Art, dreams and active imagination: a post-Jungian approach to transference and the image

The term active imagination is sometimes applied rather uncritically to describe all forms of creative activity that take place in depth psychology. Whilst there are many forms of expression that evoke or are evoked by active imagination, they cannot automatically be classed as active imagination. In this article investigation of visualized mental imagery, dreams and art reveals three distinct forms of image-based psychological activity. Integrated and mediated within the transference and countertransference dynamic, it is proposed that the engagement in active imagination reflects and is influenced by the transference. Distinctions between sign and symbol, simple and big dreams as well as diagrammatic and embodied imagery clarify the differences. Examples from clinical practice demonstrate each mode in action within the analytic frame.     

Is transference the ‘total situation’?

This paper examines through the detailed explication of analytic material the author's experience of a psychoanalytic and a Jungian way of understanding the interactions between him and his patient. This comparative approach considers where the differences lie with respect to timing and content of interpretations and where the differences are essentially tactical rather than theoretical.     

Confidentiality and paradox: the location of ethical space

Implicit in Jung's alchemical metaphor of the vas bene clausum is the idea of an analytic frame with a space inside it for something vital, a relationship between two selves, to develop. For this to happen, analysts must respect their patients' rights to confidentiality. The paper explores the analyst's state of mind and the intrapsychic processes that are constellated when struggling with ethical dilemmas about issues of confidentiality in analytic work. The author suggests that at times when analysts consider breaking confidentiality, there is often a disturbing inner conflict between their moral principles (codes of ethics) and their internal personal ethical attitude. At these difficult moments, the mutuality of the work and the vas bene clausum can be significantly disrupted. The analyst tries to find a third position, a mental and emotional ethical space where the subjective and the objective, the ethical and the unethical can become more companionable bedfellows.     

员工被上司信任感的形成机制

现有文献显示员工感知到被上司信任在工作场所中非常重要,因为这种感知会带来许多与工作相关的积极产出。虽然我们已经知道被上司信任感是如何发挥作用的,但是对它的形成机制却知之甚少。忽视这一感知的产生机制将会限制其在管理实践中的有效应用,因为被上司信任感只有被成功地激发才能使信任关系得到建立,并由此对员工的行为产生影响。作为一种由个体对信任相关信息加工而得的感知,员工被上司信任感未必等同于上司实际的信任水平。因此,要想通过让员工感知到被信任来进行有效的管理,作为授信方的上司不仅要主动做出信任的行为,更需要考虑如何让员工准确地感受到自己的信任。 基于符号互动理论和社会信息加工理论,本文构建了一个关于员工被上司信任感形成机制的理论模型。根据该模型,上司的授权与培养这两种管理行为被识别为影响员工被上司信任感产生的重要因素;授权与培养对员工被上司信任感影响的有效性依赖于员工的目标导向、上司的可信度以及团队焦虑水平;员工被上司信任感的产生会影响员工的忠诚与敬业奉献,其影响程度受制于上司所面临的管理风险。 通过揭示上司的信任行为如何以及何时能激发员工被上司信任感并由此对员工的工作行为产生影响,本研究在理论和实践上做出了三个主要的贡献。首先,被信任感不是由授信方或被信任方单独一方决定的,而是在二者的互动中形成。虽然过往研究曾检验过领导风格对被上司信任感的影响,但却未从信任互动的角度进行解释。本文识别出了授权和培养这两种可以传达典型信任信息的管理行为,从而在理论上拓展了关于被上司信任感前因的文献,在实践上为上司如何做可以让员工感受到被信任提供了新的思路。其次,尽管被上司信任感的形成有赖于社会信息加工,却鲜有研究对该过程进行过探索。根据信息加工理论,本研究对被上司信任感产生的机理及边界条件发起了新的对话。我们不仅关注信任信息加工的正反效应,还探索了信息相关度（员工目标导向）与可信度（上司可信度）对这一过程的影响。关注员工目标导向有助于识别基于信任的管理行为的有效目标人群,而关注上司可信度进一步明确了上司在相关信息传达中可能产生的积极或消极的两种不同的影响。实践上,这一探究为管理者提供了重要的指导,帮助他们有针对性地、有效地让员工感知到被信任。最后,通过探讨团队焦虑和管理风险这两个团队层面上的消极因素的调节作用,本文丰富了对上下级信任互动情境的理解。实践上,我们为管理者如何在高不确定和充满挑战性的环境中采用信任管理策略提供了启发。     

Dreaming the other's past: Why remembering may still be relevant to psychoanalytic therapy,at least in some traditions

Against the background of a reconstruction of the reasons for the vanishing role of remembering in the history of psychoanalysis, Botella's (2014, Int J Psychoanal, 95 ) arguments regarding the therapeutic significance of reconstruction and remembering and of the therapist's role are discussed. The difference between intellectual reconstruction and actual emotional remembering are underlined, the term regredience is compared to competing concepts such as equally suspended attention, countertransference and reverie. It is argued that to conceptualize the use of countertransferential associations for reconstructing past traumatic events is difficult with a monadic conception of the unconscious and problematic both in terms of truth claims and in terms of achieving a shared creative atmosphere in which therapist and patient participate alike. It is concluded that historical truth may be important for traumatic experiences, and that biographical reconstruction and change in the subjective life story help to make sense of neurotic patterns and integrate diachronic identity.     

The body of the analyst and the analytic setting: Reflections on the embodied setting and the symbiotic transference

In this paper the author questions whether the body of the analyst may be helpfully conceptualized as an embodied feature of the setting and suggests that this may be especially helpful for understanding patients who develop a symbiotic transference and for whom any variance in the analyst's body is felt to be profoundly destabilizing. In such cases the patient needs to relate to the body of the analyst concretely and exclusively as a setting ‘constant’ and its meaning for the patient may thus remain inaccessible to analysis for a long time. When the separateness of the body of the analyst reaches the patient's awareness because of changes in the analyst's appearance or bodily state, it then mobilizes primitive anxieties in the patient. It is only when the body of the analyst can become a dynamic variable between them (i.e. part of the process) that it can be used by the patient to further the exploration of their own mind.     

An overview of the treatment of severe narcissistic pathology

This paper provides an overview of narcissistic personality disorders as they present clinically along a spectrum of severity ranging from the best functioning forms of pathological narcissism to the most threatening to the patient's psychosocial and physical survival. It proposes a general interpretive psychoanalytic stance with all these clinical syndromes that range from standard psychoanalysis to a specific psychoanalytical psychotherapy for the most repressive and life threatening conditions that may not respond to standard psychoanalysis proper. This general psychoanalytic approach is placed into the context of related developments in contemporary psychoanalytic understanding of pathological narcissism and its treatment.     

Burial and resurgence of projective identification in French psychoanalysis

Curiously enough, the concept of projective identification was ignored, and even rejected in France for at least two decades after the publication of the founding texts of Melanie Klein and Herbert Rosenfeld. This rejection was due to a critique from child psychoanalysts close to Anna Freud and also from the teaching of Lacan: the first took the real mother–child relation extensively into account, while the latter only saw the internal object as a signifier. The fact that during this period the countertransference was a concept reduced to its negative content no doubt explains this deliberate ignorance. With the dissemination of a broader and more positive conception of the countertransference, a renewal of interest could be observed in the 1980s with references to empathic listening and to the effects of thought‐induction.     

Learning from the patient: The East,synchronicity and transference in the history of an unknown case of C.G. Jung

This article presents the history of one until now unknown case of C.G. Jung: Maggy Reichstein. Born in Indonesia in 1894 in a very aristocratic family, she brought her sister to Zurich to be treated by Jung in 1919, and later she herself was in analysis with him. Jung used her case as example in his lecture in 1937 on the realities of practical psychotherapy, relating it to the process of transference and countertransference. Jung deepened his studies in Eastern psychology after a series of dreams she had, which culminated in the Yoga Kundalini Seminars. She was also the case presented in his article of 1951 on the concept of synchronicity. Jung wrote that her case, concerning synchronicity, remained unique in his experience. Jung also published some of her mandalas. He considered her able to understand his ideas in depth. Reichstein was for Jung an important case, which challenged and triggered his interests in different subjects.     

The supervisory alliance: Comparison of measures and implications for a supervision toolkit

Background Clinical supervision lies at the core of the professional development of clinicians providing services within a range of service settings. The supervisory alliance is regarded as the most important construct in effective supervision which underlies the importance of metrics to assess this construct. Aims materials and Method A cross‐sectional self‐report questionnaire design was used to examine clinical supervision constructs. The study used two scales measuring the supervisory alliance (SRQ and SWAI‐T), a scale measuring supervision satisfaction (SSQ) and a scale measuring disclosure (TDS). The questionnaires were administered to 127 clinical psychology trainees who were undertaking a practicum placement. Results Both scales measuring the alliance were positively correlated with satisfaction with supervision and disclosure, with similar sizes of correlation for each alliance scale. There was also a large, positive correlation between the two scales of measuring the alliance. Discussion Both scales were designed for use in supervision and are related to supervision outcome measures in the expected directions. Conclusion The SRQ has some distinct advantages over the SWAI‐T that lend the SRQ to be potentially more useful in clinical and research settings.