The inner witness

The inner witness is a mechanism that develops in response to a reasonable experience of infantile helplessness, the resulting maternal impingement and the presence of a sufficient experience of a third. Being crucial to the subject's capacity to shift between the first person and the third person of experience, it also has an essential role in coping with trauma. Three types of testimonial narrative are differentiated in terms of the presence of the inner witness in their syntax. The first mode is one in which the inner witness is accessible, enabling the imaginary shift between the voice of the victim and the voice of the witness. The second mode, which remains a 'first-person' mode of report, preserves and enacts the traumatic memories and the traumatic features. The third, psychotic mode attacks both the first and the third person, separating the subject from both his memories and his sense of selfhood. This mode can evolve as a reaction to an adult massive trauma, but is more likely to emerge as a result of early traumatization. The above ideas and their implications for recovery are illustrated by a case study and through a reading of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.     

Estimating the effects of misleading information on witness accuracy: can experts tell jurors something they don't already know?

This study investigated potential differences between expert and lay knowledge of factors influencing witness suggestibility. Expert psychologists (N = 58), jurors (N = 157), and jury‐eligible undergraduates (N = 220) estimated the effects of misleading information on witness accuracy for three age groups in various conditions. Respondents possessed similar knowledge of age‐related trends in suggestibility, the positive effects of a pre‐misinformation warning, and the negative influence of longer delays between the event/misinformation and event/final memory test. Compared to experts, laypeople underestimated the size of suggestibility differences between age groups and lacked knowledge about how event detail centrality, witness participation, and source prestige can increase witness suggestibility. Laypeople rated themselves as being largely unfamiliar with witness suggestibility research and thought that expert testimony would be beneficial. These data shed light on the potential helpfulness of expert testimony in cases involving witness suggestibility. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Surviving Deadness in the Analytic Experience

The transference/countertransference (third space) analysis is considered to be central in the therapeutic effectiveness of the analytic process. Less emphasis has been placed on the actual experiences of analyst and analysand in the conflictual reenactment of third space experience and its resolution. This paper recounts the shared experience of a patient who was silent throughout most of the analysis, and my reaction, in fantasy and enactment, to this disturbing experience—both for him and for myself. I argue that it is the affective re-experiencing of past repressed trauma in the analytic space that has a therapeutic impact, leading to growth in the patient and also the therapist. I contrast Freud’s emphasis on insight, making the unconscious conscious, with Ferenczi’s suggestion that the therapeutic impact lies in the repetition of past traumatic experience in the analysis but with the possibility of a different outcome with a more benign object, leading to symbolic representation of repressed trauma. Re-experiencing and symbolization, in the third space, of past traumatic experience can be an exit point from the endless repetition of trauma in internal and external object relations, leading to a new beginning in the patient’s life. Immersed in the experience of deadness in the analysis, which had become a dead womb, the struggle to remain alive and thinking led to a rupture out of the dead womb, like the Caesura of birth, into aliveness and the ability to mentalize what had previously remained unmentalized.     

Witness Vetting: What Determines Detectives' Perceptions of Witness Credibility?

During the course of a criminal investigation witness vetting, a detective's process of determining the credibility and weight of witness information, can lead to errors in an investigation that can go virtually unchallenged. Witness confidence, opportunity to view, and type of information proffered were examined in relation to detective inferences about witness reliability, accuracy, and probable cause to arrest. Experiment 1 involved 39 sworn law enforcement officers, and experiment 2 involved 43 sworn law enforcement officers and 86 mock detectives. Participants viewed a digital recording depicting a witness describing a gas station robbery (Experiment 1) or a campus mugging (Experiment 2). Witness confidence and detectives' inferences about culprit information influenced the vetting process and lent credibility to a confident witness whose accuracy was objectively unknown. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that sworn law enforcement are comparable with untrained observers in their use of social inference cues (i.e. confidence) in determining witness credibility; however, social inference can be assuaged by the rational, rule‐governed, decision framework established for witness vetting. Social inference processes inherent in the detective‐witness dyad is influenced by legal procedures in vetting witness information. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Free will: reconciling German civil law with Libet's neurophysiological studies on the readiness potential

The free will debate widely exceeds the neuroscientific and philosophical fields due to profound implications for legislation, case law and psychiatric expert opinion. Data from Benjamin Libet's experiments on the readiness potential have been used as an argument against personal responsibility and for changes in the law. Due to the explicit use of the term "free will" in German civil law, the psychiatrist as an expert witness is confronted with this debate. In this article we outline the role of this crucial term in German civil law and we describe the neurophysiologic challenge in the form of Libet's experiments, which is led on three levels: the correctness of the data, the impact on the question of whether free will exists and possible consequences for the law. We conclude that the problem of free will cannot be debated on the basis of the data provided by Libet's experiments and that doubts about the existence of a free will must not lead to changes in the law or in psychiatric expert testimony. Therefore, advice for the psychiatrist as an expert witness is offered on the basis of a psychopathological approach that takes into account cognitive and motivational preconditions and the structure of values and personality.     

The Space of Motivations

Abstract

The distinction between the space of reasons and the realm of law captures two familiar ways of making events intelligible, by reference to reasons or to natural laws, respectively. I describe a third way of making events intelligible, by explaining them in terms of an agent’s being motivated to do certain things. Explanations of this sort do not involve appealing to reasons for which the agent acts, nor to natural laws under which the event falls. To explain an event in this way is to place it in the space of motivations. I outline the relation between the space of motivations and the space of reasons, and suggest that the space of motivations may serve as a common ground between the positions defended by McDowell and Dreyfus in their recent debate.     

Hart and Honoré on causation in the law

Hart and Honoré contend, in their book Causation in the Law, that causal appraisals in everyday life and in the law can be made, with justifiable confidence, without appealing to relevant general laws; that in order to grasp the workings of causal notions in everyday life and the law, it is sufficient to note that causes are events which interfere with or intervene in the course of events which would normally have taken place. This thesis is criticized on the ground that what purport to be purely causal appraisals are hopelessly vulnerable to moral considerations, especially when such appraisals are presumed to take place in complete independence of scientific theory.     

Retrieval-induced forgetting in an eyewitness-memory paradigm

The potential impact of repeated questioning of a witness was examined. Subjects were shown slides depicting the aftermath of a theft and subsequently were asked several times to recall selected details of what they saw. Previous experiments employing simple verbal materials have demonstrated that information addressed by questioning becomes more recallable in the future than it would have been without such retrieval practice, but other information, especially that bearing a categorical similarity to the practiced items, becomes less recallable. Such positive and negative effects appeared in subjects’ later recall of crime-scene details in the present experiment. These results have an important implication for legal practice: Repeated interrogation of a witness can modify the witness’s memory-enhancing the recall of certain details while inducing the forgetting of other details-even when no misinformation is contained or implied in the questioning.     

A Phenomenology of Emotional Trauma: Around and About the Things Themselves

This paper seeks to provide a noetic analysis of emotional trauma. It highlights three essential features of trauma, as well as one non-essential feature, and attempts to make sense of them phenomenologically. The first essential feature of trauma that the paper considers is the disbelief that pervades traumatic experience. When traumatized, we cannot believe that the traumatic event has taken place. This is because we will, not for the event not to have happened??we cannot will something that is in the past??but to believe that it did not happen so as to shield ourselves from our painful emotional response to it. The second essential feature of trauma is our inability to distinctly categorially intuit the central state of affairs around which our trauma revolves. The traumatic situation is literally unthinkable by us, for it is incongruent with both our expectations regarding the subject of the trauma and our horizon of sense more generally. The third essential feature of trauma is the temporal disorientation that it brings about. Such disorientation arises from our prolonged and single-minded attention to an increasingly complex categorial object: the traumatic situation. Finally, the paper considers a non-essential feature of trauma, namely, how traumatic experience can motivate phenomenological and scientific reactions.     

Expert testimony in pornography trials: A role for the social scientist

This article attempts to clarify the concepts of law, pornography, and the special role of the expert witness in pornography. Different conceptual frameworks taken by experts in this field are addressed, as are the shortcomings of various approaches. Finally, the critical role of ethics in giving expert witness testimony in pornography is discussed.     

The learning theory model of neurosis—A new approach

This paper is concerned with the development of a learning theory model of neurosis which would not be susceptible to the many criticisms which can be made of former models. Two widely favoured models—those of Freud and Skinner—are rejected because they are either non-falsifiable or tautological. The Watson and Mowrer models are rejected because they have been experimentally invalidated. The model here suggested differs from previous ones in several important respects. In the first place, it replaces the classical law of extinction by a more modern version which allows for incubation (enhancement) effects of exposure to CS-only stimuli, as well as for extinction effects. In the second place, the model emphasizes the importance of individual differences, and suggests precise relations between personality and the conditioning of neurotic behaviours. In the third place, the model lays stress on innate fear patterns and ‘preparedness’ as important factors in the genesis of conditioned fear responses. In the fourth place, the concept of ‘pain’ in the classical animal literature, and its use in creating models of neurosis, is supplemented by other concepts (‘frustrative non-reward’, ‘approach-avoidance’ conflict) which are more relevant to human neurosis. In the fifth place, and most important. the notion of ‘traumatic’, single-trial conditioning is abandoned, and a new theory based on incubation is proposed. It is suggested that the new theory is more adequate than previous ones to account for the known facts of human neurosis, and that it suggests novel types of experiment in both the animal and human fields which can be used to test its adequacy.     

Rationales for organ donation: Charity or duty?

Media appeals encouraging people to sign organ donor cards suggest that donating one's own organs after death or donating the organs of a deceased family member is an act of charity, i.e., something which it would be meritorious for people to do but not wrong to avoid. This paper argues to the contrary that posthumous organ donation is a moral duty, a duty of the type that rests at the base of recently enacted state “Good Samaritan” laws which require a witness to an emergency situation to render aid to the victim(s) when this can be done at minimal cost/risk to the potential rescuer.     

Exposure to community violence and trauma symptoms in late adolescence: comparison of a college sample and a noncollege community sample

This paper presents a comparison for two samples (college and noncollege) of older, urban African-American adolescents of correlations between two measures of exposure to community violence (victim and witness) and four types of psychological trauma symptoms (anger, anxiety, depression, and dissociation). The central issue is the generalizability of previous findings about these relationships obtained from beginning college students of traditional age. The two samples did not differ in the magnitude of either the zero-order correlations or the multiple correlations between the two types of exposure to community violence and the four types of symptoms of trauma. The conclusion is that findings regarding the relationship of exposure to community violence with psychological symptoms of trauma obtained from college students may tentatively be generalized to older adolescents who are not in college.     

Proving sexual assault

The framework provided by therapeutic jurisprudence is used to examine the rules of evidence that govern sexual assault trials. The concern is with the impact of the trial process on the accusing witness.In the first part a personal narrative is used to put the legal rules in context. Psychological sources are used in discussing the reasons for presenting such a narrative.In the second part, the effect of statutory changes to the common law rules as effected in NSW in 1981 is analyzed. Drawing upon the Heroines of Justice report the paper suggests that the intention of reducing the trauma of the victim has not yet been achieved. It is suggested that this failure is not unique. A change in attitude on the part of those involved in the trial process is necessary, and the hope is that this paper might contribute to such a change.     

The intersubjective links in perversion1

The author studies the intersubjective links which the pervert maintains with analyst or partner, attempting to indicate the differences between the investments in each case. Rather than accepting that empathy towards these patients is impossible to achieve and disturbs the countertransference profoundly, it attempts to show that these difficulties may be overcome if they are reinterpreted in the light of the theory of the intersubjective link. The author examines the theories and the practice of intersubjectivity and gives a definition of his approach to the link between two subjects. He applies these ideas to the case of a sexually masochistic female patient. The countertransference is marked successively by indifference, rejection and smothering. The analysis of the analyst's dream allows the situation to evolve. Failures in primary identification can result in domination over others and utilitarianism. The author examines the place of the challenge to the ‘Law’ and the father (in the attempt by the patient to put a theory to the test) in order to identify the figure of the witness in the pervert's intersubjective links. The desire of the transference would be marked by the figure of the witness rather than by that of the analyst as accomplice.     

What the State Owes ‘Bastards’: A Modest Critique of Modest One-Child Policies

This essay criticises ‘modest’ one-child policies, which would impose sanctions upon parents who create multiple children. Specifically, this article considers what the state owes individuals who would be born (illegally) beneath restrictive procreative policies and argues that such policies would fail to show due respect to second- or third-born individuals created beneath them. First, I argue that modest procreative restrictions (like sanctions) are likely to generate only modest compliance. I then suggest it is reasonable to think a one-child policy fails to demonstrate due respect to existing second and third children. I argue that such a policy generates an undue burden on any second or third children who would be born beneath them, before concluding by considering whether the state might be able to avoid effectively reinscribing ‘bastardy’ into its law by locating responsibility for the effects of such a policy entirely on the parents, rather than on children.     

Breathing Underwater—Swimming in the Sea of Collective Trauma

My response focuses on the two main issues raised by the three discussants: first, the complex forms of relationality that characterize both individual and group trauma and responses to trauma, and second, the function of vicarious trauma that is produced for witnesses and onlookers and the ways in which this enables a third space to develop with healing properties. I explore these two issues by returning to the work of the Royal Commission with an account of my experience of attending Case Study 43 in September 2016.     

Social Trauma and Testimony: A Reading of Maryan S. Maryan’s Notebooks Inspired by Sándor Ferenczi

The purpose of this paper is to present the relational dimension of trauma according to Sándor Ferenczi, illustrating it by using the testimonial material produced during the analysis of Maryan S. Maryan, a visual artist, survivor of Auschwitz. Furthermore, a few formulations are proposed on being witness to traumatic experiences in psychoanalytic practice, as well as what can be considered as ethics and politics in psychoanalysis when facing situations of social trauma and violence.

     

Is Mother Other?

Abstract

The discourse of maternality figures a contentious site for feminist theology. If figured in terms of a fecund womb, maternality risks reinscribing women in a masculine symbolic order of world-making that has long conflated women’s differences with motherhood, narrowly defined in terms of fecundity. After considering the ways identifying female sexual difference with motherhood reifies a masculine model of subjectivity, this paper turns to Lynne Huffer’s reading of feminist psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray to suggest that maternality has the potential to interrupt the self-same movement of masculine discourse and engender an ethical space of difference of and for the other. Examining Irigaray’s interweaving of maternality with pleasure to create space for women’s desires, this paper concludes that the ambiguity of desires through which maternality is constituted challenges the care-driven, natality-centered discourse of maternality itself. As a scene of unresolved desire between flesh and discourse, immanence and transcendence, self and other, maternality can be narrated to disrupt views of mother as origin that would otherwise return motherhood to a figure of sameness and to construct a possibility of desire for intersubjective becoming that is at once beyond narration and entirely concrete. Maternality thus presents desires unrecognizable within a prevailing symbolic framework in a way that bears witness to the disruptiveness of those desires and engenders radical alterity.