Seduction,date rape,and aborted surrender

Abstract

This paper clarifies the dual-layered nature of the “demon lover complex,” with its background of both pre-Oedipal trauma and Oedipal-level desire. It draws on an object relations understanding of the unconscious and dissociated addiction to an internal demon object that has derivations in the personalities of the actual parents, and in the internalization of these parents. The dramatic case of early trauma compounded by adult date rape trauma serves to illustrate how a “developmental mourning process” in treatment can resolve such trauma. It also illustrates how reparation with the mother that partially heals pre-Oedipal trauma cannot immunize anyone against Oedipal-level attractions to a “demon lover” father, as represented in a displacement, resulting in victimized behavior, and in an aborted surrender to heterosexual desire. However, this victimization can be resolved, as seen in the clinical illustration, when the psychoanalyst has an understanding of the mourning process in developmental terms, working with a natural interaction between mourning and transference evolutions in treatment. The case also demonstrates the transitional object role of the psychoanalyst who is involved with the healing of pre-Oedipal trauma through mourning.     

Mirroring,imitation, identification: the sense of self in relation to the mother's internal world

The phenomenon of neonatal imitation, and the use of mutual imitation by mother and baby in the service of attunement, are considered in relation to psychoanalytic theories of mirroring, imitation and identification. Material from infant observation and from the treatment of two children on the autistic spectrum is discussed in terms of the suggestion that developmental imitation implies a perceived position of balance between the external baby and the mother's supposed internal occupant. This is seen as making possible introjective identification and assimilation, with the enrichment of the sense of identity, in contrast to the kind of imitation involving mimicry, in which adhesive or projective identification may be operative.     

Frustration and disappointment

The paper describes research on children’s responses to failures of gratification. Although this has always been an important area of consideration in psychoanalytic thinking, arguments are put forward for the child’s actual feelings of disappointment being significant in ways that have yet to be fully realised theoretically and clinically within Kleinian object relations. Since Freud first used the term ‘frustration’, it has been applied in psychoanalysis as a means by which to describe in an undifferentiated way all those responses to failures of gratification that have an aggressive content. It will be argued that, in a context of the historical shift in thinking from drive to relational models, there is now perhaps scope to posit the existence instead of two discrete object relational positions towards such failures of aim – that frustrated responses can be differentiated in important structural and developmental ways from disappointed ones, by suggesting that the former are schizoid, whilst the latter are depressive in quality. To try and begin to test the hypothesis that there might be an object relational distinction between feelings of frustration and feelings of disappointment, selected process notes from two training cases became the subject of a combined piece of clinical and theoretical research. I will outline how this research was undertaken and present the findings that arose from the clinical part of it. With the use of a content analysis, a method for gathering interesting quantitative data about the children’s various responses to the failures of gratification was arrived at.     

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.     

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for the treatment of current depressive symptoms: a meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) appears to be a promising intervention for the prevention of relapse in major depressive disorder, but its efficacy in patients with current depressive symptoms is less clear. Randomized clinical trials of MBCT for adult patients with current depressive symptoms were included (k = 13, N = 1046). Comparison conditions were coded based on whether they were intended to be therapeutic (specific active controls) or not (non-specific controls). MBCT was superior to non-specific controls at post-treatment (k = 10, d = 0.71, 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.47, 0.96]), although not at longest follow-up (k = 2, d = 1.47, [?0.71, 3.65], mean follow-up = 5.70 months across all studies with follow-up). MBCT did not differ from other active therapies at post-treatment (k = 6, d = 0.002, [?0.43, 0.44]) and longest follow-up (k = 4, d = 0.26, [?0.24, 0.75]). There was some evidence that studies with higher methodological quality showed smaller effects at post-treatment, but no evidence that effects varied by inclusion criterion. The impact of publication bias appeared minimal. MBCT seems to be efficacious for samples with current depressive symptoms at post-treatment, although a limited number of studies tested the long-term effects of this therapy.     

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.