Bion/Winnicott encounter: absence, failure and the negative in the work of Bion and Winnicott.

After the death of Freud, a major thrust of the expansion of psychoanalytic theory involved the increasing recognition that the actuality of the emotional functioning of the object,-the primary objects in the infant's development, the analyst as object in the treatment process-were crucial determinants of developmental and therapeutic outcome. This recognition has been the driving force behind the evolution of various iterations of the role of interaction, inter-affectivity and intersubjectivity in two-person theories of psychic development and therapeutic action. This paper attempts to briefly trace in the work of Bion, Winnicott, Green and the Paris Psychosomatic School not only the effects of traumatic occurrences, but of their negative-i.

On the question of the internal frame.

This paper attempts to expand José Bleger's classic, metapsychological descriptions of the psychoanalytic frame to formulate and emphasize the role of the analyst's internal frame in establishing a psychoanalytic observational perspective in the analytic situation. The rationale for doing so follows from clinical necessity, especially when working with patients and psychic organizations that are 'beyond neurosis' and in non-traditional settings such as distance and telemetric analyses. Clinically speaking, in its most effective state, the analyst's internal frame can inform the possibility of an observational vertex aimed at the intuitive grasp of psychic reality rather than a sense-based, empirical observation of parameters denoted by the elements of a consensually validatable social reality.

On looking into 100 years after its publication.

Freud's publication of The Ego and the Id sparked a diverging set of psychoanalytic models - ego psychology, structural conflict theory, Kleinianism, object relations theories, Lacanianism, etc. - each of which attempted to deal with the clinical limitations of his first topography in regard to unconscious guilt, negative therapeutic reactions and primitive character organizations. This paper attempts to look back on these developments from the perspective of contemporary, post-Freudian psychoanalytic theories.

To Feel in My Flesh: Receptivity, Resonance, Representation, and The Beta Screen.

When we are confronted with the challenge of trying to fully convey or describe something about human life and emotional experience, we find ourselves up against the very limitations of language. This problem becomes especially relevant as we attempt to expand psychoanalytic theory so as to enable us to "approach a mental life unmapped by the theories elaborated for the understanding of neurosis" (Bion1962, p. 37).

A Metapsychology of the Unrepresented.

The terms and are increasingly being referred to in psychoanalytic discourse, without our having established a generally agreed upon consensus about their definition, use or meaning. While these particular designations were never used by Freud, a careful reading of his work reveals them to be qualities that characterize the initial state of both the drive and perception. This paper attempts to place these terms in a clinically useful, metapsychological perspective by reviewing their conceptual origin in Freud and examining their elaboration and clinical relevance in the work of Bion, Winnicott, and Green.

Trauma, process and representation.

The concept of Trauma in psychoanalysis has suffered from overuse and inconsistent use. A review of Freud's writings beginning with the Project indicates that from the perspective of the impact upon psychic processes, Freud held a more consistent view of the concept that, if recognized, can help avoid the often fruitless etiological debates of internal vs. external cause, intrinsic (drive) vs.

FURTHER THOUGHTS ON TRAUMA, PROCESS AND REPRESENTATION.

Beginning with Freud, throughout his work and in most if not all psychoanalytic formulations, the concept of trauma has been associated with the disruptive effects of excess excitation on psychic regulatory processes and psychic development. Foremost among these are the capacities for emotional containment and representation. The restoration, strengthening or acquisition for the first time of these capacities can take place intersubjectively in a successful analytic therapy and lies at the heart of the therapeutic action.

The compulsion to repeat: An introduction.

The Repetition Compulsion has been the source of much controversy and perplexity. From it's clinical introduction in 1914 in Remembering, Repeating and Working Through to it's metapsychological elaboration in 1920 in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, it has occupied a central position in Freud's thinking. Especially in regard to his later work, it can be seen to be intrinsic to his final dual instinct theory, his theories of the Death Instinct, trauma, memory, binding and action and to the clinical challenges and theoretical changes that led to the formulation of his second topography.

Reflections on Therapeutic Action and the Origins of Psychic Life.

Psychoanalysis has seen a shift in emphasis regarding therapeutic action and technique. A predominant focus on the uncovering or reintegrating of repressed, disguised, or split-off contents has moved to include the intersubjective creation, development, and strengthening of psychic processes and capabilities. The analyst's role in this process has been analogized to that of the primary maternal object in the origins of psychic life.

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH.

After briefly reviewing Freud's search for "the truth" in psychoanalytic treatments, the author discusses Bion's views on truth and its prominence in his thinking. The author then addresses various definitions of truth, drawing particularly on recent comments by Ogden (2015). Considerations of the relationship between truth and philosophy, and of that between truth and the arts, follow; the author then returns to a focus on psychoanalytic truth as emergent.

The colourless canvas: representation, therapeutic action and the creation of mind.

Freud's initial formulations viewed psychoanalysis as working towards the rediscovery of psychic elements - thoughts, feelings, memories, wishes, etc. - that were once known - represented in the mind, articulatable, thinkable - but then disguised and/or barred from consciousness. His subsequent revisions implicated a second, more extensive category of inchoate forces that either lost or never attained psychic representation and, although motivationally active, were not fixed in meaning, symbolically embodied, attached to associational chains, etc.

Creating analysts, creating analytic patients.

This paper applies a contemporary, 'two-track'- transformational as well as archaeological - perspective on psychoanalytic process to clinical issues in the creation of analytic patients: case finding, recommending analysis, and recommending and negotiating the intensification of frequency of sessions in analytic psychotherapy. Central importance is assigned to the role of the mind and analytic identity of the analyst, including the analyst's capacity to maintain an internal analytic frame and analyzing attitude from the very first contact with the patient and throughout the treatment, the analyst's confidence in and conviction about the usefulness of analysis for a given analytic dyad and the role of the analyst's theory, which must be broad and consistent enough to allow the analyst to feel that he or she is operating analytically when addressing non-neurotic (unrepresented and weakly represented mental states) as well as neurotic structures.

Time and timelessness: inscription and representation.

Time is a real dimension of the physical universe and a subjective matter of mind. Depending on their relationship to Eros and the Death Instinct, our feelings about time and timelessness may serve disparate ends- positive or negative, constructive or destructive. The conflicts that emerge between time and timelessness will be affected by and drawn into our conflicts between the reality principle and the pleasure principle and by our capacity to acknowledge and bear the losses, hurts, and disappointments with which life presents us and the hopes and possibilities that life may hold.

Representations and their vicissitudes: the legacy of Andre Green.

André Green is a leading voice in French psychoanalysis whose contributions sit at a crossroads, where the challenges posed and the opportunities presented by the work of Lacan, Klein, Winnicott, and Bion meet the still-generative insights of Freud, many of which Green reminds us have yet to be fully appreciated or developed. In offering a summary of Green's work, two of his recent books, Key Ideas for a contemporary psychoanalysis: Misrecognition and recognition of the unconscious' and Psychoanalysis: a paradigm for clinical Thinking, give readers a chance to join him in his struggles to understand and treat patients whose difficulties lie beyond the spectrum of neurotic disturbances for which psychoanalytic treatment was originally intended. Additionally, they allow readers to listen in depth to the reflections of a sensitive clinician who is also an intellectual and a theoretician in the best sense of these words, as he looks back over some of the major issues that have shaped his professional lifetime and ahead to what is still to be settled in our field.

A note on notes: note taking and containment.

In extreme situations of massive projective identification, both the analyst and the patient may come to share a fantasy or belief that his or her own psychic reality will be annihilated if the psychic reality of the other is accepted or adopted (Britton 1998). In the example of' Dr. M and his patient, the paradoxical dilemma around note taking had highly specific transference meanings; it was not simply an instance of the generalized human response of distracted attention that Freud (1912) had spoken of, nor was it the destabilization of analytic functioning that I tried to describe in my work with Mr.

Boundaries and postanalytic contacts in institutes.

The work of a COPE study group on boundaries is presented, with particular focus on post-termination contact after the training analysis. Through the use of clinical examples evocative and illustrative of the complexity of postanalytic contacts and relationships in the training analysis situation, a number of dilemmas are identified that former analysts and patients face when they meet as colleagues after the training analysis is over. These dilemmas, it is argued, have implications for the conduct and effectiveness of the training analysis and for the institutional cultures and power relations that evolve within institutes.