The Analytic Moment Doesn't Fit Analytic “Technique”: Commentary on Tony Bass's “When the Frame Doesn't Fit the Picture”

Tony Bass in his groundbreaking contribution to the analytic literature argues cogently that the frame remains an essential reference point throughout any psychoanalysis, a statement about which he and I are in agreement. He also argues that for a frame to be therapeutically useful it must be flexible enough to allow negotiation of enactments and their working through in an intersubjective field, another point about which we are in complete accord. He and I each hold a self-state perspective that informs and enriches our clinical work. Where we diverge slightly is in how this perspective shapes the way we think about the nature of the “frame” as it applies to the dissociated self-states of patient and analyst that emerge and engage each other subsymbolically as an ongoing aspect of the work, often in quite bewildering and sometimes confounding ways. This paper speaks to a number of issues that I hope will bring into relief some of the points of contrast that do exist, while underlining the core commonality in our thinking and clinical sensibility that unites us.     

One Need Not Be a House to Be Haunted: On Enactment,Dissociation, and the Dread of “Not-Me”—A Case Study

This paper examines psychic trauma as experience so shockingly strange that it exceeds the threshold for cognitive processing and begins to flood the mind with unintegratable affect that threatens to disorganize the internal template on which one's experience of self-coherence, self-cohesiveness, and self-continuity depends. A detailed clinical vignette illustrates how the unprocessed “not-me” experience held by a dissociated self-state as an affective memory without an autobiographical memory of its traumatic origin “haunts” the self. It remains a ghostly horror even in an otherwise successful psychoanalysis unless a new perceptual reality is created between patient and analyst that alters the narrative structure maintaining the dissociation as though the past were still a present danger. The analyst's making optimal use of dissociative processes in an intersubjective and interpersonal context enables the patient more readily to self-regulate affect in those areas of implicit memory where trauma has left its mark; the dissociated ghosts of “not-me” are thus persuaded, little-by-little, to cease their haunting and participate more and more actively and openly as self-reflective, self-expressive parts of “me.”     

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.