Unconscious Fantasies Research Articles

Some Thoughts on Interpretation in Child Psychoanalysis

ABSTRACT Interpretation is the primary tool of psychoanalysts. While there are other technical interventions we use, they serve as steps toward interpretation itself. Thoughts about the meaning of interpretation, the aims of the interpretative process, and the multiple dimensions of the methods used are examined. Examples from several child psychoanalyses are given to illustrate the application of interpretation. The interpretive work contained within the analytic relationship with analyst as transference object, developmental object, and the object of projection of the patient’s sense of self are all demonstrated, as well as the interpretation of resistance, conflict, defense, and the enactment of unconscious fantasy.

An economic model of the drives from Friston's free energy perspective.

This paper is focused on the theory of drives, particularly on its economic model, which was an integral part of Freud's original formulation. Freud was aiming to make a link between the psychic energy of drives and the biophysical rules of nature. However, he was not able to develop this model into a comprehensive system linking the body and the mind. The further development of psychoanalytic theory, in various attempts to comprehend the theory of drives, can be described as taking different approaches. Some of them equate drives with bodily impulses, others abandon the economic model, a few stay with Freud's original model. I believe that the Friston notion of free energy and the hierarchical model of the brain allows us to develop this model and to integrate the economic model into some contemporary theories of drives. I argue against those theories equating drives with biological impulses. My arguments are supported by Freud's project itself but also by recent developments within neuro-psychoanalysis describing the process of mentalizing homeostasis, interoceptive signals and relations with caregivers. I argue for those theories which see the drives as psychic forces, which through developmental processes and cathexes acquire aims and objects, and become intertwined with impulses originating internally and externally, such as affect, interoceptive impulses, perception of the external world, and impulses from erotogenic zones in particular. Here, I present my analysis of the compatibility and consistency of free energy and the hierarchical model perspective, and two psychoanalytical traditions of thoughts: French psychoanalysis and the post-Kleinian school of British psychoanalysis. In particular, my analysis focuses on the contemporary Kleinian notion of unconscious phantasies, especially Bronstein's description of their semiotic aspects. Secondly, I look at Segal's view of drives as dialectic forces of adaptation vs. conservatism. Analyzing the French tradition, I focus on Green's perspective on the drives, Lacan's distinction between drives and desire, and Penot's description of the process of subjectivation. I conclude that free energy, as described by Friston, can be seen as a source of the drives' energy and the process of minimizing it is an equivalent of what Freud described as binding the free energy, in which psychic unbound energy acquires distinctive features and becomes bound.

Investor Emotions and the Psychodynamics of Asset Pricing Bubbles: A Chinese Perspective

This paper explores the powerful emotions unleashed during asset pricing bubbles. Adopting a psychoanalytic perspective, we develop a five-stage path-dependent model of such financial crises and test this empirically on the Chinese 2005–2008 and 2014–2016 stock market bubbles. Results are consistent with our underlying theory and demonstrate how investors experience a range of highly charged emotions directly related with different market states during such episodes. Our evidence suggests that if we wish properly to understand and explain such destructive events, we also need to recognize the fundamental role investor unconscious fantasies and market psychodynamic processes play in their etiology.

On couple countertransference: thoughts about the therapist’s experience in psychoanalytic work with couples

Couple countertransference, the therapist’s experience in psychoanalytic work with couples, is explored. Its close connection with the concept of a couple’s shared unconscious phantasy is elaborated. Couple countertransference is seen to include therapist experiences such as feelings, thoughts, conscious images, dreams, associations, and bodily sensations, accompanied by a feeling of pressure to react. These derivatives (feelings, thoughts etc.) are shaped by the impact on the therapist of the couple’s split off and projected aspects of their shared inner world. If sufficiently processed couple countertransference leads to a conjecture about a shared unconscious phantasy of the couple regarding the nature of relating. Corroboration of this phantasy can then add shape to the therapist’s interpretations. A detailed case example illustrates the gathering and processing of couple countertransference, leading to a conjectured shared unconscious phantasy. In describing the process of corroborating this conjectured phantasy, attention is also paid to the therapist’s thoughts about how to respond, called response proclivities.

Psychoanalyzing democracies: Antagonisms, paranoia, and the productivity of depression

Psychoanalyzing democracies: Antagonisms, paranoia, and the productivity of depression

Madeleine and Willy Baranger’s contribution to psychoanalysis

ABSTRACT This paper provides a summary of the careers of the psychoanalysts Madeleine and Willy Baranger and the context in which their ideas developed. It will outline their training contributions in Latin American psychoanalytic associations, which culminated in the foundation of the Uruguayan Psychoanalytic Association. The theory of the bipersonal field, later known as the intersubjective field, will be described. This was conceptualized to study the analytic situation when problems of stagnation arise in the analytic process and focuses on the common, unique unconscious phantasy created between analyst and analysand. The concept of the “bastion” and the notion of the “second look” directed toward the intersubjective field will be described as well as the differences between the theory of the intersubjective field and the concept of enactment. The repetition of the analyst will be considered, in particular when the analyst only uses one theory. The distinction between Klein’s early Oedipus and the Freudian Oedipus complex, which the Barangers considered to be two different concepts, will be explored. The essential points of Madeleine Baranger’s article on “bad faith” will be presented. Finally, the concept of resignification and the use of theoretical complementarity will be highlighted.

On “The Edge of the Sea”: Climate Breakdown and Psychoanalysis

This article connects Rachel Carson’s idea of what “seem[s] unchanged” to a specific point in psychoanalysis’s narrative of loss, where the tension between letting go of an object that is external (mourning) and the incorporation of the lost object (melancholia) persists to such an extent that the indeterminacy of the internal/external object becomes the matter at hand for interpretation. This indeterminacy is experienced in and as unconscious phylogenetic phantasy, which I locate in Carson’s figure of change at the “edge of the sea.” This article attempts to bring the realm of unconscious phantasy directly to bear on ideas of the environment, using Harold Searles’s ideas of the nonhuman environment and phylogenetic regression to explore the idea of the psychical significance of the environment. It then extends these ideas about the significance of the nonhuman environment to thinking about change and reality in the clinical psychoanalytic space in the writing of Betty Joseph and Hans Loewald.

Special Report: How to Work With Patients Using Problem-Focused Psychodynamic Psychotherapies

Special Report: How to Work With Patients Using Problem-Focused Psychodynamic Psychotherapies

Sexual fantasy, unconscious phantasy, and the dynamics of attachment

This article explores sexual fantasy as an articulation of unconscious phantasy in couple relationships. Drawing on patterns of attachment, and attending to "pretend" and "psychic equivalence" states of mind, it considers the potential of partners to combine in enacting shared unconscious phantasy through fantasy-driven sexual encounters. Observations about different forms of narcissistic object relating are made in this context, and some implications for couple therapists suggested.

Infidelity and the shared unconscious phantasy of the couple

This article will describe the concept and evolution of shared unconscious phantasy and explores the psychoanalytic treatment of couples who consulted because of an extramarital affair. The unconscious phantasy, unconscious beliefs, mutual projective identifications of each of the members reveals the shared unconscious dynamics behind the marital affair.

A psychoanalytic understanding of the couple relationship: the Tavistock Relationships approach

This article describes a psychoanalytic approach to understanding and treating couple relationships, developed from the pioneering work at the Tavistock Institute of Marital Studies, now called Tavistock Relationships. The approach focuses on the influence of the past on relationships, the nature of couple relationships developmentally and dynamically in the present, and the potential for the creative development of the couple in the future. It focuses on unconscious elements including shared unconscious fantasy, the wish to repeat from the past, and the wish to create something new. It explores the central role of projective identification and mutual projective systems in couples. It concludes with an illustration of a couple treatment in which repetitive ways based on unconscious gridlock and shared unconscious fantasy are reworked in the setting of the couple therapy.

The couple's link on alert in the context of the pandemic

This article aims to show how suffering within a couple's link could appear due to the violent environmental invasion provoked by the coronavirus pandemic. That impact on the couple's link is shown bringing the example of a case provided by an online solidarity service built by an International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) society during lockdown in Madrid. The economy of the constitutive unconscious fantasy of the couple was disrupted by the worldwide sociocultural political situation, showing how unstable social situations promote conflict within links due to uncertainties and trauma imposed by reality.

The Door in the Wall: Suspended Between Reality and Unconscious Fantasy

ABSTRACT Freud argued that people perceive reality through their unconscious fantasies while striving to fulfill their wishes. This paper claims that the role of unconscious fantasies should be expanded beyond Freud’s description; and that our unconscious imaginary process generates inner communication that is motivated by thoughts and emotions about relating to oneself and others. The clinical case illustrates the role of analysis in closing the permeable gap between reality and unconscious fantasy. In analysis, uncovering unconscious fantasy can serve as a bridge to reality and can be used to facilitate resolution of the patient’s underlying conflicts.

The Clinical Significance of Hartmann’s Concept of Adaptation

ABSTRACT The author views every symptom, conflict, defense, or unconscious fantasy as a result, in part, of an adaptation. For example, cumulative traumas from childhood aren’t just traumatic, but become part of an individual unconscious fantasy while potentially contributing to a way of living that can lead to certain satisfactions along with crippling inhibitions. Analyzing adaptations, along with the other components that bring patients to our offices, is necessary because of a paradigm change in the goals of psychoanalysis from reconstruction to building more complex representations from simple representations. Further, the analyst’s appreciation for forces that lead to adaptations helps reduce intense super-ego pressures. Clinical examples are presented to demonstrate the author’s perspective.

Stance, Set, Transference: The Differentiation of Two Modes of Clinical Technique.

Comparative approaches to psychoanalytic theory are a major source of exposure to different theoretical orientations and clinical technique. However, it is not always clear what the analyst actually does when translating theory into practice. As an attempt at clarification, descriptions are provided of two listening stances or attentional sets that are associated with different modes of analytic listening. These modes reside at a relatively low level of abstraction and are experience-near. The two listening stances are (1) a directed attentional set aimed at the identification of conscious or unconscious repetitious patterns, and (2) a diffuse attentional set receptive to emergent phenomena for the purpose of elaborating unconscious fantasy. These listening modes are combined in everyday practice and usually occur in an oscillating fashion; thus, separation of these listening modes in this discussion is for heuristic purposes. At the same time, these modes are prioritized differently among various theoretical models depending on the analyst's intention and goals. They also can be correlated with different types of transferences, evoking different types of clinical material that correspond to the analyst's goals and/or to phases in treatment. Because these attentional modes are governed by different neurophysiological substrates, it is helpful for analysts to have these modes clearly differentiated in their minds, even though engaging these modes tends to be spontaneous and rapidly oscillating. Two clinical vignettes are provided that illustrate the use of these two modes of listening where one or the other is prioritized.

The Psychoanalytic Study of Suicide, Part I: An Integration of Contemporary Theory and Research.

Psychodynamic psychotherapy has an important role in suicide prevention. The psychoanalytic study of suicide has taught us a great deal about the human experience and the process of suicidality. There is also much to be learned from other fields of study and from empirical research that can be integrated into psychoanalytic therapies. Central to the psychoanalytic approach to suicide has been understanding the patient's internal subjective experience of unbearable emotional or psychic pain and the urgent need for relief. Emotional pain can include intense affects such as shame, humiliation, self-hate, and rage. Factors that can increase vulnerability to suicidal states include problems with early attunement, dissociation and deficits in bodily love and protection, conscious and unconscious fantasy, and certain character traits and dynamics. Empirical research has confirmed many basic psychoanalytic concepts about suicide, including escape from unbearable pain as the primary driver of suicidal behavior, the role of dissociation in increasing risk of bodily attack, and the importance of unconscious processes. Further research into implicit processes and their role in the suicidal process holds potential to improve suicide risk assessment and to enhance psychotherapy by bringing otherwise inaccessible material into the treatment.

Shared Catastrophe, Resistance, and Learning in the Countertransference

In light of the 2020–2021 pandemic and consequent necessity for radical changes in psychoanalytic treatment, the author discusses transference-countertransference, resistance, and the analytic setting, among other themes. In particular, the author explores how elements of regression induced in patient and analyst during times of external challenge sometimes obscures elements of unconscious conflict and fantasy that analysis mobilizes and can help to elucidate. He explores an element of the analyst’s work with his own resistance to learning about what this catastrophe means psychologically to our patients and to those trying to help them. Three illustrative clinical vignettes are present and discussed.

A Matter of Wife and Death: Reflections on Music and Violence

Many authors have explored the connection between creativity and destructiveness, and from a psychodynamic perspective both creative and destructive acts carry a psychic significance. Forensic psychotherapy, notably in the work of Estela Welldon, has shown the importance of understanding the unconscious meaning of the violent act, which can be seen as a form of communication. Similarly to violence, the execution of a piece of music involves a synergy of physical, mental and affective functions, and an interaction of conscious and unconscious forces. Reflecting on her experience of working in prison, the author explores the relationship between music and violence. Describing her work with an inmate who had committed a violent offence, the author illustrates how the structured and formal language of music provided a rigorous yet flexible space where the prisoner's internal world and unconscious phantasies could begin to be confronted. In particular, the author discusses how split off aspects connected with the index offence emerged in the ambiguous language of music. Finally, the author illustrates how the progressive acquisition of music technique can be understood as the beginning of a process of symbolization and integration.

Listening for Trans Childism in Discursive Concern

ABSTRACT Keira Bell’s case against the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust challenged the notion that children can consent to certain forms of gender-affirming care, and the subsequent trial has sparked global effects. This paper considers the unconscious fantasies and anxieties that surround both this trial and trans childhood more broadly. Although psychic phenomenon, the normalized defenses of adults continue to inform policy, healthcare, and have a significant impact on the materiality of trans lives. Drawing from Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, I argue that gender non-conforming children become an extension of their caregiver’s subjectivity and provide a unique container for adult’s projected, unbearable thoughts and feelings. In particular, Young-Bruehl’s use of three Freudian personality structures is helpful for tracing symptomatic expressions of childism and conceptualizing the different unconscious motivational forces behind otherwise disparate, public discourses of concern for the child’s wellbeing.

Between partnering and parenting: psychoanalytic approaches to working with parental couples

This paper explores the link between parenting difficulties and couple relationship issues in psychotherapeutic work with parental couples. Initially, the discussion focusses on the social policy context of couple psychotherapy and the resistances it can evoke, which has led to an emphasis on ‘parenting’ rather than ‘couple’ interventions in the historic development of family service provision in the UK. Some developmental challenges facing couples who are parents are then discussed, focussing on a clinical case and drawing on the concepts of shared unconscious phantasy and enactment in the analytic session, to elucidate defensive and developmental possibilities of working at the interface between ‘parenting’ and ‘partnering’.