Trauma Child on The Couch: Transference,Introjection, Identification

This paper attempts to explore some of the psychic processes at work with patients whom I identify as the “trauma child”. The term is a metaphor rather than a diagnosis of “traumatisation”, to indicate patients particularly resistant to maturational processes. They feel blocked and thereby find it difficult to evolve as creative adults. As opposed to the “traumatised” child no particular distressing event can be identified as a cause for emotional suffering. The malaise is often “low key” or silent but functions as a saboteur, undermining satisfactory existence. The trauma child is constantly seduced by regressive functioning and bound by numerous strategies of resistance of reality and often incapable of relinquishing the boundless pleasure of omnipotence. On the basis of my clinical work with the “trauma child”, I will explore the different processes of introjection in transference and counter transference, paying particular attention to the dynamics of identification between analyst and patient and its implications for object relations. Instead of “healthy” identification with the other, taking account of difference and reality, the mode of object relations can be that of “pathological imitation” based on fantasies of oral incorporation. A kind of regressive defense against “mature” relationships; it is an attempt to acquire a substitute identity through magical imitation. Analytical listening, associative work and interpretation stimulate maturational processes within the patient and help him/her to let go of immature relational modes fixated in childhood.     

Madness Decolonized?: Madness as Transnational Identity in Gail Hornstein’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Agnes’s Jacket</Emphasis>

The US psychologist Gail Hornstein’s monograph, Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologist’s Search for the Meanings of Madness (2009), is an important intervention in the identity politics of the mad movement. Hornstein offers a resignified vision of mad identity that embroiders the central trope of an “anti-colonial” struggle to reclaim the experiential world “colonized” by psychiatry. A series of literal and figurative appeals makes recourse to the inner world and (corresponding) cultural world of the mad as well as to the ethno-symbolic cultural materials of dormant nationhood. This rhetoric is augmented by a model in which the mad comprise a diaspora without an origin, coalescing into a single transnational community. The mad are also depicted as persons displaced from their metaphorical homeland, the “inner” world “colonized” by the psychiatric regime. There are a number of difficulties with Hornstein’s rhetoric, however. Her “ethnicity-and-rights” response to the oppression of the mad is symptomatic of Western parochialism, while her proposed transmutation of putative psychopathology from limit upon identity to parameter of successful identity is open to contestation. Moreover, unless one accepts Hornstein’s porous vision of mad identity, her self-ascribed insider status in relation to the mad community may present a problematic “re-colonization” of mad experience.     

Against “Transracialism”: Revisiting the Debate

This article critically reflects on some of the themes and assumptions at stake in the “transracialism” controversy, and connects them to important works in critical race theory: namely Rey Chow's notion of “coercive mimeticism” and Sara Ahmed's critique of white liberal multiculturalism. It argues that the analytic account of “race” that Tuvel draws upon in her article—Sally Haslanger's—is politically problematic, both on its own terms and in light of broader reflections on racialized and gendered power relations. In particular, I critique Haslanger's assumption that all racial identities exist on the same conceptual plane: that a single variable definition of “race” can be applied to any particular racialized group—including white and nonwhite racial identities. This erases racialized power relations, especially where, in liberal “multicultural” nations, whiteness constitutes the implied standard against which an appearance of “racial difference” is conjured. Finally, I extend my argument to the issue of treating “race” and gender analogously. Rejecting this move, I propose an alternative way of conceptualizing these as analytically distinct, yet constitutively interdependent, phenomena. In order to situate the debate historically, I consider an example of “racial transgression” from twentieth‐century China.     

From “Home” to “Camp”: Theorizing the Space of Safety

In this article, I discuss how the space of the classroom is a contested object that is constituted by historical, cultural, political, social, psychological, and discursive practices (Lefebvre in The production of space, Blackwell, Oxford, UK, 1991). I then employ Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of “assemblage” to characterize the ways in which educational spaces cohere “content and affect” quoted in Puar (Terrorist assemblages: Homonationalism in queer times, Duke University Press, Durham, 2007, 193) into discursive figures of the heteronormative and racialized national “family.” Finally, I argue that in order to advance contemporary theorizing on safe space we might consider shifting the metaphor of the classroom (and/or schooling) as a situation of home (in loco parentis) to that of a metaphor of camp. As a discursive practice, “camp” is like “home” in that it has multiple associations of past histories. However, the advantage of the metaphor of classroom as camp allows for a more capacious range of past histories of association, from recreation to temporary inhabitation to forced relocation, thus foregrounding the innate political implications of theorizing space. Moreover, the metaphor of camp implies transience (whether real or imaginary) while keeping in mind the partial and situated nature of particular places and spaces. Foregrounding the transient component/feature of safe space allows us to make visible and explore the possibilities and limitations of conceptualizing relations of power as circuitous, contested and performative through competing claims to particular places as objects of safety.     

Homage to Dora: Commentary on Paper by Melanie Suchet

This discussion of Suchet's paper further explores Butler's double disavowal of love and loss as it relates to racialized bonds. It also examines Yoshino's concept about the cost of “covering” difference and supports the need to uncover white privilege and lack while being mindful of holding the tension of sameness and difference between the psychic and the social. Surrender is considered within a frame of multiplicity and of Buddhist thought, and the author associates to the sensory realm of childhood through her own early attachment. Finally, the author wonders about the nature and complexity of racialized shame and its delicate place in clinical work.     

The concept of unlivability: A reading of Frantz Fanon's “The North African Syndrome” (1952)

From a close reading of Frantz Fanon's “The North African Syndrome” (1952), this article draws out Fanon's understanding of “death in life” to suggest that a concept of unlivability in the present must account for the temporal duration of racialized and colonized experiences of pain and trauma. It is thus critical of Judith Butler's and Frédéric Worms's discussion of unlivability in The Livable and The Unlivable (2023) for not centering a phenomenological study of the testimonies of the oppressed. I argue for a greater engagement with Fanon on the longue durée of racial and colonial violence enacted on the bodies, psyches, and histories of racialized and colonized peoples. This article concludes by pointing to possibilities for a shared unlivability in a shared temporality, with potential to move beyond refusal and toward resistance to the colonial control over time.     

Video reviews

Therapists and theorists have long sought to define and thus contain the complex constellation of people and their stories that together constitute what we call “family.” Locating the use of metaphor in family therapy and practice within its historical context, and mindful of the ultimate limits of even the most congruent metaphor, the authors present a metaphoric reconceptualization, that of family as anthology, to propose how individual and collective voices are heard, edited, subjugated, emphasized, embellished, and assembled; to illuminate the synergistic nature of family stories; and to integrate the dualistic simultaneity within families of “being” and “becoming.”     

Shut-Up and Listen: Implications and Possibilities of Albert Memmi’s Characteristics of Colonization Upon the “Natural World”

This paper begins by exploring the anti-colonial work of Tunisian scholar Albert Memmi in his classic book The Colonizer and the Colonized and determining whether the characteristics of colonization that he names can be successfully applied to the current relationship between modern humans and the “natural world”. After considering what we found to be the five key characteristics: manufacturing the colonial, alienation and unknowability, violence, psychological strategies (bad faith), and language, history, and metaphor we draw clear parallels, through selected examples, to the exploitative relationships enacted in many realms of the modern human/nature relationship. In so doing the paper posits that the beings that comprise the “natural world” are colonized. It then continues from that position to explore the possibility of cultivating practices of listening to the voices of these colonized others to inform anti-colonial ecopedagogy as allies. We employ the term “shut-up” as an anti-colonial gesture to remind ourselves as much as others of the importance of first listening to the colonized other before engaging in “post-colonial” theorizing about prospective relationships or liberatory solutions “for” them. Given the fast-paced and cacophonic urban life many humans increasingly inhabit, and the disciplined and reiterative practice(s) required to learn to listen to other voices, we suggest caution and care when importing postcolonial theory into “environmental” contexts and seek to instigate further discussion as to how we might enact solidarity with other beings as anti-colonial allies in education. To this end, we conclude the paper with some educational implications based on research at a place-based school and focus on the role history, language and metaphor play in manufacturing a colonial relationship, but also provide a potential means for changing relationships with the diverse beings with whom we share the planet.     

Ecology in mind,mindful practices

In many areas of writing and social practice it has become commonplace to think of people and organizations as having content-specific characteristics (e.g., traits, attitudes, structures), and as conducting internal and external processes (intra and interpersonal, intra- and inter-organizational...). The approach taken here is very different. Relational processes form the “starting point”, these being viewed as the medium within which social realities and learning are socially constructed. More precisely, relational processes are said to construct (1) people and things and (2) relations-as social realities. It is suggested that relations very often are constructed as being between separate and opposed entities; these being viewed as relations of “either/or”. However, relations also may be constructed as “both/and”, which invites a view of learning as participation by treating self and other as joined. It is this participative or ecological view that is explored here. An ecological view invites serious consideration of ways of relating that are: diverse-rather than homogenized; slow-rather than fast; and capable of constructing deep knowledges, e.g., that are less closely tied to conceptual language and to a disembodied sense of “I”, “outside” of nature. Discussion briefly points to some mindful (mind-full) practices that embrace, for example, self-reflecting ways, reflection on frames and questions, and reflection on conceptual ways of knowing.     

Regulating the Private Relations of Adults with Mental Disabilities: Old Laws,New Policies,Hollow Hopes

Recent legislative reforms have aimed to help people with mental disabilities pursue more “normal” lives. Yet, current laws regulating the mentally disableds' private relations continue to disenable them. Social scientists have asserted that people with mental disabilities vary widely in their individual competencies. Yet, laws tend to forgo an individualized approach to the mentally disabled in favor of broad restrictions on their rights to engage in sexual, marital, and parental relationships. Reviews of cases also show that when they challenge these restrictions, the mentally disabled tend to be required to demonstrate a higher level of morality and functioning than non-disabled. Reforming these restrictive legal rules requires an unlikely, but possible, concordance between social science and the law.     

儿童和青少年的空间—时间隐喻图式

研究考察儿童和青少年是否具有“左-右”空间-时间隐喻图式。以泉州市惠安县4所学校小学三年级、小学六年级、初中三年级和高中三年级共100名学生为被试,完成时态-按键匹配任务。结果发现,各年级被试均对“左-过去,右-将来”的按键匹配比对“左-将来,右-过去”的按键匹配反应更快,准确率更高,表明自小学三年级起,儿童和青少年在时间隐喻图式上表现出和成人一致的模式,未发现年龄发展效应。该发现支持隐喻结构观。     

儿童和青少年的空间—时间隐喻图式

研究考察儿童和青少年是否具有“左-右”空间-时间隐喻图式。以泉州市惠安县4所学校小学三年级、小学六年级、初中三年级和高中三年级共100名学生为被试,完成时态-按键匹配任务。结果发现,各年级被试均对“左-过去,右-将来”的按键匹配比对“左-将来,右-过去”的按键匹配反应更快,准确率更高,表明自小学三年级起,儿童和青少年在时间隐喻图式上表现出和成人一致的模式,未发现年龄发展效应。该发现支持隐喻结构观。     

Pain Sensitivity: An Unnatural History from 1800 to 1965

Who was truly capable of experiencing pain? In this article, I explore ideas about the distribution of bodily sensitivity in patients from the early nineteenth century to 1965 in Anglo-American societies. While certain patients were regarded as “truly hurting,” other patients’ distress could be disparaged or not even registered as being “real pain.” Such judgments had major effects on regimes of pain-alleviation. Indeed, it took until the late twentieth century for the routine underestimation of the sufferings of certain groups of people to be deemed scandalous. Often the categorizations were contradictory. For instance, the humble status of workers and immigrants meant that they were said to be insensitive to noxious stimuli; the profound inferiority of these same patients meant that they were especially likely to respond with “exaggerated” sensitivity. How did physicians hold such positions simultaneously? Pain-assignation claimed to be based on natural hierarchical schemas, but the great Chain of Feeling was more fluid than it seemed.     

Psychology's eugenic history and the invention of intellectual disability

Intellectual disability is a severely understudied topic within psychology. It is rarely woven into the curriculum of mainstream psychology departments and often left for other disciplines to address. Despite this neglect within the field, historical figures within psychology helped invent and shaped the category of intellectual disability. In order to understand the depth of dehumanization experienced by those labeled as intellectually disabled, it is vital to trace the history of the category within psychology. This article offers a critical history of “intellectual disability” as an institutional category in the United States to better understand the outcome of a recent court case that considered the possibility of a sexual relationship between a man labeled as intellectually disabled and a woman who does not carry this label. To fully appreciate the meaning of the court case that concluded without ever engaging the man whose wellbeing it presumably concerned, psychology must be held accountable for its past and current entanglements with the eugenic project.     

《周易》对探索潜意识启示

隐喻是一种语言现象,也是一种认知方式。《周易》是一套复杂的隐喻认知系统,“象”与“理”都是认识事物的思维方式。潜意识通过心理表征以隐喻的方式呈现,精神分析师借助隐喻方法来分析潜意识。将潜意识的呈现形式(如梦、口误等)理解为某种“象”,把“象”作为表征潜意识的符号与工具,通过“观象、取象、辨象、立象、尽意”这个认知过程,实现对“理”(潜意识)的理解。通过“象思维”来探索潜意识对中国人来说具有文化上亲和性,克服精神分析中的“无结构性”与“语言的限制”。     

Voices and Visions from the Margins on Mission and Unity: A disability‐informed reading of the Pauline metaphor of the church as the body of Christ

Disability studies from a missional perspective in the Indian context are rare. Mission and unity cannot be “talked” about without the active inclusion of those in the margins; rather, they are the subject of mission and unity of the church which, in Pauline language, is the body of Christ. With the help of a disability‐informed reading of the Pauline metaphor of church as the body of Christ, an attempt is made to understand the integral constituent of this “body” and its mission and unity. Our deliberations on the metaphor of body make it amply clear that “weaker” members are indispensable for the mission and unity of the church. They are the paradigm for the manifestation of God. Mission and unity of the church depend on the inclusion and equal participation of the margins—the disabled.     

More Than Words: Place,Discourse and the Struggle over Public Space in Barcelona

The social construction of human-environment relations is a central concern of an emerging tradition of research on place, which extends the so-called “discursive turn” in social psychology. This research highlights the primary role of everyday linguistic practices in the production of place meanings, challenging the prevailing tendency among environmental psychologists to treat place meanings mainly as an expression of individual cognitions. By the same token, in this article we argue that research on human-environment relations also has the potential to enrich the field of discursive psychology, tempting discursive researchers to move beyond their customary focus on verbal and written texts. Specifically, we propose an analytic framework that transcends the dualism between the material and discursive dimensions of human-environment relations. In order to develop this argument, we outline the novel concept of place-assemblage and illustrate its utility by conducting an analysis of a recent conflict over a public space in Barcelona. This analysis shows how discursive constructions of the development of this public space over time were inextricably entwined with other kinds of material and embodied practices—practices through which place meanings were actively performed, reproduced and contested.     

Narrative,imagination, and the search for intelligibility in environmental ethics

This essay presents a contextualist defense of the role of narrative and metaphor in the articulation of environmental ethical theories. Both the intelligibility and persuasiveness of ecocentric concepts and arguments presuppose that proponents of these ideas can connect with the narratives and metaphors guiding the expectations and interpretations of their audiences. Too often objectivist presuppositions prevent the full contextualization of environmental ethical arguments. The result is a disembodied environmental discourse with diminished influence on citizens and policy makers. This essay is a pragmatist call for more philosophical attention to locating speakers, audiences, and meanings in more intelligible “discursive spaces.”     

INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY AND MYSTICAL UNKNOWING: CONTEMPORARY INSIGHTS FROM MEDIEVAL SOURCES

Intellectual disabilities make people vulnerable to marginalization in churches and social spaces, but theology has not sufficiently attended to the topic and promoted the flourishing of people who have cognitive impairments. This article responds to theology's inadequate attention to intellectual disability and historical resources for reflection on the topic by reading medieval sources with intellectual disability in mind. I argue that Bonaventure's Itinerarium Mentis in Deum provides a model for imagining intellectually disabled and nondisabled people sharing the journey into God and that Eckhart's view of intellect as the uncreated element in the soul includes people who are intellectually disabled among those who may be united with God.     

The Networking of Differences That Makes a Difference: Theology and the Unity of the Church

Abstract : What does the church mean when it confesses through the Creeds its oneness? My aim is to reflect on how and why theology needs to bring to the fore a hidden dimension in the discourse on the unity of the church, that is, its tendency to fall into a “solid” and “totalizing” disciplinary technology, i.e., an ideology. I will approach the theme following these basic theological pointers: (a) a biblical primary symbol as it emerges to unveil a new existence and practice—Paul's metaphor of the body in 1 Corinthians 12; (b) a secondary symbol through which the church understood itself to be lodged—the trinitarian understanding of being as a communicative relationship; (c) the regulative principle of law and promise as guiding a discursive practice that supports different levels of decentering and centering that signals a breakthrough of the eschaton—Luther's understanding of law and gospel. These overlapping theological dimensions allow a different metaphorization of the oneness and unity of the church.