Robert Aberg, Ph.D.

reviewed by

Denise Humphrey, M.M.

In our current series of investigations into the world of the other, Dr. Robert Aberg presented DSPP's members with a topic that is personally relevant and meaningful to all of us, The Other in Love. Using the journal article On Romantic Love by Wilkinson and Gabbard as a foundation, Dr. Aberg launched with inimitable style into a discussion of the value of both the intrapsychic and the interpersonal in love relationships. This involves the paradoxical coexistence of depressive and paranoid-schizoid modes within each partner, i.e., an integration of the familiar and the fresh, the rational and the spontaneous, the serious and the playful, etc. Without such integration, any relationship risks falling toward complaisance. Indeed, Dr. Aberg's presentation contained elements of both of these positions, at times profoundly serious and at times introducing playful aspects of the other in love.

The intrapsychic view of falling in love encompasses the idea of "re-finding" past Oedipal objects. In this context, the refound object is not so much a person in his or her own right as an object that enhances the sense of "agency and narcissistic well-being that comes from having gained control over the previously frustrating Oedipal object." The "falling" aspects include "passion, enthrallment, irrationality, and general psychological upheaval" that is exponentially more powerful at later stages because it is relatively free of the strictures and taboos from childhood. Pre-oedipal objects also participate in the eruption that accompanies refinding, and the concomitant ability to form gratifying sexual and more stable bonds.

Intersubjective aspects of the love relationship refer to relating to the other as real. While the aspects of merging, timelessness, exultation and elation are contained in this other, the real other presents us also with grief, loss, frustration, expectations, and needs associated with developmental passages of an individual nature that must be held and nurtured in the partnership. Dr. Aberg noted that, while not pleasure in itself, this paradoxical quality "becomes an essential element, perhaps the context for a more developed kind of pleasure, a pleasure more associated with appreciation, for integration and reconciliation than with simple drive reduction or narcissistic gloating."

One particularly compelling portion of the presentation was a discussion of gender roles as perpetuated in our society and which appear microcosmically in the therapeutic situation, often in conflict around patterns of domination and submission. In these roles, women are cast as objects of desire and simultaneously as the never-ending mother, luring defenseless men back into infantile states of immersion and dependence. They may be the trophy won, with a price-tag on the award. Men are cast as powerful autonomous heroes, worthy of idealization and applause. This, too, has a price-tag. Men may strive competitively to live up to this ideal of mandated manhood, only to achieve it and experience emptiness and dissatisfaction. How much of these roles are built on illusion? What does therapy contribute?

Dr. Judith Samson artfully responded to Dr. Aberg's presentation by asking why as therapists, we often assist patients to achieve the serious rationality of the depressive mode more than the spontaneity and playfulness of the paranoid-schizoid mode. Perhaps, it is because psychoanalysis is oriented toward the pathological, and we rarely see patients who present with healthy and sustaining love relationships. Before opening up the discussion to members, Dr. Samson expressed her approval of our continuing exploration into the interface of the intrapsychic and the interpersonal and our attempts at integration.

Dr. Aberg's exploration into the other in love was replete with lines from contemporary songwriters. While lyrics such as "That should have been me in that big, fine car" may not be on a par with Milton's description of love between Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost, Dr. Aberg's use of lyrics to elicit images of romance was no less riveting and more amusing and playful. Thank to Dr. Aberg, and move over Milton.

COMPETITION

Submission deadline is March 15, 1999.

For information and entry forms,

See the DSPP Web Site at

http://www.dspp.com

The film is a story of obsessive love with a weird twist. Based on an allegorical novella by 19^th century novelist, Honore de Balzac, the tale takes place in the Sahara Desert during Napoleon's Egyptian campaigns. A young army officer, played by mesmerizing British actor, Ben Daniels, is assigned by Napoleon to escort his court artist to the front lines. There, French soldiers fire on the Sphinx, damaging its face irreparably, perhaps bringing their own fate upon themselves. Disoriented and lost in a desert sandstorm, the artist and the soldier become separated from their military unit, then from each other. The soldier stumbles upon mysterious ruins, an exotic creature, and a mystical life-changing intimacy.

Hosted by

Sandra Pitts, Ph.D. and Steven Seidenfeld, M.D.

5017 Swiss Avenue

Dallas 75214

214 826 0583

5:00 P.M.

Did you ever wonder what connection there could be between Mozart and personality theory? Maybe not, but Denise Humphrey did. To complete a requirement for a class in personality theory, Denise Humphrey used her knowledge of music as a foundation for a story exploring Mozart's relationship with his father, as viewed at the time of his death. Three major theories of personality were used to explore the various ways this relationship might be interpreted. Readings from the story will be presented and intertwined with piano music of Mozart. Denise and her husband, John, will perform selections of duet music composed by Amadeus Mozart.

John and Denise are former musicians. Denise is a DSPP member working toward her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the Fielding Institute. John is an anesthesiologist at Baylor Hospital. Denise won the first annual DSPP / Fairhill Scholarship Award last year.

No opera glasses required!

A cocktail buffet will follow.

Home of Elena Blum, MA, LPC

9114 Valley Chapel Lane

Dallas, TX 75220

214 956 9184

I very much appreciated Myrna Little's report of my case presentation at the Fall Workshop with Dr. Shapiro as consultant. One sentence popped out, however, in which I feel somewhat misunderstood and which is not congruent with my experience of the case or my presentation: "Not only did the patient seem lost, but we, the supervising audience, could make little sense of the process because the therapist was lost in the patient's unconscious reenactments."

The core of the case which I attempted to present was a picture of a patient recreating in her adult life the dysfunctional containing structures of her early life and her attempts to use the therapeutic relationship in a similar way. The process of the therapy in my experience has been an oscillation between "lostness" and "foundness." This process has been marked by simultaneous regressive and progressive aspects resulting in the emergence of both chaotic and "true self" aspects of personality. I tried to show how the struggle to hold the projective identifications of the patient involved a scrutiny of not only the patient's process, but also my own, and the co-constituted atmosphere between us, as well as the differentiation of roles - all of which allowed for the emergence of new structures out of chaos. I felt an affirmation of this experience of the therapy by Dr. Shapiro.