‘Can you push a camel through the eye of a needle?’ Reflections on how the unconscious speaks to us and its clinical implications

There has been a recent surge of interest in a type of thinking seen in some patients most of the time, and all patients some of the time. In the past it was simply called regressive thinking, but attempts to be more specific have led it to be called by various names, like 'pre-symbolic', 'pre-conceptual' and 'pre-operational'. What these labels attempt to capture is that the patient's thinking, at these times, is without representations and closer to actions. As a clinical phenomena I prefer to use Loewald's term, 'action–language', that is, where words become attempts to bore, seduce, anger, etc. It is different from when words are used to communicate internal states via free association. A case is made for action–language being the primary method by which the unconscious speaks to us in psychoanalytic treatment. This paper explores some of the reasons for this type of thinking, along with the clinical methods to find the thinker where there appears to be none. Distinctions will be made as to the use of the process versus the content, on the goal of interventions as bringing insight versus the capacity for insightfulness, and the model of treatment as leading to transformations in thinking, rather than lifting of repressions. A clinical example is presented to demonstrate these perspectives.     

'The healing power of love': The literary/analytic bond of marriage in Freud's essay on Gradiva

Freud 's declared position regarding the management of 'transference love' advocated 'abstinence', objectivity and even 'emotional coldness in the analyst'. However, his essay on Jensen's Gradiva reveals an identification with an involved and responsive 'maternal' analytic position associated with theorists such as Ferenczi, Balint and Winnicott. These theorists attribute the origins of transference love to the pre-oedipal stage, shaping their analytic model on the basis of the early relationship with the mother. Freud generally had difficulty identifying with such a position, since it entailed addressing his own inner feminine aspects. Yet a literary analysis of his 'Gradiva' reveals this stance in his textual performance, i.e. in the ways in which he reads and retells Jensen's story. Freud 's narration not only expresses identification with Zoe, the female protagonist, but also idealizes her 'therapeutic' conduct, which is closer in spirit to that of object-relations theorists. His subtext even implies, however unintended, that an ideal treatment of transference love culminates in a psychical 'marriage' bond between the analytic couple, a metaphor used by Winnicott to describe the essence of the mother–baby (analyst/patient) bond. Freud 's reading process is itself analogous to Zoe's 'therapeutic' conduct, in that both perform a creative and involved interaction with the text/patient.     

Child versus adult psychoanalysis: Two processes or one?

Child analysis continues to be seen as a different technique from adult analysis because children are still involved in a developmental process and because the primary objects continue to play active roles in their lives. This paper argues that this is a false dichotomy. An extended vignette of the analysis of a latency‐aged girl is used to demonstrate that the psychoanalytic process that develops in child analysis is structurally the same as that in adult analysis. Both revolve around the analysis of resistance and transference and use both to promote knowledge of the patient’s mind at work. And both techniques formulate interventions based on the analyst’s appraisal of the patient’s mental organization. It is hoped that stressing the essential commonality of both techniques will promote the development of an overarching theory of psychoanalytic technique.     

特征类型在组合概念范畴效应中的作用

组合概念范畴效应是指,人们解释不同范畴组合概念的策略存在差异。本研究通过特征列举实验和建构路径模型,检验概念的特征类型在组合概念范畴效应中的作用。特征列举实验的结果表明,生物的实体特征比率高于人造物,而人造物的情境特征比率高于生物。路径分析的结果表明：⑴修饰词的实体特征比率显著影响属性解释比率,修饰词具有较多实体特征的组合概念得到属性解释的比率较高;⑵主名词的情境特征比率对关系解释比率的影响不显著;⑶将特征类型引入路径模型后,范畴对解释策略的影响依然显著。因此,范畴间的特征类型差异会影响组合概念范畴效应,但还存在其他影响因素有待进一步研究。     

驳"王弼以老解《易》论"

本文反对王弼以老庄思想解释<周易>这一传统观点,因为他除了用老庄道家思想解释<周易>之外,王弼也运用儒家思想来解释<周易>,而且运用儒家思想解释的内容大于运用道家思想解释的内容.本文分析了王弼为何同时运用儒家和道家思想解易的原因,并提出<周易注>的绝大多数内容是以<易传>的思想和汉代的注易方法来解释<周易>.     

Absolute Versus Tentative Interpretations: Mediating Effects of Client Locus of Control

An analog design was used to investigate the mediating effects of client locus of control (i.e., an internal focus or external focus) on perceptions of counselor style of interpreting events (i.e., absolute or tentative interpretations) on measures of perceived session depth and smoothness, and perceived counselor expertness, attractiveness, and trustworthiness. One hundred and thirty-four undergraduate college students, crossed on level of locus of control, were randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditions, and then completed measures of perceived session depth and smoothness, as well as perceived counselor expertness, attractiveness, and trustworthiness. Results indicated a significant interaction effect on perceived counselor trustworthiness. Implications for college counselors are provided.     

Event structure as a basis of semantic processing of familiar metaphors

In this paper I propose a model of metaphor interpretation that would account for the possibility that semantic processing of familiar metaphors no longer go through the sequential steps of alignment and projection, but may rather be established upon schematic semantic units allowing faster processing. The proposition is grounded on the notion that metaphors are formed based on peoples’ perception of what is typically associated with entities. It is suggested that in its most abstract form, these associations are essentially events, analyzed in terms of event structure.     

Inferring task performance and confidence from displays of eye movements

Eye movements reveal what is at the center of people's attention, which is assumed to coincide with what they are thinking about. Eye-movement displays (visualizations of a person's fixations superimposed onto the stimulus, for example, as dots or circles) might provide useful information for diagnosing that person's performance. However, making inferences about a person's task performance based on eye-movement displays requires substantial interpretation. Using graph-comprehension tasks, we investigated to what extent observers (N = 46) could make accurate inferences about a performer's multiple-choice task performance (i.e., chosen answer), confidence, and competence from displays of that person's eye movements. Observers' accuracy when judging which answer the performer chose was above chance level and was higher for displays reflecting confident performance. Observers were also able to infer performers' confidence from the eye-movement displays; moreover, their own task performance and perceived similarity with the performer affected their judgments of the other's competence.     

Retracing Augustine's Ethics

Augustine's exposition of the image of God in Book 15 of On The Trinity (De Trinitate) sheds light on multiple issues that arise in scholarly interpretations of Augustine's account of lying. This essay argues against interpretations that posit a uniform account of lying in Augustine—with the same constitutive features, and insisting both that it is never necessary to tell a lie and that lying is absolutely prohibited. Such interpretations regularly employ intertextual reading strategies that elide distinctions and developments in Augustine's ethics of lying. Instead, I show how looking at texts written prior and subsequent to the texts usually consulted suggests a trajectory in Augustine's thought, beginning with an understanding of lies as morally culpable but potentially necessary, and culminating in a vision of lying as the fundamental evil and the origin of every sin.     

Where Philosophy and Literature merge in the Platonic dialogues

It is no surprise if a good quality communication unit succeeds in seizing the attention of the intended audience (or readership) and is able to let people see precisely what the author wanted them to see, while avoiding that the average addressee become aware of what the author wants to convey in an almost subliminal way. In this respect Plato is no exception. Nevertheless the study of these resources, far from having been somewhat systematic, still is largely neglected, and only a minority of commentators find it important to pay head to the communicational strategies which are at work in Plato's dialogues. It will be argued that the shades of meaning and the contextualization of thought (a) systematically grant to Plato ample room for affecting the way a reader comes to perceive his points of doctrine and (b) often let him convey a biased perception of his arguments.The paper includes an outline of the already longstanding debate on these matters, a case study (Memo 80–82), and a sketchy typology of how the literary working-out is able to affect the reader's perception of the line of thought, esp. within the aporetic dialogues.