacher and lecturer on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis who made contributions particularly within the specialty known as relational psychoanalysis. Aron was the Director of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis in New York City. He was the founding president of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and was formerly President of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association. He was board certified in psychoanalysis by the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP) and a Fellow of the American Board of Psychoanalysis (FABP). His 1996 volume A Meeting of Minds: Mutuality in Psychoanalysis and his (1999) edited volume with Stephen Mitchell, Relational Psychoanalysis: The Emergence of a Tradition are considered two of the essential texts in contemporary American psychoanalysis. Together with Adrienne Harris, he edited the Relational Perspectives Book Series, which has published many of the texts in the field. Aron was one of the founders of the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues: The International Journal of Relational Perspectives.
Abstinence or the rule of abstinence is the principle of analytic reticence and/or frustration within a clinical situation. It is a central feature of psychoanalytic theory – relating especially to the handling of the transference in analysis.
Jon Mills is a Canadian philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist. His principle theoretical contributions have been in the philosophy of the unconscious, a critique of psychoanalysis, philosophical psychology, value inquiry, and the philosophy of culture. His clinical contributions are in the areas of attachment pathology, trauma, psychosis, and psychic structure.
Sidney J. Blatt was a professor emeritus of psychiatry and psychology at Yale University's Department of psychiatry. Blatt was a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist, empirical researcher and personality theoretician, who made enormous contributions to the understanding of personality development and psychopathology. His wide-ranging areas of scholarship and expertise included clinical assessment, psychoanalysis, cognitive schemas, mental representation, psychopathology, depression, schizophrenia, and the therapeutic process, as well as the history of art. During a long and productive academic career, Blatt published 16 books and nearly 250 articles and developed several extensively used assessment procedures. Blatt died on May 11, 2014, in Hamden, Conn. He was 85.
Beatrice Beebe is a clinical psychologist known for her research in attachment and early infant-parent communication. Her work helped established the importance of non-verbal communication in early child development. She is a Clinical Professor of Medical Psychology at the College of Physicians & Surgeons, Columbia University and the director of the Communications Science Lab at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI).
Psychoanalytic institutes and societies in the United States are often linked together, though a distinction may be made between the functions of the institutes and the societies. Some local psychoanalytic organizations have both words in their title while others have only one or the other.
Stanton Marlan is an American clinical psychologist, Jungian psychoanalyst, author, and educator. Marlan has authored or edited scores of publications in Analytical Psychology and Archetypal Psychology. Three of his more well-known publications are The Black Sun. The Alchemy and Art of Darkness, C. G. Jung and the Alchemical Imagination, and Jung's Alchemical Philosophy. Marlan is also known for his polemics with German Jungian psychoanalyst Wolfgang Giegerich. Marlan co-founded the Pittsburgh Society of Jungian Analysts and was the first director and training coordinator of the C. G. Jung Institute Analyst Training Program of Pittsburgh. Currently, Marlan is in private practice and serves as adjunct professor of Clinical Psychology at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He also currently
George E. Atwood is an American clinical psychologist. Atwood and his collaborator Robert Stolorow introduced the concept of intersubjectivity to the field of psychoanalysis. Their book Faces in a Cloud (1979) established the theory of intersubjective psychoanalysis which influenced analytic thinking across many schools of psychoanalysis. Atwood is professor emeritus of Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University where he received the Lindback Award. He is an honorary member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and Founding Faculty Member at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity in New York City.
