Studies in Dysphoria: The False Accord in the Divine Symphony

Works in Progress Seminar:

“Studies in Dysphoria: The False Accord in the Divine Symphony”

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

8:00 pm

Presenter: Marion Oliner, Ph.D.

This presentation spans forty years of study and assumes that psychoanalysts should not base their understanding of trauma exclusively on the events that trigger the traumatic process since  there are an infinite variety in the ways individuals assimilate a wide range of traumatic events.  Some  victims never recover and are simply not suitable for analytic treatment: The events truly dominate their lives. However, the clinical insights analysts have gained over the years does make it possible to help those individuals who have the capacity to benefit from psychoanalysis. Winnicott’s assessment of the close relation between cumulative trauma omnipotence is explored.  Analysts who emphasize the victimization of  traumatized  individuals may find themselves subject to a confusion of tongues and  unprepared for the resistance they encounter when they work clinically from a tacit assumption of omnipotent triumph.  The use of identification as a sufficient explanation for the transgenerational transmission of trauma is questioned, and  the difference between the experience of trauma and the memories of it over time is clarified. During the damaging experience there is a specific ego organization that is geared toward external reality and effective action.  Subjectivity has no role here, in other words, the subject is absent.  This ego state should not be confused with the work of integration, dreaming, and fantasy. Time is an important factor.  Analysts should take all elements of human experience into consideration when trying to understand their patients. This includes the role of the impact of the senses that is neglected  when analysis privileges the unconscious. In this connection it is important to remember that in the Interpretation of Dreams Freud relied on the events of the day before to penetrate the dream’s meaning. The material to be discussed  is drawn from a book that will be available in December 2018.

No CME/CE credits offered.

Marion M. Oliner, Ph.D. (Columbia University 1958, Psychoanalytic Training Program of the NY Freudian Society, 1970) is currently in the private practice of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. She also teaches, supervises and writes on psychoanalytic topics. Dr. Oliner is a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association and a member and on the faculty of the Contemporary Freudian Society where she obtained her training. She is also a member of NPAP and the Metropolitan Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. For many years, she participated in the study group devoted to the long-term impact of the Holocaust on survivors and their children. In the many years she has been active in the field, she has participated in the governance of the NY Freudian Society, as it was then called, and chaired the Ethics Committee. She devised a syllabus for a course on ethics that is widely used. She has published articles on a wide range of subjects, and she is the author of the following books: Cultivating Freud’s Garden in France (1988) and Psychic Reality in Context: Perspectives on Psychoanalysis, Personal History and Trauma (2012), (2015 German translation), (2018 French translation).  A collection of her essays will be published by Routledge in December 2018 as Studies in Dysphoria: The False Accord in the Divine Symphony.