Unconscious Communication in the Intersubjective Analytic Field at Times of Separation,Loss, and Termination

ABSTRACT

Unconscious communication, like transference-countertransference, is ubiquitous in life and in the psychoanalytic process. Regardless of a clinician’s theoretical perspective, and despite differences in clinical technique, Freud’s advice to turn our unconscious to the patient’s unconscious “like a receptive organ” has guided generations of analysts toward deeper exploration of the countertransference in the intersubjective analytic field (Freud, 1912a, p. 115). In this clinical article, the recognition and use of unconscious communication, from the ordinary to the more extraordinary or uncanny, is described at moments of separation as harbinger of loss and, ultimately, termination. Such moments hold potential for a depth of emotional resonance with and accessibility to our patient’s psychic realities that may otherwise be unavailable due to our systemic defense against a shared existential anxiety that all things come to an end. The emergence of unconscious communication via the analyst’s reverie and dreams are considered an opening of potential space where ending can be conceived as a bearable thought—a transitional organizing experience for the dyad.     

Wishful Thinking and the Unconscious: A Reply to Gouws

Abstract

This paper argues against the view that the Freudian unconscious can be understood as an extension of ordinary belief-desire psychology. The paper argues that Freud’s picture of the mind challenges the paradigm of folk psychology, as it is understood by much contemporary philosophy of psychology and cognitive science. The dynamic unconscious postulated by psychoanalysis operates according to rules and principles that are distinct in kind from those rules that organise rational and conscious thought. Psychoanalysis offers us a radical reconception of our ordinary way of thinking about our own minds.     

Anna Freud’s Diagnostic Profile: Then and Now

ABSTRACT

This article argues that Anna Freud’s diagnostic aim of assessing a child’s developmental status to obtain a picture of the child’s total personality remains central and relevant to contemporary child mental health. It introduces the work of a research group at the Anna Freud Centre which re-examined Anna Freud’s Provisional Diagnostic Profile (1965), in 2001 and again in 2016, to include contemporary developmental psychology and attachment research. The resulting 2016 revised Diagnostic Profile is published in this issue for the first time.     

Neuroscience and the Embodiment of Psychoanalysis—With an Appreciation of Damasio’s Contribution

ABSTRACT

This article contends that psychoanalysis benefits from a neurobiological perspective. It is suggested that Antonio Damasio’s view on the neurobiology of mind and self is particularly useful in this regard. The article presents a review and discussion of Damasio’s basic assumptions on body, emotion, feeling, unconscious and conscious mind, and embodied self. It explains how Freud’s hypotheses that ego is first and foremost a bodily ego is underpinned by contemporary neurobiological research and theory. A clinical illustration highlights that changes in sense of self encompasses changes throughout the whole body, as felt from the inside and as observed from the outside.     

Enactment as Unconscious Communication

ABSTRACT

I explore the way in which unconscious primitive and nonsymbolic experience is communicated to the analyst’s unconscious through enactment. As the analyst receives the projections unconsciously, she is encouraged to enact aspects of the patient’s internal world. The analytic work then is through the understanding of these subtle and ubiquitous enactments. I value the work of understanding enactments as a rich and subtle pathway into the deepest levels of the patient’s unconscious. I explore the nature of this work and illustrate my point with clinical examples.     

Wishful thinking and the unconscious

Abstract

This paper gives a sketch for a reconstruction of the Freudian unconscious, and an argument for its existence. The strategy followed attempts to side-step the extended debates about the validity of Freud’s methods and conclusions, by basing itself on the desire/belief schema for understanding and explaining human behaviour - a schema neither folk psychology nor scientific psychology can do without. People are argued to have, as ideal types, two fundamental modes of fulfilling their desires: engaging with reality, and wishful thinking. The first mode tries to acknowledge the constraints reality imposes on the satisfaction of desires, while the second mode tries to ignore, deny or disguise these constraints, inasmuch as they threaten to make such satisfaction impossible or unfeasible. Crucially, wishful thinking can be used so as to ignore or deny any desire that is incompatible with other strong desires. Thus we end up unaware of the existence or nature of some of our desires, of the fact that they are influencing our thought and behaviour, and of the process our own mind has used to thwart awareness of them. Once we acknowledge this possibility, we are already seriously entertaining the possibility of the Freudian unconscious, or something fairly close to it. The more aware the subject is that her wishful thinking is just that, the less effective it becomes. Wishful thinking thus requires an unconscious; it is inimical to a clear, complete and unambiguous acknowledgement of its own status. Next, various aspects of my account (and Freud’s) that allow a conception of the unconscious in non-Cartesian terms are emphasised: the unconscious is largely constituted by semantic phenomena of a particular type: forms of representation which would conceal their meaning even if the full light of ‘attention’, Cartesian ‘consciousness’ or ‘introspection’ were cast upon them. If wishful thinking is an integral part of mental life, philosophers and others wishing to “educate humanity” will have to proceed differently from what would have been appropriate had rational thought and action been the only available option for satisfying desires.     

From Freud’s dream-work to Bion’s work of dreaming: The changing conception of dreaming in psychoanalytic theory

Bion moved psychoanalytic theory from Freud's theory of dream-work to a concept of dreaming in which dreaming is the central aspect of all emotional functioning. In this paper, I first review historical, theoretical, and clinical aspects of dreaming as seen by Freud and Bion. I then propose two interconnected ideas that I believe reflect Bion’s split from Freud regarding the understanding of dreaming. Bion believed that all dreams are psychological works in progress and at one point suggested that all dreams contain elements that are akin to visual hallucinations. I explore and elaborate Bion’s ideas that all dreams contain aspects of emotional experience that are too disturbing to be dreamt, and that, in analysis, the patient brings a dream with the hope of receiving the analyst’s help in completing the unconscious work that was entirely or partially too disturbing for the patient to dream on his own. Freud views dreams as mental phenomena with which to understand how the mind functions, but believes that dreams are solely the ‘guardians of sleep,’ and not, in themselves, vehicles for unconscious psychological work and growth until they are interpreted by the analyst. Bion extends Freud's ideas, but also departs from Freud and re-conceives of dreaming as synonymous with unconscious emotional thinking – a process that continues both while we are awake and while we are asleep. From another somewhat puzzling perspective, he views dreams solely as manifestations of what the dreamer is unable to think.     

Freud and the Psychoanalysis of Telepathy: Commentary on Claudie Massicotte’s “Psychical Transmissions”

Freud was interested in and eventually accepted the diverse forms of telepathic communication as psychoanalytic rather than occult phenomena, particularly as manifested in dreams. Massicotte revisits the topic of Freud and his interest in the occult in a manner that invites serious reconsideration of this aspect of his work, long the subject of intense controversy in the history of psychoanalysis. In my response to Massicotte’s paper I argue that Freud’s interest in telepathy or thought transference belongs to his psychoanalytic theories of the unconscious and transference. His approach to telepathy parallels his approach to religious beliefs: He accounts for both as creations of the human mind as individuals attempt to make sense and meaning of their real experiences. What Freud meant by telepathy is what contemporary psychoanalysis refers to as unconscious communication, and the strange, often inexplicable forms it takes in clinical contexts. For Freud, instances of telepathy or unconscious communication are to be understood contextually and relationally, revealing important data about the nature of affectively charged human relationships.     

New approaches to understanding unconscious processes: Implicit and explicit memory systems

Abstract

Freud viewed the unconscious as being roughly equivalent to dynamically repressed wishes, needs, and motivations. Findings from developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience over the past 40 years have dramatically changed our views of unconscious processes and the human mind. It is now clear that Freud's dynamic unconscious is only a minor segment of information that is processed at subsymbolic, implicit, and automatic levels. Only a fraction of this information is further processed at explicit conscious levels. Moreover, the vast majority of the information that remains nonconscious is adaptive and has major consequences for development. We examine some clinical implications of these views.     

Drives and objects - notes on the change of drive theory

Freud’s drive theory has been questioned since the 1940s when Fairbairn created a metaphor of the mind that is not based on the tripartite model and drive theory. His work inspired others to elaborate on the significance of internal object relationships. According to the object relation theory, internal object relations are dynamic structures capable of generating meanings and action. Consequently, two distinct metapsychologies were created.The aim of this article is to show how the interaction of theories has initiated revisions of classic drive theory. Freud’s concept of drive and three synthesizing viewpoints between the two perspectives are discussed. Otto Kernberg addresses affects as a primary motivational system; the mother–infant relationship organizes affects to drives. Joseph Sandler adheres to classic drive theory but proposes that the ego’s attempt to protect the mind against psychic pain is as important as drive derivatives in motivating the mind. Laplanche proposes that the unconscious of the care-giving adult is the crucial factor for the constitution of an infant’s unconscious and drives. For Freud and Klein, drive is inherent. Contemporary writers, like Loewald and Laplanche, conceive drive as a function of the mind that is born out of the same matrix of interaction with the other elements of the mind.     

Trauma and the Unconscious: Double Conscience,The Uncanny and Cruelty

Relatively little has been written on the role of trauma in conceptions of the unconscious. This paper explores Freud’s conceptions of the unconscious, comparing his ideas with the original French notion of “double conscience” and exploring their implications for technique. Whereas Freud’s concept of the unconscious mainly depends upon a theory of internal drives, Ferenczi’s ascribed a central role to trauma, shifting the focus to the individual in the context of relationships. The comparison is illustrated with a case history.     

Freud’s “Project”, Distributed Systems,and Solipsism

Abstract

This paper discusses Freud’s model of the psychical apparatus in the “Project”, and concludes that it is a remarkably sophisticated work which even today is still highly relevant to neuropsychological theorising. Freud rejects the notion that what happens in the brain can be clearly localised in space and time. This anticipates the notion of a distributed system found in recent developments in computing (“neural networks”) and in Derrida’s conception of systems characterised by différance. Every part of such a system is constituted by its relation to the rest of the system. Although such systems are spatio-temporal, processes occurring in them cannot be pinpointed in space and time. Against the common charge that Freud has a passive hydraulic-reflex model of the psychical apparatus, the authors argue that Freud presents it as an open, complex, self-organising system. Ricoeur’s (1972) claim that the model of the psychical apparatus in the “Project” is essentially solipsistic, is accordingly rejected.

In conclusion the authors explain why they prefer the model in the “Project” to the more linear model found in Ch. VII of the Traumdeutung.     

Ordinary Unconscious Communication in the Therapist/Patient Relationship

ABSTRACT

In this article, I consider the ways in which unconscious communication between therapist and patient is omnipresent in psychoanalytic work. To consider unconscious communication between therapist and patient is to consider psychoanalysis, at its core. The phenomenon of unconscious communication between patient and therapist is a quotidian event. It defines its essential listening stance, with variations associated with different theoretical perspectives. I present several clinical vignettes to illustrate the phenomenon and consider some different theoretical perspectives that bear on the therapist’s uses of self in engaging the ways that one unconscious informs another.     

Nietzsche on the Nature of the Unconscious

Abstract

This paper argues that Nietzsche develops a novel and compelling account of the distinction between conscious and unconscious mental states: he argues that conscious mental states are those with conceptual content, whereas unconscious mental states are those with nonconceptual content. I show that Nietzsche’s puzzling claim that consciousness is ‘superficial’ and ‘falsifying’ can be given a straightforward explanation if we accept this understanding of the conscious/unconscious distinction. I originally defended this view in my ‘Nietzsche’s Theory of Mind: Consciousness and Conceptualization’ (2005, European Journal of Philosophy 13: 1–31); since then, the view has come under criticism on several fronts. Brian Leiter and others suggest that there is not enough textual evidence for the view. In addition, Leiter, Mattia Riccardi and Tsarina Doyle argue that, rather than aligning the conscious/unconscious distinction with the conceptual/nonconceptual distinction, Nietzsche endorses a higher-order thought model of consciousness. Riccardi also objects that Nietzsche must treat some unconscious mental states as conceptual. In this essay, I defend the interpretation in light of these objections. I provide new textual evidence for the interpretation, show that Nietzsche extracted aspects of the view from Schopenhauer’s work on consciousness, consider the possibility that Nietzsche endorses a higher-order thought theory, and respond to Riccardi’s objection.     

Emotional Communication and the Unconscious in the Analytic Setting

ABSTRACT

One type of unconscious communication is conceptualized as a form of emotional communication, the channel of communication that conveys information about a person’s emotional state through the nonsymbolic expression of feelings and is experienced as feeling in the receiver. Some of the analyst’s feelings are attuned responses to the patient’s unconscious communications; others are disjunctive and related only to the analyst’s unconscious. Attuned feelings can be identified by their congruence—similarities, consistencies, and analogies—with the patient’s verbal material, which reveals the meaning that the analyst’s feeling has within the patient’s subjectivity. Attuned feelings also have a meaning within the analyst’s subjectivity. Two cases are discussed, one in which the analyst experiences the patient’s unconscious communication within the symbolism of one of her own childhood memories. The other illustrates the risk of confusing disjunctive feelings emanating from the analyst’s own unconscious with unconscious communication from the patient.     

The two time vectors of Nachträglichkeit in the development of ego organization: Significance of the concept for the symbolization of nameless traumas and anxieties1

The author describes Freud ’s conception of Nachträglichkeit as an active process that bridges the gap between past affective vicissitudes and the cognitive present by way of meaning. Symbolization is thereby subsequently [nachträglich] conferred on early traumatic events, which thus become susceptible to omnipotent control. The two time vectors of Nachträglichkeit are discussed: the first is a causal process operating in the forward direction of time against the background of a factual reality, while the second is a backward movement that permits an understanding of unconscious scenes and phantasies taking place at primary-process level. This twofold temporal motion was observed and described by Freud early on. However, its significance often remained hidden prior to his study of Moses. It was mostly overlooked in English and French translations, thus giving rise to a one-sided understanding of the concept in the various psychoanalytic cultures, as either deferred action or après-coup. Freud ’s Moses study addresses both temporal aspects of Nachträglichkeit, seeking not only to reconstruct a past event on a causal, deterministic basis, but also to understand the subjective truth of that event in the transference along the retrograde time line. The decisive criterion for the conceptual and clinical separation of the two time vectors is the development of ego organization and the capacity for symbolization. The two vectors should not be separated on the factual level, as both aspects of Nachträglichkeit are essential to the understanding of unconscious processes, combining as they do in a relationship of circular complementarity.     

Reader and story,viewer and film: On transference and interpretation2

Two sides in Freud's attitude towards literature and art are presented: Freud the sensitive listener, whose interest in art is a potential springboard for a rich interdisciplinary dialogue; and Freud the conquistador, whose wish for power in ‘invaded’ territories is related to troublesome aspects of ‘pathography’ and ‘applied analysis’. The unique contribution of psychoanalysis may not be discovering objectively the true unconscious content of works of art, but rather enriching the exploration of the potential transitional space evolving between artist, work of art and readers or viewers, enhancing our sensitivity to multiple meanings and complex emotional influences of art. This requires exploring our own subjective experiences of art, which may be described as transferences (when art is mostly perceived as a source of insight) or countertransferences (when artists and their work are basically experienced as troubled patients). Transference (broadly defined) and interpretation tend to intermingle, both in the clinical analytic encounter, and in any reading/viewing of art, be it by laymen, analysts or other scholars. Several examples from the psychoanalytic study of literature and film are given, and three pairs of contrasting interpretations are studied, concerning Kafka's The metamorphosis, Minghella's The English Patient and Polanski's Chinatown.     

Ferenczi and Freud – From psychoanalysis as a “professional and personal home” to the creation of a “psychoanalytic home” for the patient1

Abstract

The author explores the relationship between Sándor Ferenczi and Sigmund Freud in the light of their correspondence. This allows us to see how Freud was able to offer and create for Ferenczi a “professional and personal home” that enabled the latter to find a much more meaningful and creative contact with himself. According to the author, this experience played an important role in Ferenczi’s later readiness to offer to and create with his patients a similar “psychoanalytic home.” As Freud was not able to share such clinical research work with Ferenczi, a conflict developed between them whose nature has occupied psychoanalysts ever since, and whose seeds can be found in the 1246 letters that they exchanged between January 1908 and May 1933. From this point of view, Ferenczi’s Clinical diary (written in 1932 and published only in 1985) can be seen as the continuation of the dialogue they had entertained for so many years, as well as Ferenczi’s attempt not to give up the “professional and personal home” that they had created together.