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.     

2. Freud's 'id' and Jung's 'self' as aids in self-analysis

The id and the self are described as constructs of our unconscious which can be deployed in describing the analytic process. They can be used like the x in mathematics or the joker in a pack of cards as fitting in almost anywhere. But we can call on them as important aids to concentration, when additional room is made for meditating on the past which then comes to life again. They are useful for analysing ourselves and others. In this way the id as well as the self become aide-mémoires. The analysis of the repressed by means of the transference is not the only road to hitherto unconscious memories. This kind of meditation has helped me despite all reservations to undertake self-analysis and to write an autobiography. I maintain that one can have a transference to oneself. It is, of course, narcissistic. But then, no one can write an autobiography without a healthy dose of narcissism.     

Fears of death and fears of dying in the counter-transference

It is commonplace for people to say they are not afraid of death but they are afraid of dying. I discuss unconscious aspects of fears of dying and fears of death which are revealed in counter-transference experiences in therapy with people suffering from terminal illnesses and with older people. Studying the counter-transference shows that fears of dying, which usually refer to lingering and disabling illnesses, unconsciously are linked with fears of dependency and the apprehension that if one becomes dependent then no-one will want to look after you. This apprehension is often a residue of failures in the early dependency relationship which can be re-enacted in adult life through projective identification when therapists and carers may be induced to abandon the caring role. Despite the ubiquitous denial, fears of death surface in the counter-transference, often obliquely but always with a particular terror for the survival of the self. This unconscious terror confirms Freud’s insight about the denial of death that what is unthinkable is the annihilation of the self. I conclude with a discussion about the importance of setting an ending date in therapy with those who are old or terminally ill.     

Homo Virtualis: Body,Mind, and Soul in a Virtual World

The virtual reality that stands in the center of the digital revolution is changing the bases of our lives today. This new reality is both a product of the basic human ability of imagination and an essential element of analytical psychology. The close relationship between the activity of imagination and its influence on the body is shown in research results from the oldest known prehistoric figures, dating back between 40,000–30,000 b.c.e., and the experiences derived from the work with robots at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Additionally, how this virtual, body-transforming power is reflected in the current ideas of the transhumanists is examined. In this perspective, the extension of physical abilities via technical skills is a necessary step in human evolution: to transfer the human mind onto a machine as a means of circumventing inherent physical limitations.

The psychodynamics of deep psychological needs, frustrations, and fears are discussed as the motors of technical development. An interpretation of this development, based on the mythological biography of the ancient god Hephaistos, is discussed as showing astonishing parallels to the characteristics of the digital revolution and the transhumanist ideas. Thus, Hephaistos can be understood as an archetypal manifestation of those impulses from the collective unconscious that are significantly affecting our present time. The potentialities as well as the dark sides that are hidden behind such “hephaistic” solutions to deep inner psychological and spiritual conflicts are explored.     

Hidden struggles of fieldwork: Exploring the role and use of field diaries

Many methodological and ethical accounts of fieldwork become sanitised and smoothed over particularly because they tend to be written several months after the fieldwork has taken place. They often lose the immediacy and emotional impact of the fieldwork, which is why a field diary can be essential. But why do we tend to keep our field diaries to ourselves? Why are we so apprehensive about being open and honest, revealing direct extracts from our field diaries? This paper explores the role and use of field diaries (as opposed to field notes based on observations) in relation to the often hidden struggles of fieldwork. It argues that guilt, apprehension, fears and worries are legitimate, common and even useful experiences of fieldwork. Key issues which emerge in the field diary extracts from my research in rural Bolivia include practical difficulties, emotional and intellectual concerns, and feelings of cultural and academic guilt. It is based on a follow-up study with participants from my PhD research ten years previously. This paper contributes to methodological debates by exploring how we might use field diaries more explicitly to examine the ways our personal challenges and emotions impact on the research process and outcome.     

The psychohistorical roots of the American "Tea Party" Movement

Extreme resistance to governmental taxation and authority is derived, according to Freud's theory of anal characterology, from premature and harshly coercive toilet training, in which a child is forced unfairly and against its will to surrender the products of his eliminations (which represent money, among other things, in the unconscious) to parental authority. Among these individuals anal eroticism plays a significant role in the psychogenesis of paranoia and conspiracy theorizing, which may represent a defense mechanism erected against repressed fears of passive submission.     

Intuition

At least since the Enlightenment Western thought has been dominated by a skeptical attitude towards intuition, although it is vital for mental and creative functions. In contrast, in recent times, a re-evaluation has emerged. Intuition is now considered by many to be of significant assistance not only in everyday life but also in making complex decisions in business, people management and psychotherapy. This article describes different dimensions of intuition ranging from unconscious intelligence in everyday life through intuitive processes with their connection to the collective unconscious up to its spiritual dimension. The question of how intuition works is extensively discussed. A distinction is made between intuitive work, resonance phenomena and gut feelings. The author concludes that it is not a question as to whether we want to use intuition as a source of knowledge for ourselves but if we recognize and appreciate that we do it constantly.     

Grief as a Transcendent Function and Teacher of Spiritual Growth

Death is an inevitable phase of life, so is grief. This paper attempts to pinpoint the enormous potential of grief in advancing our spiritual growth. Jung states that when encountering a crisis such as loss, the unconscious often breaks through to help us with new adjustments, whereby a transcendent function takes place (Jung, 1971). Instead of becoming an emotional trauma, grief can transcend our everyday experiences and awaken us to our spiritual essence.     

Neural synchronization as a hypothetical explanation of the psychoanalytic unconscious

Cognitive scientists have tried to explain the neural mechanisms of unconscious mental states such as coma, epileptic seizures, and anesthesia-induced unconsciousness. However these types of unconscious states are different from the psychoanalytic unconscious. In this review, we aim to present our hypothesis about the neural correlates underlying psychoanalytic unconscious. To fulfill this aim, we firstly review the previous explanations about the neural correlates of conscious and unconscious mental states, such as brain oscillations, synchronicity of neural networks, and cognitive binding. By doing so, we hope to lay a neuroscientific ground for our hypothesis about neural correlates of psychoanalytic unconscious; parallel but unsynchronized neural networks between different layers of consciousness and unconsciousness. Next, we propose a neuroscientific mechanism about how the repressed mental events reach the conscious awareness; the lock of neural synchronization between two mental layers of conscious and unconscious. At the last section, we will discuss the data about schizophrenia as a clinical example of our proposed hypothesis.     

Sibling rivalry at work; from family to groups

Sibling relationships are ambivalent. They are full of love and hate, and therefore, our most basic wish cannot simply be to get rid of our siblings. Many of the conflicts we find ourselves in, either with friends or within institutions, may need a complex and subtle understanding of sibling dynamics. The famous Controversial Discussions that nearly destroyed the Institute of Psychoanalysis in the early forties could be partly attributed to the unacknowledged and unconscious dynamics of the sibling transferences that swirled around Melanie Klein, Anna Freud and Freud. One of the tasks of therapists is to explore how we all must live within a society, with our contemporaries. This difficulty involves observing that sometimes in therapy we are part of the nursery quarrel itself, rather than superior. And so in adult sibling conflict within an institution, there may be a need for an outside moderator, like a parent, to sort out the quarrel; for when sibling passions are revived at work or in the consulting room, they can knock one sideways with the unmeditated quality of the encounter.     

Fishing: Finding One’s Way to the Unconscious

By imagining ourselves to be fishing in the deep waters of the unconscious, we consider here many questions about the meeting of the personal ego and the powerful unknown energies that lie below—questions ranging from “Why should we even want to connect with such forces?” to “What’s the best way of doing it?” There are many more questions to ask, such as how does the unconscious express itself and when should we avoid a direct meeting with it and why?

As individuals and as cultures, we have long histories with the unconscious, sometimes welcoming it, sometimes trying to wall it off, sometimes being overwhelmed by it. In this article the author emphasizes the necessity of becoming aware of the unconscious, knowing it as something that is always active in us, recognizing that it is not under our control, and realizing that it is not of our own making.     

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.     

THINKING ABOUT FEELINGS: WORKING WITH THE STAFF OF AN EATING DISORDERS UNIT

I would like to share with colleagues some thoughts about the fascinating and disturbing states of mind and body that I found when working in an Eating Disorders Unit, and try both to describe and to think further about how these impact on the work of the staff and upon my task.

Some recurrent themes are: splitting and projection, showing up in many areas as either/or states of mind, which can affect the whole team at times; the refusal to let anything in, which seems linked to disastrous unconscious muddles between food and love, love and hate, etc; a great unconscious terror that, given the slightest acknowledgment, need will emerge as greed; horror of fatness, and body dysmorphic confusions; enactment in place of feeling/thinking; antagonism to change and growth.

Despite common themes and ways of behaving that can make these patients seem superficially very alike, it is their differences that are so striking; it seems clear that there is unlikely to be a single identifiable precursor. We have to keep reminding ourselves that the search for meanings is not always the same as seeking after causes, and that neither is the same as blame, often a difficult balance to hold where splitting is so prevalent a defence.     

Intersubjektivit?t und psychoanalytische Identit?t

The psychoanalytic identity is the result of identification with a psychoanalytic introject. It protects against the fears to which everyone who is attempting to illuminate the unconscious is exposed. In this paper the substantive issues of identity are discussed as a psychoanalyst who is a support for the work by providing concepts for the understanding of the unconscious. Using the example of the intersubjective wend in psychoanalysis it will be examined how these contents have changed under the influence of intersubjectivity. The notion that psychological development also occurs in psychoanalysis in unmistakable interpersonal contexts implies removing the restraints imposed by commitment to the technical rules and normative expectations. The intersubjective view of psychoanalysis therefore demands from the psychoanalyst an identity which is fundamentally different from that of the classical psychoanalyst. Processing the associated fears places the psychoanalytic identity at a more mature stage.     

Repression, transference and reconstruction

Whereas Peter Fonagy almost dismisses the importance of repression and the recovery of repressed and suppressed memory, the author believes that the analysis of repression retains importance in clinical psychoanalysis. Transference is a return of the repressed, with repressed memories embedded within a fundamental unconscious fantasy constellation. Moreover, transference is an essential, but not the only, route to the understanding and analysis of the patient. Nor should transference be confused with the real or new analytic relationship. The author does not regard the dynamic unconscious as definitely registered and retrieved in procedural memory, awaiting further research. A focus on the present 'self with other' model of therapeutic action neglects pathogenesis and the importance of childhood and its psychoanalytic reconstruction.     

From Freud to the present day: difference,not knowing and its relation to psychoanalysis

In order to know and to understand we are often tempted to use defined models and theories. But catastrophe happens when you project models onto phenomena where they don’t belong. Difference exists and not all phenomena can be forced to reside within existing models. We can project our already known theories and ideas onto what we think we see through certain frames that we create but the cost may be dear. There is no one way to understand the unconscious and the psyche. Psychoanalysis is always open for revision and development. Old models can be broken and new thought created. The unconscious is an impossible yet generative resource. We need to stay open to not knowing – constantly look at the frame and stay alert to its constructed nature. We need our frame to work with the unconscious but not to the detriment of the spirit of that unconscious.     

Moral Imagination, Disability and Embodiment

abstract    In this paper we question the basis on which judgements are made about the 'quality' of the lives of people whose embodied experience is anomalous, specifically in cases of impairments. In moral and political philosophy it is often assumed that, suitably informed, we can overcome epistemic gaps through the exercise of moral imagination: 'putting ourselves in the place of others', we can share their points of view. Drawing on phenomenology and theories of embodied cognition, and on empirical studies, we suggest that there are barriers to imagining oneself differently situated, or imagining being another person, arising in part from the way imagination is constrained by embodied experience. We argue that the role of imagination in moral engagement with others is to expand the scope of our sympathies rather than to enable us to put ourselves in the other's place. We argue for explicit acknowledgement that our assessments of others' QOL are likely to be shaped by the specifics of our own embodiment, and by the assumptions we make as a consequence about what is necessary for a good quality of life.     

Privacy and Personal Identity

What marks the traditional privacy torts of disclosure, intrusion, false light, and appropriation is that they require an invasion, an intrinsic harm caused by someone doing something to us without our consent. But we are now voluntarily giving up information about ourselves--to our physicians, for instance--that is being gathered into databases that are brought and sold and that can be appropriated by those who wish to assume our identities. The way in which our privacy is put at risk is different, and this leads to a new understanding of the concept of privacy. Others appropriate our identities, treating us as objects; by doing so, our standing as autonomous moral agents, controlling how we present ourselves to the world, is thus denied.     

Confronting the Trickster: Crises and Opportunity in the Time of Trump—A Jungian Perspective

Through our own moral and political ineptitude, we have unknowingly invited the trickster archetype into our midst in the form of Donald Trump, our trickster president. Terrifyingly, we now have no idea what will happen to us. Within this new dynamic, we must now confront the trickster, as it manifests within him. It is a wakeup call and a warning as to what is going on in the shadow lands of the American and global psyche. But although it is a clear and present danger to us, it is also an unprecedented opportunity to become more conscious of ourselves psychologically, and to potentially heal our divided selves. This is the hidden meaning and value that the trickster brings to us.     

Going Deep,Going Wide

Contemporary theories of psychoanalytic action have for the most part shifted from an archeological model—analyst as objective scientist/detective in search of patients’ deeply repressed affective experience—to analyst as often unwitting co-participant in a relationship ultimately designed to broaden patients’ awareness and acceptance of their varied internalized self-other configurations. These sometimes dissociated configurations often emerge in the context mutual enactments between patient and analyst.