Psychoanalysis on the Verge of Language

After noting how psychoanalysis has fragmented into theoretical and methodological clusters lacking a common language, the author proposes a unifying nomenclature for clinical psychoanalysis. Specifically, he suggests psychoanalysts, regardless of theoretical orientation, frame psychoanalytic relationships, bring presence to their patients, and engage them. These methods facilitate transformation most commonly by bringing features of the unconscious into consciousness. They also disrupt patients’ internalization processes—phenomena synonymous with what Fairbairn (1941) called the “schizoid background” (p. 250), Klein (1946) “schizoid mechanisms” (p. 99), Steiner (1993) “psychic retreats” (p. 1), Kernberg (2007) the “narcissistic spectrum” (p. 510), and Summers (2014) “narcissistic encapsulation” (p. 233). The author provides a clinical vignette demonstrating how framing, presence, and engagement describe psychoanalytic work, and concludes by discussing how such nomenclature could enhance psychoanalysts’ capacity to communicate with one another while also making the field more accessible to the general public.

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.

Pretexts: Literary and Cultural Studies, 2003

The recent preponderance of discursive or social constructionist approachesso currently popular within the critical social sciences, humanities and artsseems to call for a rival ontology, so as to delimit the analytical field of the discursive. The primary theoretical challenge of this paper is to do just this, to think, psychoanalytically, an ontological domain that both precedes, and exists in opposition to the discursive, that is, to the realm of language and the symbolic. The body and corporeality prove to be key players in this argument given that it is here, as puts it that we confront an "underground resistance from the boundary of the discursive empire" (p. 219). This body, as problem to representation, is able to induce a variety of disturbing experiences, reactions of dread, horror and nausea -reactions which typically mark the confrontation of discursive limits, arising at particularly those moments where signification fails and meaning collapses. These affects, along with the role of the body as limit-case of social or discursive meaning can variously be understood as the effects of the uncanny (in Freud), of the abject (in Kristeva), or the Real (in Lacan). A careful reading of these theories -across which a single explanatory trajectory may be traced -enables one to speculative about both the conditions of possibility for the speaking subject (and their significatory practices), and, by the same token, about the conditions of impossibility for this subject (and their ability to signify).

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.

British Journal of Psychotherapy, 1993

The most archaic levels of the psyche may not be accessible through verbal forms of expression. They are retained within the body and body-centred experiences. Pankow has developed a method of modelling with plasticine which is expressive rather than gratifying. It offers the possibility of giving form to otherwise formless areas of psychic function. We have used this method to enable patients to give form to the unexpressible layers that cannot be signified in language. In the early stages of life, sensations play an important role in the establishment of a sense of existence which is basic to a sense of self. Tustin (1986) describes these early states as a`repertoire of relatively uncoordinated sensations which are sensed rather than imagined' (p. 216). According to Freud (1923), these bodily sensations form the basis of psychic functions. The relationship between the body and psychic functions is referred to metaphorically in the psychoanalytic literature. Esther Bick (1968) speaks of`psychic skin' which prevents the dispersion of psychic objects into a boundless space and permits connections. Winnicott (1965, 1969) describes the function of`handling and holding' in which the mother gathers together all the parts of the baby, and in her hands they add up to one, forming the basis of ego integration. For Winnicott (1965),`it is only when all goes well that the person of the baby starts to be linked with the body and the body-functions, with the skin as the limiting membrane' (pp. 56-63). Bion (1967) emphasises the dynamic and organising role of`mental skin' and introduces the concepts of containment, linking and delimitation. The role of the container is not passive; rather it transforms psychic elements (1962). Anzieu (1985, 1987) refers to the`ego skin and the psychic envelope' which function as a containing and unifying envelope of the ego, a barrier that protects the mind, and a filter of exchanges and inscriptions of the first traces. Anzieu (1985) introduces the concept of`formal signifiers' as psychic representatives of`various forms of organization of the self and the ego' (p. 1). Formal signifiers are representations of psychic containers regulated by the primary process and containingè lements of an archaic psychic topography' (p. 2). The concept of formal signifiers (1987) relates to`pictograms' that Aulagnier (1975) regards as typical of the original basis of the psyche, which constitute the first step in symbolisation. So too, formal signifiers relate to what McDougall (1986) refers to as`archaic hysteria' which represents the struggle for psychic survival, often expressed in a non-symbolic manner, by somatic dysfunctioning. These metaphorical descriptions bring us into contact with the earliest and most

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.

Exploring continuity from organic codes and natural signals to cultural sign and symbol systems, this paper is undergirded conceptually by a semiotic tree depicting an ascending hierarchy of semiotic forms. Originating in underground roots from a medley of organic codes, the human use of codified meanings surfaces in the trunk, (in Latin Caudex or Codex), our simplest semiotic instrument. Ascending branches represent natural and man-made signals, and indicative and denotive signs, rising to more complex fully symbolic abstract forms in various sign systems. Each level corresponds to a different mental organization, determining the quality and nature of subjective experience and knowledge, epistemology and information being closely tied to semiotic and semantic factors. The psychoanalytic method focuses on unconscious phenomena descending interpretively below the limen of linguistic consciousness generating a semantic field that exposes multiple levels and kinds of meanings. This positions us optimally to observe different semiotic organizations, a multi-coded spectrum of human enacted and mediated meanings that is best systemized along developmental lines (Aragno 1997/2016). Freud's decoding the grammar of dreams enables the linguistic interpretation of condensed and displaced pictographic representations of a deeply unconscious 'Primary Process' semantic bridging biological and psychological processes that are ongoing throughout life. A multilayered model of mind reframes theoretical understanding around epigenetic and morphological principles that are applicable to phylogenetic and ontogenetic development. From this revised meta-theoretical base, this paper illustrates how language absorbs and often serves deep unconscious functions, as well as, conversely, elevating abstract cognition and conscious articulation, presenting examples that are specific to a dialogue designated as the " talking cure. " A bio-semiotic multiple-code model of mind is based on progressive stages in the development of Symbolization, a cerebral faculty unique to our species, distinguishing us from all other animals, without which we could neither speak nor conceive of " Mind " at all. Conscious 'Mind' emerges through a signifying act, assigning a name to a 'person' or 'thing' that can be represented within, in its absence: This simple concept has far reaching cognitive/psychological consequences impacting on all organizations of experience and knowledge.

Language and Psychoanalysis, 2018

Following detailed presentation of the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme (CCRT), there is the objective of relevant methods for what has been described as verbalization and visualization of data. Such is also termed data mining and text mining, and knowledge discovery in data. The Correspondence Analysis methodology, also termed Geometric Data Analysis, is shown in a case study to be comprehensive and revealing. Quite innovative here is how the analysis process is structured. For both illustrative and revealing aspects of the case study here, relatively extensive dream reports are used. The dream reports are from an open source repository of dream reports, and the current study proposes a possible framework for the analysis of dream report narratives, and further, how such an analysis could be relevant within the psychotherapeutic context. This Geometric Data Analysis here confirms the validity of CCRT method.