Download Author: Ellman, Steven, Ph.D.

3 eBooks available.

Otto Kernberg:Psychoanalysis and Object Relations Theory: the Beginnings of an Integrative Approach

Otto Kernberg has presented the most systematic and wide-sweeping clinical and theoretical statements about psychoanalysis, for of the last decade, perhaps even since Freud. His work touches on many if not most of the topics that have been of interest to contemporary analysts. In addition, he has been instrumental in introducing many topics to the American psychoanalytic community. Kernberg has been strongly influenced by Kleinian concepts, however, there is also no question that he is attempting to integrate many different parts of what is called the British object relations school, as well as aspects of Freudian thought, ego psychology, and different strands of research in neurophysiology and physiological psychology. This list is by no means complete. Kernberg is strongly interested in research in affect, for example, whether from psychoanalysis, physiology, or academic psychology.

Margaret S. Mahler:Symbiosis and Separation-Individuation

Mahler began her career as a pediatrician and director of a well-baby clinic in Vienna. The interests she developed at the outset of her professional life have remained important throughout her career. Probably the most important of these has been her interest in the mother and baby as a dyad, or, as she later referred to it, as a dual unity within one commen boundary, a symbiotic pair. Beginning with her first paper delivered in this country, entitled “Pseudoimbecility: A Magic Cap of Invisibility,” she demonstrated her interest in the pre-oedipal era, in motility, and in the affecto-motor communication between mother and child. In her psychoanalytic work, Mahler began to treat several children suffering from childhood psychosis. This culminated in her eventual formulation of the autistic and sybiotic types of childhood psychosis. She also became interested in determining how normal infants attain a sense of separate identity in the caretaking presence of their mothers.

Modern Revisions of Freud’s Concept of Transference

Freud began by considering transference as the imposition of old situations onto the analysis, and regarded them as a nuisance. Then he recognized that which analysis has taken as axiomatic ever since: transference is the expression of old problems in the current setting. The revisions introduced in the last twenty-five years by various schools are cited.