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This article seeks to compare the approach developed in 1974 by Michel de M'Uzan to the concept of the 'chimera' with Thomas Ogden's (, ) reflections on 'the analytic third'. This comparison shows that in spite of the different theoretical approaches, unconscious to unconscious communication - a subject of interest in contemporary psychoanalytic research - makes it possible to grasp the intersubjective data deployed in the field of the session. After reviewing M. de M'Uzan's conception of the 'chimera' - a product of the unconsciouses of patient and analyst alike, and which emerges during a process of depersonalization in the analyst - the author proposes her hypothesis of the chimera as a particular intersubjective third whose creation, in a hallucinatory state, makes it possible to gain access to the bodily and emotional basis of the trauma. The author describes the chimera as a mental 'squiggle' between the two members of the pair which finds expression in different forms; further, she considers that the chimera that seizes the analyst is underpinned by the unconscious affinities of traumatic zones in both protagonists, which permit the grounding, configuration and sharing of the territories of suffering, as apprehended in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at comparing Freud's and Bion's conceptual models on dreams and dreaming. Beyond both authors' shared disposition vis-à-vis problems posed by knowledge, a critical gap opens regarding their differing clinical practices. It is hypothesized that their ideas do not belong to irreconcilable paradigms, but that there are continuities besides discontinuities more frequently highlighted between Freudian statements on psychic functioning - described in his theory on dreams - and Bion's findings in his development of both the original theory and the connections between dreaming and thinking. Firstly, Freud's and Bion's epistemological sources are examined as well as their creative use and historical environment. Then certain general theoretical and clinical issues are considered concerning their theories on dreams, the evolution of their ideas and corresponding clinical contexts. In a third section, their confluences and dissimilarities are dealt with, including clinical vignettes belonging to the authors to illustrate their interpretative modes of working. This is meant to show both an implicit theoretical-clinical complementarity and the fact that, though their routes bifurcate about the function of dreams, there remain connecting paths. Lastly, the final remarks review certain issues that have frequently been controversial between these lines of thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We start by stressing the idea that the process itself of constructing the symbol in its different components and its vicissitudes is centrally important to contemporary psychoanalysis as symbols are essential for thinking and for storing emotional experiences in our memory and for conveying our affects to others and to ourselves. Our implicit idea is that internal attacks are not directed only at the internal objects, but also include attacks on the structure or forms of the mental representations before and while they become constituted in symbols. It is by this means that destructive impulses invade the processes of symbolic construction. Symbols can lose their plasticity and thus silence the emotions and therefore cut off the patient from their meanings. Our clinical material allows us to increase our understanding of how the formal qualities of symbols operate in mental life, and how they can interfere in the capacity to work through emotional experiences. Finally, our reflections based on the analysis of a patient with difficulty in relating with the meanings of the symbols he produced will highlight the importance of the analyst's reverie along the process of formulating an interpretation. This paper is also part of a development in the study of the process of reverie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author views paper, The nature and function of phantasy , as making an important contribution to the development of a radically revised psychoanalytic theory of thinking. Perhaps Isaacs's most important contribution is the notion that phantasy is the process that creates meaning, and that phantasy is the form in which all meanings - including feelings, defense 'mechanisms,' impulses, bodily experiences, and so on - exist in unconscious mental life. The author discusses both explicit formulations offered by Isaacs as well as his own extensions of her ideas. The latter include (1) the idea that phantasying generates not only unconscious psychic content, but also constitutes the entirety of unconscious thinking; (2) the notion that transference is a form of phantasying that serves as a way of thinking for the first time (in relation to the analyst) emotional events that occurred in the past, but were too disturbing to be experienced at the time they occurred and (3) a principal aim and function of phantasy is that of fulfilling the human need to get to know and understand the truth of one's experience. The author concludes by discussing the relationship between Isaacs's concept of phantasy and Bion's concepts of alpha function and the human need for the truth, as well as the differences between Fairbairn's and Isaacs's conceptions of the nature of unconscious internal object relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a recent surge of interest in a type of thinking seen in some patients most of the time, and all patients some of the time. In the past it was simply called regressive thinking, but attempts to be more specific have led it to be called by various names, like ‘pre-symbolic’, ‘pre-conceptual’ and ‘pre-operational’. What these labels attempt to capture is that the patient’s thinking, at these times, is without representations and closer to actions. As a clinical phenomena I prefer to use Loewald’s term, ‘action–language’, that is, where words become attempts to bore, seduce, anger, etc. It is different from when words are used to communicate internal states via free association. A case is made for action–language being the primary method by which the unconscious speaks to us in psychoanalytic treatment. This paper explores some of the reasons for this type of thinking, along with the clinical methods to find the thinker where there appears to be none. Distinctions will be made as to the use of the process versus the content, on the goal of interventions as bringing insight versus the capacity for insightfulness, and the model of treatment as leading to transformations in thinking, rather than lifting of repressions. A clinical example is presented to demonstrate these perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author focuses on the importance of the body in the analysis of patients with a defect of thinking. In many cases this defect is not fully evident until concrete and bodily aspects begin to emerge in sessions. In the absence of awareness of the body, the patient’s personality is deprived of the main source of emotional stimulus, and mental growth is consequently paralysed. Hence the body is considered the starting point of mental processes and a progressive source of experience requiring the exercise of responsibility and thought. To indicate the theoretical background to this essentially clinical paper, some hypotheses about the body–mind link are very briefly considered. Specific emphasis is given to the development of Freud–Klein–Bionian theories about this subject and to some of Ferrari ’s recent proposals. The author discusses four clinical cases, emphasizing the encounter with the body in analysis and its integration in emotional and thinking processes. The analyst’s function in such cases is conceived mainly as that of midwife for a dialogue between the analysand ’s body and mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Winnicott's concept of holding and Bion's idea of the container-contained are for each of these analysts among his most important contributions to psychoanalytic thought. In this light, it is ironic that the two sets of ideas are so frequently misunderstood and confused with one another. In this paper, the author delineates what he believes to be the critical aspects of each of these concepts and illustrates the way in which he uses these ideas in his clinical work. Winnicott's holding is seen as an ontological concept that is primarily concerned with being and its relationship to time. Initially the mother safeguards the infant's continuity of being, in part by insulating him from the 'not-me' aspect of time. Maturation entails the infant's gradually internalizing the mother's holding of the continuity of his being over time and emotional fl ux. By contrast, Bion's container-contained is centrally concerned with the processing (dreaming) of thoughts derived from lived emotional experience. The idea of the container-contained addresses the dynamic interaction of predominantly unconscious thoughts (the contained) and the capacity for dreaming and thinking those thoughts (the container). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author critically examines the nature of the positive, reconciliatory attitude towards religion that has become increasingly prevalent within psychoanalytic thinking and writing over the past 20 years. She shows how this positive attitude rests on a change in the nature of the prototype of religion and its reassignment to the realm of illusion, thus making irrelevant an issue most central both to psychoanalysis and to traditional Judeo-Christian belief - the passionate search for truth. The author demonstrates how the concern with truth, and specifically with the truth of religious claims, lies at the basis of the opposition between psychoanalysis and religion but, paradoxically, also provides the common ground for dialogue between the two. She argues that, as Freud developed his ideas regarding the origin of conviction in religious claims in his Moses and monotheism (1939), the nature of this common ground was expanded and the dialogue became potentially more meaningful. The author concludes that meaningful dialogue emerges through recognition of fundamental differences rather than through harmonisation within a realm of illusion. In this light, the present study may also be seen as an attempt to recognise fundamental differences that have been evolving within psychoanalysis itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]