Biomedical subjects

Arlene Kramer Richards

Publications and source records attributed to Arlene Kramer Richards.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2003

On being lonely: fear of one's own aggression as an impediment to intimacy.

This paper considers loneliness from the point of view of compromise formation and the development of fantasy as a means of defending against painful affect. Our idea is that at least one strand of loneliness derives from longing for an ideal object with whom one would never have to feel aggression and from whom no aggressive actions would have to be tolerated. The development of such a fantasy in a middle-aged man is traced to early loss of a parent with missed mourning, and is shown to be ameliorated by psychoanalytic treatment that allowed the mourning to take place.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

The "sweet and sour" of being lonely and alone.

This paper explores the question of why some lonely people seem to forget what goes on in their treatment when they are away from the analyst's presence. The authors look at loneliness from the perspective of a female patient using the transference to attempt to undo a childhood trauma of early abandonment and neglect. This woman appeared child-like and helpless while she resisted using insight. A dream highlights the unconscious wishes and fantasies that fueled her stance in treatment. The premise is that by not allowing herself to use her insights when out of the analyst's presence, she was maintaining herself as the lonely abandoned child that she had been. Using her treatment in this way seemed to assuage her pain while she waited for the father of her fantasy. The price she paid for waiting was loneliness, loss of self-esteem, and a life with few adult pleasures. Her fantasy of cure followed a sequence from a deficit model, to a model of internalization of bad objects, to a conflict model. The authors believe that sequencing the view of her troubles in this way had a therapeutic effect.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

A fresh look at perversion.

The history of ideas about perversion is considered, along with an examination of whether the concept is clinically useful. Three cases of varying degrees of severity are presented, illustrating the clinical value of the concept in the analytic situation. All three cases are women, and the particular usefulness of the concept of perversion for women is noted. The place of aggression and the pleasure resulting from its expression are highlighted.

Adult↗