Disorders of Temporality and The Subjective Experience of Time: Unresponsive Objects and the Vacuity of the Future

This paper explores how the personal sense of time—temporality—is organized and experienced in different clinical situations. It uses examples from infancy observations to draw links between caregivers’ response to infants’ capacities for motor activity and emotional communication and the development of the senses of personal security, vital intersubjectivity and temporality, that is, the feeling of a meaningful self and an open future. In illustrations from both early child–parent interaction and an extended case, it suggests how moment-to-moment interactions reflect and sustain these core, highly personal experiences of what it feels like to live in the world, that is, how an accretion of “micro” interactions can contribute to and help us understand the “macro” structures that analysts usually describe, such as intersubjectivity, the sense of self, and here, the senses of time.

With that in mind, the paper evokes a few specific “disorders of temporality.” One group of these involves the blurring of past and present, especially following trauma. Much of the paper, though, is concerned with a basic deficit in the sense of time that can be observed, when the patient presents without the hope that new experiences can emerge, however fitfully, with the feeling of a forward-moving future. In an imaginative move, the paper links this image with the experience of an infant with an unresponsive parent, one who does not afford that infant the most basic senses of personal agency that come from having her feelings and gestures recognized and responded to in a way that gives her the feeling that she is having some effect on her world. Clinical implications are drawn, often demonstrating how brief moments of analytic interaction reflect the macrocosms of the broader analytic relationship and the patient’s psychological organization.     

DREAMING THE ANALYTIC SESSION: A CLINICAL ESSAY

This is a clinical paper in which the author describes analytic work in which he dreams the analytic session with three of his patients. He begins with a brief discussion of aspects of analytic theory that make up a good deal of the context for his clinical work. Central among these concepts are (1) the idea that the role of the analyst is to help the patient dream his previously “undreamt” and “interrupted” dreams; and (2) dreaming the analytic session involves engaging in the experience of dreaming the session with the patient and, at the same time, unconsciously (and at times consciously) understanding the dream. The author offers no “technique” for dreaming the analytic session. Each analyst must find his or her own way of dreaming each session with each patient. Dreaming the session is not something one works at; rather, one tries not to get in its way.     

Affective Honesty and Compassion Come in Many Forms: Discussion of “Love (and Hate) With the Proper Stranger: Affective Honesty and Enactment,” By Holly Levenkron,L.I.C.S.W.

Holly Levenkron's work with her patient, Ali, beautifully illustrates one way that a creative analyst makes superb use of her own experience to communicate and negotiate with great affective honesty. Holly's analytic style emphasizes the effective use of a particular kind of self-disclosure and a way of thinking about intersubjectivity and enactment associated with the contemporary Relational movement. Yet, it may be Holly's personal willingness to allow the analytic relationship to profoundly destabilize and influence her that most engages Ali in their work.

An imaginary analytic scenario is described with an analyst, Dr. X, who like Holly is destabilized by Ali but whose thinking about intersubjectivity and enactment emphasizes an empathic immersion in Ali's experience of the analytic relationship. In contrast to Holly, Dr. X focuses primarily on grasping and interpreting the adaptive strivings that animate Ali's differently organized subjective world.

The underlying capacity to acknowledge and use the analyst's own version of the patient's issues may also characterize analyses such as that of the hypothetical Dr. X—in style that are more explicitly “interpretive” (less confrontative) than Holly's work. These two contrasting approaches highlight the wide range of ways to think about intersubjectivity, enactment, and affective honesty in the analytic process.     

Political Divide in the Consulting Room*

This paper addresses a treatment relationship that tests the analyst’s capacity for empathy within an impinging political context. It involves a Ferenczian “relaxation of technique” within the analytic frame, while the analytic couple attempts to negotiate a polarized transference and countertransference. Specifically, within a long-term treatment imbued with positive transference, my patient becomes openly outraged by my insensitive anti-Trump remarks. Increasing confrontations around the expression of political views illuminate our otherness. He complains of psychic ostracism within a liberal cultural context, which tolerates no divergence from mainstream liberal ideas or discourse. I come to embody the oppressive other: the liberal “thought police”, “silencing” him for his perspective. Empathic breaches between us take center stage: how I don’t see the world as he does, and don’t see or hear him.     

Sensibility and the otherness of the world: Levinas and Merleau-Ponty

Sensibility has traditionally been defined as a relation with the world’s exteriority. However, a certain post-husserlian phenomenology tends to reverse this definition and to redefine sensibility as an internal relation that takes place from within the world. This article focuses on this phenomenological concept of “sensibility” in Levinas and Merleau-Ponty and intends to show that this concept rests upon the presupposition of an alternative according to which we would have whether a sensible experience of identity, or an acosmic experience of otherness—whether a wordly experience of the same or a worldless experience of otherness. Yet, by reducing sensibility to the experience of the world’s interiority and rejecting otherness beyond any worldly experience, this conception fails to account for a significant dimension of sensibility—namely, sensibility as the experience of the world’s own otherness, foreignness or exteriority. It is our hope that, from the critical exposition of this alternative, will eventually appear in conclusion the significant part of this forgotten dimension of sensibility.

     

A Priori Abduction

While “All events have a cause” is a synthetic statement making a factual claim about the world, “All effects have a cause” is analytic. When we take an event as an effect, no inference is required to deduce that it has a cause since this is what it means to be an effect. Some examples often given in the literature as examples of abduction work in the same way through semantic facts that follow from the way our beliefs represent those effects; from this we may deduce not only that it has a cause, but what that cause is.     

The reality of the other: Dreaming of the analyst1

The author discusses the obstacles to symbolization encountered when the analyst appears in the first dream of an analysis: the reality of the other is represented through the seeming recognition of the person of the analyst, who is portrayed in undisguised form. The interpretation of this first dream gives rise to reflections on the meaning of the other’s reality in analysis: precisely this realistic representation indicates that the function of the other in the construction of the psychic world has been abolished. An analogous phenomenon is observed in the countertransference, as the analyst’s mental processes are occluded by an exclusively self‐generated interpretation of the patient’s psychic world. For the analyst too, the reality of the other proves not to play a significant part in the construction of her interpretation. A ‘turning‐point’ dream after five years bears witness to the power of the transforming function performed by the other throughout the analysis, by way of the representation of characters who stand for the necessary presence of a third party in the construction of a personal psychic reality. The author examines the mutual denial of the other’s otherness, as expressed by the vicissitudes of the transference and countertransference between analyst and patient, otherness being experienced as a disturbance of self‐sufficient narcissistic functioning. The paper ends with an analysis of the transformations that took place in the analytic relationship.     

The analyst's witnessing and otherness

The analyst's active though silent witnessing of the patient's self-inquiry is presented as an essential aspect of the analytic process. Witnessing, though rooted in the analyst's empathy and holding, represents a more advanced development of those functions based on relational muturation from union to self-other differentiation. Self-definition and regard for otherness are seen as intrinsically unitary. Psychoanalytic witnessing is first illustrated and defined, then located as a derivative of negation in the unfolding of the analytic process, next considered in relation to current concerns for intersubjectivity, and finally linked to current shifts in philosophical thought.     

PATIENT‐ANALYST “WITHNESS”: ON ANALYTIC “PRESENCING,” PASSION,AND COMPASSION IN STATES OF BREAKDOWN,DESPAIR, AND DEADNESS

This paper focuses on the analyst's “presencing” (being there) within the patient's experiential world and within the grip of the psychoanalytic process, and the ensuing deep patient–analyst interconnectedness, as a fundamental dimension of analytic work. It engenders new possibilities for extending the reach of psychoanalytic treatment to more disturbed patients. Here patient and analyst forge an emergent new entity of interconnectedness or “withness” that goes beyond the confines of their separate subjectivities and the simple summation of the two. Using a detailed clinical illustration of a difficult analysis with a severely fetishistic‐masochistic patient, the author describes the kind of knowledge, experience, and powerful effects that come into being when the analyst interconnects psychically with the patient in living through the process, and that relate specifically to the analyst's compassion.     

Innen, Außen, Zwischen

The so-called “intersubjective turn” (or “relational turn”) in psychoanalysis is closely associated with the work of Winnicott. It was him who added a new dimension to the psychoanalytic theories of a separate inner world, a dimension focussing on the mediating processes between the separate spheres of psychic and external reality: a space between subject and object, drive and civilisation, Ego and reality — the “potential space” that unconsciously connects our self to the Other as well as to a shared physical and social world we live in. Winnicotts paradoxical notions of the self are traced in this paper and unwrapped from their often enigmatic, developmentally and epistemologically confusing veils: the infant who does not exist without a holding mother; who is not aware of his/her being held because of its evidence, and only has an experience when falling; who him-/herself creates that reality which is already there; who must destroy the object in order to use it; who can only be alone when another person is present. The author, starting from apparently narcissistic phenomena of the media society, rehabilitates the term of “in-between” in contemporary psychoanalytic discussion which for a long time was considered as suspect, as being part of a “non-psychoanalytic” superficial social psychology (as the intersubjective, the interpersonal or the interactive). Under the strong influence of Winnicott, and overarching the different schools, contemporary psychoanalysis is focussing on intersubjectivity and relationality. The paper is an appeal for reformulating classical intrapsychic concepts — including the theory of the unconscious—in intersubjective terms, thus unfolding a relational approach inherent in Freud’s metapsychology.     

From Survival to Creative Destiny: The Psychoanalytic Journey of Nina Farhi

Initially, this paper briefly introduces the work of my colleague, Nina Farhi, who was a highly respected psychoanalytic psychotherapist in London and who sadly died last year. After her death, I was invited to discuss both her paper, “The Hands of the Living God,” and the three commentaries by North American analysts, all published in this issue. As part of my commentary, I provide an appreciative yet critical discussion of the way Farhi uses the term “intersubjectivity.” I argue that there is a need for paternal function or a third position to be found in the mind of the analyst in the later phases of work with deeply disturbed patients. I also contribute to the hypothetical debate about whether or not experiences in the womb can be subject to analytic work, using the Lacanian concept of the “Real” and Piontelli's work on fetal and child observation. After this, I explore some of the ways Lacan revised drive theory and discuss these in relation to psychic devolution in later life, essential aloneness and creative human destiny. Finally, I look at how Farhi's paper's posthumous publication may have affected the commentary.     

PHILOSOPHY,MYTH, AND THE “SIGNIFICANCE” OF SPECULATIVE THOUGHT

Abstract: A close examination of the relation between philosophy and myth reveals important functional parallels in some of their basic means of operation that helps shed some light on philosophy's overall task. A crucial aspect of the structural similarity between philosophy and myth is the generation of what Hans Blumenberg calls “significance.” I argue that the preservation and enhancement of significance (through a strong affinity to myth) is an essential and overlooked aspect of philosophy's task, one best accomplished through the world‐orienting work of speculative philosophy. By weaving the fragmented insights, criticisms, lessons, and methods of the more “specialized” analytic, pragmatic, critical, postmodern, deconstructivist, and other methods of thought together in a systematic way, speculative philosophy may be able to provide us with the kind of world orientation needed for developing a healthier, richer, more profound understanding of ourselves and our proper place within the world.     

Commentary on “Considering Gestational Life” by Thomas Cohen

Cohen’s paper (this issue) is discussed from a temporal persepective in order to query the place of psychic movement in nonsymbolic, “gestational” states and in treatment, and the relationship of these to personality development. The question of unconscious psychotic hostility to change is raised. The discussant queries the relevance of “merger” in “objectless intersubjectivity” in the context of the “systemic interchange” emphasized by the author, where it seems that the process of “interchange” is prior. Finally, the discussant raises the question of the role of primordial, “live” silence in gestation and in treatment.     

Reconsidering “Considering Gestational Life”: Reply to Commentaries by Levine and Williams

The two commentaries of “Considering Gestational Life” are both wonderful in their generative reflections and from such uniquely different perspectives. Each has generated an array of new questions about the nature and impact of gestation that are yet to be substantially explored. This discussion attempts to further their inquiries by focusing on how “gestational thinking” leads us into exploring Negative Capability; the improvisational nature of analytic process; objectivity versus subjectivity; reconsidering the impact of gestational trauma; the epistimophilic instinct; gender bias; clarifying “objectless intersubjectivity”; the role of silence, isolation, interiority, and privacy in analytic listening; what patients seek in treatment; and clarification of the meaning of “merger” and “unity.”     

SEXUAL DIFFERENCE AND TRINITARIAN DEATH: CROSS,KENOSIS, AND HIERARCHY IN THE THEO‐DRAMA

Hans Urs von Balthasar's “Theo‐Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory” exhibits a mutual funding of a hierarchical ordering of the relation between “man” and “woman” and a hierarchical ordering of the relation between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The two hierarchies explain, illustrate, and support one another. Von Balthasar's oscillation between hierarchy and equality, particularly in the divine case, results in a tortured understanding of personhood where being in relation means handing oneself over to another with the threat of death always present. Von Balthasar's understanding of personhood turns out to be fundamentally masochistic. Further, difference collapses into hierarchy and thus turns out to be no more than repetition in the mode of reception, which then poses a serious challenge to Balthasar's account of divine and human being. Since the point of connection between the two is found in his account of the way inner‐trinitarian relations of origin are extended into the world in the sending of the Son, this is the thesis which needs problematizing. For von Balthasar, the kenotic nature of the inner‐trinitarian processions explains what in the life of God makes the cross possible, but this move ascribes something like suffering and death to the inner life of God in a way that undercuts the fullness of divine love while undergirding a hierarchical understanding of divine relationality.     

Feminism as a Radical Ethics? Questions for Feminist Researchers in the Humanities

A feminist perspective on selfhood – bound to a perspective on otherness – is the main concern of this article. The resonance of this notion of selfhood both with ethical philosophy and with the language of humanism enables a deeper understanding of a feminist ethics as well as its internal tensions. The article considers the relationship of feminism and humanism as one of “paradoxical fluidity” rather than antithetical polarization, to explore the ways in which feminism’s alliance with contemporary ethics exemplifies its paradoxical relation to humanism. The study then underlines the vital contribution of feminist discourse to an ethical understanding of selfhood and intersubjectivity. Finally, it examines the work of experimental Canadian poet Lola Lemire Tostevin, who reveals the importance of an ethical, feminist version of selfhood that highlights the insufficiency as well as the potential of both humanist and postmodern versions of subjectivity.     

The primal scene and symbol formation

This article discusses the meaning of the primal scene for symbol formation by exploring its way of processing in a child's play. The author questions the notion that a sadomasochistic way of processing is the only possible one. A model of an alternative mode of processing is being presented. It is suggested that both ways of processing intertwine in the “fabric of life” (D. Laub). Two clinical vignettes, one from an analytic child psychotherapy and the other from the analysis of a 30 year‐old female patient, illustrate how the primal scene is being played out in the form of a terzet. The author explores whether the sadomasochistic way of processing actually precedes the “primal scene as a terzet”. She discusses if it could even be regarded as a precondition for the formation of the latter or, alternatively, if the “combined parent‐figure” gives rise to ways of processing. The question is being left open. Finally, it is shown how both modes of experiencing the primal scene underlie the discoursive and presentative symbol formation, respectively.     

Reply to Crastnopol and Sandmeyer

This response focuses on four points brought up by the discussants: connections between shame and competition, links between competition and envy, the issue of splitting into “all good” and “all bad,” and the question of “digging into” the “dark” side of competition and envy in psychodynamic work. The conclusion: There is no unilateral or definitive explanation for or way of working with the many different issues that can emerge in relation to competition for women in psychoanalysis. However, acknowledging the importance and complexity of competition in women’s lives can make it possible for an analytic dyad to begin to make space for multiple meanings of and defenses against competitive feelings and thoughts, bringing them out of the realm of acting out and into the world of thought representation.     

PSYKOANALYYSIN URANUURTAJAT SUOMESSA

This article discusses how the individual, on different levels of relating, connects towards the otherness of other persons. In Winnicott's theory, this may be seen as a fundamental issue in child development, psychoanalysis, and in psychoanalytic psychotherapy as well. In “holding”, the otherness and subjectivity of the caretaker is implied, but not recognized by the individual—care is taken as a given. In “mirroring”, the otherness of the other person is implied and dimly recognized by the individual, but only appreciated within an omnipotent frame. The full recognition of otherness comes through the “destruction of the object”, a process that also opens up for a relation to a “third” other, and for oedipal themes. In this article, these different levels of relating to otherness are viewed as a search for a “meaning bearing other”. That is, someone who allows the possibility of meaningful thoughts and feelings, either through his or her actual communicative presence, or as an unconsciously-imagined communication partner. This postulate is discussed and illuminated through a case study of a 6-year-old boy in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.