Response to Peter Fonagy

Peter Fonagy highlights the therapeutic efficacy of new experience, 'a way of being with the other', while the author gives priority to interpretation, insight into and the working through of unconscious conflict. The recovery of the repressed memories and fantasies of childhood is now an intermediate goal of psychoanalysis, largely superseded by transference interpretation and genetic reconstruction. Transference, like symptoms, is a return of the repressed. The author believes Fonagy's theoretical and technical focus on the non-conscious, rather than the dynamic unconscious, devalues the persisting influence and pathogenic significance of the infantile unconscious.     

Repression, transference and reconstruction

Whereas Peter Fonagy almost dismisses the importance of repression and the recovery of repressed and suppressed memory, the author believes that the analysis of repression retains importance in clinical psychoanalysis. Transference is a return of the repressed, with repressed memories embedded within a fundamental unconscious fantasy constellation. Moreover, transference is an essential, but not the only, route to the understanding and analysis of the patient. Nor should transference be confused with the real or new analytic relationship. The author does not regard the dynamic unconscious as definitely registered and retrieved in procedural memory, awaiting further research. A focus on the present 'self with other' model of therapeutic action neglects pathogenesis and the importance of childhood and its psychoanalytic reconstruction.     

The cause is worse: Remeeting Jocasta1

This paper will help bring Jocasta, a fi gure relatively neglected by psychoanalytic theory, whose lens upon her son has left her to the side, into greater focus. It is not that Jocasta is completely ignored but rather that, when studied, she appears as the dangerous, castrating, forbidden woman to be placated or avoided at all costs. So, although she stands at center stage as the fulcrum of Oedipus's destruction, it is never as a mother longing for her son. The author contends that Jocasta is the personifi cation of an ongoing developmental need on the part of all mothers to separate from their children coupled with a universal longing for reunion. As with Oedipus, Jocasta—a character in a play—is an example of the perverse outcome of forbidden gratifi cations; but also, as with Oedipus, she is the fi gurative presentation of normal variations on a theme.     

Transformations of early infantile experiences: A 6-month-old in psychoanalysis

The aim of the paper is to study the theoretical and technical tools for psychoanalysis adapted to an infantile analysand's requirements. The author presents the case of a 6-month-old boy with his mother in psychoanalytical sessions four times a week; the analysis was terminated after six weeks. After the fi rst two sessions the disturbances between the infant and the mother disappeared from everyday life but continued with increasing intensity as an emotional storm in the sessions during three weeks up to a 12-day break. During and after the break everyday life continued without disturbances. After the break the emotional storm continued in the sessions but abated and was replaced by playing. The infant's creation of a fort-da game with his pacifi er indicated a transformation of the mental functioning. The analysis could then be terminated. The study of the process indicates good reasons to adapt psychoanalytical concepts to the prerequisite of the infantile personality and to use the concepts of unconscious, infantile repression, substitute formation, return of the infantile repressed, infantile transference, splitting, xKy, reverie and containment as some of the theoretical tools for understanding the infantile personality in a clinical psychoanalytical setting.     

Oneiric activity and the analytical process A semiotic perspective on Willy Baranger's theory of dreams1

This author reconsiders, from a semiotic perspective, the theoretical and technical ideas developed by Willy and Madeleine Baranger, especially W. Baranger's views on the function of dreams, the status of oneiric symbols and the further clinical‐technical use of dreams in the context of the intersubjective dynamic fi eld, together with the basic unconscious fantasy that emerges in the analytic situation. She attempts to relate the Barangers' ideas to others arising from Peirce's analytic semiotics that would support a triadic conceptualization of dreams. The need to incorporate a pragmatic view of communication and of the processes of production of sense as contributions to dream metapsychology and interpretation in the case of non‐neurotic patients is particularly emphasized. On the basis of the hypothesis of a described series of triads underlying the production and retelling of dreams, the acknowledgment of these produced/told dreams as intentional signs allows the presence of a continuous process of semiosis to be proposed. The author introduces clinical material to illustrate the communicative value of dreams through the textual analysis of the report and accompanying associations of three dreams. Such analysis takes a linguistic pragmatics approach that examines those aspects of meaning not accounted for by a restricted semantic theory.     

What does Batman think about SpongeBob? children's understanding of the fantasy/fantasy distinction

Young children reliably distinguish reality from fantasy; they know that their friends are real and that Batman is not. But it is an open question whether they appreciate, as adults do, that there are multiple fantasy worlds. We test this by asking children and adults about fictional characters' beliefs about other characters who exist either within the same world (e.g., Batman and Robin) or in different worlds (e.g., Batman and SpongeBob). Study 1 found that although both adults and young children distinguish between within-world and across-world types of character relationships, the children make an unexpected mistake: they often claim that Batman thinks that Robin is make believe. Study 2 used a less explicit task, exploring intuitions about the actions of characters-whom they could see, touch, and talk to--and found that children show a mature appreciation of the ontology of fictional worlds.