Close encounters in the liminal zone: experiments in imaginal communication Part II

The phenomenology of the experience of being in psychic contact with another person was explored in a series of observations using a novel dyadic interaction in imaginal space. Research participants working in pairs with eyes closed received instructions to imagine being in mental contact with one another for three minutes while they observed their internal experiences. Their reports indicated that the imagined contact was experienced as real, as intimate, and aroused the ambivalences usually associated with intimacy as well as phenomena suggestive of projective identification effects. This first part demonstrated that the liminal zone, or the transitional space between individuals, can be experimentally observed through the imagination. Part II of this report will present evidence that the experienced psychic contact was more than 'just imagination', and involved transpersonal interactions, including suggestions of synchronicity and telepathy.     

On psychic elements in a case of autistoid perversion

The paper explores the formation of psychic elements from an epistemological point of view, drawing on the work of Bion to examine a clinical case of autistoid perversion. Distinguishing the qualification of psychic elements from the realization of pre‐conceptions, the paper argues that psychical elements are constituted through a mutually shared experience of presence, and so they should be understood in a paradoxical way – through being‐O and transformations into K. These ideas are explored via a clinical case concerning a patient with an autistoid–perverse organization. The patient had been denied any bodily contact with her parents during her first year of life due to an infection; in later life she exhibited an autistoid coprophilic perversion. During the course of her treatment, as it became possible to break down the autistoid organization, the nameless contents surfaced in a mutually shared experience of presence. The analyst was able to hold on to their meaning, which was unavailable to the patient. The absent analyst, however, turned into the mother who ‘put the child down’ and was experienced by the patient as a suicidal threat. In being‐O, the analyst was able to endure the paradox of being the one who ‘put her down’ in order not to put her down; the paradox of being‐O functioned as a container for the destructive objectal dimension of the state of ‘being put down’.     

Clinical Commentary

Abstract

This paper is the narrative of a first-time father with a son born seven weeks early by Caesarean section. Against the anxiety and trauma of his infant's birth and his wife's illness, another inner darker drama is being relived. Michael shows all the wounds of a battered child. He asks two awesome questions - Will I be to my son as my father was to me? Will my son be to me as I was to my father? Fearful and at first unvoiced questions, the developing interviews gave them a voice. We respected Michael's sharing of the early and fearful days and nights when his infant first came home. We sometimes found it hard to empathize with his running away to hide in work, until we understood what he was hiding from. Most poignant was his struggle with his anger and hurt with his father and his desire to understand, ‘Why?’, so that he would not be like this to his son. We saw a sensitive revelation of life being born inside him anew, as he made contact with his real infant and his psychic infant within. Of particular interest was the therapeutic use of the research interview space and the interviewer.     

Report on a Panel Discussion on Interpretation

A case is presented where the patient's early experiences of violence and neglect have resulted in a defensive organization that has protected him against intolerable anxiety, at the cost of development and growth. In the analytic setting, the patient withdrew into his perverse fantasy world, an area of relative peace where he had omnipotent control, whenever contact with the analyst within a “room for relatedness” was experienced as threatening or frustrating. His avoidance of contact with the analyst was also an avoidance of reality, and proved to be a strong obstacle to progress in the treatment. During the terminal phase, he was forced to face reality and it seemed then that some widening of his psychic reality took place.     

Creating the Freedom to Move: Reply to Goldberg and Grusky

In current times, more and more of us are seeing patients who are afraid and unable to make genuine contact with another human being. Their self is more undeveloped than false—more unrealized than broken—and the psychoanalytic, alchemical process of turning reality, truth, and lived experience into meaning often fails, as they wither in psychic encapsulation or retreat. Peter Goldberg and I address the project of how to develop the capacity to play—to help patients come into being and develop a self. Goldberg (this issue) highlights that the analyst’s animating presence and psycho-sensory engagement has alway been present in psychoanalytic processes but usually resides in the background of a treatment, but this crucial inductive dimension of the analytic method comes more to the foreground with the treatment of unintegrated patients. Zoe Grusky (this issue) discusses the medium of play therapy as a means to create transitional space. In my reply, I underscore that a critical component of the project of reclamation, or “inductive dimension” of the treatment with some melancholic patients, is for the analyst to help the patient separate from self-states of non-being that are also anti-life, by meeting the patient where she lives and survive being destroyed; this sort of object-usage is critical to building subjectivity and restoring faith in Life.     

Interaction in the psychoanalytic situation

In psychoanalytic psychotherapy we are primarily interested in psychic change and how to facilitate it for the better. Change is a universal property of matter, living or inanimate: everything in nature is influenced by everything else; interaction is ubiquitous. In the early years of psychoanalysis, the prevailing view was that therapeusis was essentially informational—insight and awareness would bring about changes in the ways one would experience events and respond to them. Over time, there has been a subtle shift from the informational perspective to the transformational, where insight is often retrospective rather than the active agent. The growing awareness of the need to be deeply recognized and responded to by another human being is reflective of this shift and has loomed ever larger in the interactive arena known as psychoanalysis. This paper focuses on a single facet of the need for recognition by another—the role of enacted response in effecting psychic change. It also addresses another level of the meaning of interaction: Whereas the internal interaction between perception and response has tended to be looked upon, in psychoanalysis, as unidirectional, the present discussion draws attention to the complexity of the bidirectional interaction between perception and response.     

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.     

An order of pure decision: growing up in a virtual world and the adolescent's experience of being-in-a-body

Technological advances and the dominant values of contemporary culture make it possible and acceptable to alter, extend, or altogether bypass the body and its functions in actuality and in virtual space. This has contributed to a split between the body and the self, leading to a disembodied subjectivity that may encourage a neglect of the body's unconscious meaning for the individual. Due to the psychic requirement during adolescence to accommodate the reality of the changing body, some vulnerable adolescents are especially primed for the seductions of virtual space--a "space" that is nowadays not only culturally sanctioned, but also idealized. The use of cyberspace can become a psychic refuge from the challenge of integrating the reality and meaning of the sexual body into the image of the self. Two case examples illustrate how for some vulnerable adolescents it is through the use of cyberspace that confusion about the real body can be denied or disavowed; for them the integrity of the self is sustained through pseudorepresentations of the body defensively experienced in terms of "play" rather than pathology.     

On Digital Consciousness and Psychic Death

This paper describes states of consciousness in some disturbed or traumatized patients in which time is not experienced as being linked to future or past. The patient's experience in this state is “digital” rather than continuous, making it difficult for him to have an inner sense of continual “aliveness” and to link analytic sessions together. In extreme cases, his world may be experienced as a succession of moments interrupted by little blanks or psychic deaths. The experiential, developmental, and neurobiological aspects of these states are explored with an emphasis on implications for psychoanalytic treatment.     

The Violation of Inner and Outer Boundaries in Political Persecution

One of the consequences of persecution for the individual is the experienced confusion of inner and outer worlds. With the help of a broadened concept of the transitional space, derived from Winnicott, we could understand the various psychological consequences of structural physical violence. The violation of the transitional space during physical violence can result in a transformation to an inorganic state, an introjection or incorporation of the bad object into the self, intrusive re-experiencing and shattered assumptions often seen long after psychotrauma. In this article a broadened and elaborated concept of transitional space is described. Therefore, several theoretical concepts, such as inner and outer world are discussed and defined which makes it possible to put them into practice of psychotherapy and research. An example is given of a documented case of imprisonment under extreme conditions in which the prisoners were able to build up a common transitional space in order to survive. In this case, the transitional space is not an aid for the passage from one developmental phase to another, but instead a way of keeping open the connection between the psychic inner world, the world of the prison and the free world outside the prison walls. It is suggested to extend the concept of the transitional space to this meaning.     

Mentalizing eye contact with a face on a video: Gaze direction does not influence autonomic arousal

Recent research has revealed enhanced autonomic and subjective responses to eye contact only when perceiving another live person. However, these enhanced responses to eye contact are abolished if the viewer believes that the other person is not able to look back at the viewer. We purported to investigate whether this “genuine” eye contact effect can be reproduced with pre‐recorded videos of stimulus persons. Autonomic responses, gaze behavior, and subjective self‐assessments were measured while participants viewed pre‐recorded video persons with direct or averted gaze, imagined that the video person was real, and mentalized that the person could see them or not. Pre‐recorded videos did not evoke similar physiological or subjective eye contact effect as previously observed with live persons, not even when the participants were mentalizing being seen by the person. Gaze tracking results showed, however, increased attention allocation to faces with direct gaze compared to averted gaze directions. The results suggest that elicitation of the physiological arousal in response to genuine eye contact seems to require spontaneous experience of seeing and of being seen by another individual.     

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.     

Creating New Ways of Being and Relating

The therapeutic action of psychoanalysis has been broadened beyond interpretation to the creation of new ways of being and relating. The concept of analysis as including both understanding and creation is rooted in two major analytic traditions: the British Independent school and the relational movement. It is proposed that central concepts from each tradition can be combined to form a theory of technique that is focused creating new ways of being to replace the patient's historical patterns. The clinical strategy advocated here is aimed toward bringing dissociated self states to consciousness and then using the now conscious conflicting states to create new self-world relationship patterns. A theory of technique is suggested that combines the relational concepts of dissociated patterns of interaction with Winnicott's theory of potential space for the purpose of transforming latent psychic capacities into new forms of being. Specific criteria are proposed for identifying new potentially authentic ways of being, and a technique for facilitating their evolution from nascent dispositions to new ways of being is delineated. Two cases are used to illustrate how the technical strategy can be used to create ways of being from previously dormant psychic potential.     

Life within death: Towards a metapsychology of catastrophic psychic trauma

In this paper the author offers a phenomenology and a metapsychology for the effects on the mind of catastrophic psychic trauma, defined as the reaction of the psyche to an utterly external event, which the person is helpless to resist, and against which there is no possible defense. The author affirms that the experience of 'infinite affliction' produces a radical break in being which disarticulates the psyche and causes a headlong descent to the most primitive levels of psychic functioning. When there is a complete surrender to the process of disarticulation, it continues until it extinguishes even the most basic level of mental activity, contact with sensation, producing psychic and then psychogenic death. The author then offers a phenomenological and metapsychological analysis of how the process of disarticulation is stopped so that the state of survival is assured, affirming that, faced with this situation of utter emergency, the survival urge instantly mobilizes the organism in furious activity to preserve life and regenerates psychic activity by sensing the ongoing existence of the psychesoma. Then anguish precipitates on to the body and is sensed as psychophysical pain, which diverts conscious attention from the infinite destruction of utter affliction which is thus encapsulated so that, as an experience, it is no longer present to the mind. This assures survival, but it leaves the psyche in a state of non-integration and begins the unending battle for mastery over the deadly inner object which ceaselessly threatens to become present. This constitutes the precariousness of the state of survival.     

Missing what was true: Problems of seeing and knowing in Henry James's The wings of the dove

The author examines a central theme in this late novel by Henry James in relation to current psychoanalytic ideas that link the Oedipus complex with the child's developing perception of reality (both psychic and external), specifi cally through the experience of seeing and being seen. Britton visualises the oedipal triangle as a psychic structure through which the child may achieve recognition not only of its parents' sexual relationship, from which it is excluded, but also of itself being observed by one parent while the child is with the other. Thus, it both observes and is observed. The differing perspectives achieved‐of subjectivity and objectivity‐ promote the perception of objective reality, as the world of relationships grows and becomes more complex. James captures with great subtlety and penetration the experience of three characters living out a symbolic oedipal relationship in which the truth is evaded or perverted. A young couple in love exploit the situation of a dying heiress whose vulnerability is intensifi ed by her reluctance to acknowledge the truth about their relationship. At the same time, she shrinks from the gaze of others and consigns herself to isolation and ultimate despair. The author presents three signifi cant scenes in which seeing and being seen are central to the development. In each, the dying woman is forced to face, if momentarily, her exclusion from the sexual relationship. Increasingly this connects with her approaching death‐but also with the anguished recognition that the couple have cruelly befriended her only to betray her. It is suggested that James's late style and novelistic technique require the reader to tolerate confusion and uncertainty. As the perspective shifts from one protagonist to another, we ourselves are in danger of ‘missing what is true’ in this characteristic Jamesian scenario, where relationships are gradually perverted by manipulation, evasion and lies. In psychoanalytic theory, this would represent a failure to work through the oedipal situation, where the struggle of the child to face reality is met by a parental relationship that is too weak or too perverse to contain the pain and confl ict.     

Permeability and Demarcation in the Psychoanalytic Process Functions of the Contact‐Barrier1

Introjection, identifi cation and projection are concepts that designate processes in which something is being put into or taken out of something else. These processes presuppose the overcoming of some form of separation between two entities. The permeability or impermeability of a fi ctive boundary between the representations of subject and object set the emotional tone of their coexistence. There are moments of complete diffusion, in which subject and object can no longer be differentiated, and moments of autistic enclosure in which the individual can no longer be reached at all. Permeability and demarcation result from the processing of stimuli carried out by the ‘contact‐barrier’, as an ego function. Stimuli of internal, libidinal or aggressive origin, as well as ‘im‐pressions’ of external origin, are classifi ed and processed with the aid of various kinds of factors arising from coagulated object‐relational experiences. Whereas for Freud the contact‐barrier regulates the quantity of energy and founds a topographical structure, Bion understands the contact‐barrier as a psychic function that simultaneously regulates boundary demarcation and making contact. In the psychoanalytic process, the contact‐barrier created by patient and analyst regulates the events in the transference and countertransference. An awareness of the struggle for contact and demarcation at the dynamic boundary representations that are constantly being recreated by both partners in the analytic process may be helpful in our clinical work. The author presents an examination of the ways in which patient and analyst make contact and demarcate the boundaries, which provides a better understanding of the dynamics of transference processes. He demonstrates this in relation to clinical material.