Working at the “Intimate Edge”: Intersubjective Considerations—Comments on “A Case Study of Power and the Eroticized Transference–Countertransference”

Working from the premise that as analysts we are always vulnerable to unconscious collusion and enactment, and that this has radical implications for how we conceive of the analytic process, I try to illustrate how the process of working at the “intimate edge” of the analytic relationship, and explicitly engaging what goes on intersubjectively between patient and analyst expands the analytic process and the analytic possibilities. I especially focus on how deconstructing interactive enactment can help to access unconscious aspects of what might be in play in relation to the issues of power and eroticized transference–countertransference under discussion here, and how this process itself can become the medium of the work and the focus of therapeutic action.     

Countertransference—Transference seen from the Point of View of Child Psychoanalysis

This paper explores the ‘point of interaction’, that interface where the psyches of the patient and analyst meet. The author examines what is activated in the analytic pair at the point of interaction, with a particular focus on the mental activity of the patient and analyst. This exploration of the mental activity of the patient and analyst is from a theoretical position that combines contemporary Freudian and Kleinian perspectives on the therapeutic process. The author concludes that the capacity for mutuality in both the patient and analyst rests upon a part of the mind that is connected to a certain aspect of the Oedipus complex. Finally, the point of interaction is also discussed as a place where there is a potential meeting of minds around divergent methods and applications of psychoanalytic treatment. Clinical material is presented to illustrate these points.     

Dysregulated Rhythms and the “Grip” of the Context: A Discussion of the Paper “Poison Cookies” by Katherine Oram

Two moments from the clinical narrative under discussion are used to highlight the critical impact of attention to timing not in terms of when and what to say, but rather as a an ongoing source of emotional meaning emerging on implicit dimensions of rhythm and affective tone occurring in the clinical interaction. Meanings having to do with different forms of power including fear of psychic annihilation, agency, and aggression expressed within sado-masochistic dynamics are demonstrated to be scaffolded and coming into formation on these implicit levels. Alternatively, Merleu-Ponty's concept of Urdoxa as a grip on context is introduced to highlight how the analyst's use of timing to violate an expectation for nonresponsiveness or impingement creates an experience of distance between enactment and reflection, allowing space for re-membering as a form of representation. Here the creation of space through timing serves not just a representational function, but also a way for affective self and interactive regulation to emerge in an interaction as scaffolding for experiences of predictability (i.e., continuity and coherence) and vitality in self and other.     

Levinas and the Parent–Child Relation: A Merleau-Pontyian Critique of Applying Levinas's Thought to Developmental Psychology

Central to Emmanuel Levinas's philosophical account of ethics and intersubjectivity is the parent–child relation. Throughout his major texts, paternity, maternity, and education all function as critical motifs that Levinas utilizes to claim that the subject is primordially oriented by a radical passivity and asymmetrical ethical obligation to the other. Further, several scholars, including Claude Lefort, Brian Vandenberg, Diane Perpich, and Joel Krueger, have highlighted Levinas's insights in relation to child development; however, I argue that they have not adequately accounted for the radicality of Levinas's view of original passivity as the essential ground of subjectivity. After explaining Levinas's account of radical passivity in the parent–child relation, I then turn to recent research in child development to evaluate Levinas's view. In light of the current research, I suggest that Merleau-Ponty's account of the parent–child relation not only complements Levinas's work, but it is also essential for incorporating Levinas's thought in psychological models of the parent–child relation.     

ESID,Dissemination, and Community Psychology: A Case of Partial Implementation?

Dissemination, the second stage of Experimental Social Innovation and Dissemination (ESID) is a critical, if not defining, element of this social change model. This paper attempts to assess the extent to which community psychology has adopted and implemented ESID's dissemination focus in its training and publications. We identify four levels of commitment to dissemination: dissemination advocate, dissemination activist, dissemination researcher, and experimental dissemination researcher. Content analyses of textbooks, journal publications, and conference papers and a brief survey of doctoral training in the field were conducted. Findings suggest that the dissemination aspects of ESID have been modestly and partially implemented within the field. That is, although there is some evidence of a commitment to dissemination practice (advocate, activist), there is much less evidence of a commitment to dissemination research. The implications of these findings for the effectiveness of the ESID model and for training and practice in community psychology are discussed.     

Religiosity,Secular Participation,and Cultural Socialization: A Case Study of the 1933–1942 Urban English Cohort

The nature of secularization is of enduring interest in the social science of religion. Numerous recent papers have established downward cohort trends as characterizing religious change. We examine potential mechanisms by assessing cultural participation and secular engagement during the formative period of one cohort. We provide estimates of active and nominal religiosity, nonreligion and religious belief for those born between 1933 and 1942, using multiple surveys fielded between 1957 and 2018. We model the association between religiosity and secular cultural and social participation for this cohort in 1957, then examine how cultural socialization in childhood relates to religiosity in their later adulthood using surveys fielded between 2005 and 2007. Increased secular competition is found to be associated with less active religiosity. These trends were underpinned by an ethic of increasing autonomy for the young. We conclude by affirming the link between increasing secular competition, long-run modernization, and changing cultural socialization.     

A Broader View of “Self” in Egocentric Social Judgment: Current and Possible Selves

Virtually all previous research addressing the self as a standard of comparison in social judgment defined the self to be one's current-held characteristics. We extended research on egocentric definitions of social categories (Dunning, Perie, & Story, 1991 Dunning, D, Perie, M and Story, AL. 1991. Self-serving prototypes of social categories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61: 1–12. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and the self-image bias (Lewicki, 1983 Lewicki, P. 1983. Self-image bias in person perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45: 384–393. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) by measuring a broader definition of “self” which includes possible selves. In two studies, measures of college students' self-systems (current and possible selves together) accounted for three times as much variance in social judgments (M?=?12.9%) than did measures of their current selves alone (M?=?4.2%). We argue for the theoretical and empirical benefits of using a broader definition of self in social judgment research.     

Toward the Formation of a “Cultural Mosaic”: A Case Study

This study describes an intervention designed to promote integration between Ethiopian and Israeli students (N = 93) in Grades 2 to 5 and adaptation of these immigrants to school norms of behavior and to discipline. The metaphor of cultural mosaic was used for describing the goal state. To achieve a comprehensive school reform, the curriculum was enacted on four levels: individual student, school and classroom, staff, and community (parents and local council). The intervention effects were evaluated in three domains via questionnaires, interviews, and observations – the domains being the academic, behavioral, and personal-social realms. Four stages were identified in the process: an opening stage, the euphoria stage, the setback stage, and the final stage of a new equilibrium. Results suggest that both the natives' and the immigrants' needs and difficulties have to be attended to in each of the stages. The social domain was found to be the most salient in the integration process, although integration within it may take less time and be more feasible than academic accommodation.     

Wade in the Water: Transference Actualization and the Ethics of Memory—Discussion of Bartlett’s “Time-Soaked”

In this discussion of Bob Bartlett’s compelling paper “Time-Soaked,” I shift attention away from the vivid account of the interpersonal dynamics between Bartlett and his patient to describe the perspectives offered by theories of social memory and transgenerational haunting. I attempt to speak for and convey the voices and vulnerabilities of previous generations that I argue—if heard within the analytic dyad—can further inform and deepen the therapeutic endeavors undertaken by Bartlett and his patient.     

Whither the Psychology of Religion: A Spirituality-Focused Discussion of Paloutzian and Park’s (2005)

Presuming Rayburn’s (2006: Child & Family Behavior Therapy, 28, 86–92) review of (Paloutzian and Park, 2005, Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality. New York: The Guilford Press) and sketching an alternative paradigm, this review focuses on the Handbook’s virtual conflation of religion and spirituality; relates this conflation to the hegemony of Protestant theology in North American psychology of religion; highlights the Handbook’s neglect of spirituality per se, which, if not inseparably linked with theism, is, nevertheless, related to the self-transcending, meaning-making dimension of the human mind, could provide an explanatory breakthrough in the field of the psychology of religion and of the social sciences overall; and sees Handbook’s advocacy for a “multilevel interdisciplinary paradigm” as a regrettable acceptance of the failed, long-term strategy of the field of psychology in general.     

Discussion of Otto F. Kernberg's Paper: “The Nature of Interpretation: Intersubjectivity and the Third Position”

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

A Scientific Theory of the Development of Meditation in Practicing Individuals: Patañjali’s Yoga,Developmental Psychology,and Neurobiology

This article considers the psychology of meditation and other introverted forms of mystical development from a neo-Piagetian perspective, which has commonalities with biogenetic structuralist and neurotheological approaches. Evidence is found that lines of meditative development unfold through Patañjali’s stages at different rates in an echo of the unfolding of lines of cognitive development through Piaget’s stages at different rates. Similar factors predicting the degree of independence of development apply to both conventional cognitive and meditative contents. As the same brain and the same nervous system are involved in both cognitive developmental psychology and meditation there are likely to be commonalities between conventional psychological and transpersonal development. Neo-Piagetian transpersonal psychology predicts a variable landscape of spiritual development across traditions and individuals, in line with variability in the cultural learning environment.     

Discussion of “Hysteria and Humiliation”: Commentary on Paper by Sam Gerson

This commentary describes certain differences in how Relational and Contemporary Freudian analysts approach both the conceptual dynamics of hysterical functioning and its clinical management. The discussion shows how, despite considerable agreement between these two groups concerning the critical importance of a receptive other for the successful buildup of virtually every aspect of mental life (not to be confused with the concept of co-creation), they also have quite substantial differences; differences that are rooted in contrasting basic assumptions about the ways in which fantasies, unconscious transference displacements, and self-regulating repetitive processes are set up in the mind. The discussion also illustrates how the clinical management of hysteria differs considerably depending on whether what is taking place in the consulting room is conceived of as an autonomous, repetitive process that the patient brings to the treatment and repeats (one way or another) over and over again, or whether it is conceived of as co-created, belonging to the minds of both persons in the room, even if not in equal measure or equal ways.     

Holding the Baby in Mind: Discussion of Joseph Lichtenberg's “Communication in Infancy”

Joseph Lichtenberg suggests that infants are held in their caregivers' symbolic world before they create one of their own. This idea is addressed from the perspective of parental reflective functioning. This construct offers a means of further understanding how a caregiver's capacity to elaborate upon the mental life of her child sets the stage for the child's internal experiences becoming known and developed or distorted and stunted within the context of the relationship. These ideas both complement and expand upon the research and theoretical work described by Lichtenberg in his consideration of the development of communication with self and other in infancy.