Neurofisiología de la alimentación: su incidencia en la obesidad común (I)

Resumen

En este estudio revisamos y valoramos las distintas explicaciones etiológicas de la obesidad común, que de alguna manera se fundamentan en principios neurofisiológicos. Entre otras, se estudian las influencias del proceso metabólico, del tejido adiposo, de la herencia genética y, en especial, del «arco reflejo alimentario». Se evidencia la limitación que supone una perspectiva radicalmente organicísta para la comprensión de la obesidad, que en la inmensa mayoría de casos necesita del soporte psicosocial.     

Cómo el niño construye hipótesis sobre la gramática de su lengua

Resumen

El «Paradigma de los Recados», procedimiento experimental en el que un adulto incita al niño a transmitir un recado a otro adulto, es aplicado a una muestra de 36 niños franceses comprendidos entre los 2 y los 3,6 años con el propósito de elicitar la construcción de frases. A partir de las omisiones, errores y otras conductas lingüísticas peculiares que producen estos niños, se infieren las estratégias transitorias para abordar los problemas que la expresión del sujeto plantea en esta lengua. Estas estratégias guían hacia la construcción de hipótesis sobre la gramática del modelo adulto. Ambas dan cuenta de la evolución desde la categorización semántico-pragmática a la categorización sintáctica sin acudir a la intervención de principios lingüísticos innatos. En lo que respecta a la categoría de sujeto, se cuestiona la existencia de una primitiva y universal gramática pro-drop.     

Esquizofrenia: ¿Enfermedad crónica? I. Consideraciones teóricas

Resumen

Se revisa el concepto de Esquizofrenia en base a una síntesis de la literatura reciente sobre la evolución a largo plazo de la enfermedad. De acuerdo con el modelo de enfermedad de diátesis-stress, se analizan los indicadores de la vulnerabilidad, la influencia de los acontecimientos vitales, de los stressores psicosociales crónicos, especialmente de la Expresión Emocional familiar, y del mantenimiento con medicación antipsicótica, en el curso de la Esquizofrenia. Se sugiere la existencia de una relación entre la llamada «Esquizofrenia Crónica» y las influencias yatrogénicas.     

Confronting Bluebeard: totalitarian regimes in childhood and in the collective psyche

Beginning with the story of Bluebeard, the author considers how traumatic overwhelm can occur in everyday childhood situations of a psychically murderous quality; for example, a nanny’s totalitarian regime may be invisible to parents ruled by collective social and cultural norms. A child who is remote from mother and idealises a father embodying a powerful patriarchal system may remain naïvely dependent in marriage and unable to cope with the realities of human aggression. The paper describes analytic work with a woman who had suffered repeated breakdowns and needed to relinquish a fragile, socially constructed identity in order to establish her own true orientation.     

When culture fails: coping with cultural trauma

The research into the phenomenon of cultural trauma is growing as the effects of historical transformations are recognized and analysed. The concept of cultural trauma and the analytic concept of the cultural complex is a suitable theoretical approach for this research. The Lithuanian experience of cultural trauma after the historical shifts indicates the importance of the interplay between societal and individual factors in coping with trauma. Academic psychotraumatological studies carried out at Vilnius University indicate a stronger traumatic experience by people who are survivors of direct political repression and even intergenerational transmission of trauma, but this group also seems to demonstrate an intergenerational transmission of resilience. Paradoxically, from a long‐term perspective, the victims of direct repression seem to have suffered less than the people who accommodated to the regime, and this applies also to their offspring. Analysis in terms of overcoming cultural trauma indicates that society is gradually integrating historic traumatic experiences, although a healthy cultural identity has not yet been restored.     

Psychological implications of a vision disorder

The paper discusses how the condition of crossed‐eyes affects a baby's eye contact with mother and potentially results in the loss of a vital emotional connection with her during the earliest days of life. This loss may contribute to a rupture that arrests emotional development at a deep psychic level. It is suggested that, in the same way as premature separation, the rupture can precipitate a ‘fusional complex’, a defence that develops to protect the infant against psychotic anxieties. The paper proposes that psychological development atrophies in this place and creates a blind spot. These ideas are explored through analytic theory and developmental literature. The dreams of a patient and his art are used to illustrate a 10‐year ‘alchemical’ process of bringing repressed material into consciousness and transformation. Healing the psychological wounds of deficits in early eye contact may be found to bring sight to a blind spot that was created by the nature of the condition itself.     

Clinical experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic

Most of the clinical experiences discussed in this article arose from monthly Zoom meetings at Rome’s Italian Centre of Analytical Psychology (CIPA). We set up a discussion group in April 2020, one month after lockdown began in Italy, and these monthly online meetings continue to this day. All senior analysts and analysts-in-training at Rome’s CIPA, whose backgrounds range from child and adolescent psychotherapy to adult psychotherapy and analysis, to sandplay therapy and medicine and psychiatry, have been participating in these meetings. The group discussions focus on the present time and its impact on us, as well as on our relationships with patients. By further developing these reflections during the lockdown in Italy (9 March - 3 May 2020), it is fair to ask whether a sense of unreality, depersonalization, or derealization has occurred, either in the therapist or patient, and if so, whether it is possible that therapists miss the human contact more than clients. We will mainly refer to clinical and personal experiences as our most precious guidelines.     

Opportunities of online analysis1

The question of whether tele-analysis is an acceptable way of conducting analysis has been discussed since it has become available. Merchant (2016) and others concluded that ‘the essentials of a genuine analytic process are not necessarily precluded’ (p. 1). In this paper, the author goes a step further and examines potential advantages of tele-analysis. There may be benefits for patients with a history of physical or sexual abuse who value the distance. The potential for a ‘safe place’ for work with erotic transference is also examined. In a further section the author is interested in allowing the analyst the freedom to practise in an authentic way, congruent with their personality. Also explored is the concept of the interactive field including the technological medium, which is subject to synchronistic events. Finally, the author gives examples of a deep connection between patient and analyst which came about despite the physical distance.     

The Alchemical Oedipus: Re-Visioning the Myth

The Oedipus myth is foundational to depth psychology due to Freud’s use of Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex in the creation of psychoanalysis. But analytical psychology’s engagement with the myth has been limited despite the importance Jung also places upon it. The absence of a developed Jungian response to Oedipus means the myth’s psychologically constructive elements have been overlooked in favour of reductive Freudian interpretations. I examine whether analytical psychology can fruitfully re-engage with Oedipus by reinterpreting his story as a paternal rebirth. This is achieved by reincorporating those parts of the myth that occur before and after the period portrayed in Oedipus Rex. Such a move reintegrates Oedipus’ father, King Laius, into the story and unveils important parallels with the alchemical trope of the king’s renewal by his son. Using Jung’s method of amplification, Oedipus is recast as Laius’ redeemer and identified with the archetype of psychological wholeness, the Self. The contention is that such an understanding of Oedipus supports a clearer recognition of the potentially generative quality of human suffering, restoring to the myth the quality of moral instruction it possessed in antiquity.     

Embodying analysis: the body and the therapeutic process

This paper considers the transfer of somatic effects from patient to analyst, which gives rise to embodied countertransference, functioning as an organ of primitive communication. By means of processes of projective identification, the analyst experiences somatic disturbances within himself or herself that are connected to the split‐off complexes of the analysand. The analysty’s own attempt at mind‐body integration ushers the patient towards a progressive understanding and acceptance of his or her inner suffering. Such experiences of psychic contagion between patient and analyst are related to Jung’s ‘psychology of the transference’ and the idea of the ‘subtle body’ as an unconscious shared area. The re‐attribution of meaning to pre‐verbal psychic experiences within the ‘embodied reverie’ of the analyst enables the analytic dyad to reach the archetypal energies and structuring power of the collective unconscious. A detailed case example is presented of how the emergence of the vitalizing connection between the psyche and the soma, severed through traumatic early relations with parents or carers, allows the instinctual impulse of the Self to manifest, thereby reactivating the process of individuation.