Psychoanalytic Theory and Methodology Today: Selected Papers of Charlotte Schwartz

Charlotte Schwartz has continued her thinking and writing  in the tradition of Freud and classical psychoanalysis. Though she has differed with Freud regarding the Death Drive and has emphasized the Aggressive Drive as a preferable observable second  drive, she follows in his tradition of drive focus and description in her writings. In her paper  Frequency of Sessions, she presents how the intensity  of frequency makes possible increased insight and understanding of unconscious problems and conflicts for the patient. The patients’ ability  to internalize their experience, to feel the transference wishes, desires and   affects in the analysis is obviously more pronounced in more frequent sessions than once or even twice weekly visits.

        Mrs. Schwartz  further takes issue with those theorists who have malined Freud for his supposed failure to give credence to the object in the patient’s lives and who  stresses the role of drives particularly the sexual drive  both in  their internal conflicts and in psychic structure. In her paper Freud, The Progenitor of Object Relations Theory, she formidably stresses the role of the infantile object and its subsequent force throughout life in Freud’s writings.

        For those who wish a quick and in depth review of Freud’s thinking on  such topics as a Reconsideration of Topographic Theory, Ambivalence, Narcissism,  Superego Development, and  other psychoanalytic concepts, Mrs Schwartz’s book offers an opportunity to encounter.