The primal scene and symbol formation

This article discusses the meaning of the primal scene for symbol formation by exploring its way of processing in a child's play. The author questions the notion that a sadomasochistic way of processing is the only possible one. A model of an alternative mode of processing is being presented. It is suggested that both ways of processing intertwine in the “fabric of life” (D. Laub). Two clinical vignettes, one from an analytic child psychotherapy and the other from the analysis of a 30 year‐old female patient, illustrate how the primal scene is being played out in the form of a terzet. The author explores whether the sadomasochistic way of processing actually precedes the “primal scene as a terzet”. She discusses if it could even be regarded as a precondition for the formation of the latter or, alternatively, if the “combined parent‐figure” gives rise to ways of processing. The question is being left open. Finally, it is shown how both modes of experiencing the primal scene underlie the discoursive and presentative symbol formation, respectively.     

Verführung in der Gegenübertragung

The author presents a counter-transferential dream of the director of a flat sharing community for mentally disabled persons. On the one side she realizes hereby a tension between the performances which have to be presented for external quality assurance and the “work which is not to be seen”, i.e. the coping with emotions and phantasies of the caring staff. On the other side she discovers, motivated by Freud, Morgenthaler and most of all by Elisabeth Lenk, in this dream a mimetic (ecstatic, sexual) dimension which may become a threat for the coherence of the subject. An attempt at interpretation leads to the extremes of exhibitionism and voyeurism as they are activated in the care work. Institutions produce their own counter-transferences steeped in the phantasms prevailing in these institutions (here: mental disability). In the counter-transference dream analyzed here the author discovers elements of the primal scene and examines the relevance of the associated phantasies in the constitution of the subject of the caring staff, of the cared-for persons and of the author herself.     

Considerations on the precedence of the scenes,the contact barrier and the separation of conscious and unconscious

In this essay the term ‘scene’ which has been developed in the German psychoanalytic discussion, is confronted with the terms ‘total situation’ and ‘psychoanalytic field’, showing common features as well as differences. Thereafter four child observations are presented, through which light is thrown onto the scenic structures which make the foundations of early experience. In the precedence of scenes those structures are omnipresent whereas subjectivity only gradually builds up. It is shown how the development of subjectivity and the differentiation of consciousness and unconscious go along with overcoming the precedence of scenes, by breaking them up and reorganizing them. Thus scenes can become metaphors, which are used for ‘translating’ experience and for building up the contact barrier.