THE ONEIRIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF GEORGES PEREC

Georges Perec's book La Boutique Obscure (1973; translated into English in 2012) serves as the basis for this paper. The book is a collection of dreams that its author dreamed from May 1968 to August 1972. The present author treats these dreams as chapters in a bizarre autobiography, elaborating Perec's life through a discussion of those dreams and using them as a starting point with which to discuss his views of dream interpretation and the role of dreams in psychoanalysis.     

ROY SCHAFER: A BEGINNING

The author provides a biographical overview of Schafer's life, culled from his published work and focused primarily on his professional development. This biography is used to demonstrate some of Schafer's central theoretical insights on narrativity and language, and reveals the consistency of his thinking over his long career. A brief discussion of his writing on King Lear provides a bridge between theoretical and biographical material.     

NEUTRALITY IN THE FIELD: ALPHA‐FUNCTION AND THE DREAMING DYAD IN PSYCHOANALYTIC PROCESS

Analysts have interpreted the concept of neutrality in a variety of ways, beginning with Strachey's use of that word to translate Freud's (1915) term, Indifferenz. In this paper, neutrality is linked to Freud's notions of free association and evenly suspended attention. A history of psychoanalytic attempts to clarify the concept are presented, with special attention to issues of ambiguity and the patient's role in the determination of neutrality. Neutrality is further elaborated in relation to the bipersonal field as described by the Barangers and contemporary field theorists. Understood in terms of the field, neutrality becomes a transpersonal concept, here conceived in terms of alpha‐function and a dreaming dyad. Two clinical examples cast in the light of a Bionian perspective are discussed to suggest an alternative understanding of analytic impasses and their relation to alpha‐function and neutrality.     

Architecture: Effect of Territory,Boundary, and Orientation on Family Functioning

Most students of family process and family therapy practitioners have failed to pay sufficient attention to the importance of the physical home environment. The thesis of this paper is that the physical home environment may facilitate or constrain inter- and intrafamily interaction, role relationships, values, and identities. The paper presents a comprehensive review of the status of current knowledge concerning family interaction and the home environment. We propose a conceptual framework to facilitate discussion of the nature of man-environment relationships and focus attention on those aspects of the physical environment that have been noted as profoundly influencing family life. These are illustrated by three brief vignettes drawn from case studies of families in their home environment.     

Creativity and Counseling

This article distinguishes between curative, restorative psychotherapy, and educative, growth-oriented counseling. The authors show how the processes and methods of creativity in scientific and artistic pursuits are similar to those of personal growth and counseling. They also discuss divergent production, deferred judgment, preparation, incubation, illumination, elaboration, and the balance between thought and emotion in terms of creativity and counseling. In this article, counselors can find new methods of facilitating creativity.