Psychoanalytic Process Research Articles

Nachträglichkeit and psychoanalytic creativity

ABSTRACT This article sheds light on the concept of Nachträglichkeit as a basic psychoanalytic concept that not only contributes to the explanation of the dynamic evolution of traumatization but also may serve as a basic concept in the understanding of the creativity inherent in the transformative process towards curative psychic change. We will argue 1) that Freud’s concept of Nachträglichkeit can be seen in a broader perspective than as a way to understanding only the mechanism of the trauma. This will be done through a presentation of some fundamental and more recent viewpoints and interpretations of the concept; 2) that the concept of Nachträglichkeit as a complex dynamic causality of proactive and retroactive processes is a basic concept in the understanding of psychoanalytic practice as such; 3) that the dynamics of the curative effects of the psychoanalytic process may rely on the analyst’s ability to include conscious and unconscious creativity in the work with the repetitive aspects of Nachträglichkeit.

I Can’t Forget What You Couldn’t Tell Me: A Psychoanalyst Listens to Asylum Seekers

This paper details my psychoanalytic process evaluating refugees as part of their application for asylum. It focuses on the emergence of unrepresented content and abject states within the intersubjective matrix that lead to collaborative creation of a story of trauma. Such intra- and inter-personal encounters are structured by the larger social, political, and cultural contexts that support, limit, structure, erase, and determine what can be known and told. Knowledge of traumatic inscription necessitates attunement to nonverbal affective states in both survivor and witness as well a receptive society that is able to tolerate grief, acknowledge the degradation and depravity unleashed in victim and victimizer during violence, and absorb survivors’ mournful morality tales.

Autotheory: Toward the Embodying of Analytic Framing.

Autotheory is an emerging idea in feminist theory that emphasizes the inevitability of the subjective and embodied personal within any development, understanding, or application of theory. Autotheory offers a way to bring the sexed and gendered body of the analyst back into view in clinical practice and is a possible route to relibidinizing psychoanalytic theory. The embodied part of the "personal" contribution of the analyst will be examined through conceptions of framing and the frame, extending and further conceptualizing ideas prominently addressed within relational and intersubjective theories. Framing activity as a developmental goal for psychoanalytic process is considered in relation to the ways in which autotheoretical texts enact or depict the unceasing interplay of relational experience and theory that forms subjectivity. A clinical vignette describes the experience of framing activity during remote videoconference therapy.

Unrepresented States and the Bodily Encoded Unconscious

Unrepresented states are considered important obstacles to the psychoanalytic process. They describe elements that are beyond the reach of the symbolic network with which psychoanalysis is used to working. The emergence of unrepresented states has often been described as the failure of the caregiver to symbolize the child's emotions and thereby enable the child to connect his or her bodily states to the psychic representation. Psychoanalysis, however, has been reluctant to name the locus of these inscriptions beyond the symbolic network as the body-self. The author proposes to do so and discusses two concepts for describing the dynamics of the bodily unconscious and the therapeutic method for calibrating our technique to unrepresented states. The concept of the encapsulated body engram is used to describe the dynamic structure of the bodily unconscious. Processes of disorganization, petrification, perceptual defense, and secondary self-stimulation form the dynamics of the bodily unconscious. The method of somatic narration systematically examines body sensations of the analysand, reverses the defense processes of the engram, and leads to a reorganization of the body self, which can now find connection to symbolic structures again. This requires a more active analytic stance that responds to the defensive processes with which the subject fends off the threat of annihilation he or she was exposed to in the traumatic engram. A clinical vignette illustrates the mode of operation.

Unconscious processes in psychoanalysis, CBT, and schema therapy.

Unconscious processes in psychoanalysis, CBT, and schema therapy.

What Is Expressed in "Free-Association"? Theoretical Notes on the Erotic Poetics of freier Einfalle.

Despite the historical importance of free-association to psychoanalysis, there are theoretical tensions within the discipline as to how we think about what is expressed in free association and why it might be important to listen and become aware of ourselves free associatively. This method has usually been conceived of as a mode of speaking with the purpose of listening in order to hear and to arrive at the formulations of interpretation and insight. Rather than solely having this epistemological purpose, it can also be considered as an ontological freeing of subtle energies leading to greater aliveness. Pivotal to this way of approaching psychoanalytic processes are the "helpful notions" of psychic energy and of repression, with the latter being understood not as an eviction of representational forms from the domain of consciousness, but rather as the deformation of representations into traces of psychic energy that remain actively disruptive within us. The author suggests that, through free-associative processes, the patient and the psychoanalyst can become aware of movements of psychic energy that cannot be formulated in the representationality of self-consciousness. This unorthodox reading of Freud's discoveries leads to an interesting "ontoethical" appreciation of psychoanalytic processes as somatically grounded and erotically poetic.

Comparing Psychoanalytic Process in Consulting Room and Teleconference: A Naturally Occurring Controlled Experiment.

In response to COVID-19, clinicians migrated psychoanalyses to videoconference platforms, creating an opportunity for a controlled empirical study in which only the site varied. There will be no differences in the quality of the psychoanalytic process (QAP) in the consulting room (CR) and in videoconference (VC). Individuals' defensive functioning (adaptive style) will be associated with their capacity to maintain the analytic process when treatment moves from CR to VC. Underlying was the concept that empirical research of clinical psychoanalysis is possible. Forty psychoanalysts of all ranks in the Accreditation Council for Psychoanalytic Education, Inc., accredited programs contributed 50 cases. Participants scored QAP at each site on a 0-to-100 scale. They reported patients' characteristic defense mechanisms using the Defensive Functioning Scale (DFS). To minimize bias, investigators calculated median DFS scores from data provided by clinicians. They compared QAP scores in CR and VC for the entire group without and with DFS scores, and for each DFS level (when feasible) using the related-samples Wilcoxon signed-rank test. There was no difference in QAP between CR and VC for the group as a whole; but QAP of the Minor Image Distorting group degraded significantly from CR to VC. This was the only group showing a significant difference. While statistical significance may not reflect clinical significance, individual differences in adaptation to telepsychoanalysis warrant further study. Empirical research of phenomena occurring naturally in clinical psychoanalysis appears feasible.

Incorporating Brain Explanations in Psychoanalysis: Tennessee Williams as a Case Study.

Despite Tennessee Williams's genius as a playwright who could represent his inner emotional struggles in his art, psychoanalysis was unable to free him from the powerful "blue devils" within him. Williams's inability to engage with psychoanalysis presents an opportunity to discuss ways that contemporary thinking about brain structure and function might guide our understanding and treatment of patients such as Williams. One of the core defensive behaviors that made analysis difficult for Williams was his avoidance of painful emotions through compulsive writing, sex, alcohol, and drug-addictive behaviors. These pre-mentalized reactions became Williams's habitual procedural body response, which occurs below the level of the self-reflective brain. Within a relatively traditional ego psychological frame, Lawrence Kubie, Williams's analyst in 1957, attempted to prohibit the compulsive behaviors to be able to process the underlying painful affects in the analysis. However, given that this level of mind and brain functions was Williams's chief means of regulation, Williams could not engage in the psychoanalytic process and left the treatment after one year. I propose that Williams was operating in brain circuits below the level of "higher" reflection or interpretation-receptive circuits and therefore he was unable to make use of a traditional ego psychological model. A review of these brain circuits seeks to encourage therapists to utilize simplified brain explanations for patients, which can destigmatize the pathologic behaviors and enhance engagement in the treatment process.

LO NEGATIVO EN TRANSFERENCIA. DESAFÍOS A LA CONSECUCIÓN DEL TRATAMIENTO

Starting from a clinical material where there is an attempt to interrupt treatment, this paper proposes to visualize the transference vicissitudes and the difficulties that arise when giving continuity to a psychoanalytic process. In order to contribute to the training of the psychotherapist, a historical account is carried out, enabling a theoretical-clinical interweaving. Concepts such as negative transference and negative therapeutic reaction are presented, from Freud to other historically significant authors who have contributed to this conceptualization.Changing techniques is considered key for the psychotherapist in training, especially with patients who hover on the margins of neurosis.

Foregrounding fathers: Reflections on a psychoanalytic research process.

Foregrounding fathers: Reflections on a psychoanalytic research process.

Music, Insight and the Development of the Thinking Voice in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

This paper explores insight and the development of the thinking voice in the psychoanalytic process. It begins with music and images, narrating an important Australian historical event. The composers have created a dreaming space, and for this paper, a metaphor for the analytic space and the creative process. At once physical, aural and visual, it also exists within and reflects the patient's and analyst's shared historical and cultural frame. It is a liminal space, for exploration, crossing, and a product of the alchemy created between patient and analyst. Pickering's (2016) and Grier's (2019) consideration of musicality as an essential part of the analytic experience assists recognition of the multidimensional nature of the space created between patient and analyst. Ferro and Civitarese's (2015) conceptualization of the space where patient and analyst dream one another, and Baranger and Baranger's (2008) discussion of the bi personal field are pertinent here. Symington's idea of insight as an essential ‘thing in itself’, within the individual patient helps articulation of insight as a product of an internalized linking, or parental intercourse, enabling movement to a separate third position.

Psychoanalysis, the Sufi, and the Story

Psychoanalysis, the Sufi, and the Story

Bastard children of the avant-garde: artistic expression in the Cubist and Abstract Expressionist movements and the psychoanalytic process.

The art movements of Cubism and Abstract Expressionism, influenced by Jung and Freud, emerged as a symbolic representation of the collective unconscious, and became an expression of the challenging times of a culture in transition. Similar to the technique of interpretation in psychoanalysis, Cubist painting was a method of demarcation, rather than an imitation of what was seen in the physical world. Also, as an expression of collective experience, the avant-garde movement of Abstract Expressionism emerged out of Cubism. It moved away from the logical idealism of Cubism into an expression of felt experience. This paper will review the art of the avant-garde Cubist and Abstract Expressionist movements. The psychology of the artistic process will be explored in relation to psychoanalysis and collective experience.

The sources of the concept of extension in the work of W. R. Bion

ABSTRACT Bion frequently resorts to mathematical thought in his use of abstractions that account for “elements of psychoanalysis”; among these, the concept of extension plays a central role. The author's hypothesis is that Bion borrowed the concept of extension from Alfred North Whitehead, whose book An Introduction to Mathematics, published in 1911, Bion read. The examples that both Bion and Whitehead use to illustrate the process of extension are almost the same. It is on the basis of this concept of extension that Bion accounts for the psychic growth of each individual, and for the analytic process in terms of transference interpretations in three registers - the senses, the personal myth of the patient, and passion. Bion's description of extension in the psychoanalytical field helps to make explicit some aspects of the psychoanalytic process, with an emphasis on the intuition of the analyst. The author's argument is illustrated with clinical material from the analysis of an autistic child.

Maternal Erotic Transferences and the Work of the Abject.

Kristeva's profound and comprehensive understanding of maternal eroticism allows us to examine the ways in which a negative maternal transference, structured through the work of the abject, can be viewed as a maternal erotic transference in its devitalizing form. Through the use of a clinical case, the revitalizing experiences of maternal eroticism within analytic process facilitate the emergence of a maternal erotic transference in its vitalizing form. The lack of erotic dimensions in maternal transferences, it is argued, may be viewed as present absences, and the development of a positive maternal erotic transference as an achievement. André Green's visual-spatial metaphor of foreclosed space is extended as an imploding force wherein abject signifiers do their devitalizing work. In contrast, the usable space of a healthy psychoanalytic process is viewed as the envelope around which abject signifiers emerge, becoming available for psychoanalytic work. A transformation related to the author's experiences with her dying mother is shown to have expanded her containing capacities, including new areas of patience and receptivity. These dynamics are placed within the context of a multiverse conception of maternal eroticism, including the analyst's disciplined receptivity, viewed as an eternal signifier of the maternal.

To go through experiences – about the psychoanalytical process

ABSTRACT The distinguishing feature of psychoanalytic treatment, compared to other forms of treatment, is that it offers the opportunity to go through experiences and thereby develop to become a more psychologically experienced person. The aim of this paper is first of all to try to clarify, with the help of the philosophy of Hegel, Heidegger and Gadamer, what it means to ‘go through an experience’, to ‘learn from experience’ and to ‘become experienced’. Next, and on the basis of the clarification of the concept of experience, the aim is to develop an understanding of the clinical challenges psychoanalysis is facing when it tries to offer a kind of contact that will enable the patient, in the best case scenario, to go through the experiences that she/he has never before permitted her/himself to go through.

Shared Trauma, the Renegotiation of the Frame, and the Preservation of What Is Essential: Transformations in Psychoanalytic Treatment in the Time of the Pandemic

In this paper, the author describes a process, renegotiation of the frame, that emerged as he contemplated with his patients the continuation of work together in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Such a renegotiation lends itself to the formation of bastions, as described by Baranger and Baranger (1969); attention to these bastions demonstrates that the psychoanalytic process continues and can deepen. An extended clinical vignette is presented to illustrate. If a more broadly defined functional frame is considered, not only may the frame be used as a clinical tool in a more nuanced way, but in addition, aspects of the traditional narrowly defined frame may be seen to contribute to the formation of bastions that, unaddressed, could impede the analytic process.

Psychological-philosophical Approach to the Reflection in Altered States of Consciousness in the Research Activity of Andrey Rossokhin

The article summarized the results of the research activity of Andrey Rossokhin, which is devoted to studying the dynamics of reflection in the altered states of consciousness in the course of psychoanalytic process. These states of consciousness are characterized by transformation of the semantic space of the subject and changing forms of categorization with a transition from socially normed to new ways of rationalizing internal experience and experiences take place. By theoretical and empirical analyses, A. Rossokhin concluded that through means of the internal dialogue during the altered states of consciousness, it carries out an active reflexive rethinking activity both previously non-reflective mental content and the very strategies of reflection with the internal dialogue. This leads to qualitative alteration in value-meaning formations, activates, and brings about the personality integration into a new, more complete state.

Wounded by reality: emotional deprivation and unresolved trauma in psychoanalytical couple’s therapy

In this article, I will focus on highly conflictual couples with extensive emotional deprivation and unresolved trauma, which prevents them from developing healthy romantic relationships and overcoming the challenges entailed in any intimate attachment. I will describe how everyday interactions are experienced as threatening or even lethal movements between the partners. The question which arises in the psychoanalytical therapeutic process is how to help the couple tolerate the sensory reminders of the unresolved trauma as a necessary precursor to any process of symbolisation. In order to provide a safe enough therapeutic attachment bond, extensive time is dedicated to the emotional experience of self and the other in the here-and-now of the session, which validates the emotional experience of the couple as well as contains it. The therapy focuses on the transferential and countertransferential movements inspired by the matrix of the victim, abuser, and uninvolved witness (Davies & Frawley, 1994) to elaborate the intertwining of the unresolved trauma with the couple’s form of attachment. In order to illustrate my argument, I present two examples: one from a fictional narration and another from my clinical work.

Slasher therapy: the slasher movie as an allegory for uncovering trauma

This study aims at analyzing slasher films as potential allegories for the therapeutic process of uncovering trauma, proposing a reading of the slasher killer as a metaphor for the trauma. To perform this analysis, the plots of the movies A Nightmare on Elm Street (Bayer, 2010) and Final Girls (Schulsson, 2015), were read as possible allegories for a psychoanalytical process in which their final girls come to terms with trauma as they face the killers. This analysis is performed based on the slasher film structure as composed by Final Girl versus Slasher killer, as defined by Carol Clover (1992), and, as their confrontation takes place in what Clover calls the Terrible place, that is compared to the unconscious and its dynamics, as proposed by Sigmund Freud’s The Ego and the Id (2019). The correlation of trauma and fictional narratives is performed based on Cathy Caruth’s (1996) studies of trauma and the construction of narratives.