The Object Relations View Susan Kavaler-Adler

Topic of envy is continued as it relates to D.W. Winnicott’s understanding of mother-infant relationship and the “good enough” mother.

Dr. Kavaler-Adler continues the topic of envy and its relationship with the saying “biting the hand that feeds you,” especially in clinical therapeutic situation.

Envy is a powerful and difficult clinical topic. Yet Envy pervades our lives, and rivals with Jealousy for its killer instinct and terror filled hunger. After Freud’s more narrow understanding of envy in terms of penis envy, Melanie Klein was the first prominent theorist to expand our view of envy, and lay it at the doorstep of psychoanalysis as the dish “de jour” that haunts our daily life.  From breast envy to womb envy, Klein sufficiently countered the unique status of penis envy as an instinctual main course on the envy menu.

What is a Writer? How to Know whether you're a Writer from the inside  out? What is the creative process, versus performing for publication,  versus the Compulsion to Create, and versus writing blocks or creative  blocks?  What role do dreams have in understanding and resolving writing  blocks?

Dr. Kavaler-Adler addresses Cravings versus Yearnings in Bulimia and Anorexia, as well as the multilevel hunger in both.   Psychic Visualization technique (used consistently in Dr. Kavaler-Adler's monthly groups) helps to hone in on these topics. During Psychic visualizations, one's stomach area focuses on dialogues with hunger, hate, rage, and anger towards Internal Others; while one's heart focuses on dialogues with the love, longings, yearnings, loss, yearnings, and grief for Internal Others. Connecting to the emotional hunger cravings in the stomach brings up very different communication than focusing on the yearnings, longings, and passionate love desire in the heart.   Anorexic people locate the absence of the other in the oral cavity, and the therapist working with them can feel the aloneness and emotional hunger in the oral cavity area. Emotional need is channeled in oral channels rather than through heart channels. Other Eating Disorders may have similar dissociative body displacements.  Splitting and conflict between cravings and yearnings are experienced by participants of the Psychic Visualizations, with Developmental Mourning that integrates the heart and stomach psychic channels.

Time Management From the Inside Out: Playing with Time and the Internal Objects We Project onto Time