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This Better Be Good! Complex Systems and the Dread of Influence

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As much as a bidirectional model of influence has enhanced our understanding of the therapeutic process, this article argues that reliance on two-person models has limited our ability to explore the role that influence plays in therapeutic action. From a psychoanalytic complexity perspective, the manner in which the dyad adapts to influence is a dynamic, emergent property of numerous systems in which the dyad itself is embedded. The conditions that support the dyad's capacity to adapt to and use influence in a manner that builds complexity and supports therapeutic change are explored and contrasted with the qualities of systems that "dread influence" and tend to resist change. From a complexity perspective, therapeutic action involves the dyadic capacity to adapt to one another, as well as to these multiple sources of influence, and to self-organize in a manner that produces and sustains therapeutic change. © The International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology.

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For some time, psychoanalysts have been attempting to utilize complex systems theory as a tool to understand their interactions with their patients, as well as their own clinical processes. One of the difficulties in doing so stems from the fact that systems theory seems better at describing what has already happened than it is at predicting what is likely to happen in the future. This article details 3 small elaborations of complex systems theory that may help clinicians utilize it more proactively and prospectively than before.
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The article opens with a fairly detailed overview of the research on nonlinear dynamic systems, deterministic chaos, and complexity theory—referred to collectively as complexity theory. The second part of the article is aimed at applying this research to an interesting discussion that has developed in the psychoanalytic literature regarding the fundamental nature of the self as either singular or multiple. Chaotic systems (a class of nonlinear systems) exhibit staggering variability, sensitivity, and adaptation in response to perturbation (in the form of sensitive dependence on initial conditions), while also demonstrating an enduring and distinctive coherence and continuity in their overall organization (in the form of strange attractors). As such, chaotic systems are useful in conceptualizing how relatively healthy people remain recognizable (or in character) in the midst of their variability, multiplicity, and change. By contrast, pathology of the self from the perspective of nonlinear dynamic systems is characterized by the repetitive, periodic and self-same quality of mental states.
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The place of the analyst's “influence” in psychoanalytic theory and practice is explored. There is a current in the literature in which it is welcomed as an aspect of “corrective experience,” although usually legitimized by being forced into the narrow channel of interpretation and understanding. A taboo on influence persists despite theoretical shifts that would seem to clear the way for greater acceptance of its importance. Among other factors, the aversion to influence is traced to its association with hypnotic “suggestion,” which implies little room for the patient's autonomy. Opening the door to embracing the possibility of influence goes hand in hand with, on one hand, the analyst respecting the patient as a competent free agent and, on the other hand, the analyst combining willingness to take a stand with willingness to reflect critically on his or her participation. In that context, and with those caveats, the analyst takes on the responsibility to combat destructive introjects and to become an inspiring, affirmative presence in the patient's life. The analyst's passion for the patient's well-being and for changes that entail the realization of dormant potentials now has its place. Different kinds of expression of therapeutic passion in the countertransference are described and illustrated.
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What allows us to explain the repetitive cycles of self-destructive, self-defeating behavior that we all struggle to help patients overcome? What explains the malignancy that can infuse certain transference—countertransference relationships, often suddenly and without warning? Why do some patients come to hate us despite our best efforts? Why do we come to hate some of them? Perhaps more to the point of this paper, why do we come to hate that version of ourselves that emerges when we are with them? This paper explores these questions, examining the issues of repetition and repair with regard to our most toxic introjects—the patients' and our own.Whereas Melanie Klein helped us to understand why we come to hate that which is good in others, this author explores the complementary question of how loving that which is bad in others keeps the self innocent, good, and sane. A fundamental dissociative split in two necessary but incompatible self–other organizations is posed. With reference to a detailed clinical example, the author investigates how the evocation of intensely shame-riddled bad self representations in both the patient and the analyst can perpetuate a need to provoke, find, and sustain that badness clearly in the psychic domain of the other, blocking entry into certain necessary therapeutic enactments that may therefore fail to occur. Both self—other organizations must occur, first in oscillating moments and ultimately in simultaneous awareness, in order for the analytic work to proceed.
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The central thesis of this paper is that grand theories of development are alive and well and should be paramount to those interested in behavioral intervention. Why? Because how we think about development affects how we approach treatment. Here I discuss the central concepts of a new theory of development—dynamic systems theory—to highlight the way in which a theory can dramatically alter views of what intervention is all about. Rather than focusing on one root of maladaptive behavior such as biological predispositions, environmental causes, or motivational states, dynamic systems theory presents a flexible, time-dependent, and emergent view of behavioral change. I illustrate this new view with a case study on how infants develop the motivation to reach for objects. This example highlights the complex day-by-day and week-by-week emergence of new skills. Although such complexity presents daunting challenges for intervention, it also offers hope by emphasizing that there are multiple pathways toward change.
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Perhaps more than most psychological concepts, the concept of recognition is central to the most fundamental question: What does it mean to be human? Recognition underscores one of our basic ideas about being human; namely, that our selfhoods emerge from, are maintained within, and contribute to the shaping of our community of other human beings. However, I think the concept of recognition can also serve to illuminate a more hidden aspect of what it means to be human, what philosopher Charles Taylor calls a desire “to be rightly placed in relation to the good.” Our relationships to ourselves and others are transformed when we are recognized as orienting towards a “good.” I use phenomenological description and case examples to illustrate my thesis.Quizá en mayor grado que la mayoría de conceptos psicológicos, el concepto de reconocimiento es central para la pregunta fundamental por excelencia: ¿qué significa ser humano? El reconocimiento subraya una de nuestras ideas básicas acerca de ser humano, a saber que nuestro sentimiento de sí emerge de la comunidad de los seres humanos, es mantenido en ella, y al mismo tiempo contribuye a la formación de la misma. Pero creo que el concepto de reconocimiento puede también servir para iluminar un aspecto más escondido de lo que significa ser humano, lo que el filósofo Charles Taylor denomina el deseo de “ser correctamente situado en relación al bien.” Nuestra relación con nosotros mismos y con los demás queda transformada cuando nos sentimos reconocidos como orientados hacia “el bien.” Utilizo una descripción fenomenológica y ejemplos clínicos para ilustrar mi tesis.Peut-être davantage que la plupart des concepts psychologiques, le concept de reconnaissance est central dans la question la plus fondamentale: que signifie être humain? La reconnaissance souligne l'une de nos idées fondamentale au sujet d'être humain, à savoir que le sens d'être soi émerge, est maintenu à l'intérieur, et contribue au façonnement de notre communauté des autres êtres humains. Mais je pense que le concept de reconnaissance sert aussi à éclairer un aspect plus caché de ce que veut dire être humain, ce que le philosophe Charles Taylor appelle un désir «d'être à juste titre placé en relation au bon.» Nos relations à nous-mêmes et aux autres sont transformées lorsque nous sommes reconnus comme nous orientant vers le «bon.» J'utilise une description phénoménologique et des exemples de cas en illustration de ma thèse.Mehr als die meisten psychologischen Konzepte ist das Konzept der Anerkennung zentral für die grundlegende Frage: Was bedeutet es ein Mensch zu sein? Anerkennung unterstreicht eine unserer grundlegenden Vorstellungen des Menschseins: Unser Selbst-Sein entwickelt sich, wird aufrecht erhalten und liefert seine Beitrag zur Formgebung unserer menschlichen Gemeinschaft. Ich denke aber, dass das Konzept der Anerkennung auch dazu dienen kann, einen mehr versteckten Aspekt dessen, was es heiβt Mensch zu sein, zu erhellen; der Philosoph Charles Taylor benennt die Sehnsucht, “gut platziert in der Beziehung zum Guten zu sein.” Unsere Beziehung zu uns selbst und zu anderen verändert sich, wenn wir als etwas anerkannt werden, was sich zum “Guten” hin wendet. Um diese These darzustellen, benutze ich eine phänomenologische Beschreibung und Fallbeispiele.Forse più della maggior parte dei concetti psicologici, il concetto di riconoscimento è centrale per la questione più fondamentale: cosa vuol dire essere umani? Il riconoscimento sottolinea una delle idee di base circa gli esseri umani, cioè che il nostro sé emerge da, è mantenuto in, e contribuisce a dar forma a, la comunità di altri esseri umani. Ma io credo che il concetto di riconoscimento possa servire anche a chiarire un aspetto più nascosto di cosa significa essere umani, quello che il filosofo Charles Taylor chiama desiderio: “di essere giustamente collocati sin relazione al bene”. La nostra relazione con noi stessi e con gli altri si trasforma quando siamo riconosciuti come orientati al “bene”. Utilizzo una descrizione fenomenologica e degli esempi clinici per illustrare la mia tesi.
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Asaco-keynote address, the purpose of this article was to provide a theoretical context for the 20th annual International Self Psychology conference. Idelineate, ever so schematically, the revolutionary paradigm changes that have been taking place in psychoanalysis over the past 25 years, the new model of transference with implications for the concept of enactment, and the implicit and explicit dimensions of analytic work, leading to what, in my view, is the conceptualization of 2 fundamental pathways to analytic change. I conclude with a focus on the radical, ongoing extension of the analyst's participation, using illustratively the cocreation of analytic love. The leading-edge question guiding my discussion is, “How does analytic change occur?”Translations of AbstractComo copresentación principal, el objetivo de este artículo fue suministrar un contexto teórico para el XX Congreso Internacional de la Psicología del Self. Describo, aunque muy esquemáticamente, los revolucionarios cambios de paradigma que han tenido lugar en el psicoanálisis durante los últimos veinticinco años, el nuevo modelo de transferencia con sus implicaciones en el concepto de puesta en acto, y las dimensiones implícita y explícita del trabajo analítico, todo lo cual conduce a lo que, en mi opinión, es la conceptualización de los dos principales caminos para el cambio analítico. Finalizo centrándome en la progresiva y radical ampliación de la participación del analista, utilizando como ejemplo la cocreación del amor analítico. La pregunta central que guía mi discusión es “¿Cómo sucede el cambio psíquico?”En tant que conférencier principal à l'ouverture de la 20e Conférence internationale annuelle de la psychologie du soi, j'ai voulu offrir un contexte théorique pour l'évènement. J'énonce, de manière très schématique, les changements paradigmatiques révolutionnaires qui sont survenus en psychanalyse durant les dernières vingt–cinq années. Je décris le nouveau modèle du transfert avec ses implications pour le concept de mise en acte, et les dimensions implicites et explicites du travail analytique, menant à la conceptualisation, selon la vision que j'en ai, de deux voies fondamentales pour le changement analytique. Je conclus en me centrant sur l'élargissement croissant de la participation de l'analyste, et j'utilise, en tant qu'illustration, la cocréation de l'amour analytique. La question de pointe qui guide ma discussion est la suivante: “Comment le changement analytique survient-il?”Scopo di questo articolo era fornire un contesto teorico alla 28° Conferenza Internazionale Annuale della Psicologia del Sé. Delineo, anche se schematicamente, i cambiamenti di paradigma rivoluzionari che sono avvenuti nella psicoanalisi negli ultimi venticinque anni, il nuovo modello di transfert con le sue implicazioni per il concetto di “messa in atto”, e le dimensioni implicita ed esplicita del lavoro analitico che portano a quello che—a mio modo di vedere—è la definizione teorico-clinica di due percorsi fondamentali verso il cambiamento analitico. Concludo focalizzando la mia attenzione sull'ampliamento radicale, tuttora in corso, della partecipazione dell'analista, ed uso - per illustrarlo - la co-creazione dell'amore analitico. La domanda di punta che guida la mia discussione è: come avviene il cambiamento analitico?Die vorliegende Ausarbeitung - ein Ko-Referat - sollte einen theoretischen Kontext für die 20th Annual International Self Psychology Conference anbieten. Ich beschreibe, wenn auch sehr schematisch, die revolutionären Paradigmenwechsel, die in den letzten 20 Jahren innerhalb der Psychoanalyse stattgefunden haben; ebenfalls beschrieb ich die neuen Übertragungskonzepte mit ihren Auswirkungen für das Konzept des Enactments, sowie die impliziten und expliziten Dimensionen der analytischen Arbeit, die meines Erachtens zur Konzeptualisierung zweier grundlegender Zugänge der analytischen Veränderung führen. Abschließend lenke ich die Aufmerksamkeit auf den fundamentalen fortwährenden Ausbau der Teilhabe des Analytikers am Beispiel der Ko–Kreation der analytischen Liebe. Die „Leading Edge”–Frage, die sich durch meine Diskussion hindurchzieht, lautet: was führt zur analytischen Veränderung?
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Stolorow and Atwood begin with a penetrating critique of the concept of the isolated individual mind; this myth, they argue, has long obstructed recognition of the intersubjective foundations of psychological life. They next proceed to a series of chapters that reframe, from the standpoint of intersubjectivity theory, basic assumptions of the psychoanalytic theory of mental life. These assumptions relate to the concept of the unconscious, the relation between mind and body, the concept of trauma, and the understanding of fantasy. Concluding chapters on "varieties of therapeutic alliance" and "varieties of therapeutic impasse" further exemplify the ability of intersubjectivity theory to reorient the psychoanalytic therapist, providing fresh strategies for understanding and addressing the most challenging clinical contingencies. A brilliantly focused exposition of "the intersubjective foundations of psychological life," "Contexts of Being" is the conceptual culmination of Stolorow and Atwood's earlier studies. Here the authors explain why the perspective of intersubjectivity cannot be reduced to a clinical sensibility that can be grafted onto existing psychoanalytic theory. Rather, they argue, the intersubjective perspective has methodological and epistemological implications that mandate a radical revision of all aspects of psychoanalytic thought. "Contexts of Being" is not only a cogent elaboration of these implications, but an important first step in effecting the sweeping revision that follows from them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Book
In "Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective," Slochower brings a contemporary relational framework to bear on D. Winnicott's notion of the analytic holding environment. She presents [an] integration of Winnicott's seminal insights with contemporary relational and feminist/psychoanalytic contributions. She addresses holding in a variety of clinical contexts and focuses especially on holding processes in relation to issues of dependence, self-involvement, and hate. She also considers clinical work with patients "on the edge"—patients who seem desperately to need a holding experience that remains paradoxically elusive. Throughout [the book, Slochower] emphasizes the analyst's and the patient's co-construction, during moments of holding, of an essential illusion of analytic attunement; this illusion serves to protect the patient from potentially disruptive aspects of the analyst's subjective presence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Review of book: Irwin Hoffman. Ritual and Spontaneity in the Psychoanalytic Process: A Dialectical Constructivist Point of View. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press, 1998, 288 pp. Reviewed by Arnold D. Richards. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Book
As science probes the nature of life, society, and technology ever more closely, what it finds there is complexity. The sophisticated group behavior of social insects, the unexpected intricacies of the genome, the dynamics of population growth, and the self-organized structure of the World Wide Web - these are just a few examples of complex systems that still elude scientific understanding. Comprehending such systems seems to require a wholly new approach, one that goes beyond traditional scientific reductionism and that re-maps long-standing disciplinary boundaries. This remarkably accessible and companionable book, written by a leading complex systems scientist, provides an intimate, detailed tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of efforts that seek to explain how large-scale complex, organized, and adaptive behavior can emerge from simple interactions among myriad individuals. In this richly illustrated work, Melanie Mitchell describes in equal parts the history of ideas underlying complex systems science, the current research at the forefront of this field, and the prospects for the field's contribution to solving some of the most important scientific questions of our current century.
Article
"The Moment of Complexity is a profoundly original work. In remarkable and insightful ways, Mark Taylor traces an entirely new way to view the evolution of our culture, detailing how information theory and the scientific concept of complexity can be used to understand recent developments in the arts and humanities. This book will ultimately be seen as a classic."-John L. Casti, Santa Fe Institute, author of Gödel: A Life of Logic, the Mind, and Mathematics The science of complexity accounts for that inscrutable mix of chaos and order that governs our natural world. Complexity explains how networks emerge and function, how species organize into ecosystems, how stars form into galaxies, and how just a few sequences of DNA can account for so many different life forms. Recently, the idea of complexity has taken the worlds of business and politics by storm. The concept is used to account for phenomena as varied as the behavior of the stock market, the response of voting populations, and the effects of risk management. Even Disney has used complexity theory to manage crowd control at its theme parks. Given the startling development of new information technologies, we now live in a moment of unprecedented complexity, an era in which change occurs faster than our ability to comprehend it. With The Moment of Complexity, Mark C. Taylor offers a timely map for this unfamiliar terrain opening in our midst, unfolding an original philosophy through a remarkable synthesis of science and culture. According to Taylor, complexity is not just a breakthrough scientific concept, but the defining quality of the post-Cold War era. The flux of digital currents swirling around us, he argues, has created a new network culture with its own distinctive logic and dynamic. Drawing on resources from information theory and evolutionary biology, Taylor explains the operation of complex adaptive systems in social and cultural processes and captures a whole new zeitgeist in the making. To appreciate the significance of our emerging network culture, he claims, we need not only to understand contemporary scientific and technological transformations, but also to explore the subtle influences of art, architecture, philosophy, religion, and higher education. The Moment of Complexity, then, is a remarkable work of cultural analysis on a scale rarely seen today. To follow its trajectory is to learn how we arrived at this critical moment in our culture, and to know where we might head in the twenty-first century.
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381 p., ref. bib. : 2 p.1/2 In a rented convent in Santa Fe, a revolution has been brewing. The activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics such as Murray Gell-Mann and Kenneth Arrow, and pony-tailed graduate students, mathematicians, and computer scientists down from Los Alamos. They've formed an iconoclastic think tank called the Santa Fe Institute, and their radical idea is to create a new science called complexity. These mavericks from academe share a deep impatience with the kind of linear, reductionist thinking that has dominated science since the time of Newton. Instead, they are gathering novel ideas about interconnectedness, coevolution, chaos, structure, and order―and they're forging them into an entirely new, unified way of thinking about nature, human social behavior, life, and the universe itself. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell-and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today. They want to know why ancient ecosystems often remained stable for millions of years, only to vanish in a geological instant―and what such events have to do with the sudden collapse of Soviet communism in the late 1980s. They want to know why the economy can behave in unpredictable ways that economists can't explain-and how the random process of Darwinian natural selection managed to produce such wonderfully intricate structures as the eye and the kidney. Above all, they want to know how the universe manages to bring forth complex structures such as galaxies, stars, planets, bacteria, plants, animals, and brains. There are common threads in all of these queries, and these Santa Fe scientists seek to understand them. Complexity is their story: the messy, funny, human story of how science really happens. Here is the tale of Brian Arthur, the Belfast-born economist who stubbornly pushed his theories of economic change in the face of hostile orthodoxy. Here, too, are the stories of Stuart Kauffman, the physician-turned-theorist whose most passionate desire has been to find the principles of evolutionary order and organization that Darwin never knew about; John Holland, the affable computer scientist who developed profoundly original theories of evolution and learning as he labored in obscurity for thirty years; Chris Langton, the one-time hippie whose close brush with death in a hang-glider accident inspired him to create the new field of artificial life; and Santa Fe Institute founder George Cowan, who worked a lifetime in the Los Alamos bomb laboratory, until-at age sixty―three―he set out to start a scientific revolution. Most of all, however, Complexity is the story of how these scientists and their colleagues have tried to forge what they like to call "the sciences of the twenty-first century.".
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It is by now generally accepted that something more than interpretation is necessary to bring about therapeutic change. Using an approach based on recent studies of mother-infant interaction and non-linear dynamic systems and their relation to theories of mind, the authors propose that the something more resides in interactional intersubjective process that give rise to what they will call 'implicit relational knowing'. This relational procedural domain is intrapsychically distinct from the symbolic domain. In the analytic relationship it comprises intersubjective moments occurring between patient and analyst that can create new organisations in, or reorganise not only the relationship between the interactants, but more importantly the patient's implicit procedural knowledge, his ways of being with others. The distinct qualities and consequences of these moments (now moments, 'moments of meeting') are modelled and discussed in terms of a sequencing process that they call moving along. Conceptions of the shared implicit relationship, transference and countertransference are discussed within the parameters of this perspective, which is distinguished from other relational theories and self-psychology. In sum, powerful therapeutic action occurs within implicit relational knowledge. They propose that much of what is observed to be lasting therapeutic effect results from such changes in this intersubjective relational domain.
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Analytic work based on the intersubjective view of two participating subjectivities requires discipline rooted in an orientation to the structural conditions of thirdness. The author proposes a theory that includes an early form of thirdness involving union experiences and accommodation, called the one in the third, as well as later moral and symbolic forms of thirdness that introduce differentiation, the third in the one. Clinically, the concept of a co-created or shared intersubjective thirdness helps to elucidate the breakdown into the twoness of complementarity in impasses and enactments and suggests how recognition is restored through surrender.
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