The seventh servant: The implications of a truth drive in Bions theory of 'O'

Drawing upon Bion's published works on the subjects of truth, dreaming, alpha‐function and transformations in ‘O’, the author independently postulates that there exists a ‘truth instinctual drive’ that subserves a truth principle, the latter of which is associated with the reality principle. Further, he suggests, following Bion's postulation, that ‘alpha‐function’ and dreaming/phantasying constitute unconscious thinking processes and that they mediate the activity of this ‘truth drive’ (quest, pulsion), which the author hypothesizes constitutes another aspect of a larger entity that also includes the epistemophilic component drive. It purportedly seeks and transmits as well as includes what Bion (1965, pp. 147‐9) calls ‘O’, the ‘Absolute Truth, Ultimate Reality, O’ (also associated with infi nity, noumena or things‐in‐themselves, and ‘godhead’) (1970, p. 26). It is further hypothesized that the truth drive functions in collaboration with an ‘unconscious consciousness’ that is associated with the faculty of ‘attention’, which is also known as ‘intuition’. It is responsive to internal psychical reality and constitutes Bion's ‘seventh servant’. O, the ultimate landscape of psychoanalysis, has many dimensions, but the one that seems to interest Bion is that of the emotional experience of the analysand's and the analyst's ‘evolving O’ respectively (1970, p. 52) during the analytic session. The author thus hypothesizes that a sense of truth presents itself to the subject as a quest for truth which has the quality and force of an instinctual drive and constitutes the counterpart to the epistemophilic drive. This ‘truth quest’ or ‘drive’ is hypothesized to be the source of the generation of the emotional truth of one's ongoing experiences, both conscious and unconscious. It is proposed that emotions are beacons of truth in regard to the acceptance of reality. The concepts of an emotional truth drive and a truth principle would help us understand why analysands are able to accept analysts’ interpretations that favor the operation of the reality principle over the pleasure principle—because of what is postulated as their overriding adaptive need for truth. Ultimately, it would seem that Bion's legacy of truth aims at integrating fi nite man with infi nite man.     

Dialogical construction of the selves of trainees as competent researchers

There is a widespread perception among family therapy trainees and practitioners of research as an alien activity. This perception is both damaging and unnecessary. Exercises to enhance the relationship of trainees to research were conducted in stages. Concepts of dialogically constructed selves were introduced, and exercises explored the trainees' construction of ‘self as a systemic therapist’. The idea of an extensive repertoire of selves was proposed. During subsequent research training the fact that all trainees had successfully completed a collaborative research project was exploited. Pairs successfully conducted a dialogue in which they actively and imaginatively constructed their selves as researchers.     

Identifying support systems: a mapping exercise

Within systemic training there is an increasing focus on integrating trainees' personal life experiences and beliefs with their practice. In this paper we present a mapping exercise that is used to help trainees explore their own support needs and the resources they draw upon in order to carry out their work. Although this exercise was developed from training carried out with professionals working with refugees it is our belief that it can be used by any professional groups who wish to explore their own support needs within a learning environment.     

The act of interpretation1

The author understands the interpreting act as an attempt to perceive what happens in the transference/countertransference fi eld and not just what happens in the patient's mind. Interpretation transcends mere intellectual communication. It is also an experience in which analysts’ emotions work as an important instrument in understanding their patients. Interpretation is seen to possess manifest as well as latent content; the latter would contain the analysts’ feelings, emotions and personality. The unconscious content of an interpretation does not inconvenience or preclude the development of the analytic process, but, on the contrary, it allows new associative material to emerge, and it transforms the analytic session into a human relationship. Analysts’ awareness of this content derived from patients’ apperceptions is a signifi cant instrument for understanding what is happening in the analytic relationship, and what transpires in these sessions provides fundamental elements for analysts’ self‐analysis. Some clinical examples demonstrate these occurrences in analytic sessions, and how they can be apprehended and used for a better understanding of the patient. The author also mentions the occurrence of diffi culties during the analytic process. These diffi culties are often the result of lapses in an analyst's perception related to unconscious elements of the relationship.     

The analytic setting today: using the couch or the chair?

This paper re‐visits Murray Jackson's 1961 paper in the Journal of Analytical Psychology, ‘Chair, couch and countertransference’, with the aim of exploring the role of the couch for Jungian analysts in clinical practice today. Within the Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP) and some other London‐based societies, there has been an evolution of practice from face‐to‐face sessions with the patient in the chair, as was Jung's preference, to a mode of practice where patients use the couch with the analyst sitting to the side rather than behind, as has been the tradition in psychoanalysis. Fordham was the founding member of the SAP and it was because of his liaison with psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts that this cultural shift came about. Using clinical examples, the author explores the couch/chair question in terms of her own practice and the internal setting as a structure in her mind. With reference to Bleger's (2013) paper ‘Psychoanalysis of the psychoanalytic setting’, the author discusses how the analytic setting, including use of the couch or the chair, can act as a silent container for the most primitive aspects of the patient's psyche which will only emerge in analysis when the setting changes or is breached.     

A Pilot Study of a Method for Teaching Clinical Psychology Trainees to Conceptualise and Manage Countertransference

There is evidence that therapists' countertransference responses can affect the therapeutic relationship. There is also evidence that trainee therapists can experience difficulty understanding and managing countertransference. This evidence suggests the need for greater focus on countertransference in the training of professionals, such as psychologists, for whom therapy is a core activity. However, little is currently known about the best way of providing such training or the impact of such training on recipients. This pilot study examined clinical psychology trainees' responses to a teaching and learning method for conceptualising and managing countertransference. The method was designed to be accessible to a range of psychology trainees including those in cognitive behavioural therapy programmes. This article outlines the method and its pilot evaluation. An anonymous online questionnaire was completed by 55 trainees pre‐intervention and 40 post‐intervention. Qualitative methods were used to examine changes in trainees' analyses of countertransference pre‐ and post‐intervention, and their reports of understanding and managing countertransference. Trainees also rated the intervention. The majority of participants who completed the post‐intervention questionnaire reported that training increased awareness of or the ability to conceptualise countertransference. They reported strategies for managing countertransference, although they were less confident in this area.     

‘My language thing … is like a big shadow always behind me’: International counselling trainees' challenges in beginning clinical practice

Background: While counsellor education becomes increasingly culturally diverse, little is known about international trainees' experiences of training. Objective: The present study explores one aspect of training, namely clinical practice from the perspective of international, non‐native speaking trainees. In particular, this paper focuses on the challenges this group encounters when practicing in a second language. Methodology: Semi‐structured interviews with four non‐native English‐speaking trainees were conducted and analysed following the principles of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Results: Findings suggest that participants encounter practical difficulties related to their non‐native/foreign identity in practice, such as problems with articulate self‐expression and understanding the client's speech. These difficulties generate anxiety and impact on the trainees' confidence. Conclusions and implications for counsellor training: This study elucidates language as a fundamental aspect of culture, and identifies second language use as a significant source of difference in counselling practice. This paper highlights the need for attention to linguistic diversity and for appropriate support during counsellor education. This will improve international trainees' experiences of training, but also enhance all trainees' understanding of difference, resulting in better service provision for the community.     

The Rape Myth and Blame‐Based Beliefs of Counselors‐in‐Training Toward Male Victims of Rape

The authors surveyed counselors‐in‐training at counselor education programs nationwide, accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs, to examine trainees' acceptance of rape myths and their willingness to make blame‐based attributions toward a male victim of rape. Results suggested that male counselor trainees with no experience counseling sexually assaulted clients tended to endorse the greatest degree of acceptance of rape myths. Trainees of both sexes thought that a male rape victim who showed no resistance to his attacker should have done so. The authors discuss implications for counselor training and supervision.     

The goals of psychoanalytic treatment: Conceptual considerations and follow‐up interview evaluation with a former analysand1

There has been a long, ongoing discussion of goals in psychoanalytic treatment. Some analysts are even of the opinion that psychoanalysis ought to be goalless (‘just analysing’). The growing number of outcome studies, however, is in need of a generally accepted set of criteria by which treatment results can be judged. The author proposes a definition of the goals of psychoanalysis that covers four areas: the alleviation of symptoms and complaints, changes in life adjustment, changes in personality structure, and procedural goals such as the resolution of the transference neurosis. She illustrates the relevance of this conceptualization by an empirical study that considers the assessments of 19 psychoanalysts discussing statements made by a former patient about her analytic treatment. On the basis of this case, which comes from the follow‐up study of the DPV (German Psychoanalytical Society), reported by Leuzinger‐Bohleber et al. in 2002, the author demonstrates that psychoanalysts use the criteria defined above implicitly in forming their opinions. Moreover, they arrived at similar judgements regarding the treatment's outcome.     

Psychoanalysis,science, and art: Aesthetics in the making of a psychoanalyst1

This paper critically examines the relationship of psychoanalysis to science and art. Its point of departure is Michael Rustin's theorizing. Specifically, in considering the possibility of a psychoanalyst's having an aesthetic orientation, the author analyses: 1) the difficulty of there being any connection between psychoanalysis and science because science's necessarily presupposed subject‐object dichotomy is incompatible with transference, which, beginning with Freud, is basic to psychoanalysis; 2) the complex relationship between psychoanalysis and aesthetics using Maurice Merleau‐Ponty's philosophical perspective as well as Luigi Pareyson's theory of aesthetics; 3) the Kantian foundations of the psychoanalytic notion of art as the ‘containing form of subjective experience’ 4) intersubjectivity, without which clinical practice would not be possible, especially considering matters of identity, difference, the body, and of sensory experience such as ‘expressive form’; 5) the relationship of psychoanalysis and art, keeping in mind their possible convergence and divergence as well as some psychoanalysts' conceptual commitment to classicism and the need for contact with art in a psychoanalysts's mind set.     

Psychoanalytic training experience and postgraduate professional development: A survey of six decades of graduate analysts

This exploratory study explored the training and post‐training experience of graduates of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. All living graduates of the past six decades were invited to complete a survey that addressed their training analysis, classroom work, supervision and other training experiences as well as their degree of post‐graduation involvement in teaching, supervising, study groups and other professional endeavors. They were also asked to rate their sense of themselves as psychoanalysts and their satisfaction with their analytic career. Further, they were encouraged to provide spontaneous narrative data. Our findings contribute to the current understanding of the careers of psychoanalysts – including that there is a difference in generational cohorts regarding professional satisfaction, identification as an analyst, and experience of training. We also found that there are no real differences between analysts who do and do not have analytic patients on some important variables: supporting analysis as a treatment method, identifying oneself professionally with psychoanalysis, and disillusionment with psychoanalysis – which is consistent with other studies. Also discovered were differences between male and female analysts' perception of certain aspects of their training.     

‘Freud's speculations in ethnology’: A reflection on anthropology's encounter with psychoanalysis

In the early 20th century, many analysts – Freud and Ernest Jones in particular – were confident that cultural anthropologists would demonstrate the universal nature of the Oedipus complex and other unconscious phenomena. Collaboration between the two disciplines, however, was undermined by a series of controversies surrounding the relationship between psychology and culture. This paper re‐examines the three episodes that framed anthropology's early encounter with psychoanalysis, emphasizing the important works and their critical reception. Freud's Totem and Taboo began the interdisciplinary dialogue, but it was Bronislaw Malinowski's embrace of psychoanalysis – a development anticipated through a close reading of his personal diaries – that marked a turning point in relations between the two disciplines. Malinowski argued that an avuncular (rather than an Oedipal) complex existed in the Trobriand Islands. Ernest Jones’ critical dismissal of this theory alienated Malinowski from psychoanalysis and ended ethnographers’ serious exploration of Freudian thought. A subsequent ethnographic movement, ‘culture and personality,’ was erroneously seen by many anthropologists as a product of Freudian theory. When ‘culture and personality’ was abandoned, anthropologists believed that psychoanalysis had been discredited as well – a narrative that still informs the historiography of the discipline and its rejection of psychoanalytical theory.     

Psychopolitics

Neophyte group therapy trainees often encounter significant difficulties in their initial experiences as group therapists. In this article, we report and discuss the results of a semistructured interview conducted with each of 16 neophyte group therapy trainees in an academic training program. The interview focused on the trainees' subjective experiences related to their initial training and group therapy clinical practice, with particular emphasis on their satisfaction with their training and the role and impact of supervision. All trainees reported strong emotional reactions to their group experience and numerous technical concerns. However, trainees reported a broad range of degrees of satisfaction with their training. Overall satisfaction with training strongly paralleled satisfaction with supervision and the supervisory relationship. Recommendations for improving the group therapy training experience that emerge from the evaluation of the trainees' subjective experiences are suggested.     

‘I was seeing more of her’: international counselling trainees' perceived benefits of intercultural clinical practice

Counsellor education in Britain is steadily turning into a multicultural environment. The limited relevant literature focuses on the challenges that ‘culturally different’ and international trainees may encounter. The aim of this paper is to elucidate a rarely exposed aspect of international counselling trainees' training experience, namely, the benefits they identify in practising across languages and cultures during placement. The illustration of this positive perspective is pertinent to the profession, as it expands existing knowledge on international trainees' experience of clinical practice and it challenges the prevailing conceptualisation of this situation as potentially problematic. It is argued that a shift towards a more holistic understanding of this population's counselling experiences is likely to have particularly useful implications for counsellor education and the profession more broadly.     

On becoming a psychoanalyst

One has the opportunity and responsibility to become an analyst in one's own terms in the course of the years of practice that follow the completion of formal analytic training. The authors discuss their understanding of some of the maturational experiences that have contributed to their becoming analysts in their own terms. They believe that the most important element in the process of their maturation as analysts has been the development of the capacity to make use of what is unique and idiosyncratic to each of them; each, when at his best, conducts himself as an analyst in a way that reflects his own analytic style; his own way of being with, and talking with, his patients; his own form of the practice of psychoanalysis. The types of maturational experiences that the authors examine include situations in which they have learned to listen to themselves speak with their patients and, in so doing, begin to develop a voice of their own; experiences of growth that have occurred in the context of presenting clinical material to a consultant; making self-analytic use of their experience with their patients; creating/discovering themselves as analysts in the experience of analytic writing (with particular attention paid to the maturational experience involved in writing the current paper); and responding to a need to keep changing, to be original in their thinking and behavior as analysts.     

Supervising away from home: clinical,cultural and professional challenges

This paper explores some challenges of supervising clinical work of trainees, known as ‘routers’, who live in countries with diverse cultural, social and political traditions, and the analysts who travel to supervise them. It is written as an evolving dialogue between the authors, who explore together the effects of their own culture of origin, and in particular the legacy and values of their own training institutes on the styles and models of analytic supervision. Their dialogue is framed around the meaning of home and experiences of homesickness for analysts working away from home in an interactive field of strangeness in countries where analytical psychology is a relatively new discipline. The authors outline the findings from their own qualitative survey, where other supervisors working abroad, and those they have supervised, describe their experiences and their encounters with difference. The dialogue ends with both authors discussing what they have learned about teaching and supervising abroad, the implications for more flexible use of Jungian concepts, and how such visits have changed their clinical practice in their home countries.     

Psychoanalytic developmental psychology and the supervision of psychotherapy supervisor trainees

While literature on psychotherapy supervision abounds, literature on supervisor supervision (i.e., the actual supervision of a supervisor trainee who is in the process of learning to supervise) is far more scarce. How might the supervision of supervision process be best understood? What is the developmental experience of supervisor trainees? How can supervisors effectively intervene when working with supervisor trainees? Those questions have been addressed in only the most meagre fashion, and guidance on how to engage in the supervision of supervision is sorely lacking. In this paper, a psychoanalytic developmental framework is used to provide a means of conceptualising the supervisor trainee experience and to suggest a programme by which supervisors can best respond to their supervisor trainees' needs. Supervisor trainee ‘unfolding’ and ‘becoming’ are captured within a developmental progression that punctuates separation and individuation processes. The place of the supervisor – in holding and containing, loosening and liberating, buffering and bolstering, and refuelling and reloading – is considered in the facilitation of supervisor trainee development.     

The early history of lay analysis,especially in Vienna,Berlin and London: Aspects of an unfolding controversy (1906‐24)1,2

Before the First World War, it had been taken for granted that psychoanalysis was carried out by doctors. The IPA, however, also included non‐physicians. This corresponded to Freud's view that psychoanalysis was a basic science (psychology of the unconscious) with manifold fields of application in medicine as well as in the humanities. It was for the latter application that Freud specifically recruited a number of researchers, e.g. Rank. After 1918, helped by a general boom in psychotherapy, these people too began to work as therapists. This led to a debate about lay analysis within the ‘Secret Committee’ that has so far received little attention and is one focus of this paper. Abraham had only allowed doctors to become members of his group. Similarly the Berlin Policlinic was established as a place for the postgraduate training of doctors. On the other hand, Freud (together with Rank) continued to maintain his broader view of psychoanalysis. In 1920/21, he already wished that analysts would not become a subgroup within the medical profession, but a profession of their own, defined by their special training. The big problem of the late 1920s, that different attitudes to the lay question threatened the autonomy of local or national groups and the integration of the IPA, also became visible at that early time in a conflict between London (Jones) and Vienna/Berlin.