PANY Scientific Meeting: Summary

The Second C. Philip Wilson, MD, Memorial Lecture

Monday, September 13, 2004, 8:15 PM Einhorn Auditorium, Lenox Hill Hospital, 131 E. 76th St.,NYC

A Literary Example of Being Haunted by Parents: Benjamin Spock

Leonard Shengold, M.D.
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
NYU Medical Center, New York, NY

Summary

The paper begins with an explication of its theme: the resistance to change evidenced by a number of gifted and psychologically-minded people seen in 2d and 3d analyses is ascribed to an underlying expectation that change will lead to loss. It is the loss of the internalized early parental imagoe that is expected to be unbearable, despite conscious wishes to separate emotionally from the parents. The psychic bondage to the parents appeared to be primarily sado-masochistic, consisting of individual mixtures of compulsive submission to and compliance toward them.

The bulk of the paper concerns the fascinating work and life of Benjamin Spock--the evolution of his ideas about child development, how he was influenced by Freud and psychoanalysis, his political career, his relationship to his wives and his children. These topics all present evidence of his being haunted by the imagoes of the parents of his childhood, especially by his mother--haunted in ways that turned out to be both good and bad.

Selected References

Maier, T. (1998). Dr. Spock. An American Life. New York: Harcourt, Brace.

Shengold, L. (2002). "What Do I know?" Perspectives on What Must Not Be Known When Change Means Loss. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, vol. 71, pp. 699-724.

Shengold, L. (2004). Haunted By Parents: A literary Example: Edna St. Vincent Millay. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, vol. 73, pp. 717-737.