Paper Announcements by Danielle Knafo (USA)

Alone in a Crowded Mind: When Psychosis Masks Loneliness

Psychoanalytic Psychology, 2020, 37(2):108-116.

This article explores the relationship between loneliness and psychosis, with respect to how psychosis constitutes a longing for connection and reality, how harrowing loneliness both precedes and follows psychosis, even triggering it in some individuals. It also examines some strategies individuals with psychosis use to cope with loneliness and how psychosis and its treatment further isolate a person, increasing loneliness. Finally, it discusses how therapists who treat psychosis experience a particular kind of loneliness in the countertransference. Case material is presented.

https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2019-56435-001

The Sexual Illusionist

Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 2020, 17(1):13-30.

In a letter to Jung in 1902, Freud wrote, “the cure is effected by love.” Indeed, I believe, like Freud, that every therapy is a love relationship of a sort and that the analytic work is an act of love. But how is this accomplished in the case of perversions, since they are essentially the antithesis of love and intimacy? Among the greatest challenges such patients present for the analyst are how to humanize those who dehumanize and how to teach them to love. This paper presents the case of Cain, a man who learned to love in his analysis, but whose very love resulted in the need to terminate.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1551806X.2019.1685312

GIF