The unwelcome child and his dreams: reconceptualization of dreaming in trauma

Based on the concepts of Sándor Ferenczi on trauma and vincularity, the author examines the operation of the mechanisms of dreaming in the processing of early traumatic situations and their clinical utilization. The difference is established between dreams of “repetition”, which lack dream imagery and contain a great amount of anguish, consisting of bodily sensations which may last on awakening, and the “secondary dream” with imagery, into which the first type can be transformed when the capacity of the psychic apparatus to process the traumatic situation is increased through therapeutic work. This “secondarization” of the repetitive dream has a traumatolytic effect, allowing the patient to reach psychoanalytically the mechanisms and mental states prevailing in the traumatic situation, through the mechanism of dream autorepresentation described by Silberer. In some cases, as illustrated in the clinical material, it is possible to anticipate the event of episodes of somatic disease before they become clinically evident.?The detailed analysis of dreams in patients with these characteristics is presented and discussed.     

Images of freud: From his correspondence

Abstract

The study of the epistolary activity of Freud, because of the specific investment demonstrated by the estimated 20,000 letters which make up his correspondence, in itself affords us various insights: on Freud himself, describing himself from day to day, on the history and nature of the conscious and unconscious libidinal relationships which linked him to his principal correspondents and, taking this exceptional case as our starting point, on the specificity of the need to write and to receive letters which is present to differing degrees in every human being. Leaving to others the detailed investigation of the content of this correspondence as a source of biographical or theoretical information, this work concentrates on the comments by Freud himself on the many different aspects of the art of the letter-writer. The method used was specific: some 600 extracts from his letters were read, whereby we confined ourselves to remarks on the material circumstances in which they were written, the handwriting, the detailed records which were kept of them, their frequency, their family or conventional aspects, etc. This intentionally limited vision allows us to isolate a number of points of reference in the manifestations of a compulsion to write intended to prevent the occurrence, already feared by the young Freud of age 18 years, of “mortal boredom”.     

疼痛恐惧的形成及其对疼痛知觉的影响

脑岛、杏仁核是疼痛恐惧形成的重要神经网络中心。疼痛恐惧增强了慢性疼痛患者的疼痛知觉体验, 进而加剧抑郁、焦虑情绪和功能损伤程度。脑岛、杏仁核、前额皮层和前扣带回是疼痛恐惧影响疼痛知觉的重要神经基础。通过认知方法干预疼痛恐惧可以改善患者的抑郁、焦虑情绪, 减少功能损伤。未来研究应拓展疼痛恐惧的测量工具, 采用功能磁共振成像技术进一步揭示疼痛恐惧影响慢性疼痛患者疼痛知觉的神经机制。     

Internal reflections of an external peace process: A case study

Abstract

This case study records and analyzes how external changes, emanating from the ceasefires in Northern Ireland in 1994, resulted in significant changes within the internal world of a Northern Irish Client     

Reflexive theories of consciousness and unconscious perception

A core commitment of the reflexive theory of consciousness is that conscious states are themselves necessarily the contents of mental states. The strongest argument for this claim—the necessity of inner-content for consciousness—is the argument from unconscious perception. According to this argument, we find evidence for the necessity claim from cases of alleged unconscious perception, the most well-known and widely discussed of these being blindsight. However, the reflexive theory cannot partake in this argument and therefore, must rely on at least one of the other arguments for the necessity claim. These arguments are significantly less convincing than the argument from unconscious perception, and thus the reflexive theory is left in a dialectically weak position.     

Walter Bradford Cannon: Reflections on the man and his contributions

My father's early research was with X-rays and led him to a serendipity finding concerning the role of distress in the physiological responses of cats. This chance finding led to further studies of the effects of emotional stimuli on various organs and systems in the body. These studies were the foundation for Cannon's discovery of the fight-or-flight, or stress response, and the development of his companion notion of homeostasis, embodied inThe Wisdom of the Body. While being fond of William James from undergraduate coursework under him, Cannon challenged and refuted the validity of the James-Lange Theory of emotions during his research career. Always fascinated by the psychological and emotional realm of human functioning, Cannon enjoyed warm and close relationships with Robert Yerkes and Ivan Pavlov over the years. The only time in my father's life when he felt strong pressure to produce may have been during World War I when he was part of the Allied medical team solving the problem of traumatic shock experienced by Allied troops in Europe.     

Man Up: Young Men's Lived Experiences and Reflections on Counseling

The author interviewed 6 young men about their perceptions of masculinity and their experiences with counseling. Through a phenomenological approach, 3 themes emerged: characteristics of men, perceptions of social expectations, and experiences with counseling. All participants characterized men as emotionally reserved, protective and supportive, powerful, sexually motivated, honorable, and goal oriented. Findings are discussed in terms of theoretical and counseling implications.     

Forever is Always Finite: Reflections on Radical Life Extension

This essay reflects on the Radical Life Extension movement from six critical perspectives: RLE (1) ignores the benefits of finitude; (2) perpetuates the denial of death by seeking to vanquish it; (3) disregards the paradoxical nature of death as problem and mystery; (4) turns death and the Bronze Dream into idols; (5) overlooks a plethora of ethical dilemmas; and (6) fails to ask the central life question: “how well can we live?.” RLE is not only problematic: it is redundant. Being kept in the love of God forever is a different kind of ‘radical life extension’ that includes finitude and death.     

Reconstructing Life as a One-Foot Man: Reflections on the Role of Football

This article is one of a series of personal construct investigations of the aftermath of the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone. It is based on interviews conducted with nine members of the Sierra Leone Single-Leg Amputee Football Club, all of whom lost a limb during the war. Interview themes concerned participants’ construing of this event and its perpetrators, the constriction of their lives and the emotions they subsequently experienced, the choices that they made, and the role of football and of forgiveness in their recovery and in posttraumatic growth.     

Consciousness and modality: on the possible preserved visual consciousness in blindsight subjects

In a recent paper, Brogaard (2011) presents counter-arguments to the conclusions of an experiment with blindsight subject GR. She argues that contrary to the apparent findings that GR’s preserved visual abilities relate to degraded visual experiences, she is in fact fully unconscious of the stimuli she correctly identifies. In this paper, we present arguments and evidence why Brogaard’s argument does not succeed in its purpose. We suggest that not only is relevant empirical evidence in opposition to Brogaard’s argument, her argument misconstrues necessary criteria to decide whether a conscious experience is visual or not visual.     

Counter-narratives in context: The role of the organisation and broader culture in psychic splitting among South African survivors of intimate partner violence

Chronic trauma, shame and psychopathology, as well as the association between them, are acutely understudied, both in South African and internationally. The focus of this article is on chronic trauma of a particular kind, intimate partner violence (IPV) and the development of a specific form or shame-related psychopathology, the splitting of self and how this splitting may be further facilitated or exacerbated by the contexts in which people live. The (counter) narratives of three women are presented. These (counter) narratives demonstrate the presence of both a concealed and shameful authentic self, and the socially conforming projected false self, two polarised parts of the psyche. It is argued that the organisational context, a shelter for survivors of IPV, which has a strong ethos centred around advocacy and human rights and which promotes a strong message of personal empowerment and agency, may unintentionally exacerbate the psychic split in women who have been subjugated at a broader (predominantly patriarchal) cultural level their whole lives. Participants’ resistance narratives were often characterised by inconsistencies and contradictions which oscillated between supporting mainstream cultural narratives and organisationally driven, active resistance against the cultural context from which they came. However, resistance narratives often felt thinly veiled and inauthentic, which is one of the problems with interventions in resource constrained settings which are necessarily time-limited. To fully and completely counter the cultural message that has been the focus of participants’ lifelong gendered socialisation, long-term and in depth interventions at organisational level are needed. These ideas are not only relevant to the South African setting, but have wider application internationally.     

"Binaural rivalry": dichotic listening as a tool for the investigation of the neural correlate of consciousness

Since about two decades neuroscientists have systematically faced the problem of consciousness: the aim is to discover the neural activity specifically related to conscious perceptions, i.e. the biological properties of what philosophers call qualia. In this view, a neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) is a precise pattern of brain activity that specifically accompanies a particular conscious experience. Almost all studies aimed at investigating the NCC have been carried out in the visual system. One of the most promising paradigms is based on sensory stimuli which elicit bistable percepts, as they allow to decouple subjective perception from the characteristics of the physical stimulation. Such kind of perception can be produced in the visual modality by using particular images (e.g. Rubin's vase/face figure) or by presenting two dissimilar stimuli separately to the two eyes (binocular rivalry). The stimuli compete for perceptual dominance and each image is visible in turn for a few seconds, while the other is suppressed. The use of this methodology has led to important findings concerning visual consciousness, which are briefly discussed. For the investigation of auditory consciousness, a similar stimulation paradigm can be achieved by using dichotic listening, consisting in two different stimuli presented each to one ear, which compete for perception (binaural rivalry). The principal aim of the present mini-review is to discuss the few contributes facing the issue of auditory consciousness and to advance the use of dichotic listening and binaural rivalry as valid tools for its investigation.     

The problems of consciousness and content in theories of perception

The paper aims to show, first, that O’Regan’s and Noë’s Sensorimotor Theory of Vision and Visual Experiences suffers from circularity, and that evidence from empirical research within perception psychology unequivocally invalidates their theory. Secondly, to show that the circularity in O’Regan’s and Noë’s theory of vision and in other general causal and functional theories of perception (i.e. Gibson’s and Marr’s theories of perception) is the inevitable consequence of mutually conflicting assumption of Cartesian dualism underlying these theories. The paper concludes by outlining the consequences of this conflict of assumptions for psychological theories of perception.     

Belongings Beyond Borders: Reflections of Young Refugees on Their Relationships with Location

Young separated refugees are exiled from familiar places and on seeking asylum encounter new, potentially alienating, places. Yet, there is limited research regarding the effects of location on the psychological experiences of young separated refugees. This study explores the relationships that young adults who arrived in the UK as separated refugees have with the spaces that they inhabit and the consequences of these. It draws on qualitative interviews with young men from Iraq and Afghanistan who are living in London. Four key themes emerged from the analysis. Participants felt frustrated in bureaucratic settings where processes of labelling and physical manipulation prevented their sense of subjectivity from being expressed. Certain community spaces offered a rich range of support. Micro‐spaces of belonging and embodied processes of exploration in the wider community were also reported to be psychologically beneficial. The themes suggest that considerations of young separated refugees' relations to place may provide alternative psychological understandings of their experiences, particularly in relation to concepts such as trauma. Policy implications related to immigration control and the benefits of community projects are highlighted. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Common pathways in mental imagery and pain perception: an fMRI study of a subject with an amputated arm

The present paper reviews data from two previous studies in our laboratory, as well as some additional new data, on the neuronal representation of movement and pain imagery in a subject with an amputated right arm. The subject imagined painful and non-painful finger movements in the amputated stump while being in a MRI scanner, acquiring EPI-images for fMRI analysis. In Study I (Ersland et al., 1996) the Subject alternated tapping with his intact left hand fingers and imagining "tapping" with the fingers of his amputated right arm. The results showed increased neuronal activation in the right motor cortex (precentral gyrus) when tapping with the fingers of the left hand, and a corresponding activation in the left motor cortex when imagining tapping with the fingers of the amputated right arm. Finger tappings of the intact left hand fingers also resulted in a larger activated precentral area than imagery "finger tapping" of the amputated right arm fingers. In Study II (Rosen et al., 2001 in press) the same subject imagining painful and pleasurable finger movements, and still positions of the fingers of the amputated arm. The results showed larger activations over the motor cortex for movement imagining versus imagining the hand being in a still position, and larger activations over the sensory cortex when imagining painful experiences. It can therefore be concluded that not only does imagery activate the same motor areas as real finger movements, but also that adding instructions of pain together with imaging moving the fingers intensified the activation compared with adding instructions about non-painful experiences. From these studies, it is clear that areas activated during actual motor execution to a large extent also are activated during mental imagery of the same motor commands. In this respect the present studies add to studies of visual imagery that have shown a similar correspondence in activation between actual object perception and imagery of the same object.     

Expanding the discussion: Revision of the fundamental assumptions framing the study of the neural correlates of consciousness

The way one asks a question is shaped by a-priori assumptions and constrains the range of possible answers. We identify and test the assumptions underlying contemporary debates, models, and methodology in the study of the neural correlates of consciousness, which was framed by Crick and Koch’s seminal paper (1990). These premises create a sequential and passive conception of conscious perception: it is considered the product of resolved information processing by unconscious mechanisms, produced by a singular event in time and place representing the moment of entry. The conscious percept produced is then automatically retained to be utilized by post-conscious mechanisms. Major debates in the field, such as concern the moment of entry, the all-or-none vs graded nature, and report vs no-report paradigms, are driven by the consensus on these assumptions. We show how removing these assumptions can resolve some of the debates and challenges and prompt additional questions. The potential non-sequential nature of perception suggests new ways of thinking about consciousness as a dynamic and dispersed process, and in turn about the relationship between conscious and unconscious perception. Moreover, it allows us to present a parsimonious account for conscious perception while addressing more aspects of the phenomenon.     

A passion of the soul: an introduction to pain for consciousness researchers

Pain is an important focus for consciousness research because it is an avenue for exploring somatic awareness, emotion, and the genesis of subjectivity. In principle, pain is awareness of tissue trauma, but pain can occur in the absence of identifiable injury, and sometimes substantive tissue injury produces no pain. The purpose of this paper is to help bridge pain research and consciousness studies. It reviews the basic sensory neurophysiology associated with tissue injury, including transduction, transmission, modulation, and central representation. In addition, it highlights the central mechanisms for the emotional aspects of pain, demonstrating the physiological link between tissue trauma and mechanisms of emotional arousal. Finally, we discuss several current issues in the field of pain research that bear on central issues in consciousness studies, such as sickness and sense of self.     

Unawareness of Deficits in Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias: Operational Definitions and Empirical Findings

Individuals with dementia frequently demonstrate decreased awareness of their cognitive difficulties. Empirical research examining this phenomenon has addressed a number of aspects of unawareness in Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, including occurrence in various disorders; possible neuroanatomical substrates; relationship to general cognitive functioning, executive functioning, and psychiatric symptomatology; and progression over time and across cognitive domains. Limitations of the current research literature are discussed, particularly issues surrounding operational definitions of unawareness and the current limited understanding of the role of the frontal lobes. A number of conclusions regarding unawareness that appear to be supported by the current body of empirical research and possible future directions are discussed.