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A bug-free universe.
(1997)
Analysis Uptown
(1997)
Betrayal.
(1997)
Eulogy for Rose Spiegel.
(1997)
Freud's theoretical writings on hypnosis are reviewed and reasons for his abandoning of this clinical tool are suggested. Clinical hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness which has its own felt reality and does not bypass the ego. In fact, many of the essential characteristics of hypnosis are ego functions. Functions such as focused or free-floating attention, deep absorption, enhanced memory, imagery, ego-receptivity, ego-activity, defenses, and the capacity for self-observation all remain intact in hypnosis. This view is contrasted with Freud's early uses of hypnosis which were not informed by his later psychoanalytic discoveries. Clinical material is presented which illustrates how the conversion from a psychoanalytic psychotherapy to a hypnoanalysis resolved a therapeutic impasse and allowed for a productive treatment. Fromm's view of hypnosis, as a special form of adaptive regression in the service of the ego is clinically illustrated. It is postulated that the altered state of hypnosis facilitates an increased ego mobility. It is the psychic mobility of hypnosis which facilitates the vacillation between primary and secondary process thinking; the experiencing ego and the observing ego, and conscious and unconscious experience. It is largely the ego-mobility and available memory in hypnosis that account for its advantages as compared to non-hypnotic treatment. Relational and self-psychological components of hypnosis are also proposed.
In this paper I comment on several aspects of the way language is used in psychoanalysis. Language is viewed not simply as a >package< for carrying ideas and feelings, but as a medium in which thoughts and feelings are created. In the analytic setting, analyst and analysand are viewed as engaged in an effort to use language in a way that is adequate to the task of creating/conveying a sense of what it feels like for the patient to be human, to the extent that he is capable at a given moment (with particular emphasis on describing the leading anxiety that the analysand is experiencing). The analyst strives to use language in a way that embodies the tension of forever struggling to generate meaning while at every step casting doubt on the meanings >arrived at< or >clarified.< Forms of lifelessness of analytic language are discussed with emphasis on those forms of linguistic deadness that derive from (1) the analyst's ideological attachment to a particular school of analytic thought and (2) the analyst's unconscious participation in an intersubjective construction jointly, but asymmetrically, generated by analyst and analysand (Ogden, 1994a, b, in press a, b). Finally, I discuss the idea of effects being created in language and suggest that this phenomenon constitutes a principal medium through which unconscious meaning is communicated in the analytic setting. Such unconscious effects in language are generated at least as much through the way the patient (or analyst) is speaking as through what the patient (or analyst) is saying. This paper does not represent an effort to apply analytic thinking to the field of literary studies. Instead, I hope to make a small contribution to an awareness of the life of words (and the life in words) that occurs in the analytic situation. Rather than attempting to look behind language, the effort here is to look into it.
Despite its centrality in the lives of many people, psychoanalysis, with its traditional emphasis on psychosexuality and rationalism, has generally undervalued the importance of love and romance. This essay explores this devaluation within psychoanalytic theorizing and the parallel widespread degradation of love in everyday life. Whereas common wisdom claims that familiarity extinguishes love, I argue that the illusory security that familiarity often masks is endangered by genuine love, with all its accompanying risks.
This paper uses concepts from infant research to describe the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis. Louis Sander's model of bidirectional mutual influence implies that agency is a property of all living things. Studying sleep – wake cycles, Sander concludes that these are mutually regulated the infant uses his state to guide his pole of the bidirectionality. It is in the >moment of meeting,< when the caregiving surround acknowledges the infant state in a way that >fits,< lies the beginnings of the infant's sense of agency. I suggest that one can make links between how a sense of agency develops in infancy and how this concept can be used in psychoanalytic treatment. Specifically, a bidirectional stance, a continuous attention to affect and state, and a systematic inquiry into how the patient is experiencing the analytic activity foster a sense of agency. Clinical examples illustrate the thesis.
The paper begins with the claim that psychoanalysis faces a dilemma in locating itself in a contemporary world that devalues experiences of interiority, depth, and embeddedness in personal history. Psychoanalysis's coming to terms with this modern world – reflected in contemporary relational paradigms and emphases on interaction, authority, and epistemology – is essential yet tends to replace an outdated conformity with an updated one, in which what is offered to analysands may become limited and the soul of psychoanalysis lost. Bollas's work attempts to reinspire psychoanalysis. This paper explores his contributions and the tensions within them and develops several points about how psychoanalysis can maintain a worthwhile self – for itself and for its analysands – in the modern world. Among the issues discussed are the sense in which an endogenous motivational core associated with an emphasis on interiority may be compatible with a relational paradigm and how the notion of personal idiom is a rich and fruitful one, but that the cultural field deserves a more fundamental place than it is given by Bollas. The problem of authority and exploitation, within and outside the consulting room, is also taken up, and it is argued that psychoanalysis should be conceived as a moral discourse in which the analyst's self-subverting (but not diminished) authority is essential.
In this commentary, Jacobson's exploration of Bollas's notions of >true self and >idiom< is discussed. I underline Bollas's focus on unconscious processes in general and in the psychoanalytic relation in particular and – referring to Bion and Bollas – discuss the importance of the analyst's intuitive capacity in sensing these processes. Winnicott's and Bollas's formulations on the notion of true self/idiom are briefly reviewed and its unknowable quality is emphasized. While being in many respects appreciative of Jacobson's essay, I argue against his position of not considering idiom as something inherent and unique to each person, claiming that Jacobson's understanding of Bollas's notion sometimes is too concrete. I argue as well against Jacobson's view of Bollas as a >one-person theorist< and as holding a position leading to >a distancing of the social world.<