{"title":"In My Right Mind: Truth in the Guise of Illusion","authors":"Helen Grebow","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2014.947680","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2014.947680","url":null,"abstract":"Enactments are ubiquitous and essential communications of procedurally encoded relational experience. The analyst’s capacity to grasp and reflect upon these wordless communications is a first step in the process of analytic meaning-making when there are no words to convey these early affective experiences of self in relation to other. Enactments are a facilitative component of the analytic process and analytic action. The challenge in writing about enactment is how to convey these implicit, contextual components of communication in language that often constricts rather than expands imagination and meaning. I approach this challenge in a twofold manner. I explore the complexity of enactment citing relevant literature and propose that enactments are a type of metaphor, “metaphor-in-action.” Then, I illustrate the evocative experience of enactment by presenting my associations to my patient and the narrative that emerged from these associations. I present vignettes in an “enacted” form, instead of the usual process-oriented narration. In doing so, I attempt to play with the challenge of conveying, in writing, the analyst’s subjective experience. I present a narrative, based upon my associations to the enactment between my patient and myself, as a means of elucidating and defining both the feeling of this enactment for me and the resonance between my internal experience and that of my patient—a way of “playing” with what it feels like to be a participant in an enactment.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2014.947680","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60007580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Learning to Respond Affectively to Prejudice and Racism: Discussion of Lynne Jacob’s “Learning to Love White Shame and Guilt: Skills for Working as a White Therapist in a Racially Divided Country”","authors":"R. Frie","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2014.948366","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2014.948366","url":null,"abstract":"How do we understand culturally constructed norms of inequality that are grounded in an identity of “whiteness?” This article examines the pervasive “double-standard” of a society that is ostensibly based on the notion of equality, but that nevertheless sees “whites” as the norm. In this society the “other” person is defined in terms of “difference” and “difference” and is implicitly seen as “less-than.” I examine the nature of social location, and particularly what it means to be a member of the normative majority in a society in which racism is both widespread and overtly tolerated. I discuss ways to understand and respond to the emotions that maintain racist beliefs over time and across contexts.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2014.948366","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60008048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Where Memory, Advantage and Emotions May Lead Us: Response to Roger Frie","authors":"L. Jacobs","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2014.948367","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2014.948367","url":null,"abstract":"In my response to Frie’s discussion of my article I extend my earlier analysis, focusing on the themes of intersectionality, advantage, and shame. I examine Frie’s own social locations and consider questions of advantage and shame in relation to his locations. I conclude by suggesting that awareness of being advantaged should include humility, compassion, and openness to shame.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2014.948367","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60008131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Context is Everything! Book Review of Psychoanalytic Complexity: Clinical Attitudes for Therapeutic Change","authors":"T. Marks-Tarlow","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2014.948369","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2014.948369","url":null,"abstract":"A s a psychoanalytically-minded theorist and clinician dedicated to ushering in a complexity model of mental health and clinical practice (see Marks-Tarlow, 2008, 2011), I am pleased to review William Coburn’s new book, Psychoanalytic Complexity: Clinical Attitudes for Therapeutic Change (2014). This slender but pithy tome represents the latest volume of Routledge’s Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series. Coburn describes the historical roots of complexity science, identifies clinical attitudes consistent with complexity science, illustrates complexity attitudes in practice through a sprinkling of cases, and ties his clinical approach into the writings of fellow psychoanalysts. Through this combination of elements, Coburn achieves the balance between research, theory and clinical application sought by Joseph Lichtenberg, Editor of the Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series. Roots of complexity theory extend at least as far back as ancient Greece, when the philosopher Heraclitus reflected upon the dynamic, ever-changing flux of reality. Heraclitus famously observed that we can never step into the same river twice. His student reputedly added a psychological dimension by declaring we can never step into the same consciousness twice. Despite ancient roots, the formal sciences of complexity are relatively new, tracing back to 19th century mathematicians such as Weierstrauss, Hilbert, and Riemann among others. Of them all, it was Henri Poincaré who broke open","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2014.948369","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60008408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Sense of “Being Human” and Twinship Experience","authors":"Koichi Togashi","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2014.947676","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2014.947676","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I attempt to illustrate the ways in which a person experiences himself or herself as being human, including what it means to be treated as human by others. This study consists of a review of the literature in clinical ethics and psychoanalysis, and the psycho-biographical research of Heinz Kohut, who sought the meaning of being human while in the grip of a ten year struggle with lymphoma. The study shows that, from a self psychological perspective, the sense of being human can be described as a psychological state in which a person feels an emotional tie with others and makes sense of temporal continuity in his or her existence. Through careful examination of Kohut’s words and his life, I conclude that a sense of being human can be organized through sharing with the other about how the person was born, and how he has been with the other, through an authentic and honest relationship with others, or through a hope of passing on something significant to the next generation. I argue that these human processes serve to connect a person’s subjective experience from the past with the present, from the present to the future, and to the experience of others in the present.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2014.947676","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60007270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Eat This Cookie and Call Me in the Morning”: Perspectives on the Magic of Metaphor","authors":"C. R. Hastings, Roger Hastings","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2014.947681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2014.947681","url":null,"abstract":"This discussion reviews the subjective experience of analysts encountering enactment in clinical practice and the various attempts which have been made to maintain therapist coherence under the destabilizing effects of their own unconscious intersubjective process. The discussion includes descriptions of the phenomenal experience of enactment and a variety of responses to that experience. Also, the issue of how the subjective experience might be reported and conveyed in sharable language is examined, especially with reference to the use of metaphor as a potential bridge between subjects. Questions are raised as to whether process or content variables contribute more to coherence of mind and which relationship variables are more salient.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2014.947681","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60007628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Revisiting “Truths” in the Guise of Illusion: Response to Roger Hastings and Estelle Shane","authors":"Helen Grebow","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2014.947683","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2014.947683","url":null,"abstract":"In their discussions of my article, Roger Hastings and Estelle Shane each offer a compelling and complementary perspective on understanding enactment and the experience of enactment, as I have tried to convey it. In my response I highlight, and comment on, points they each make. In my response to Hastings, I elaborate on his consideration of the “process level of awareness,” and the problem of “conveyance” as well as his thoughts about trauma, dissociation, and enactment. In my response to Shane, I reconsider enactment through the contemporary lens of complexity theory, the perspective from which Shane has written her discussion. In particular, I consider aspects of the writings of the four thinkers whose work Shane cites. I am most appreciative of both Roger Hastings and Estelle Shane, two wonderful thinkers and experienced clinicians, who have thoughtfully and creatively crafted discussions that expand and enrich my article.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2014.947683","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60007865","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Certain and Uncertain Aspects of a Trauma: Response to Doris Brothers","authors":"Koichi Togashi","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2014.947678","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2014.947678","url":null,"abstract":"In this response to Doris Brothers’ discussion in which she describes the process by which a “survival-threatening event” can create emotional meaning, I have attempted to illustrate two aspects of trauma; the trauma of a “bad” event and the trauma of “nothing.” A human being, existing in an uncertain world, faces a difficult task in maintaining the sense of being human. Despite the difficulty, the potential for finding meaningful experience in an empty and uncertain world, and perceiving a hopeful future, is one of the significant gifts of being human. As indicated in Kohut’s concept of “tragic man” (Kohut, 1977), though, it is inherently tragic for us that meaningful experience can be found only in a human relationship with others.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2014.947678","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60008000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Response to Helen Grebow","authors":"E. Shane","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2014.947682","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2014.947682","url":null,"abstract":"My discussion focuses on the excellence and complexity of Helen Grebow’s presentation on the therapist’s experience of the uncanny, unsettling, even surreal nature of the verbal and non-verbal resonance that emerges in the analytic dyad. She explores how the analyst is able to grasp and translate the patient’s embodied and enacted experience, using data drawn from such sources as infant developmental studies, cognitive theory, neurological research, brain study, and systems understanding to conceptualize this mysterious experience of seemingly unnatural knowing. Yet despite her explication of these resources, we remain in awe of the process, in a state of uncertainty about how it all works. I turn to alternative resources for understanding this process of subsymbolic communication, including brief forays into the writings of Claudio Arnetoli on connectionism, neural networking, and parallel distributed representations; the contributions of Elizabeth Lloyd Meyer on the anomalous, on uncanny unconscious communication, and the bounded mind versus the radically connected mind; of the discussion of Bruce Reis on recognition and mutual recognition, and finally, on the work of William Coburn on psychoanalytic complexity.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2014.947682","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60007681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Learning to Love White Shame and Guilt: Skills for Working as a White Therapist in a Racially Divided Country","authors":"L. Jacobs","doi":"10.1080/15551024.2014.948365","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15551024.2014.948365","url":null,"abstract":"This article addresses the issues of white-centeredness and racialization that are inherent in contemporary American society and culture. The aim is to develop a conceptual framework by which dominant culture therapists and analysts might sensitize themselves to the implications of their dominance in the therapeutic process. While racialization is my fulcrum, the ideas I present could as easily be applied to heterosexism and to any situation in which a so-called normative standard regarding experience and behavior reigns. The article addresses the major difficulty in recognizing white-centeredness and challenges the common wisdom that white shame and white guilt need to be removed as barriers to the progress toward racial justice. The author addresses inherent power imbalances in the therapeutic setting and offers ideas for managing white guilt and shame productively.","PeriodicalId":91515,"journal":{"name":"International journal of psychoanalytic self psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15551024.2014.948365","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60007985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}