D S P P  B U L L E T I N

March 2000

PREVIEW OF MARCH MEETING

Gender and Language
Speaker: Beth Newman, Ph.D.

DSPP is pleased to introduce Beth Newman, Ph.D. for our March meeting. Professor Newman will examine ideas about gender and language associated with French feminist writing in the mid-1980s. She will introduce these ideas through an explication of two short, suggestive, enigmatic essays: Monique Wittig’s "The Mark of Gender," in which a writer considers the way gender as a linguistic category affects women; and Luce Irigaray’s "This Sex Which Is Not One," in which a psychoanalyst meditates upon the way femininity is represented in the writings of Freud and in Western culture more generally. The readings are theoretical and encourage speculation, but Professor Newman looks forward to learning from members of DSPP about how their theoretical claims and implications are confirmed or contradicted by their experiences as clinicians.

Questions for consideration:

1. Can we have access either to the body or to the experience of sexuality that is outside, prior to, beyond, or in some way independent of the shaping effects of language and culture?

2. Is Wittig right that the gender as a grammatical phenomenon is "harmful to women in the exercise of language" (66)? Is it possible to imagine language without gender pronouns?

3. What does it mean to be (or to have) a "sex which is not one"? What are the implications for feminine sexuality of "phallocentric" systems of language and representation—whether in analysis or, more generally, in lived experience?

Beth Newman is an Associate Professor of English at Southern Methodist University, where she teaches nineteenth-century British literature, feminist theory, and as she puts it, "the kind of psychoanalytic theory interesting to people in literature departments"—specifically, the writings of Freud, Lacan, and their contemporary commentators. She has published articles on nineteenth-century fiction in Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (PMLA), English Literary History (ELH), NOVEL A Forum on Fiction, and other journals, and produced an edition of Jane Eyre with accompanying essays for the series, Case Studies in Literary Criticism (Bedford Books). She is completing a book about middle-class Victorian femininity and the relations of seeing and being seen. Professor Newman is a founding member of the Interdisciplinary Psychoanalytic Consortium at SMU, which fosters discussion between academics from area universities and members of the local psychoanalytic community.

Intimate and Autonomous: Negotiating Relationships
Myron Lazar, Ph.D.

By Melissa Black, Ph.D.

On Wednesday, February 9, 2000, Dr. Myron Lazar gave a stimulating and thought provoking presentation examining facets of intimacy and autonomy from theoretical, clinical and cultural viewpoints. Dr. Lazar began with connecting the assigned reading by Mary Morgan to his own personal journey into Kleinian thought. He cited work by Horace Etchegoyen as his early introduction into "old school" Kleinian theory and discussed his personal resistance to some of these ideas based on the anti-Kleinian position of Freudian Ego Psychologists.

Since his initial exposure to Kleinian thought, Dr. Lazar has done quite a bit of study in the area which has led to an appreciation for the new schools of Kleinian thought. Dr. Lazar shared his admiration for Roy Schafer’s treatment of the work of Melanie Klein via his "highlighting of the writings and work of Betty Joseph, a leading British Kleinian" and for Schafer’s own professional journey towards a position close to the Contemporary Kleinians of London. Dr. Lazar then presented a clear and concise description of the overall frame of the Contemporary Kleinians. The retention of the paranoid/schizoid and depressive positions was highlighted, but differentiated as these are no longer considered clinical syndromes, rather as "aspects of the internal world of the patient that shift from moment to moment" where the patient is seen as "fluctuating desperately between the two".

Dr. Lazar described manifestations of these positions in the moment to moment process of analysis. As identified by Schafer, the fluctuation between positions is tied to "persecutory anxiety, splitting, projective identification, envy, fear of envy and grandiosity in the paranoid/schizoid position and the emergence of guilt, regression, flight into manic states featuring denial and idealization of the self and others, or bondage to a reparative position relative to the imagined damaged objects and devastation feelings in the depressive position." The healthier functioning of the depressive position allows love, understanding, desire, concern, reparation and regard for the object. The importance of the here and now movement between these positions, as seen through unconscious fantasy and transference, is the primary vehicle for analysis by the Contemporary Kleinians.

Dr. Lazar then addressed the more practical side of how to put these ideas into clinical practice. Citing his own struggle to make sense out of the internal confusion that often underscores the manifest level of material, Dr. Lazar played with the idea of listening to your gut instincts by fantasizing about how Mel Brooks would advise him. "Pay attention to the poopic" (Yiddish word for belly button). In other words, listen to your gut instincts. This idea was taken one step further as Dr. Lazar demonstrated the Contemporary Kleinians' use of interpretation based on these gut feelings to elicit more affective material in the patient.

Dr. Lazar then moved to his thoughts about the assigned article by Michael Balint, On Love and Hate. Dr. Lazar highlighted Balint’s three stage analytic process as presented in the article. He also focused on Balint’s ideas regarding hate; essentially that "hate arises as part of the primary transferences and its source is the oppressive inequality between subject and object". Dr. Lazar demonstrated this idea with clinical case material.

The discussion of Mary Morgan’s article, The Projective Gridlock: a Form of Projective Identification in Couple Relationships, followed. The projective gridlock was defined as the overuse of projective identification in an effort to deny the separate psychic existence of the other. The result of this stance in a relationship is either a comfortable state of fusion or feelings of being trapped in the relationship. Using Rosenfeld’s idea of "narcissistic omnipotent object relations", Dr. Lazar discussed how partners will often seek out the disowned aspects of themselves for developmental or defensive purposes. Dr. Lazar then presented clinical case material that highlighted many of the principles of which he had spoken.

Dr. Lazar took the audience into the realm of cultural experience to emphasize many of these analytic ideas. This was demonstrated in a discussion of the film, Map of the Human Heart, a poignant story of the life of an Alaskan man and the lifelong dance between he and his adoptive father and the young woman whom they both come to love. This story of love, loss, and reunion across multiple generations was brilliantly tied to the ideas discussed during the evening.

The presentation elicited a lively and interactive discussion among audience members. Many of the questions were related to clinical work with couples who were "stuck" with one partner in the paranoid/schizoid position and one in the depressive position and how the resultant despair in the couple is worked with in session. Dr. Lazar led the discussion using the context of his clinical case material to emphasize his points. Another interesting question regarded the advantage of regarding gridlock as movement between paranoid/schizoid and depressive positions versus viewing it as a sadomasochistic dynamic. A conceptual discussion of domination/submission followed and emphasized the dual projective nature of the relationship. The discussion ended with a focus on how the therapist’s own beliefs influence their "neutrality" regarding marital therapy. Dr. Lazar concluded the evening presentation with a strong recommendation for The Fight Club, a current film which he regards as the best example of primitive object relations, incorporating object relations of a psychotic, desperate quality.

The presentation was a continuation of this year’s DSPP theme Authority and Desire in the Analytic Relationship and certainly stimulated much thought and discussion in preparation for our upcoming Spring Workshop with Dr. Jessica Benjamin, Beyond Either/Or: Gender, Intersubjectivity and the Post-Oedipal.

DSPP on the Web
By Cheryl Martin RN, LPC

In preparation for the Spring Workshop, April 1^st, a new paper has been added to the DSPP web site. Harriet Kimble Wrye's "Review of Jessica Benjamin's Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender in Psychoanalysis" appeared in the fall issue of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and is available with the permission of The Analytic Press. As a reminder, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's, "Review of Like subjects, Love Objects: Essays on Recognition and Sexual Difference," is also available. In addition, members may purchase the books online.

The DSPP Mailing List is fast becoming an effective communication tool for members. We've had discussions about the "Treatment, Payment and health care operations" Section of the Standards of Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information, RIN09912-AB08, prompted by Laurie Wagner's encouraging a writing campaign, preferences and options voiced regarding the planning of DSPP's educational format for next year, and others. If you are not yet subscribed to the Mailing List, you may be added by sending your e-mail address to Cheryl Martin at editor@dspp.com.  Members may view past messages by going to www.eGroups.com/group/dspp . Events and announcements you wish to add to the calendar may be submitted through the same address. DSPP has 68 registered members this year and 80% of our members are currently subscribed to the Mailing List.

REVIEW OF DMA TALK
Judith Samson, Ph.D.

On February 12, at the Dallas Museum of Art DSPP Arts Committee and the DMA cosponsored a talk and slide program by DSPP member, Salomon Grimberg, M.D., noted psychiatrist, art critic and art broker, in the DMA's Horchow Auditorium. Dr. Grimberg presented his "Mexico Reflected on Andre Breton's Mirror", a study of Breton's legacy in Mexico, and its effect in the developing New York School of Painting that was forming during the decade of the Forties. As an art movement, Surrealism sprang out of Freud's theory of the unconscious during the first half of the Twenties. It began when a group of French poets, led by Andre Breton, developed "automatic writing" to shape unconscious material into poetry. Interest in the visual arts followed. The rest is history.

No organized group of artists, before the Surrealists, had delved with such fervor into the recesses of their psyches to identify various realities for themselves and others to grasp. Grimberg's presentation, accompanied with seventy-five slides, lead the public through the history of the Surrealist pilgrimage to Mexico, initiated by poet-actor Antonin Artaud, who came to Mexico "to find reality within another reality, deeper, purer, more primitive." Andre Breton followed, with the belief that he would introduce Surrealism in Mexico. But Surrealism jumped at him wherever he looked.

Upon entering Mexico, Breton had entered a transitional space where separate realities fuse and transformational shifts take place. Mexicans, he found, were natural Surrealists, and in their art, permeated with black humor, he discovered a direct line to their psyche. It was a context where opposites, like life and death, coexisted comfortably. Breton returned to France saying that Mexico was the Surrealist place par excellence, and he took back with him many objects ranging from Pre-Hispanic to Colonial, onto Modern, and folk art to prove his point. One of the painters he had "discovered" was Frida Kahlo who exhibited her work in France, where she met Austrian artist Wolfgang Paalen.

Paalen's subsequent visit to Mexico would be pivotal for New York painters who had read his theories and studied his art. Jackson Pollock, Motherwell, and Gorky were among many whom made history by using his introspective work, created in Mexico, as point of departure to create the images that made them famous. The talk ended as Grimberg showed how Surrealism, as a theory of self-awareness, became incorporated into Mexico's sense of identity. A discussion with the audience followed, ranging across historical, artistic, and psychological issues. A reception for Salomon, at the home of Arts Committee chair, Judith Samson, followed his talk and featured a Mexican cocktail-buffet, catered by Classic Gourmet of Fort Worth. The reception offered more opportunity for DSPP and DMA members and their guests, members of the Mexican Cultural Center, local artists, students and others, to talk further with Salomon.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

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