Hyman spotnitz biography definition
•
Hyman Spotnitz
Hyman Spotnitz (September 29, 1908 – April 18, 2008) was an American psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who pioneered an approach to working psychoanalytically with patients with schizophrenia in the 1950s called modern psychoanalysis. He also was one of the pioneers of group therapy.
Background and education
[edit]Born in Boston to immigrant parents, Spotnitz attended Harvard College and received a degree in medicine from Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin in 1934. He continued his medical studies at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, earning a Medical Science degree in neurology in 1939. His initial work on schizophrenia was conducted while a consulting psychiatrist for the Jewish Board of Guardians in New York City.
At the time, most psychoanalysts did not think that schizophrenia was treatable through therapy and group approaches were not popular. His approach was considered controversial, and he left the New York Psychoanaly
•
This page has the following content:
The background to an unpublished article that I wrote about Spotnitz and the article itself
A recording of one of the interviews I did with Spotnitz and a summary of another one
A recording of an interview with Larry Epstein about Spotnitz
An unpublished article by Dr. Robert Marshall about Spotnitz
And, coming soon (but not yet here), videos of interviews with Spotnitz conducted by Charles and Deborah Bertshatsky
I couldn’t figure out how to put a link in so that you could jump to any specific section. So if you would like to skip anything, just scroll down.
SPOTNITZ INTERVIEWS and ARTICLE ABOUT SPOTNTIZ
In 1986-1987, I wrote Breaching the Stone Wall, an articleabout Hyman Spotnitz’s work with schizophrenic patients, and the ways in which it lead to new developments in psychoanalytic technique and philosophy. I was a candidate at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies at the time, 6 years in, and I was frustrated
•
Modern psychoanalysis
Psychoanalytic technique
Modern psychoanalysis is the term used by Hyman Spotnitz[1] to describe the techniques he developed for the treatment of narcissistic (also called preverbal or preoedipal) disorders.
Theory
[edit]Narcissism is understood (by Spotnitz) as a state in which unexpressed aggression and hostility are trapped within the psychic apparatus with corrosive effects on mind and body. The bottled up aggression is turned against the self by a weak and undeveloped ego that is not capable of papper the stress of hateful feelings. The techniques of modern psychoanalysis[2] are aimed at allowing the ego to direct aggression outward in productive ways and at protecting a fragile ego against the self-attack seen in cases ranging from schizophrenia, depression, and somatization to neurotic forms of self-sabotage.[3] This is accomplished bygd helping the patient to "say everything."
The ego is protected by what is ca