The self, the psyche and the world: a phenomenological interpretation

Abstract :  This paper takes as its starting point Jung's definition of the self as the totality of the psyche. However, because the term psyche remains conceptually unclear the concept of the self as totality, origin and goal, even centre, remains vague. With reference to Heidegger's analysis of human being as  Dasein , as well as Jung's writings, it is argued that Jung's concept of psyche is not a synonym for mind but is the world in which we live psychologically. An understanding of the psyche as existentially situated requires us to rethink some features of the self. For instance, the self as origin is thus not a pre-existential integrate of pure potentiality but the original gathering of existence in which, and out of which, personal identity is constituted. The ego emerges out of the self as the development and ownership of aspects of an existence that is already situated and gathered. Relations between the ego and the self are about what is known, or admitted, and its relation with what is already being lived within the gathering that is existence. The self as psyche, origin, and centre are discussed, as well as the meaning of interiority. Epistemological assumptions of object relations theory are critically discussed. The paper also includes critical discussions of recent papers on the self.     

What’s in a name? A psychoanalytic exploration of self and identity in transgender individuals who were assigned female at birth

This study explores the development of self and gender identity within the lived experience of transgender individuals who were assigned female at birth and now identify as male or male spectrum. A psychoanalytically informed interview technique was employed here, involving six participants, aged 20–37 for 3–4 one-hour interviews. Alongside close attention to the content and the manner of representation of self and other across interviews, the analysis was also informed by counter-transference processes. Three core themes emerged from the data: ‘What’s in a Name?’; ‘Rejected, Bullied, Ignored and Forgotten’; and ‘I’m a Boy (not a Girl)’. Recollections of traumatic experiences and the use of laughter were other notable details that appeared across participants. Links are made between the emerging themes and concepts of incongruent mirroring and the development of a false self. Directions for further research and clinical implications for working with transgender clients in a psychotherapeutic context are also outlined.     

Jung's view on myth and post-modern psychology

Post-modern psychology embodies two core themes, the social mind and the narrative self. Whereas the social-mind thesis seems diametrically opposed to Jung's position regarding human nature, the narrative-self thesis is associated with research and theorizing about personal myth and mythmaking in ways that could make contact with Jung's concerns. Jung's view is examined here with particular attention to McAdams' theory of narrative identity. It is suggested that the ostensible differences between Jung and post-modern psychology might reflect divergent interests, rather than necessarily irreconcilable worldviews.     

The self in cyberspace. Identity formation in postmodern societies and Jung's Self as an objective psyche.

Jung's concept of the Self is compared with current theories of identity formation in post-modern society concerning the question: is the self constituted through experience and cultural influences--as it is argued by current theories in the social sciences--or is it already preformed inside the person, as Jung argues? The impact of communication media on the formation of identity in today's societies is discussed with a focus on internet communication and virtual realities. The resulting types of identities are conceptualized as polycentric which has surprising parallels to Jung's idea of the Self. The epistemology of constructivism and parallels in Jung's thought are demonstrated. Jung's work in this respect often appears contradictory in itself but this can be dealt with by a postmodern approach which accepts a plurality of truths.     

“I was and still am”: Narratives of Bisexual Marking in the #StillBisexual Campaign

This research investigated narratives of bi-erasure and bisexual marking by considering 53 video confessionals associated with the #StillBisexual campaign. #StillBisexual is a web-based campaign that targets myths about bisexuality and promotes bisexual identity visibility. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify emergent themes regarding the ways that individuals mark and make known their bisexuality. Three major themes of bisexual demarcation emerged including the enduring nature of bisexuality, defining bisexuality, and defining the self as a bisexual being. Discussion focuses on describing bisexual marking approaches by #StillBisexual participants and by analyzing the way bisexual demarcation challenges assumptions of monosexism and cisgenderism inherent to cultural conceptualizations of sexuality.     

Chaos and self-organization: emergent patterns at critical life transitions

A feeling of chaos can accompany many real-life events over which we have little or no control, and latent developmental needs may create tension that manifests in symptoms of depression or anxiety. Particularly at critical life transitions, conflicts may arise which have no obvious solution. From an analytic perspective, recent scientific models from the area of complexity theory can prove illuminating as analogies to Jung's archetypal view of the individuation process. Throughout life, human beings, like many complex, open systems, pass from disordered phases to more complex stages of order. This paper shows how the scientific concept of self-organization can be compared with our physical and psychological developmental processes. From embryology, the model of the 'epigenetic landscape' (C.H. Waddington) is introduced as an analogy to Jung's individuation process, with a clinical example to illustrate these parallels. The emergent nature of behaviour and development is seen from the viewpoint of the organism as a dynamical system, and Jung's concept of the archetype viewed as an emergent property of the activity of the brain/mind.     

Spirituality,Gendered Subjectivities,and Education in Preadolescents: Canadian preadolescents' reflections on gender-roles and their sense of self

'Adolescents' spirituality' has emerged as a lively focus for discussion and research amongst both academics and practitioners. Yet remarkably little reference has been made to conceptions of the child provided by developmental educational psychology. To gain a holistic perspective of how preadolescents construct their sense of self, cultural meanings of sexuality and spirituality must also be examined. How do adolescents make the connections among a sense of body, self, and soul? What is the role of education? To address these issues, this paper draws on recent research that explored the connections between the self-concepts of Canadian preadolescents (9-12 year-olds) and their perceptions of their gender-role orientation. This paper undertakes an 'excavation' of psychocultural approaches to gender and language, and the mixed messages about early adolescent spirituality and gendered selves implicit in the respective understandings of psychological development. The examination of these theories unearths many points of resonance with contemporary debates about our expectations of the nature of spirituality and sexuality in preadolescence, and our interventions for its nurture. The paper examines gendered perceptions of femininity and masculinity in Canadian preadolescents and how these perceptions influence their self-worth or overall well-being. It focuses on the links between spirituality and gendered perceptions and understandings of emotions and self. The final section discusses the socio-educational implications of the research findings within the context of holistic education. In this way, dialogue with a psychocultural and holistic approach to psychology and education offers valuable additional vocabulary and grammar with which to tackle these challenges.     

Writing ourselves into being: writing as spiritual self‐care for adolescent girls. Part Two

This paper, the second of two parts, reports the claims of a participatory qualitative research project that explores the inner self‐awareness and self‐presentation of adolescent girls based on excerpts from their own adolescent writings. The participants selected material from their own diaries and poetry written between 1969 and 1999 (ages 11–17) that spoke to their adolescent spiritual concerns. The research team addressed questions of audience, voice, intention in writing and the role writing played in maintaining an inner life and sense of self. The persistent themes that arose were creating solitude, transforming to calm, preserving sensitivity, nurturing voice, and connecting beyond the self, while the central identified theme was care of self. Part One set out context and process and then addressed the first two themes. Part Two explores the remaining themes and some implications for care work with adolescent girls.     

Falling outside of the ‘nice little binary box’: a psychoanalytic exploration of the non-binary gender identity

The non-binary gender identity has recently emerged on the landscape of gender variance. It captures individuals who may experience a gender identity that is neither exclusively male nor female, is a combination of male and female or is between or beyond genders. The availability of literature exploring the non-binary gender experience is somewhat limited. Consequently, our understanding of the development of ‘self’ amongst such individuals seems to lag behind that of other gender variant identity, in particular the binary transgender identity. A psychoanalytically informed qualitative research design was used to explore the psychological realities of 6 individuals, aged between 19 and 29 years, who identified as gender fluid, genderqueer, polygender, non-binary Trans person, non-binary trans guy and non-binary gender. Analysis focused upon the integration of conscious and unconscious material in order to provide some insight into the participants’ internal world and object-relating. Three core themes emerged from the data: ‘A developing gender identity’, ‘Correct and incorrect language’ and ‘Being seen and unseen’. These themes, as well as the heterogeneity and complexity of non-binary gender identity, are explored within the discussion, with some implications around our clinical and wider cultural response to people who identify themselves in this way.     

Writing ourselves into being: writing as spiritual self‐care for adolescent girls. Part One

This paper, the first of two parts, reports the claims of a participatory qualitative research project that explores the inner self‐awareness and self‐presentation of adolescent girls based on excerpts from their own adolescent writings. The participants selected material from their own diaries and poetry written between 1969–1999 (ages 11–17) that spoke to their adolescent spiritual concerns. The research team addressed questions of audience, voice, intention in writing and the role writing played in maintaining an inner life and sense of self. The persistent themes that arose were creating solitude, transforming to calm, preserving sensitivity, nurturing voice and connecting beyond the self, while the central identified theme was care of self. This first paper sets out context and process then addresses the first two themes. Part Two, to be published in a later edition of this journal, will explore the remaining themes and some implications for care work with adolescent girls.     

The co-construction of adolescent narrative identity: narrative processing as a function of adolescent age, gender, and maternal scaffolding

The current study aimed to situate the development of adolescent narrative identity in the context of past-event conversations between adolescents and their mothers, extending work on conversational contexts in early childhood to adolescence. We examined a cross-section of 63 adolescents with 2 goals: (1) to examine how adolescent age and gender interacted with mothers' scaffolding behaviors and how those interactions were associated with adolescents' narrative processes of meaning-making, vulnerability, and resolution; (2) to examine mothers' behaviors in conversation and how the interactions between those behaviors and event type (important, sad, and happy themes) were associated with those narrative processes. We found that maternal behavior in the conversation was related to adolescent narrative processes, yet this link varied as a function of characteristics of the adolescent and type of event discussed. Overall results suggest that those with potentially less practice at narrating the self in elaborative ways--younger adolescents and boys--receive more supportive scaffolding, and that for those with likely more practice with elaborative narration--girls and older adolescents--mothers engage in more negation behavior. The role of these scaffolding behaviors in adolescent narrative identity development is discussed.     

青少年自我同一性发展研究

本研究以小学至高中阶段的青少年为研究对象,使用自我同一性状态客观测量的标准化问卷,对青少年的自我同一性发展规律进行分析,研究结果发现,自我同一性的发展是一个逐渐变化的过程,其中,初中是一个很重要的阶段;同时,自我同一性的发展在不同领域问表现出发展不同步的现象,人际关系领域发展比意识形态领域较早;另外,自我同一性发展受地区、性别角色等因素影响。     

The Constructive Use of Power and the Philosophy of the Self in the Training of Family Therapists

Abstract

This article presents findings from an exploratory qualitative study, which used individual interviews and a focus group to investigate how women in Black-White interracial heterosexual partner relationships retrospectively described their racial identity development and the influence of gender identity development on this process. Social consrructionist, feminist, and racial identity development theories guided the grounded theory methodology. Participants described both constraining and empowering racial identities. Salient constraining racial identities were being a “sell-out” or “traitor,” being a “rule-breaker,” having a masked reference group orientation, needing to prove reference group orientation, and having minority family status. Empowering racial identities included refusing to take sides, being “not racial,” being neutral, identifying by respect rather than by race, having a multiple reference group orientation, being strong, and being an educator and mediator.

Gender identity themes of strength and resiliency emerged as significant influences in racial identity development. Suggested questions for use within a narrative therapy context provide a clinical application of findings from the study.     

Forced migration, adolescence, and identity formation

Adolescence is a complex biopsychosocial phenomenon. All the inner-subjective changes in adolescents take place within the context of a specific social environment, which offers the necessary ideological setting that adolescents must confront in the course of their identity formation. Forced migration creates conditions under which the adolescent Ego may be traumatized more easily, resulting in the development of defensive mechanisms, which may interfere with the natural process of identity formation. The aim of this paper is to investigate how a traumatic situation such as forced migration may affect the mechanisms of identity formation in adolescence. For this purpose, clinical material, consisting of two cases of psychoanalytical psychotherapy of adolescents who were forced to immigrate to Greece, is presented and discussed in a psychoanalytical theoretical framework, along with the historical-sociological background.Dimitris C. Anagnostopoulos, M.D., is a child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Unit, Community Mental Health Center, Psychiatric Department, Medical School, University of Athens, Athens, Greece.Maria Vlassopoulos, Ph.D., is at the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Unit, Community Mental Health Center, Psychiatric Department, Medical School, University of Athens, Athens, Greece.Helen Lazaratou, M.D., is at the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Unit, Community Mental Health Center, Psychiatric Department, Medical School, University of Athens, Athens, Greece.     

The role of identity in how whole‐blood donors reflect on and construct their future as a plasma donor

In the context of decreased demand for whole blood and increased demand for plasma‐derived products, donors in Australia are increasingly being asked to convert from whole‐blood to plasmapheresis donations. Plasmapheresis is a different type of donation to whole blood as the process takes longer and can be engaged in more frequently. What is unknown is whether whole‐blood donors view donating plasma as consistent with their donor identity and how they respond to the possibility of donating more frequently. To explore this, we undertook semistructured telephone interviews with 26 whole‐blood donors who had recently made their first plasma donation. Findings indicated that whereas donating plasma was viewed as a bigger ask than donating whole blood, the former was viewed as consistent with their identity as a donor because both behaviours were seen to benefit others and self and were located within the same institutional context. Donating plasma was an opportunity for donors to enhance their self‐concept as an altruistic giver. When contemplating their future donation behaviour, donors considered how their donor identity would fit alongside other salient roles. These findings have implications for how institutions can position their request of existing donors to give a different gift.     

Has infantile sexuality anything to do with infants?

Classical psychoanalytic theory draws many concepts from mental processes that are assumed to arise in the infant and influence the adult mind. Still, psychoanalytic practice with mothers and infants has been integrated but little within general psychoanalytic theory. One reason is that only few analysts have utilized such practice to further theory. Another reason is that infant therapists tend to abandon classical psychoanalytic concepts in favour of attachment concepts. As a result the concept of infantile sexuality, so central to classical theory, plays an unobtrusive role in clinical discussions on infant therapy. The author argues that infantile sexuality plays an important role in many mother-infant disturbances. To function as a clinical concept, it needs to be delineated from attachment and be understood in the context of mother-infant interaction. Two examples are provided; one where the analyst's infantile sexuality emerged in a comment to the infant. Another is a case of breast-feeding problems with a little boy fretting at the breast. This is interpreted as reflecting the mother's infantile sexual conflicts as well as the boy's emerging internalization of them. Thus, to conceptualize such disorders we need to take into account the infantile sexuality in both mother and baby.     

Discourse Analysis: a systematic critique of Cosmopolitan and Afropolitan identity

While contemporary theories of Cosmopolitanism often tend to overlook ideological structures of identity on the basic levels of beliefs, experiences, and the situation of the human condition, this article aims at providing a metaphorical unpacking of ethical-existential identities of post-colonial African discourse. Achille Mbembe's work on the post-colonial subject forms the basis of analysis and critique, while the framework for this archaeological analysis is a theory of conceptual active and passive postures within the context of power relations of dominating colonial ideologies. This context provides a foundation for the discursive unpacking of notions of contemporary local and collective identities which were constructed along the lines of a-normative power structures, with the loss and consequent rediscovery of agency within the notion of the ‘self’. The foundational themes underlying this particular concept of ‘self’ or identity are the often essentialised relationships between persistence and change, universal and particular, structure and narrative, and necessity and contingence. After briefly criticising certain Cosmopolitan theories which attempt to construct specific conditions for human nature over recognising the historical context of the human condition, the article concludes that the humanist approach to identity is severely problematic and needs to be rethought from a post-humanist framework of investigating the origins of the narratives of post-colonial discourse.     

On the Subjectivity of Lustful States of Mind

This paper explores certain subjective dimensions of sexuality by proposing that erotic experience is predicated on an experience of otherness within the self. I suggest that the ability to lust where one loves is contingent on the capacity to bring this otherness of self forward in the context of attachment. The dampening or deadening of desire in long-term relationships may be understood, counterintuitively, not as a failure of the integration of lust with love but as a breakdown of the normative dissociative processes on which the emergence of lust depends. I theorize that the otherness of lustful states of mind emerges via the impact and dynamic interplay of social regulatory intrusions on identity formation. This understanding helps explain both the psychic tensions and potential sources of breakdown present in combining lust with love.     

Adolescence: a literary passage.

Using Erikson's and Gilligan's theories of adolescent development, this paper presents a content analysis of the depiction of adolescent development in a sample of Newbery Medal winners and honor books. Some diversity was found among the major characters, but white males were overrepresented. Many of the characters underwent an identity crisis. Some passed through the identity versus role confusion stage; others, especially in the almost prototypical male-initiation-rite stories, discovered ways to deal with nature (industry) which engendered a far clearer sense of self (identity). The major female characters experienced the two phases more or less simultaneously, but a similar fusion existed for a number of the male characters. The themes of "separation" and "connection" were paramount in the stories, and what Gilligan has called "the ethic of care" was presented positively. Some main characters matured only when they recognized their responsibility to others.