After Freud: Development of Psychoanalytic Thought and Theory

Second Year Adult Psychoanalytic Training (APT)
2022-23, 2nd Trimester — Fridays, 3:30-5:00pm
Julie Wood, MA

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January 27, 2023 — The English-Speaking World (UK and USA): Human Development, Self, and Attachment

[67 pages]

Erikson is often neglected in the history of psychoanalysis, yet his contribution of attending to the entirety of the human life span was foundational to psychology, education, and the emerging science of human development. He considered himself a classical ego psychologist.

Kohut began his career as a classical ego psychologist, but then shifted his focus to the narcissistic needs and injuries to one’s developing sense of self.

Erikson and Kohut both helped shape the historical shift to a focus on the healthy growth and development of a sense of self, not just in early childhood, but into adulthood. Meanwhile in London, The Anna Freud Center turns its attention to the foundation provided by the Middle School (Winnicott, Bowlby, Sharpe, etc), human attachment in the earliest life of the infant. The war time Hampstead Nursery (Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham) and baby orphanages (Rene Spitz) vividly showed the harm of separation and loss to infants. Bowlby researched this phenomenon leading the way to attachment theory. The Anna Freud Center became the center for attachment theory, led by Fonagy and Target in London and Main and Ainsworth in the USA.

(Note, there will be no class next week, February 3, due to APsaA meeting.)

Erikson, E.H. (1984). Reflections on the Last Stage—And the First. Psychoanal. St. Child, 39:155-165

Kohut, H. (2010). On Empathy: Heinz Kohut (1981). Int. J. Psychoanal. Self Psychol., 5(2):122-131.

Fonagy, P. and Target, M. (2007). The Rooting of the Mind in the Body: New Links between Attachment Theory and Psychoanalytic Thought. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 55(2):411-456