Love, Respect, and Being Centered Upon: Loewald’s Image of Development in Childhood and the Consulting Room
Celebrating Western New England’s 60th Anniversary: Hans Loewald’s Enduring Contribution to Psychoanalysis
Nancy J. Chodorow, PhD
Abstract
This contribution begins from two Loewaldian formulations: one, the patient becomes a centered unit by being centered upon by the analyst, and two, analytic neutrality and the analytic attitude begin from love and respect for the individual and individual development. Loewald elaborates these aspects of the analytic attitude, as he emphasizes affective as well as semantic uses of language and an attunement to the patient’s particular developmental place and possibility for understanding. Loewald’s developmental view of change in analysis ties him to Erikson and points the analyst to age and the life cycle. I describe some of the goals and challenges of working with older patients and bring in Settlage’s writings on adult development and analysis in old age.
The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 71/1: 224-233, 2018.
Link to Online Publication (fulltext can be downloaded in the library)
About the Author:
Nancy J. Chodorow, PhD is Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; a Lecturer on Psychiatry at the Cambridge Health Alliance, Harvard Medical School; and Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley. Chodorow’s books include The Reproduction of Mothering (1978); Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory (1989); Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities: Freud and Beyond (2004); The Power of Feelings: Personal Meaning in Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Culture (1999); and Individualizing Gender and Sexuality: Theory and Practice (2012). Chodorow has written extensively on Loewald and the Loewaldian tradition, and, in 2004, she suggested that Loewald, along with Erik Erikson, can be seen to have founded an American Independent tradition in psychoanalysis, which she describes as intersubjective ego psychology. Dr. Chodorow is the winner of numerous awards and recognitions. Her other recent publications include:
Chodorow, Nancy (2017). How Psychoanalysis Lost the Birthing Body: Commentary on Balsam. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 65: 91-98.
Chodorow, Nancy (2017). Warren Poland: Humanist, Ethicist, Friend. Preface to Poland, Intimacy and Separateness in Psychoanalysis. New York and London: Routledge. Pp.ix-xiv.
Previous Posts:
Rodrigo Barahona, PsyaD (2018). Book Review of Una visión binocular: Psicoanálisis y filosofía (A Binocular Vision: Psychoanalysis and Philosophy). Bárbara Bettocchi & Raúl Fatule. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2014, 265 pp. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 66/2: 386-392.
Steven H. Cooper, PhD (2017). The Analyst’s “use” of Theory or Theories: The Play of Theory. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 65/5: 859-882.
Ayelet R. Barkai, MD (2017). Troubling Gender or Engendering Trouble? The Problem With Gender Dysphoria in Psychoanalysis. The Psychoanalytic Review, 104/1: 1-32.
Morris Stambler, MD (2017). 100 Years of Adolescence and its Prehistory From Cave to Computer. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 70/1: 22-39.
Rita K. Teusch, PhD (2017). More Courtship Letters of Freud and Martha Bernays. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 65/1: 111-125.
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