SOME REFLECTIONS ON IAN MCEWAN'S ATONEMENT: ENACTMENT,GUILT, AND REPARATION

Recognizing that enactments have been discussed in psychoanalysis primarily as occurrences in the treatment setting, the author proposes a new application of the term enactments: that it may pertain to the actions of some individuals in their efforts to cope with bad things that they have done to others. That is, enactment can be a substitute‐for‐atonement mechanism. The author illustrates this view of enactment through a discussion of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement (2001), and in particular by examining the behavior and motivations of one of its central characters, Briony Tallis. Included are explorations of the relationships between enactment and guilt and between enactment and reparation.     

THE THOUGHT AND TALK OF INDIVIDUALS WITH AUTISM: REFLECTIONS ON IAN HACKING

Abstract: Ian Hacking proposes that ways of talking about autistic experience can shape, or even transform, what it is like to be autistic. I explore the grounds for two nonexclusive interpretations of this thesis. The informative interpretation holds that, because nonautistics cannot read mental states into autistic behaviour as they normally do with one another, autistic self-narratives give nonautistics unique insights into what it is like to be autistic. This in turn affects how nonautistics interact with autistic individuals, enriching their social environment in various ways. The more radical, transformative interpretation holds that autistic experience is itself moulded under the influence of developing a language-game for talking about autistic experience. I endorse both theses, albeit with some cautionary remarks.     

VALUES,DESIRES, AND LOVE: REFLECTIONS ON WOLLHEIM'S MORAL PSYCHOLOGY

In The Thread of Life, Richard Wollheim argues that a person's sense of value is grounded in the power of love to generate certain favourable perceptions of an object. Following from his view is a psychoanalytic conception of valuing as constituted by the imaginative force of phantasy, rather than rational deliberation. In this paper, I shall defend this conception with a view to explaining the relation between values and desires. I suggest that valuing qua phantasy‐making can ‘tune up’ a person's desires to fit his perception of the good. Such power of phantasy is to be contrasted with various types of motivational failure in moral imagination. Finally, I argue that ‘effective valuing’, which makes us capable of desiring what we perceive to be good, requires an affective kind of imagination which assures us that we have the ability to love and to be loved.     

LANGUAGE AND THE TAO: SOME REFLECTIONS ON INEFFABILITY

Confucius withdrew and told his disciples, "I know a bird can fly; I know a fish can swim; I know animals can run. Creatures that run can be caught in nets; those that swim can be caught in wicker traps; those that fly can be hit by arrows. But the dragon is beyond my knowledge; it ascends into heaven on the clouds and the wind. Today 1 have seen Lao Tzu, and he is like the dragon!"     

MICHAEL POLANYI ON ART AND RELIGION: SOME CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON MEANING

This paper is a critique of the theory of meaning in art and religion that Michael Polanyi developed in his last work entitled Meaning. After giving a brief summary of Polanyi's theory of art, I raise two serious difficulties, not with the theory itself, but with the claims Polanyi makes about the relation of meaning in art to science and religion. Regarding the first difficulty, I argue that Polanyi betrays an earlier insight when in Meaning he attempts to dissociate meaning in art from meaning in science; instead I argue that both science and art are aesthetic enterprises. Regarding the second, I argue that Polanyi's account of religion is an aesthetic reduction, that meaning in religion, at least in the Western tradition, is not so much an aesthetic as it is an existential matter.     

ON LOVE AND MELANCHOLIA IN MARGUERITE DURAS'S AUTOFICTION

In the Durassian melancholic atmosphere, past and present, fantasy and reality come together as one. This paper addresses the themes of love and destruction in Marguerite Duras's life that pervade her oeuvre, allowing us to discern a melancholic structure within her autofiction. Writing down her melancholia—the impossible mourning of a loved object—Duras captures nothingness and loss—in order not to die of love. In a constant exchange with her readers, she searches for herself and delivers herself to her readers. This renewable creative process of writing enables her to engage in an ongoing experience of identity reconstruction, in a way similar to the patient in psychoanalysis re‐creating his/her life's fiction.     

ON MISREADING AND MISLEADING PATIENTS: SOME REFLECTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS,MISCOMMUNICATIONS AND COUNTERTRANSFERENCE ENACTMENTS1

This author focuses on an aspect of transference countertransference interaction that enacted covertly is often overlooked. He argues that conflicts, needs and biases that may go undetected for lengthy periods of time are not infrequently contained within the analyst's accurate and technically correct interventions and that for defensive reasons, patients often suppress, deny or rationalise their accurate perceptions of these countertransference elements and fail to confront their analysts with them. The mistakes, miscommunications and misperceptions that arise as a consequence of the unconscious collusions that develop between patient and analyst can have a profound effect on the analytic work. Several clinical examples are presented to illustrate the operation of such covert communications in analysis and their impact on the treatment process.     

A MODERN LOOK AT THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE

Abstract. In what follows, I review the modern theory of the origin of the universe as astronomers and physicists are coming to understand it during the last decades of the twentieth century. An unexpected discovery of this study is that the story of "cosmogenesis" cannot be completely told unless we understand the fundamental nature of matter, space, and time. In the context of modern cosmology space has become not only the bedrock (so to speak) of our physical existence, it may yield a fuller understanding of the universe itself.     

ON A PARADOX OF CHRISTIAN LOVE

The two love commands attributed to Jesus clearly show the basic feature of Christianity as a “religion of love.” However, it may be argued that there is conflict between these commands, so that the Christian idea of love confronts a deep paradox: on the one hand, it takes loving God as the ultimate foundation of loving one's neighbor and loving one's neighbor as the perfect manifestation of loving God. On the other hand, it gives supremacy to loving God over loving one's neighbor, with the result that, in cases of conflict, Christianity has to sacrifice loving one's neighbor to loving God and thus to negate the second great command by the first.     

THE PSYCHOANALYST AND THE BABY: A NEW LOOK AT WORK WITH INFANTS

The author argues that objections to involving the infant in a relationship with an analyst have led psychoanalysts to overlook the possibility that the interaction between the infant and the analyst may be able to activate and retrieve those parts of the infant's inner world that have been excluded from containment and be conducive to a vitalisation of the emotional disturbance that can then become worked through in the mother-infant relationship. As long as the infant's ego is weak, the infant and the mother have a unique flexibility that enables them to repair disturbances in their relationship when the emotional container-contained link is (re-)established. Based on the assumptions (1) that a relationship can be established between the infant and the analyst, (2) that the infant has a primordial subjectivity and self as base for intersubjectivity and the search for containment, (3) that the infant has an unique flexibility in changing representations of itself and others that comes to an end as the ego develops, and (4) that the infant is able to process aspects of language, three cases, at the ages of 6, 18 and 20 months, are presented to illustrate what is considered to be a novel approach to work with infants.     

A FAILED RECONCILIATION: FURTHER REFLECTIONS ON STERBA'S PROJECT

Although I do not find any of Sterba's responses to my recent criticisms of his work How to Make People Just convincing, I shall not attempt to answer them point by point since this would be a boring, scholastic exercise at best.1 Rather, I shall expand upon what I believe continue to be the three major problems with Sterba's theory and explain why his recent responses to my criticisms (and the criticisms of others) along these lines are not adequate.     

MULTIPLE FRACTURES IN TIME: REFLECTIONS ON A CAR CRASH

This essay offers a story of a traumatic event experienced by the author on September 6, 1999. Presented here in autoethnographic and multivoiced form, the author narrates a fraction of time in her life that has left her forever changed: a near-death car crash. She uses literary mode in the crash story and recollected dialogue in the rescue story. In the effort to engage readers into the particulars of such a horrific experience, she seeks to connect with trauma survivors and perhaps offer illumination for those who (for their own reasons) seek further understanding in what will, hopefully for them, never be a first-order experience.