John Beebe in conversation with Beverley Zabriskie

John Beebe speaks with Beverley Zabriskie about the central motifs of his life and depth psychological experience, and how these informed his choice of vocation as psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, educator and author. Dr. Beebe narrates how he moved beyond the fate assigned the son of a needy mother and abandoning father. He illustrates how the role his family expected him to fill constellated archetypal motifs--the magical or divine curative child, the whiz kid--from which he had then to disidentify for the sake of becoming an individual with a personal voice and capacity to express his own true values. He tells of his differentiation and search for completion through the perspective of Jung's psychological types theory. He also reflects on the evolution of Jungian analytic theory and practice generally, his editorship of the JAP and the San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, his confrontation with analytic homophobia, and the emerging quality of professional and personal relationships in relation to ethics and to love. He assesses Jung's courage and integrity as displayed through the release of Jung's Red Book, and his own quest for an organic and psychological moral stance expressed in his benchmark book, Integrity in Depth.     

Clinical Commentary

Abstract

This paper is the narrative of a first-time father with a son born seven weeks early by Caesarean section. Against the anxiety and trauma of his infant's birth and his wife's illness, another inner darker drama is being relived. Michael shows all the wounds of a battered child. He asks two awesome questions - Will I be to my son as my father was to me? Will my son be to me as I was to my father? Fearful and at first unvoiced questions, the developing interviews gave them a voice. We respected Michael's sharing of the early and fearful days and nights when his infant first came home. We sometimes found it hard to empathize with his running away to hide in work, until we understood what he was hiding from. Most poignant was his struggle with his anger and hurt with his father and his desire to understand, ‘Why?’, so that he would not be like this to his son. We saw a sensitive revelation of life being born inside him anew, as he made contact with his real infant and his psychic infant within. Of particular interest was the therapeutic use of the research interview space and the interviewer.     

Revenge of the fathers Incest and the male therapist

Abstract

This paper argues that the socio-psychological foundation of incestuous relations between father and daughter resides in the primordial rivalry between father and son and is a manifestation of the property relations existing between them throughout the period of patriarchy. After an attempt to trace this rivalry along a path through Western civilization by summarizing evidence from both religious and mythological sources, I introduce it into our own times by using two case illustrations from my own clinical work. Here I claim that when a male counsellor/therapist engages a sexually abused female patient he, at the same time, encounters the incestuous father in a potentially rivalrous struggle over the patient. For genuine healing to take place in the patient, the counsellor/therapist must form an alliance with the father and utilize his hidden value in enhancing his own therapeutic capability.

I began by stating that particular clinical complexities exist when male therapists engage with female clients who have been the victims of paternal incest. I then postulated the idea that the socio-psychological foundation of such relationships is the primordial rivalry between father and son and is in fact a particular manifestation of the property relations existing between them. I then traced this father/son rivalry along its path down through Western civilization via Jerusalem and the Judaic/Christian religions, and Athens with its early creation myth, and the somewhat later myth of Oedipus. I then pursued the course of its influence to our own times, to the incestuous father/daughter relationship, and, using examples from my own clinical work, I attempted to show how this father/son rivalry survives as a powerfully pervasive influence in the clinical relationship between the female patient who has experienced paternal incest and her male therapist.     

The interiorizing movement of logical life: reflections on Wolfgang Giegerich

The following article is an account of my discovery of and subsequent immersion in Wolfgang Giegerich's work. A sampling of his voluminous writings on the soul is set out to illustrate how he attempts to penetrate thinkingly into psychological phenomena and his claim that this inevitably brings out their internal dialectic. The article summarizes his critiques of Jung, Hillman, and The Red Book: Liber Novus.     

A conversation with Dr Michael Fordham. Interview by James Astor

In this interview in Dr Fordham's 83rd year he describes how he started to work with children, and how Mrs Jung was supportive. He talks about the initial suspicion this interest generated in the wider Jungian community. He refers to his acceptance of and interest in the psychotic elements in child analysis and his transference-based approach to working with these elements. He reflects on his own birth, his work with evacuee children in hostels during the war years and the politics of supervision. He describes the core Jungian concepts which underpinned his work and the theoretical differences from the Kleinian and Anna Freudian positions.     

The Dialectics of Relational Psychoanalysis and Group Psychotherapy: Commentary on Paper by Robert Grossmark

In this commentary, I address the question of why so few psychoanalysts become group therapists as I respond to the thoughtful and impressive paper written by Robert Grossmark on his work with a psychotherapy group, now in its 10th year of meeting. Prior to discussing the clinical material, and to set the stage for a discussion of Grossmark's work, I comment on my sense of the prevailing attitudes on group affiliations and group therapy within our culture and field as they have progressed over time. I then discuss my reactions to Grossmark's handling of his group session. Many of his conceptualizations of group treatment are in accordance with my own beliefs. There are some differences, however, in how I view my role as a leader and some ideas I have about group treatment that Grossmark did not address.     

An architect of the golden years

William H. Morse has played a major role in the experimental analysis of behavior. His view of operant behavior as the outcome of differential reinforcement provides an invaluable lesson in scientific research and theory. He studied schedules of reinforcement to generate an in-depth analysis of the complex interactions existing when contingencies exert their control over behavior. He has been instrumental in showing how behavior is determined by the dynamic interaction of factors brought into play by the imposition of any schedule, and he has a remarkably intuitive understanding of the nature of these determining variables. Some of these causal events are imposed directly by the schedule, but others arise in a more indirect manner through necessary constraints. In Morse's view, schedules can be more fundamental in determining behavior than are the scheduled events themselves. Behavior is the shaped product of an organism's history in combination with present environmental conditions. His impact deserves to be more than historical: A study of his work continues to reward the reader with exciting insights into the nature of behavioral control.     

From canon to context

This article traces the development of my own scholarly work on Paul from the individualism of “justification by faith” as the theological canon during my student period, to studies of Paul within his historical context and his efforts to unite Jews and non-Jews. The changes in my own studies took place within the larger shift in New Testament studies from a German, Protestant hegemony to an American, non-confessional scene. The historical-critical method was supplemented with other methods, illustrated here by studies of honour and shame societies. In conclusion, I outline how these changes have influenced my own teaching of Paul, as a contextual theologian.     

The paternal function in Winnicott: The psychoanalytical frame

My first aim has been to identify the implicit assumptions underlying Winnicott's detailed notes on a fragment of an analysis dating from 1955 and published after his death. The importance given by Winnicott to the father figure as early as 1955 is one of my discoveries; another is the deep Freudian roots of his thinking. In this essay I propose a new way of linking together the concepts of ‘paternal function’ and the ‘psychoanalytical frame’. Developing my hypothesis, I compare my reading of Winnicott and my way of reading José Bleger's study on the frame. Like Winnicott, I explore in detail a process of discovery, focusing on what the analyst and the patient are nor fully aware of …'as yet'. I am not proposing to unify Winnicott's and Bleger's thinking. My aim is to avoid the pitfall of eclecticism and, in so doing, to recognize both the related depths they sound in their thinking and their otherness. I want to share with the readers their ‘meeting’ in my mind.     

Does Gustave Dax deserve to be forgotten? The temporal lobe theory and other contributions of an overlooked figure in the history of language and cerebral dominance.

Gustave Dax played an important role in the early history of cerebral dominance for language. He not only sent the 1836 memoir of Marc Dax, his deceased father, to Paris in 1863, but saw to it that this important document was published before Paul Broca's own article on cerebral dominance appeared later in 1865. In addition, he supported his father's contention that the left hemisphere is special for speech with 140 additional clinical cases. Gustave Dax's own unique contribution, however, has been almost completely overlooked. Although his theory lacked specificity, he preceded Meynert, Schmidt, and Wernicke in suggesting that the left temporal lobe may be especially important for speech.     

The Unfreezing of Time in the Haunted Hours

When trauma shattered the cohesion of the self and “destroyed time” for my patient Bob, he managed to hold himself more or less together with the help of haunting ghosts. This paper is the story of how my connection with Bob deepened as I eventually learned to honor his ghosts through access to my own dissociated memories of traumatic loss that had left a ghostly presence in its wake. I hope to show how a difficult and complex immersion into haunted worlds—Bob’s and my own—created the possibility for new relational depths and the reemergence of Bob’s creativity.     

Reflections for Clinical Pastoral Education Students in Psychiatric Settings

This article focuses on Donald Capps’s books on mental illness. In doing so I highlight three key insights from Capps that I have applied in my own ministry with persons with mental illness in various psychiatric hospitals. These insights, together with my own experience as a chaplain, lead to three practical lessons for clinical pastoral education students in psychiatric settings. I provide some context for my interest in mental illness and my friendship with Capps, as well as some background regarding how Capps’s writings on mental illness fit with certain broader themes in his own work as a pastoral theologian. This essay is personal throughout.     

Coping with the Angry Patient

This patient is enacting two chronic maladaptive patterns. In one he alternates between the role of victim and abuser while inducing the therapist to play the counterrole. He tries to master the abuse he suffered passively as a child by becoming abusive with the therapist and having her experience what it feels like to be mistreated. My effort would be to interpret this pattern even while acknowledging and absorbing some degree of his anger. In a second pattern he acts like an angry, demanding child in an effort to extract nurturance and special treatment from the therapist. I would help him explore this posture in terms of his deprived background and its maladaptiveness in his current life. Finally, I present vignettes from my own practice to demonstrate how I work with patients' anger when it is expressed indirectly rather than in Mr. P's very direct manner.     

God's point of view: A reply to Mander

According to one antitheist argument, God cannot know what it is like to be me because He, who is necessarily unlimited and necessarily incorporeal, cannot have my point of view. In his recent article, William J. Mander tries to demonstrate that God can indeed have His own point of view and my point of view at the same time by providing examples that seem to motivate his claim. I argue that none of his examples succeeds in this task. I introduce a different objection to the antitheist argument that appeals to the Thomistic principle regarding divine attributes.     

The generalization of newly acquired behaviors by parents and child across three different settings

The generalization of newly learned behaviors to different settings on the part of an autistic child and his parents was investigated by means of a multiple baseline design. Contingency management techniques were taught to the parents while they interacted with their child in a training apartment equipped with observation facilities. In order to assess whether the parents generalized the use of these techniques, data were gathered at their own home. Data were also gathered in the child's school in order to ascertain whether changes brought about in the child's behavior in the training apartment generalized to the school situation. It was concluded that the child's behavior was responsive to the contingencies of each particular environment. Generalization did not occur until the contingencies and stimulus cues were specifically designed to promote a change in behavior in each setting.     

THE FATHER,THE FATHER FUNCTION,THE FATHER PRINCIPLE: SOME CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOANALYTIC DEVELOPMENTS

The author discusses Freud's thinking on the role of the father, as well as that of later French theoreticians. To illustrate his remarks, he draws on the poetry of Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1912–1987), a Brazilian poet whose work often dealt with themes of the father, the family, and his own paternal relationship. The author also discusses the psychic formation of the father principle and how this may be evident in the clinical analytic setting, even when the analyst's approach privileges field theory, intersubjectivity, or other concepts emphasizing the relationship between analyst and patient.     

The poet as prophet: a psychoanalytic perspective

The poet spins a public fantasy, created from his own private daydreams and speaking to the unconscious fantasies of his audience. He presents a socially acceptable form of expression of forbidden wishes and conflicts. A process of mutual exculpation is set up between the poet and his audience. For a special group the work of the poet may also make possible the alleviation of pathogenic anxieties. An examination of the play, The Beard, indicates how an artist may intuit and articulate changes in sexual morality. The poet rebels against the constraints of society, thereby helping his audience to rebel without guilt. He may be the herald of a changing morality, and even more, his art may become an instrument for such change.     

Collaboration and Guided Discovery

Collaboration and guided discovery, collectively described as collaborative empiricism, are two primary features of Aaron T. Beck’s Cognitive Therapy (CT) that remained central to his work throughout his long and productive career. This commentary highlights how collaboration and guided discovery were described during the early development of CT. In addition, conversations with Beck are cited that reveal how his own life may have influenced their inclusion and importance in his therapy.