Notes towards a psychoanalytic understanding of the couple relationship

In this paper an attempt is made to demonstrate how a particular orientation to contemporary psychoanalytic concepts may be useful to an understanding of the nature of the marital, or couple, relationship. The unconscious forces which may attract two people to each other, which may influence the patterns of their interaction and which may result in psychic stagnation or development are outlined. The second part of the paper addresses the nature of the therapeutic relationship with the patient couple. A hypothesis is offered regarding possible diagnostic criteria for choosing whether to work with a couple presenting for couple psychotherapy employing one psychotherapist or two psychotherapists working as a co-therapy pair. (The usual practice of myself and my colleagues at the Tavistock Institute of Marital Studies is to see our patient couples with a co-therapist partner).     

The I and World history in Hegel

In this paper, I investigate the relations between the notion of the I and the conception of World history in Hegel’s philosophy. First, I address Hegel’s account of the I by reconstructing its phenomenological and logical development from consciousness to self-consciousness through recognition with the other and arguing that the project of the Philosophy of Right is normative, as it provides an account of the logical process of affirmation of the I as the normative source of the realm of objective spirit. I then argue for an account of World history as the self-conscious development and liberation of the I in time and objectivity, and I consider Hegel’s philosophy of history in light of the Philosophy of Right as the historical emergence of the I through the forms of objective spirit in history. Finally, I focus on two of the allegedly most problematic issues related to Hegel’s conception of World history: the nature and very possibility of an ‘intersubjective consciousness’ and the notion of ‘World spirit’. I conclude by outlining how the conception of World history, if reconstructed in light of Hegel’s conception of the I, can have previously unnoticed political implications.     

Intersubjective cultural representations predicting behaviour: The case of political culture and voting

Research has shown that cultural identification is influenced by the congruence between people's personal values and intersubjectively represented cultural values. The current research extended this finding to voter choice and behaviour. We hypothesized that people whose values and attitudes are similar to the collective representations of the political party that an election candidate belongs to would be more likely to vote for that candidate. Also, this relationship would be mediated by party identification. We found support for our hypotheses in two studies, one on the Legislative Council election in Hong Kong and the other on the 2004 US presidential election.     

A METAPHILOSOPHICAL DILEMMA FOR EPISTEMIC EXTERNALISM

Abstract: In this article I argue that the prevalence of intersubjective disagreement in epistemology poses a serious problem for Epistemic Externalism. I put the problem in the form of a dilemma: either Epistemic Externalism is not a complete account of epistemic justification or it's implausible to claim that the belief that Epistemic Externalism is true is itself an externalistically justified belief.     

A psychoanalytical phenomenology of perversion1

After stating that the current tasks of psychoanalytic research should fundamentally include the exploration of the analyst's mental processes in sessions with the patient, the author describes the analytical relation as one having an intersubjective nature. Seen from the outside, the analytical relation evidences two poles: a symmetric structural pole where both analyst and patient share a single world and a single approach to reality, and a functional asymmetric pole that defines the assignment of the respective roles. In the analysis of a perverse patient, the symmetry‐asymmetry polarities acquire some very particular characteristics. Seen from the perspective of the analyst's subjectivity, perversion appears in the analyst's mind as a surreptitious and unexpected transgression of the basic agreement that facilitates and structures intersubjective encounters. It may go as far as altering the Aristotelian rules of logic. When coming into contact with the psychic reality of a perverse patient, what happens in the analyst's mind is that a world takes shape. This world is misleadingly coloured by an erotisation that sooner or later will acquire some characteristics of violence. The perverse nucleus, as a false reality, remains dangling in mid‐air as an experience that is inaccessible to the analyst's empathy. The only way the analyst can reach it is from the ‘periphery’ of the patient's psychic reality, by trying in an indirect way to lead him back to his intersubjective roots. At this point, the author's intention is to explain this intersubjective phenomenon in terms of metapsychological and empirical research‐based theories. Finally, some ideas on the psychogenesis of perversion are set forth.     

The art of the tincture: analytical supervision

Using the alchemical metaphor, effective supervision can be seen as an excellent example of the tincture: a little goes a long way. This paper offers a model of the dynamics in analytical supervision: a mirroring of the professional-self of the supervisee, the opportunity to learn through empirical factual knowledge, and, most importantly, experiential, interactive and dynamic learning. The container of supervision will be amplified using an image of the triple vessel of alchemy. The materia of supervision is discussed as 'amalgams' of complex related material. The supervisory field is seen in a triadic intersubjective and interimaginal manner. Jung's diagram of all the possible conscious and unconscious connections between patient and therapist is expanded to include the supervisory situation. Moving beyond projective identification as explanatory process, the concept of the mundus imaginalis is used as the medium for this triadic structure. The 'analytic third' expands to include the 'supervisory fourth' while incorporating the supervisor's imaginings of the patient as the quintessential experience of the imaginal other. The supervisor's attitude and state of mind are seen through the paradigm of active imagination. This state of mind is called supervisory reverie.     

The Latin American contribution to the psychoanalytic concept of phantasy

The author argues that the ubiquity of phantasies at various levels of mental functioning is undisputed in the current schools of psychoanalytic thought; however, she demonstrates some variations in their understanding of how the psychotherapeutic access to different configurations occurs. In the process of examining and acknowledging the central role played by unconscious phantasies in his patients’ symptoms, Freud gradually broadened the vernacular meaning of the German word ‘Phantasie’ that refers to imagination and the world of imagination, conferring on it the specific features that came to characterize its use in the psychoanalytic vocabulary. Later, the expansion of the concept derived from Melanie Klein’s clinical material obtained from child analyses gave rise to important debates. The author discusses the main points of disagreement that led to these debates, as well as their various theoretical and technical implications. Psychoanalytic associations in Latin America were strongly influenced by Klein and her followers. Thus, most of their scientific writings use the concept of unconscious phantasy put forward by the Kleinian school. Taking Kleinian principles as their starting point, Baranger and Baranger made the most original Latin American contribution to the concept of unconscious phantasy with their works on the unconscious phantasies generated by the analytic pair.     

Early trauma and affect: the importance of the body for the development of the capacity to symbolize

In this paper I aim to outline the importance of working clinically with affect when treating severely traumatized patients who have a limited capacity to symbolize. These patients, who suffer the loss of maternal care early in life, require the analyst to be closely attuned to the patient's distress through use of the countertransference and with significantly less attention paid to the transference. It is questionable whether we can speak of transference when there is limited capacity to form internal representations. The analyst's relationship with the patient is not necessarily used to make interpretations but, instead, the analyst's reverie functions therapeutically to develop awareness and containment of affect, first in the analyst's mind and, later, in the patient's, so that, in time, a relationship between the patient's mind and the body, as the first object, is made. In contrast to general object‐relations theories, in which the first object is considered to be the breast or the mother, Ferrari (2004) proposes that the body is the first object in the emerging mind. Once a relationship between mind and body is established, symbolization becomes possible following the formation of internal representations of affective states in the mind, where previously there were few. Using Ferrari's body‐mind model, two clinical case vignettes underline the need to use the countertransference with patients who suffered chronic developmental trauma in early childhood.     

Intrapsychic-Interpsychic

The ‘interpsychic’ is an extended psychic dimension, regarding the joint functioning and reciprocal influences of two minds. The concepts of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘person’ can be included in the ‘interpsychic’. They can also overlap with each other, and sometimes all three can overlap together, but they do not necessarily coincide. In the different contemporary perspectives, how can we modify the intrapsychic ‘through’ (and ‘with’ and ‘by’) the interpsychic? Presenting four clinical vignettes, the author progressively moves from the theoretical positions that emphasise the exploration and the elaboration of the intrapsychic mainly through the intrapsychic, to the positions that emphasise the same operations mainly through the interpsychic. The last part of the paper deals with the technical use of the interpsychic dimension: the analytic dialogue, when interpsychically experienced (from inside), gains a new, more specific effectiveness, first in containing and then in symbolising. In an intense mental ‘cohabitation’ inside the analytic working pair, it is very often clearly experienced as ‘true’ (as in dreams).     

The effect of students’ roles on the establishment of shared knowledge during collaborative problem solving: a case study from the field of mathematics

According to role theory each participant in a peer interaction performs a specific role in order to maintain his/her face. The aim of the present study was to examine whether the roles performed during collaborative problem solving affect the establishment of shared mathematical knowledge. The participants of our study were 40 student teachers who worked in dyads to solve three mathematical problems. The categorization of the roles performed and the analysis of their effect in the establishment of shared knowledge led us to the conclusion that certain role combinations enhance while others hinder the establishment of shared mathematical knowledge. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 28th Annual Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME 28), held in Bergen, Norway in 2004.