Enlightenment as a Psychological Construct and as a Buddhist Religious Pursuit: A Cross-cultural Understanding

Enlightenment has been explored in a variety of ways, for example, in Buddhist cultural traditions and in psychological science. In this essay, we categorise enlightenment as both a religious pursuit and psychological construct in order to reach a deep understanding. We summarise the key elements of enlightenment in Chinese Chan history and the development of an Enlightenment Scale in a Western context then discuss the weaknesses of Chan teaching methods with respect to the assessment of levels of Chan practitioners’ enlightenment. Instrument development methods in Western psychological science provide a useful way to capture the concept of enlightenment, and we argue that the Enlightenment Scale can be used to assess Chan practitioners’ enlightenment. The Enlightenment Scale may not assess all features of enlightenment from a Chan Buddhist perspective, so it is proposed that the scale is examined and if necessary adapted accordingly, a research area in Chinese Buddhist study that to date has been neglected.     

The screen function of unconscious fantasy

Although being a fundamental concept in psychoanalysis, fantasy is an ambiguous term. It covers a vast field of conscious and unconscious phenomena, from daydreaming, the manifest narration of the patient’s world of imagination to unconscious fantasy and primal fantasy. Further, it introduces the delicate alternatives of imaginary versus real, subject versus object and internal versus external. Following Freud’s reflections on the ambiguity of fantasy, we arrive at an idea introduced by Freud himself, but elaborated years later by Lacan. Fantasy, accordingly, is seen as a screen which both reveals and conceals. Our aim is to demonstrate, theoretical as well as clinical, how unconscious fantasy serves as a window into not only repressed wishes and conflicts, but also the most primary scenes where the subject may not even have a specific place. Simultaneously, it is the site of protection and defence, including projection and denial, but also repetition of what we will call the identical. A clinical case will be presented to illustrate our theoretical ideas and their clinical implications.     

On fascination and fear of annihilation

In this paper fascination phenomenologically is described as a state of radically being captured by an imposing object. What is left of the impoverished and paralysed subject clings to the exclusive fascinating object. Fascination is the eye of the storm of extreme ambivalence towards an exclusive object: being the only remaining object it is necessary for living in an object world, but at the same time it is threatening to life by absorbing the subject totally. So the subject is sucked in by a yet frightening object. From a metapsychological point of view fascination is understood as the congealed result of excessive projective identification and a strong confusional state connected with it: the subject empties itself so much in the object that it comes to stand for the subject. The fascinating object embodies in a condensed way – as a special form of a bizarre object – split off unconscious threatening material. So fascination is linked to the Kleinian theory of anxiety. Two clinical vignettes illustrate how states of fascination can be understood as an ultimate defence against unconscious menacing material welling up. The hypothesis is developed that fascination points to a revelation of fundamental psychic truth that promptly cramps the subject because the reintegration of it is felt as annihilating. In the vignettes this takes the form of a ‘transformation in hallucinosis’. Fascination is at the same time ‘the moment of truth’ and possibly a serious obstruction of the analytic process. This unconscious truth seems to concern primitive ‘superego violence’. The challenge consists in thawing the frozen fascinating object by linking it to other material.     

The felt presence of other minds: Predictive processing,counterfactual predictions,and mentalising in autism

The mental states of other people are components of the external world that modulate the activity of our sensory epithelia. Recent probabilistic frameworks that cast perception as unconscious inference on the external causes of sensory input can thus be expanded to enfold the brain’s representation of others’ mental states. This paper examines this subject in the context of the debate concerning the extent to which we have perceptual awareness of other minds. In particular, we suggest that the notion of perceptual presence helps to refine this debate: are others’ mental states experienced as veridical qualities of the perceptual world around us? This experiential aspect of social cognition may be central to conditions such as autism spectrum disorder, where representations of others’ mental states seem to be selectively compromised. Importantly, recent work ties perceptual presence to the counterfactual predictions of hierarchical generative models that are suggested to perform unconscious inference in the brain. This enables a characterisation of mental state representations in terms of their associated counterfactual predictions, allowing a distinction between spontaneous and explicit forms of mentalising within the framework of predictive processing. This leads to a hypothesis that social cognition in autism spectrum disorder is characterised by a diminished set of counterfactual predictions and the reduced perceptual presence of others’ mental states.     

Interpretation as a misunderstanding

In the following article ‘who’ as the agent in the clinical session becomes questioned. By speaking we are introduced in the world of misunderstanding, where we are not merely speaking but being spoken to. Listening to what is being said and in this way misunderstanding what the patient is trying to say helps us in order to locate where the subject of the unconscious places himself in relation to the desire of the Other. In the article, it is conveyed how interpretation is not something that clarifies or explains to the patient his difficulties, but instead locates them by letting them take part in the session. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, locating the subject of the unconscious is crucial as this gives the patient a clue about where they place themselves in relation to the Other. This is why cutting the session is an essential element of its technique, as it stops in this way something that can disturb or hide where the subject of the unconscious has appeared. This allows patients to experience where they are gratifying themselves in their own difficulty. Interpretation is not speaking about the truth but instead, making the truth present in the session.     

Strange-face illusions during inter-subjective gazing

In normal observers, gazing at one’s own face in the mirror for a few minutes, at a low illumination level, triggers the perception of strange faces, a new visual illusion that has been named ‘strange-face in the mirror’. Individuals see huge distortions of their own faces, but they often see monstrous beings, archetypal faces, faces of relatives and deceased, and animals. In the experiment described here, strange-face illusions were perceived when two individuals, in a dimly lit room, gazed at each other in the face. Inter-subjective gazing compared to mirror-gazing produced a higher number of different strange-faces. Inter-subjective strange-face illusions were always dissociative of the subject’s self and supported moderate feeling of their reality, indicating a temporary lost of self-agency. Unconscious synchronization of event-related responses to illusions was found between members in some pairs. Synchrony of illusions may indicate that unconscious response–coordination is caused by the illusion–conjunction of crossed dissociative strange-faces, which are perceived as projections into each other’s visual face of reciprocal embodied representations within the pair. Inter-subjective strange-face illusions may be explained by the subject’s embodied representations (somaesthetic, kinaesthetic and motor facial pattern) and the other’s visual face binding. Unconscious facial mimicry may promote inter-subjective illusion–conjunction, then unconscious joint-action and response–coordination.     

Implicit learning shapes new conscious percepts and representations

We present here the lineaments of a new account of implicit learning, an account that does not rely on the notion of “implicit knowledge.” In this account, improved performance depends on the action of unconscious mechanisms that structure the phenomenal, conscious experience of the world. This integrative view makes groundless the search for dissociations between conscious and unconscious influences that has been at the core of the research on implicit learning and memory. We contrast this view, on the one hand, to Dienes and Berry’s (1997) proposal, which defines implicit learning by analogy with subliminal perception, and, on the other, to Neal and Hesketh’s (1997) episodic account, in which subjective experience is a starting point for inquiry, rather than the phenomenon requiring explanation.     

In the Nutshell: Gestational Experience as Liminal Space: Commentary on Thomas Cohen’s Paper “Considering Gestational Life”

Cohen (this issue) raises intriguing questions about the impact of gestational experience but asks his readers to suspend disbelief, as he posits links between this liminal, mysterious, and on some level “unknowable” of times and later phenomenological and relational experience. Using the novel Nutshell, by Ian McEwan, narrated by a fetus who is privy to the portentous events happening outside, as well as inside, his mother’s womb as a frame, I explore questions including how much we can know about fetal subjectivity, how to differentiate the impact of prenatal from postnatal experience, and how that translates to later developmental and clinical realms.     

THE REBIRTH OF THE IDOLS: THE FREUDIAN UNCONSCIOUS AND THE NIETZSCHEAN UNCONSCIOUS3

The author explores how psychoanalysis mutates in its passing from the privacies of the session to the public spaces of academia, shifting away from enquiry into unfolding unconscious psychic processes guided by its method, and from the clinically based notions Freud and his diverse followers constructed, here called the ‘Freudian unconscious’. In postmodern intellectual contexts Freud's work fuels a ‘Nietzschean unconscious’, issuing from public lecterns in the protagonistic, self‐creating feats of a ‘psychoanalytic discourse’. The ideology of such mutation ishere traced from Nietzsche on to Heidegger and Kojave, and then to Lacan and Laplanche. It reflects the might of the ‘death of evidences’ and the Romantic penchant for the limit‐experience and the primacy accorded to the creative imagination. Discourse as revelation rests on a ‘paradox of the enunciation’ whereby the subject (author) of the statement is taken to be identical to the subject (matter) of the statement. Banishing the boundaries of illusion and evidence, and of self‐overcoming and insight, academic ‘psychoanalytic discourse’creates a ‘return of the idols’ in ‘theoretical’ narcissistic identification.     

The numinous and immanent nature of the psychoanalytic subject

In the Freudian and Kleinian conception of unconscious mental life, credence is given to the existence and functioning of peremptory instinctual drives as the putative causation of all mental life, yet they are denied an organization or a personality. It is especially when we come to the notion of how dreams are created or how the free associations of an analytic hour are orchestrated that we begin to wonder about the hidden order, the cryptic intelligence or presence, that seems to cohere our chaos and present it to us in mystically encoded forms for us to translate.
In this contribution it is posited that there is a numinous or ineffable subject of the unconscious which organizes our mental life and which unconsciously registers everything that happens to us. Mysteriously connected with this is the immanent subject of conscious/preconsciousness which registers the impact of stimuli from the external world but which has contact with the numinous subject.     

Surviving Deadness in the Analytic Experience

The transference/countertransference (third space) analysis is considered to be central in the therapeutic effectiveness of the analytic process. Less emphasis has been placed on the actual experiences of analyst and analysand in the conflictual reenactment of third space experience and its resolution. This paper recounts the shared experience of a patient who was silent throughout most of the analysis, and my reaction, in fantasy and enactment, to this disturbing experience—both for him and for myself. I argue that it is the affective re-experiencing of past repressed trauma in the analytic space that has a therapeutic impact, leading to growth in the patient and also the therapist. I contrast Freud’s emphasis on insight, making the unconscious conscious, with Ferenczi’s suggestion that the therapeutic impact lies in the repetition of past traumatic experience in the analysis but with the possibility of a different outcome with a more benign object, leading to symbolic representation of repressed trauma. Re-experiencing and symbolization, in the third space, of past traumatic experience can be an exit point from the endless repetition of trauma in internal and external object relations, leading to a new beginning in the patient’s life. Immersed in the experience of deadness in the analysis, which had become a dead womb, the struggle to remain alive and thinking led to a rupture out of the dead womb, like the Caesura of birth, into aliveness and the ability to mentalize what had previously remained unmentalized.     

Perceptual consciousness plays no epistemic role

It is often assumed that perceptual experience provides evidence about the external world. But much perception can occur unconsciously, as in cases of masked priming or blindsight. Does unconscious perception provide evidence as well? Many theorists maintain that it cannot, holding that perceptual experience provides evidence in virtue of its conscious character. Against such views, I challenge here both the necessity and, perhaps more controversially, the sufficiency of consciousness for perception to provide evidence about the external world. In addition to motivating and defending the idea that unconscious perception can and does often provide evidence, I observe that whether or not perceptual phenomenology is relevant to the evidentiary status of perception depends on the nature of consciousness. And I argue that a well‐supported theory of consciousness—higher‐order thought theory—invites a striking conclusion: that perceptual phenomenology is not on its own sufficient to provide for evidence of the external world.     

Seeing,mirroring, desiring: The impact of the analyst’s pregnant body on the patient’s body image

The paper explores the impact of the analyst’s pregnant body on the course of two analyses, a young man, and a young woman, specifically focusing on how each patient’s visual perception and affective experience of being with the analyst’s pregnant body affected their own body image and subjective experience of their body. The pre‐verbal or ‘subsymbolic’ material evoked in the analyses contributed to a greater understanding of the patients’ developmental experiences in infancy and adolescence, which had resulted in both carrying a profoundly distorted body image into adulthood. The analyst’s pregnancy offered a therapeutic window in which a shift in the patient’s body image could be initiated. Clinical material is presented in detail with reference to the psychoanalytic literature on the pregnant analyst, and that of the development of the body image, particularly focusing on the role of visual communication and the face. The author proposes a theory of psychic change, drawing on Bucci’s multiple code theory, in which the patients’ unconscious or ‘subsymbolic’ awareness of her pregnancy, which were manifest in their bodily responses, feeling states and dreams, as well as in the analyst s countertransference, could gradually be verbalized and understood within the transference. Thus visual perception, or ‘external seeing’, could gradually become ‘internal seeing’, or insight into unconscious phantasies, leading to a shift in the patients internal object world towards a less persecutory state and more realistic appraisal of their body image.     

Expanding the discussion: Revision of the fundamental assumptions framing the study of the neural correlates of consciousness

The way one asks a question is shaped by a-priori assumptions and constrains the range of possible answers. We identify and test the assumptions underlying contemporary debates, models, and methodology in the study of the neural correlates of consciousness, which was framed by Crick and Koch’s seminal paper (1990). These premises create a sequential and passive conception of conscious perception: it is considered the product of resolved information processing by unconscious mechanisms, produced by a singular event in time and place representing the moment of entry. The conscious percept produced is then automatically retained to be utilized by post-conscious mechanisms. Major debates in the field, such as concern the moment of entry, the all-or-none vs graded nature, and report vs no-report paradigms, are driven by the consensus on these assumptions. We show how removing these assumptions can resolve some of the debates and challenges and prompt additional questions. The potential non-sequential nature of perception suggests new ways of thinking about consciousness as a dynamic and dispersed process, and in turn about the relationship between conscious and unconscious perception. Moreover, it allows us to present a parsimonious account for conscious perception while addressing more aspects of the phenomenon.     

Archetypes and Spirits: A Jungian Analysis of Puerto Rican Espiritismo

In this paper a comparison is made between Jung's approach to healing with a traditional healing system practised in Puerto Rico, called ‘Espiritismo’. Jungian psychology and ‘Espiritismo’ have several strong similarities in their conception of the therapeutic process, similarities which suggest that the healing process itself has generic properties which can be found in several therapeutic systems. In addition, by analysing Jung's development as a healer, it is possible to draw parallels between his development as a psychotherapist and the process of becoming a spiritist healer. In both healing systems, a transpersonal dimension is recognized as an integral element in the healing process. In ‘Espiritismo’, the suffering individual has to confront the spirit world; in analytical psychotherapy the patient has to confront the collective unconscious. This parallel was explicitly recognized by Jung in his autobiography when he compared the collective unconscious with the land of the dead. For Jung, knowledge of the figures of the unconscious enormously facilitates the individuation process; in ‘Espiritismo’ it is necessary to know the spirit world and to establish a relationship with the spirits. In Jungian psychology, healing is a process of ‘exorcizing’ some types of complexes or integrating others to consciousness. On the other hand, spiritist healers ‘exorcize’ ignorant spirits in order to heal a client or help him/her to identify spirit guides. In both systems, healing is essentially a process of establishing a dialogue with a transpersonal dimension (archetypes or spirits). Healing in ‘Espiritismo’ and Jungian psychology is a process of transcending the limited perspective of the ego (the ‘material world’) in order to experience a much broader reality (spiritual world or collective unconscious). Both systems emphasize the need to work with resources beyond the boundaries of the ego and to connect with forces that belong to a different reality.     

'Projective transidentifi cation': An extension of the concept of projective identifi cation

Questions about the concept of projective identifi cation still persist. The author presents the following hypotheses: Klein's traditional view and Bion's extension and revision of it can be thought of as occupying a continuum in reverse. He postulates that Bion's concept of communicative intersubjective projective identifi cation (which the author renames 'projective transidentifi cation') is primary and inclusive of Klein's earlier unconscious, omnipotent, intrapsychic mode but includes Bion's 'realistic' communicative mode as well. The author hypothesizes, consequently, that intersubjective projective identifi cation constitutes both the operation of an unconscious phantasy of omnipotent intrapsychic projective identifi cation solely within the internal world of the projecting subject-in addition to two other processes: conscious and/or preconscious modes of sensorimotor induction, which would include signaling and/or evocation or prompting gestures or techniques (mental, physical, verbal, posturing or priming) on the part of the projecting subject; followed by spontaneous empathic simulation in the receptive object of the subject's experience in which the receptive object is already inherently 'hard-wired' to be empathic with the prompting subject.     

Consciousness and Criterion: On Block's Case for Unconscious Seeing

Block ( 2012 ) highlights two experimental studies of neglect patients which, he contends, provide ‘dramatic evidence’ for unconscious seeing. In Block's hands this is the highly non‐trivial thesis that seeing of the same fundamental kind as ordinary conscious seeing can occur outside of phenomenal consciousness. Block's case for it provides an excellent opportunity to consider a large body of research on clinical syndromes widely held to evidence unconscious perception. I begin by considering in detail the two studies of neglect to which Block appeals. I show why their interpretation as evidence of unconscious seeing faces a series of local difficulties. I then explain how, even bracketing these issues, a long‐standing but overlooked problem concerning our criterion for consciousness problematizes the appeal to both studies. I explain why this problem is especially pressing for Block given his view that phenomenal consciousness overflows access consciousness. I further show that it is epidemic—not only affecting all report‐based studies of unconscious seeing in neglect, but also analogous studies of the condition most often alleged to show unconscious seeing, namely blindsight.     

Critical refl ections on intersubjectivity in psychoanalysis1

The authors review the philosophical trend known as postmodernism and the way it has infl uenced a part of psychoanalytic thought, concluding with some comments on the qualities and shortcomings of the new developments. The authors consider the origins and the cultural and aesthetic‐philosophical meaning of postmodernism, identifying some key concepts such as deconstructionism, the disappearance of the ‘individual subject’ and individual identity, and the rejection of ‘in‐depth’ models of psychoanalysis. Then they examine various, wide‐ranging developments in psychoanalytic thought and treatment. They review the intersubjective fi eld in psychoanalysis, especially in the USA, and then explore whether the underlying lack of truth to be discovered, stressed by these ‘new view’ statements, or the fact that the ‘truth’ only exists in linguistic‐narrative constructions is consistent with basic analytic concepts such as the unconscious, phantasy, transference and countertransference, which recall the tri‐dimensional nature of inner psychic reality. The psychoanalytic process is a condition activated through a bond that is able to hold and contain the relationship of the analytic couple and the patient's unconscious world and not through hermeneutic or narrative constructions.     

Nietzsche’s account of self-conscious agency

This essay is an overview of Nietzsche’s philosophy of action. I discuss the central features of Nietzsche’s account and the ways in which it departs from standard accounts. Section 1 discusses Nietzsche’s view of the opacity of human action. I focus on the way in which the agent’s experience of the world is shaped by unnoticed and unconscious factors. Section 2 asks what role self-consciousness has in the production of action. Section 3 turns to the way in which Nietzsche understands the action/behavior distinction. Finally, Section 4 analyzes Nietzsche’s account of freedom. What emerges is a view that is not just one more entry into the standard debates, but an attempt at rethinking the terms in which the debate is cast.