Biomedical subjects

D Safán-Gerard

Publications and source records attributed to D Safán-Gerard.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1998

Bearable and unbearable guilt: a Kleinian perspective.

Material is presented from four analytic sessions with a patient who seems unable to bear guilt. The first two illustrate defenses against guilt; the last two show the incipient experience of guilt and, finally, the ability to suffer conscious guilt. The author questions interpretations that address defenses against guilt but fail to help the patient bear the guilt. Such interpretations can make the analyst prey to a sadomasochistic enactment in the transference whereby the patient expiates the guilt and reverts to not recognizing what he or she does to objects. The ability to bear guilt is increased by a diminution of the patient's destructiveness and by the mobilization of love.

Adult↗

PubMed1996

A Kleinian approach to group psychotherapy.

This article presents clinical material from a group that is now in its seventh year. The clinical material illustrates an aspect of the working through of depressive anxieties. The theoretical framework for understanding the material and my interventions is Bion's application of Klein's ideas. The clinical vignettes show how a group struggles with the split between good and bad characteristic of the paranoid-schizoid position (Ps) and the more integrated view of objects as both good and bad, characteristic of the depressive position (D). This more integrated view carries with it the capacity for both love and hate. One member's early memory of cruelty mobilizes other members' guilt toward their objects as well as their reparative wishes.

Adult↗

PubMed1985

Chaos and control in the creative process.

This has been an attempt to understand the alternation of chaos and control in the creative process. As a painting acquires a life of its own, the artist loses control over it but then and only then can he or she establish an enriching dialogue with it. When losing control leads to too much anxiety, the artist will attempt to gain control over the work but this excessive control will lead to a tight structure that will seem lifeless. At some point the artist will have to destroy this structure and create a new chaos in order to start afresh and to seek something of value in it. Milner, Segal, Winnicott and the work of other psychoanalytic writers, as it is pertinent to these ideas, was examined.

Art↗