From biography to theory: the role of Anna Freud in the emergence of the ‘adolescent process’

Some aspects of Anna Freud’s life reveal the existence of specifically adolescent conflicts, which can be tied to some of her theoretical and clinical discoveries in the field of adolescent psychoanalysis. Her historical input in the gradual construction of a theoretical corpus on adolescence has often been ignored. These links between biography and theory gave rise to a movement of conceptualisation, making it possible to develop a psychoanalytic metapsychology of adolescence: indeed, emerged such notions as asceticism, intellectualisation in relationship with anorexia and the struggle against the genitalisation of the adolescent body. Today, the Annafreudian school of thought has remained the main source of investigation and theoretical transmission of what is now called the adolescent process.     

An interruption in unconscious communication in the analytic couple

The authors describe an interruption in communication in the analyses of two patients, which gradually brings the analytic process to a halt/standstill. They propose several hypotheses for understanding this situation. One explanation is mutual identification of primitive superegos in the analytic couple which generates a moralizing effect thereby hindering investigation and discovery. They emphasize the importance of countertransference involvement which partly provokes this particular type of impasse. They also suggest the idea of shared acting out, with complementary participations of analyst and patient. In this way the analytic couple supports a 'bastion' which protects against the risk of breaking the omnipotence of patient and analyst or contributes to this omnipotence. Their shared unconscious phantasy feeds collusion linked to unconscious persecutory guilt. The authors also describe movements to break free from this impasse. The enclave created by the analytic couple is detected and subsequently worked through by way of the patient's contribution of dream material and the analyst's work with her countertransference.     

Recognising the role of emotion in the classroom; an examination of how the psychoanalytic theory of containment influences learning capacity

This paper begins with personal reflections about my work in school which began over forty years ago, outlining how the different roles of teacher and therapeutic practitioner have contributed to my interest in the role of emotion for children’s capacity for learning in the classroom. I suggest that focusing too heavily on achievement risks losing sight of the experience of the individual child and argue that a psychoanalytic framework informs us of the significance of relational aspects of teaching and learning. My aim is to alert educationalists to the complexities of the classroom context, particularly the conscious and unconscious elements at work there. I have chosen to examine containment, as one aspect of the psychoanalytic, developmental framework, as a way of thinking about relational influences in the classroom and the importance of the relational context of learning. These case studies relate to my workplace, an Infant and Nursery school with a high British multi-ethnic population, where I am employed as a teacher/therapeutic practitioner. Two brief child studies are included to illustrate this examination. The first, Hamzah, concerns a young child entering formal learning without the expected relational skills and therefore unable to connect with staff and children in any meaningful way. The second, Isa, demonstrated well developed relational skills but at times found it difficult to manage his feelings when his needs took second place to the requirements of the curriculum.     

测谎者的无意识加工对谎言识别的影响

在谎言识别研究中, 最重要的发现之一就是人们在意识层面上识别谎言的正确率仅仅略高于随机水平。于是, 大量的研究转而考察无意识加工对谎言识别的影响。本文从测谎者的角度出发, 考察测谎者的无意识加工是否可以提高其谎言识别的正确率。本文梳理了关于无意识谎言识别的理论建构, 总结了无意识谎言识别的实证研究, 从无意识的信息接收、信息接收后的无意识思维以及无意识判断决策三个方面详细介绍了近年来的重要的成果和主要的争议。针对目前研究的困境, 本文提出未来的研究应该重点关注理论建构、交互式谎言情境、线索加工匹配效应、测试生理和脑激活指标以及无意识谎言识别的应用等五个方面。     

Shifting shadows: shaping dynamics in the cultural unconscious

Jung has suggested that wars, social upheavals and religions are 'but the superficial symptoms of a secret psychic attitude unknown even to the individual himself, and transmitted by no historian ...' (Jung 1964, para. 315; emphasis author's). With a focus on South Africa and some dream material, I explore this idea with particular emphasis on the cultural unconscious and the emerging theory of cultural complexes. Different cultures demand the repression of different aspects of the self and have different ways of actualizing a moral code. These repressions are part of what make up a dynamic and shifting cultural complex which inevitably plays a part in historical change. In turn, historical change plays its part in shifting these dynamics. In the analytic setting via the transference and countertransference, we are familiar with what is being repressed in relation to shadow dynamics, complexes and obsolete defences. Such dynamics relate to themes of boundary, identity and otherness which, in turn, reach back to early infantile strivings as well as forward in the service of unfolding. Central to this dynamic is the absorption of cultural attitudes--including that which must be repressed, allowed in or defended against. Major political shifts--historical change--inevitably affect cultural dynamics, 'secret psychic attitude(s)' and shifting shadows.     

The Problematics of Human Subjectivity: Gilles Deleuze and the Deweyan Legacy

This article is part of alarger project exploring the continuity betweentwo philosophical positions – that of Frenchpoststructuralist Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995)and John Dewey – that appear at first sight tobe separated by time, place and culture. Thescope of the present paper is necessarilylimited and focuses on one aspect of theproject, namely: the problematics ofsubjectivity, or subject formation, inDeleuze's philosophy. Deleuze's position isestablished as pragmatic by virtue of itssharing the value allotted by Dewey toexperiential and experimental inquiry inphilosophy. By drawing initial parallels with anumber of selected Dewey's excerpts, this paperaims to open up a space for the imaginarydialogue between two philosophical thoughts soas to consider a possibility for applyingDeleuze's philosophy to educational theory andpractice in the context of current debates andin a manner continuous with the Deweyan legacy.The paper concludes by affirming Deleuze'splace in the contemporary scholarship on Dewey.     

Dream actors in the theatre of memory: Their role in the psychoanalytic process2

The author notes that neuropsychological research has discovered the existence of two long‐term memory systems, namely declarative or explicit memory, which is conscious and autobiographical, and non‐declarative or implicit memory, which is neither conscious nor verbalisable. It is suggested that pre‐verbal and pre‐symbolic experience in the child's primary relations is stored in implicit memory, where it constitutes an unconscious nucleus of the self which is not repressed and which influences the person's affective, emotional, cognitive and sexual life even as an adult. In the analytic relationship this unconscious part can emerge essentially through certain modes of communication (tone of voice, rhythm and prosody of the voice, and structure and tempo of speech), which could be called the ‘musical dimension’ of the transference, and through dream representations. Besides work on the transference, the critical component of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis is stated to consist in work on dreams as pictographic and symbolic representations of implicit pre‐symbolic and pre‐verbal experiences. A case history is presented in which dream interpretation allowed some of a patient's early unconscious, non‐repressed experiences to be emotionally reconstructed and made thinkable even though they were not actually remembered.     

AN ESSAY ON DREAMING,PSYCHICAL WORKING OUT AND WORKING THROUGH2

In this paper the author attempts to expand the idea put forward by Freud who considered dreams as a special form of unconscious thinking. It is the author's contention that the psychical working‐out function performed by dreams is a form of unconscious thinking, which transforms affects into memories and mental structures. He also attempts to clarify the way in which meaning is built and transformed in mental life. In that respect the unconscious internal world is seen as a form of unconscious thinking, a private theatre where meaning is generated and transformed. He focuses on what happens to feelings in dreams in connection with the meanings as a result of and an expression of the several stages of working through. The dream world is described as the setting where the mind gives expressive pictorial representation to the emotions involved in a conflict: a first step towards thinkability. The dreamwork also constitutes a process through which meaning is apprehended, built on and transformed at an expressive non‐discursive level, based on representation through figurative/pictorial images. The author draws on Meltzer's formulation to conjecture that the working‐through function of dreams, mainly in response to interpretations, is performed by a process of progression in formal qualities of the representations made available by dreaming in the form he has called affective pictograms. It is through progression in formal qualities of the representation that the thinking capabilities of the affective life develop and become part of the process of what is called metaphorically the metabolisation of emotional life. This process takes place through migration of meaning across various levels of mental process. In this perspective the analyst'sinterpretations of dreams effect what linguists call transmutation of the symbolic basis, a process that is necessary to help the mind to improve its capacity to think. Something expressed on the evocative plane and condensed into a pictographic image is then transformed into verbal language that expresses meaning. These conceptions are illustrated by a detailed clinical case.     

Access is mainly a second-order process: SDT models whether phenomenally (first-order) conscious states are accessed by reflectively (second-order) conscious processes

Access can either be first-order or second-order. First order access concerns whether contents achieve representation in phenomenal consciousness at all; second-order access concerns whether phenomenally conscious contents are selected for metacognitive, higher order processing by reflective consciousness. When the optional and flexible nature of second-order access is kept in mind, there remain strong reasons to believe that exclusion failure can indeed isolate phenomenally conscious stimuli that are not so accessed. Irvine’s [Irvine, E. (2009). Signal detection theory, the exclusion failure paradigm and weak consciousness—Evidence for the access/phenomenal distinction? Consciousness and Cognition.] partial access argument fails because exclusion failure is indeed due to lack of second-order access, not insufficient phenomenally conscious information. Further, the enable account conforms with both qualitative differences and subjective report, and is simpler than the endow account. Finally, although first-order access may be a distinct and important process, second-order access arguably reflects the core meaning of access generally.