Commentary on Carola M. Kaplan's “Navigating Trauma in Joseph Conrad's Victory: A Voyage From Sigmund Freud to Philip M. Bromberg”

This commentary adds a few additional sparks to Carola M. Kaplan's incandescent essay at the boundary of literary fiction and psychoanalysis, and attempts to place her already generous treatment of my work into a perspective that enriches her synthesis. Conceptually, I try to further develop our shared understanding of why the legacy of developmental trauma too relationally barren to allow cognitive symbolization and self-reflection, leads to an adult life shaped by a dissociated mental structure that channels the “best of intentions” toward tragically predestined defeat. But beyond our conceptually explicit link, and perhaps even more central, is that the history of my own attempt to “navigate trauma” at the interface of psychoanalysis and literature has become part of a deeper connection between Kaplan and me. I discuss this implicit link between us as representing the fuller meaning of intersubjectivity and the wonders of selfhood, otherness, and human relatedness. My overarching emphasis is that Professor Kaplan, meticulously respecting the boundary of what defines fiction in literature, has simultaneously demonstrated the permeability of the boundary between fiction and nonfiction in human relationships —showing that what is most human in human beings is in one way always nonfiction if it is experientially authentic.     

The Gill/Bromberg Correspondence

This correspondence between Merton Gill, M.D., and Philip M. Bromberg, Ph.D., includes five letters written between December 7, 1979, and January 8, 1984. The first letter, from Gill to Bromberg, shared reflections on Bromberg's paper “Interpersonal Psychoanalysis and Regression,” published in the October 1979 issue of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. The exchange of letters that follows takes up a number of issues relevant to the evolution of analytic theory and technique, of historical as well as contemporary interest. Their discussion moves from a consideration of the nature and role of regression in psychoanalytic work to a consideration of mental structure and mental states, to free association and the analysis of transference, and finally to their reflections on the analytic frame and analytic technique itself.     

“Afterword” to the Gill/Bromberg Correspondence

In trying to convey what it is like 30 years later to reflect on my correspondence with Merton Gill I write about a memory that has stayed the same while changing. As I looked with fresh eyes at the ideas that excited us individually/together, I relived and here try to convey my experience of this extraordinary man while reentering my own self-experience during it. This is indeed an afterword but also such an experiential continuation that I felt his “real time” absence in this discussion as a palpable loss.     

Exposing Mammon: Devotion to Money in a Market Society

Abstract : The recent financial crisis has exposed the extent to which the contemporary global economy is driven by credit. Yet credit is the obverse of debt, and where overspending threatens instability through an increasing debt spiral, austerity measures also threaten instability through reducing growth, also leading to an increasing debt spiral. Humanity is increasingly exposed to the force of money, which is created as debt with a given expiration date. Yet to place our credit or faith in the power of debt itself is to place faith in a world of shadows, in estimations of the value of things as perceived by others or market prices. Redemption from debt involves a restoration of our capacity to judge intrinsic values rather than mere prices.     

The Effect of Group Psychotherapy in Reducing Resistance to Individual Psychotherapy: A Case Study

Abstract

Cohesion in group treatment of spouse abusers plays an important and often overlooked role. Involuntary abuser groups can benefit from cohesion, but due to their unique structure, cohesion may develop differently than in voluntary psychotherapy groups. Initially, abuser groups may develop premature levels of cohesion that can make group members unwilling to express conflict, develop intimacy, and take responsibility for their actions. Understanding the abuser personality and the unique characteristics of involuntary abuser groups can shed light on why cohesion develops the way it does and the importance it plays in abuser groups. Developing effective interventions that target premature cohesion can help the group members express conflict, develop intimacy, and take responsibility for their actions, thus bringing about therapeutic levels of cohesion.     

Patterns of Human Interlimb Coordination Emerge from the Properties of Non-Linear,Limit Cycle Oscillatory Processes

The present article represents an initial attempt to offer a principled solution to a fundamental problem of movement identified by Bernstein (1967), namely, how the degrees of freedom of the motor system are regulated. Conventional views of movement control focus on motor programs or closed-loop devices and have little or nothing to say on this matter. As an appropriate conceptual framework we offer Iberall and his colleagues’ physical theory of homeokinetics first elaborated for movement by Kugler, Kelso, and Turvey (1980). Homeokinetic theory characterizes biological systems as ensembles of non-linear, limit cycle oscillatory processes coupled and mutually entrained at all levels of organization. Patterns of interlimb coordination may be predicted from the properties of non-linear, limit cycle oscillators. In a set of experiments and formal demonstrations we show that cyclical, two-handed movements maintain fixed amplitude and frequency (a stable limit cycle organization) under the following conditions: (a) when brief and constantly applied load perturbations are imposed on one hand or the other, (b) regardless of the presence or absence of fixed mechanical constraints, and (c) in the face of a range of external driving frequencies from a visual source. In addition, we observe a tight phasic relationship between the hands before and after perturbations (quantified by cross-correlation techniques), a tendency of one limb to entrain the other (mutual entrainment) and that limbs cycling at different frequencies reveal non-arbitrary, sub-harmonic relationships (small integer, subharmonic entrainment). In short, all the above patterns of interlimb coordination fall out of a non-linear oscillatory design. Discussion focuses on the compatibility of these results with past and present neurobiological work, and the theoretical insights into problems of movement offered by homeokinetic physics. Among these are, we think, the beginnings of a principled solution to the degrees of freedom problem, and the tentative claim that coordination and control are emergent consequences of dynamical interactions among non-linear, limit cycle oscillatory processes.     

Changes in the Rorschach and MMPI–2 After Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT): A Collaborative Assessment Case Study

We used before-and-after testing with the Rorschach Inkblot Test (Exner, 1997/2003) and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2 (Butcher et al., 2001 Butcher, J. N., Graham, J. R., Ben-Porath, Y. S., Tellegen, A., Dahlstrom, W. G. and Kaemmer, B. 2001. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2: Manual for administration, scoring, and interpretation, , rev. ed., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.  [Google Scholar]) to assist a psychotherapy client—a survivor of child abuse suffering from depression accompanied by hallucinations—in evaluating a course of electroconvulsive therapy that she underwent. The results of both tests indicated positive changes. During the collaborative discussion of the test results, especially the changes seen on the Rorschach, a deeper understanding of her skeptical response to evidence of improvement came to light and helped to refocus the ongoing psychotherapy work.