The Doors of Reception: Commentary on Paper by Stephanie Lewin

This discussion on Stephanie Lewin's “Parallel Identification: A Shield Against the Assault of Traumatic Jealousy” addresses the challenge of introducing new concepts and revising previous conceptual understandings while maintaining a balance between innovation and appreciation of the work of previous theorists. In the course of considering Lewin's notion of parallel identification the subjects of internalization, the nature of internal space and its relation to psychic reality, the role of unconscious models of therapeutic action, and the oscillating tension between the selected fact and the overvalued idea are explored and discussed in terms of their relevance to both development and clinical analysis.     

Fatherhood today: variations on a theme

Freud explored the concept of the unconscious in some detail in one of his papers on 'metapsychology' in 1915. But this concept is crucial to the birth of psychoanalysis more than twenty years earlier. If we look closely at one of the early cases Freud described in his 1895 book with Breuer, Studies on Hysteria, we can see how that concept was also being born. This paper focuses on the case of Elisabeth von R, to show how the distinctive psychoanalytic understanding of the unconscious was starting to be used there to make sense of her hysterical symptoms. Freud's account and the words he chooses to frame it raise a number of questions about theory and practice in psychoanalysis, which we examine here in relation to unconscious love.     

The Whole and the Parts: Working in the Analytic Field

Field concepts have been imported from physics into psychology and philosophy, in the work of writers such as Kurt Lewin and Maurice Merleu-Ponty. In psychoanalysis, they are found in the work of Harry Stack Sullivan, Enrique Pichon-Rivière, and Willy and Madeleine Baranger. They are essential for relational analysis, where everything than happens in the analytic situation is considered to depend on both parties of the analytic relationship. The analytic situation is understood as a two-person setup, in which neither party can be conceived without the other, because they are inescapably bound and complementary. This is called a “dynamic field,” and it corresponds to an experiential configuration that changes and evolves in time. Insight is better understood as a restructuring of the field, a gradual development of both parties' understanding of their shared unconscious situation. In this paper I discuss the main ideas posed by the Barangers, as well as my own, and present a clinical vignette to illustrate the phenomenology of the field.     

Organization-, supervisor-, and workgroup-directed commitments and citizenship behaviours: A comparison of models

The purpose of this study was to test two competing theoretical models explaining the relationships between affective commitment to the organization, the supervisor, and the workgroup, and organizational citizenship behaviours (OCB) specifically directed toward these foci. Drawing on cohesion theory, the first model stated that commitment to the organization is a key mediating variable intervening between “local” commitments and OCB (Hunt & Morgan, 1994). Building on Lewin's (1943) field theory and the notion of psychological proximity, the second model proposed that commitment to the most proximal focus should mediate the effect of commitment to more distal entities on OCB. Data drawn from a sample of blue-collar workers and their supervisors in an iron and steel company indicated that the model of a proximal mediation best represented the relationships between commitments and OCB.     

The Unconsciously Constructed Virtual Other

Neuroscience has confirmed Freud's assertion of the primacy of unconscious process in relation to conscious experience. However, unconscious process, for many neuroscientists, is viewed as something that is devoid of meaning. This paper suggests that there are different levels of unconscious process. This conceptualization of unconscious process may help to reconcile the psychoanalytic assumption of a meaningful unconscious with the conception that unconscious process is a meaningless code, a belief held by most neuroscientists. To effect this reconciliation we must return to Freud's earlier theory of unconscious process as described in his Interpretation of Dreams. A dream-like unconscious process, employing metaphor, unconsciously organizes our affective experiences while we are awake.     

Comparing Field Theories

While in broad agreement with many of the observations made by Donnel B. Stern, this essay emphasizes certain differences in how BFT in general and the work of Nino Ferro in particular are seen. These begin with the very meaning of the term, field, and include a less authoritarian view of the analyst's “knowing” the degree to which the analyst's unconscious and subjectivity are implicated in the creation of the field, and the nature and degree of the analyst's unconscious contribution to the creation of the field.     

Kurt Lewin's early intentions (dedicated to his 100th birthday)

This article deals with Lewin's early intentions to promote applied psychology, especially with his essay ‘Die Sozialisierung des Taylorsystems’ (The Socialisation of the Taylor System). The authors point out that certain characteristics of Lewin's social psychological approach can already be seen in this early article. Furthermore, they want to show how important the role of applied psychology has been in the development of Lewin S scientific work.     

Mixed Race and the Negotiation of Racialized Selves: Developing the Capacity for Internal Conflict

The author uses contemporary psychoanalytic theory in further understanding the negotiation of conflict and dissociation in biracial patients who are both African-American and White. Drawing on the work of contemporary theorists who have made efforts to navigate the relationship between inner and outer worlds in our understanding of race from a psychoanalytic perspective, the author examines the relationship between race, culture, and internalized self-other relations—how they interact with each other and impact splitting and dissociative processes among self-states. The author argues for a notion of the unconscious as one that contains historical trauma related to race relations that influences the developing capacity to sustain internal conflict between opposing self-states borne out of this trauma. The author shows how society works against the integration of racialized self-states and interferes with the capacity to contain conflict. Through an extended clinical vignette from an analysis of a mixed-race patient, the author looks at the interplay of self-states between a White analyst (author) and a mixed-race patient (African-American and White) as manifested through a series of enactments and the unconscious “mating” between dissociated self-states in both patient and analyst. The author argues that the analyst's engagement of his or her own dissociated self-states and containment of internal conflict is critical to aiding the patient in moving toward greater integration.     

New approaches to understanding unconscious processes: Implicit and explicit memory systems

Abstract

Freud viewed the unconscious as being roughly equivalent to dynamically repressed wishes, needs, and motivations. Findings from developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience over the past 40 years have dramatically changed our views of unconscious processes and the human mind. It is now clear that Freud's dynamic unconscious is only a minor segment of information that is processed at subsymbolic, implicit, and automatic levels. Only a fraction of this information is further processed at explicit conscious levels. Moreover, the vast majority of the information that remains nonconscious is adaptive and has major consequences for development. We examine some clinical implications of these views.     

The Italian Red Brigades and the structure and dynamics of terrorist groups

One of the problems in dealing with terrorism is that we have virtually no access to individual terrorists; only their actions are visible. The founders of the Italian terrorist group, the Red Brigades, on the other hand, have written about their experiences and have exhaustively explained their motivations. The author’s premise is that these autobiographies and her interviews with several of the group’s members give us access to the unconscious processes involved in the formation and operation of the group. After terrorist attacks, it is natural to ask whether the terrorists’ capacity for collective violence is an indication of personal pathology. This paper argues that the relevant pathology in the terrorist enterprise is not that of the individual but that of the group. Relying on the theories of groups of Freud (1921), Bion (1961), Anzieu (1984) and Kaes (2007), the author argues that psychoanalytic theory is essential to understanding the motivations and actions of violent groups which otherwise remain obscure. Although the discussion has been confined to one terrorist group, the author hopes that it can also be useful for understanding the unconscious dynamics of other groups structured around an ideology which mandates the destruction of human life.     

The Problem of a Transcendent God for the Well‐Being of Continuous Creation

This year marks the 30th Anniversary of Lynn White's critique of Christianity, which set off the field of eco‐theology. At that time, apologetic theologians responded to the White critique, that the Genesis “dominion” command is largely responsible for the contemporary ecological crisis, through reformulating Christian doctrines to address ecological issues. These pioneers have brought us a long way in terms of addressing both how Christianity has been responsible in supporting harmful human‐earth relations and what resources within the tradition might be useful for addressing the contemporary ecological crisis. Building on this work, this article suggests that Christian theology (whether eco or not) will continue to support an understanding of the human being as rooted “outside of creation” as long as the concept of a transcendent, Omni, Creator‐God is left intact. In place of this theological discourse of transcendence which secularizes the natural realm, I suggest a “radical materialist” (Val Plumwood) understanding of Christianity that moves between idealism and reductive materialism (both are forms of transcendence) through a “planetary” (Spivak) understanding of Creation and a “bio‐historical” (Gordon Kaufman) understanding of anthropology.     

Analysts in Search of an Author: Voltaire or Artemisia Gentileschi? Commentary on “Field Theory in Psychoanalysis,Part 2: Bionian Field Theory and Contemporary Interpersonal/Relational Psychoanalysis” by Donnel B. Stern

The authors comment on Stern's characterization of differences between interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis and Bionian field theory. The critical points on which a consensus is not, for the time being, readily possible concern the relationship between the external and internal worlds and the various conceptions of unconscious experience. They believe that, before forging a link with the external world (whose role we would be foolish to deny), it is clinically more useful to apprehend this internal world as rigorously and over as wide a range as possible—which they do by radically transforming the external world into a dream of the field. Conversely, in their view we may be reassured but partly misled by the concept of a dialectic between the external and internal worlds that fails to take account of the utter pervasiveness of the unconscious and the fact that it speaks even when seemingly silent—not only negatively in micro- and macroenactments but also positively in waking dream thought, which is an expression of its poetic activity that unceasingly confers meaning on experience.     

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.     

‘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.     

The controversy around the concept of archetypes

The paper reviews the course of the controversy surrounding Jung's theory of archetypes beginning in the mid 1990s and continuing to the present. Much of this controversy was concerned with the debate between the essentialism of the evolutionary position of Anthony Stevens as found in his 1983 book Archetypes: A Natural History of the Self, and the emergence model of the archetypes proposed in various publications by Hogenson, Knox and Merchant, among others. The paper then moves on to a consideration of more recent developments in theory, particularly as derived from an examination of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who introduces Bergson's somnambulistic unconscious into the discussion of Jung's theories. It is suggested that this largely unexamined influence on Jung may provide answers to some of the unanswered questions surrounding his theorizing. The paper concludes by suggesting that the notion of the somnambulistic unconscious may resemble Atmanspacher's argument for a dual‐aspect monism interpretation of Jung.     

ANALYTIC MIND USE AND INTERPSYCHIC COMMUNICATION: DRIVING FORCE IN ANALYTIC TECHNIQUE,PATHWAY TO UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL LIFE

Developed from established psychoanalytic knowledge among different psychoanalytic cultures concerning unconscious interpsychic communication, analysts' use of their receptive mental experience—their analytic mind use, including the somatic, unconscious, and less accessible derivatives—represents a significant investigative road to patients' unconscious mental life, particularly with poorly symbolized mental states. The author expands upon this tradition, exploring what happens when patients unconsciously experience and identify with the analyst's psychic functioning. The technical implications of the analyst's “instrument” are described, including the analyst's ego regression, creation of inner space, taking mind as object, bearing uncertainty and intense affect, and self‐analysis. Brief case vignettes illustrate the structure and obstacles to this work.     

The Rise of the Machines: Deleuze's Flight from Structuralism

In this paper, I offer an account of the conceptual shift that occurs between the work completed by Gilles Deleuze prior to 1969 and his later work with Félix Guattari, beginning in 1972 with Anti‐Oedipus. Against previous interpretations, which have concentrated on the developments initiated by Deleuze, I argue for the primary importance of Guattari's influence, especially his insistence on a theory of “machinic processes.” The importance of these processes is made manifest in Deleuze and Guattari's move away from theories of structuralism. In order to carry out this task, I offer a close reading of Guattari's essay “Machine and Structure.” This essay was first written as a review of Deleuze's acclaimed work in Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense and formed the basis for Deleuze and Guattari's first meeting. In the concluding sections of the paper, I show how the integration of the concept of the machine allows Deleuze and Guattari to develop a theory of the unconscious that operates outside of the boundaries traditionally set by structuralist analysis.