Analytic Work Research Articles

The Umbilical.

Traditional psychoanalytic approaches view excessive parental, social or relational involvement in human development as an opportunity for linking complex gender and identity experiences. The analyst's unconscious bias might present them with an opportunity for interpretation that might resemble something akin to conversion therapy. All of which leaves the patient feeling alienated thereby confirming their exiled Self. Early relational trauma affects every gender and sexual identity. In turn each traumatic situation, from inappropriate interference to traumatic abuse, affects how an individual forms and experiences relationships. Gender and sexual identity are fluid agencies of the Self within all human development. For people who are non-normative when it comes to their gender, identity or sexuality, evidence of early relational trauma should not unthinkingly be treated alongside mental health struggles. This clinical paper explores the once-weekly analytic work with a young trans man who was exiled and lived in a dysregulated state of mind from his early relational trauma. This paper uses images from the artist Louise Bourgeois to explore the early development of projective identification and to propose that this becomes a way of exiling unwanted feelings into the Other with the hope of finding a place of belonging as if through a psychic umbilical.

On “Beginning” in Analysis

While we speak casually about the beginning of an analysis, we are also aware that there are different senses of beginning in the context of an analysis. Certain differences surrounding the nature of beginning reflect technical-theoretical debates within the field. But in addition and more broadly, the various senses of beginning represent different dimensions of our understanding and experience of analysis. In this essay, I explore some of these dimensions and consider the significance and challenges of beginnings throughout the course of analytic work.

Optimization of SOX2 Expression for Enhanced Glioblastoma Stem Cell Virotherapy

The Zika virus has been shown to infect glioblastoma stem cells via the membrane receptor αvβ5, which is activated by the stem-specific transcription factor SOX2. Since the expression level of SOX2 is an important predictive marker for successful virotherapy, it is important to understand the fundamental mechanisms of the role of SOX2 in the dynamics of cancer stem cells and Zika viruses. In this paper, we develop a mathematical ODE model to investigate the effects of SOX2 expression levels on Zika virotherapy against glioblastoma stem cells. Our study aimed to identify the conditions under which SOX2 expression level, viral infection, and replication can reduce or eradicate the glioblastoma stem cells. Analytic work on the existence and stability conditions of equilibrium points with respect to the basic reproduction number are provided. Numerical results were in good agreement with analytic solutions. Our results show that critical threshold levels of both SOX2 and viral replication, which change the stability of equilibrium points through population dynamics such as transcritical and Hopf bifurcations, were observed. These critical thresholds provide the optimal conditions for SOX2 expression levels and viral bursting sizes to enhance therapeutic efficacy of Zika virotherapy against glioblastoma stem cells. This study provides critical insights into optimizing Zika virus-based treatment for glioblastoma by highlighting the essential role of SOX2 in viral infection and replication.

Facilitating Greater Understanding of Trauma-Informed Care in Applied Behavior Analysis: An Introduction to the Special Issue.

Trauma-informed care (TIC) refers to the guiding principles that inform how organizations or individuals arrange services with respect to acknowledging both the prevalence and impact of trauma. Given the elevated risks of trauma in the populations with which many behavior analysts work, clarifying why, how, and if TIC should be incorporated into behavior analytic work seems prudent. Although the core commitments of TIC are inherently aligned with ethical and effective applied behavior analytic practice, there are few exemplars of how TIC can be intentionally incorporated into behavioral assessment and treatment. This special issue is intended to begin to fill that gap, as well as to promote further discussion of the benefits and limitations of TIC in ABA. In this introduction, we review both the prevalence and potential outcomes of trauma, as well as attempting to dispel misconceptions about TIC that appear common among the behavior analytic community. We highlight how the articles in the special issue are important in developing an evidence base for TIC in ABA, as well as suggesting areas for future research.

An Interview with Jan Wiener.Conducted by Linda Carter on January 7, 2024.

Jan Wiener is a Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP) trained Jungian analyst and Journal of Analytical Psychology Board member, highly esteemed in Jungian and psychoanalytic circles for her work as a practitioner, teacher, supervisor and writer as well as for her well-honed leadership skills, notably as a member of the executive committee and as a vice-president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP), the international organizing body for Jungian analysts worldwide. Jan has made remarkable contributions to the personal and professional development of Jungians not only in the UK but also for those involved in the IAAP Developing Groups programme where she has been a pioneer, providing cross-cultural outreach to those seeking training in Russia, Taiwan, Serbia, Ukraine and Denmark. Success in Jan's many-faceted and full life has been facilitated by a natural authenticity, good sense of humour, hearty laugh and a welcoming attitude; these attributes have significantly aided in bridge-building and opening space for creative interactions within and between individuals and groups. Her development was influenced by a history of parents who fled from Vienna and Berlin to London, escaping persecution by the pre-war Nazi regime. Jan's aunt lived in close proximity and was a child analyst who worked closely with Anna Freud. As a young woman, Jan swam the English Channel and she has always been a sports lover, especially tennis. Her many talents extend to music and she is a trained opera singer who has recently been involved in an affordable educational programme in Cratoule, France, that fosters the expanding growth of amateurs who have the opportunity to learn from more established, experienced attendees. Jan has performed as a singer in addition to presenting her analytic work globally. She has many publications that centre around clinical practice, her forte. Well-known by those who have been in relationship with Jan personally and professionally is her exceptional capacity for presence in the moment while holding the long-view; this capacity as well as an inclusive attitude, perhaps born in part from family history, along with a keen intelligence, intuition and native talent, have led to a life-long commitment to service and generative partnerships that continue to bear fruit amongst those touched by her kind and generous soul.

My Analyst Has Dementia, I Might Need a Donut

ABSTRACT This paper explores a ten-year analytic relationship through the lens of analyst as patient dealing with love and loss. The patient is witness to her analyst’s mind succumbing to dementia. The vault of encrypted memory, containing the years of work, is under attack. Juxtaposing moments of dementia madness are shared space connected to significant expansion of mind and emotional experience. This experience challenges all framework of psychoanalytic work, and yet it doesn’t. Psychoanalysis espouses giving patients: meaning, vitality, sturdiness, and an expansive emotional range of experiences. This analytic work accomplished these features and more. But, what does it mean to be held in mind when the analyst mind has been highjacked by a paranoid delusion momentarily? Moreover, delusions of persecution reflect profound fear and anxiety with the loss of the ability to tell what’s real and what’s not. Delusions are a common feature of dementia. Delusions are often triggered by memory loss connected to simple things like losing one’s keys. My lived story of personal transformation lives among the mind field of sporadic delusions sometimes expressed by my analyst’s mind. What happens to psychoanalytic work when the vault of the analyst mind is compromised by dementia?

Symposium 1: Tracing analytic assemblages – doing doctoral research with actor-network theory

The practices of doctoral education are intricately entangled with technologies. This methodological paper examines the practical concerns involved in doing the analytic work in a networked learning setting with Actor-Network theory (ANT). It is a story about engaging with ANT as a companion in an ethnographic research project on teaching practices in Sweden during the Covid-19 pandemic. The empirical examples are pulled from online interviews in the pandemic outbreak and two ways of assembling the analytic practices of those interviews. On the premises that method and technology are non-neutral, the focus is on how the interviews are analysed and the modes of knowing that they form. For example, the paper examines how computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software acts on the analyses of the interviews and the knowledge patterns made possible and what signals are silenced. A second analytic assemblage is deployed that traces those signals. Based on the empirical examples of doing analyses, the paper discusses how analytic assemblages change and move research and the researcher in unpredictive and performative ways that troubles the expectations of a singularised doctoral journey.

Session Frequency or Working Model? An Investigation into How We Can Think of the Difference Between ‘Intensive’ and ‘Non‐Intensive’ Work Using the Comparative Clinical Method

ABSTRACTThis is an exploratory account of an applied clinical method, the Comparative Clinical Method, used to address a specific question: how can we best think of the difference between intensive and non‐intensive analytic work? Normally, it is session frequency that is taken as a determining difference, as a marker of a different approach or method being employed. In our investigation, which consisted of the three authors presenting examples of their clinical work to each other, we did not find the intensive and non‐intensive work of each author to demonstrate clear and easily defined differences in method or technique. Instead, we found more evidence of each author adopting a coherent and consistent approach, based on an underlying and implicit working model, across their intensive and non‐intensive work. We conclude from this that the differences between intensive and non‐intensive work are best explored by encouraging more conceptually rigorous and clinically specific descriptions of the different kinds of analytic assumptions and methods employed in ordinary analytic clinical work.

Sure It Works in Practice, but Does It Work in Theory? Appreciating Fred Pine.

Fred Pine is a major contributor to contemporary Freudian analytic work. He expanded the breadth of clinical psychoanalysis by showing how the analyst could integrate ever expanding perspectives in analysis, and he expanded its depth through greater insight into how development affects psychic structure and, thereby, the context within which unconscious conflict and compromise is experienced and processed. Both of these-his expansion of potential variables implicated in the process of dynamic conflict and his developmental focus on structural deficit-have led to a way of Freudian thinking that is highly assimilative and integrative. Pine's focus on integrating disparate points of view-not different theories, but clinical observations that are featured in different overall theories-illuminates clinical possibility and nuance. Pine's work leads to questions about the relation of psychoanalytic theory to analytic practice and the definition of contemporary Freudian psychoanalysis itself.

Playing, Paradox, and Analytic Activity Between Knowing and Being

The author explores some ways that we help patients to hold paradoxical realities intrinsic to transference and play in analytic work. He suggests that Winnicott’s guardianship of the setting for the emergence of playing raises questions about the role of neutrality in an ontological analysis. The author tries to demonstrate some ways that the work of helping patients to hold paradox in play overlaps with a concept that he has earlier referred to as an activity of neutrality. He explores how in the analytic process, understanding and being are two dimensions of the analytic process that work in concert with each other. Often the analyst works quietly in spaces between epistemological and ontological approaches in the holding of paradox.

The elephant in the zoom: will psychoanalysis survive the screen?

While screen-mediated analysis long predated the pandemic, it was largely seen as non-equivalent to in-person treatment by analysts and patients alike. When COVID forced us to move our entire practices to the screen, our concerns about its limitations were replaced by relief; we could continue doing analytic work during a terrifying and challenging time. Three years later, many have chosen to continue practicing remotely for reasons that are no longer driven by fears of exposure. We mostly minimize or deny our earlier concerns about the limitations of screen work. Have we chosen convenience, ease, and a personal sense of safety over togetherness, while ignoring the underbelly of remote work? This paper identifies the convergence of several forces underlying our decision to stay remote, including guilt and anxiety about privileging our own self-interest, unmourned losses and collective PTSD, fear of the future and existential anxiety about living in a techno-culture that threatens to replace us. Our denial of these powerful forces makes it easy to rationalize a decision to embrace remote work and disavow the threat it poses to our field.

CYCLONE STABILITY PARAMETER: ITS NUMERICAL VALUE AND SIGNIFICANCE IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF TRACK DETERMINATION

The study of the dynamics of tropical cyclones constitutes a major portion of the curriculum for atmospheric science throughout the world. This is due to its enormous significance on the coastal human civilization all over the world. The increase in sea surface temperature globally has led to an increase in the frequency of tropical cyclones. As many as ten deadly tropical cyclones have hit the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal Coastline after generating depressions from the Bay of Bengal in the last decade. The most challenging part lies in the early detection of tropical depressions in the ocean bed, the consequent intensity prediction of the generated tropical cyclone, and the forecasting of the resulting path of propagation of the cyclone in landmass. For these a detailed analytic study of the related cyclone dynamics governing equations, their corresponding solution, propounding of the cyclone analytic solution model, and estimation of some critical parameters based on real cyclone data for the validation of the analytic model is of utmost importance. Radio Sonde Radio Wind (RSRW) data analysis for 5 cyclones and subsequent Cyclone Stability Parameter (CSP)determination, simplification of the complicated expression of and its subsequent significance is the main work of this paper. The is the representative of the entire analysis of the governing equations of tropical cyclones in the applicable coordinate system of a previously performed important work. So this work is also a validation of the previously performed analytic work. We have also analytically simplified the expression of through some approximations and chalked out a more lucid expression which is a function of only. This work effectively unites analytic and numerical performances for more effective prediction of tropical cyclone path of propagation in landmass after their formation in tropical oceans.

“Being Careful in Only a Perverse Way”: The Use of Aesthetic Experience in Psychoanalytic Work

ABSTRACT The author describes some of his interest in the painting of Richard Diebenkorn, the poetry of Bob Dylan, and a lifelong enjoyment of entomology and fly fishing as it comes into “play” with his analytic work. Diebenkorn’s “Notes to Myself Upon Beginning a Painting,” which were discovered after his death in 1995, are remarkably overlapping with elements of the ontological analysis of both Winnicott and Bion. The author elaborates a few elements of analytic listening from inside his personal “aesthetic matrix,” a concept so helpfully introduced in Palmer’s paper, “The Aesthetic Matrix: A Conversation Between a Painter and a Psychoanalyst.” There is special attention to a few varieties of visual and verbal imagery linked to auxiliary containing functions for the analyst.

Receptivity to the Weight and Heft of the Natural World in our Inner Selves.

Through the literary explorations and poetry of Alice Oswald, and through analysis of detailed clinical material from a Kleinian perspective, the authors expand the bounds of reverie as it is usually construed in psychoanalytic consulting rooms. The authors draw attention to the presence of a relationship to the more-than-human world as an integral aspect of our internal experience, and to the value of consideration of the quality and dynamic meaning of connections to the natural world in ordinary analytic work. The relationship to the primary object heavily influences the form taken by the relationship to the natural world, but once established, this connection has the possibility for a life of its own, that can provide a different kind of containment than the human variety, allow experimentation with new ways of being, and can strengthen the ego. The authors address the clinical implications of listening enhanced by an ear for affiliation to the natural world.

Qualitative Data Analysis Retreats: Creating New Spaces for Doctoral Student Analytic Work

Qualitative data analysis is recognized as a threshold concept in research education and can be conceptually challenging for doctoral students. While retreats are common approaches to support dissertation writing, we propose an unconventional approach for doctoral education with the use of retreats for qualitative data analysis. Analytic autoethnography was used to examine what features of an off-campus retreat supported data analysis of dissertation research, With the use of a focused agenda, the retreat space offered opportunities for icebreakers to stimulate synthesis thinking, student-led analytic activities, and reflective writing. Data were collected from documents, analytic artifacts, photographs, and reflective journals. We identified three themes pertaining to retreat features to support qualitative analytic work: Analytic Immersion, Analytic Support, and Analytic Reflection. Findings suggest that retreat spaces can be used to support doctoral students navigating the challenges of knowledge acquisition associated with qualitative data analysis. We recommend four key considerations when designing a qualitative analysis retreat: (1) create a space for analytic immersion; (2) design activities to cultivate student agency; (3) situate faculty for optimal student mentoring and support; and (4) allocate time and space reflective practice. This paper contributes to the ongoing conversation of threshold concepts in doctoral education and offers a new approach for supporting students during data analysis.

Person Reference and a Preference for Association in Emergency Calls

ABSTRACT Person reference is pervasive in talk. Conversation analytic work has identified preferences in person reference relating to recognitional reference. However, the principles shaping nonrecognitional reference are less well understood. We propose a preference for association in an institutional setting in which recognition is not relevant. Our data are calls to the New Zealand police emergency line that were institutionally classified as family harm. Using a collection methodology, we found that nonrecognitional person reference typically takes the form my x which directly associates speaker and referent, for example, “my partner,” “my ex-partner,” “my dad.” Initial references that suggest no association (e.g. “someone” or “an abusive guy”) were subsequently revised by callers using self-repair or targeted by call takers through questions that seek clarification about association. The shifts from nonassociative to associative references demonstrate participants’ orientations to the relevance of association and are evidence of a preference for association in the setting under examination. Data are in English.

Why Do People Attack Military Statues? A National Survey in New Zealand

Military statues are being attacked and removed in multiple countries, but there is little analytic work on the associated reasons. Therefore, this research aimed to conduct a nationwide survey of outdoor military statues in a case study country (New Zealand) and identify reasons for attacks. Of the 118 statues identified, 11 (9%) of these had been physically attacked. A key risk factor for statue attack was it being linked to the colonial-era New Zealand Wars versus any other specific war (75% vs 8%, p = .003). This finding fitted with other evidence from attacks on statues of named New Zealanders (e.g. politicians) and on attacks of other types of monuments to these particular wars. It is also consistent with past and persisting injustices experienced by the Indigenous Māori population. In conclusion, some of the attacks on the military statues in this country appear to reflect social injustices and harm from colonialism.

Can We Hug? The vibrancy and vicissitudes of patients in person: Sifting through the rubble of Covid

ABSTRACT This article sets forth how the dual influences of the shared emotional trauma of the pandemic plus the structure of the two dimensionality of remote analytic work led to triumphant first meetings when we returned to an in-person setting. I deconstruct the cascade of assaults on our lifestyles and our psyches resulting from the forced lockdown during the Covid pandemic. The paper braids together two unexpectedly affecting experiences of meeting in-person in 2022 and 2023 against the backdrop of the pandemic. One was with an individual patient and the other was with a class of advanced analytic candidates. I describe how, at long last, having the opportunity to meet our patients, students, and colleagues again elicited profound and overwhelming feelings, from anxiety and self-consciousness to delight and joy.

The Process of Case Writing: A Fourth Pillar of Analytic Training.

The educational and clinical effects of the process of case writing during analytic training have not been extensively studied, even though the case report, as a product, has prompted attempts to make it a more revealing and accurate document. Countertransference experiences during an analysis can constrain both the candidate's writing and the analytic work, while examining them during the writing process can deepen the candidate's analytic work. Three overlapping resistances to the writing, and their underlying anxieties, are described. These are publication resistances: concerns about the anticipated reception of the candidate's work by potentially critical readers; transference resistances: feelings toward the analytic institute that requires the writing; and countertransference or reimmersion resistances: fears of reawakening reactions from the analysis. These can interfere with finding a safe internal space in which to write. Examples are given of writing through of these resistances during case supervision, resulting in more open writing and in a deepening of the analytic work. As the case writing process can have direct and potentially profound effects on the candidate's current and future analytic work, it is proposed that the process of case writing is a fourth pillar of analytic training, in addition to the candidate's personal analysis, case supervision, and didactic seminars.

Shame, Gaze and Voice: A Lacanian Perspective

AbstractThis paper proposes a Lacanian theory of shame linked to the era of Lacan's work starting with Seminar X and the invention of the object a. From a Lacanian perspective, shame is not evoked by the exposure of a deficit, but rather by the exposure and witnessing of the divided subject's constitutive lack. This paper proposes that the affect of shame is an index pointing to the divided subject's structural lack when it is exposed and witnessed by object a instantiated as the gaze of the scopic drive and the voice of the invocatory drive. Since shame can freeze speech as well as provoke flight from the analytic work, we suggest that it is helpful for the clinician to understand how the structure of shame manifests in the patient's speech and in the transference. Clinical examples are given throughout. The paper concludes with a case discussion of Lacanian analytic work with a female patient confronted with multiple existential dilemmas that evoked shame in relationship to her body, sexuality and death.