Fred Plaut in conversation with Andrew Samuels

Abstract :  This is a reprint of an interview of Fred Plaut (who died in June 2009) conducted by Andrew Samuels in mid-1988 and first published in April 1989 in the  Journal , 34, 2, pp. 159–83. The interview covers Plaut's early life, his career, and historical observations of the development of the Society of Analytical Psychology from its beginnings, and of the wider community of Jungian analysis. Plaut reflects uninhibitedly on such topics as the role of leadership in analytical psychology, discussing the parts played by Michael Fordham in London and Hannes Dieckmann in Berlin. Plaut explains his thinking concerning individuation.     

James Astor in conversation with Warren Colman

In this interview with Warren Colman, James Astor speaks about his development as a Jungian analyst from his own experience of personal analysis in the 1960s to his recent retirement from clinical practice. The discussion covers his long association with Michael Fordham, the child analytic training at the SAP, the infant observation seminars with Fordham and Gianna Henry through which Fordham was able to make new discoveries about infant development, his experience of supervision with Donald Meltzer and the development of his own thinking through a series of papers on the analytic process, supervision and the relation between language and truth. The interview concludes with reflections about the legacy of Michael Fordham and the future of analytic work.     

‘With healing in her wings…’: Integration and repair in a self-destructive adolescent

This paper describes certain Jungian concepts related to integration and repair. Fundamental to this is Jung's concept of the self, which Fordham has made the basis of his model of development. To Jung's notion of the self as an integrator and organizer of experience, Fordham has added the idea that the self divides up, or deintegrates. Three corollaries of Fordham's model, pertaining to whole and part objects and the depressive position, are amplified through infant studies.

Clinical material from the treatment of a pigeon-phobic adolescent is presented, which attempts to demonstrate that a significant part of what the phobia represented was an infantile state of projective and introjective identification with an anxious mother. Treatment facilitated actions of the self that contributed to the integration of the experiences represented by the pigeons, so that what had been split off became a deintegrate capable of being reintegrated.

The focus of this paper is on the developmental as well as the pathological. Both are conceived in relation to the treatment.     

Self objects and development: Infant states of mind in an adolescent girl

In the context of Fordham's model of the deintegrating-reintegrating self, the paper discusses the total quality of the baby's earliest deintegrations and the nature of what Fordham terms the self object. The use of the term ‘whole object’ in Klein's and Fordham's terminology is explored and the self object is placed in the context of Jung's construct of the self and the archetypes. The paper illustrates how residues of the self object permeated a rule-making defensive structure in a 14-year-old girl and how the therapy provided an opportunity for the defence to loosen and for elements that had been locked, as potentials, in a ‘bump car’ self object, to unfold and develop. These elements included the possibility of enjoying the feminine qualities of being a girl and exploration of the mother-infant couple and its confusions in her inner world. In addition, they included getting in touch with an infant, vulnerable part of her personality and modifying a habitual defence which was to take refuge in projective identification with an aggressive, omnipotent phantasied brother. Another important element unfolded through the separation of herself from the idealized, precept-daughter in her mother's mind. A fixed projective identification with a self object became more flexible as the object was explored and developed, and its archetypal absoluteness modified, in the therapeutic relationship.     

Arguing at Cross-Purposes: Discharging the Dialectical Obligations of the Coalescent Model of Argumentation

The paper addresses the manner in which the theory of Coalescent Argumentation [CA] has been received by the Argumentation Theory community. I begin (section 2) by providing a theoretical overview of the Coalescent model of argumentation as developed by Michael A. Gilbert (1997). I next engage the several objections that have been raised against CA (section 3). I contend that objectors to the Coalescent model are not properly sensitive to the theoretical consequences of the genuinely situated nature of argument. I conclude (section 4) by suggesting that the resolution to the dispute between Gilbert and his objectors hinges on the outcome of several foundational theoretical questions identified over the course of the paper.     

A case of subcortical dementia due to sarcoidosis of the hypothalamus and fornices

A patient with sarcoidosis involving predominantly the hypothalamus and fornices was evaluated for dementia. He showed a relative sparing of fund of knowledge and orientation. Memory skills, particularly short-term memory, were severely impaired. Behavioral changes included apathy and a lack of spontaneity. Insight was relatively preserved. The pattern of his deficits showed some similarities to the pattern reported in patients with Huntington's disease and was different from that described in Alzheimer's disease. The dementia caused by subcortical pathology may differ in important respects from that caused by diffuse cortical dysfunction.     

Individual differences in the game motives of Own,Relative, and Joint gain

Two hundred and eighteen undergraduates (94 males and 124 females) made decisions in same-sex dyads across four types of 3-choice decomposed games. An analysis of each subject's choices was performed to see if he or she consistently pursued one of the three motives of Own (Individualism), Relative (Competition) or Joint (Cooperation) gain across all four decomposed games. Sixty-six percent of the subjects manifested such consistency, and sex of subject was unrelated to which goal was pursued. Of the remaining 32%, a sizable subgroup ($\text{1}\text{3}$) was shown to be making its choices in an Altruistic fashion, attempting to maximize the outcomes of the other subject. An analysis of variance of the F scale scores of subjects in these motivational categories yielded an effect (p < .025), with the Competitive group having the highest, and the Altruistic group having the lowest mean authoritarianism score. Correlational analyses indicated negative r's between degree of Competition and F score, positive r's between degree of Altruism and F, but no apparent relation between F and either Individualistic or Joint gain choice.