Bertram David Lewin (30 November 1896 – 8 January 1971) was an American
psychoanalyst
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious processes and their influence on conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on dream interpretation, psychoanalysis is also a talk th ...
who was both an acute clinician and a contributor to theory, particularly to the study of
elation, and of the dream screen.
Training and contributions
Lewin had a training analysis with
Franz Alexander
Franz Gabriel Alexander (; born Alexander Ferenc Gábor, ; 22 January 1891 – 8 March 1964) was a Hungarian-American psychoanalyst and physician, who is considered one of the founders of psychosomatic medicine and psychoanalytic criminology.
...
in Berlin in the 1920s, before publishing his first analytic article in 1930. This was followed by ten more over the next decade, on subjects ranging from diabetes and
claustrophobia
Claustrophobia is a fear of confined spaces. It is triggered by many situations or stimuli, including elevators, especially when crowded to capacity, windowless rooms, and hotel rooms with closed doors and sealed windows. Even bedrooms with a l ...
to the body as
phallus
A phallus (: phalli or phalluses) is a penis (especially when erect), an object that resembles a penis, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. In art history, a figure with an erect penis is described as ''ithyphallic''.
Any object that symbo ...
. The main focus of his interest, however, was in manic states, which he saw as characterised by fleeting identifications with a multiple of outside figures.
After the war, he published the fruits of his investigations in ''The Psychoanalysis of Elation'' (1951). There he stressed the role of
denial
Denial, in colloquial English usage, has at least three meanings:
* the assertion that any particular statement or allegation, whose truth is uncertain, is not true;
* the refusal of a request; and
* the assertion that a true statement is fal ...
in mania – denial particularly of feelings of separation and loss. He also explored the paradox in elation's dark counterpart, depression, whereby the melancholic in seeking to punish the effigy of their loved one in fact punishes themselves having incorporated this effigy.
By that point he had also published his seminal article (1946) on the dream screen – the backcloth formed from primitive memories of the breast onto which the dream is projected. The concept would be fruitfully followed up both within analysis, and in the context of
film theory
Film theory is a set of scholarly approaches within the academic discipline of film or cinema studies that began in the 1920s by questioning the formal essential attributes of motion pictures; and that now provides conceptual frameworks for und ...
.
[L. Fischer, ''Cinematernity'' (2014) p. 25]
Selected publications
____''The Image and the Past'' (1968)
See also
References
External links
The Work of Bertram D. Lewin
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lewin, Bertram
American psychoanalysts
Jewish psychoanalysts
1896 births
1971 deaths
Film theory
Place of birth missing
20th-century American psychologists