Paradoxical affinities: otherness and ambivalence as creative pathways

Referring to her own background as the child of Jewish refugees forced to leave their countries of origin before the second World War, the author describes how her attitude towards Jung and his ideas has evolved. The role of paradoxical affinities that have affected the author's life and identity as a Jungian analyst are considered, alongside the impact of experiences of otherness whilst supervising and teaching abroad, particularly in Eastern Europe.     

The language of spirituality

By exploring the evidence brought forward by palaeontologists and archaeologists, this paper will investigate the hypothesis that spirituality is rooted in our primordial origins. It will be claimed that as a fundamental human dimension that distinguishes humans, spirituality needs to interact with the other constituent dimensions that make us human, including our need for community, our characteristics of learning, of being rational and of developing tools that change us. If spirituality emerged so early in the evolutionary process, and if it is tied to the quest of search for meaning, one could put forward an argument that it precedes most of the tools and knowledges developed by humans. There seems to be evidence that its ability to spur human development is mainly done through the development and use of symbols which, if understood in a wider sense, seem to be the primary language of spirituality.     

Gifts,talismans and tokens in analysis: symbolic enactments or sinister acts?

Analysis is nuanced with many non-verbal cues and interactions. This is vividly illustrated when gifts are presented to the analyst. Their physical presence transcends the symbolic frame of analysis because, although their meaning may be metaphorical, their presence is real. Unlike other material objects and pictures, the gift may seem to invite the analyst to receive it personally. It may apparently demand some form of action. A gift may be consciously given as a token, or it may be magically invested as a talisman. On the surface, it might appear to be an expression of love; it may be a communication of a wish for acceptance; but it may have more 'sinister', unconscious intent. It may embody the wish to expel unwanted affect, ward off evil or control the analyst. Therefore disposal, that is the resolution and settling of the object, is significant. The case with which this paper is illustrated traces the meaning of a series of gifts in a single analysis. It is hoped that this will enhance a wider understanding of this common analytic phenomenon.     

Models Clarified: Responding to Langdon Gilkey

We respond to concerns raised by Langdon Gilkey. The discussion addresses the nature of theological thinking today, the question of truth within the situation of pluralism, the identity and difference between theological models and scientific models, and the proposed methods for testing theological models.     

儿童绘画与语言关系的发展研究综述

儿童绘画与儿童语言的关系,是儿童绘画心理及符号认知发展研究中的重点和难点问题。文章在简要回顾儿童绘画心理相关研究的基础之上,从绘画与语言都是符号、二者在发生和发展过程中的相似性以及二者心理发展阶段的一致性等方面介绍了儿童绘画与语言相互关系的研究。这些研究的结果表明,不同符号系统之间联系的焦点在于意义,意义是沟通两个符号系统的纽带。儿童绘画与语言的关系随着儿童的发展而变化。文章还分析了这些研究中存在的不足并提出了今后研究的思路。     

Auto-sensuous shapes: prototypes for creative forms

The author looks at some of the more normative, adaptive, and creative aspects of what have been called autistic' or auto-sensuous' shapes by Tustin and others. She explores the construct from several frameworks, including the literature on early sensory experience and that on the empathic attunement between infant and caretaker in which interpersonal rhythms and meanings are built. The views of Bion and Matte-Blanco are utilized to help explore the processes by which meaning is created from experience, while the works of Segal and Milner are used to focus more explicitly on the role of symbol formation in the creative process. Finally, it is suggested that these auto-sensuous shapes can become prototypes for creative endeavours, including the creative process we call psychoanalysis. The author uses examples from her own experience in deriving pattern from basic sensory experience, toward the creation of poetry, drawings, and the establishment of attunement and meaning-making' within the analytic setting.     

Symbolic attitude and reverie: problems of symbolization in children and adolescents

In comparison to the 1970s and 1980s, we now treat more children and adolescents who, because they have had traumatic experiences of violence, child abuse, deprivation or chronic physical illness, are not able to adequately use their symbolizing function. The question is which qualities and which analytical attitude we should and can offer in analysis to help a child regain his or her capacity to symbolize, irrespective of how poorly developed or blocked this capacity may be. In contrast to Jung and some Jungians, the author argues that although the transcendent function is a 'natural process' and hence archetypally grounded as Jung maintained, the transcendent function does not work spontaneously. Rather it requires a matrix based on the child's earliest relationship, which can later be re-enacted in treatment. Jung's general concept of a 'symbolic attitude' can be complemented and focused in a specific way through the use of Bion's concept of 'reverie', which contributes in a fundamental way to symbol formation within the transference/countertransference. This idea is illustrated by clinical material from a nine-year-old boy who suffered from a severe congenital intestinal disease and was blocked in his capacity to symbolize. From the perspective of treatment technique, the author shows how the drawing of 'comic book' narratives in a reciprocal exchange was brought into the treatment. The drawings evolved in a way that he understood as a modified form of active imagination with children. The drawing process helped the boy gradually to develop a symbolic space in the therapy and to contain a psychic space in his mind.     

Active imagination and the analysis of film

The emotions aroused by the pleasure-generating mechanisms of the cinema are usually benign because they refer to a virtual world. Experiencing affects aroused by fictions can resemble being drawn into a rehearsal for a possible, imagined future that just might (but more likely never will) occur in the individual's life in the real world. Movie-goers, no less than the readers of novels, actively engage with the symbols that film makers inscribe in the screen text. In so doing, they take a measure of control over elements of the fiction. Screened fiction has thus the potential to help the individual grow in self-awareness. Shifting its focus to the work of the film critic, the paper argues that, suitably adapted to the requirements of working with a pre-recorded film or tape, Jung's concept of the active imagination helps us to model, license, limit and endorse the subjective element in textual analysis. Because the method proposed makes it possible formally to recognize that the interpretation of fiction is inevitably integrated with the analyst's personality, interpretation is always a matter of a reader bringing a text into being rather than disinterring a pre-existing object.     

Art within analysis: scapegoat, transference and transformation

Through clinical example and pictorial illustration, the author examines ways in which art offers a particular means of psychological transformation in states which may otherwise be in expressable. A transference to the art work itself is proposed. It is submitted that, mediated within the transference/ countertransference dynamic, this 'scapegoat transference' facilitates a particular process of psychological differentiation. The aesthetic qualities of art presented within analysis will resonate with other countertransference affects. Clinical material demonstrates how observation of this--aesthetic countertransference--leads to a distinction between the 'diagrammatic' and the 'embodied image. The process of integration of shadow material is furthered by the temporary safe-keeping of the art work by the analyst.