Symbolic conceptions: the idea of the third

The idea of the third which appears in Jung's concepts of the transcendent function and the coniunctio also occurs in several psychoanalytic theories concerning the emergence of reflective and symbolic thought in childhood development (defined here as the development of 'imaginal capacity'). Noting the way this process is often conceived in terms of the metaphor of sexual intercourse leading to 'conception', this paper suggests that such images need to be understood as symbolic conceptions of the meaning-making functions of the human mind. This leads to a different view of psychoanalytic theories that attempt to account for the development of imaginal capacity in terms of the Oedipus complex. It is suggested that a) these functions must be operative in the mind before the Oedipal situation can become meaningful and b) that psychoanalytic theories are themselves symbolic conceptions which, like mythological narratives, seek to communicate and comprehend psychic reality through imaginal forms.     

The body and sublimation in a violent male offender

A case study of a violent young man called Stan is presented to understand the nature and function of his violence as he negotiated his way through anxieties about heterosexuality and passivity stimulated by his adolescence. Stan’s early history and the clinical material are used to illustrate Armando Ferrari’s concept of the Concrete Original Object. As his psychotherapy progressed he utilised his talent for drawing to sublimate his violent activity into violent images, which, in turn, enabled him to reflect on his anxieties. Stan’s violence subsided and he was able to engage in a vocation and develop a long-term relationship with a woman.     

The hero, the anima and the claustrum: anality and idealization

Joe Redfearn's (1979) classic paper 'The captive, the treasure, the hero and the anal stage of development' is recognized as seminal to the development of Jungian thought about anality, particularly its integration with mainstream (Freudian, Kleinian) psychoanalytic perspectives. This paper develops such an approach through drawing on contributions from Meltzer, Green, Bion, Chasseguet-Smirgel and Kernberg. More specifically, it is argued that over-investment in hero and anima archetypal configurations may represent an attempt to replace the resource of the internal parental couple that, at the level of unconscious phantasy, has been destroyed by the aggrieved child's attack on the primal scene. Unless this usually dissociated sadism can be integrated, the creative epistemophilic instinct may remain blunted, giving rise, through projective identification, to the adoption of a pseudo-adult identity based on appropriation or assertion. This in turn may lead to manic attempts to reach authentic ('animating') experience through the (often erotized) excitement of heroic endeavour. Consideration of both Redfearn's and the author's own clinical material demonstrates how close attention to process as well as content is fundamental to revealing and addressing such likely-to-be dissociated scenarios.     

Phallic Integration and Male Identity Development

The analytic setting as well as the analyst's initial communications unavoidably exert influence that may be perceived by the patient as a sexually tinged intrusion, which evokes questions about what the analyst wants. Together with the asymmetry of the analytic relationship, these phenomena uncannily bring to life a repressed relationship between infant and adult in which analogous stimuli constitute enigmas for the child. The theoretical understanding of Jean Laplanche of such enigmatic transference in terms of “primal seduction” is reviewed and clinical material is provided to illustrate Laplanche's ideas. The discussion addresses “recentralized” and “decentralized” aspects of sexuality. Primal seduction is discussed as including not only intrusion, but also qualities of stimulation and trust.     

Are waves of relational assumptions eroding traditional analysis?

The author designates as ‘traditional’ those elements of psychoanalytic presumption and practice that have, in the wake of Fordham's legacy, helped to inform analytical psychology and expand our capacity to integrate the shadow. It is argued that this element of the broad spectrum of Jungian practice is in danger of erosion by the underlying assumptions of the relational approach, which is fast becoming the new establishment. If the maps of the traditional landscape of symbolic reference (primal scene, Oedipus et al.) are disregarded, analysts are left with only their own self‐appointed authority with which to orientate themselves. This self‐centric epistemological basis of the relationalists leads to a revision of ‘analytic attitude’ that may be therapeutic but is not essentially analytic. This theme is linked to the perennial challenge of balancing differentiation and merger and traced back, through Chasseguet‐Smirgel, to its roots in Genesis. An endeavour is made to illustrate this within the Journal convention of clinically based discussion through a commentary on Colman's (2013) avowedly relational treatment of the case material presented in his recent Journal paper ‘Reflections on knowledge and experience’ and through an assessment of Jessica Benjamin's (2004) relational critique of Ron Britton's (1989) transference embodied approach.     

'A father is being beaten': constructions in the analysis of some male patients

I will suggest that the phantasy of 'a father is being beaten' and its transformations emerges for certain male patients as a result of the work of analysis and becomes a potential appropriation of the (symbolic) father. The symbolic beating of the father takes place at the threshold between an anal-sadistic organization and the oedipal situation. The phantasy of the 'father being beaten' does not necessarily mean that it is the father who is explicitly being beaten. It is a construction derived from the free associations and dreams, in the analytic encounter, reached through the work of interpretation. Detailed material of sessions of the five times a week analysis of one of my patients will be presented. This will be contrasted with material from four other analyses of male patients where the 'father being beaten' phantasy was not achieved. The common feature in all these other configurations is a foreclosure in the relationship to the father and a lack of an internalization of the paternal function as a symbolic capacity. It is my suggestion that this absence of the father in its symbolic function is then sexualized in a fusion between life and death drives. A final contrasting example is derived from Karl Abraham's classic paper detailing the analysis of a patient where one can interpret a dream as expressing 'a father is being beaten' phantasy; however the dream's repetitive nature and its links with a current dream in the analysis points out to a lack of differentiation between the sexes and an anal-sadistic organization.     

The primal scene in cross-species and cross-cultural perspectives

A review of cross-species and cross-cultural research suggests that, throughout most of human behavioral evolution, children may have been enlightened as to the facts of life by observing parental intercourse and then imitating it in sexual rehearsal play in the context of a continuously rising curve of sexual desire and sexual knowledge throughout childhood. Concealment of the primal scene and prohibition of cross-generational, bisexual, and 'polymorphously perverse' childhood sex play may be of relatively recent origin in human cultural evolution, buttressed by the instillation of culturally acquired sexual disgust in sexually conservative cultures. Looking at the primal scene in cross-species and cross-cultural perspectives utilizing the adaptationist framework of contemporary evolutionary biology can challenge normative assumptions that may still be embedded in psychoanalytic theories of species-wide psychosexual development.     

The observing ego as voyeur

A resistance to self-observation and self-reflection is discussed in which there is a perversion of the observing ego. The observing ego has been unconsciously recruited in the service of enacting an unconscious fantasy: the fantasy of being an excited observer of a primal scene who is punished for making forbidden observations. This voyeuristic observing ego is pathologically enmeshed in a love triangle with the patient's seductive superego (i.e. identification with the desired but unfaithful parent) and with the patient's punitive superego (i.e. identification with the rivalrous parent). This unconscious scenario is played out in the clinical situation as the patient unreflectively cycles through phases of denial (i.e. self-seduction) and moral masochism (i.e. self-betrayal). A case study illustrates how humor may be employed to free the observing ego from being enthralled by a perverse superego. Humor may unconsciously enable a rebellious attitude toward the omnipotent sadism of a perversely oppressive superego and thus enable the observing ego to break free from its pathological enmeshment.     

The impulse to infidelity and oedipal splitting

Freud suggested that the child perceives parental intercourse as an act of infi delity by the desired but unfaithful parent. Parental sexual infi delity is felt to be a major narcissistic injury that gives rise to fantasies of revenge. A defensive organization arises to manage this trauma and its attendant revenge fantasies. That organization involves splitting of the desired parent into faithful and unfaithful parts, displacement of hostility on to the rival parent, and identifi cation with the desired but unfaithful parent resulting in the impulse to infi delity. Romantic fantasies of escape and rescue from evil rivals provide guilt free ways of satisfying fantasies of oedipal revenge. In those fantasies the evil rival is turned into an injured third party who gets his or her just deserts as the romantic couple gets to live happily ever after. This defensive organization may embroil patients in complicated love triangles as adults for which they may seek treatment. Analyzing the repudiated narcissistic wound of parental infi delity and the disguised revenge fantasies that defend against that wound may provoke narcissistic rage towards the analyst as a moralistic, possessive, controlling, envious, and spoiling oedipal parent.     

Elements of the Oedipus complex: A Kleinian account1

The author discusses and illustrates the place in current Kleinian practice of the analysis of the Oedipus complex. He outlines the development of the concept of the Oedipus complex by Freud and by Klein and later writers in the Kleinian tradition. Because the child's exclusion from his parents' sexual relationship represents such a fundamental aspect of reality for the child, analysis of the patient's responses to the oedipal situation constitutes the central task of analysis. Despite the Oedipus complex being in this way central, it is sometimes hard to discern because what is most visible are the patient's defensive responses to the oedipal situation. The emergence of meaning in analysis is often understood unconsciously as the product of the parental intercourse, represented by the work of the patient with the analyst, or of the analyst's or the patient's mind. The analysis of the patient's characteristic reactions to moments of meaningfulness in analysis is therefore an especially fruitful focus for the analysis of the Oedipus complex. The author illustrates these ideas by three clinical examples, from a 3½‐year‐old child, a borderline psychotic patient and a more neurotic patient.