Back to Table of Contents
interplay between three superimposed communicative circuits: two intrapsychic ones (the patient’s and the analyst’s) and the interpersonal circuit created between them. In his book Communication in psychoanalytic therapy (1962) Liberman makes use of Jurgen Ruesch’s contributions in order to classify the different types of ‘personae’ according to the way they communicate with their interlocutors. He enumerates and correlates them firstly with O. Fenichel’s (1945) classical nomenclature, and then with his own future systematizations, as in the following tables:
Ruesch ’ s nomenclature
O. Fenichel ’ s nomenclature
An outgoing person
Conversion hysteria (hysterical character)
A fearful, a ‘flight’ person
Anxiety hysteria (phobic character)
A logical person
Obsessive neurosis (obsessive character)
A person of action
Psychopathic personality (perversions and compulsions) Cyclothymic disorder, neurotic depression and cyclical psychosis
A depressive person
An observing, non-participant person Schizoid disorder, schizophrenia
An infantile person
Organ neurosis (psychosomatic illnesses)
Liberman proceeds further to combine Ruesch and Fenichel with the phases of development of the libido (Freud, 1905, 1933; Abraham, 1924) with paranoid and depressive anxieties (M. Klein, 1952), thereby drawing the following outline in order to describe the prevailing affects in each clinical picture (Liberman, D. 1962, p. 130):
748
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online