‘Translation’ and ‘transformation’ in the analytic situation: Freud – Bion – Laplanche

Following a short introduction to the core theses of Jean Laplanche’s theory of a ‘general seduction’ the author presents the resultant clinical position of the analyst. In the same way that an adult sends ‘enigmatic messages’ to the child, it is the analyst’s task to reopen this primal situation so that the patient can find new ‘translations’ for these messages. Laplanche distinguishes between the function of the analytic frame – which represents and supports attachment – and the ‘sexual’– which is the repressed and constitutes the unconscious. Only the focus on this unconscious facilitates the deconstruction of ‘incorrect’ translations. Accordingly, the analyst, says Laplanche, should not take part in construction – this is a self‐construction of the patient – but only in reconstruction. The author compares this clinical model with Freud’s notions and the ‘transformation processes’ through the alpha function as described by Bion. She illustrates Laplanche’s model and the interpretation strategy with case material.     

The body one has and the body one is: Understanding the transsexual’s need to be seen

The transsexual individual confronts the analyst with a disturbing otherness. How this otherness is understood, that is, how the analyst ‘looks’ at the patient through her distinctive theoretical lens impacts, in turn, on the patient’s experience and what transpires between them. In this paper the author outlines a developmental model rooted in attachment and object relations theory to provide one alternative way of ‘looking’ at some of these patients’ experiences in the clinical setting. It is suggested that in some cases of transsexuality the primary object(s) did not mirror and contain an early experience of incongruity between the given body and the subjective experience of gender: it remains unmentalized and disrupts self‐coherence leading to the pursuit of surgery that is anticipated to ‘guarantee’ relief from the incongruity. Through an account of work with a male to female (MtF) transsexual who underwent surgery during her five years of psychotherapy, the author explores how a focus on the transsexual’s experience of ‘being seen’, that is, of being taken in (or not) visually and mentally by the object in their state of incongruity, affords another window through which to approach the transsexual’s experience in the transference–countertransference dynamics.     

Embodying analysis: the body and the therapeutic process

This paper considers the transfer of somatic effects from patient to analyst, which gives rise to embodied countertransference, functioning as an organ of primitive communication. By means of processes of projective identification, the analyst experiences somatic disturbances within himself or herself that are connected to the split‐off complexes of the analysand. The analysty’s own attempt at mind‐body integration ushers the patient towards a progressive understanding and acceptance of his or her inner suffering. Such experiences of psychic contagion between patient and analyst are related to Jung’s ‘psychology of the transference’ and the idea of the ‘subtle body’ as an unconscious shared area. The re‐attribution of meaning to pre‐verbal psychic experiences within the ‘embodied reverie’ of the analyst enables the analytic dyad to reach the archetypal energies and structuring power of the collective unconscious. A detailed case example is presented of how the emergence of the vitalizing connection between the psyche and the soma, severed through traumatic early relations with parents or carers, allows the instinctual impulse of the Self to manifest, thereby reactivating the process of individuation.     

Looking back,looking forward: A reexamination of Benjamin Wolstein’s interlock and the emergence of intersubjectivity

In this paper the author takes a close look at Benjamin Wolstein’s chapter, ‘Therapy’, from his book, Countertransference, published in 1959. This chapter contains a discussion of what he refers to as the interlock between analyst and patient, or today what we might describe as transference/countertransference enactment. The author shows how Wolstein’s concept of the interlock and its relation to the analyst’s countertransference was radical and innovative for its time. Wolstein’s notion of a transference/countertransference interlock, along with the seminal contributions of Ferenczi and some of the early interpersonal theorists, anticipates the complexities of a two‐person psychology and the entanglement which can occur from the intermingling of unconscious processes of analyst and patient in the experiential field. The author highlights three main ideas. First, the author provides a brief review of enactment with an emphasis on the role of the analyst’s participation as conceptualized by the various theoretical perspectives. An historical context is given for Wolstein’s clinical theorizing. Second, the author explicates Wolstein’s concept of the interlock, with particular attention to the processes involved which account for the complexities it presents. Third, the author examines the ‘working through’ process, including the emergence of intersubjectivity in the resolution of the interlock. The author shows throughout Wolstein’s emphasis on the influence of the analyst’s personal psychology, mutuality, and intersubjectivity, all of which anticipated the gradual interpersonalization of psychoanalysis across the various schools of thought.     

AFFECT IN PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY: DISCUSSION OF ANDRÉ GREEN'S “ON DISCRIMINATING AND NOT DISCRIMINATING BETWEEN AFFECT AND REPRESENTATION”1

André Green's 1999 programmatic essay on affect and representation, an attempt to extend Freud's model of the neuroses (where affect and representation have different vicissitudes) to non‐neurotic cases is submitted to critical reading. Green wishes to restore the importance of representation; to use the second topographical theory, where id, psychical impulse and object‐cathexis replace the unconscious and the ideational representation in order to conceptualise borderline disturbance, and to show how ultimately the ‘non‐discrimination’ affect‐representation obtains in non‐neurotic cases as well. The author, interested in the question posed in Green's essay as to what we have to sell our borderline patients, addresses the various reasons why this project fails. Among the problematic points are the paradox of Green's model of unconscious affect, that does not allow the analyst to generate meaning with borderline patients, the view of ‘representation’ as replacing presence and perception of the object that does not allow the analyst to be a nonabsent object, and the inabilty to conceptualise affect‐representatives and to work out the definition of affect as ‘the anticipation of a meeting with the other's body’ which does not allow the analyst to function as an ‘anticipatory object’ or ‘an object of affect’.     

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.     

‘You were not born here,so you are classless,you are free!’ Social class and cultural complex in analysis

The unconscious impact of differences in culture and social class is discussed from the perspective of an analyst practising in London whose ‘foreign accent’ prevents patients from placing her within the social stratifications by which they feel confined. Because she is seen by them as an analyst from both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the British psycho‐social fabric and cultural complex, this opens a space in the transference that enables fuller exploration of the impact of the British social class system on patients’ experience of themselves and their world. The paper considers this impact as a trans‐generational trauma of living in a society of sharp socio‐economic divisions based on material property. This is illustrated with the example of a patient who, at the point of moving towards the career to which he aspired, was unable to separate a sense of personal identity from the social class he so desperately wanted to leave behind and walk the long avenue of individuation. The dearth of literature on the subject of class is considered, and the paper concludes that not enough attention is given to class identification in training.     

Where are you,my beloved?: On absence,loss, and the enigma of telepathic dreams

The subject of dream telepathy (especially patients' telepathic dreams) and related phenomena in the psychoanalytic context has been a controversial, disturbing ‘foreign body’ ever since it was introduced into psychoanalysis by Freud in 1921. Telepathy ‐ suffering (or intense feeling) at a distance (Greek: pathos + tele)‐is the transfer or communication of thoughts, impressions and information over distance between two people without the normal operation of the recognized sense organs. The author offers a comprehensive historical review of the psychoanalytic literature on this controversial issue, beginning with Freud' years‐long struggles over the possibility of thoughttransference and dream telepathy. She then describes her own analytic encounter over the years with five patients' telepathic dreams' dreams involving precise details of the time, place, sensory impressions, and experiential states that the analyst was in at that time, which the patients could not have known through ordinary sensory perception and communication. The author's ensuing explanation combines contributory factors involving patient, archaic communication and analyst. Each of these patients, in early childhood, had a mother who was emotionally absent‐within‐absence, due to the absence of a significant figure in her own life. This primary traumatic loss was imprinted in their nascent selves and inchoate relating to others, with a fixation on a nonverbal, archaic mode of communication. The patient's telepathic dream is formed as a search engine when the analyst is suddenly emotionally absent, in order to find the analyst and thus halt the process of abandonment and prevent collapse into the despair of the early traumatization. Hence, the telepathic dream embodies an enigmatic ‘impossible’ extreme of patient‐analyst deep‐level interconnectedness and unconscious communication in the analytic process. This paper is part of the author's endeavour to grasp the true experiential scope and therapeutic significance of this dimension of fundamental patient‐analyst interconnectedness.     

Transcending the caesura: Reverie,dreaming and counter‐dreaming

The author reflects about our capacity to get in touch with primitive, irrepresentable, seemingly unreachable parts of the Self and with the unrepressed unconscious. It is suggested that when the patient's dreaming comes to a halt, or encounters a caesura, the analyst dreams that which the patient cannot. Getting in touch with such primitive mental states and with the origin of the Self is aspired to, not so much for discovering historical truth or recovering unconscious content, as for generating motion between different parts of the psyche. The movement itself is what expands the mind and facilitates psychic growth. Bion's brave and daring notion of ‘caesura’, suggesting a link between mature emotions and thinking and intra‐uterine life, serves as a model for bridging seemingly unbridgeable states of mind. Bion inspires us to ‘dream’ creatively, to let our minds roam freely, stressing the analyst's speculative imagination and intuition often bordering on hallucination. However, being on the seam between conscious and unconscious, dreaming subverts the psychic equilibrium and poses a threat of catastrophe as a result of the confusion it affords between the psychotic and the non‐psychotic parts of the personality. Hence there is a tendency to try and evade it through a more saturated mode of thinking, often relying on external reality. The analyst's dreaming and intuition, perhaps a remnant of intra‐uterine life, is elaborated as means of penetrating and transcending the caesura, thus facilitating patient and analyst to bear unbearable states of mind and the painful awareness of the unknowability of the emotional experience. This is illustrated clinically.     

Emotional Communication and the Unconscious in the Analytic Setting

ABSTRACT

One type of unconscious communication is conceptualized as a form of emotional communication, the channel of communication that conveys information about a person’s emotional state through the nonsymbolic expression of feelings and is experienced as feeling in the receiver. Some of the analyst’s feelings are attuned responses to the patient’s unconscious communications; others are disjunctive and related only to the analyst’s unconscious. Attuned feelings can be identified by their congruence—similarities, consistencies, and analogies—with the patient’s verbal material, which reveals the meaning that the analyst’s feeling has within the patient’s subjectivity. Attuned feelings also have a meaning within the analyst’s subjectivity. Two cases are discussed, one in which the analyst experiences the patient’s unconscious communication within the symbolism of one of her own childhood memories. The other illustrates the risk of confusing disjunctive feelings emanating from the analyst’s own unconscious with unconscious communication from the patient.     

The countertransference dream1

Can the analyst's night‐dream about his patient be considered as a manifestation of countertransference‐and, if so, under what conditions? In what way can such a dream represent more than just the disguised fulfillment of a repressed wish of the analyst? Is there not a risk of the analyst unconsciously taking up and ‘using’ the content of a session or other elements coming from the analytic situation for his own psychic reasons? The author, closely following Freud's dream theory, shows the mechanisms which can allow us to use the dream content in the analytical situation: preserved from the secondary processes of conscious thinking, other fantasies and affects than in the waking state can emerge in dream thought, following an ‘unconscious perception’. After examining the countertransference elements of Freud's dream, ‘Irma's injection’, which leads off The interpretation of dreams, the author presents a dream of her own about a patient and its value for understanding affects and representations which had hitherto remained unrepresented.     

The body of the analyst and the analytic setting: Reflections on the embodied setting and the symbiotic transference

In this paper the author questions whether the body of the analyst may be helpfully conceptualized as an embodied feature of the setting and suggests that this may be especially helpful for understanding patients who develop a symbiotic transference and for whom any variance in the analyst's body is felt to be profoundly destabilizing. In such cases the patient needs to relate to the body of the analyst concretely and exclusively as a setting ‘constant’ and its meaning for the patient may thus remain inaccessible to analysis for a long time. When the separateness of the body of the analyst reaches the patient's awareness because of changes in the analyst's appearance or bodily state, it then mobilizes primitive anxieties in the patient. It is only when the body of the analyst can become a dynamic variable between them (i.e. part of the process) that it can be used by the patient to further the exploration of their own mind.     

Merleau‐Ponty’s Reading of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism

The aim of this paper is to explore Merleau‐Ponty’s ambivalent relationship with Kant’s transcendental philosophy. I begin by looking at several points of convergence between Kant and Merleau‐Ponty, focusing on the affinities between Kant’s account of transcendental realism and Merleau‐Ponty’s notion of objective thought. I then show how Merleau‐Ponty’s analysis of Kant’s paradox of asymmetrical objects points to a parallel in Kant’s thought to Merleau‐Ponty’s thesis of the primacy of perception. In the second part of the paper, I show why Merleau‐Ponty believes that, despite the promise of Kant’s thought, he fails to adequately escape from objective thought. After presenting the central claims of the transcendental deduction, I piece together Merleau‐Ponty’s criticism of it by answering three questions: For Merleau‐Ponty, how do we encounter the world prior to reflection? How is experience constituted? And what leads Kant to mischaracterise experience in his own transcendental philosophy?     

The arms of the chimeras

This article seeks to compare the approach developed in 1974 by Michel de M'Uzan to the concept of the ‘chimera’ with Thomas Ogden's ( 1995 , 2005 ) reflections on ‘the analytic third’. This comparison shows that in spite of the different theoretical approaches, unconscious to unconscious communication – a subject of interest in contemporary psychoanalytic research – makes it possible to grasp the intersubjective data deployed in the field of the session. After reviewing M. de M'Uzan's conception of the ‘chimera’ – a product of the unconsciouses of patient and analyst alike, and which emerges during a process of depersonalization in the analyst – the author proposes her hypothesis of the chimera as a particular intersubjective third whose creation, in a hallucinatory state, makes it possible to gain access to the bodily and emotional basis of the trauma. The author describes the chimera as a mental ‘squiggle’ between the two members of the pair which finds expression in different forms; further, she considers that the chimera that seizes the analyst is underpinned by the unconscious affinities of traumatic zones in both protagonists, which permit the grounding, configuration and sharing of the territories of suffering, as apprehended in this paper.     

Working with chronic and relentless self‐hatred,self‐harm and existential shame: a clinical study and reflections

This paper is the first of a two‐part series which explores some of the theoretical and experiential reference points that have emerged in my work with people whose relationship to their body and/or sense of self is dominated by self‐hatred and (what Hultberg describes as) existential shame. The first paper focuses on self‐hatred and the second paper focuses on shame. This first paper is structured around vignettes taken from a 14‐year analysis with a woman who was bulimic, self‐harmed and repeatedly described herself as ‘feeling like a piece of shit’. It draws together elements of Jung's concepts of the complex and symbol, and Laplanche's enigmatic signifier to focus on experiences of ‘inner otherness’ around which we are unconsciously organized. It also brings Jung's understanding that emotion is the chief source of consciousness into conversation with Laplanche's approach to the transference which is that by being aware that they do not ‘know’, the analyst provides a ‘hollow’ in which the patient's analytic process can evolve. These combinations of ideas are linked speculatively to emerging understandings of the neuroscience of perception and throughout the paper clinical material is used to illustrate these discussions.     

Process‐orientated psychoanalytic work in initial interviews and the importance of the opening scene

From the very first moment of the initial interview to the end of a long course of psychoanalysis, the unconscious exchange between analysand and analyst, and the analysis of the relationship between transference and countertransference, are at the heart of psychoanalytic work. Drawing on initial interviews with a psychosomatically and depressively ill student, a psychoanalytic understanding of initial encounters is worked out. The opening scene of the first interview already condenses the central psychopathology – a clinging to the primary object because it was never securely experienced as present by the patient. The author outlines the development of some psychoanalytic theories concerning the initial interview and demonstrates their specific importance as background knowledge for the clinical situation in the following domains: the ‘diagnostic position’, the ‘therapeutic position’, the ‘opening scene’, the ‘countertransference’ and the ‘analyst's free‐floating introspectiveness’. More recent investigations refer to ‘process qualities’ of the analytic relationship, such as ‘synchronization’ and ‘self‐efficacy’. The latter seeks to describe after how much time between the interview sessions constructive or destructive inner processes gain ground in the patient and what significance this may have for the decision about the treatment that follows. All these factors combined can lead to establishing a differential process‐orientated indication that also takes account of the fact that being confronted with the fear of unconscious processes of exchange is specific to the psychoanalytic profession.     

What’s a coach to do? Exploring coaches’ perspectives of body image in girls sport

Adolescent athletes report body image concerns that negatively impact their sport experiences and participation. The coach’s perspective may be informative to how the context of sport perpetuates, supports, or protects from negative body image. Yet few coaches are represented in this area of research. The purpose of the present study was to explore coaches’ perceptions of body image in girls sport. Thirteen coaches with an average of 10 years of experience working with girls in primarily non-aesthetic team sports were interviewed. Based on inductive thematic analysis, coaches’ perceptions of the athletes’ body image concerns were reflected in four themes labelled (i) body image: the ‘elephant’ on the field (i.e., identifying the unspoken nature of body image), (ii) agents of body image in sport (i.e., parents, coaches, and media), (iii) skill over appearance (i.e., focusing on athletic skill and competence), and (vi) systemic strategies. This last theme offers several considerations for improving the sport context with a lens to improve body image. Of relevance, it was apparent that all coaches operationalized body image as predicated on appearance, body shape, and weight and this narrow simplistic perception could guide future programs and practices. Taken together, findings highlight the need to intervene with coaches to provide adequate support and education on body image in girls sport.     

Commentary on ‘The arms of the chimeras’ by Béatrice Ithier

In this Commentary I will first of all summarise my understanding of the proposal set out by Béatrice Ithier concerning her concept of the ‘chimera’. The main part of my essay will focus on Ithier's claim that her concept of the chimera could be described as a ‘mental squiggle’ because it corresponds to Winnicott's work illustrated in his book ‘Therapeutic Consultations’ (1971). At the core of Ithier's chimera is the notion of a traumatic link between analyst and patient, which is the reason she enlists the work of Winnicott. I will argue, however, that Ithier's claim is based on a misperception of the theory that underpins Winnicott's therapeutic consultations because, different from Ithier's clinical examples of work with traumatised patients, Winnicott is careful to select cases who are from an ‘average expectable environment’ i.e. a good enough family. Moreover, Winnicott does not refer to any traumatic affinity with his patients, or to experiencing a quasi‐hallucinatory state of mind during the course of the consultations. These aspects are not incorporated into his theory. In contrast (to the concept Ithier attempts to advance), Winnicott's squiggle game constitutes an application of psychoanalysis intended as a diagnostic consultation. In that sense Winnicott's therapeutic consultations are comparable with the ordinary everyday work between analyst and analysand in a psychoanalytic treatment. My Commentary concludes with a question concerning the distinction between the ordinary countertransference in working with patients who are thinking symbolically in contrast to an extraordinary countertransference that I suggest is more likely to arise with patients who are traumatised and thus functioning at a borderline or psychotic level.     

Effects of a physical exercise session on state body image: The influence of pre-experimental body dissatisfaction and concerns about weight and shape

The effects of a physical exercise session on state body image and mood were examined. In a cross-over design, participants were randomised to two groups starting either with physical exercise (PE; experimental condition) or with reading a newspaper (RN; control condition). Before and after PE and RN, participants (N = 65) rated their body dimensions using a digital photo distortion technique and indicated their attitudinal body image and mood. Participants’ judgements of their ‘felt’ body dimensions and attitudes toward their own body were affected differently by PE and RN, indicating that participants felt slightly slimmer and were more satisfied with their bodies after PE. Exercise-induced changes in body perception were greater, the higher the pre-experimental drive for thinness, body dissatisfaction and weight/shape concerns were. Especially in those participants with higher body image disturbances, physical exercise can have a reinforcing effect on immediate body image and mood improvement.     

‘Caesura’ as Bion’s discourse on method1

The author contends that Caesura, one of Bion’s last works, can be read as the equivalent of Descartes’s Discourse on Method. In this compact and complex text, the dictate of ‘methodical’ and ‘hyperbolic doubt’– so called because it is taken to the extreme form of application to the faculty of thought itself – which, for Descartes, represents the fundamental principle of philosophical and scientific research, is reflected in the formula of ‘transcending the caesura’. Bion directs his attention successively to the pairs of opposing concepts that structure psychoanalytic discourse and demonstrates their paradoxical and non‐separative logic. The binary system of producing meaning is deconstructed through the systematic use of non‐pathological – i.e. not static but dynamic – reversible perspective. A viewpoint that appears natural, self‐evident and primary is plunged into crisis and proves to be founded on what the punctuation mark of the slash excludes. Yet the new point of view does not supplant its predecessor, but supplements it. The conceptual opposition is not overturned, but merely destabilized in such a way as to maintain a creative tension that generates new thoughts. By this technique of wrong‐footing the reader, Bion achieves what is tantamount to a Kuhnian revolution: the transition from Freud’s semiotic or evidential paradigm to an aesthetic one, centred on emotional experience – to a ‘science of at‐one‐ment’. Working with the antithetical concepts of censorship and caesura, the author illustrates some clinical implications of this radical shift.