Reflections on catastrophic change

Abstract

The present paper examines the way Freud's letters, in particular the ones to Oskar Pfister and Karl Abraham, were edited. The nature and extent of distortions and cuts are demonstrated, and conclusions are drawn regarding the picture of Freud that emerges. Questions of confidentiality, medical discretion, and archival restrictions are discussed.     

Containment and the threat of catastrophic change in psychotherapy groups

Wilfred Bion's seminal work with treatment and training groups is considered by many group therapists to be a classic study of group behavior. Despite the influence of his early work on groups, practitioners frequently find his later writings difficult to apply to group settings. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the potential usefulness of Bion's later psychoanalytic writings to our understanding of the complex dynamics active in therapy groups. This paper examines the relationship among four concepts that Bion emphasized in his later writings: projective identification, containercontained, (Ps<---->D), and catastrophic change. Two clinical vignettes are presented to demonstrate how these concepts can aid the therapist in understanding the complicated dynamics active in therapeutic group settings.     

Bodies out of place: Affective encounters with whiteness

This essay foregrounds the role of affect in felt experiences of whiteness by illustrating two accounts, one that took place on 25th May 2020 between Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper in Central Park, and an encounter from the authors previous study on Black educators’ experiences of working in white spaces. In doing so, this essay is an affective attunement to the ways that felt intensities inform our experience of power relations and ultimately constrain the capacities of bodies to act.     

Impulsive behaviour in interpersonal encounters: Associations with quarrelsomeness and agreeableness

Associations between impulsivity and interpersonal behaviours have rarely been examined, even though impulsivity may disrupt the flow of social interactions. For example, it is unknown to what extent the commonly used Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS‐11) predicts impulsive behaviour in social situations, and how behaving impulsively during interpersonal encounters might influence levels of quarrelsomeness and agreeableness. In this study, 48 healthy working individuals completed the BIS‐11 and recorded their behaviour in social situations using event‐contingent recording. Record forms included items representing quarrelsome, agreeable, and impulsive behaviours. BIS‐11 motor impulsiveness scores predicted impulsive behaviour in social situations. Impulsive behaviour was associated, in different interactions, with both agreeableness and quarrelsomeness. Behaving impulsively in specific interactions was negatively associated with agreeableness in participants with higher BIS‐11 motor impulsiveness and positively associated with agreeableness in participants with lower BIS‐11 motor impulsiveness. Impulsive quarrelsome behaviour may cause interpersonal problems. Impulsive agreeable behaviour may have positive effects in individuals with low trait impulsivity. The idea that there are between‐person differences in the effects of state impulsivity on the flow of social interaction deserves further study.     

Mechanisms of change in cognitive behaviour therapy for panic disorder: The role of panic self-efficacy and catastrophic misinterpretations

The efficacy of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for panic disorder with or without agoraphobia (PD) is well-established; however, little is known about the underlying change processes of clinical improvement during therapy. According to cognitive theories, CBT for PD primarily works by changing catastrophic misinterpretations of bodily symptoms and panic attacks. However, panic self-efficacy, i.e. the perceived ability to cope with panic attacks, has also been suggested as an important change mechanism in CBT for PD. The aim of the study was to investigate if change in catastrophic misinterpretations and panic self-efficacy mediated change in the level of anxiety during the course of thirteen sessions of group CBT for PD. Forty-five participants completed weekly self-report measures of the possible cognitive mediators and the level of anxiety throughout therapy. The results indicated that within-person change in panic self-efficacy in one session, but not in catastrophic misinterpretations, predicted within-person level of anxiety symptoms the following week. However, in a reversed analysis, prior change in level of anxiety symptoms also predicted change in panic self-efficacy the following session. These results support panic self-efficacy as a mediator of change in CBT for PD, although a reciprocal causal relationship between panic self-efficacy and level of anxiety seems to be implied.     

Family reunions: Visionary encounters with the departed in a modern-day psychomanteum

A poignant feature of many near-death experiences is a visionary encounter with deceased loved ones. Over the centuries, researchers have sought safe ways to replicate near-death and related experiences, hoping to induce the powerful aftereffects of these events. The ancient Greeks contructed psychomanteums, or oracles of the dead, where seekers could consult spirits of the deceased. I describe a modern attempt to recreate the psychomanteum. Like near-death experiences, visionary encounters in this modern psychomanteum are experienced as real and not as hallucinatory, and have profound personal aftereffects. This novel experimental technique may permit the scientific study of phenomena that previously occurred only spontaneously and under uncontrolled circumstances.     

Near-death encounters with and without near-death experiences: Comparative NDE scale profiles

In a retrospective study contrasting the near-death encounters of 183 persons who reported near-death experiences and 63 persons who reported no near-death experience, the two groups did not differ in age, gender, or time elapsed since the near-death encounter. Near-death experiencers reported all 16 items of the NDE Scale significantly more often than did nonexperiencers.     

Israeli adolescents and military service: encounters

Problems of mental health during combat activities are well documented in Israel (Dasberg, 1976). Much less attention has been paid to the problems of the young soldier who enters army life in Israel. This paper delineates some areas of friction and vulnerability between the worlds of the youth and the military. These encounters are systematized into groups, creating the "Binary Model." This model, based on the authors' experience as clinicians in the I.D.F. Central Mental Health Clinic, helps in locating and treating young soldiers in crisis situations.     

Symmetric frenzy and catastrophic change: A consideration of primitive mental states in the wake of Bion and Matte Blanco

The author explores the connections between Matte Blanco's notion of symmetric frenzy, i.e. the turbulence characteristic of the deepest levels of mental functioning, and Bion's concept of catastrophic change. For Bion, mental links are retrieved from the formless darkness of infinity. With catastrophic change, emotional violence and the confining nature of representation come into conflict, leaving the subject prey to an explosiveness that paralyses mental resources. Matte Blanco identifies indivisibility as the abyss in which all differentiation ceases; he bases his model on the conflict between symmetry and asymmetry. Infinity, he maintains, is where the first forms of mentalization develop. Both Bion and Matte Blanco emphasize the contrast between the immensity of mental space and the spatio-temporal order introduced by the activation of thinking functions. The author presents clinical material from the analysis of a psychotic patient, stressing the need to encourage both working through the defect of thinking (Bion) and 'unfolding' manifestations of symmetry (Matte Blanco) so as to foster the activation of the resources of thought, meanwhile postponing transference interpretation. He concludes with two later sessions, in which recognition of the analyst in the transference allows the analysand to develop his capacity for containment and asymmetric differentiation.     

Reflexive encounters with embodied resistance to relational forgiveness

Troubling relationships with our parents may raise unanswered questions and anxieties. Over time, our bodies harbor these sensations in ways that often may go unrecognized. In this autoethnographic account, I examine memories of my childhood and recent past to understand emotionally disturbing episodes tainting my relationship with my father. Interrogating my reflective habits, I probe meanings left undetected by my preconceived sense-making routines. At the same time, I notice and voice the embodied resistance I encounter when opening up and deconstructing intimate layers of deeply rooted pains associated with my father. In doing so, I demonstrate how reflective practices summon a dialogue between embodied emotions and re-engagements with past understandings. Such dialogue generates potential for reimagining relational meanings and apprehending possibilities for forgiveness.     

Clinical encounters with children in the Trump era

There is an emerging research and conceptual literature on the impact of the 2016 United States election of Donald Trump on the psychoanalytic psychotherapy process; however, the focus of this growing body of literature has been primarily with adults. Issues related to the election of Donald Trump, and the current political climate, also continue to arise in clinical encounters with children. These moments highlight the complexities of intersectionality, intersubjectivity, power dynamics, and self-disclosure. This article describes several clinical scenarios with American youth – reports from the front lines of a new political reality – drawn from the perspectives of trainees learning psychodynamic therapy, a private practitioner conducting an assessment for a young asylum seeker, and a school psychologist working in a private school for children with learning disabilities. We consider the fears and preoccupations that arise among children and their caregivers and the feelings that are provoked in the clinician, both in response to their clients and to the election itself. Traditional psychoanalytic paradigms of limiting self-disclosure and maintaining the therapeutic frame are challenged by the intensely personal nature of contemporary politics. This paper explores a contemporary phenomenon – the tension between therapeutic attending to internal experience and symbolisation, repression, and integration, while also considering a harsh, political external reality – through the lens of centuries of psychoanalytic work conducted in the face of war, trauma, and oppression. Children and adolescents who present for treatment or other forms of clinical intervention require a flexible therapeutic approach that acknowledges their unique position in history and the ways in which their distress is exacerbated by real and perceived political threats.     

Psychotherapy: Close encounters of the intimate kind

The therapeutic relation is a unique and special kind of human interaction, an intimate relationship which involves the whole of two human beings, but which is confined to a certain place, time and circumstance. The intimacy that develops between therapist and patient within the context of psychotherapy can be compared to other close and intimate human interactions, but it differs from other human encounters in numerous respects, especially in regard to the roles of the participants.The therapist-patient relationship is examined across various therapeutic techniques and theoretical models, with focus on the intimacy that may develop within the context of therapy, and contrasting it with other human intimate contacts. The roles of the therapist and the patient in developing and maintaining this intimacy, as well as its potential for both contributing to personal growth and to termination of the relationship, are reviewed. An issue that may usually be a natural extension of intimacy, sexual involvement between intimate partners, is explored with reference to the special nature of the therapeutic relationship.Based on a paper presented at the 37th annual convention of the Ontario Psychological Association, February 9, 1984; Toronto, Ontario.     

Freud and film: encounters in the Weltgeist

Freud's antipathy toward film is striking, since film and dreams are formed by similar mechanisms. Nevertheless, Freud occasionally and unavoidably encountered film. This paper details some of these encounters. Ten years after viewing time-lapse photography, a fore-runner of moving pictures, at the Salpêtrière, he was conceptualizing a model of the mind and of the formation of dreams that in some ways parallels the film apparatus invented by the Lumière brothers in December 1895. On his visit to America in 1905, Freud saw movies in New York City. In 1925, he refused a lucrative offer to consult on a film, and he discouraged Karl Abraham and Hanns Sachs from consulting on the first psychoanalytic film, Pabst's Secrets of a Soul (1926). He was, however, once sighted viewing an American double feature in Vienna. The paper closes with a critique of his acting in home movies.     

Editorial: Intergenerational encounters,intersubjective age relations

This special issue introduces a conceptual framework of intergenerational relationality, with the purpose of drawing attention to the question, what exceeds an age's categorical features. In recent interdisciplinary scholarship, wide and diverse range of identities and experiences within different categories of age have been explored. In childhood studies, understandings of children and youth as subjects in their own rights have pushed past a reliance on their existence via their fundamental difference from adults. Another robust literature discusses the ways that categorical power relations embolden adults to exert control onto youth, and the purposes and effects of power relations on the adult and child binary. Despite the sustained and vital arguments foregrounding children and young people's agencies and subjective experiences, these debates have done little to theorize age. In our view, age often remains legible through the same categories that the research started with. That is, by focusing on distinctions, scholarship often renaturalizes age by assuming it as such. As one result, the naturalized position of adults as “non-aged beings” is maintained and reconstructed. To take the study of relational age a step further, this special issue sets out to deflate categorical assumptions of age, and instead proposes that increasing attention is paid to intergenerational encounters and intersubjective age relations.     

Falling In and Out of Love with Philosophy

In this article, principally through autobiographical remarks, some observations concerning philosophical temperament are made, the example of Gerd Buchdahl as a textual interpreter of classic philosophical texts is invoked, and the position of philosophy in relation to history of science is explored, in particular in the work of Kuhn and Foucault. The article concludes with a reminder of the overall history of philosophy at Cambridge through a discussion of the history of the moral sciences.