Self objects and development: Infant states of mind in an adolescent girl

In the context of Fordham's model of the deintegrating-reintegrating self, the paper discusses the total quality of the baby's earliest deintegrations and the nature of what Fordham terms the self object. The use of the term ‘whole object’ in Klein's and Fordham's terminology is explored and the self object is placed in the context of Jung's construct of the self and the archetypes. The paper illustrates how residues of the self object permeated a rule-making defensive structure in a 14-year-old girl and how the therapy provided an opportunity for the defence to loosen and for elements that had been locked, as potentials, in a ‘bump car’ self object, to unfold and develop. These elements included the possibility of enjoying the feminine qualities of being a girl and exploration of the mother-infant couple and its confusions in her inner world. In addition, they included getting in touch with an infant, vulnerable part of her personality and modifying a habitual defence which was to take refuge in projective identification with an aggressive, omnipotent phantasied brother. Another important element unfolded through the separation of herself from the idealized, precept-daughter in her mother's mind. A fixed projective identification with a self object became more flexible as the object was explored and developed, and its archetypal absoluteness modified, in the therapeutic relationship.     

RICOEUR'S PHILOSOPHY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR PSYCHOANALYSIS

In differentiation of early and mature shame, the phenomenological content of shame changes with the development of a stable self-state. In this hypothesis, early shame refers to a person's dependence upon mirroring himself and in being mirrored by an outer object, while mature shame refers to introspection and self-reflection. From a developmental psychological point of view, the connection between self-development and mirroring is expounded. Mirroring is defined as a psychic dialectic process between the inner psychic reality and the outer reality. Early shame is connected to dyadic mirroring, which refers to attachment and empathy. Mature shame is connected to triadic mirroring, which refers to separation and reflection. Early shame emerges from discrepancies between the infant's expectations of a complementary affective response and the mother's response, and is defined as an early marker of differences in the mother/infant unit. It is argued that early shame in smaller ‘doses’ has a regulating function on self-development by maintaining the psychic dialectic process, while in larger ‘doses’, it has a disturbing effect on the self-development, resulting in pathological shame. In the therapeutic process, early shame appears as shame scenarios illustrated in the text by a clinical vignette.     

The present and absent object—on thinking and the capacity to symbolize

In this paper, Bion's different theories on the development of thinking will be introduced: on the one hand, his theory of thoughts as resulting from tolerance for the absence of the object, and on the other hand, dream thoughts and thoughts as resulting from the presence of the object, originally through the mother's containing function. The effects of failures in this development will be discussed; among other things, a hypertrophy of the apparatus of projective identification at the expense of thinking capacities. Briefly, a comparison will be made between a facilitating relation between container and contained and the oscillation between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive position, which Bion describes as a prerequisite for open symbolizing processes. Bion's theories and concepts will be supplemented by Winnicott's theories on the “creative illusion” and the breast/the mother as a “subjective object” as a precondition for the symbolizing capacity that later develops in the “potential space”. Very briefly, a comparison is made between Winnicott's term “the subjective object” and Segal's term “symbolic equation”. Clinical vignettes are interpolated.     

两种时空线索条件下表面颜色特征线索对客体保持的作用*

采用客体回溯范式,以客体预览利化效应(object specific previewing benefit, OSPB)作为指标,考察表面特征线索对客体保持的作用。实验1使用双向隧道创建时空线索不明确的条件,研究表面颜色特征线索的作用。实验2使用单向隧道使时空线索明确,研究表面颜色特征线索与时空线索一致、冲突情境下的客体保持。实验1和实验2均出现了OSPB效应,且实验2冲突情境的OSPB效应低于一致情境。研究结果表明在时空线索不明确的条件下,仅凭表面颜色特征线索就能实现客体保持;在时空线索明确的条件下,时空线索是客体保持的主要线索,同时表面颜色特征线索也起一定的作用。     

Architecture and psychoanalysis. Nathaniel Kahn and the search for the father

Abstract

This text is intended as a contribution to the study of the profound mutual relations between architecture and psychoanalysis. Architecture creates representations that conceal unconscious forms of thought; psychoanalysis helps to explain the meanings of these representations – forms of construction and forms of the psyche. The multifaceted work of psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas – his thoughts on the relationships between psychoanalysis and architecture, on the vitality of objects, on the creative implications of the Oedipal relationship – serves as a critical and decisive instrument for the authors’ inquiry. The issue of the “vitality of objects” as described by Bollas also concerns – but only in part – the architectural “object.” One modern form of architecture with an inordinate capacity empathy has to be Louis Kahn’s. Kahn’s youngest son , Nathaniel, lost his father when he was still a child and hardly had a chance to get to know him. After becoming an adult and an established film-maker, he managed to recover his father in two ways: by discovering him in his works, with their powerful affective impact; and by drawing from those very works of his father to enhance his own creative process in his filmic art. As it turns out, it is this very process that has allowed for an emblematically positive resolution of the Oedipal relationship.     

Eye movements across viewpoint changes in multiple object tracking

Observers can visually track multiple objects that move independently even if the scene containing the moving objects is rotated in a smooth way. Abrupt scene rotations yield tracking more difficult but not impossible. For nonrotated, stable dynamic displays, the strategy of looking at the targets' centroid has been shown to be of importance for visual tracking. But which factors determine successful visual tracking in a nonstable dynamic display? We report two eye tracking experiments that present evidence for centroid looking. Across abrupt viewpoint changes, gaze on the centroid is more stable than gaze on targets indicating a process of realigning targets as a group. Further, we show that the relative importance of centroid looking increases with object speed.     

Adventure based counselling,individual counselling and object relations: a critical evaluation of a qualitative study

Adventure based counselling is a short-term experiential psychotherapeutic approach, which utilises adventurous activities and being in natural environmental in order to facilitate therapeutic change in clients. The present paper critically appraises the results of a qualitative study that investigated how clients with self-reported anxiety and depression experienced participating in an innovative counselling intervention with combined individual counselling with such an adventurous outdoor transaction. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, as described by Smith and Osborn (2008), was used in order record and analyse the experiences of four male and six female students who were treated at the Teesside's University Counselling Service. Interviewees perceived the counselling sessions as offering a safe therapeutic space within which they could unveil their anxieties and achieve inner healing, whereas the outdoor transaction as providing an experiential venue for achieving personal change. Interviewees felt that without the outdoor transaction the therapeutic significance of the counselling process would not have reached its full potential. Likewise, without the individual counselling, the outdoor transaction would just have an entertaining event and not a venue for personal change. These findings are discussed in relation to object relations theory.     

Parental object representations,attachment to God,and recovery among individuals with psychosis

This study explored the relationships between object representations of mother and father and recovery among outpatients with psychotic disorders, and examined the role of attachment to God in moderating those relationships. A total of 46 outpatients diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder participated. Benevolent representations of mother and father were associated with recovery whereas punitive representations were negatively associated with recovery. Secure attachment to God amplified the association between benevolent representations of father and recovery. Secure attachment to God was found to buffer the relationship between mild-to-moderate punitive parental representations and recovery; however, this relationship was not evident for those with the most punitive parental representations. Directions for future research and clinical implications are discussed.     

Judgements about the relation between force and trajectory variables in verbally described ballistic projectile motion

How accurate are explicit judgements about familiar forms of object motion, and how are they made? Participants judged the relations between force exerted in kicking a soccer ball and variables that define the trajectory of the ball: launch angle, maximum height attained, and maximum distance reached. Judgements tended to conform to a simple heuristic that judged force tends to increase as maximum height and maximum distance increase, with launch angle not being influential. Support was also found for the converse prediction, that judged maximum height and distance tend to increase as the amount of force described in the kick increases. The observed judgemental tendencies did not resemble the objective relations, in which force is a function of interactions between the trajectory variables. This adds to a body of research indicating that practical knowledge based on experiences of actions on objects is not available to the processes that generate judgements in higher cognition and that such judgements are generated by simple rules that do not capture the objective interactions between the physical variables.     

Sport,moral interpretivism,and football's voluntary suspension of play norm

In recent years it has become increasingly the norm in football1 1. For North American readers, football here equals soccer. to kick the ball out of play when a player is, or appears to be, inadvertently injured. Kicking the ball out of play in football represents a particular instantiation of a generally understood fair play norm, the voluntary suspension of play (VSP). In the philosophical literature, support for the VSP norm is provided by John Russell (2007 Russell, J. S. 2007. “Broad internalism and the moral foundations of sport”. In Ethics in Sport, 2nd edn, Edited by: Morgan, W. J. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.  [Google Scholar]) who claims that his interpretivist account of sport is helpful for evaluating complex moral issues in sport in general and issues related to injury in football in particular. This paper examines whether Russell's interpretivist-backed account of autonomy can adequately inform football players as to the nuanced and ambiguous moral considerations that arise in relation to the VSP norm. The paper goes on to identify the highly complex dynamic circumstances football players need to consider in order to better discharge their moral responsibilities when faced with inadvertent injuries.