Psychoanalysis versus adoption: analytic parenthood and parental countertransference
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Article PSYCHOANALYSIS VERSUS ADOPTION: ANALYTIC PARENTHOOD AND PARENTAL COUNTERTRANSFERENCE Gianni Guasto1
As we know, Sa´ndor Ferenczi compared the analytic and adoptive relationships as the psychoanalyst exercises a parental role to some extent. The author notes that a commonality between the adoptive relationship and the analytic one is that if the parental couple is burdened with painful counter-transferential experiences and feelings that have not been worked through, these can pose a danger for the strength of the newly developing parental relationship. In the analytic situation the analyst’s position implies the risk of conflict with the parental internal objects resulting from the primary introjections, especially if the original environment was abusive or severely neglectful. Similarly, the adoptive family is often burdened with revengeful and competitive aggressiveness of their own introjected parental objects, having as a main task to keep unified the pre-adoptive autobiographical memories that were dissociated and interrupted. In such cases it is very important to give the adoptive parents help so as to cope with their difficult ‘‘countertransference,’’ supporting them to reduce their sense of guilt and unsuitability to nurse their children, especially if the adoptive parents feel guilty because of their own infertility. In this paper the author describes two cases concerning both situations, emphasising the clinical risks and the evolutionary potentialities.
KEY WORDS: Ferenczi; Psychoanalytic relationship; Adoptive relationship; Countertransference; Bad introjected objects; Dissociated autobiographical memory https://doi.org/10.1057/s11231-020-09264-w
HISTORICAL CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY IN SELF-EXPERIENCE
Awareness of the historical continuity of existential experience is an undeniable requisite for the cohesion of the self. Frequent encounters with patients, who have undergone various types of caesura during their pre- and
Gianni Guasto, M.D., psychiatrist, training analyst of Societa` Italiana di Psicoanalisi e Psicoterapia ‘‘Sa´ndor Ferenczi’’ (ISFN). Co-editor-in-chief of The Wise Baby/Il Poppante Saggio rivista del rinascimento Ferencziano. Address correspondence to: Gianni Guasto, M.D., via G. Mazzini 80/6 16031 Bogliasco (GE), Italy. E-mail: [email protected]
GUASTO
post-natal lives, increasingly highlight the ways in which the reunification of this experience becomes essential to the survival or the psychic birth of the subject. Neuroscientists’ discovery of an implicit fetal memory (Piontelli, 1992, 2006) and a postnatal one (Mancia, 2006) means that psychoanalysis must now confront the topic of recovering these memories, at least potentially (see also Korff-Sausse, 2009). If the study of the influence of prenatal caesura on the psychic development of those born prematurely is still at an initial stage, greater information can be obtained from the individual experiences of people who have undergone significant existential discontinuity during infancy. This is the case with adopted i
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