Ongoing change in psychoanalytic theory implications for analysis of religious experience

Hans Loewald (1980) once made the distinction between ghosts and ancestors, the former always wanting to return to the land of the living, the latter being able to rest in peace and live forth through their progeny in the present generation. Extending this metaphor, Stephen Mitchell (1991) has noted that the intellectual integrity and vitality of psychoanalysis depends on our shifting our view of Freud from an unburied ghost who haunts us to an honored ancestor. I argue that perhaps nowhere is Freud's enduring presence greater than in psychoanalytic perspectives on religion, and it is often as an unburied ghost. Ongoing change in psychoanalytic theory, however, affords respectful amendment to his work in a way that allows Freud to be a dearly honored ancestor from whom we are all psychoanalytic descendents. Three developments in psychoanalytic theory have special implication for the analysis of religious experience. These areas of change pertain to contemporary understanding of illusion, narrative, and social constructivism. I offer in conclusion seven points for further consideration.     

On knowing one's patient inside out: The aesthetics of unconscious communication∗1

“Knowing one's patient inside out” is a metaphor that is intended to capture the paradoxical quality of the intersubjective field that we call the analytic relationship. The interface among trauma, dissociation, and regression is discussed in the context of unconscious communication as a transferential enactment of unsymbolized experience.The view is offered that for certain patients in particular, past experience is not so much unconscious as “frozen in time” and that a key element of the psychoanalytic relationship is bridging dissociated aspects of self through the creation of a dyadic experiential field that is both “inside” and “outside.” The writings of Michael Balint, D. W. Winnicott, and several other British object relational theorists are explored in the context of a contemporary interpersonal psychoanalytic perspective.     

Binocular Vision in the Total Situation

This paper investigates the concept of “total situation” which, even though introduced into psychoanalytic thinking via sister disciplines, such as sociology, the neurosciences, etc., has gradually acquired a relatively prominent position in current therapeutic practice. It is used as a metaphor for the envelopment of the unfolding transferential and related events in the analytic process. Irrespective of whether one focuses on the individual analytic condition or the group-analytic one, contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives include both the bi-personal unconscious interactions and the various levels of the total situation in their conceptualizations of the nature of the process. Such a complex approach in conceptualization can only be achieved through the so-called binocular vision of the analyst.     

Commentary on Steven H. Cooper’s Paper “Blurring Boundaries or Why Do We Refer to Sexual Misconduct With Patients as ‘Boundary Violation’”

In this commentary on Steven H. Cooper’s paper, the author acknowledges that the term boundary violation presents a vexing problem when we try to integrate it with the traditional use of the term boundary in psychoanalytic thought. He suggests that the two discourses represent two separate but somewhat related levels of discourse and that overlap occurs in some areas but not in others. While the use of “boundary violations” to describe ethical misconduct presents problems, the author suggests that it may be useful for some analysts who have experienced a collapse of analytic space and can no longer “play” in a symbolic realm. He also suggests that we may be stuck with the term because of the unconscious function it serves for the analytic community.     

Getting Home: A Discussion of “Accompaniment in Jazz and Psychoanalysis”

Situating his current paper (this issue) within the developing dialogue between psychoanalysis and music, as well as within the evolution of Markman’s own definitive contributions to that dialogue, this discussion identifies Markman’s inspired, embodied musicality as the primary force animating Markman’s writing and clinical work. Markman’s remarkable taxonomy of rhythmic styles of psychoanalytic accompaniment, formed entirely by his clinical experience, is highlighted and elaborated. The value of music as a source of metaphor is contrasted with an understanding of the actuality of music as a dimension of psychical life that is cultivated and healed through psychoanalytic accompaniment. Using “process notes” from a music documentary, the power of actual music is located in the fabric of culture, conducted through musical sound and forms of movement, including the rhythmic practice of the psychoanalytic frame and the antiphonic discourse of psychoanalytic process.     

Neuropsychoanalytic Explorations: Linking Practice,Theory, and Research

ABSTRACT

Clinical vignettes along with applicable neuroscientific research findings are considered for the purpose of examining the utility of neuropsychoanalysis to psychoanalytic thought and practice. Several fundamental psychoanalytic concepts are revisited along both lines. Among them are: identification, embodiment, attachment, drive, danger situations, dreams, memory, metaphor, conflict, defense. In the process, the metapsychology of the “mental apparatus” gains renewed attention. The article uses instances of three different clinical situations as moments open to neuro-psychoanalytic explorations of several basic psychoanalytic propositions: on the couch; on the phone; in the chair.     

PATIENT‐ANALYST “WITHNESS”: ON ANALYTIC “PRESENCING,” PASSION,AND COMPASSION IN STATES OF BREAKDOWN,DESPAIR, AND DEADNESS

This paper focuses on the analyst's “presencing” (being there) within the patient's experiential world and within the grip of the psychoanalytic process, and the ensuing deep patient–analyst interconnectedness, as a fundamental dimension of analytic work. It engenders new possibilities for extending the reach of psychoanalytic treatment to more disturbed patients. Here patient and analyst forge an emergent new entity of interconnectedness or “withness” that goes beyond the confines of their separate subjectivities and the simple summation of the two. Using a detailed clinical illustration of a difficult analysis with a severely fetishistic‐masochistic patient, the author describes the kind of knowledge, experience, and powerful effects that come into being when the analyst interconnects psychically with the patient in living through the process, and that relate specifically to the analyst's compassion.     

Review Essay: Constructivism with a Human Face

Irwin Hoffman's book Ritual and Spontaneity includes, but goes well beyond, his series of seminal papers—written over the past several decades—developing a psychoanalytic, constructivist perspective. A new, existential framework depicts what Hoffman calls the “psychobiological bedrock” at the core of the human process of constructing meaning—the lifelong effort to create a livable, subjective world in face of our ever present sense of loss, suffering, and, ultimately, mortality.

This review describes Hoffman's encompassing, existential perspective and discusses how, within this framework, he uses his dialectical sensibility to frame our understanding of both parenting and analysis as “semisacred” activities. The “dialectic of ritual and spontaneity”—the vital clash between disciplined adherence to the analytic frame and personally expressive deviations from it—represents the creative tension between the “magical” dimension of analytic authority and the healing influence of a genuinely expressive human relationship. Hoffman's perspective on the self-interested, “dark side” of the analytic relationship is compared with Winnicott's views on the vital, therapeutic role of “hate” and the paradoxical process by which the patient comes to “use” the analyst.

Unlike most postmodernist “constructivists,” Hoffman openly reveals his underlying belief in certain “transcultural, transhistorical universals”—his “psychobiological bedrock.” In acknowledging these “essentials” (assumptions about human nature) that in some form are integral, yet often hidden, elements of any system of thought, Hoffman saves his own dialectical constructivism from falling into dichotomous (constructivist vs. essentialist) thinking.     

Principles of coparticipant inquiry: An introductory outline and implications for therapeutic action

Abstract

Historically, two paradigms have been dominant in clinical psychoanalysis: the classical paradigm, which views the impersonal analyst as objective mirror, and the interpersonal/relational model, which views the analyst as intersubjective participant-observer. An evolutionary shift in psychoanalytic consciousness has, however, been quietly taking place, giving rise to coparticipant inquiry, a third paradigm that integrates the individualistic emphasis of classical theory and the social focus of participant-observation, avoiding the reductionism of each. This new perspective, which is rooted in the radical teachings and clinical experiments of Sandor Ferenczi, represents a significant shift in analytic theory and has major clinical implications. This essay articulates the seven guiding principles of coparticipant inquiry and reviews its contribution to the psychoanalytic theory of therapeutic action. The curative process of reconstructive new experience in the analytic situation, referred to as the “living through” process, is seen to subtend curative change, for both patient and analyst. The inherent mutuality and bi-directionality of this beneficial “living through” process is examined in both its direct and its dialectic coparticipatory aspects.     

Interrogating Integration, Dissenting Dis-integration: Multiplicity as a Positive Metaphor in Therapy and Theology

The term “integration” has long been used as a metaphor for psychological health and wholeness, and a therapeutic goal. It is counterposed to related conceptions of pathology, such as “disintegration,” “fragmentation” and “splitting.” Christian theology has similarly framed salvation as “at-onement” vs. sin as alienation. Contemporary psychologies have begun to contest the hegemony of the “One,” leading to a number of paradigms of health that do not privilege “integration” as the primary model (e.g., feminist, postmodern, and relational-psychoanalytic). The seeds of a positive view of multiplicity already exist in earlier psychoanalytic models. This paper will argue for valuing multiplicity in psychotherapy as a way of conceptualizing both health and a goal of treatment. Re: pastoral psychotherapy in particular, multiplicity will be shown to have fruitful parallels in a constructive Trinitarian theology of multiplicity of God as a framework for interrogating “integration,” and claiming “dis-integration” as psycho-spiritual dissent and creativity.     

Three Dimensional Field Theory: Dramatization and Improvisation in a Psychoanalytic Theory of Change

This paper explores the three-dimensional (3D) field of psychoanalytic practice in four parts. It first begins with the radical shift in epistemology from Freud’s energy theory–based metapsychology to one based in information theory. This shift altered the classical theory of change—based on “cause and effect” of energic forces—to a contemporary one based on patterning of information in the field. This latter view posits that change in living systems is constant, though it operates in two distinct manners: (a) change that keeps living systems the same, that is, “1st Order Change,” in relationship to (b) novel change referred to as “2nd Order Change.” The information-based epistemological view argues that all of the information necessary for determining change in any psychotherapy exists in every session of the 3D field of every treatment. This raises the question in the second part of how this information is accessed in the field, the answer of which explores the functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain along with their asymmetrical interdependence. While understanding their asymmetrical operation is necessary, it is not sufficient for discerning what truly matters to the analytic participants. This leads to the third part regarding how the experience of what “rings” true is dependent upon the six axes of truth in every 3D field. The fourth part delves into how dramatization and improvisation provide aesthetically charged ways of considering change in psychoanalytic treatment. Dramatic repetition reflects the constancy of change which keeps the system the same (1st Order), whereas improvisation takes up how the analyst and patient learn how to play with possibility amidst the stasis of their emerging repetitions, therefore capturing 2nd Order Change.     

CLINICAL WINNICOTT: TRAVELING A REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

The author contends that, contrary to the usual perception that Winnicott followed a linear progression “through pediatrics to psychoanalysis,” Winnicott's vision was always a psychoanalytic one, even during his early pediatric work. His place in the development of psychoanalytic theory is highlighted, and the author discusses such key Winnicottian concepts as transitional space, the false self, and the use of the object. Winnicott's unique approach to the form and value of analytic interpretation is particularly emphasized, and his thoughts on the treatment of depression are also addressed, as well as his distinction between regression and withdrawal. Included is a summary of convergences and divergences between Winnicott's thinking and that of Bion.     

The Ties That Bind

In this paper, I define a psychoanalytic object broadly, as an object that “matters” to an individual. My focus is on how someone becomes a psychoanalytic object and how our ideas about this process lead us to a particular conception of an analyst’s mutative role. Further, I examine the function of a psychoanalytic object in one’s inner world. One view of the object leads to a “dynamic” emphasis, examining the object’s role in a system of unconscious conflict and compromise, whereas a second, overlapping line of thought leads to a “structural” focus, emphasizing the object’s role in developing, stabilizing, and often maintaining compromised internal psychic capacities. These capacities are developmental achievements that form the context of conflict and compromise. Dynamic and structural emphases lead to different clinical stances. In considering the object and evolving conceptions of the object within Freudian psychoanalysis (my focus), we simultaneously review the evolution of Freudian psychoanalysis itself.     

A Few More Thoughts on the Frame: Forms,Functions, and Meanings

This response to discussants David Scharff, Juan Tubert-Oklander, Boaz Shalgi, and Reyna Hernández-Tubert takes up some further considerations bearing on the variety of forms, functions, and meanings of an analytic frame. The metaphor of a “fractal,” drawn from chaos theory, is discussed, in terms of its relevance to the relationship between therapeutic process and the structure of the analytic frame, and between content and process. Multiple functions of the frame, both practical and symbolic, are considered. “Structuring” and “holding” dimensions of the frame are discussed, with particular reference to Winnicott's groundbreaking paper, “Hate in the Countertransference,” as well as his analysis of Margaret Little.     

Response to Safran: The Development of Critical Psychoanalytic Sensibility

Jeremy D. Safran feels that my views regarding the relative merits of case studies and systematic empirical research are unnecessarily polarizing. I feel that, on the contrary, I'm offering bridges between my perspective and those of researchers on psychoanalytic process and outcome in two ways. One is through my own constructivist critique of traditional positivist case studies and theorizing based upon clinical experience. The second is through conceptualizing the place of systematic research within a constructivist paradigm. I am arguing that its place can be no different than that of case studies. Both generate possibilities for any particular analyst or analytic therapist to have in mind as he or she works with a particular patient at a particular moment. Safran locates the destructive effects of scientism with “biologically oriented researchers and cognitive therapists.” In my view, it might be convenient if the problem could be located exclusively with them, but the fact is that psychoanalytic researchers, as I demonstrate, are working largely within the same paradigm as their adversaries in the research world. That paradigm erroneously privileges systematic research as hypothesis-testing, whereas case studies are relegated to the status of anecdotal, hypothesis-generating work. I describe what I call “nonlinear constructivist learning” as the kind of “generalization” that case studies can yield and that is optimal for our field.     

《周易》对探索潜意识启示

隐喻是一种语言现象,也是一种认知方式。《周易》是一套复杂的隐喻认知系统,“象”与“理”都是认识事物的思维方式。潜意识通过心理表征以隐喻的方式呈现,精神分析师借助隐喻方法来分析潜意识。将潜意识的呈现形式(如梦、口误等)理解为某种“象”,把“象”作为表征潜意识的符号与工具,通过“观象、取象、辨象、立象、尽意”这个认知过程,实现对“理”(潜意识)的理解。通过“象思维”来探索潜意识对中国人来说具有文化上亲和性,克服精神分析中的“无结构性”与“语言的限制”。     

An Analyst Has a Birthday - Can Forgiveness Heal?

Forgiveness is a challenging endeavor in human experience and in clinical work. Is it an important and/or legitimate analytic concept? Long the province of theologians and philosophers, forgiveness has had little theoretical place in the psychoanalytic lexicon. This paper considers the analytic place of forgiveness through a treatment that was shadowed by two lost mothers – the patient’s and analyst’s - in the consulting room. The patient’s question, “must we forgive to heal?” will be examined in this story of healing for both him and his analyst.     

Different Strokes in Boundary Artistry: Commentary on Cooper’s “Blurring Boundaries or Why Do We Refer to Sexual Misconduct With Patients as ‘Boundary Violation’”

In this commentary, the useful idea of psychoanalytic process as boundary art is taken up, elaborated, and further conceptualized. Two registers of psychic experience are utilized: the mutual and asymmetric modes of relating inherent in and definitional of analytic process. In line with Steven H. Cooper’s ideas, the givenness of boundaries in the mutual realm constitute the psychic matter of self-other differentiation. In contrast, the asymmetrical register marks boundaries as asserted and intended to be actualized in behavior. The usefulness of “boundary violation” as an expression of a perversion of ethical commitments is construed as a justified and necessary phrase. Boundaries in the asymmetrical register, continually asserted, make play and flex in the mutual register possible and in this way form a dialectical relation. In concert with Cooper, these assertions reflect the power of boundaries to ‘allow us to get lost.’ Fallibilities in the ways theories can be coopted to erase (and thereby truncate) aspects of the psychoanalytic process are described as a misuse (violation?) of boundary art.     

Gender constructions from a project on sex offenders

Abstract

The four-year group therapy of 16 sex offenders in prison was videotaped, and 21 sessions were carefully transcribed and analysed by means of conversation analysis and analysis of metaphor and narration. These qualitative methods are apt for verbal data and can be combined with psychoanalytic thinking in a productive way. New forms of process analysis can be developed. The results presented here are selected to relate to the topic of how the imprisoned group therapy participants constructed “gender” by ways of speaking about themselves, women, and their victims, young girls. The results show that it would be a mistake to think of these ways of speaking as if they could be ignored in favour of “deeper” motives, lying “behind” the words. Our results show how unconscious constructions of gender are not beyond language, but in language. “Doing gender” is a conversational practice.