Psychic Organization Research Articles

On the question of the internal frame

ABSTRACT This paper attempts to expand José Bleger's classic, metapsychological descriptions of the psychoanalytic frame to formulate and emphasize the role of the analyst's internal frame in establishing a psychoanalytic observational perspective in the analytic situation. The rationale for doing so follows from clinical necessity, especially when working with patients and psychic organizations that are ‘beyond neurosis' and in non-traditional settings such as distance and telemetric analyses. Clinically speaking, in its most effective state, the analyst’s internal frame can inform the possibility of an observational vertex aimed at the intuitive grasp of psychic reality rather than a sense-based, empirical observation of parameters denoted by the elements of a consensually validatable social reality.

The role of narcissism and parental reflexive function in the development of the child’s personality and psychoemotional state

The article investigates the correlations between the narcissistic dimensions of parents and the neurotic symptoms of children, in a sample of 20 parent-child pairs. The average age of children is 9 years. The research reveals that the narcissistic aspects of mothers can influence the psychic organization of the child, having implications for the development of personality traits and psychopathological symptoms. An essential feature highlighted by the research concerns the mother’s ability to mentalize. The significant links between certain maternal narcissistic dimensions and children’s neurotic symptoms highlight the potential impact that parental narcissism and mentalizing ability have on healthy child development. The results obtained underline the importance of the reflexive parental function in metabolizing the neurotic symptoms of children.

Crianças e jovens com medida de acolhimento residencial: a importân-cia da arte e do desporto como estratégia de intervenção social

This article aims to demonstrate the contribution of art and sport as a social intervention strategy with children and teenagers in residential care. Results obtained by the D'AR-TE project, an Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship Initiative, developed by the Casa de Acolhimento da Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Santarém, show a decrease in aggressive behavior and an increase in self-esteem in sixteen children and teenagers, after a year of attending sports (judo) and arts (theatre, music and body expression) workshops twice a week. By analyzing the affective and behavioral dynamics of children and teenagers, it is possible to perceive the effectiveness of these practices in promoting individual and social resilience and as a consequence the reduction of aggressive behavior, enabling individuals to have a health-ier psychic (re)organization and a redefinition of concepts and attitudes

A Conceptual Analysis of the Funds of Knowledge and Identity Approach from an Eco-functional Perspective

AbstractThe article situates the Funds of Knowledge (FoK) approach and the Funds of Identity (FoI) theory in the context of the eco-functional perspective. It proposes to understand the “funds” as external factors of extra-cerebral organizations, as both refer to products of historically accumulated social labor. Furthermore, the article lays out that similar to the dynamic features of external factors in developing functional psychic organizations, funds of knowledge and identity have to be considered specific to a social and developmental context. It is found that Vygotsky’s concept of perezhivanie and Holzkamp’s concept of position-specificity may provide a valid framework for realization of this dynamic understanding of FoK and FoI.

Le complexe d’œdipe : un organisateur temporel toujours actuel

ContextThis article prolongs questions raised in the author's doctoral thesis. It engages with contemporary psychoanalytical research that questions the psychic modalities that organize the relationship to time and the subjective inscription of temporality, within the framework of the processes that begin at the time of puberty. These processes operate, in fact, as fertile moments of reorganization and psychic organization of the relationship to time of individuals. ObjectiveBased on the psychoanalytical works carried out since Freud as well as his own elaborations, the author underlines the importance of considering the Oedipus complex in its double valence, as a psychic organizer of the difference between the sexes and between the generations - this second valence having been very often left in the background compared to the first one. This psychoanalytic reading of the Oedipus complex, in its dual register, is set against other perspectives (gender studies and the historical study of myths). MethodStarting from the fundamental texts in the Freudian corpus and completing them with contributions from contemporary psychoanalysis, and illustrating this with a clinical vignette, the author underlines the heuristic value of recourse to the Oedipal myth as a representation of subjective and inter-subjective temporal organization. ResultsIn the wake of contemporary psychoanalytical research, the author's work demonstrates the interest of thinking about the place of the Oedipus complex as a psychic organizer of the relationship to time – the psychic modalities of investment in time appearing, in themselves, as organizers of psychic life. This is done from a complementarian perspective, which does not exclude other approaches to the problem. ConclusionsThis reflection invites us to think about the complexity of the Oedipal myth in order not to reduce it to its gendered dimension. If social and societal evolutions, as well as the anthropological context, must lead us to reexamine the value of our conceptual tools and their limits, the Oedipus complex as a nodal organizer must be grasped here in all its dimensions – sexual and temporal. As the author's reflections draw on clinical work with juvenile psychopathology, they deserve to be completed and discussed in the light of other complementary fields.

The problem of the formation and functioning of bilingualism in the family and society

The article determines the conceptualization of “bilingualism” as a common phenomenon. The importance of this disputed point in the state of new multicultural sovereign state is emphasized. A minor overview of the scientific guidance is given in which the occasion of bilingualism is studied. The advantageous and opposite points of opinion of bilingualism researchers are considered, likewise as the contemporary attitude to this problem. Special importance is given to the formation of bilingualism in the family. Accomplishable variation of family bilingualism, age-related dilemma of bilinguals and ways to clear up them are considered. The article fix up with provision methodological recommendations for successfully overcoming difficulties in the upbringing of bilingual children. The article furthermore exposes the conceptualization of bilingualism and bilingual families, investigates the denotation and the role of bilingualism in the development of a kid in contemporary society, tells about the positive and negative sides of bilingualism in a child, the characteristic of the psychical organization of bilingual education.

The Biophysical Modelling of the Stress Theory

Selye published a short note about his findings in Nature in 1936. Selye applied his famous theory of stress to everyday life. A stress-free state is equivalent to being dead. In our paper we write about the some directions in stress research and the stress syndromes in clinical medicine. We show that eustress suits to situations when the psychoneuroendocrine stimulation of the organism and its behavior is temperate, maintaining at an optimal level the physical and mental resources and the health status and inducing a positive adaptation to the environment. We give a comparative analysis between the eustress and distress. Psychical stressors are those which come into being independently from the man’s will and destroy – as social factors – psychic and organic components taking place in the response, the organism consequently get tired. During the harmonic life gradually all human psycho-organic components shall get exhausted. Forming a biophysical model is not the task of the biologist or physicist alone, a good model can successfully constructed only by common, collective-work. This is typically the task of the biophysicist and a problem which falls within the competence of this discipline. Model is always an approximation, the user of the model has to take into consideration that he can approach only the absolute truth just through the endless series of relative truths. We use the Le-Chatelier principle and determine the measure of psychical organization.

A Metapsychology of the Unrepresented

The terms unrepresented and unrepresented states are increasingly being referred to in psychoanalytic discourse, without our having established a generally agreed upon consensus about their definition, use or meaning. While these particular designations were never used by Freud, a careful reading of his work reveals them to be qualities that characterize the initial state of both the drive and perception. This paper attempts to place these terms in a clinically useful, metapsychological perspective by reviewing their conceptual origin in Freud and examining their elaboration and clinical relevance in the work of Bion, Winnicott, and Green. These concepts should prove especially useful for understanding and addressing problems presented by non-neurotic patients and psychic organizations and will help expand the reach and efficacy of psychoanalytic understanding and technique to increasing numbers of contemporary patients.

Understanding the psychodynamic functioning of patients with PTSD and CPTSD: qualitative analysis from the OPD 2 interview

The traumatic event produces intolerable excitations to the psychic apparatus that searches to relief them through the production of symptoms. When established, patients with post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) may experience flashbacks, somatizations, negative emotions about themselves, and difficulty in social contact. This work seeks to understand how the psychodynamic functioning of women victims of interpersonal and urban violence, diagnosed with these disorders, is organized, identifying traumatic experiences, ways of interpersonal relationships, conflicts and psychic structures and use of defense mechanisms, and for peculiarities that may differentiate these disorders. The qualitative transversal method was used through the content analysis of clinical interviews based on the Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnosis (OPD-2). The sample of this study consisted of five women with PTSD and five with CPTSD. The following categories were created: reasons for seeking care, symptoms and desire for treatment, traumatic developmental events, and characteristics of the psychic functioning. Early trauma generates psychic organizations with greater disintegration. A new traumatic event destabilizes the psychic organization and intensifies symptoms. Relationships were marked by dependence and isolation. Participants with CPTSD presented tendency to disintegration related to the object relation regulation and the psychic conflict was of Individuation versus Dependence, with more primitive flaws in object representations, existential need for the other and direct discharge of impulses. Participants with PTSD had moderate to low level of object relation integration and the conflict was need to be care of versus self-sufficiency, with self-representations being fragile and with reduced capacity to manage impulses. Thus, it could be observed that OPD-2 is capable of assessing in a broad and deep way patients with traumatic disorders, in addition to identifying essential peculiarities to guide health professionals towards treatment in the search for better quality of life for patients.

Revival of the Fundamental Anthropological Situation: Supervision, Intromission, Trans*, and the Sexual1

ABSTRACT This article focuses on conflicts stemming from the vertical and hierarchically ridden transmission of psychoanalysis through the supervision process. Drawing on a Laplanchian framework, the author argues that the intromission of violent signifiers emanating from the supervisor is liable to alter the supervisee’s idiosyncratic functions and attack their thinking activity. To illustrate this argument, the author recounts his own supervised treatment of a transgender adolescent during which the supervisor–supervisee transference lapsed into a sadomasochistic relationship and a folie-à-deux, leading to the premature termination of both the therapy and the supervision. An initial interpretation of this experience explores the theoretical bias associated with transgender subjectivities, which blinded the supervisor and made him irrationally aggressive. A second post hoc reading of this case reveals the therapist’s own blind spot: his overidentification with the patient and his ensuing need to protect the latter from pathologization. Accordingly, the failed supervision may be viewed as an attack on the third-party function linked to the patient’s psychic organization. Finally, the countertransference madness to which the therapist succumbed with his supervisor can be understood as the unbinding of repressed infantile sexuality and the reenactment of paradoxical messages intromitted to the patient’s body ego by his parents.

Recuperação Psicológica após Adoecimento Grave e Internação em UTI

Abstract The effects of critical illness and hospitalization in intensive care units (ICU) have been associated with the presence of negative psychological consequences. This study explores the experiences of sick people who were admitted to an ICU, seeking to know its repercussions on the self. In-depth qualitative interviews and participant observations were carried out with two people since their ICU admission until at least six months after discharge from the unit. Data was analyzed following an adaptation of the clinical qualitative method within a longitudinal frame and interpreted with Winnicott’s psychoanalytic perspective. This research managed to describe participants’ lived experiences and the ways they affected their psychic organization. To the interviewed, these experiences configured threshold situations which promoted a process of psychic disintegration. Psychological recovery, then, depends on the articulation of lived experiences, and is supported by facilitating intersubjective relationships that promote the expression of personal potentialities.

Same Sex Parenthood

Abstract With respect to same-sex parenting, we are obliged to take a renewed look at the relevance of the theory of the Oedipus complex in its « simple » form, just as Freud himself found it necessary to do (Freud 1923b). We could argue that the psychical flexibility that is typical of human beings helps same-sex parents to implement in their children a fantasy scenario that supports the structuring of their psychical organization.

Contribution to the Study of the Dynamics of the Self (I)

Abstract The author retraces, by means of a patient’s short analysis, the reshuffling of the forces at play in his psychic life. The article is about the continuity of the dreamlike sequences, which have highlighted the evolution of the patient’s ability to reconstruct a link with his objects, despite the influence of a narcissistic sector of his personality that hindered its development. All of this clinical material has enabled the author to support her theory of the balance between life drives and death drives, between reality-ego and narcissistic ego, which share the entire psychic organization.

For Want of a Respondent: Climate Guilt, Solastalgia, and Responsiveness

Discourses on the climate crisis and the Anthropocene are shaped by a defect in relationality: by the want of a respondent, that is, by both the will for someone to respond to the discourse and the definite lack of one. The want of a respondent testifies to an interdependence between psychic organization and the shape of the earth, in which the concept of guilt is a key regulator, articulated as economical, juridical, and moral indebtedness. This article discusses the concept of solastalgia to describe the complication of responsiveness that culminates in negotiations of guilt, and analyzes the super-ego, according to Freud the psychical organ that produces the sense of guilt, as linking the human psyche to climate history. The aim of the article is to carve out the temporalities entangled in the concept of guilt, which tends to be comprehended as only backwards-oriented causation, but also comprises obligation, which provides an opening for futurity and transgenerational concern. In order to show this, the article reads the last poem by Droste-Hülshoff (An einem Tag wo feucht der Wind) as renegotiating the metaphysical position that could respond to evocations of guilt.

Lorsque l’intersexuation rencontre la psychanalyse. Entre norme et renouvellement théorique

IntroductionIntersexualiton, now referred to as a variation from the norm of the binary of the sexes, raises many challenges for law, medicine, but also for psychoanalysis. AimOur contribution aims to show that, whatever the field which takes up it, it comes to reveal on the one hand the weight of the bisexual norm on the organization of the company and of what takes place there and on the other hand, the power of the movement to maintain this standard, at all costs. Guided by psychoanalysis, this contribution aims to support the hypothesis that this enterprise of upholding the norm serves the safeguard of an infantile sexual theory that operates right to the heart of the psychoanalytic theory of the difference between the sexes. MethodFrom a careful reading of the psychic movements of its author, of repression and displacement, which can be identified in the construction of Freudian theory, we will show that intersexuality puts the centrality of the difference between the sexes in crisis. Taking as a methodological guide the psychoanalytic tools and concepts whose centrality, not of the difference of the sexes, but of the Sexual drive, the stake will then be to consider a theoretical model to think the clinic of intersexualization which does not collide to the limits imposed by the normativity of the binary difference between the sexes. ResultsBy integrating gender into psychoanalytic theory in a model supporting the primacy of the intersubjective dimension in the genesis of psychic organization, Jean Laplanche's gender assignment theory is posed as a model that emerges from anatomical determinism. ConclusionIf the Laplanchian conception allows us to support the importance of early relationships and the fundamental doubt in which they are rooted in order to distinguish what we call the singularity of the intersubjective experience of intersexuation, it could also constitute a fruitful path for the clinical work by clearing the path of subjectivation from the cumbersome anatomical determinism.

Some Stress Aspects from Psycho-biophysical Point of View

Selye published his famous theory of the stress in Nature in 1936. For the stress motto is the inscription at the main entrance of the Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery (Montreal): “Neither the prestige of your subject, and the power of your instruments, nor the extent of your learned¬ness and the precision of your planning, can substitute for the originality of your approach and the keenness of your observation.” The stress in the human organism is a perturbation. This perturbation is regulates by negative feedback. All physiological parameters characterizing the organism oscillate between a minimum and maximum value. The stress is properly a general adaptational answer rised under the influence of some stressor, with characteristic but not specific changes. The organism can, in general, get along namely by switching on also another regulatory mechanism for the convienent control of the altered physiological parameter. All these surplus regulations need excees-energy from the side of the organism, contribute to wear it and for this very reason accelerate the process, of aging. We use the Le-Chatelier principle and determine the measure of psychical organization. For the all laboratorial parameters exists five zones: optimum (1), admissible (2a., 2b.), dangerous (3a., 3b.), inactivity (4a., 4b.) and inviability (5a., 5b.). As a conclusion, the present medical science reserves the word perinormal for naming biophysical, biochemical and physiological responses in a wide range that warn us referring to the existence of mainly quantitative or reversible qualitative changes and the possibility of irreversibly pathological qualitative alterations. We presented of the biophysical modeling of the creativity and talk over the psychological balance of the man.

The unknown and the horrific in the appearance of evil: On the borderline of presence and absence in transference and countertransference relationships

Psychotherapists currently find themselves considering the extent to which sociopolitical and economic issues in a globalized world can affect the evolutionary nature of the psychic organizations sustaining the individual. It seems we are mostly witnessing a weakening of the psychic structures that contain and maintain a sufficient and constant level of integration and unity of sense within the individual–world relationship. Patients frequently come into analysis with invalidating states of anxiety, panic attacks, and the explosion of sudden psychotic crises, accompanied by experiences of depersonalization and derealization. What I would like to examine in depth relates to the influence of the trans-subjective in us as psychotherapists, committed to dealing with psychic disorders that involve us as persons emotionally and intellectually present in our times, with a sense of awareness and responsibility. The quality of the treatment depends, among other things, on the effective elaboration of fullness and emptiness that one generates in the resonance emerging from the process of transference and countertransference. The word, the presence, and the absence, physically and mentally, of the psychoanalyst and the patient are recognized as those activators of potential transformation which are an appropriate form of medicine at an analyst’s disposal during the process of changing a pathogenic state.

The Natural Medium as Carrier of Meanings and Their Decoding by Living Beings: Biosemiotics in Action

The synthetic, integrative significance of biosemiotics as a modern interdisciplinary research program is under discussion in the article. Aimed at studying the cognitive and life activity of living beings, which are capable of recognizing signals and extracting the meanings, biosemiotics serves as a conceptual node that combines some important notions of theoretical biology, evolutionary epistemology, cognitive science, phenomenology, neuroscience and neurophilosophy as well as the theory of complex adaptive systems and network science. Worlds of perception and actions of living beings are built in the process of co-evolution, in structural coupling and in enactive interaction with the surrounding natural environment (Umwelt). Thereby the biosemiotic theories developed by the founders of biosemiotics (J. von Uexküll, Th. Sebeok, G. Prodi, H. Pattie) are conceptually closed to the system-structural evolutionary approach developed in synergetics by H. Haken and S.P. Kurdyumov, the conception of autopoiesis (H. Maturana and F. Varela), second-order cybernetics (H. von Foerster), the conception of enactivism in cognitive science (F. Varela, E. Thompson, A. Noë). The key to comprehending the processes of extracting and generating meanings is that every living organism lives in the subjectively built world (Umwelt), so that its Umwelt and its internal psychic organization become parts of a single autopoietic system. According to the well-known expression of G. Bateson, information is a not indifferent difference or a difference that makes a difference. Differences become information when a cognitive agent as an interpreter, acting as part of an autopoietic system, sees signs in these differences that make meanings.

La question du diagnostic psychologique en clinique de la douleur

Classically, the medical approach focuses on the close fit between the site, intensity, type of pain and objective tissue damage. The medical position is interested in what is objective. The psychological position has little interest in the symptom, it is interested in the subject. Medicine is interested in the body, the psychologist is interested in what the patient says about his body, the way he feels this body leaving him, abandoning him, making him suffer. For the psychologist, the body is subjective, there is no telling of a subject that is valid for another subject. The question therefore lies in what the patient presents to us and not in the reality of a disease. Pain has a definite anchoring and bodily appearance for everyone. Then the complexity for the clinical pain psychologist will be to articulate what is objective, i.e. the symptom, with what is subjective, i.e. the subject. It is not the medical sense that we are going to seek but the meaning of the subject, which makes sense for the subject. Nevertheless, what we learn or relearn from the pain clinic is that there is no physical pain without psychological counterpart and it is essential to think reciprocally: that is, there is no mental disorder without physical correlation. During his clinical activity in a chronic pain department, the psychologist performs the functions of evaluation psychological and psychopathological diagnosis. This process of tracking the places and functions of pain in the history and psychic organization of the patient in pain is essential for the care of the suffering body in a necessary somato-psychic round trip. However, the nosographical reorganization led to a renaming through which it may be hard to find one's way. This confusion is also maintained by the medical care of the psychic symptomatology, when provided by “somatic” medicine. To make a diagnosis questions the place and purpose of the approach: how it settles inside the therapeutic relationship, which goal is adapted to what type of care, who is sharing this goal, who discusses it… many questions that maintain humility and make room for what can happen. Hence the diagnosis opens and does not close, it helps to give meaning to what does not make sense, or not anymore. But the diagnosis also can sterilize thoughts and care if given with no preoccupation of its purpose and address. Thus, it would probably be more accurate to speak about a process of diagnosis, as it takes time to reach the registered painful trace, taking space in the internal space, and to get out of the “organicity” in which the patient settled down. When psychologists, who perform psychological and psychopathological evaluation functions, are absent or if the psychologist does not participate in this process, how is the psychic dimension understood, or even what can be understood of the psychic dimension? A subsidiary question arises: and who occupies this place?

L’impact psychologique de la douleur en soins palliatifs : entre majoration de l’angoisse de mort et renforcement du sentiment d’existence, un impact psychologique complexe

This is a theorical and clinical reflection of psychologists and doctors, grounded in palliative care caregivers practice where interdisciplinary is at the heart of ethical reflection. A better understanding of pain in its psychological aspects will help to improve the care of patients in end of life and will help interdisciplinary thinking. The management of pain in palliative care is a priority. For the patient, the experience of pain causes a significant impact physically and psychologically. Impacts of pain on the psychic sphere include an increase death anxiety and impede the ability to think. However, although pain disrupts the patient's existential foundation, it can sometimes present positive functions for the psychological dynamics. This article aims to question and understand the psychological repercussions of pain in palliative care : What functions may have pain in patients psychological process? These reflexive approach about pain management will lead us to raise ethical questions and to brighlight the necessity of interdisciplinary discussion. In palliative care, the disease puts the patient's psycho dynamics under strain. The disease deteriorates the body as the support of narcissistic foundations, which will then be altered. These disruptions disturb the identity of the individual as they alter the perception of self. In this context, pain will have a significant impact. While the presence of the disease requires a defensive reorganization to adapt to a difficult reality, the pain tends to restrict the adaptive faculties of the subject. The feeling of pain reminds to the patients, at every moment, the existence of pathology. Pain causes a divestment of external reality and “freezes” the ability to think. Futhermore the experience of pain may suggest a worsening of the general condition, meaning the imminent end of life: Pain has the function of an alarm, indicating a risk of injury tend to increase death anxiety already caused by the existence of an incurable disease. Paradoxically, although the pain disrupts the existential psychic construction, the pain may have positive functions in the psychological dynamics. Pain, by its impact, tends to reduce anxiety by concentrating on one body area. Feeling the pain can also participate in maintaining the sens of existence: All bodily perceptions, even painful, attest of the fact of being alive and give an access to the feeling of being alive. The pain may be, for some patients, the only “purpose” because when the disease has completely destabilized the foundations of identity, feeling pain is continuing to be. The management of pain can become the primary objective for the patient, the center of its concerns. Through a displacement mechanism being centered on the treatment may allow the patients to focus on a manageable element. The pain is also involved in the representations of the body. The feeling of pain generates a work on subjectivity and leads to a perception of the body as personal and intimate. To conclude, pain is a true disruptive experience for a person. It breaks the already precarious balance caused by the existence of disease and end of life situation. But whether the pain disturbs the individual in its internal dynamics, it also can be a carrier of the psychic organization. The pain management in a palliative context requires to integrate in the caregiver's patient's care the reflection on the psychic impact of pain. Is allows to query the care process beyond of the symptoms treatment and to adapt the care closer to the patient's need. Our reflection promotes the recognition of the subject in his singularity, in his personal and subjective construction. By giving its place to the recognition of human being in its psychological dimension, the interdisciplinary then becomes the keystone of our reflection: by bridging a plurality of views, this approach offers to build different frames of thinking and encourages comprehensive patient care.