Subcortical aphasia with deep dyslexia: A case study of a Japanese patient

The reading performance of a Japanese Broca-type aphasic patient on a single-word reading test was investigated. The result indicated that the subject fits the symptom complex of deep dyslexia in more than one aspect. Unique characteristics of this subject included (1) the isolated subcortical site of the lesion, which apparently produced deep dyslexia, and (2) double dissociations between kanji and kana processing and between oral reading and reading comprehension. The performance of this subject was compared with that of another Japanese deep dyslexic subject in S. Sasanuma (1980, In M. Coltheart, K. Patterson, & J. C. Marshall (Eds.), Deep dyslexia, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). A theoretical implication was attempted based on a dual coding process scheme by S. Sasanuma and O. Fujimura (1978, Cortex, 7, 1-18).     

Reflections on the work of Hanna Segal (1918–2011),

This paper is based on a talk given at the conference to celebrate the Work of Hanna Segal and attempts to summarise her contribution to psychoanalysis. I suggest that in addition to being the important presenter of the work of Melanie Klein, she made major contributions to our understanding of many analytic ideas, for example, symbol formation, the usefulness of the concept of the death instinct and the relation between phantasy and reality. She was a pioneer in the analytic treatment of psychosis and sh wrote important papers on literature and aesthetics. She was a great teacher and emphasised the central role played by the analytic setting in representing the attitude of the analyst.     

On the immediacy of unconscious truth: understanding Betty Joseph's 'here and now' through comparison with alternative views of it outside of and within Kleinian thinking

Psychoanalysis emphasizes that in discovering psychic truth what is needed is not abstract or distant knowledge of this truth but rather an immediate encounter with it. In this paper the author examines the meaning of this immediacy through the study of Betty Joseph's notion of 'here and now,' which in recent years has been most directly associated with it. The author shows how Joseph's notion of 'here and now' continues a legacy beginning in Freud and taken up by Klein regarding the immediacy of unconscious truth that differs from other available analytic formulations of the term. To highlight the uniqueness of Joseph's contribution the author goes on to examine what distinguishes it within the kleinian framework. She does this in part through comparison with the clinical approach of Hanna Segal, whose focus on unconscious phantasy adheres to the same foundational legacy. The author points to the differences between Joseph and Segal and their significance, which have not been sufficiently elaborated in the analytic literature. She argues that viewing these differences within the context of a shared perspective on the role of unconscious truth in the analytic process and task enriches our understanding of the complexity of kleinian thinking and the meaning of truth in psychoanalysis. This understanding is also furthered by the recognition that many uses of the term 'here and now' in the analytic literature refer to something very different from what Joseph refers to and are based on a perspective that is fundamentally opposed to hers.     

The song of the siren: Some thoughts on idealization and creativity in Martinů's Julietta

The authors draw on ideas posited by Segal in her seminal paper 'A psychoanalytic approach to aesthetics' to explore idealization and the creative endeavour as it is imaginatively portrayed in the Poutney/Lazaridis production of Martin3's Julietta, performed by Opera North (2003). The opera is set in a dreamlike world in which confusion proliferates, and Julietta is portrayed as a modern-day siren, luring Mischa, the main character, on to the rocks of psychic withdrawal. It depicts an inner drama where music, narrative and spectacle work together to evoke the main character's struggle which touches on universal themes–the ongoing nature of infantile longings, the pain of loneliness and separation and the fear of madness. Through careful reading of the opera and consideration of Martin3's life, the authors refl ect on the factors that may have shaped Martin3's relationship to this work, including his feelings towards his homeland, his mid-life crisis and the social and political turmoil of Europe at the time. The authors conclude by refl ecting on the aesthetic experience of the opera and the way in which the music transforms the drama and seeks to extend our understanding of psychic truth.     

Dichotic listening pattern in conduction aphasia

This paper reports a finding of hemispheric brain asymmetry for speech in short-gestation infants (mean gestational age = 36 weeks). Using a new measure—degree of reduction in limb tremors following exposure to speech stimuli compared to two control groups, one hearing orchestral music, the other no patterned stimuli—we found that speech disproportionately affected right limb movements. It is not clear whether the effect is due to asymmetries in cortical or subcortical processing. This provides evidence against the notion that brain specialization for language functions necessarily appears over time; rather, specialization for some functions (e.g., speech reception) must be present at birth.     

Melanie Klein’s letters addressed to Marcelle Spira (1955–1960)1

Between 1955 and 1960, Melanie Klein wrote some 45 hitherto unpublished letters to Marcelle Spira, the Swiss psychoanalyst living at that time in Geneva. In 2006, after Spira’s death, these letters were deposited with the Raymond de Saussure Psychoanalysis Centre in Geneva. They are the only known letters that Klein addressed to her psychoanalyst colleagues. Several topics are mentioned in them: (1) the meetings between the two women in Geneva and London; (2) Spira’s contribution to Boulanger’s translation into French of The Psychoanalysis of Children, which Klein herself carefully revised; (3) the papers that Klein was at that time working on, including Envy and Gratitude; (4) Spira’s own work; (5) the difficulties that Spira, a Kleinian psychoanalyst who trained in Buenos Aires, was encountering in her attempt to be admitted to the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society; and (6) a few items of personal and family news. In addition to the invaluable historical information that these letters provide, they offer us a very moving epistolary self‐portrait of Melanie Klein, enabling us to discover her personality in the final years of her life – she died in September 1960, just two months after writing her last letter to Spira.     

Adrian Stokes and the portrait of Melanie Klein

This paper focuses on the offer by the art writer Adrian Stokes to commission and pay for a portrait of the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein by the artist William Coldstream. It details some of the precursors of this offer in Stokes's preceding involvement first with Klein and then with Coldstream; her response to this offer; and its outcome and aftermath in Stokes's subsequent writing about Klein and Coldstream.     

Production of narrative discourse in aphasia

The study described the abilities of a group of 15 moderately impaired aphasics and 15 normals to produce narrative discourse. The experimental tasks included telling stories, summarizing stories, and giving morals to stories. The data were analyzed in terms of sentential grammar, discourse grammar, and subjective ratings of content and clarity of language. The results showed that aphasics produced well-structured discourse. The language of the aphasics' discourse was reduced in both complexity and amount, as compared to that produced by normals. The reduction of language reflected selective reduction of hierarchically organized information. The findings of the study confirm the results of previous research on mildly impaired aphasics, which also showed preservation of discourse structure with selective reduction of information.