Rediscovering the ritual technology of the placebo effect in analytical psychology

Technology, viewed more generally, is a collection of skills and methods that are used to accomplish an objective of some kind. Modernity has produced many kinds of ever‐expanding new technologies, but it is also evident that technologies can be lost or fall out of use. A cross‐cultural survey of ritual reveals a rather startling observation: that while developed nations often exceed other cultures in terms of material technology, they often pale by comparison in their use of ritual technology. In this essay we will see how ritual is a powerful sort of technology that developed nations have mostly allowed to drift out of regular, vigorous use, despite its numerous psychological and biological effects. This tendency has left one of the rituals we still have – psychotherapy itself – to be bereft of some of the typical tools for concretizing the symbolic in recurrent patterns around the world. Jung himself could be accused of being somewhat anti‐ritual himself, enmeshed as he was in the post‐Protestant, post‐Enlightenment cultural environment that defines the West in many ways 1 . But these under‐utilized elements of ritual technology may be a natural fit for Jungian therapy due to its use of symbols.     

Autistic phenomena in The Adventures of Pinocchio

This paper seeks to demonstrate that the protagonist of Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio illustrates numerous autistic phenomena such as communication difficulties, sensory and perceptual distortions and mindblindness. While Pinocchio is viewed as a literary construct with contraindications of autism, it will be argued that his autistic traits are sufficient to suggest the possibility that Collodi had a partial intuition of the syndrome 60 years before it was identified by Leo Kanner. Approaching Collodi's text in this manner is taken as an opportunity to survey and reflect upon the psychoanalytic literature on autism and to position it in relation to contemporary theories from cognitive neuroscience.     

Digging Deeper: An Object Relations Couple Therapy Update

Over the past two decades, neurobiology research has added clarity to the process of emotional and behavioral change. In turn, this has led to endorsement of interventions that appear to be most helpful in individual and couple therapy. In addition to research on emotional dysregulation, contemporary studies have focused on the construction of meaning and its relevance to interpersonal relationships. According to Lisa Barrett, Richard Lane, and others, the brain references concepts to rapidly arrive at the most probable conclusions. Encoded experience and memory fragments guide this process and are vital in understanding partners' emotional responses. These findings support an object relations perspective that emphasizes the importance of past relational experiences that inform the present. This is particularly relevant in work with couples, as each individual's beliefs, expectations, and capacity for intimacy are invariably tied to earlier relationships. Research findings on memory reconstruction provide a basis for interventions that can add to the existing treatment approach, as it is suggested that working in a specific way with emotionally based memories has the potential to modify and reduce their predictive power and ability to unleash beliefs and behaviors that work against intimacy. The therapist who is informed by emerging neuroscience research can better uncover and actively work with memories that may be compromising a couple's relationship.     

Complex in memory,mind in matter: walking hand in hand

This paper aims to highlight four major points: first: a ‘Jungian attitude’ understood as a viewpoint which enables work with interconnectedness through various fields of knowledge. Second, that complexes are dynamic, as is memory, and that both are transformed by experience and develop hand in hand with each other i.e., the transformation of the complex occurs through the transformation of memory as embodied in internal working models, and vice versa. Third, complexes and archetypes are linked to each other in matrices of one form or another and lead to the complexity of the psyche, which is a developing system. Fourth, the analytical process provides an arena that enables and consolidates interconnections that foster a better intrapsychic transition. The analytic meeting promotes profound changes, redesigning our neural architecture as well as our psychic landscape.     

Foetal trauma,body memory and early infant communication: a case illustration

This paper presents the complex case of a male patient who started life as an unwanted pregnancy and adoptee in an era of socio‐cultural shame and blame. When able to contact his birth mother later in life, he experienced a number of confronting synchronicities as well as visions which he felt were related to failed abortion attempts and to other pre‐ and post‐natal events. The case material lends weight not only to Freud's, Ehrenwald's and FitzHerbert's assertions that the earliest form of mother‐infant communications is telepathic in nature but that this mode of communication can be retained if emotional trauma inhibits normal developmental processes. Contemporary neuroscience research is presented supporting the hypothesis that emotional memory can become imbedded in the psyche/soma of the foetus. Such memory traces can later emerge into imagery and/or words if the traumatic impingement has been substantial enough and if other defensive strategies are in place. Clinical implications are then suggested regarding analysts’ attention to the emotional conditions underpinning their patients’ conceptions and foetal development; the connection to projective identification components of the countertransference as being aspects of the earliest telepathic mother/infant communication channel and the need for reductive analyses in analyst training programmes.     

Relationships,Environment, and the Brain: How Emerging Research is Changing What We Know about the Impact of Families on Human Development

Recent research is providing family therapists with new information about the complex interaction between an individual's biological makeup and his/her social and physical environment. Family and social relationships, particularly during sensitive periods early in life, can affect a child's biological foundation. Additionally, stress during the early years can have a lasting effect on an individual's physical and mental health and contribute to the onset of severe mental illness. Community programs have been developed to intervene early with families who have an at‐risk child to prevent or minimize the onset of mental illness including providing partnerships with at‐risk mothers of infants to shape attachment relationships. Programs are also developing individual and family interventions to prevent the onset of psychosis. Practicing family therapists can incorporate emerging neuroscience and early intervention research and leverage the growing base of community programs to enhance the effectiveness and sustainability of mental health outcomes for clients. Additionally, family therapy education programs should broaden student training to incorporate the growing body of information about how family relationships affect individual mental health development.