Psychopathology I: Neurotic-Level Character and Symptom Disorders

First Year Adult Psychoanalytic Training (APT)
2022-23, 3rd Trimester — Fridays, 1:45-3:15pm
Michael Pauly, MD
Kelly Lippman, LMHC

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May 26, 2023 — Obsessionality and a return to Sexuality

[34 pages]

Bergstein aims to invite the analyst to reconceptualize the verbose obsessional patient (typically thought of as neurotic) and to work at a more primitive unmentalized level with them. She proposes that the obsessional patient is aiming to shield themselves from the pain of intense emotional experience and inherent fear of surrendering to the feeling-based rather than thought-based self. Does this fit with your experience working with obsessional people?

Atlas discusses sexuality in the framework of relational psychoanalysis in an effort to counter the fact that contemporary psychoanalytic approaches as they turned away from drive theory often abandoned sexuality altogether. This paper calls for a return to the centrality of sexuality in understanding the mind, development, and interpersonal / object relations.

Bergstein, A. (2016). Obsessionality: Modulating the Encounter with Emotional Truth and the Aesthetic Object. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 64(5):959-982.

Atlas, G. (2018) Has Sexuality Anything to Do with Relationality?, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 28:330-339.