Nina Farhi: Leaning on an Annealed Identification: Commentary on Paper by Nina Farhi

In my response to Nina Farhi's paper, I begin my discussion with the concept of a placental space that Farhi develops to represent the psychotic's internal experience of living in a fusion with the Other. Farhi's new concept of an annealed identification provides a useful addition to the psychoanalytic literature to describe the living conditions of a psychotic who is severely entrenched in an unyielding maternal bond. Basing her conceptualizations on Milner's psychotic patient Susan, Farhi also focuses on Milner's discovery that no repressed unconscious existed for her patient Susan. I suggest in my response that Freud's nearly forgotten idea of primal repression and Lacan's idea of maternal jouissance would shed additional light onto the psychotic experience and expand Farhi's notion of an annealed identification with the maternal figure. In addition, I argue for an inclusion of the Third whose presence is so powerfully lacking in the case discussion and in the patient's life.     

Love,Desire, Jouissance: Two out of Three Ain't Bad

The author demonstrates in this paper the different dynamics of love, desire, and jouissance. This impossible affair of loving whom one does not desire and desiring whom one does not love is analyzed through the writings of Jacques Lacan and Stephen Mitchell. The author illustrates Lacan's use of the “objeta” as the fragment in the Other that gives the desiring individual the illusion of completeness whereas the desired Other has no notion for whom or what she or he is desired. Desire is unmasked as this hide-and-seek game of narcissistic illusions where one is wanted for what one does not have and one desires what one cannot have. Both Lacan and Mitchell suggest that love is a far more risky encounter because all narcissistic illusions risk to be jettisoned. Although Mitchell suggests that it is only through the Other that one can discover the otherness in oneself, Lacan states that to love is to give nothing of oneself and to accept the emptinessin the Other. Texts from popular culture are used to illustrate the dynamics of live and desire and the limits of jouissance.     

Countertransference: Our new royal road to the unconscious?

In this paper I am tracing the history of countertransference and how it has informed the current debate about self‐disclosure as a pivotal instrument of analytic work. Now that the analyst's “subjective factor”; has been understood as a central influence on the analysand and as a vital source of information about the analysand's intrapsychic life, I argue that certain currents in the relational school of psychoanalysis confuse the analyst's subjectivity with his personality. While becoming more “real”; with a patient may enliven a stale analytic dialogue, it ought not be confused with, or take the place of, an analysis of unconscious desires and phantasies. I claim that a two‐person psychology can exist only within a tripartite structure in which the analyst does not lose sight of his complex function of being the carrier, observer, and conveyor of the unconscious currents holding both participants in check.     

The sound of darkness: why do auditory cues aid infants' search for objects hidden by darkness but not by visible occluders?

In manual search tasks designed to assess infants' knowledge of the object concept, why does search for objects hidden by darkness precede search for objects hidden by visible occluders by several months? A graded representations account explains this décalage by proposing that the conflicting visual input from occluders directly competes with object representations, whereas darkness merely weakens representations. This study tests the prediction that representations of objects hidden by darkness are strong enough for infants to bind auditory cues to them and support search, whereas representations of objects hidden by occluders are not. Six-and-half-month-olds were presented with audible or silent objects that remained visible, became hidden by darkness, or became hidden by a visible occluder. Search required engaging in the same means-end action in all conditions. As predicted, auditory cues increased search when objects were hidden by darkness but not when they were hidden by a visible occluder. Results are discussed in the context of different facets of object concept development highlighted by graded representations perspectives and core knowledge perspectives and in relation to other work on multimodal object representations.     

Are infants in the dark about hidden objects?

Infants appear to search for objects hidden by darkness earlier in development than they search for objects hidden by an occluder in the light. However, these two types of search tasks have differed in numerous ways that may have contributed to better performance in the dark (e.g. in whether the hidden objects made sound, in the number of familiarization trials with visible objects). The current studies controlled such incidental differences between search tasks, so that they could be directly compared. Six‐and‐a‐half‐month‐olds received four types of test events, in which either a toy or no toy was presented and then hidden in the dark or under a cloth in the light. Infants searched more often on toy than no‐toy trials in the dark than with a cloth. The advantage in searching for hidden objects in the dark thus appears to be genuine. Theoretical implications are discussed.     

Verbal ability and executive functioning development in preschoolers at head start

Research suggests that executive functioning skills may enhance the school readiness of children from disadvantaged homes. Questions remain, however, concerning both the structure and the stability of executive functioning among preschoolers. In addition, there is a lack of research addressing potential predictors of longitudinal change in executive functioning during early childhood. This study examined the structure of executive functioning from fall to spring of the preschool year using a multimethod battery of measures. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed a unidimensional model fit the data well at both time points, and tests of measurement invariance across time points indicated that children's mean latent executive functioning scores significantly improved over time. Verbal ability was a significant predictor of longitudinal change in executive functioning. Theoretical implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Head Start and urban children's school readiness: a birth cohort study in 18 cities

We used longitudinal data from a birth cohort study, the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, to investigate the links between Head Start and school readiness in a large and diverse sample of urban children at age 5 (N = 2,803; 18 cities). We found that Head Start attendance was associated with enhanced cognitive ability and social competence and reduced attention problems but not reduced internalizing or externalizing behavior problems. These findings were robust to model specifications (including models with city-fixed effects and propensity-scoring matching). Furthermore, the effects of Head Start varied by the reference group. Head Start was associated with improved cognitive development when compared with parental care or other nonparental care, as well as improved social competence (compared with parental care) and reduced attention problems (compared with other nonparental care). In contrast, compared with attendance at pre-kindergarten or other center-based care, Head Start attendance was not associated with cognitive gains but with improved social competence and reduced attention and externalizing behavior problems (compared with attendance at other center-based care). These associations were not moderated by child gender or race/ethnicity.