No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
The Object Invades: Illustration and Implications
Abstract
A challenging case is presented to illustrate the phenomenon of an invasive object. The specific concept of the invasive object has been elaborated recently by Paul Williams, who identifies a primitive object relation in which a child's nascent self is subjected to violent projections from a disturbed object. The object's force and malignancy have the dual effects of shaping as well as shattering the child's developing systems. This article highlights the complex sequelae of an invasive object in an adult patient, and the treatment manifestations in primitive states, intense affects, transference-countertransference, and stagnation. The explanatory value of Williams's concept and his contribution to early object relations formulations are emphasized. Williams's lack of specified treatment approaches is noted. With the aim of elaborating the clinical application of Williams's idea, a possible pathway to the patient's reorganization is suggested.
... His memoir captures a simple idea that is at the heart of this paper: that true healing often involves going further into our patients' worlds of suffering and private madness rather than working to move them out of these states. In this paper I address how one works intersubjectively and authentically as a relational analyst with patients and states where there is no mutuality and no differentiation of self and other, when consciousness is dominated by part-object relatedness and fragmented, constricted, and bizarre experiences of self, other, and the world and where symbolization and reflective function are greatly limited (Director, 2009(Director, , 2014Grossmark, 2012aGrossmark, , 2012bMcGleughlin, 2011;Reis, 2009Reis, , 2010Reis, , 2011. I foreground the utility of imbricating the ideas of object relations theory together with relational conceptions of clinical interaction such that patients and self states that are unavailable for dialogic connection can be reached and engaged with. ...
In this paper I offer an integration of object relations and relational conceptions of clinical interaction and suggest a register of psychoanalytic companioning. I suggest that when working with patients and states where there is no self-other definition and therefore no mutuality, the path to healing and growth is via companioning the patient into the darker, more regressed and unformed states of illusion and merger rather than via the promotion of separateness and relatedness, which, I propose, will accrue from within the companioning register. The analyst works from within an unobtrusive relational position. I offer a case example of my work in this register and suggest that this offers a different register of the use of the analyst’s subjectivity: one that is receptive, “cooperative” (Trevarthen) and responsive to the patient’s internal world and objects, rather than analytic and knowing. I consider the dimensions of intersubjectivity that cohere with the dimensions and levels of the patient’s mentalization as outlined by Leciurs and Bouchard (1997).
This paper addresses the challenges of working with narcissistically vulnerable patients who suffer vast schisms between objective and subjective time. Such patients ward off awareness of temporal limits both because they long to access an authentic sense of personal rhythm and agency, and because they cannot tolerate the encounter with past and present losses that living in real time requires. A clinical vignette centered around the developmental window of fertility illustrates how temporal enactments unfold when the analyst feels forced to choose between inviting the potentials of timelessness and the expansion of continuity and interiority, or acknowledging the urgency to act and the threat of new losses that accompany the patient’s longing to wait for subjective experiences of “readiness.”
The question of the uniqueness of relationships is examined: How do relationships come to be unique? What are some of the features of their uniqueness? And how can relationships, be it the mother—infant relationship or the patient—therapist relationship, have unique rather than archetypical effects on other relationships? A model of relationship uniqueness is presented that argues that mother and infant, and patient and therapist, co-create dyadic states of consciousness—states of making implicit and explicit sense of the world—out of their normally messy exchanges of age-possible meanings. These co-creative processes lead to change in the infant's and child's state of knowing the world, and also change the way the patient makes sense of the world and ways of being with others. Additionally presented are (I) a critique of attachment theory's assumption that the mother—infant relationship is the prototype of later relationships; (2) a critique of models of therapeutic change that see adult analysis as working primarily in the same domain as the workings of the mother-infant relationship; (3) a brain model of co-creative relational processes, Relational Activation Patterns (RAPs); and (4) possible psychodynamic processes in infants.
"[A] well-plotted survey." Total Film
In 100 American Horror Films, Barry Keith Grant presents entries on 100 films from one of American cinema's longest-standing, most diverse and most popular genres, representing its rich history from the silent era - D.W. Griffith's The Avenging Conscience of 1915 - to contemporary productions - Jordan Peele's 2017 Get Out.
In his introduction, Grant provides an overview of the genre’s history, a context for the films addressed in the individual entries, and discusses the specific relations between American culture and horror. All of the entries are informed by the question of what makes the specific film being discussed a horror film, the importance of its place within the history of the genre, and, where relevant, the film is also contextualized within specifically American culture and history. Each entry also considers the film’s most salient textual features, provides important insight into its production, and offers both established and original critical insight and interpretation.
The 100 films selected for inclusion represent the broadest historical range, and are drawn from every decade of American film-making, movies from major and minor studios, examples of the different types or subgenres of horror, such as psychological thriller, monster terror, gothic horror, home invasion, torture porn, and parody, as well as the different types of horror monsters, including werewolves, vampires, zombies, mummies, mutants, ghosts, and serial killers.
Through a detailed clinical vignette and a review of the relevant literature this paper illustrates the failures in narrative formation, symbolization, and even in the process of psychoanalytic listening and comprehension, that occur in the wake of events of massive psychic trauma. Inexplicable gaps and absences occur in what should be all too evident and readily known, and the processes of exploratory curiosity come to a halt. The author attempts to explain this phenomenon through the cessation of the inner dialogue with the internalized good object, the "inner thou" that is annihilated in massive trauma. He tries to demonstrate the role the death instinct derivatives play in this presumed shut-down of processes of association, symbolization, and narrative formation. Such death instinct derivatives come unleashed once the binding libidinal forces of object cathexis are abolished and identification with the aggressor (the only object left in the internal world representation) takes place. Implications for psychoanalytic psychotherapy with severely traumatized patients are discussed and illustrated by another case vignette.
This chapter introduces a new model of infant-mother interaction - the 'Dyadic States of Consciousness' (DSC). In an infant-mother interaction, each individual communicates their affective evaluation of the state of what is going on in the interaction. In response to the induction of meaning in the other, infants and mothers adjust their behaviour to maintain coordinated dyadic state. When the mutual induction is successful, a DSC is formed, meanings from the other' state of consciousness (SOC) are incorporated, and their SOCs gain coherence and complexity.
The question of a theory of analytic change is approached through a consideration of analytic impasse. Impasse is considered in relation to impasse in the analyst, linked to an impasse in some forms of mourning in the analyst. The analyst's impasse is considered in the light of character formation, the relation of analytic vocations to early attachment, and object ties in the analyst leading to problems with omnipotence. Impasse then is tied to various processes and defenses that shape and contribute to the analyst's countertransference. Analytic change is considered then in the context of theories of nonlinear development, models of speech practice, and mutative action. These ideas are explored through case material.
The author describes the psychoanalysis of a female patient who was diagnosed psychiatrically as a paranoid psychotic. The patient reported a history of chronic sexual abuse. The psychopathology and the phases of treatment are considered, with particular reference to the dynamics and content of psychotic ideation and their transference and countertransference implications. In particular, the author points to the qualitative distinctiveness of psychotic thought, which, if mistaken for nonpsychotic thought, can generate confusion leading to impasse. Differentiation of the two levels of mentation and interpretation of their symbolic meaning in the nonpsychotic transference is necessary for the psychotherapy of psychosis to proceed.
Through a detailed clinical vignette and a review of the relevant literature this paper illustrates the failures in narrative formation, symbolization, and even in the process of psychoanalytic listening and comprehension, that occur in the wake of events of massive psychic trauma. Inexplicable gaps and absences occur in what should be all too evident and readily known, and the processes of exploratory curiosity come to a halt. The author attempts to explain this phenomenon through the cessation of the inner dialogue with the internalized good object, the “inner thou” that is annihilated in massive trauma. He tries to demonstrate the role the death instinct derivatives play in this presumed shut-down of processes of association, symbolization, and narrative formation. Such death instinct derivatives come unleashed once the binding libidinal forces of object cathexis are abolished and identification with the aggressor (the only object left in the internal world representation) takes place. Implications for psychoanalytic psychotherapy with severely traumatized patients are discussed and illustrated by another case vignette.
In discussing therapeutic action as conceived within the British Independent School and the conceptual and technical difficulties involved in integrating dissociated states of mind, the author's linking of relational concepts of dissociated patterns of interaction with Winnicott's theory of potential space (for the purpose of transforming latent psychic capacities) presents a number of difficulties for this discussant which may reflect in part a culture different from the author's own but also profound differences of approach. Despite attempts to achieve common ground within psychoanalysis there are numerous variations of the discipline and areas of commonality are neither obvious nor clear. The paper under discussion left this discussant with a sense not having entered clinically into the unconscious world of the patient in a way that felt familiar. There is an emphasis on psychic change in the paper, but there is also an emphasis on the role of consciousness in relationships, which, though important, does not for this writer constitute the foundation of enduring psychological change. Overlaps and gaps in understanding are discussed which may reflect differing clinical trajectories or destinies as we undertake the analytic journey with our respective patients.
In this brief introductory paper, Cooper introduces a panel by four analysts who consider their work with particularly challenging patients. This introduction emphasizes the dyadic nature of difficulty in initiating therapeutic work with the patients described here. The author refers to the genre employed in these papers as a less heroic genre than is sometimes used in psychoanalytic papers—a welcome development, as these authors courageously describe the fraught and sometimes failed attempt to engage their patients.
This paper represents the fruits of a long friendship and collaboration between Marion Milner and Nina Farhi. At the heart of the paper sits a famous treatment conducted by Milner over a 17-year period. The presentation of clinical material; many drawings, and the questions raised by Milner in one generation and Farhi in another gives shape to a unique and historically and theoretically meaningful document.Farhi uses the work and her collaboration with Milner to push theory into new ground, to examine the complexity and intersubjectivity of regression and primitive states, to assess the long shadow of maternal destructiveness, and to propose her own ideas of the power of prenatal intersubjective process, the potential (ill or good) for communication before the child is born. Issues of intergenerational communication of trauma and prenatal sensitivity allow Farhi to bring a new dimension to this long-ago case.
This essay explores the sometimes uncanny quality of unconscious experience and unconscious communication that often characterizes life in psychoanalytic relationships. As Ferenczi noted some 70 years ago, the psychoanalytic relationship may “significantly promote the development of subtler manifestations of receptivity.” Special qualities of unconscious receptivity and deep points of contact in the psychoanalytic relationship are explored, with reference to the history of psychoanalytic ideas (e.g., Freud, Ferenczi, Singer, Loewald, Symington) and to findings from other fields such as contemporary quantum science. Clinical vignettes are provided to illustrate such phenomena.
This book has been conceived and executed as a cross-sectional systematic analysis mainly of two concepts: introjection and identification. These two concepts are frequently used in relation to each other in an uncoordinated, often implicit variety of ways, and also in relation to the concepts of internalization and incorporation, again in an uncoordinated, often implicit variety of ways.
The reader will find extensive discussion of certain aspects of metapsychology of internalization, introjection, identification, and incorporation, and little or no discussions of other aspects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In this new book, Anzieu presents a synthesis of his research and proposes a theory on the functions of 'the skin-ego'.
Just as the skin is envelope to the body, Anzieu sees 'the skin-ego' as a psychic envelope containing, defining and protecting the psyche. From this perspective, the structures and the function of the skin can provide psychoanalysts and psychotherapists with fertile analogies.
Anzieu's concept of the skin-ego is the answer to questions he regards as crucial to contemporary psychoanalysis: questions of topography, left incomplete by Freud; the analysis of fantasies of the container as of the contained; issues of touch between mothers and babies; extending the concept of prohibitions within an Oedipal framework to those derived from a prohibition on touching; questions pertaining to the representation of the body and to its psychoanalytic setting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
After reviewing the writings of Freud, Fenichel, Hartmann, Winnicott, and Kris on sublimation, Dr. Loewald presents his own ideas. In his attempt to disentangle sublimation from other concepts with which it is often confused, he examines it within three contexts: as reconciliation, as defense, and as symbolic expression. He establishes a strong case for the undifferentiated quality of early life—a time of unselfconscious unity prior to awareness of self or other. Sublimation, according to Dr. Loewald, is an act of instinctual expression derived from this early pre-differentiated period.
Dr. Loewald's inquiry leads to a reexamination and revision of basic psychoanalytic theory relating to instincts, symbolism, motivation, ego development, and various emotional processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
We are used to the idea that trauma in the past interrupts our capacity to grasp the present. But present or recent trauma can have a similar dissociative effect on our capacity to experience the more distant past. Contemporary trauma can rob the past of its goodness, leaving one feeling as if the past is gone, dead, separated from the present. The vitalization of the present by the past or the past by the present requires that experiences be linked across time. These links are created, in both directions, via categories of experience characterized by shared affect (Modell 1990, 2006). Such categories are created, in turn, by metaphor; and the construction of these metaphors across time requires that one be able to occupy self-states in both the past and the present that can then bear witness to one another. Trauma can result in the dissociation of these self-states from one another, leading to a disconnection of present and past.
The origins of psychoanalysis, as well as the concerns of our daily endeavors, center on engagement with the fate of the unbearable - be it wish, affect, or experience. In this paper, I explore psychological states and dynamics faced by survivors of genocide and their children in their struggle to sustain life in the midst of unremitting deadliness. Toward this continuous effort, I re-examine Freud's theoretical formulations concerning memory and mourning, elaborate André Green's concept of the 'Dead Mother', and introduce more recent work on the concepts of the 'third' and 'thirdness'. Throughout, my thoughts are informed by our clinical experience with the essential role of witnessing in sustaining life after massive trauma. I bring aspects of all these forms of knowing to reflections about a poem by Primo Levi entitled Unfinished business and to our own never finished business of avoiding denial while living in an age of genocide and under the aura of uncontained destructiveness.
Even in the absence of others, we learn about ourselves by imaginatively listening to our own thoughts through the ears of the other. At the beginning of life, we need a witness to become a self. Later, patients listen to themselves as they imagine their analysts hear them, and in this way create new narrative freedom. The resolution of enactments is crucial in psychoanalytic treatment, not only because it expands the boundaries of the self, but also because it reinstitutes and broadens the range within which patient and analyst can witness one another's experience. Narrative is not the outcome of the analyst's objective interpretations, but an emergent, co-constructed, unbidden outcome of clinical process.
In this paper it is suggested that patients bring to analysis their damaged inner objects, and not only themselves, to undergo reparation because they are unable to do it. Stress is put on the very complex mechanisms used to keep damaged and dying inner objects alive whilst waiting for help to come. The contrast between concrete repair and psychic reparation appears to be very important and the defences necessitated by failed reparation efforts are described. Failed reparation manoeuvres must not be confused with resulting defences. Examples are given for various levels of personality organizations and pathology, including neurotic, borderline, psychotic, psychosomatic and hypochondriacal patients. A group of six neurotic patients is included.
In the first part of this paper I have concentrated on Melanie Klein's description of early infantile positive and negative object relations, which, in her view, start from birth onwards. I have also described the defences which arise in early infancy, which Melanie Klein stressed particularly in her papers in 1935 and 1946. I have discussed in greater detail those processes which Melanie Klein and others, including myself, have described under the term projective identification.
The term unmentalized experience is defined, elaborated, explicated, and illustrated with clinical examples from the analysis of adult patients. The origins of the author's conceptualization of the term are traced from Freud's early notion of the "anxiety equivalent" through the work of present-day object relations theorists. A model for the somatic recording of early pre- and postnatal experience is derived from Stern's research in the field of infant development, and some implications for treatment are noted.
The author discusses the experience of 'being invaded' that is sometimes communicated by certain severely disturbed patients. The complaint can sometimes be couched in terms of bodily suffering and such patients may state that they have the experience of a 'foreign body' inside. It is suggested that these patients have suffered severe early failure of containment of their projections, while at the same time they have incorporated primitive characteristics of the object that have been powerfully projected into them. An object that invades in this way, it is suggested, experiences a compulsive need to expel unbearable states of mind using others as a repository. The infant incorporates these violent projections as part of his own mental representational system, and normal identification processes are disrupted. There follows impairment of the development of the sense of self. Clinical examples of how the invasive experience manifests itself in the analytic setting and in the transference and countertransference are presented. It is argued that this highly complex form of early subject-object interaction (prior to the differentiation of psyche-soma) is more likely to be found in severely narcissistically disturbed individuals. Some reflections on the origins of invasive phenomena are given.
Producers) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? [Motion picture]. United States: The Associates & Aldrich Company, Seven Arts Productions
- R Aldrich
- K Hyman
Aldrich, R. (Producer/Director), & Hyman, K. (Producers). (1962). What Ever
Happened to Baby Jane? [Motion picture]. United States: The Associates &
Aldrich Company, Seven Arts Productions, Warner Bros.
Attention and interpretation
- W Bion
Bion, W. (1970). Attention and interpretation. New York, NY: Jason Aronson.
Elements of psychoanalysis
- W Bion
Bion, W. (1984a). Elements of psychoanalysis. London, UK: Maresfield. (Originally
published 1963.)
Learning from experience
- W Bion
Bion, W. (1984b). Learning from experience. London, UK: Maresfield. (Originally
published 1962.)
Alien [Motion picture
- G Carroll
- D Giler
- W Hill
- I Powell
- R Shusett
- R Scott
Carroll, G., Giler, D., Hill, W., Powell, I., Shusett, R. (Producers), & Scott, R.
(Director). (1979). Alien [Motion picture]. United States: Brandywine Productions, Twentieth Century-Fox Productions.
The mind object: Precocity and pathology of self-sufficiency
- E Corrigan
- P Gordon
Corrigan, E., & Gordon, P. (1995). The mind as an object. In E. Corrigan &
P. Gordon (Eds.), The mind object: Precocity and pathology of self-sufficiency
(pp. 1-22). Northfield, NJ: Jason Aronson.
Affect regulation, mentalization, and the development of the self
- P Fonagy
- G Gergely
- E Jurist
- M Target
Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E., & Target, M. (2002). Affect regulation, mentalization, and the development of the self. New York, NY: Other Press.
A psychoanalytic theory of infantile experience: Conceptual and clinical reflections
- E Gaddini
Gaddini, E. (1992). A psychoanalytic theory of infantile experience: Conceptual
and clinical reflections. New York, NY: Routledge.
Introduction A language for psychosis
- P Williams
Williams, P. (2001a). Introduction. In P. Williams (Ed.), A language for psychosis
(pp. 1–7). London. UK: Whurr.
Unimaginable storms: Introduction and conclusion
- P Williams
Williams, P. (2010b). Unimaginable storms: Introduction and conclusion. In
Invasive objects: Minds under siege (pp. 227-245). New York, NY: Routledge.
The Shawshank redemption [Motion picture
- L Glotzer
- D Lester
- N Marvin
- F Darabont
Glotzer, L., Lester, D., Marvin, N. (Producers), & Darabont, F. (Writer/Director).
(1994). The Shawshank redemption [Motion picture]. United States: Castle Rock
Entertainment.
- W Bion
Bion, W. (1992). Cogitations. London, UK: Karnac Books.
Director). (1979). Alien [Motion picture
- G Carroll
- D Giler
- W Hill
- I Powell
- R Shusett
- R Scott
Carroll, G., Giler, D., Hill, W., Powell, I., Shusett, R. (Producers), & Scott, R.
(Director). (1979). Alien [Motion picture]. United States: Brandywine Productions, Twentieth Century-Fox Productions.
- Stern D. B.