The body of the other: intercorporeality and the phenomenology of agoraphobia

How is our experience of the world affected by our experience of others? Such is the question I will be exploring in this paper. I will do so via the agoraphobic condition. In agoraphobia, we are rewarded with an enriched glimpse into the intersubjective formation of the world, and in particular to our embodied experience of that social space. I will be making two key claims. First, intersubjectivity is essentially an issue of intercorporeality, a point I shall explore with recourse to Merleau-Ponty’s account of the prepersonal body. The implication of this claim is that evading or withdrawing from the other remains structurally impossible so long as we remain bodily subjects. Second, the necessary relation with others defines our thematic and affective experience of the world. Far from a formal connection with others, the corporeal basis of intersubjectivity means that our lived experience of the world is mediated via our bodily relations with others. In this way, intercorporeality reveals the body as being dynamically receptive to social interactions with others. Each of these claims is demonstrated via a phenomenological analysis of the agoraphobe’s interaction with others. From this analysis, I conclude that our experience of the world is affected by our experience of others precisely because we are in a bodily relation with others. Such a relation is not causally linked, as though first there were a body, then a world, and then a subject that provided a thematic and affective context to that experience. Instead, body, other, and world are each intertwined in a single unity and cannot be considered apart.     

The Therapist Dissociates: Psychic Nodules and Group Process

I introduce the term nodule to call attention to the effects of a particular type of irruption into the therapist’s psychology, leading to dissociation. A preoccupying state of mind emerges that muffles, mutes, or blots outs other internal and external channels of communications. The therapist’s associations do not integrate usefully, furthering self-reflection and contributing to productive leadership. Rather, a nodule crystallizes as the therapist becomes preoccupied with an amalgamation of affects and feelings, fantasies, reality statements and suppositions, bodily states, actions, and actions-tendencies. I focus on the influence of psychic nodules on me, as a commandeered subject, and their effects on the communicative matrices (nodes) of three groups I led.     

The missing pieces in the scientific study of bodily awareness

Research on bodily awareness has focused on body illusions with an aim to explore the possible dissociation of our bodily awareness from our own body. It has provided insights into how our sensory modalities shape our sense of embodiment, and it has raised important questions regarding the malleability of our sense of ownership over our own body. The issue, however, is that this research fails to consider an important distinction in how we experience our body. There are indeed two ways in which we can be aware of our body: via observational awareness, which involves attending to the body as an object, and via non-observational awareness, where the body is given as the subject of experience and does not involve attention. The research to date has focused on the former—observational bodily awareness—and has left the latter—non-observational bodily awareness—in the dark. This is detrimental to ever formulating a complete account of how we are aware of our body. It is understandable, however, because of the inherent problem in studying non-observational bodily awareness: how would you instruct subjects to report on their unattended bodily awareness? In view to resolving this problem, I propose here a working hypothesis on the basis of research on interoception and the rubber hand illusion, and on the effect of meditation on awareness and attention. This working hypothesis can show us a way to begin studying non-observational bodily awareness, and finally build a complete theory of bodily awareness.     

My body as an object: self-distance and social experience

In phenomenology the body is often referred to as the lived body which makes the world familiar to me. In this paper, however, I discuss bodily self-consciousness in terms of self-distance. Self-distance is the suggestion that bodily self-consciousness consist in a reflective stance where you conceive of your body as a physical thing, an object in the world as well as the subject of bodily experiences. I argue that we are bodily self-conscious because we experience our own body in more than one way and that these ways are not derivative of one another or hierarchically ordered. This latter claim conflicts with certain phenomenological readings of how the body is experienced, one of which I will refer to and discuss as the Familiarity Objection to my idea of self-distance. I end the paper with a discussion of why we need the conception of experienced objectification that is entailed in the notion of self-distance to account for both pathological and non-pathological bodily self-experiences. The notion of self-distance improves our understanding of how the body plays a central role in psychosis for the experience of distorted inter-subjective relations.     

Bodily Awareness, Imagination and the Self

Common wisdom tells us that we have five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. These senses provide us with a means of gaining information concerning objects in the world around us, including our own bodies. But in addition to these five senses, each of us is aware of our own body in ways in which we are aware of no other thing. These ways include our awareness of the position, orientation, movement, and size of our limbs (proprioception and kinaesthesia), our sense of balance, and our awareness of bodily sensations such as pains, tickles, and sensations of pressure or temperature. We can group these together under the title ‘bodily awareness’. The legitimacy of grouping together these ways of gaining information is shown by the fact that they are unified phenomenologically; they provide the subject with an awareness of his or her body ‘from the inside’. Bodily awareness is an awareness of our own bodies from within. This perspective on our own bodies does not, cannot, vary. As Merleau‐Ponty writes, ‘my own body…is always presented to me from the same angle’ (1962: 90). It has recently been claimed by a number of philosophers that, in bodily awareness, one is not simply aware of one's body as one's body, but one is aware of one's body as oneself. That is, when I attend to the object of bodily awareness I am presented not just with my body, but with my ‘bodily self’. The contention of the present paper is that such a view is misguided. In the first section I clarify just what is at issue here. In the remainder of the paper I present an argument, based on two claims about the nature of the imagination, against the view that the bodily self is presented in bodily awareness. Section two defends the dependency thesis; a claim about the relation between perception and sensory imagination. Section three defends a certain view about our capacity to imagine being other people. Section four presents the main argument against the bodily self awareness view and section five addresses some objections.     

The Body in Spiritual Exercise: A Comparative Study between Epictetan Askēsis and Early Buddhist Meditation

The paper explores the role of body in Epictetus’s Discourse and Buddhist Satipa??hāna Sutta and underscores the importance of embodied practice in Epictetan askēsis (‘training or exercise’). It argues that the important but unrecognized role of the body in Epictetan askēsis can be better understood if we introduce in some perspectives of early Buddhism. From the angle of spiritual exercise, early Buddhism maintains that the meditator ought to experience the body directly and contemplate the body as an impermanent physical object, and not identify oneself with it. And based on the insight into the reality of the body and the cultivation of bodily awareness, the meditator can detach himself from the transient phenomenon and remove the unwholesome states of mind. Similarly, for Epictetus, by training our impression on the body and regarding the body as an indifferent thing but not the true self, one may successfully attain the truth of the body conditioned in various social contexts and then realize detachment and freedom. Therefore, in both early Buddhist meditation and Epictetan askēsis, the embodied practice of contemplating the body as it actually is, is also a spiritual exercise to understand the phenomenal world and detach from external things and to examine and tranquilize the internal world.     

CONSIDERATIONS ON DEPRESSIVE CONFLICT AND ITS DIFFERENT LEVELS OF INTENSITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR TECHNIQUE

This article considers the problem of depressive conflict (DC) and the difficulties that arise in integrating aggression towards the object of libidinal cathexis. This conflict results, in particular, from the destructive omnipotence that infantile fantasies attribute to the aggression. In order to better clarify Klein's very broad concept of the depressive position, three levels of severity of depressive conflict are proposed, depending on the type of fantasies concerning the loss of the object that predominate in the individual. These are: fantasies of catastrophic and irreparable destruction of the object ('parapsychotic' DC); fantasies of death and serious damage of the object ('para-depressive' DC); and fantasies of rejection and loss of the love of the object ('para-neurotic' DC). Having looked at these theoretical hypotheses, their implications for technique will then be considered, particularly the importance of focusing the interpretation on guilt feelings rather than on drives in the transferential relationship. A clinical example drawn from the work of Klein and a clinical vignette of a particularly difficult analysis illustrate this technical hypothesis.     

The Negative Transitional Object: Theoretical Elaboration and Clinical Illustration

Winnicott’s theory of transitional phenomena looks mainly at the normative experience of children’s early efforts to use proto-imaginative and bodily strategies to self-regulate in nonverbal dialogue with the parents. This paper explores another, less optimal possibility, one where the transitional object is shunted into a dissociated realm of experience under the weight of a deeply negative, grandiose co-constructed narrative. The enduring presence of that split-off, psychically impoverishing narrative can aggravate a vulnerability toward addictions and compulsions in adulthood, complicating the individual’s ability to make use of dominant addiction treatment models or the transitional space of the analytic relationship, as illustrated by the analysis of a patient struggling with a compulsive involvement with Internet pornography.     

Listening to Somatosensory States in Psychoanalysis: Body,Trauma, and Poetry

ABSTRACT

The author starts from the apparently outdated James-Lange theory of emotion to rediscover elements of modernity for contemporary psychoanalysis: from James’ bodily-sensory dimension to Damasio’s “feeling of what happens,” to Bucci’s attention to the patient’s visceral narrative in session. William James stated that bodily sensations are the first elements on the path toward consciousness. Damasio emphasizes that “Consciousness is rooted in the representation of the body”. Bucci presents a framework for identifying linkages between bodily and symbolic states and to observe the various degrees of patients’ “visceral speech” in session. These parallels support a sensibility to listen to language as the voice of the body: the relationship between the patient’s narrative and the bodily-sensory dimension can be grasped through the patient’s “imagery” which may reference earlier somatic experience. Particular emphasis is given to the story-telling of trauma.     

THE ‘MEDEA FANTASY’: AN UNCONSCIOUS DETERMINANT OF PSYCHOGENIC STERILITY1

The author begins by pointing out that myths have always been powerful vehicles for the projection of ubiquitous unconscious fantasies. Having noted the importance of certain male protagonists of the Greek myths in Freud's theories, she observes that their female counterparts exert an equal fascination and suggests that the Medea myth as recounted by Euripides can be invoked to elucidate a central unconscious fantasy found to underlie the psychogenic frigidity and sterility of several of her female patients. The manifestation of this ‘Medea fantasy’ is illustrated by a clinical account in which a dream is analysed. The author next summarises the Medea story as told by Euripides and attempts a psychoanalytic interpretation of it. She draws attention to features of the ‘unconscious truth’ inherent in the myth that were shared by all the members of her group of patients. A case history then shows how the progressive understanding and working through of the Medea fantasy led to a change in the analysand's experience of femininity and enabled her to have children. It is postulated that both early infantile sexual fantasies and repressed memories of early objectrelations traumas such as maternal depression combine with ubiquitous bodily fantasies to produce the unconscious Medea fantasy.     

Self-focused attention and the experience of alcoholic intoxication

The present study investigates the relationship between self-focused attention and the experience of emotional and bodily concomitants of alcoholic intoxication. It was hypothesized that self-focused attention would amplify salient mood and bodily concomitants of intoxication after alcohol intake and counteract these concomitants after placebo treatment. Self-focused attention was assessed by measures of private body consciousness, private self-consciousness, and of self-awareness. Since alcohol intake did not influence mood, it was not possible to test our main-hypothesis linking self-focused attention with the experience of mood concomitants of intoxication. As to bodily concomitants of intoxication a strong effect of alcohol intake was disclosed. Further analysis revealed the predicted relationship between self-awareness and private body consciousness on one hand and the experience of bodily concomitants of intoxication, on the other. The relationship between private body consciousness and experience of bodily concomitants of intoxication was moderated by the amount of experience with alcohol. No significant relationship between private self-consciousness and experience of bodily concomitants of intoxication was found.     

The objects of bodily awareness

Is it possible to misidentify the object of an episode of bodily awareness? I argue that it is, on the grounds that a person can reasonably be unsure or mistaken as to which part of her body he or she is aware of at a given moment. This requires discussing the phenomenon of body ownership, and defending the claim that the proper parts of one’s body are at least no less ‘principal’ among the objects of bodily awareness than is the body as a whole. I conclude with some reasons why this should lead us to think that bodily awareness, unlike introspection, is a form of perception.     

What Is the Stuff We Are Made Of? The Body and the Body–Mind Relationship in Early Development: A Discussion of Thomson-Salo and Paul’s “Understanding the Sexuality of Infants”

Acknowledging the importance of the baby’s sensuality and sexuality in the infant–parent dyad, the author emphasizes the role of the body as the basis of the person’s being. The baby needs to develop, through his mother’s reverie, an internal capability to cool down his bodily turmoil. Early bonding requires from the mother a capacity to discriminate the sensual from the sexual in order to help the baby to contain his invasive sensory experience. This area of exploration is deeply related with the body–mind dissociation we often meet in our most difficult adult patients.     

Grounding Bodily Sense of Ownership

Philosophia - The experience of one’s body as one’s own is normally referred to as one’s “bodily sense of ownership” (BSO). Despite its centrality and importance in...     

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.     

Little Hans and the thought police: the 'policeman fantasies' as the first reported supervisory transference fantasies

The ‘policeman fantasies’ in Freud ’s case of Little Hans, famous for being Freud ’s most direct evidence for specifically sexual oedipal desire by Hans for his mother, are reconsidered. The Hans case is the first recorded instance of psychoanalytic supervision, and recent studies suggest that it is common for patients in supervised treatment to experience fantasies about the supervisor. It is argued that the policeman fantasies are the first recorded instances of such transference fantasies about psychoanalytic supervision and the patient–therapist–supervisor triangle. The explanatory power of this interpretation is supported by the nuances of the features of the fantasies themselves, as well as by the context in which they occurred that might serve as ‘day residues’. Moreover, this interpretation provides an answer to the central mystery of the two fantasies, which goes unaddressed by Freud ’s oedipal interpretation: Who is the policeman?     

Say hello to the scream extractor: working with an autistic child with psychotic mechanisms

This paper describes the first two years of intensive psychotherapy with a six-year-old boy diagnosed with autism. I explore the many ways in which he retreated from reality, most frequently by taking refuge inside the maternal body or flying off into an imaginary space world. He fragmented his identity and that of his objects by using the discourse of fictional characters. Everything was externalised; there was little transmutation of material available for thought. I consider his dilemma – the wish to fuse with the object and the fear of being engulfed; the omnipotent denial of the need for an object and of the parental relationship, leading to an inability to make links. The paper discusses working with a child who experienced any ‘paternal’ firmness as persecuting and destructive. The softer, receptive maternal mind of the therapist was more easily tolerated. He gradually began to internalise a more benign combined object, as he became more able to bear separateness from the other.     

Sanctity of the Body and the Relational Paradigm

The individual is in constant interaction with others from birth onwards. The primary experience evolves from the innate need for bodily touch and connection, which form the foundation for the psychobiological structure of the individual. The body’s anatomy is made to yearn for another, for building a home with the body of another. This makes the body the focal instrument, which is discernible already in the mother–child relationship, as well as later in male–female or husband–wife relationships. The body thus provides the most sacred space, and deep within it carries a natural yearning for another, for having a relationship with another. Relationships are the means through which the body can come to full realization.