Psychoanalysis in Three Dimensions: Ringstrom’s Relational Metapsychology: Discussion of “Three Dimensional Field Theory”

Although the analytic intersubjective field remains infinite in its potential forms, processes, and transformations, this commentary highlights Ringstrom’s 3D model (this issue) as tackling the challenge of theorizing the relational analytic act, explaining simultaneously the dimensions of metapsychology and practice. Within the epistemological premises of information theory, the 3D model offers a triangulation between the asymmetry of hemispheral modes of processing, consciousness as truth seeking and an intersubjective dramaturgic dimension to describe the vicissitudes and evolutions of an intersubjectively embedded subjectivity. Reading Ringstrom’s model through the corridor of some basic Freudian intuitions, I formulate my reading of the model’s unique conceptions of time, nothing, and otherness as agents of transformation in the thick relational web of the analytic dyad.     

The Semantic Theory of Truth: Field’s Incompleteness Objection

According to Field’s influential incompleteness objection, Tarski’s semantic theory of truth is unsatisfactory since the definition that forms its basis is incomplete in two distinct senses: (1) it is physicalistically inadequate, and for this reason, (2) it is conceptually deficient. In this paper, I defend the semantic theory of truth against the incompleteness objection by conceding (1) but rejecting (2). After arguing that Davidson and McDowell’s reply to the incompleteness objection fails to pass muster, I argue that, within the constraints of a non-reductive physicalism and a holism concerning the concepts of truth, reference and meaning, conceding Field’s physicalistic inadequacy conclusion while rejecting his conceptual deficiency conclusion is a promising reply to the incompleteness objection.

In sickness and in health?: Psychoanalysis and psychosomatics

Abstract

This article revolves around the question of physicality and its relationship to emotional health. Several different perspectives on the mind-body relationship, from within popular culture, philosophy and psychoanalytic literature, are compared and contrasted. The author then suggests ways in which psychodynamic insights might more effectively be brought to bear upon benign and beneficial aspects of bodily expression and offers illustrative clinical material.     

Discussion of “Three Dimensional Field Theory”

Ringstrom addresses major changes in a number of paradigms that have been occurring over the past 50 to 70 years within the larger scientific/philosophical community and, more specifically, within psychoanalysis. His overall purpose is to further delineate and integrate these paradigmatic changes and their theoretical and clinical implications for understanding psychoanalytic change. In his title, “Three Dimensional Field Theory: Dramatization and Improvisation in a Psychoanalytic Theory of Change,” Ringstrom a third “spatial” dimension to relational field theory that makes it more than a metaphor. Dramatization and improvisation does not just refer to a technical approach but, more important, provides a framework by which he understands effective therapeutic interaction. This discussant attempts to evaluate several of the paradigm shifts, namely, the informational revolution and dramatization and improvisation.     

Psychoanalysis: a dysfunctional family?

The discussion opens with an account of the author's mother's bizarre family in which a strong, charismatic grandmother maintained absolute control over her large family by encouraging a neurotic dependence in them through daily reports of their complaints.
Getting interested in psychoanalysis in an effort to understand the dynamics of this dysfunctional family, the author, a biographer, turned to the study of Melanie Klein, becoming entranced by her ideas. Her research also revealed how Klein had discouraged her followers from developing ideas that diverged in any way from her own. Her portrait of the pioneer analyst provoked intense indignation. A similar pattern of absolute loyalty to his person and theories was to be found in Freud's Secret Committee, formed primarily as a means of getting rid of Jung who had been showing disturbing signs of independence. When Ferenczi and Rank began to pursue independent lines of enquiry in their work, they too were thought to be undermining the foundations of classical psychoanalysis.
Finally, the author concludes that though there have been sorry incidents in psychoanalysis, we should be mature enough to accept both the contributions of the early pioneers and the realizations that new ideas must be permitted to evolve.     

In Defence of Naiveté: The Conceptual Status of Lagrangian Quantum Field Theory

I analyse the conceptual and mathematical foundations of Lagrangian quantum field theory (QFT) (that is, the ‘naive’ (QFT) used in mainstream physics, as opposed to algebraic quantum field theory). The objective is to see whether Lagrangian (QFT) has a sufficiently firm conceptual and mathematical basis to be a legitimate object of foundational study, or whether it is too ill-defined. The analysis covers renormalisation and infinities, inequivalent representations, and the concept of localised states; the conclusion is that Lagrangian QFT (at least as described here) is a perfectly respectable physical theory, albeit somewhat different in certain respects from most of those studied in foundational work.     

“E” Enactments in Psychoanalysis: Another Medium,Another Message

This paper explores sources of therapeutic action located in inchoate experience, in the often-preconscious resonance that is generated in that dimension of experience which we have come to regard as enacted in the transference/countertransference field. The living and working through of a wide range of problematic and reparative elements distilled in the analytic relationship are described as a crucial source of therapeutic action. A brief historical treatment of the place of enactment in different psychoanalytic traditions is followed by the explication of two different kinds of enactments: ordinary, quotidian enactments that form the daily ebb and flow or ordinary analytic process and (capital E) Enactments. The latter are highly condensed precipitates of unconscious psychic elements in patient and in analyst that mobilize our full, heightened attention and define, and take hold of, analytic activity for periods of time. Clinical vignettes by Theodore Jacobs and Margaret Black are discussed in explicating the latter distinction and considering its implications for technique.     

For the Greater Good of Psychoanalysis: Response to Carla Fischer’s Paper “Psychoanalysis and Dictatorship in Chile: A Non-Existing Relationship”

My response to Carla Fischer’s paper enlarges upon one of the powerful subthemes she introduces. Beginning with the rise of the Third Reich, there is a long history in psychoanalysis in which questionable decisions furthering the interests of the institution itself have been made at the expense of individual psychoanalysts. These conscious and unconscious choices have established an unfortunate precedent; they have had a profound effect on the culture of psychoanalysis as a whole, with technical and theoretical consequences that continue to reverberate throughout the profession. The “submission and castration” of the institution of psychoanalysis, as Fischer puts it so succinctly, have led to a loss of integrity and the sacrifice of the founding principles of a discipline that had privileged understanding, an investigative discipline that sought the truth even if that truth was a threat to the social order.     

“It's A Long Way …” to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Training Experience in Self Psychology,Intersubjectivity, and Relational Psychoanalysis

The successful experience with a Jungian analyst, research work on international economic interdependence, and the failure of a classical analysis were the preliminary steps toward the discovery of Kohut's self psychology. The comparison of epistemological principles in Jung and in Kohut and the discovery of the relational nature of experience formed the background of my professional attitude as an analyst. After an unsatisfactory, but “orthodox” supervision, training in self psychology, intersubjectivity, and relational psychoanalysis at Isipsé made it possible to integrate all previous experiences in a complex and, at the same time, clinically coherent framework.     

Rapprochement in Sight? Postmodern Family Therapy and Psychoanalysis

This paper explores aspects of the theory and practice of psychotherapy with the aim of identifying similarities in the approaches of both family therapists and psychoanalytic psychotherapists. The author calls for a dialogue between the disciplines, and makes specific reference to the potential value of this in relation to training and research.     

A Quantum Field Theory Description of Elementary Fermion “Epigenetics”

I derive a number of impressive analogies between the modifications of the elementary components of Matter, generated by an external source of interaction, and the analogous modifications of the elementary components of an Organism. I will consider the interaction between the elementary components of matter and a weak classic magnetic field. This interaction will be treated in the theoretical quantum field theory formalism.     

Dissecting Intentionality in the Lab: Meinong’s Theory

Besides presenting a phenomenological-experimental analysis of consciousness, Meinong challenged one of the major indisputable axioms of current scientific research, i.e. that perception in awareness has to be veridical on the stimulus. Meinong’s analysis of consciousness, which he conducted through a kind of dissection of its structures from a systematic and an experimental viewpoint, offers relevant insights to contemporary consciousness studies.     

Something and Nothing,Aliveness and Deadness: Discussion of “Three Dimensional Field Theory”

In this discussion of Philip Ringstrom’s provocative paper (this issue), I attempt to elaborate on several concepts: the role of “something” and “nothing” in psychoanalytic treatment, the problematic nature of the search for truth, the dialectic of aliveness and deadness, and the inevitability of improvisation in the pursuit of aliveness in the crucible of treatment. I also enumerate several transference–countertransference vulnerabilities inherent in improvisation.     

“Man Is a Wolf to Man”: Disorders of Dehumanization in Psychoanalysis

A key component of dehumanization is the loss of personal credibility experienced by victims whose trauma and abuse have gone unwitnessed or unconfirmed. The scant or doubtful attention to victimization in orthodox psychoanalytic theory, where the late introduction of the destructive instinct favored analysis of the predator, has only underscored the victim's anonymity—a conspicuous shortcoming in our time of genocide and crimes against humanity. Yet victimization, as illustrated in this paper's case material, reveals relational conflict as compelling as classical intrapsychic conflict: between urges to keep silent or to speak and between concealment and habituation to human abandonment or reparative search for witness. What therapeutic neutrality is to psychic reality, therapeutic witness is to the recovery of social reality and one's right to live in it.     

Meta—Realization in Horney and the Teaching of Psychoanalysis

Horney was the first psychoanalyst to develop a comprehensive framework for understanding character structure and character pathology, and the first to do so in experience-near terms. She uncovered the often hidden metapsychological assumptions of classical analysis and created a deeper meta-level thinking about psychological splits, including how splits can develop between assumed opposites. In the clinical moment, insight into meta-level process rests on an epistemological change in the relation between subjective and objective. Horney was an early pioneer in examining the dialectical unity of these presumed opposites. A specific proposal for training and teaching candidates in the science of subjectivity will be advanced. Systemic clinical insights in the assessment and treatment of patients are offered, as well as systemic uncovering of cultural assumptions of Western society which can impede analytic exploration of psychic conflict.     

The Power of the Spoken Word in Life,Psychiatry, and Psychoanalysis—A Contribution to Interpersonal Psychoanalysis

Starting with a 1890 essay by Freud, the author goes in search of an interpersonal psychology native to Freud's psychoanalytic method and to in psychoanalysis and the interpersonal method in psychiatry. This derives from the basic interpersonal nature of the human situation in the lives of individuals and social groups. Psychiatry, the healing of the soul, and psychotherapy, therapy of the soul, are examined from the perspective of the communication model, based on the essential interpersonal function of language and the spoken word: persons addressing speeches to themselves and to others in relations, between family members, others in society, and the professionals who serve them. The communicational model is also applied in examining psychiatric disorders and psychiatric diagnoses, as well as psychodynamic formulas, which leads to a reformulation of the psychoanalytic therapy as a process. A plea is entered to define psychoanalysis as an interpersonal discipline, in analogy to Sullivan's interpersonal psychiatry.