Coordination tending towards an anti-phase relationship determines greater sway reduction during entrainment with a simulated partner

The increased risk of falls in the older aged population demands the development of assistive robotic devices capable of effective balance support. For the development and increased user acceptance of such devices, which provide balance support in a human-like way, it is important to understand the simultaneous occurrence of entrainment and sway reduction in human-human interaction. However, sway reduction has not been observed yet during a human touching an external, continuously moving reference, which rather increased human body sway. Therefore, we investigated in 15 healthy young adults (27.20±3.55 years, 6 females) how different simulated sway-responsive interaction partners with different coupling modes affect sway entrainment, sway reduction and relative interpersonal coordination, as well as how these human behaviours differ depending on the individual body schema accuracy. For this, participants were lightly touching a haptic device that either played back an average pre-recorded sway trajectory (“Playback”) or moved based on the sway trajectory simulated by a single-inverted pendulum model with either a positive (Attractor) or negative (Repulsor) coupling to participant's body sway. We found that body sway reduced not only during the Repulsor-interaction, but also during the Playback-interaction. These interactions also showed a relative interpersonal coordination tending more towards an anti-phase relationship, especially the Repulsor. Moreover, the Repulsor led to the strongest sway entrainment. Finally, a better body schema contributed to a reduced body sway in both the “reliable” Repulsor and the “less reliable” Attractor mode. Consequently, a relative interpersonal coordination tending more towards an anti-phase relationship and an accurate body schema are important to facilitate sway reduction.     

Cross‐cultural structures of concentric and diametric dualism in Lévi‐Strauss’ structural anthropology: structures of relation underlying the self and ego relation?

The parallels between Jung's and Lévi-Strauss' concentric cross-cultural structures of the unconscious are highlighted. Lévi-Strauss' basic contrasts between concentric and diametric dualisms are developed into psychologically relevant differences regarding symmetry, connection and separation, and interaction between foreground and background structures respectively. These contrasts between concentric and diametric structures are applied as a common structural framework for understanding Jungian conceptions of the self, the ego and their relations, Freudian views of compensation and repetition in obsessional neurosis, and Winnicott's conception of a child's transitional object. Developing the contrasts between concentric and diametric structures reveals a compensatory relation between both structures. This supports an argument that concentric structures express the self and diametric structures express the ego in their mutual compensatory interrelation. Contrasting concentric with diametric structures challenges traditional Western logic, including Fordham's view that it is contradictory to treat the self as both centre and totality. It also develops an understanding of Jung's transcendent function which seeks to go beyond the ego-shadow opposition.     

Learning from experience: Bion's concept of reverie and Buddhist meditation: A comparative study

The author argues for a common denominator between Bion's view and the Buddhist view of mental development. In both thought systems, mental growth is synonymous to learning from experience. The author closely examines Bion's concept of attention and compares it to mindfulness, a major factor in Buddhist meditation. In both doctrines, attention must be isolated from other mental processes in order to attain learning from experience. The author compares reverie to the state of mind of equanimity. She argues that enhancement of the ability of reverie, or improving the inner container such that it can hold any content while unmoved by desire, is the purpose of Buddhist practice. Both view the mind as capable of transcending its own restrictions and 'the capacity to know anything' as attainable through disciplined practice.     

The day the clock stopped. Primitive states of unintegration,multidimensional working through and the birth of the analytical subject

This paper is based on one idea and built around one clinical experience that helped me to broaden my comprehension of it. The idea, underlying the work of several authors, is that when the analytic field is saturated with primitive and unintegrated mental contents, the analyst’s somatic countertransference is a precious indicator of a deep, dissociated form of communication. The clinical experience concerns the difficult elaboration of a complex, multifaceted countertransference that took place during the early stages of the analysis of a sensitive patient who used to communicate in a very dissociated way and that I found hard to contain. This experience, closely described in the article, led me to formulate the clinical idea that the transference field may be made of distinct layers (psychoid, affective, verbal), and that each one of them may potentially convey dissociated, even contrasting bits of information. The corollary of this is that the analyst should be ready to accept contrasting sensations, feelings and thoughts at the same time, as they might be the basic ingredients of a complex reverie. The analyst could find himself/herself in front of his/her own internal unelaborated multiplicity before a symbolic image may emerge to link the scattered pieces of the experience. Nevertheless, the heart of this paper is not about suggesting an idea, but in the sharing of a complex working through, which fostered the birth of a new, more human relational perspective: the capacity of being together in time, in a transitional space where there is neither total separation nor fusion.     

Bi‐ocularity,the functioning mind of the psychoanalyst

With the use of clinical material the author discusses the importance of a ‘bi‐ocular’ mode of attentiveness, one pole of which rests on the psychic process of reverie and the other on ‘analysing’. This is necessary to foster the development of a psychic space in which experiences which were ‘in the shadow’ or unrepresented, can come to the fore and be given shape first pictorially and later ideationally. This requires staying with and fostering the ambiguity of the different times and spaces without collapsing them into the clear, logical and explanatory. It requires the psychoanalyst to make space for that which is ‘other’, other than just apparently here and now, and other than just ‘you and me’, while maintaining the analytic ‘fire’ in a situation in which there is ‘no model in real life’, a place maximally geared to that which is not apparent.     

Transcending the caesura: Reverie,dreaming and counter‐dreaming

The author reflects about our capacity to get in touch with primitive, irrepresentable, seemingly unreachable parts of the Self and with the unrepressed unconscious. It is suggested that when the patient's dreaming comes to a halt, or encounters a caesura, the analyst dreams that which the patient cannot. Getting in touch with such primitive mental states and with the origin of the Self is aspired to, not so much for discovering historical truth or recovering unconscious content, as for generating motion between different parts of the psyche. The movement itself is what expands the mind and facilitates psychic growth. Bion's brave and daring notion of ‘caesura’, suggesting a link between mature emotions and thinking and intra‐uterine life, serves as a model for bridging seemingly unbridgeable states of mind. Bion inspires us to ‘dream’ creatively, to let our minds roam freely, stressing the analyst's speculative imagination and intuition often bordering on hallucination. However, being on the seam between conscious and unconscious, dreaming subverts the psychic equilibrium and poses a threat of catastrophe as a result of the confusion it affords between the psychotic and the non‐psychotic parts of the personality. Hence there is a tendency to try and evade it through a more saturated mode of thinking, often relying on external reality. The analyst's dreaming and intuition, perhaps a remnant of intra‐uterine life, is elaborated as means of penetrating and transcending the caesura, thus facilitating patient and analyst to bear unbearable states of mind and the painful awareness of the unknowability of the emotional experience. This is illustrated clinically.     

Reflections on the clinical implications of symbolism

We start by stressing the idea that the process itself of constructing the symbol in its different components and its vicissitudes is centrally important to contemporary psychoanalysis as symbols are essential for thinking and for storing emotional experiences in our memory and for conveying our affects to others and to ourselves. Our implicit idea is that internal attacks are not directed only at the internal objects, but also include attacks on the structure or forms of the mental representations before and while they become constituted in symbols. It is by this means that destructive impulses invade the processes of symbolic construction. Symbols can lose their plasticity and thus silence the emotions and therefore cut off the patient from their meanings. Our clinical material allows us to increase our understanding of how the formal qualities of symbols operate in mental life, and how they can interfere in the capacity to work through emotional experiences. Finally, our reflections based on the analysis of a patient with difficulty in relating with the meanings of the symbols he produced will highlight the importance of the analyst's reverie along the process of formulating an interpretation. This paper is also part of a development in the study of the process of reverie.     

Associative dreaming: reverie and active imagination

The idea of countertransference has expanded beyond its original meaning of a neurotic reaction to include all reactions of the therapist: affective, bodily, and imaginal. Additionally, Jung's fundamental insight in 'The psychology of the transference' was that a 'third thing' is created in the analysis, but he failed to demonstrate how this third is experienced and utilized in analysis. This 'analytic third', as Ogden names it, is co-created by analyst and analysand in depth work and becomes the object of analysis. Reverie, as developed by Bion and clinically utilized by Ogden, provides a means of access to the unconscious nature of this third. Reverie will be placed on a continuum of contents of mind, ranging from indirect to direct associative forms described as associative dreaming. Active imagination, as developed by Jung, provides the paradigm for a mode of interaction with these contents within the analytic encounter itself. Whether the analyst speaks from or about these contents depends on the capacity of the patient to dream. Classical amplification can be understood as an instance of speaking about inner contents. As the ego of the analyst, the conscious component, relates to unconscious contents emerging from the analytic third, micro-activations of the transcendent function constellate creating an analytic compass.     

面孔方位对返回抑制的影响

采用辨别任务探讨了正立与倒立的中性面孔线索对返回抑制的影响。实验一采用同时线索化范式考察了正立与倒立面孔线索对靶刺激反应的影响,结果发现,两种面孔线索对随后靶刺激的反应没有影响。实验二采用单线索范式考察正立与倒立面孔对返回抑制的影响,结果发现,两种线索条件下均产生了返回抑制,而且返回抑制量没有显著差异。实验三,正立与倒立面孔作为靶刺激呈现,得到与实验二相同的结果。这些结果表明当采用中性面孔为线索时,返回抑制的产生并不受线索与靶刺激显著性的影响,而且返回抑制这种盲目机制不受任务难度的影响。     

The stranger1

This work concerns a nine‐year analytical experience with a patient who presented as a main feature an apparent inability to experience and express feelings. Right from the beginning the author was confronted with the question of the viability of analytical work, considering transference or emotional involvement in the absence of perceptible establishment of an affective link on the part of the patient. The patient never missed a session, was usually very punctual and presented very rich material, but the accounts of his life, everything he was saying, hearing and observing was manifestly deprived of any emotional meaning for the patient and consequently deprived of sense for the analyst. If, at the beginning, the question was how to communicate with the patient, after some time it became a problem of how to enable the patient to communicate with himself. Confi rming an observation by Bion that the patient is the best colleague the analyst can have, the way forward was indicated by the patient himself. This article is a theoretical exercise based on this clinical experience, using concepts developed by Bion, Ferro and Winnicott.