Psychoanalytic Listening Research Articles

“A Woman Who Found She Needed a Session of Indefinite Length”: A Look at Chapter Four of Winnicott’s Playing and Reality Through the Prism of its Modalities of Temporality

ABSTRACT This paper offers a reflection and an open, experiential reading of one of Winnicott’s most fascinating case studies. I try to show how the question of time in the psychoanalytical context emerges not only in relation to a deviation from the traditional setting but also concerns an axis inherent to some key therapeutic issues, such as the meaning of time and the temporal as a quality of holding in regression to dependency; or as a component in the transference experience or in the therapist’s holding in mind of the patient’s potential, through holding the future. The high frequency of meetings in psychoanalysis facilitates qualitative change, allowing patients and therapists to be in touch with deep, primitive strata of the psyche. Extending time in psychoanalytic treatment, therefore, whether as an ad hoc response to the patient’s needs or as an extension of the setting, is tantamount to enabling a multi-layered experience of time across the spectrum of its manifestations. Attention to the temporal component in therapy and the experience of time in the transference is a valuable resource in our work. This paper contributes to the attempt to elaborate this dimension of psychoanalytic listening.

Psychoanalytic listening: Between unconscious and conscious

Psychoanalytic listening can be deployed for enhancing the quality of clinical psychiatric practice. As a clinical skill, it should be teachable throughout the years of psychiatric residency. Nevertheless, the teaching of such important faculty is difficult due to the scarcity of a systematic, relatively structured model that can be used as an underpinning of learning that capability. This article is aimed at fulfilling a part of that lack of teaching methodology. The model offered in this article describes psychoanalytic listening as a mental process initiated by the therapist, which then goes through the patient too, which involves a continuing oscillation of unconscious apprehension and conscious comprehension. This rhythmic proceeding of affectively experiencing and rationally considering will expectedly bring about a mutual understanding between patient and therapist which then facilitates further clinical enterprises.

Intersubjectivité et médiation thérapeutiques

ObjectivesThis article sets out to define the specificity of intersubjective psychoanalytic listening in therapeutic mediations. It proposes to bring to light the presuppositions of this psychoanalytic listening as prerequisites for a possible subjective appropriation of therapeutic work by patients. MethodThe method concerns extensions of psychoanalysis, and consists in transposing the methodical and theoretical foundations of psychoanalysis into the therapeutic mediation setting. The data collection methodology is thus based on clinical observation of various forms of verbal, sensorymotor, and formal associativity, as well as the consideration of the “transferential constellation” (Freud). It is based on an analysis of “limit situations” encountered in the use of mediation treatment systems for serious narcissistic and identity disorders. ResultsThis article distinguishes six operators of intersubjective listening in therapeutic mediations: sensorymotor language, interintentionality, sensorymotor forms of the transference, emergence of primary forms of symbolisation, as well as clinicians’ use of intersubjectivity (attunement, affect sharing, dramatization, and sensorymotor dialogue), and finally the reinstatement of games that could not be played in early childhood. DiscussionEach of the operators highlighted is discussed in summary form in this article; a more in-depth analysis can be made by referring to the bibliographical indications. ConclusionPsychoanalytic listening to intersubjectivity in therapeutic mediations therefore makes it possible to give reference points, both for practice and for a qualitative evaluation of processes involved in these care protocols, which represents a heuristic tool for clinicians.

« Crown protection » ou velléités protectrices du Corona Covid-19 et ses rencontres improbables

The title of our paper could be receipted (intellectually receipted) like a paradox or like choking item. In real life of our hospital activity is not at all true because in both clinical situations the symptomatology of infectious disease was protected about a long psychotic or pseudo psychotic episode. The most important for the psychiatric stabilization was strictly observance and repetition of consultations who created a secure feel, necessarily for construction after psychodramatic real story Covid-19. Our clinical case shows the possibility of our patients to relativize the gravity of the pandemic and his impact. The modalities of psychotropic treatment are very important in this specific pathologic case and our presentation could give us new ideas in psychiatry and immunology about protection by ay antibiotherapy in pre- and post-operatory. Unlikely encounter with a disease that leads to an episode of madness and psychological care after a severe episode of Covid-19. Psychological support is upset by this disease, like the rest. The clinic returns to its original meaning: at the patient's bed to understand this new disease and its protective and/or revealing effects. Clinical presentation of an unlikely encounter in the context of the Covid-19 epidemic. Encounter with both a severe form of this new disease and psychopathological expression in intensive care and post-reanimation units. Psychological support in a patient suffering from a delusional episode and identity disorders related to Covid-19. Psychological support is disrupted by this disease, as is the rest. The clinic returns to its original meaning: in the patient's bed to understand this new disease and its protective and/or revealing effects. The singular and psychoanalytic listening allows the patient to understand the process of constructing his episode of delusional appearance, like dreamlike construction. Adaptation and creation of a clinic requiring to be as close as possible to the patient to allow the psychological restructuring having been disorganized in connection with the disease but also with the hospital and family environment, strongly impacted by anxiety.

A construção da escuta-flânerie: uma pesquisa psicanalítica com socioeducadores

Resumo A partir de rodas de conversa com adolescentes acautelados em uma instituição socioeducativa, desenvolvidas pelo Núcleo de Pesquisa no qual esta investigação está inserida, decidimos ampliar os espaços de escuta aos agentes socioeducadores. A apresentação massiva de real, por meio da estética do lugar, das cenas presenciadas na instituição e de algumas narrativas dos agentes, foi sendo engendrada a partir de dois pressupostos teóricos: a escuta psicanalítica e a leitura benjaminiana da posição do flâneur de Baudelaire. O flâneur, como aquele que imprime um tempo distendido à urgência, foi tomado como o correspondente corporal para a atenção flutuante. Nesse sentido, a psicanálise e a flânerie conjugaram-se a fim de abrir espaços de narração por meio dos quais os sujeitos podiam retomar pontos extraviados da história social e da sua própria. O escrito apresenta a escuta-flânerie como um modo de a escuta e a pesquisa psicanalítica estarem presentes também nesses sítios.

A Clínica Extensa na Interface entre a Universidade e a Atenção em Saúde

Resumo O presente ensaio pretende abordar a interface do trabalho entre a Universidade e a assistência à Saúde a partir da perspectiva da clínica ampliada em Psicanálise. Considerações teórico-metodológicas sobre a Clínica Extensa e o Narcisismo são os fundamentos de onde partiremos para abordar a especificidade da escuta psicanalítica no contexto institucional. Visamos demonstrar a experiência de acolhimento e acompanhamento de famílias e de díades mãe-bebê desde o início da gestação, incluindo condições críticas de internação em UTI-Neonatal. Faremos isso através da apresentação de uma proposta de dispositivos para a observação e a intervenção, a fim de discutir a necessidade de ampliação do trabalho do psicólogo para abordar a equipe multidisciplinar, considerando os fenômenos grupais que atravessam esse tipo de trabalho. Como conclusão, assinalamos a contribuição de uma escuta psicanalítica sobre a constituição do sujeito e a ética do desejo no contexto de uma lógica complexa em Psicologia da Saúde.

The challenge of becoming supervisor/seminar leader in infant observation

ABSTRACTBecoming an infant observation supervisor/seminar leader is a complex challenge, generally experienced in a solitary way. Despite the various, creative local solutions that have been tried in different parts of the world, the issue of the training of new supervisors remains open to discussion. No formal training exists for this demanding function that includes the responsibility of maintaining and transmitting the technique, as well as sustaining the dynamic and continuity of the group. In the last several years, we have witnessed a number of colleagues who have sought to prepare themselves in different ways for this new function of supervisor: a second supervised observation, supervision in pairs of supervisors, joining a group led by an experienced supervisor, and, more recently, supervision of supervision. Based on the latter experience, the aim of this paper is to present some reflections on the training and function of the infant observation supervisor. Maintaining a certain distance, the supervisor of the new supervisor/seminar leader is in a privileged position to take a more experienced and, perhaps, calmer, detailed look at the primitive unconscious observation material. This enables the new seminar leader/supervisor the opportunity to listen to herself and to simultaneously train her psychoanalytic listening of primitive psychic phenomena.

Scenes of Self-Conduct

Casting off from the deployment of sexuality under modern biopolitics, the emergent subjectivities knitted between same-sex players and transexuals in Iran reveal networks of affiliation and fantasy best disclosed by psychoanalytic listening. Jean Laplanche's reworking of sublimation allows us to read a fantasy of fatality as evidence of transsexual inspiration in the materials gathered by Afsaneh Najmabadi's Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran (2014).

Reflections Toward an Enactive Psychoanalysis

ABSTRACTThe present work examines the meaning of embodied mind—a key notion in the thinking of biologist and epistemologist Francisco Varela—as an answer for the paradoxes and blind spots originated by the representationist approaches that underlie theories of the mind of most psychological and philosophical schools, including Freudian psychoanalysis. The understanding of this notion implies a radical review of our beliefs regarding the substantial reality of the self, the world, and the relationship between them. For this reason Varela suggests that only a nondiscursive nonanalytic praxis can allow the subject to carry on the observation, inquiry, and acceptance of the experience of himself or herself, the other, and the world as empty and groundless.. Two preliminary reflections are discussed in the paper: (a) the possibility of developing an enactive psychoanalysis, that is, a psychoanalysis that understands the experience of the constitutive frailty of the self as a potentially liberating one rather than as a flaw in the structuring of personality and its defense mechanisms, and (b) how to introduce the method of Mindfulness in the psychotherapeutic setting without interfering with the psychoanalytic listening or the patient and analyst’s relational work.

A alegre indiferença

Resumo Esta resenha apresenta o livro A clínica psicanalítica em face da dimensão sociopolítica do sofrimento, de Miriam Debieux Rosa, publicado pela Escuta/Fapesp em novembro de 2016. Trata-se de reflexões da autora a partir de suas experiências de intervenções clínicas com populações hostilizadas pelo discurso social, o que ela chamou de “intervenções psicanalíticas clínico-políticas”. A partir da necessidade de reconhecimento do diálogo da psicanálise com o discurso público, o próprio dispositivo de escuta clínica psicanalítico é colocado em pauta, tanto em seu clássico setting quanto no que diz respeito à implicação e ao lugar de escuta do analista.

A escuta a partir da Natureza e da Observação em Grande Sertão: Veredas, de Rosa

As Manoel T. Berlinck highlights, the clinical method is a result of a somewhat passive positioning, accounting for Freud’s use of the term “hovering attention” when referring to psychoanalytic listening. It is, in fact, the filling of a void occupied by a representation, or, in other words, by something whose existence is absent, despite its presence. Observation involves Lacan’s Symbolic/Real/Imaginary trio, and includes that which makes no sense, that which is strange and the Freudian Umheimlich . This article uses the concepts of Nature (Sertao/Sertanejo) and Observation as a starting point in order to interpret the representations of jaguncos to feature in the narratives and neologisms so lovingly researched by Guimaraes Rosa. The aim is to reflect on ethics woven into the sustaining of desire, despite the surprising circumstances and labyrinths that life throws before us.

MEDITATIVE PSYCHOANALYSIS.

Psychoanalysis and meditation not only compensate for the other's blind spots, but also, when practiced together, can provide a richer experience than either discipline pursued alone. After considering the way meditation cultivates heightened attentiveness, refines sensory clarity, lessens self-criticism, and increases affect tolerance, thereby deepening psychoanalytic listening, I'll examine how psychoanalytic perspectives on unconscious communication and meaning illuminate and transform the nearsightedness of meditation, aiding therapists and clients in understanding troubling thoughts, feelings, and behavior. This helps therapists deepen their capacity to help those people with whom they work. The paper also attempts to illuminate how the therapeutic relationship, conceived of in a freer and more empathic way--as the vehicle for both validating a person's experience and providing opportunities for new forms of relatedness and self-transformation--provides a crucible in which old and dysfunctional ways of caring for oneself and relating to other people emerge and new patterns of self-care and intimacy can be established. In the concluding section, I will delineate meditative psychoanalysis, my own integration of meditation and psychoanalysis. Clinical material will illustrate my theoretical reflections.

Fragilidade narcísica na adolescência: a caveira mexicana como paradoxo da vida e da morte

Adolescence is a life cycle’s period marked by the management of instinctual, biological and social demands, which require an intense psychic work. The theme of identity generates unstable moments, as the reinterpretation of the Oedipal conflictive is taking place and the detachment of child’s place is required. Given these considerations, the fragility of the adolescent’s narcissism is expected, as the ideal maintenance process of the I is consolidating. It is essential to consider the fine line between narcissistic fragility, inherent to adolescence, and the helplessness shown by the traumatic. Thus, the aim of this article is to explore the psychic constitution process and the possible consequences of a weakened I in adolescence. To this end, a qualitative method of literature review and discussion of clinical vignettes was chosen, resulting in a theoretical and clinical questioning. It can be concluded that failures occurred in the psychic constitution of the subject acquire an increase in adolescence, requiring elaborative psychic work in this phase of life. Thus, the psychoanalytic listening is presented as teenage complexities research tool, enabling the development of the traumatic. Keywords : adolescence, narcissism, psychoanalysis.

Challenges of the Psychoanalyst’s Work in the General Hospital: The Antinomy Between Psychoanalysis and Medicine

The article addresses the challenges of the psychoanalyst in the General Hospital where there is a prevalence of treatment of organic diseases in the Real of the body. The objective was to analyze, through a clinical vignette, the effects of the clinical management of the psychoanalyst in the hospital setting. Freud’s clinical device of free association as well as Jacques Lacan's theory of discourses were used to demonstrate that, from the singular and the contingent and the construction of the clinical case, it is possible to create universal concepts. The psychoanalyst's work at the General Hospital is to listen to the subject, who, through free association, is anchored in language in a particular way: when speaking, he exposes his fantasies, develops a possible knowledge about his illness and his body, in an attempt to associate the word with the Real of the body. In the General Hospital, it is the disease and not the patient that is treated: the technique is superior to the subject. Psychoanalytic listening, on the other hand, gives place to the subject, subjugated by the disease. We consider medical knowledge as a scientific knowledge that can not be ignored and we recognize the advances made in this field, especially with the support of current technological resources. However, we also consider that it is important to contemplate the risks of exalting scientific knowledge and disregarding all the factors involved in the production of a disease, such as social, economic, political and subjective ones.

The subject of Holocaust fiction

Introduction Prologue: Ghostwriting the Holocaust: The Ghost Writer, The Diary, The Kindly Ones, and Me Section One: Psychoanalytic Listening and Fictions of the Holocaust 1. Voyeurism, Complicated Mourning, and the Fetish: Cynthia Ozick's The Shawl 2. Forced Confessions: Subject Position, Framing, and the Art of Spiegelman's Maus 3. Aryeh Lev Stollman's Far Euphrates: Re-picturing the Pre-Memory Moment Section Two: Golems, Ghosts, Idols, and Messiahs: Complicated Mourning and the Inter-textual Construction of a Jewish Symptom 4. Bruno Schulz, the Messiah, and Ghost/writing the Past 5. A Jewish History of Blocked Mourning and Love 6. See Under: Mourning Section Three: Mourning Becomes the Nations: Styron, Schlink, Sebald 7. Blacks, Jews, and Southerners in William Styron's Sophie's Choice 8. (Re)Reading the Holocaust from a German Point of View: Berhard Schlink's The Reader 9. Mourning and Melancholia in W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz Epilogue: Holocaust, Apartheid, and the Slaughter of Animals: J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello and Cora Diamond's Difficulty of Reality Notes Bibliography Index

The intelligence of the unconscious and different forms of psychoanalytic listening

The design of the psychoanalytic situation and relation – the stable frames, the frequency, the analysand’s free association, the analyst’s evenly suspended attention – is unique in facilitating contact with unconscious levels and processes in both participants as well as the unconscious communication between them.In this paper I wish to highlight the intelligence and the creativity of the unconscious: how it is displayed in dream-life, in the formation of new inner structures and new ways of envisioning life and in the unconscious interplay between the analysand and the analyst, what I will call the Freudian here-and-now. Dreaming and dream-life will have a central position in this, in the foreground or in the background.

Zen meditation, reverie, and psychoanalytic listening.

The author reviews the literature on the relation between Buddhist meditation and psychoanalytic listening and argues that the influence of the dynamic unconscious is not addressed in this literature, which engenders a pragmatic overvaluation of attention and an accompanying unexamined devaluation of the analyst's experiences of inattention. The article emphasizes contemporary psychoanalytic theories that are consistent with basic Buddhist principles and their influences on recommendations for psychoanalytic listening. The author also examines the role of intention as a guiding principle in psychoanalytic listening by elaborating the issues at hand in terms of both Zen Buddhist and contemporary psychoanalytic conceptualizations of various fluctuating mind states, such as reverie.

Listening genres: The emergence of relevance structures through the reception of sound

This article proposes the concept of listening genres and analyzes the constitution of a particular case, “psychoanalytic listening.” The aim is to conceptualize listening practices by focusing on how they create contextual frameworks of interaction, which hold the capacity to direct behavior. The argument is that through listening, sound images produce different contexts depending on the particular way in which an individual listens. Social actors, thus, listen both pragmatically and intentionally. Hearers listen with a purpose, they look for (directed) meanings, and the outcome of their interpretation transforms various social dimensions. To exemplify how listening genres are produced and reproduced, this article explores psychoanalytic listening as a genre in a multi-family psychoanalytic setting in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Traumatismes et traces : données expérimentales

BackgroundsWhether traumatic events and history enhance the risk of later psychopathology is no longer controversial since early description of posttraumatic stress disorder by psychoanalysts after World War I. However, whether the best model is the so-called vulnerability one (meaning genetically predetermined development) or the probabilistic epigenetic one (meaning that trauma can impact biological levels in a permanent manner as well) is still debated. ObjectiveTo critically review the literature to explore supporting data on how “trauma gets under the skin” leaving measurable consequences at a biological and/or psychological level. MethodsI critically reviewed the literature and selected studies investigating impact of early trauma (e.g. severe deprivation, maltreatment and/or abuse) at biological and/or psychological levels. I will also summarize experimental data from recent work of the Salpétrière group focusing on the impact of traumatic experience on early interaction or psychoanalytic listening. ResultsThere is now a consistent amount of data supporting the probabilistic epigenetic model of development. We found studies showing how traumatic experience can impact development from: (1) animal models of early separation; (2) human longitudinal studies controlling for confounding variables such as genetic ones; (3) human studies with different neurobiological correlates (e.g. neuro-imaging data; electro-encephalographic parameters; epigenetic markers). Furthermore, we were able to show in three different experiments that: (1) psychoanalysts are able to identify, without explicit knowledge and above the level of chance, healthy adults whose siblings had experienced cancer during childhood; (2) false positive ultrasound screening for soft markers may impact mother-infant interaction negatively; (3) caregivers of infants who will later develop autism adapt their interaction dynamic unconsciously before being aware of child psychopathology. ConclusionTrauma should not anymore be regarded only as an “outside” event as impact can be evidenced at biological levels that have long lasting effects during development and even in next generations.

A escuta Psicanalítica em um contexto de atendimento interdisciplinar

A aproximação de práticas dos diferentes campos de atuação profissional tem, historicamente, se efetivado ao longo dos anos bem como tem sido crescente o debate em torno da interdisciplinaridade. Sua discussão a partir de relatos de experiência profissional torna-se, portanto, oportuna. Este artigo visa a contribuir para essa discussão, na medida em que apresenta e discute o atendimento interdisciplinar que envolve as áreas de atuação profissional psicológica e jurídica. Neste artigo, apresentamos e discutimos o relato de uma experiência interdisciplinar de estágio que inclui alunos e supervisores dos cursos de Psicologia, Direito e Serviço Social. Destacamos a atuação oportuna do estagiário da Psicologia, a partir da escuta psicanalítica, em um momento específico do atendimento interdisciplinar, o da orientação jurídica e psicossocial. A escuta psicanalítica figura como forma de atendimento que visa a criar condições propícias ao posicionamento do sujeito diante de questões que frequentemente o levam a buscar orientação jurídica e psicossocial. Apresentamos um caso em que a busca inicial pela orientação com respeito ao registro civil da criança de uma usuária dos serviços da universidade resultou em um atendimento psicológico com implicações particulares em sua subjetividade.