Unconscious Fantasies Research Articles

The Cultural Underpinnings of Subjectivity and Inter-Subjectivity: A Discussion of “Trump Cards and Klein Bottles: On the Collective of the Individual”

In “Trump Cards and Klein Bottles: On the Collective of the Individual,” Dr. González (this issue) argues for the centrality of dynamic and shifting group identifications in shaping our subjectivity and our inter-subjective linking from moment to moment. My commentary about this paper is organized around the themes of cultural dislocation and cultural displacement, experiences related to large-group identifications and identity. These constructs, cultural dislocation and displacement, can deepen our understanding of how inter/intra-group tensions (historic and current) can play a determinative role in shaping individual subjectivity and inter-subjective linking. They complement and amplify claims regarding the centrality of our group identifications on ego functions. They also point toward the determinative impact of context and clashing cultural systems on our object relations and unconscious fantasies. Studying the links between individuals, collectives, and the cultural systems that structure them will deepen our theories and extend our relevance.

On revoking the subject of work: Psychoanalytic interpretations of the American television series The Office

ABSTRACT The present paper seeks to use the conceptual framework of psychoanalysis to reconstruct the unconscious fantasies and latent meanings of a very popular and massively successful comedy series. The Office (2005–2013) is an American adaptation of a much shorter British production with the same title, which was originally broadcast in the early 2000s. The pivotal unconscious idea behind the script is thoroughly anarchistic in nature, because it implies the radical revocation of the working subject by means of humour. To argue this thesis, an examination of the setting, characters and narratives of the show is carried out against a psychoanalytic background. A whole series about a workplace is nothing new, but this is a staging of absurd situations where most of the time no work is done at all. The characters undergo a constant process of de-identification with work, which subsequently leads us towards a discussion of the psychodynamic aspects of postmodern work in general. Interdisciplinary references to literature, philosophy and critical theory complement and expand the psychoanalytic perspective on the TV series as a contemporary cultural objectivation.

Maintaining the Tension Between the Classic Seduction Theory and the Role of Unconscious Fantasies: A Contemporary Reconsideration

This article describes the long‐term psychoanalytic psychotherapy of a young woman who had experienced trauma during her childhood. The details of the trauma were unknown, as all memory of the trauma had been repressed. Past trauma is analysable through a prism of transference, dreaming and dreams, mental states and thinking processes that offer an opportunity to explore and analyse the influence of both reality and fantasy on the patient. The presented case describes a therapeutic process that strives to discover hidden meanings through the unconscious system and illustrates the movement from unconscious to conscious during exploration of the patient's personal trauma in treatment. The author discusses the importance of classical and contemporary psychoanalytic models of childhood sexual trauma through the discovery of manifest and latent content, unconscious fantasies and actual events of trauma. It is suggested that the complexity of trauma is clarified by the tension between these models and by the inclusion of aspects of both of them for a complete understanding.

ПОЗАСВІДОМЕ ПСИХОАНАЛІТИКАЯК ОБ’ЄКТ ЕМПІРИЧНИХ ДОСЛІДЖЕНЬ(АНАЛІЗ ПУБЛІКАЦІЙ ІЗ БАЗИ SCOPUS ЗА І ПІВРІЧЧЯ 2017 РОКУ)

on the topic of psychoanalyst’s unconsciousness, published in the professional psychoanalytic journals from the Scopus list during the first half of 2017. According to them, out of 447 articles in 22 journals, 17 papers were discovered that contain the results of empirical research on the phenomenology of the functioning and manifestation of psychoanalyst’s unconsciousness. As a result, mostly the empirical part of them is based on clinical cases and interviews with psychoanalysts, training analysts and supervisors. In them, in particular, we discovered three general groups of key concepts that are the most relevant subjects of study during the specified period: countertransference, reverie and unconscious communication. A brief overview of the introduced categories in each group is described, for example: transference-countertransference matrix, narcissistic needs of the psychoanalyst, analytic eroticism, experiences regarding to the end of psychoanalysis, silence and numbness of psychoanalysts, unconscious fantasy and unconscious intersubjectivity. The conclusions generalize that the psychoanalyst’s unconsciousness and phenomenology of its manifestation in analytical work remains in the constant focus of research carried out in various psychoanalytic approaches, covering not only direct clinical practice (including those with specific categories of analyzers), but also training analysis and supervisor's assessment. The classical and lacanian schools are more focused on the study of countertransference, the British school – the reveries and unconscious imagination, the intersubjectivists are interested in the study on the ability of the psychoanalyst to use his or her unconsciousness in creating a special intersubjective reality between him or her and the analyst. Unity in the views of a psychoanalyst’s unconsciousness is noted in the ideas about its sensitivity, the diagnostic value of the experiences arising in the sessions, as well as the danger of neglecting the influence of his own unconscious on the psychoanalytic process.

“Poor creature, trapped in existential solitude forever”: Gothic Dreams of the Uncanny, Repetition, Temporal Loops, and the Double in <em>The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina</em>

“Poor creature, trapped in existential solitude forever”: Gothic Dreams of the Uncanny, Repetition, Temporal Loops, and the Double in <em>The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina</em>

“I’ve got you under my skin”: borderline states in couple relationships

Many couples who come for therapy are struggling with separating from unconscious phantasies and beliefs that enmesh each partner with the other, resulting in states that popular songs powerfully epitomise. While this borderline experience is common and functional in the early stages of being in love its persistence paralyses the development of the relationship. Facing separation from and loss of illusion is a challenge couple therapists are often asked to help with. The argument is illustrated by a case, and by references to some of Cole Porter’s best known songs.

On Some Unconscious Factors in Children’s Near-Death Experience: A Discussion of “Going to Where the World Ends: When the Bodies of Children Speak Who is Listening?”

This discussion examines some unconscious characteristics of children who choose to retreat, when facing social violence, abuse, illnesses and early developmental impairments, into a near-death defensive organization. This “near-death retreat” is governed by an omnipotent “death-object” with whom a pact is made, in unconscious phantasy, so as to avoid the pain of an unbearable internal and external reality at the price of mental paralysis. Children who opt for this special retreat are very often hyper-sensitive, hyper-permeable and hyper-vulnerable. As such, they are prone to flooding by archaic anxieties-of-being often found in autistic conditions, and to an internal sense of nowhere-ness. They are “pipe children” into whom the un-mentalized anxieties of their care-givers infiltrate in an osmotic, incontrollable way. Their internal objects are often confusing, comprising of a bewildering mixture of perpetrator and victim, impervious and dangerous. Clinical material taken from a psychoanalytic treatment of a refugee girl will demonstrate these characteristics.

Bringing It All Back Home: Reply to Celenza

In our response to Andrea Celenza (this issue), we take this opportunity to develop some of the implications of her original work and the Fred Duhl-Anne Sexton tragedy. We concur with Celenza that the ethics revolution in North American psychoanalysis, which dates only from the mid 1980s, has not entirely transformed the landscape. After reflecting briefly on Sexton’s cultural legacy, and on the concept of analytic love, we suggest that psychoanalysis as a profession needs to step up its effort to address, at the level of the institution, the problem of our chronic avoidance of “boundary trouble.” We propose that the psychoanalytic group needs to look in the mirror and see Fred Duhl—in its history, its training ideologies, its psychological theories, and also in our manner of othering and scapegoating those in the group who act out or otherwise refract our more problematic unconscious fantasies and group dynamics.

Developmental and dynamic dimensions of hate, rage, and violence

Hate may be regarded as a complex affective-cognitive emotion and attitude alloyed with aggression. Hate and aggression have both neurobiological and environmental determinants. Hate may be overt or covert, externalized or internalized, and/or somatized. Persistent recurrent painful and traumatic experiences generate and exacerbate hate and aggression. An amalgam of hate and love is evident in the ambivalence of all self and object relationships and in conscious and unconscious fantasy. In the mature personality, there is a preponderance of love over hate. There may be justified hatred of sociopathic individuals and groups.

The archetypal origins of the «second reality» (based on the plays «Memento», «Black Panther and White Bear» by V. Vynnychenko)

The article highlights and analyses archetypical images pictured on artists’ canvases in V. Vynnychenko’s plays. This is the new aspect of studying master’s drama, which has determined studio’s relevance and goal: to substantiate artistic nature, specific content and functional of the archetypal origins. The question is all about similar images that have archetype nature and are connected to a symbolical depiction of the matter of life. The human fantasy is one of the main sources of the archetypes, as well as the basis of the artistic process, showing, by the way, prototypes that are located in the collective unconscious. Images, located in collective unconscious, deep in people’s fears and hopes, can show up through art precisely, that is why they’re able to bring a resonance in the receivers’ souls. Archetypes are used to cause any type of effective infusion, therefore the artist – is the one who possesses the high level of perception to archetypical forms and is able to realize them extremely accurately, which approximates artist to prophets and other psychological types according to K. G. Jung. So the notion «archetype» as the studies tool allows us to highlight text nuances, understand the mechanism of the psychological impact of the art matter on the reader. The result of analysis is that the archetype oh the mother, father and child are mythological and irrational symbols. Their variety is changing, but the overall essence is common for them all. They are directly connected to the archetype of «self», that determines realization of the individualization process as the self-assertion in the world. Such decoding allows us to realize the philosophical subtext of the plays and denote the author’s views. The presence of the pictures with the child archetype in both texts – is the product of complicated psychological processes in the V. Vynnychenko’s consciousness. There are personal worries (marriage, son’s death), that undoubtedly, has crucially affected author, continuing and realizing in his art. Actually, it is also about the impact of products of the unconscious fantasy (forgotten or displaced), and collective memory, that is inheriting and realizing in consciousness due to some accidents.

A Reappreciation of Cannibal Translation as Critique of Ideology

Cultural hegemony has been widely discussed within the field of Translation Studies. However, few scholars proposed a method of political action to erase the thumbprint of hegemony found in many translated works. In my opinion, the concept of “cannibal translation” developed by Haroldo de Campos is an exception (De Campos & Wolff, 1986). This form of translation is a way to regain control over the meaning of existing discourses and of the systems of representations that govern our daily lives. This paper will rely on a strong theoretical background, in order to argue for the realization of a form of militancy within the boundaries of the systems of representations of language itself, in order to stop seeing the world with the “imperial eyes” (Mary Snell-Hornby, 2006) of cultural hegemony, namely of English tongue and culture in Canada and its industries in Colombia. Finally, I will approach militant translation as a method of “ideological criticism,” as understood by Slavoj Žižek. who defines ideology as a “unconscious fantasy that structures social reality” (Garcia & Sanchez, 2008).

Those old familial feelings: transference in reading Thomas Ogden’s The Parts Left Out

ABSTRACT A novel can alter a change in readers over a lifetime. This paper examines the dynamics of transference animated by novels that affect us. In her reading of Thomas Ogden’s The Parts Left Out, the author follows the novel’s aesthetic and formal operation as it animates transference to one’s own childhood in readers. The conceptualisation of transference in reading advanced in this paper leans on Melanie Klein’s version of the workings of unconscious phantasy in the infant’s first felt reading of the (m)other. The content of novels that profoundly affect us, the author argues, aesthetically and formally operate via self-other and/or author-reader transference in the event of reading.

Psycho-semiotic model of thinking. Combining Klein and Peirce theory of symbol for more comprehensive model of mind

Thesis: Aim of the paper is to present Melanie Klein and Charles S. Peirce concept of symbol in order to combine them into scheme that presents conscious and unconscious aspect of thinking through symbolic signs (signs based on convention).
 Presented concepts: Paper presents concept of symbol in psychoanalytical and semiotic perspective. Psychoanalytical view is based on interpretation of symbol according to object relation paradigm proposed by Klein. There are two reasons for selecting her theory for the model: it is most closely bound with interdependency between communication and thinking plus her concept of proper symbol fulfills definition of symbolic sign in Peirce theory, due to deployment of matter of absence in substitution process. Peirce theory however is selected to present semiotic perspective not only for its good linkage to Klein’s “proper symbol” but also for its accurate understating of object representation in quasi- mind through Representamen and as a result recognition of symbol embedment in code through unlimited semiosis. Chosen concepts are consolidated into psycho-semiotic model of thinking which recognizes symbol to be co-created by unique internal world of unconscious phantasy with simultaneous employment of semiotic devices oriented to external, group order perspective.
 Results and conclusions: Proposed psycho-semiotic model of thinking enhances psychoanalytic view, based on drive for object, by recognizing communication means required for meaningful relation and with that for thinking itself. As a result conceptualizing thinking processes is enriched with semiotic discoveries such as mechanics and structure of Representamen and Interpretant, along with indispensable code rules, with unlimited semiosis at its core. In turn psychoanalytical view adds to semiotic perspective sensitivity to individual potential and constrains when code is in use and with that raises precision of exploration in the field.
 Contribution to the field: Proposed model enriches theory of thinking based on object relations with semiotic sign theory, which being focused on communication serves as a frame for establishing object relations and their conceptualization. In turn employing psychoanalytic perspective into semiotic field brings back code theory to actual code usage, and by that expands it to various unconscious forces, which ultimately determine Interpretant

From relation to the field: Modes of unconscious fantasy elaborations

Relational and field theories have much in common, despite divergent foundations. In this paper, several areas of divergence are selected, including the structure of the field as a relational matrix or as an unconscious joint fantasy of the couple; the fate and form of insight; and the nature of the unconscious as relational or ubiquitous. Differences in cognitive and attentional sets are identified and linked to different modes of insight. Using a clinical vignette, these divergences will be illustrated with an attempt to compare and contrast the two approaches through a discussion of how each lens highlights, expands, or forecloses different features of the analytic process. A mode of conceiving the unconscious as unstructured and multiple in potential is offered to reconcile divergent assumptions in therapeutic action. A consideration of Sandor Ferenczi’s clinical emphasis on relaxed technique, elasticity, and especially mutuality suggests that he would have been a field theorist were he among us today.

Putting the Social Work Academy on the Couch: Exploring Emotional Resistance to Psychoanalytic Education

ABSTRACTPsychoanalytic social work scholars lament the marginalization of psychodynamic theory in contemporary social work academia. Modern conflict theory applied to social work theories of pathogenesis and cure can serve as a means to explore this marginalization. Unconscious fantasy is important for understanding the resistance to psychodynamic theory in social work education. I offer some psychoanalytically informed strategies that might begin to restore psychodynamic theory in mainstream social work academia.

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. Keywords: sexual fantasy, shared unconscious phantasy, attachment in couples, narcissistic object relating, couple psychotherapy.

Psychanalyse et développements psychiques : le temps à l’épreuve du désir infantile

ContextThe keen observation of emotional and behavioural exchanges between a young child and its parents is part of a long tradition initiated by psychoanalysts such as Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. Considering that these interactions are underpinned by parents’ and children's conscious and unconscious fantasies, clinical observations are compatible with psychoanalysis's theoretical elaboration of psychic functioning. This helps to complete the understanding of complex situations taking place at birth and during early childhood. Moreover, a standardised observation of the interactions between the baby and its family, inspired by development psychology, accounts for the baby's or young child's difficulties in regulating its behaviour, and its sensory, attention, motor, or emotional physiological processes, while considering the contextual aspects. The 0–5 classification, of which a French translation is underway, offers a simple photograph of the present moment, always open to modifications and evolution (Miri Keren, 2018). ObjectivesWith this new knowledge of different orientations, we will explore the necessary dialogue between the developmental approaches and the psychoanalytic study of children and parents, considering their compatibilities and their limits. MethodsThe concepts of containing, the psychic skin, “objeu” (the dynamic of presence/absence during play), and attachment – situated on the border of observation and metapsychological elaboration – are examined in this article. They account for the psychic functioning of the child in relation to others and have proved their relevance in the context of normal situations and in psychopathology. ResultsModels in child psychoanalysis have been developed from both a reconstructive perspective and observation. Such contextual, inventive working constructs allow one to think and elaborate the clinical field of the beginnings of psychic life through heuristic fictions. A better knowledge of the child's developmental context, in terms of emotional and tonic-motor regulations, enriches the data collected during consultations. ConclusionsThe transdisciplinary discussion of development alongside individual and family psychoanalytical clinical practice is necessary because, beyond generating innovative concepts, it also prevents conceptual sclerosis. To remain vital and capable of understanding any human activity, a method should adapt itself to the object studied and not the other way around, for example, by considering the subjectivity of the researcher and the clinician as a resource and not as source of errors.

The disturbing presence of the father: Paternal function and its initial developments

The birth of a child strongly influences the way in which we adults perceive life and, therefore, our inner world. This birth, or rather the expectation of it, initiates in the father a complex process, the paternal function. Despite being a common experience, there are many open questions regarding its development and its impact on the new father. We reflect here on paternal function and explore conscious and unconscious fantasies of the man facing new-found fatherhood. We propose that a kind of pre-Oedipal process has already begun during pregnancy. The new being’s mere existence inside the womb generates an exclusionary force that sets the father’s ambivalent feelings in motion. The overwhelming certainty of motherhood and the generation of the mother–fetus bubble develops in parallel with the uncertainty of the father, immersed in inner conflicts regarding what his relationship with the mother–child couple is and will be. He rapidly experiences how the child’s presence makes him an excluded third party, always longing to fully occupy the place he once enjoyed beside the mother. The baby enters a world where father’s strong ambivalence is already in place, facilitating and setting in motion a full development of the Oedipal process. Finally, some considerations are outlined on the potential influence of this complex ambivalence in large group reactions and the need to be remembered that humans have displayed since ancient historical times.

The "Instinct" of Imagination. A Neuro-Ethological Approach to the Evolution of the Reflective Mind and Its Application to Psychotherapy.

Recent neuro-psychoanalytic literature has emphasized the view that our subjective identity rests on ancient subcortical neuro-psychic processes expressing unthinking forms of experience, which are “affectively intense without being known” (Solms and Panksepp, 2012). Devoid of internal representations, the emotional states of our “core-Self” (Panksepp, 1998b) are entirely “projected” towards the external world and tend to be discharged through instinctual action-patterns. However, due to the close connections between the subcortical and the cortical midline brain, the emotional drives may also find a way to be reflected within an intrinsic self-referential processing, evident when the organism is not actively engaged with the external world. Thanks to such endogenous functioning, the core-Self emotional dispositions are not overtly executed, but they are organized within coherent dynamic mental structures, called “feeling-toned complexes” by C. G. Jung and “unconscious phantasies” by Melanie Klein. The intrinsic self-referential dynamism of the “brainmind” originated from REM sleep arousal and then evolved in the resting-state activity of a complex of cortico-limbic midline brain structures (CMS), also called Default Mode Network (DMN). From our neuro-ethological perspective, it is sustained by an “introverted” SEEKING activity leading to the subjective exploration of internally constructed virtual scenarios. This “mind wandering” function, implicated in dreaming, fantasy processing, remembering and thinking, is the essence of the imaginative function and constitutes the first form of reflection, where intentions and drives gain a primordial form of conscious (but not self-conscious) representation. During postnatal development, this original (“archetypal”) imaginative function is slowly attuned in a relational “transitional” space and may be expressed first in non-verbal and eventually in abstract-verbal social communicative patterns. Our view has noticeable implications for psychotherapy. Instead of trying to directly modify interpersonal, extrinsic relationships (a top-down approach), dysfunctional emotional-relational patterns may be modified by a process in which the patient is helped to let-go of the perceived feeling-objects in favor of an immersion, via the actual feeling, from the superficial level of perception towards a void feeling-state, empty of images. Only starting from this “anoetic” feeling-state, the deep imaginal creative and re-structuring self-referential activity may be reactivated by a process of spontaneous imagination.

The Elusive Good Object

Melanie Klein theorized idealization in two distinct ways. In the first instance, she maintained that "The whole of [the infant's] instinctual desires and his unconscious phantasies imbue the breast with qualities going far beyond the actual nourishment it affords," and she emphasized that the libidinally invested breast, when introjected, forms “the core of the ego,” Klein theorizes that the original good object must be experienced as ideal. But she also asserted that idealization serves as a defensive exaggeration of the object's goodness: "Idealization is bound up with the splitting of the object, for the good aspects of the breast are exaggerated as a safeguard against the fear of the persecuting breast"; that is, idealization affords a defense against persecutory anxieties stemming from the infant's projection of hateful impulses and hate-filled parts of the self into the mother. The author argues that when idealization is operating in this way it makes the good object an elusive one. A detailed clinical example is used to describe idealization as it permeates and governs the analytic relationship. The analyst's eventual capacity to discern the workings of idealization, in the second sense in which Klein means it, brought about significant change for the patient and allowed for the consolidation of a good object.