Substantive unconscious and adjective unconscious: the contribution of Wilfred Bion

The author first provides her readers with a brief summary of some of Freud's ideas, as found throughout his work, on the notion of 'unconscious'. The notion of unconscious as noun is contrasted to the idea of unconscious as adjective, this latter being proposed as a quality, or a state, ever temporary, dynamic, and subject to the constant changes going on in the individual's internal psychic world, as well as to external conditions. After presenting some considerations, the author then contrasts the Kleinian model of the mind to the Freudian, and Wilfred Bion's contribution is discussed at some length. Within Bion's conception of psychic functioning, the model of 'dream' is highlighted and, in this regard, clarifications are sought regarding Bion's view of the unconscious. To conclude, a brief and superficial approximation to the work of Carl Jung is touched upon, although the author admits to knowing little of Jung's positions.     

Photography: snapshots out of the unconscious

Abstract

This paper looks briefly at the relevance of infant and young child observation courses to work with adults and then goes on to describe how a normal young child aged 2% coped with two quite sudden changes in her life and the psychological mechanisms she used to manage her anxieties. These mechanisms - displacement, use of transitional objects, fantasy and symbolism - might equally be used by adults in later life when faced with uncertainty and change. Links are then made to psychotherapeutic work with adults.     

Shyness: conceptualization and measurement

The concept of shyness and its measurement were investigated in a series of studies (total N = 1,687). Data collection and analysis proceeded in three phases: the revision and continued development of a measure of shyness, the Social Reticence Scale; a psychometric comparison among five measures of shyness; and an examination of the factor structure underlying the construct of shyness. Phase 1 assessed the reliability and validity of the Social Reticence Scale, including ratings of videotaped monologues and ratings by significant others. Phase 2 compared the five shyness measures with one another on indices of internal consistency and with other relevant measures of emotionality, personality, relationships, and behavior. Items from the five shyness measures were combined in a factor analysis in Phase 3, and the resulting factors were correlated with the self-report and rating data obtained in Phase 2. Overall, the results from these studies confirmed that the shyness measures were valid, reliable, and empirically distinct from measures of related constructs. Behavioral validity was observed for several of the shyness scales. Additional analyses suggested that three interpretable factors underlie responses to the shyness scales but provided little support for drawing conceptual distinctions among types of shyness. Discussion focuses on the implications of these data for the measurement and conceptualization of shyness.     

The alienness of the unconscious: on Laplanche's theory of seduction

In this paper the author uses a clinical example as a focus for an exploration of his thesis that the parent is the 'other' who implants his or her unconscious message into the child by means of seduction. As the other is alien, the unconscious of the child cannot any longer be considered the centre of the person but is decentred by the implanted alienness. The author draws on Laplanche's seduction theory to argue that the unconscious message of seduction by the other is exclusively sexual and that it cannot be translated nor symbolized because an interpretative system shared by subject and object is lacking. The decentred alterity of the unconscious allows for comparison with a third object and hence a structural triangulation of the mind which is a prerequisite for symbolization. The role of the analyst in permitting a transference enactment and so facilitating the beginning of sexual symbolization is discussed in relation to the clinical example given at the start of the paper.     

Behaviorism and the unconscious

It is argued that the behaviorist's rejection of mind as irrelevant to a functional account of behavior does not necessitate his rejection of unconscious phenomena, and that the behaviorist can account for behavior normally attributed to the workings of an unconscious mind by reference to historical rather than to contemporary factors controlling behavior, and to the independent acquisition of verbal and motor behavior.     

Attitudes toward the unconscious

As a keynote to a conference bringing together psychoanalysts and analytical psychologists, this paper addresses different mythic attitudes toward the unconscious, Starting with the caricatures of Oedipus and Narcissus that the author feels Jung and Freud originally projected onto each Other in the course of their quarrel. He moves on to the fairytale-like stories of Perseus and Beauty and the Beast to discover mote complex images of the stance taken in relation to the unconscious by present-day analysts: working within both die Jungian and the Freudian traditions.     

Making conscious the unconscious in order to modify unconscious processing: Some mechanisms of therapeutic change1

This paper examines some of the mechanisms through which interpretation aimed primarily at increasing conscious awareness can nonetheless produce unconscious changes, the latter being deemed the basic aim of psychoanalysis. The concept of valency or motivational weight of the interpretation is proposed to assess which forces of the various motivational systems the interpretation mobilizes (hetero/self‐preservation, sensual/sexual, attachment, narcissistic, psychobiological regulation etc.), on which of the above‐mentioned systems interpretation relies, and which would oppose therapeutic intervention and why. Certain conditions are also analyzed that could explain the so‐called ‘change through the analytic relationship’, pointing out that, despite the major differences between this form of change and change through interpretation, both of them would share certain mechanisms. This conclusion leads to the need to qualify the idea that interpretation would be exclusively aimed at declarative memory, with no effects upon procedural memory. The paper examines the potential consequences for therapeutic techniques derived from recent fi ndings in neuroscience on so‐called labile state memory, and proposes the coupling of experiences as one of the analytical instruments used for therapeutic change. A clinical vignette is included to illustrate some of the theoretical and technical aspects considered.     

Winnicott on Jung: destruction, creativity and the unrepressed unconscious

This paper considers Winnicott's critique of Jung, principally expressed in his review of Memories, Dreams, Reflections, which asserts that Jung's creative contribution to analysis was constrained by his failure to integrate his 'primitive destructive impulses', subsequent to inadequate early containment. It is argued that although Winnicott's diagnosis illuminates Jung's shadow, particularly his constraints vis-à-vis the repressed Freudian unconscious, it fails to appreciate the efficacy of the compensatory containment Jung found in the collective unconscious. This enigmatic relationship between destruction and creativity-so central to late Winnicott-is illuminated by Matte Blanco's bi-logic, and further explored in relation to William Blake. Winnicott's personal resolution through his Jung-inspired 'splitting headache' dream of destruction-previously considered in this Journal by Morey (2005) and Sedgwick (2008)-is given particular attention.     

Meditation and the unconscious

This paper begins by describing the practice of meditation. It goes on to discuss George Kelly's view of the unconscious and uses meditation to illustrate this view. Some similarities between meditation and psychotherapy are also described within their mainly Kellian perspective. It is concluded, inter alia, that meditation practice sensitizes the world within, which includes subverbal and unconscious material. With increased adeptness its practice may lead to the temporary suspension of our habitual, dualistic, cognitive construing, and thus facilitate the experience of no-thought, tranquility and a sense of oneness or unity. In the long-term, meditation practice may elaborate both subverbal and transverbal construing.     

Constructing the collective unconscious

Abstract: Innovative attempts at collating Jungian analytical psychology with a range of ‘post‐modern’ theories have yielded significant results. This paper adopts an alternative strategy: a Lacanian vantage point on Jungian theory that eschews an attempt at reconciling Jung with post‐structuralism. A focused Lacanian gaze on Jung will establish an irreducible tension between Jung's view of archetypes as factors immanent to the psyche and a Lacanian critique that lays bare the contingent structures and mechanisms of their constitution, unveiling the supposed archetypes’a posteriori production through the efficacy of a discursive field. Theories of ideology developed in the wake of Lacan provide a powerful methodological tool allowing to bring this distinction into focus. An assembly of Lacan's fragmentary accounts of Jung will be supplemented with an approach to Jungian theory via ?i?ek's Lacan‐oriented theory of the signifying mechanism underpinning ‘ideology’. Accordingly, the Jungian archetype of the self, which is considered in some depth, can begin to be seen in a new light, namely as a ‘master signifier’, not only of Jung's academic edifice, but also —and initially—of the discursive strategies that establish his own subjectivity. A discussion of Jung's approach to mythology reveals how the ‘quilting point’ of his discourse comes to be coupled with a correlate in the Real, a non‐discursive ‘sublime object’ conferring upon archetypes their fascinating aura.     

Setting the stage subliminally: unconscious context effects

An important approach to understand how the brain gives rise to consciousness is to probe the depth of unconscious processing, thus to define the key features that cause conscious awareness. Here, we investigate the possibility for subliminal stimuli to shape the context for unconscious processing. Context effects have generally been assumed to require consciousness. In the present experiment, unconscious context processing was investigated by looking at the impact of the context on the response activation elicited by a subliminal prime. We compared the effects of the same subliminal prime on target processing when the prime was embedded in different unconscious contexts. Results showed that the same prime can evoke opposite responses depending on the unconscious context in which it is presented. Taken together, the results of this study show that context effects can be unconscious.