Ghosts and Growth: Reply to Commentaries by Anthony Bass and Steven Kuchuck

Abstract

In this reply to commentaries by Tony Bass and Steven Kuchuck’s discussions of “Finding Words: How the Process and Products of Psychoanalytic Writing Can Channel the Therapeutic Action of the Very Treatment It Sets Out to Describe,” Altstein proposes that Loewald’s reinvention of Freud’s Oedipus conflict to include the act of parricide is active in the relationship between candidates at psychoanalytic institutes and the teachers and writers they revere. Psychoanalytic writing is offered as a potential—and useful—vehicle for the destruction of, honoring of, and joining with one’s symbolic analytic parents.

Keywords:

• ghosts
• haunting
• Loewald
• maturation
• oedipal
• Oedipus
• psychoanalytic writing

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rachel Altstein

Rachel Altstein, JD, LP, is a 2013 graduate of NIP’s License Qualifying Program. Before entering the psychoanalytic field, she worked as an attorney specializing in prisoners’ rights, criminal defense, and anti–death penalty litigation. She is an associate editor of Psychoanalytic Perspectives and a member of Beatrice Beebe’s Infant Research Board. She has a private practice in New York City.