Little Hans and the "Enigmatic Messages" of His Parents.

The authors discuss the psychoanalytic treatment of Little Hans, drawing on the perspective offered by Laplanche's concept of "enigmatic messages," which they believe can contribute to a better understanding of this case history. They conclude that Little Hans's positive Oedipus complex conceals his negative Oedipus complex in which he represents his parents' oedipal problems in a distorted fashion. They demonstrate the way his parents project aspects of these problems into Hans's psyche, where his subsequent identifications with them lead to substitutive formations.

Hallucination in Adolescence-Or, Nora in Nowhereland Between Neurosis and Psychosis.

The authors present a case history in which they investigate the psychic mechanisms behind the production and function of adolescent hallucinations against the background of Freud's framework and Laplanche's concept of enigmatic messages. They conclude that these hallucinations, although to all appearance psychotic, are basically neurotic in nature, and that both their content and hallucinatory form serve to protect the defense mechanisms with which parents ward off their unconscious conflicts.

Psychoanalysis Today-A Pseudoscience? A Critique of the Arbitrary Nature of Psychoanalytic Theories and Practice.

The article centers on psychoanalysts' indifferent attitude to the mutually exclusivity of theoretical conceptualizations and the ensuing technical rules for treatment. In the author's view this indifference is due to psychoanalysts being business people for whom the exchange value of their service is essentially of greater interest than its utility value, which latter is only of interest as a means of realizing the former. The author argues that, as a consequence of the disparate coexisting conceptualizations being treated as equally valid, psychoanalysis becomes a science without truth, that is, a pseudoscience, and demonstrates that all attempts to appropriate the epithet ornans "scientific" to psychoanalysis by linking its concepts to findings in areas beyond its conceptual field have failed.

Penis Envy and the Female Oedipus Complex: A Plea to Reawaken an Ineffectual Debate.

Going along with Laplanche's assumption that there is no endogenous sexuality, the authors discuss Freud's concepts of the female Oedipus complex and penis envy and some of its proposed alternatives. The female oedipal conflict turns out to be the outcome of a projective identification with the Oedipus complexes of the mother and father. In the context of the rivalry with the mother, penis envy refers to the maternal power over the father's penis that the daughter wants to have in herself, while, in the context of the rivalry with the father, penis envy arises from the jealousy of the father's penis that the daughter believes is necessary to have on herself in order to satisfy her mother.

Oedipus and the Oedipus complex: A revision.

The authors consider whether those aspects of the Oedipus myths that have been ignored by Freud could improve our knowledge of how the Oedipus complex develops. They conclude that the myths can provide an answer to Freud's question posed on the 25 February 1914 (Nunberg and Federn, 1975, p. 234) concerning "the extent to which the Oedipus complex is a reflection of the sexual behavior of the parents" with Fenichel's (1931, p.

Repression and substitutive formation: the relationship between Freud's concepts reconsidered.

This paper examines Freud's concept of repression and the relationship between repression and substitutive formation as it presents itself in Freud's writings. The author shows that Freud gives at least four different meanings to the term "repression": Freud uses it interchangeably with defense, as a consciously intended forgetting, as a specific unconscious mechanism of defense, and to describe the consequence of defense mechanisms leading to substitutive formations. The inconsistencies in this relationship are discussed and clarified, and Freud's economic and linguistic attempts at founding repression are subjected to critique; the need of a primal repression as a necessary condition for repression proper is pointed out.

Psychoanalysis--on its way down a dead-end street? A concerned commentary.

The author discusses the problems when psychoanalysis not only neglects socio-critical issues, diversifies its concepts and sets about to define their common ground with the help of brain research findings and/or of infant observation, but also ignores the implications of attempts to legitimate its scientific status by verifying the outcome of its treatments via nomological and/or qualitative study designs. It is argued that if we reduce psychoanalysis to a mere psychotherapeutic measure we displace the factors essential to neurotic disorders into the blind spot of our field of vision, thus rendering psychoanalysis to be a pseudoscience based on appearances alone. Conceptual clarity, it is argued, cannot be gained from the findings of infant observation or those of brain research.

Some thoughts on empathy and countertransference.

Two aspects of countertransference-namely, the countertransference reaction and empathic understanding-must be distinguished. The term countertransference should be reserved exclusively for the conscious reactions of the analyst emerging from the preconscious by virtue of the patient's current transferences; the term empathy should be used to denote a perspective whereby the analyst employs current countertransference reactions for an understanding of the patient's inner life.

Trauma and traumatic neurosis: Freud's concepts revisited.

The authors examine Freud 's concepts of 'trauma', 'protective shield against stimuli ' and 'traumatic neurosis' in the light of recent findings. 'Protective shield against stimuli' is regarded as a biological concept which appears in mental life as the striving to avoid unpleasant affects. 'Trauma' is a twofold concept in that it relates to mental experience and links an external event with the specific after-effects on an individual 's psychic reality.

Attachment theory and psychoanalysis: some remarks from an epistemological and from a Freudian viewpoint.

The author examines Bowlby's attachment theory and more recent versions of it from an epistemological viewpoint and subjects it to questioning on whether they are in line with central concepts of Freudian psychoanalysis. He argues that Bowlby's basic tenets regarding attachment theory, which later attachment theorists never seriously questioned, do not conform to scientific standards, and that psychoanalytic issues such as the dynamic unconscious, internal conflicts, interaction of drive wishes and the role of defence in establishing substitutive formations are either ignored or not treated in sufficient depth. In the light of this, Fonagy's assertion that psychoanalytic criticism of attachment theory arose from mutual misunderstandings and ought nowadays to be seen as outdated is reversed: psychoanalytic criticism can only be regarded as outdated if either basic tenets of Freudian psychoanalysis, or attachment theory or both are misunderstood.

[Factors influencing psychotherapeutic treatment outcome of various syndromes].

The authors investigated specific and unspecific factors influencing the psychotherapeutic treatment of various syndromes using a questionnaire which systematically replicated the Consumer Reports Study performed in the USA in 1994. The authors were particularly concerned with the degree to which certain psychotherapeutic methods - psychoanalysis, depth psychology-based psychotherapy and behavioral therapy - produced differing results following treatment of syndromes. Using cluster-analysis, two groups of syndromes could be distinguished: Patients with depressive symptoms, stress-related disorders and/or relationship problems (depression-group) and patients with anxiety disorders and/or eating-related disorders (anxiety-group).

[Treatment of psychological disorders by the family doctor].

The authors investigated 191 patients with psychological disorders that had been treated exclusively by their family doctor. They used a questionnaire which systematically replicated the Consumer-Reports-Study executed in the USA in 1994. The investigation came to the conclusion that only the behavior and the attitude of the treating doctor showed influence on the result of treatment, the improvement of the symptoms and the satisfaction with the treatment.

[The state of outpatient psychotherapy in Germany].

This paper presents the results of a study of the state of adult outpatient psychotherapy in Germany after the PTG came into force. 1042 psychotherapists were questioned on certain issues. One result was that patients have to wait 4.