{"title":"Rethinking the concepts of the unconscious and analytic time.","authors":"Thomas H Ogden","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2023.2284325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2023.2284325","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The author proposes ways of rethinking the concepts of the unconscious and time in the analytic setting, including the very existence of the unconscious. Freud (1915) stated that the success psychoanalytic thinking has in making inferences about the patient's unconscious makes the existence of the unconscious \"incontrovertible.\" The author submits that this success does not establish the existence of the unconscious; rather, the inferences we think we make about the unconscious are inferences about consciousness itself - the totality of our experiences of thinking, feeling, sensing, observing, and communicating with ourselves. The author then offers thoughts about a second analytic concept, the experience of time in the analytic setting. He conceives of there being two inseparable sorts of experiences of analytic time that stand in a dynamic relationship with one another: diachronic time (clock time) and synchronic time (dream time). In diachronic time, time is sequential; one thing leads to another. In synchronic time, all time is contained in the present. In analysis, childhood trauma is experienced for the first time (in synchronic time) in the co-created subjectivity of patient and analyst.</p>","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141617417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Enquiries into virulent identifications.","authors":"Claudia Frank","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2024.2350222","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00207578.2024.2350222","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Unquestioned vicious identifications with dubious (e.g. political) figures seem central in today's multiple crises. As in former dark times, when M. Klein described the dynamics triggered by an 'inner Hitler', the approach offered in this contribution is to explore present forms, which we meet in the consulting room. As will be shown, a crucial step in this process lies in working through those challenges in the countertranserence.</p>","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141617410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gratitude, freedom and refusal.","authors":"Jonathan Lear","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2023.2258966","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2023.2258966","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper is an exploration of gratitude as a fundamental concept in psychoanalysis. Melanie Klein's classic article \"Envy and Gratitude\" (1957) named gratitude at one pole on an axis of human suffering and flourishing, but with a few notable exceptions, the article stimulated research into envy. This paper explores the historical and philosophical traditions that have, to some extent unconsciously, influenced our contemporary understandings of gratitude. The paper also works to explore the social and ethical meanings of gratitude as well as gratitude's psychoanalytic significance. The aim is to uncover the overall psychic significance of gratitude and its place in human flourishing.</p>","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140858756","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The psychoanalytic setting: José Bleger's <i>encuadre</i>.","authors":"John Churcher","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2024.2327241","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2024.2327241","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>José Bleger's paper on the setting (<i>encuadre</i>) is integral to his 1967 book <i>Symbiosis and Ambiguity</i>. Relevant concepts from the book are summarised before examining his view of the setting as a \"non-process\" consisting of \"constants\", complementing the \"variables\" of the analytic process. Process and setting are related as figure and ground in Gestalt psychology. The ideally maintained setting is studied as a thought experiment, uniting the categories of institution, personality, body schema, and body. Deposited in the setting, the psychotic part of the personality, or \"agglutinated nucleus\", is a remnant of early symbiosis with the mother. Bleger distinguishes two settings: the analyst's and the patient's. The latter can only be analysed by strictly maintaining the former. Ritualisation of the setting denies temporal reality. De-symbiotisation is not always possible. A concept of \"internal\" setting is suggested, but Bleger nowhere mentions this and the concept is problematic, leaving open the question of how to listen to the silence of the setting. Bleger's concept of <i>encuadre</i> can be applied to constants (invariants) in the wider world, the psychotic part of the personality being deposited in everything that is familiar and felt to be constant, including technology, which creates a \"platform\" for human activity.</p>","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140867084","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the question of the internal frame.","authors":"Howard B Levine","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2024.2327240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2024.2327240","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper attempts to expand José Bleger's classic, metapsychological descriptions of the psychoanalytic frame to formulate and emphasize the role of the analyst's internal frame in establishing a psychoanalytic observational perspective in the analytic situation. The rationale for doing so follows from clinical necessity, especially when working with patients and psychic organizations that are 'beyond neurosis' and in non-traditional settings such as distance and telemetric analyses. Clinically speaking, in its most effective state, the analyst's internal frame can inform the possibility of an observational vertex aimed at the intuitive grasp of psychic reality rather than a sense-based, empirical observation of parameters denoted by the elements of a consensually validatable social reality.</p>","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140872060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Freud's interpretation in \"Medusa's Head\" and some alternative psychoanalytic implications of Ovid's Medusa.","authors":"B J Sokol","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2023.2255888","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2023.2255888","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Freud's very brief 1922 paper on the beheading of Medusa by Perseus wisely concludes with a call for a further examination of the sources of the legend. A now widespread interpretation of this legend is based (often without acknowledgement) on an addition to traditions concerning Medusa made in Ovid's <i>Metamorphoses</i>. It is argued here that this Ovidian innovation has often been misinterpreted, and that a more careful reading of <i>Metamorphoses</i> supports neither a widely alleged exclusively vengeful portrayal of Medusa, nor Freud's portrayal of Medusa's decapitation as <i>solely</i> a pitiable and terrible symbol of castration. Instead, Ovid's complex treatments of myths involving Medusa, Minerva and Perseus present parallels with Kleinian insights into phantasy attacks on fecundity, and into imagined revivals of dead or damaged inside babies. Thus the \"displacement upwards\" of the fearful castrated maternal genital envisioned in Freud's \"Medusa's Head\" must stand beside a quite different \"displacement upwards\" of the life-giving maternal genital. Indeed, tradition holds that Medusa's beheading gives rise to the birth of vigorous twins. Together with allied details, this aligns Ovid's masterwork with theories that modify or displace the so-called \"sexual phallic monism\" that some believe taints Freud's theories of gender development.</p>","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140858755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Facing the unthinkable: Life-threatening illness in the analyst and its impact on the analytic couple.","authors":"Maxine Nelson","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2023.2237128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2023.2237128","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article explores the impact of the analyst's life-threatening illness on the analytic couple; it is informed through two theoretical lenses - Freud's ideas about the vicissitudes of mourning, which have been elaborated on by Melanie Klein and John Steiner, and Christopher Bollas's ideas about destiny and idiom. Clinical material will focus on my on-going work with a middle-aged man who has a history of early abandonment and loss and who struggles with being able to remain separate from his objects while being in relationship with them.</p>","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140870343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Discussion of A candidate at Work: The case of Ms. N.","authors":"Abbot A Bronstein","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2023.2295052","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00207578.2023.2295052","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140102591","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A candidate at Work: The case of Ms. N.","authors":"Charles Baekeland","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2023.2295051","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00207578.2023.2295051","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140102587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Adjusting the distance.","authors":"Michael Feldman","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2023.2286753","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00207578.2023.2286753","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper describes the anxiety evoked in a patient threatened by invasion or engulfment by his object on the one hand, and the fears of isolation and abandonment on the other. The author illustrates the patient's strugles to find a distance between himself and his object he can tolerate. The analyst has also to cope with the anxieties evoked by the patient's projections, and find a distance between himself and his patient that enables him to think and work.</p>","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140102588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}