The Intimate Third: Toward a Theory of Coherence

The flow and cohesion of personal existing, the sense of self, is broken up by trauma. The survivor of repeated traumata is left with a deficiency of self involving a subtle disintegration of consciousness. This paper focuses on the way in which self may be fostered, building on the work of Robert Hobson. He proposed a relational means toward coherence of self. The relationship characteristic of traumatic consciousness must be transformed into the triadic relationship of “aloneness-togetherness.” Steps toward this condition resemble the emergence of self in childhood. Extracts from a therapeutic session illustrate this generative pathway. After an initial state of traumatic “adualism,” a conversation ensues which culminates in the emergence of self, the crucial forerunner of which is the creation of an “intimate third.” The third has a unifying function.     

Secondary Revision: On Rethinking the Analytic Process and Analytic Technique

The author relates aspects of his own personal history and professional development in an effort to explain the changes in his way of thinking and working as an analyst that have evolved over the past thirty years. He also includes some of his current thinking on the questions of countertransference, the uses of memory, and contemporary analytic technique.     

The Whole and the Parts: Working in the Analytic Field

Field concepts have been imported from physics into psychology and philosophy, in the work of writers such as Kurt Lewin and Maurice Merleu-Ponty. In psychoanalysis, they are found in the work of Harry Stack Sullivan, Enrique Pichon-Rivière, and Willy and Madeleine Baranger. They are essential for relational analysis, where everything than happens in the analytic situation is considered to depend on both parties of the analytic relationship. The analytic situation is understood as a two-person setup, in which neither party can be conceived without the other, because they are inescapably bound and complementary. This is called a “dynamic field,” and it corresponds to an experiential configuration that changes and evolves in time. Insight is better understood as a restructuring of the field, a gradual development of both parties' understanding of their shared unconscious situation. In this paper I discuss the main ideas posed by the Barangers, as well as my own, and present a clinical vignette to illustrate the phenomenology of the field.     

Self-Control,Intimate Partner Abuse,and Intimate Partner Victimization: Testing the General Theory of Crime in Thailand

Cities invariably have “gray” areas where formal policing and regulatory reach is relatively ineffective. By focusing on individuals or groups traditional theories of deviance fail to account for community-level processes that create local alternative norms that contribute to behavior seen as deviant by outsiders. By combining theories of space with issues of identity construction and deviance, we analyze an inner-city neighborhood in Mexico City in terms of four factors: Structural Location, Material Form, Meaningfulness, and Organizational Integration. This creates a model for understanding forms of deviance that are rooted in community processes of resistance to the dominant normative system.     

Field Theory and the Dream Sense: Continuing the Comparison of Interpersonal/Relational Theory and Bionian Field Theory

This paper is a continuation of the comparison of interpersonal/relational theory and Bionian field theory that I began in two articles that appeared in Psychoanalytic Dialogues in 2013. The paper has two sections. In the first, I discuss differences between Bionian field theory and interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis. In the second, I turn to what the two schools of field theory share.     

Repetitive Intimate Partner Victimization: An Exploratory Application of Social Learning Theory

The research literature on intimate partner violence (IPV) has documented a number of poignant facts that serve as the foundation for this study. First, IPV is prevalent, frequent, and often repetitive. Moreover, repetitive violence within an intimate relationship tends to escalate over time, both in its frequency of occurrence and in its severity. We also know that decisions to leave the relationship do not guarantee that the violence will end. In addition, the phenomenon of “mutual combatancy,” prevalent in many intimate partner relationships, suggests that both parties in this dyadic process co-share the roles of offender and victim. Finally, we know that targets of IPV, like their abusers, tend to disproportionately come from families-of-origin in which violence and aggression were directly and/or vicariously experienced. These facts suggest that one possible starting point for the exploration of repetitive intimate partner victimization (R-IPV) may derive from an inter-generational transmission, or cycle of violence theory, suggested more formally in social learning approaches to criminal and deviant behaviors. The present study examines the extent to which measures of Akers' social learning constructs are able to predict repetitive intimate partner victimization. Self-report data on intimate partner violence among a sample of college students reveal the social learning theory variables, differential association and differential reinforcement in particular, are able to predict both the prevalence and frequency of predict repetitive intimate partner victimization.     

A Discussion of “Field Theory and the Dream Sense: Continuing the Comparison of Interpersonal/Relational Theory and Bionian Field Theory”

My discussion of Dr. Stern’s comparative paper (this issue) of Relational and Bionian perspectives focuses primarily on the difficulties in comparing two psychoanalytic clinical approaches. Each theory has its underlying assumptions, vocabulary, and sometimes idiosyncratic usages of the same term. Furthermore, when one individual trained in a particular perspective attempts to compare two theories, one of which he or she is steeped in, the comparison is always challenging. It is nearly impossible to ignore our own psychoanalytic training history which surely affects one’s views since we are often speaking different languages.     

以身化梦：意象体现的理论、方法与技术探析

“意象体现”是由罗伯特·伯尼克依据分析心理学的理论创立的一种“梦的工作”方法,主张在介于意识与无意识之间的阈限状态中采用积极想象的方式对梦中意象进行再体验,通过对不同身体感受的觉知使无意识内容意识化来达到相应的治疗效果。意象体现理论主张,梦具有真实性,应当以主客体一致性的隐喻视角来看待梦,并且对梦的工作具有治疗的意义;对梦的工作应当遵循非解析工作与体验科学、阈限状态、共验交流、心理自居与发生转换四个关键原则。其具体技术过程包括工作状态的准备、进入阈限状态、对梦进行持续性体验、心理自居与发生转换、感觉融合与离开梦境五步。其方法沿革于催眠术、自由联想与积极想象。作为分析心理学中有关梦的一套前沿的思想理论以及临床心理治疗中一种创新性的梦的工作方式,意象体现具有广阔的学术研究及实际应用前景。     

Intimate Partner Violence: The Recovery Experience

This qualitative study explored the recovery experience of six women who have survived intimate partner violence. Interviews were used as an instrument to elicit the individual stories of each of these women. Qualitative analysis revealed two types of themes: process and supports. The process themes include (a) spirituality, (b) facing death, (c) future relationships and (d) hope and encouragement. The support themes include (a) professional help (effective and ineffective) and (b) informal supports (family/friends/other survivors). Implications for helping professionals include the call for increased understanding of the recovery process and the need to abandon preset agendas when working with survivors.