Transformations of Emotional Experience

In this paper the author approaches mental pain and the problems in a psychoanalytic treatment of patients with difficulties in the psychic transformation of their emotional experiences. The author is interested in the symbolic failure related to the obstruction of development of phantasies, dreams, dream‐thoughts, etc. She differentiates symbolization disturbances related to hypertrophic projective identification from a detention of these primitive communications and emotional isolation. She puts forward the conjecture that one factor in the arrest of this development is the detention of projective identifications and that, when this primitive means of communication is re‐established in a container–contained relationship of mutual benefit, this initiates the development of a symbolization process that can replace the pathological ‘protection’. Another hypothesis she develops is that of inaccessible caesuras that, associated with the detention of projective identification, obstruct any integrative or interactive movement. This caesura and the detention of projective identifications affect mental functions needed for dealing with mental pain. The personality is left with precarious mental equipment for transforming emotional experiences. How can a psychoanalytical process stimulate the development of creative symbolization, transforming the emotional experiences and leading towards mental growth? The author approaches the clinical problem with the metaphor of the psychic birth of emotional experience. The modulation of mental pain in a container–contained relationship is a central problem for the development of the human mind. For discovering and giving a meaning to emotional experience, the infant depends on reverie, a function necessary in order to develop an evolved consciousness capable of being aware, which is different from the rudimentary consciousness that perceives but does not understand. The development of mature mental equipment is associated with the personality's attitude towards mental pain. The differentiation between psychotic, neurotic or autistic functioning depends on what defences are erected to avoid mental pain. The primary link between infant and mother is where the building of mental equipment takes place, through communicational forms that, to begin with, are not verbal. The author suggests the need for the development of an ideo‐grammar (in gestures, paralinguistic forms, etc.) in primary relations, as the precursor forms that will become the matrix for the mental tools for dealing with emotional experiences in a mature way. The paper stresses the significance of the parental containing function for the development of symbolization of prenatal emotional experiences. This containment develops ideograms, transformations of sense impressions into proto‐symbols, instruments that attenuate the traumatic experiences of helplessness. The author takes Bion's ideas about extending the notion of dream‐work to an alpha function that goes on continually, day and night, transforming raw emotional experiences in a ‘dream’. In order to acquire a meaning, facts need to be ‘dreamed’ in this extended sense. Meaning and truth are the nurture of the mind. Mental growth, the development of adequate tools – including reverie – for dealing with mental pain, seen from a psychoanalytic perspective including reverie, implies that the object becomes a provider of meanings. Analysis begins to aim primarily at the generation or expansion of the mental container, instead of predominantly working on unconscious contents as such.     

People are not cabbages: reflections on patient and analyst change

The author describes how her own internal change was a vital part of transformation between herself and two patients. She draws on Loewald's work as she discusses how change in her own internal relationship with her father was part of a lifelong emotional reorganization of Oedipal relations. She describes a process of mutual change whereby her and her patients' unconscious growth each stimulated the other. She suggests that the analyst's own emotional growth is a vital, not an incidental, part of psychoanalysis, as it brings new life to the work for patients as well as analysts themselves.     

Working with Bangladeshi young women

The author describes once-weekly psychoanalytically informed work in a child mental health setting with young Bangladeshi women making the transition to adulthood. She argues that the prevalent notion of 'culture conflict' used to account for patterns of emotional disturbance and self-harm in these young women is reductionist and represents a denial of severe family dysfunction and individual psychic pain. She shows how, despite cultural differences, psychoanalytically informed thinking can provide a basis for understanding these young women's experience and facilitate their emotional growth. However, faced with complex unconscious processes, the worker has to remain alert to her countertransference in order not to be drawn into an unhelpful collusion or denial of reality. Organizational defences may also operate to protect staff and their institutions from awareness of such high levels of emotional distress, which therefore remain hidden. The author is grateful to the two young women who consented to publication in the hope that it might help others. Details have been changed to protect their anonymity.     

A Feminist Reading of Men's Health: Or, When Paglia Speaks, the Media Listens

In this paper Bloom analyzes the popular magazine, Men's Health, from a feminist perspective, locating ways that the magazine participates in an insidious form of anti-feminist backlash. She specifically analyzes the magazine to make sense of how its writers discursively position women in their relationships to heterosexual men and how they use the voices of women who call themselves feminists to promote an anti-feminist, pro-patriarchy agenda. She demonstrates that the “health” of men being promoted in this magazine is a mental health grounded in the maintenance of male privilege and power.     

Positive psychology and adolescent mental health: false promise or true breakthrough?

The emerging field of positive psychology has pledged to improve the mental health of American adolescents. Yet, without a principle-based conceptual foundation to guide its study of optimal youth functioning, positive psychology will ultimately fail to keep its promise. This paper suggests that the principles of Mind, Thought and Consciousness can provide positive psychology with a clearer understanding of optimal psychological functioning, serve as a unifying conceptual framework to guide its proposed mission, and lead to a true breakthrough in adolescent mental health. It first describes how the logic of these principles accounts for all subjective human experience. It then demonstrates how optimal mental health is generated, and how it can be maintained irrespective of present or past circumstances. Finally, it discusses how several contemporary models of positive psychology (i.e., Csikszentmihalyi's flow. Seligman's learned optimism, Goleman's emotional intelligence, and Buss's evolutionary perspective) can be simplified and clarified using the logic of the above three principles.     

Emotional Mental Imagery as Simulation of Reality: Fear and Beyond—A Tribute to Peter Lang

This article pays tribute to the seminal paper by Peter J. Lang (1977; this journal), “Imagery in Therapy: Information Processing Analysis of Fear.” We review research and clinical practice developments in the past five decades with reference to key insights from Lang’s theory and experimental work on emotional mental imagery. First, we summarize and recontextualize Lang’s bio-informational theory of emotional mental imagery (1977, 1979) within contemporary theoretical developments on the function of mental imagery. Second, Lang’s proposal that mental imagery can evoke emotional responses is evaluated by reviewing empirical evidence that mental imagery has a powerful impact on negative as well as positive emotions at neurophysiological and subjective levels. Third, we review contemporary cognitive and behavioral therapeutic practices that use mental imagery, and consider points of extension and departure from Lang’s original investigation of mental imagery in fear-extinction behavior change. Fourth, Lang’s experimental work on emotional imagery is revisited in light of contemporary research on emotional psychopathology-linked individual differences in mental imagery. Finally, key insights from Lang’s experiments on training emotional response during imagery are discussed in relation to how specific techniques may be harnessed to enhance adaptive emotional mental imagery training in future research.     

精神分裂症患者的情绪调节

日常生活中, 个体通常有不同的理想与目标, 当个体被特定的目标驱动, 试图去影响自身将要体验到的情绪类别、将要体验到的情绪感受发生的时间, 以及如何体验、表达此种情绪时, 情绪调节就发生了。精神分裂症是一种复杂的精神疾病, 该类疾病患者普遍存在情绪方面的缺陷, 通过操控各种内外因素, 可以帮助精神分裂症患者进行有效的情绪调节, 有利于帮助他们构建健全的情绪体验, 对促进其身心健康发展具有现实临床意义。     

Zones of Proximal Emotional Development — Psychotherapy Within a Neuroaffective Perspective

This article outlines a conceptual framework for assessing personal and emotional functions of a person’s zone of proximal emotional development. The framework is based on the integrative theory Neuroaffective Developmental Psychology (NADP), which brings together attachment theory, neuropsychology, developmental psychology, and trauma theory. Within the NADP framework, this article describes a way of understanding children’s normal emotional mental organization and of examining how this mental organization may be developed or disturbed by relational issues. It also describes how a child’s mental organization can be disturbed and thus, without intervention, disturb the child’s personality development on a lifelong basis. The article presents three case vignettes, describing three children growing into adolescence with three different attachment patterns and suggested individually tailored intervention plans for each of them, relevant and useful for clinicians working with vulnerable children and families. Because the nervous system retains its plasticity throughout life, attachment is not necessarily an unchangeable pattern. That is why we as clinicians should develop psychotherapeutic methods and a research-based way of determining “what works for whom” by assessing the zone of individual proximal emotional development. The text outlines the characteristics of NADP and how it can be used to structure an intervention plan.     

JUMPING FROM THE COUCH

This paper addresses two questions: first, how do phantasies work? Second, how do these mental activities affect a person's overall emotional life? The first question tends to be overlooked since those who accept, for example, projective identification as a basic mental activity tend also to treat it as an explanatory primitive. On this view, there is no further question to ask about how projective identification itself works; rather, other psychological and emotional phenomena are explained in terms of it. By contrast, this paper asks, how does projective identification itself work? The aim is not to provide a reductive explanation but to ask how it is that phantasies have the efficacy they have. To that end, one moment in the analysis of the Rat Man is re‐examined. There is then an attempt to show the difficulties involved in weaving an account of phantasy into the broader‐scale interpretation of emotional life.     

Contributions of emotion understanding to narrative comprehension in children and adults

This study examined to what extent children and adults differ in how they process negative emotions during reading, and how they rate their own and protagonists’ emotional states. Results show that both children’s and adults’ processing of target sentences was facilitated when they described negative emotions. Processing of spill-over sentences was facilitated for adults but inhibited for children, suggesting children needed additional time to process protagonists’ emotional states and integrate them into coherent mental representations. Children and adults were similar in their valence and arousal ratings as they rated protagonists’ emotional states as more negative and more intense than their own emotional states. However, they differed in that children rated their own emotional states as relatively neutral, whereas adults’ ratings of their own emotional states more closely matched the negative emotional states of the protagonists. This suggests a possible difference between children and adults in the mechanism underlying emotional inferencing.     

Mother as Messenger of Love and Death

For mothers, the act of giving birth also brings them close to death as well as other human experiences. The mother represents the dual structure of life and death in the mind. It was this unconscious convergence that stirred the interest in reconsidering the subject of the loss of children and its effect on individual development. This article demonstrates what happens when death triumphs over life chronologically close to birth. The author presents a clinical report on a six-year-old girl, Dinah, who suffered the effects of the mother's mourning. She illustrates the therapeutic approach to mourning over time, at moments in which the shadow of pain is more clearly present. These are moments when the loss must be brought to consciousness, because of the unconscious effects it has on the survivors. Dinah's problems were not caused by the loss itself, but rather the fact that the loss occurred in a phase of her emotional development when she was only a baby an unable to react in a mature manner.     

The Theory of Transformations and Autistic States Autistic Transformations: A Proposal1

This work integrates two areas of thinking: one in which the author develops considerationsregardingobservationmethodsofmentalphenomenainpsychoanalysis according to Bion's theory of transformations; the other in which she is concerned with the investigation of primitive mental states‐protomental states‐more specifi cally, the autistic states of neurotic patients, described by Tustin. Some ideas on the ‘philosophical’ position underlying transformations theory are elaborated, particularly emphasizing the idea that the same phenomenon in psychoanalysis may be considered from different perspectives, as long as it is situated within the theoretical reference frame to which it belongs. The author considers the idea that this method of phenomenon observation is part of a wider context of general human knowledge, in which uncertainty and relativity of concepts are the main components. By adopting transformations theory as a perspective of phenomena observation that pervades the analytical meeting, the author questions whether it is possible to include other groups of transformation of emotional experiences in this theory, which shows particular phenomena with specifi c qualities, distinct from those emphasized by Bion. She hypothesizes that autistic phenomena present in neurotic patients, characterizing autistic states, may be considered and detached, making up a particular group of transformation of emotional experience, which analysts often face in their daily practice. She names this group ‘autistic transformations’.     

Transforming despair to hope in the treatment of extreme trauma: a view from the supervisor’s chair

The author considers how, when working with severely traumatised patients, times of despair can be transformed into moments of hope within the therapeutic process. She considers these moments from the perspective of ‘the supervisor’s chair’ and what emerges within the supervisory relationship when difficult and distressing sessions are openly and honestly bought to supervision. Drawing on Thomas Ogden’s ideas about ‘dreaming up the patient’ in supervision, and Michael Parsons’ thoughts about the supervisory relationship, she gives two examples of this process in action, the first about the transformation of despair to hope in the consulting room, and the second about the transformation of despair to hope in the professional network. She argues that these transformational moments of hope correspond to what Daniel Stern and his colleagues have described as ‘moments-of-meeting’ and are indicative of a potential turning point in the therapy. These fleeting moments need to be attended to and nurtured so that their potential for change and emotional growth and recovery can be harnessed.     

A reflection on a humanistic approach to narrative inquiry into the lived experience of women casual academics

Qualitative research is said to add flesh to the bones of quantitative data, and narrative inquiry, more specifically, is described as emotionally comforting, reassuring and validating for participants who share their stories. But little is said of the impact of the flesh, bone and emotions of the narrative inquirer on the qualitative research process. This paper explores a humanistic approach to a narrative inquiry into the lived experience of women casual academics in Australian universities, and exposes the emotional and embodied labour involved in researching others’ stories. Through reflecting in and on her practice as a narrative inquirer, the author discusses how she was affectively and ideologically motivated to investigate the lives of women casual academics and demonstrates how her heart worked in conjunction with her head when ‘handling’ the narrative data. The author finally explores how reflecting on a humanistic approach to narrative research exposes that emotional and cognitive alignment can create research ‘flow’, and that fully embodied engagement with research aligns with ‘slow’ and feminist ‘in-the-making’ scholarship where journey and outcomes emerge and cannot be pre-determined.     

The effects of poverty on the mental, emotional, and behavioral health of children and youth: implications for prevention

This article considers the implications for prevention science of recent advances in research on family poverty and children's mental, emotional, and behavioral health. First, we describe definitions of poverty and the conceptual and empirical challenges to estimating the causal effects of poverty on children's mental, emotional, and behavioral health. Second, we offer a conceptual framework that incorporates selection processes that affect who becomes poor as well as mechanisms through which poverty appears to influence child and youth mental health. Third, we use this conceptual framework to selectively review the growing literatures on the mechanisms through which family poverty influences the mental, emotional, and behavioral health of children. We illustrate how a better understanding of the mechanisms of effect by which poverty impacts children's mental, emotional, and behavioral health is valuable in designing effective preventive interventions for those in poverty. Fourth, we describe strategies to directly reduce poverty and the implications of these strategies for prevention. This article is one of three in a special section (see also Biglan, Flay, Embry, & Sandler, 2012; Mu?oz, Beardslee, & Leykin, 2012) representing an elaboration on a theme for prevention science developed by the 2009 report of the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine.     

文学小说阅读影响社会认知的心理机制

摘要：文学小说阅读可以提高个体社会认知能力,但其中具体心理机制有待探索。本文通过梳理以往研究,从文学小说的社会性和文学性两个视角入手,结合模拟理论,精加工似然模型和叙事传输理论讨论了文学小说阅读影响社会认知的心理机制,并在此基础上初步构建了文学小说影响社会认知的动机-情感-认知加工策略框架。文学小说的社会性会增强读者对故事的情感卷入（叙事传输理论）,并引发读者对故事内容进行心理模拟（模拟理论）;文学小说的文学性同样能够增强读者对故事的情感卷入（叙事传输理论）,同时促使读者在动机层面愿意耗费更多认知资源去理解故事内容（精加工似然模型）,进而促进心理模拟。未来需要更多实证研究来检验这一框架的解释力,完善其边界条件,寻找脑机制层面的证据。     

‘THERE IS A WAR ON! SOMEONE IS GOING TO GET KILLED’

This paper describes the first three years of work providing consultation at the interface between adult mental health and children's services. It suggests that significant numbers of children, living with parents whose mental illness may be ‘severe and enduring’, remain hidden from services. The author applies psychoanalytic theory in an attempt to understand the unconscious factors, for organizations as well as for individuals, which may contribute to making it so difficult for services to work co‐operatively to recognize these children's existence and their emotional needs. She reviews some of the related fields in which the application of psychoanalytic thinking has occurred and also describes the context in which the work takes place. A series of vignettes demonstrate some of the difficulties encountered and the ways in which the presence of a neutral third or ‘other’ can contribute to their resolution. She suggests working relationships between adult's and children's services are profoundly affected by the psychotic processes operating in the minds of these parents and that the consultant acts as a container enabling staff to manage the fragmentation and splitting which would otherwise be inevitable.     

1995 Coleman Roberts Griffith address: Profiles of excellence

Abstract

Historically circumstances that represent an extreme of the human condition attract the attention of those who record contemporary events. Perhaps one of the strongest influences on retrospectives is the achievement of excellence. Excellence is admired and hated, sought and avoided, and in a true sense rarely achieved. Excellence requires performing at the outer limit of physical, emotional and mental capacities. And even then for some this level of effort expenditure may not be enough to produce excellence. While many rationalize excellence as purely endowed or distort the concept with self-serving labels, Shin'chi Suzuki's work on developing excellence with “common” people demonstrates the various elements necessary for the opportunity to achieve excellence. Suzuki's work will be reviewed along with the profiles of selected world achievers. The prerequisites for the pursuit of excellence will be formulated and suggested along with a discussion of how the demands of achieving excellence often exceed the will to excel.     

The Adolescent Brain and the Emergence and Peak of Psychopathology

Adolescence is a period of heightened emotionality and increased risk for mental illness, affecting as many as one in five persons. This article reviews recent human imaging and animal studies that demarcate adolescent specific changes in brain and behavior that may help to explain this period of increased risk for psychopathology. We highlight adolescence as a sensitive period when: 1) the environment has particularly strong influences on brain and behavior and 2) normative changes in brain development can lead to an imbalance between rapidly changing limbic circuitry and relatively slower developing prefrontal circuitry. This imbalance can be exacerbated by both genetic and environmental influences leading to less capacity to regulate emotions and higher risk for psychopathology. We discuss these findings in the context of understanding who may be at greatest risk for psychopathology and when and how to best treat symptoms of emotional dysregulation.     

Psychotherapy and the Mormon Faith

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church, is a Christian faith with a large presence across the globe. Although Mormon doctrine suggests that faith in Jesus allows people to overcome weakness and heal from pain, Mormon people are not immune from experiencing periods of mental and emotional suffering. The deeply held religious beliefs of Mormons can influence the nature of the psychological difficulties a Mormon individual is prone to experiencing, how and when they choose to seek treatment, as well as the types of treatment that may be most beneficial.