Slides: Psychoanalysis and the Phonetic Quality of the Voice

Following both Bion's and Aulagnier's thought, this paper seeks to examine two functions of psychotic syntax within non-psychotic personality. The first function is the creating of a split between voice and meaning in the mother-infant relationship -a split whose aim is to disengage contact with contents that cannot be metabolized and that are associated with the mother's denied death wish toward her infant. The second function pertains to the use of psychotic syntax as a way of denying separateness and annihilating the "speaking I". Both functions will be exemplified by clinical case studies. In conclusion, psychotic language will be discussed as a "hybrid language" generated by an incestuous relationship between the mother's language and the infant's.

The journal of Language and Psychoanalysis is a fully peer reviewed online journal that publishes twice a year. It is the only interdisciplinary journal with a strong focus on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of language and psychoanalysis. The journal is also inclusive and not narrowly confined to the Freudian psychoanalytic theory.

The journal of Language and Psychoanalysis is a fully peer reviewed online journal that publishes twice a year. It is the only interdisciplinary journal with a strong focus on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of language and psychoanalysis. The journal is also inclusive and not narrowly confined to the Freudian psychoanalytic theory.

2019

Nowadays mindfulness has become a constituent element in various forms of psychotherapy, including psychoanalysis. This essay is my attempt to think about psychoanalysis and mindfulness together, from the starting point of Freud's recommendation of "evenly hovering attention" as the essential psychoanalytic stance. I will look at how mindfulness and psychoanalysis could enrich each other, with a view to placing them within a framework of listening practice that might contribute to our understanding of psychotherapy.

The journal of Language and Psychoanalysis is a fully peer reviewed online journal that publishes twice a year. It is the only interdisciplinary journal with a strong focus on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of language and psychoanalysis. The journal is also inclusive and not narrowly confined to the Freudian psychoanalytic theory.

This paper illustrates an analytical approach combining LIWC, a computer textanalytic application, with cluster analysis techniques to explore 'language styles' in psychotherapy across sessions in time. It categorizes session transcripts into distinct clusters or styles based on linguistic (di)similarity and relates them to sessional progression, thus providing entry points for further qualitative exploration. In the first step, transcripts of four illustrative therapist-client dyads were scored under ten LIWC variables including 'analytic thinking', 'clout', 'authenticity', 'emotional tone', and pronoun types. In the next step, agglomerative hierarchical clustering uncovered distinct session clusters that are differently distributed in each dyad. The relationships between these clusters and the chronological progression of sessions were then further discussed in context as contrastive exemplars. Applications, limitations and future directions are highlighted. details the approximately 90 variables analyzable with LIWC and their psychometric evaluation. We focus here on two specific sets of psychotherapeutically relevant variables. The first set is the four aforementioned summary variables -analytical thinking, clout, authenticity, and emotional tone. Analytic thinking is based on observed differences between 'categorical' and 'dynamic' language in college admissions essays . A high score suggests formal, logical, and hierarchical thinking, while a low score informal, personal, here-and-now, and narrative thinking. Clout is based on relationships between word choices and perceived social power in chats, emails, and letters . A high score suggests Language and Psychoanalysis, 2020, 9 (1), 4-25. http://dx.doi.org/10.7565/landp.v9i1.1701 6 speaking/writing with high expertise and confidence, while a low score a more tentative and humble style. Authenticity is based on relationships between language features and deception when expressing opinions on social issues . A high score suggests more honest, personal, and disclosing discourse, while a low score a more guarded and distanced discourse. Emotional tone is based on relationships between language features in journal entries and psychological changes following the events of . A high score is linked to a more positive and upbeat style, a low score to anxiety/sadness/hostility, while a neutral score suggests a lack of emotionality or ambivalence.

2021

In this rich and prolific book Amir brings to our attention the many aspects of the relations between psychic processes and the principles of language. She casts a light on regions that are outside the reach of verbal expression or even clash with any effort at articulation. Her clinical innovations, anchored in her profound understanding of the mazes of psychic syntax, make a daring and original addition to the psychoanalytic canon.' -Prof. Aner Govrin, Doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis,

2019

In the paper the parallels between the emblematic "mechanisms" of signification and the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud as well as Carl Gustav Jung have been studied. The Viennese founder of psychoanalysis has discovered template schemes that become a visual delineation, the blueprint for developing his scientific vocabulary, methodology, classification of psycho-emotional behavioral types in mythological plots. The Eros and Thanatos images handling, the exploitation of mythical tales about Oedipus and Electra, Prometheus, Narcissus, and many other ones to specify the behavioral complexes denote the presence of "emblematic methodology" in the formation of psychoanalytic conceptions and categories. His interpretations of famous mythological plots are boiled down to emblematic reduction.

2020

This project investigates philosophical and psychological aspects of "that little voice in our head", or inner speech. Research on inner speech has been guided by the assumption that it is essentially a speech phenomenon. This dissertation argues against this assumption from three independent angles. In Chapter 2, I consider the idea that the content of inner speech is speechspecific. After arguing against this position, I go on to claim that the content of inner speech is vocalic. In Chapter 3, I examine models that treat inner speech as a prediction. I show that these models are problematic on both empirical and theoretical grounds. In their place, I argue for a model on which inner speech is treated as a goal state. In Chapter 4, I consider the popular idea that breakdowns in inner speech processing explain auditory verbal hallucination. I argue that inner speech-based explanations of AVH belong to a problematic class of psychological explanations, which confuse phenomenological and scientific understanding. My discussion of inner speech has implications for a wide range of topics, including metacognition, imagery, and the explanation of pathological mental states. v