“I’ll Let You Be in My Dream if I Can Be in Yours.” Bob Dylan Talkin’ World War III Blues: ‘Dreaming’ Basilio Bonfiglio’s Paper

With this discussion, I dream Basilio Bonfiglio’s clinical narrative and discussion with an additional set of images and metaphors. I enter into his dreaming of considerations and reflections offering an alternative vision for the first glimmer of development, based on a sensitivity to the micro-moment polyrhythms of expression analyst and analysand weave out of experiences of emotional connection and disconnection to self and other. In this way, I dream the function of container as one kind of strategy for interactive emotional regulation. I consider emotional regulation from a vision of development as continuing experiences of first glimmers emerging out of a field of relations throughout the life span and not a developmental achievement marking a shift from primitivity to abstraction.     

Emotionally guiding our actions

If emotions have a rational role in action, then one challenge for accounting for how we can act rationally when acting emotionally is to show how we can guide our actions by our emotional considerations, seen as reasons. In this paper, I put forward a novel proposal for how this can be so. Drawing on the interconnection between emotions, cares and caring, I argue that, as the emotional agent is a caring agent, she can be aware of the emotional consideration as a pro tanto reason favouring an action choice and, even, as the reason for which she should act.     

The Content of Emotional Thoughts

Abstract

In this paper I examine Peter Goldie's theory of emotional thoughts and feelings, offered in his recent book The Emotions and subsequent articles. Goldie argues that emotional thoughts cannot be assimilated to belief or judgment, together with some added-on phenomenological component, and on this point I agree with him. However, he also argues that emotionally-laden thoughts, thoughts had, as he puts it, ‘with feeling,’ in part differ from unemotional thoughts in their content. The thought ‘the gorilla is dangerous’ when thought with an emotional feeling of fear differs in its content from the thought ‘the gorilla is dangerous’ when thought without actually feeling fear. I argue that Goldie offers no good reason to think that the difference between emotional and unemotional thoughts is found in their contents. In fact, the analogies Goldie presents to help make his case actually suggest that the contribution feelings make to the distinctive role played by emotional thoughts consists solely in their influencing the way we think emotional thoughts. However, this position is consistent with Goldie's broader point: that theories which treat emotional feelings as phenomenological afterthoughts should be rejected.     

How to Do Things with Emotional Expressions: The Theory of Affective Pragmatics

It is widely accepted that emotional expressions can be rich communicative devices. We can learn much from the tears of a grieving friend, the smiles of an affable stranger, or the slamming of a door by a disgruntled lover. So far, a systematic analysis of what can be communicated by emotional expressions of different kinds and of exactly how such communication takes place has been missing. The aim of this article is to introduce a new framework for the study of emotional expressions that I call the theory of affective pragmatics (TAP). As linguistic pragmatics focuses on what utterances mean in a context, affective pragmatics focuses on what emotional expressions mean in a context. TAP develops and connects two principal insights. The first is the insight that emotional expressions do much more than simply expressing emotions. As proponents of the Behavioral Ecology View of facial movements have long emphasized, bodily displays are sophisticated social tools that can communicate the signaler's intentions and requests. Proponents of the Basic Emotion View of emotional expressions have acknowledged this fact, but they have failed to emphasize its importance, in part because they have been in the grip of a mistaken theory of emotional expressions as involuntary readouts of emotions. The second insight that TAP aims to articulate and apply to emotional expressions is that it is possible to engage in analogs of speech acts without using language at all. I argue that there are important and so far largely unexplored similarities between what we can “do” with words and what we can “do” with emotional expressions. In particular, the core tenet of TAP is that emotional expressions are a means not only of expressing what's inside but also of directing other people's behavior, of representing what the world is like and of committing to future courses of action. Because these are some of the main things we can do with language, the take home message of my analysis is that, from a communicative point of view, much of what we can do with language we can also do with non-verbal emotional expressions. I conclude by exploring some reasons why, despite the analogies I have highlighted, emotional expressions are much less powerful communicative tools than speech acts.     

Sport and Thought. Football as therapy: A year in the life of an inner city project

‘Sport and Thought. Football as therapy, A year in the life of an inner city project’ is a paper based on a way of working that fuses football and psychodynamic thinking. The project was set up at inner city all-boys secondary school in London and was created in response to the growing need for a therapeutic intervention which was accessible to adolescent boys who would not engage via more traditional therapeutic routes. The project works with adolescents experiencing behavioural and emotional difficulties. Sport and Thought is a way of working with adolescents that fuses the sport of football, psychodynamic thinking and theory to create a space to encourage thought and act as a catalyst to promote emotional and behavioural change. Sport and Thought believes an individual’s reactions within a sporting context are no different to a societal one, and thus the sport of football can be used to enable participants to consider their own emotional and behavioural traits, and the underlying reasoning behind them.     

Relational Levels of the “Container-Contained” in Group Therapy

The cornerstone of W. R. Bion's theory of individual and group development is that thinking is a primary emotional need, and it matures in the context of social communication. Bion (1970) formulated the essential relationship between thinking and communicating in terms of the container-contained relationship. Bion (1970) described three types of communication, occurring on different levels of development: commensal, symbiotic, and parasitic. These patterns involve normal and pathological variations of the container-contained and call for different expressions of the therapist's subjectivity. In this paper, I describe each of these alterations as they apply to group therapy and to therapeutic activity. I include case examples of how I utilize the conceptual framework in my work.     

Emotions–Adaptive Standards And/Or Primitive Constructs: A Reply to Mascolo and Mancuso

Abstract

In replying to Mascolo & Mancuso's paper, I have contrasted their functionalist approach to emotional states and experience with my position on emotions as epigenetically-available primitive constructs. Biologically, Mascolo & Mancuso treat emotions as mobilizaiton in the face of discrepancies. My proposal of a four-dimensional model provides a biological grounding for the marvellous diverisyt of human emotional experience. Where Mascolo & Mancuso treat emotions as discrete entities and highlight emotion knowledge, J have suggested emotions operate as bipolar constructs, and I have highlighted experience. We should attend to emotions in terms of both knowledge and experience, but it is important to maintain the distinction     

Socratic Film

This article is about a relationship between the Socratic practice of philosophy and the aesthetic practice of watching and appreciating film. The conclusion that I defend is that certain narrative films, like the elenctic method in the hands of Socrates, are philosophical tools for examining our cognitive and emotional life and thus for gaining insight into aspects of our character. In the early sections of the article I construct an analogy between the practice of watching narrative film and the practice of self‐examination through dialogue and reflection. I argue that good aesthetic practice in film appreciation is analogous to good philosophical practice in the manner of Socrates, and I treat the elenchus as a method of self‐examination rather than of conceptual analysis and Socrates himself as an examiner of people rather than of abstract concepts. In the later sections I discuss three films directed by Christopher Nolan—Memento (2000), The Prestige (2006), and Inception (2010)—as paradigm cases of Socratic film. I argue that these films show us something about ourselves by prompting extemporaneous emotional responses and cognitive judgments that we come, reflectively, to reject.     

Metaemotional Intentionality

This article argues against two theories that obscure our understanding of emotions whose objects are other emotions. The tripartite model of emotional intentionality holds that an emotion's relation to its object is necessarily mediated by an additional representational state; I argue that metaemotions are an exception to this claim. The hierarchical model positions metaemotions as stable, epistemically privileged higher‐order appraisals of lower‐level emotions; I argue that this clashes with various features of complex metaemotional experiences. The article therefore serves dual purposes, offering metaemotions as a counterexample to an intuitive thesis about emotional intentionality, and examining their intentional structure in its own right.     

On the Role of Reparative Processes in Childhood: Pathological Development and Therapeutic Change

This article continues my discussion of the process of therapeutic change in psychodynamic child therapy. In a previous essay (Barish, 2004), I stressed the therapeutic benefit of enhancing the child's positive affects as well as developing his or her capacity to tolerate painful affects. I now propose an extension of these ideas, a perspective on the nature of psychopathology in childhood and the implications of this perspective for our understanding of the therapeutic process, based on the clinical concepts of emotional injury and normal reparative processes.

Every emotional injury evokes in the child a complex affective experience, comprised of painful emotions as well as an intensification of the child's instinctive self-protective responses—some form of withdrawal and/or retaliatory response. In normal psychological development, as in healthy biological systems, reparative processes function to heal injuries. Failure of these normal reparative processes sets in motion malignant psychological events in the mind of the child: painful affects and associated fantasies increasingly dominate the child's sense of self and others, leading to prolonged states of withdrawal and demoralization or defiant rage. The therapeutic process, especially the therapist's empathy, intervenes to arrest this malignant development, helping unlock the child's exuberant energies and restore in the child a more confident and joyful participation in life.     

Dissociative identity disorder and ambivalence

While many theorists have argued that dissociative identity disorder (DID) is a case of multiple selves or persons in a single body, I maintain that DID instead should be understood as involving a single self who suffers from significant disruptions to self-consciousness. Evidence of overlapping abilities and memories, as well as the very logic of dissociation, supports the claim that DID results from internal conflict endured by a single self. Along these lines, I will maintain that alter-formation should be understood as the result of extreme emotional ambivalence. While it is true that subjects with DID exhibit volitional conflict, as Frankfurt [1988. The Importance of What We Care About. New York: Cambridge University Press; 1999. Necessity, Volition, and Love. New York: Cambridge University Press] maintains, I argue that these incompatible volitions have a deeper source: conflicting desires and affective stances concerning basic emotional needs that are not easily abandoned. A single subject turns to different alter-personalities as a way to cope with pervasive inner conflict while at the same time hiding contradictory impulses from herself.     

Intimacies: An Integrative Multicultural Framework for Couple Therapy

Implicitly or explicitly, our ideas about intimacy are the most fundamental notions giving direction to the process of couple therapy. Yet, as a field, we have spent little time conceptualizing intimacy and even less time considering the diversity of priorities and meanings couples bring to our offices. In Part One, Varieties of Intimacy, I describe a kaleidoscope of contexts—socio‐historical, cultural, gender, life cycle, and developmental—that inform our ideas and expectations for intimacy in couples’ relationships. I highlight different spheres in which intimacy may take place such as the emotional, sexual, intellectual, or familial. I propose a starting point in which the therapist, in a collaborative manner, helps the partners articulate their yearnings and priorities in order to negotiate a shared vision. In Part Two, Conceptualizing Intimacy, I suggest an experiential definition that gives room for each partner's subjective meanings, yet consider diverse relational processes that may need to be addressed for a resilient ebb and flow of intimate experiences. In Part Three , Sexual Intimacy, I outline conditions in which sex is more likely to be experienced as intimate rather than nonintimate. Finally, in Part Four, I describe Therapeutic Principles to guide the therapist in taking couples from reactivity to dialogue to negotiations of intimacy. The integrative framework proposed here discourages monolithic a priori notions of intimacy and highlights instead: nuanced meanings, relational processes to be considered differentially, present and past emotional blocks, and a flexible clinical approach to foster conditions for the creation and resilience of intimate experiences.     

Parent Perspectives on Family Involvement in Therapeutic Foster Care

There has been an increasing focus on family involvement in the treatment of children with serious emotional disorders, but it has received only limited attention in relation to out-of-home placements. I present the findings from a qualitative study of family involvement from the perspectives of parents whose children were placed in therapeutic foster care (TFC). Parents' perspectives on their involvement in placement decisions, relationships with professionals and TFC providers, practices related to family involvement, barriers to involvement, and strategies to enhance family involvement are described. Parents of children in TFC wanted to have contact with their children and to participate in decision making. They described relationships and practices that contributed to their involvement.     

Different origins and meanings of acute acting-out in an inpatient psychotherapeutic setting

In this paper I describe four different sources of acute acting-out behaviour as may be observed in long-term hospitalised patients suffering from severe personality disorders. I hope to demonstrate that acute psychological distress does not happen in a vacuum, but that specific intrapsychic and interpersonal dynamics within the hospital setting are at the root of what appears overtly as nonspecific emotional and behavioural disturbance. I argue that the hospital team's correct insight into the factors underlying acute acting-out is crucial to the implementation of therapeutic interventions aimed to decrease the patient's disturbed state of mind.     

Atmospheres of street performance in Taipei: Affect and emotion as dynamic,simultaneous, more-than-representational experiences

Studies of street performance have highlighted its potential for creating vibrant and inclusive urban places, yet have largely neglected its atmospheric, affectual and emotional dimensions. Building on a growing body of work on atmospheres and dynamics of affect and emotion, I examine the formation of atmospheres by street performances in Taipei and its affectual and emotional resonance on space and people. I used an experimental more-than-representational methodology, including implementing a live survey questionnaire through the audience's smartphones during a performance. An atmosphere of street performance is generated through the lively interactions between the street performer, members of the audience, performance objects and the wider urban environment. Performance objects and the urban streetscape are vitalised as part of street performance, and have excessive potential in producing atmospheres. The spatio-temporal dimension of performance atmosphere is significant in generating memories and creating a therapeutic atmospheric space, experienced affectually and emotionally. I suggest that it would be helpful to see atmosphere and its affectual and emotional impact as dynamic, simultaneous experiences that people encounter as they are enmeshed within an atmosphere, such as in more-than-individual experiences or unexpected events. Within a changing atmosphere, there are multiple layers of affective and emotional outcomes, whether felt and emerging individually, and/or felt and emerging collectively.     

Weight loss as a primary objective of therapeutic groups for obese women: two preliminary studies

The studies reported here explored whether therapeutic groups for women who eat compulsively can demonstrate weight loss as a primary result as well as the improvements in emotional functioning reported by other investigators. In both studies questionnaire data showed little change in self-esteem or attitudes as measured by the Rosenberg Self-Esteem and the Eating Disorders Examination. However, interview data showed considerable changes in attitudes and emotional functioning. The initial study demonstrated no weight loss but marked changes in participants’ attitudes to themselves and food, likely to lead to weight loss. A second, longer, uncontrolled study again showed changes in emotional functioning plus weight loss of 5% or more of initial body weight at the end of the intervention in 75% of participants who completed the study (n=8) or 50% of those who were initially recruited (n=12). Weight loss has been maintained in 75% of participants at 18-month follow-up. The data are based on a small sample, which can only be suggestive but supports a further study.     

School reform disorder: Alternative audience responses to nonsense

Neither general education nor special education now offers appropriate and therapeutic treatment to all children and youth with emotional or behavioral disorders. Substantial improvements are needed in both general and special education, but the needed changes may not be those suggested by many proponents of school reform. Some suggested reforms are tenuously connected to reality in ways that suggest comedic intent or thought disorder, yet audiences typically respond as if these suggestions were both serious and rational. The disorder of school reform may be as much a problem of inappropriate audience response as it is a matter of nonsensical suggestions. One possible response to serious but highly questionable suggestions for reform is articulation of postulates on which a comprehensive educational service delivery system might be based. I present eight such postulates and correlates.This article is based on a keynote presentation at the First Annual Conference on Multiple Perspectives on Children and Adolescents with Serious Emotional Disturbance, Virginia Beach, VA, October 8, 1991. Portions of the paper are based on Kauffman and Hallahan (in press).     

Love,Poetry, and the Good Life: Mill's Autobiography and Perfectionist Ethics 1

I argue for a perfectionist reading of Mill's account of the good life, by using the failures of development recorded in his Autobiography as a way to understand his official account of happiness in Utilitarianism. This work offers both a new perspective on Mill's thought, and a distinctive account of the role of aesthetic and emotional capacities in the most choiceworthy human life. I consider the philosophical purposes of autobiography, Mill's disagreements with Bentham, and the nature of competent judges and the pleasure they take in higher culture. I conclude that Millian perfectionism is an attractive and underappreciated option for contemporary value theory.     

WHAT'S THE POINT OF ELUCIDATION?

Abstract: In this article I examine three ways in which one might interpret Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (PI). In a partial response to Hans‐Johann Glock's article in this journal, I suggest that since publication PI has, broadly speaking, been interpreted in three ways: doctrinal; elucidatory; or therapeutic. The doctrinal interpretation is shown to be, at best, difficult to sustain textually. The elucidatory (standard) interpretation, though seemingly closer to the text, is shown both to implicate Wittgenstein in some unfortunate philosophical commitments and to face a problem of “motivation.” I argue that, correctly understood, any attempt to elucidate in PI is undertaken only in pursuit of the therapeutic goal. I conclude by arguing that the therapeutic interpretation is the only interpretation that can adequately make sense of Wittgenstein's text as a whole and the metaphilosophical remarks in particular. Furthermore, it is the only interpretation that can demonstrate Wittgenstein's continued importance and relevance as a philosopher.