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E S Person

Publications and source records attributed to E S Person.

15 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Knowledge and authority: the godfather fantasy.

Three strategies are tentatively proposed by which human beings try to assuage the need for transcendence: (1) seizing the godhead; (2) submission to God; and (3) the godfather fantasy, whereby an attempt is made to clothe a mere mortal in the cloak of godly power. These strategies are connected to our innate, often conflicted, tendencies to obedience and rebellion, later elaborated into submission to authority or resistance to or cooptation of authority. These psychic tendencies are illustrated in Dostoevsky's "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor" and in Mario Puzo's The Godfather, both brilliant demonstrations of social hierarchical control. The almost universal pull to obedience is demonstrated in the research of Stanley Milgram on obedience in hierarchical situations and theorized by Freud in his formulation of "the thirst for obedience" as a product of infantile life. It is proposed that the function of the group mind, in the form of ideology, is to counter anxieties generated throughout life, not only the remnants of childhood anxiety but also fears of death and oblivion. That a person's will to power can get out of hand and lead to disaster hardly needs saying; yet the will to submission, when connected to a shared ideology, can lead to results no less devastating. More people are killed in the name of an ideological cause run amok than are destroyed by virtue of thwarted passion, personal vendettas, criminality, or greed.

Fantasy↗
PubMed1999

Creative collaborations. Writers and editors.

Creativity, which the culture often depicts as a solitary enterprise, is almost always impacted or even dependent upon one or another aspect of a real relationship or an internalized object relationship. This paper utilizes the example of creative collaborations between writers and editors to illustrate aspects of co-creativity, co-construction, and mutual influence. It draws on Howard Gardner's observation, based on a series of biographical studies, that a creator during a time of artistic or intellectual breakthrough requires both an affective support system and a cognitive one. His observation echoes that of child researchers who emphasize that the contour of developmental lines depends not only on an internal dynamic but on interactions with significant others and on cultural and social influences as well. This paper describes both successful and problematic collaborations between writers and editors and demonstrates the strengths of such collaborations and some of their potential faultlines as well.

Creativity↗
PubMed1994

Establishing trauma: the difficulty distinguishing between memories and fantasies.

This paper is intended as a contribution to understanding why, up until recently, there have been so few case reports of actual abuse and its sequelae in the psychoanalytic literature. We suggest that psychoanalytic insights into the nature of psychic reality, while indispensable to the evolution of psychoanalytic thinking, have nonetheless had the adverse effect of collapsing any distinction between unconscious fantasies and repressed memories. Moreover, the idea that knowledge of external reality is itself mentally constructed also has diminished interest in uncovering trauma and "real" history. We present a report of an adult analysis that illustrates the recovery of a dissociated memory of sexual abuse that occurred during adolescence, as a springboard to discuss problems analysts have had in dealing with trauma theoretically. We hypothesize that repressed memories and conscious fantasies can often be distinguished insofar as they may be "stored" or encoded differently, and that consequently the sequelae of trauma and fantasy often, but not always, can be disentangled. We describe some different modes of encoding trauma and some different ways of remembering, reexperiencing, and reenacting it. And, finally, we suggest why traumatic memories are increasingly accessible to patients today.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Associations between sexual experiences and fantasies in a nonpatient population: a preliminary study.

We have been interested in devising some methodology short of psychoanalytic therapy to study the relationship of conscious fantasy to personality trends and behavior. Presented here is a pilot study, utilizing the questionnaire technique, the sample consisting of 193 students enrolled at one prestigious urban university, that reports on the prevalence and content of conscious sexual fantasies in a normal (nonpatient) population and their relationship to sexual behaviors. Factor analysis suggested four experience and four fantasy clusters. Those individuals who score high on one experience factor are apt to score high on all other experience factors as well. The same is true of the fantasy factors. Our findings indicate that low sexual activity and low levels of sexual fantasy go together, whereas more sexual experience is connected to a greater range of sexual fantasy. Consequently, erotic fantasies cannot be viewed as compensation for lack of sexual outlet. Instead, there is a positive correlation between the two domains of sexual fantasies and sexual behaviors. Our overall results lead us to conclude that by and large, people are sexual generalists not specialists.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

A sadomasochistic transference: its relation to distortions in the rapprochement subphase.

The development of a rageful sadomasochistic transference early in an analysis is presented. We describe key interventions that foster its resolution and offer a reconstruction of the patient's early life, focusing on difficulty in the rapprochement phase. We believe that the intense and difficult to manage sadomasochistic transference was linked to a repudiation of both preoedipal and oedipal triangulation, resulting in the perpetuation of a hostile dependent mother-child dyad and in the patient's unconscious belief that sadomasochistic interactions were the only means of establishing and maintaining a close relationship.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Gender differences in sexual behaviors and fantasies in a college population.

This study presents male and female responses of 193 university students to questions about sexual experiences and fantasies. There are few significant gender differences in experiences, but many in fantasies. Males fantasized about sex more and exhibited greater interest in partner variation and in the spectrum from domination to sadism. While male sexuality is often described as aggressive/sadistic and female sexuality as passive/masochistic, most men and women in our population do not report fantasies supporting such stereotypes.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

The erotic transference in women and in men: differences and consequences.

Although the erotic transference is believed to be universal, it is variable in its expression. Drawing on the distinction between transference resistance and resistance to the awareness of the transference, I have proposed that, in general, the erotic transference utilized as resistance is more common among women, while resistance to the awareness of the erotic transference is more common among male patients. Erotic transference as resistance poses different analytic problems from those posed by resistance to its awareness. With women in treatment with men, the erotic transference is more often overt, consciously experienced, intense, long-lived and directed toward the analyst, and focused more on love than sex; with men in treatment with women, the erotic transference is muted, relatively short-lived, appears indirectly in dreams and triangular preoccupations, is seldom consciously experienced as a dominant affective motif, is frequently transposed to a woman outside the analytic situation, and most often appears as sexual rather than as a longing for love. In women, the strength of the erotic transference may obscure other important dynamics and conflicts. In short, the strength of the erotic transference, while it has significant therapeutic potential, often acts as a strong transference resistance to working out underlying conflicts. In contrast, in male patients in treatment with women, there is a resistance to the experience of the transference and, frequently, one witnesses defenses against the erotic transference rather than the transference itself. Yet, the dangers are substantial when the erotic transference fails to develop or is suppressed. This difference in the manifestation of the erotic transference parallels an extratherapeutic difference. In general, women achieve their self-identity as women by virtue of certain defining relationships, whereas men achieve their self-identity as men through achievement and autonomy. The reasons for these differences have been explored in terms of cultural dictates, but more particularly in terms of an asymmetry in psychological development.

Adult↗
PubMed1969

Racism: evil or ill?

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Black or African American↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Trauma diagnosis: difficulty in differentiating between recall and fantasy].

This paper is intended as a contribution to understanding why, up until recently, there have been so few case reports of actual abuse and its sequelae in the psychoanalytic literature. We suggest that psychoanalytic insights into the nature of psychic reality, while indispensable to the evolution of psychoanalytic thinking, have nonetheless had the adverse effect of collapsing any distinction between unconscious fantasies and repressed memories. Moreover, the idea that knowledge of external reality is itself mentally constructed also has diminished interest in uncovering trauma and "real" history. We present a report of an adult analysis that illustrates the recovery of a dissociated memory of sexual abuse that occurred during adolescence, as a springboard to discuss problems analysts have had in dealing with trauma theoretically. We hypothesize that repressed memories and unconscious fantasies can often be distinguished insofar as they may "be stored" or encoded differently, and that consequently the sequelae of trauma and fantasy often, but not always, can be disentangled. We describe some different modes of encoding trauma and some different ways of remembering, re-experiencing, and re-enacting it. And, finally, we suggest why traumatic memories are increasingly accessible to patients today.

Adolescent↗