Theatres of the psyche

Fragments of the analytic voyage of a forty year old patient, haunted by the idea of her death since infancy when confronted with the anguish that accompanies the discovery of a potentially death dealing illness. In three years of intensive analytic work, her way of functioning psychically changed dramatically (her flight from imaginative life, total disaffectation of her emotional life, psychic deafness regarding her body and its messages ≡). These discoveries led to my analysand's resuming her psychoanalytic voyage in these words: 'Even if I am destined to die of this cancer, at least I shall have lived'.     

Synchronicity and the meaning-making psyche

This paper contrasts Jung's account of synchronicity as evidence of an objective principle of meaning in Nature with a view that emphasizes human meaning-making. All synchronicities generate indicative signs but only where this becomes a 'living symbol' of a transcendent intentionality at work in a living universe does synchronicity generate the kind of symbolic meaning that led Jung to posit the existence of a Universal Mind. This is regarded as a form of personal, experiential knowledge belonging to the 'imaginal world of meaning' characteristic of the 'primordial mind', as opposed to the 'rational world of knowledge' in which Jung attempted to present his experiences as if they were empirically and publicly verifiable. Whereas rational knowledge depends on a form of meaning in which causal chains and logical links are paramount, imaginal meaning is generated by forms of congruent correspondence-a feature that synchronicity shares with metaphor and symbol-and the creation of narratives by means of retroactive organization of its constituent elements.     

Brain and psyche in early Christian asceticism

This study is an 11-part investigation of the psychology and neuropsychology of early Christian asceticism as represented by Evagrius Ponticus (AD 345-399), the tradition's first ascetical theologian and possibly its mosfinfluential. Evagrius's biography is reviewed in the first section. The living circuinstaii and perceptual consequences of desert asceticism are considered in the second. Penitence, dispassion, and the mysticism of "pure prayer" are discussed in the third. Austerities are addressed in the fourth section, particularly fasting, prostrations, and prolonged standing. Ascetical perspectives on sleep, dreams, and the hypnogogic state are analyzed in the fifth. The depressive syndrome of acedia is discussed in the sixth. Evagrius's reports of auditory, olfactory, and visual hallucinations are analyzed in the seventh. Multiple complementary interpretations of demonic phenoniena are developed in the eighth section. Evagrius's psychotherapy for anger is reviewed in the ninth. Interpersonal relations among ascetics are considered in the tenth section. The study concludes with a summary.     

The emergence and unfolding of the psyche

This paper is a short exposition of Freud's concept of the sexual drive. My motivation for going back once more to the first introduction of sexuality understood as drive is the seeming lack of interest in the classical concept in much contemporary psychoanalytical thinking. To my mind, this prevents us from finding satisfactory solutions to such concepts as narcissism, sublimation and even the emergence and unfolding of the ego. Reading for example Winnicott's enchanting account of play, one gets the impression that Winnicott saw playing as something separate from instinctual satisfaction, from sexual fantasying and from physical sensation. Looking at this important activity in the life of young children from the point of view of drive theory, one might argue, that here we see one of the first expressions of sublimation. However, in order to fully understand this, I found it necessary to undertake a re-reading of Freud's theory of the sexual drive.     

Jung's dissociable psyche and the ec-static self

Abstract :  Much of Jung's later work assumes that the self is an  a priori  phenomenon in which centripetal dynamics dominate. There is, however, another current in Jung's writings which recognizes the self to be an emergent phenomenon. This view is increasingly prevalent in post-Jungian discourse, and Louis Zinkin's exploration of a post-Jungian-constructivist model of the self can be seen as part of this tendency.
My paper privileges an emergent understanding of the self by focusing on the 'unravelling', 'de-centring', centrifugal experiences of otherness in the psyche. It offers a post-Jungian reading of a number of writers who have been influenced by the psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche and proposes a model of the self which focuses on our fantasies, terrors and longings about coming undone and bringing others undone.
This model is then linked to Judith Butler's understanding of the self as an ec-static phenomenon, in which the self is, of necessity, outside itself, such that 'there is no final moment in which my return to myself takes place'. I suggest that Jung's early clinical researches into the dissociability of the psyche and the clinical tools which he developed as a result of this work are especially suitable for engaging with these emergent, centrifugal dynamics.     

Jung,Winnicott and the divided psyche

In his review of Memories Dreams Reflections, Winnicott diagnosed Jung as suffering from a psychic split, and characterized the content and the structure of analytical psychology as primarily moulded and conditioned by Jung's own defensive quest for a ‘self that he could call his own’. This pathologizing analysis continues to be endorsed by contemporary Jungian writers. In this paper I attempt to show that Winnicott's critique is fundamentally misguided because it derives from a psychoanalytic model of the psyche, a model that regards all dissociation as necessarily pathological. I argue that Jung's understanding of the psyche differs radically from this model, and further, that it conforms by and large to the kind of dissociative model that we find in the writings of Frederic Myers, William James and Theodor Flournoy. I conclude that a fruitful relationship between psychoanalysis and analytical psychology must depend upon an awareness of these important differences between the two psychic models.     

Foundations of educational psychology: Howard Gardner's neoclassical psyche

This article is a theoretical examination of the implications of Howard Gardner's work in developmental and educational psychology (1983, 1993, 1999a, 1999b) for the structure of the psyche. The author accepts as axiomatic, in the context of this article, Gardner's educational manifesto (1999a) that all students should be taught disciplinary understandings of truth, beauty, and goodness. Rational inferences are then made indicating that the psyche that Gardner intends to educate and help develop is in the form of a neoclassical psyche and that it is structured by the capacities to know truth, to love beauty, and to will goodness.     

Dante's Comedy: Precursors of psychoanalytic technique and psyche

This paper uses a literary approach to explore what common ground exists in both psychoanalytic technique and views of the psyche, of 'person'. While Western literature has developed various views of psyche and person over centuries, there have been crystallizing, seminal portraits, for instance Shakespeare's perspective on what is human, some of which have endured to the present. By using Dante's Commedia , particularly the Inferno , a 14th century poem that both integrates and revises previous models of psyche and personhood, we can examine what features of psyche, and 'techniques' in soul-healing psychoanalysts have inherited culturally. Discovering basic features of technique and model of psyche we share as psychoanalysts permits us to explore why we have differences in variations on technique and models of inner life.     

Writing brains: tracing the psyche with the graphical method

At the end of the 19th century, the graphic method kindled attempts to use it for investigating psychic processes. In Germany, Hans Berger took up this line of research, later to become the pioneer of electroencephalography (EEG). This trajectory of Berger's work is analyzed as an "enabling constraint" guiding him toward the EEG at a time when nobody else was pursuing this line of research and also causing serious methodological problems. In the epistemological perspective of this analysis, many of his problems extend beyond the local context of his work and point toward ambiguities surrounding the project to trace the psyche with the graphic method. From the mid-1930s, the EEG inspired ongoing attempts to decipher the specific meanings of these recordings, and large ensembles of machinery were mobilized, molding concepts of the psyche according to the results and the specifications of the graphic method.     

Transference and dream in illness: waxing psyche, waning body

In times of change, crisis, and illness, the excited points of an individual's personal history are reactivated within the transference and may also be noted by observing countertransference. When there are anomalies in the emotional and imaginal circle of the therapeutic relationship, there is occasion for repetition and/or a transformative opening. In some cases, there is simultaneous treatment of severe developmental fixations and compulsions, and issues of individuation. Images may emerge both from the personal field and from the collective and archetypal imagination. These may be expressions of interpersonal experience, intrapsychic dynamics, and physical as well as psychic state.     

The 5th Annual psyche awards: celebrating excellence in scholarship

The Psyche Awards were developed to recognize the best journal articles published during the previous year. Each award confronts a specific topic within the field of mental health care, identifying articles that integrate the science and practice of psychology. For the current awards, 161 journals were screened, and 223 relevant articles were identified. The papers were then narrowed down to 46 papers distributed across 11 award categories. A panel of four expert judges read each article and rated all papers for their contribution to the field. The current award categories highlight some of the best articles published during 2021, capturing important information about psychological assessment, treatment of depression, working with suicidal clients, technology-assisted psychotherapy, the impact of Covid-19 on mental health, lessons from a review of history, recent innovations in the field, and strategies to expand the integration of science and practice.