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This paper starts from the thought that we cannot take for granted that a society's highest values will survive in the long term as effective motivators within that society. By 'highest values' I mean values such as justice, concern for members of weak and minority groups, and respect for promises and for the attempt to speak truthfully - values that apply at the highest level of generality. If they are to survive and to be effective, two things may be necessary: firstly, unpredictable 'epiphanic' moments in which the power of these values is emotionally experienced by individuals, and secondly, institutions and a vocabulary in which these values can be remembered, discussed and affirmed in emotionally and imaginatively impactful ways. I shall suggest, with reference in particular to the thought of Emmanuel Levinas and Ronald Dworkin, that the second of these factors, the remembering and affirmation of values, marks out the crucial, perhaps even the irreplaceable, contribution of a 'religion' to a society. The failure, within psychoanalysis and also more widely, to appreciate the working of this function in a society over generations may mean that the consequences of 'growing out of religion' (Winnicott) have not yet been adequately recognized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

abstract Isabel Menzies Lyth's seminal paper on social systems as a defence against anxiety is so well known and frequently cited that it risks acquiring mythic or legendary status. But what explains its phenomenal influence? In this contribution I suggest that it is a model example of the psychoanalytic case study, deriving its power from a deep engagement with organizational particularities as a basis for general theorizing. Its continued influence depends upon the way in which it is used to conceptualize new organizational experiences. An example from an institutional observation undertaken as part of an advanced social work training at the Tavistock illustrates this. Institutional observation is one of a range of non-clinical psychoanalytically informed methods of training at the Tavistock, and in the final part of the paper I discuss new applications of Menzies Lyth's work that aim to illuminate the irrational forces shaping modern social policy. Death and anxieties about death emerge as a subtext of the present paper, perhaps reflecting the fact that it was prepared as part of a memorial conference to Menzies Lyth herself, and also that the paper taught us to think better about death as an aspect of organizational experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My intervention briefly addresses the long, complex debate on technical and educational issues within British psychoanalysis during the late 1930s and 1940s. I hope to show that some of the problems discussed and the resolutions proposed by the Training Committee of the British Society during the years of the Controversies which we are commemorating are still a source of food for thought today, in spite of the fact that they belong to a specific past. I stress the importance of Strachey's ideas about an open psychoanalytic forum. This would not be the solution to all our problems, as crises and dissent are an inevitable part of the development of our discipline. However, the more transparent and the more informed we are about our past, and about the whole internal history of our discipline, including the wider cultural, scientific and socio-political context within which psychoanalysis developed and is developing, the better chance we have of understanding our present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the three versions of Winnicott's most well known paper 'Transitional objects and transitional phenomena' published in the Collected Works of Donald Winnicott (2016) and traces the development of his ideas over a 20‐year period. It describes the changes in emphasis, the early inclusion and later exclusion of references from child therapy, and notes other omissions that contribute to a change of emphasis. It discusses the addition of two clinical cases in the text of the final version, which together with the introduction of the notion of 'paradox', demonstrate the shifts in Winnicott's own thinking following on extensive clinical experience and lively debate. The article argues for a different assessment of the meanings of the transitional object and the much more extended interest in transitional phenomena that emerges in line with Winnicott's own claim that Playing and Reality, his last book published posthumously, taken as a whole, constitutes a discussion of the significant theoretical and clinical implications of attention to transitionality and transitional phenomena as proposing a shift in the understanding of the analytic session, the analytic process and what analysis does. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article seeks the papers from various authors on different topics including adult, child, couple, or group psychotherapy or psychoanalysis for which the Rozsika Parker Prize 2018 will be given to the winner along with the information on the guidelines for the authors and the last date for the submission of papers.

Writing as the current editor of the BJP, I respond to the research challenge Bob Hinshelwood has identified for the Journal. I explore the history of research publishing in the BJP, noting the evolution of the Journal's Aims and Scope statement, and the wide range of research methodologies and topics that have been represented. I trace the evolution of Hinshelwood's views on research, making use of Edward Said's work on late style in drawing a contrast between the views expressed in Hinshelwood's 'Psychoanalytic research: Personal reflections', and views expressed in earlier years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clinical practice with children using drawing always provokes surprise, and one of the surprises concerns the diversity in the speech of the child as they draw. If we pay attention to children's speech, we can comprehend children's internal world better, and explore their symptom as a question. In this article, I explore the interpretation of children's speech, through considering a clinical case of a boy using drawing, making use of a drawing method in which there is a transition from one sheet of paper to another. I also look for a point of contact between clinical practice with drawing, and elements of Lacanian psychoanalysis. This approach builds upon, and also then differs from Kleinian perspectives. The paper begins with an account of my work in a nursery with a child drawing, and then moves on to consider both a Kleinian perspective, and some ideas from Lacanian psychoanalysis which particularly concern my interventions as forms of interpretation. Particular emphasis is given to the Lacanian principle of scansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution is written in response to Helen Morgan's paper 'Whiteness: A problem for our times'. A distinctive feature of her writing and thinking in this essay, and her new book, is how she moves easily and freely between psychoanalytic, sociological, political and psychological frameworks of understanding. In doing so her work exemplifies something that the psychoanalytic community has mostly been poor at achieving – a recognition of both its distinctive and unique potential to illuminate social and political processes, and a parallel acknowledgement of its need to enter into equilateral dialogue with other intellectual paradigms. Social and political life is historical, specific, local and complex, and not amenable to reductionist or universalizing modes of analysis and engagement. Through some examples I aim to add to Helen's very thoughtful and well researched paper, to show how psychoanalysis needs to respect other languages and methodologies for engaging with the world, render its own more accessible to non‐specialists, and relinquish its tendency to assume the status of a 'master discourse'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes an analysis with a very difficult, emotionally inaccessible patient who, after more than a year, unexpectedly terminated the analysis, leaving the analyst with a sense of frustration due to incomplete and interrupted analysis. In the theoretical section of the paper, the author presents his understanding of the creation of such a pathological organization, starting with Freud's concept of death drive, then going on to Melanie Klein's and her successor's discoveries. John Steiner's concept of 'psychic retreat' helps us to understand the process of development of a pathological organization of personality. In the last part, the author describes how he works through mourning and prompts reflection on the reasons for the premature termination of the treatment by the patient. He indicates the causes in both the patient and the analyst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The half-day conference in 2014 at which the following papers were presented was held as part of the Interdisciplinary Programme of the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London, to mark the 70th anniversary of the series of 10 scientific meetings known as the Controversial Discussions held in the British Psychoanalytical Society between 1942 and 1944 ( King and Steiner, 1991). The conference and its papers now published here aimed to develop further the detailed histories made available by King and Steiner together with their relevance for contemporary clinicians. The extraordinary resource provided by the gathering of the documents relating not only to scientific controversies, but to the training of candidates, institutional decision making, and the nexus of power relations in psychoanalytic institutes is a profound scholarly contribution for all concerned with the future of psychoanalysis and the place of its past in that future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I reflect on and argue for the importance for our profession of the issues I address in the book I wrote on clinical research, Research on the Couch: Subjectivity, Single Case Studies and Psychoanalytic Knowledge. Psychoanalytic theories, often dismissed when first proposed, have been subjected to more serious critical attack for several decades, and thoughtful responses need to be given. This paper summarizes some of my thinking (and that of others) around two issues which constrain the parameters of psychoanalytic research and on which some believe psychoanalytic research has foundered. The first is the problem of subjectivity in contrast to the bedrock of objectivity in the natural sciences; and the second is the inappropriateness of large sample research (as used by many experimental psychologists) for the task of investigating the nature and effectiveness of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysts have to rely instead on single cases. Brief accounts are given here of research paradigms appropriate to the investigation and validation of psychoanalytic theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

abstract In this contribution I describe Isabel's approach to editing her papers for publication. I consider the 'unanxiety' that allowed for a constructive relationship to her work on her papers, and coexisted with her well-known dislike of writing. I go on to consider possible reasons for the dislike, including Isabel's longstanding preoccupation with the issue of how to translate the language of psychoanalysis into terms that could be meaningful to the organizations she was working with. I suggest that Isabel felt that the face-to-face encounter was needed to achieve this, and illustrate this with an example from a piece of consultancy at the Cassel Hospital that she undertook, which I observed. It is hoped that work on her literary archive, just beginning, will shed further light on these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the initial negative reaction to Winnicott’s paper ‘On the use of an object’ in the light of its author’s own reservations about it. It argues that its obscurities indicate Winnicott’s own difficulties in articulating how the young child moves from subjectivity to the objective apprehension of the external world, and the part played in it by aggression. Particular attention is paid to Winnicott’s interest in certain late texts of Freud where the ‘death instinct’ ( Todestrieb) features prominently. It is suggested that Winnicott’s interest, like Freud’s, was prompted by the ambition of moving beyond psychopathology to formulate the outlines of a developmental psychology. Again like Freud it is argued that in this endeavour he was conceptually overreaching himself, though for different reasons. The paper concludes with some considerations about the inherently dual nature of any would-be comprehensive psychology of human understanding and behaviour, and of the necessarily partial contribution of psychodynamic theorizing towards it. The search for such a unitary psychoanalytic formula is what unites the two men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The psychedelic state can be thought about as an interdependent intrapsychic, somatic, interpersonal and spiritual happening which encourages, perhaps both to the relief and dismay of those participating in the experience, the shocking and impressive emergence of one's unconscious desires and traumata's; a state which may be experienced as cathartic or healing, and as anxiety‐provoking and confusing. Often, in clinical trials investigating psychedelics in mental health conditions, these go hand in hand. Amid a renewed, at times hyperbolic, interest in psychedelics as a potential treatment for mental ill health, significant gaps of knowledge remain. Additional studies exploring the impact of the extra‐pharmacological factors and adjunct therapeutic models on treatment outcomes are needed. Drawing from psychoanalytic perspectives, this paper explores points of intersectionality between psychedelic therapy under investigation and psychoanalysis in the context of traumatic stress. To that end, the psychedelic state will be considered an attempt to make the unconscious conscious by immersing self in a bewildering waking‐dream to better tolerate reality; immersing self in a wilful state of vulnerability, to develop trust in one's agency and capacity to trust others; immersing self in an indescribable experience to learn how to redescribe, to self and to others the traumatic past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the Rozsika Parker Prize 2016 launched in honor of author Rozsika Parker of the books "Torn in Two: The Experience of Maternal Ambivalence" and "The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine." Topics discussed include two entry routes such as Student Path and a Post-Qualification Path for the prize; papers on psychoanalysis, adult and child to be submitted by students and qualified clinicians and the criteria for submitting manuscript.

This paper follows my previous paper in the Journal in 2018, which examined Hanna Segal's theory of symbol‐formation and the various modifications she made to it. In this paper it is argued that the specific functions involved in symbol‐formation need to be examined for which fails. To use one thing (a symbol) to represent another requires a kind of suspension of reality; to take one thing as if it were really another underpins the capacity to represent. And yet it does not invalidate the knowledge that the symbol has a separate existence of its own. There is a double relation to the symbol – which is a mark on a piece of paper, and is also the thing it represents. I have termed this the 'as‐if' function that is needed in order to use symbols and representations. It is also the precise location of failure in symbolic equations, where the as‐if quality breaks down into a simple mistaken identity of the symbol with its referent. This addition to Freud's list of ego‐function involved in the reality principle is crucial to the development of representation, and ultimately of the capacity for civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colm Tóibín's novella The Testament of Mary (2013) offers a provocative re‐imagining of the Virgin Mary's life 20 years after the crucifixion of her son Jesus. Drawing on Richard Kearney's notion of anatheism or a 'return to God after God', I use the fictive space opened up in Tóibín's version of the Gospel as a spur to understanding the way in which faith may be conceived of as wager within both fiction and psychoanalysis. Discussing how the reception of the artistic message requires the same spirit of hospitality as does the encounter with alterity within the psychoanalytic relationship, I argue that in both cases we are faced with an existential moment of choice that requires a whole‐hearted willingness to engage with otherness. The implications of Tóibín's story for psychoanalytic work are then explored with reference to developmental processes outlined by Winnicott (1971) in his paper 'The use of an object'. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the significance of testimony within psychoanalytic work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hanna Segal's original paper in 1957 on symbol‐formation is a classic. It makes clinical observations of concrete symbolic equation and theorized the contrast with normal representation. In the process of developing the most accurate and most useful theory of symbol‐formation that psychoanalysis possesses, Segal brought the psychoanalytic symbol into connection with the wider meaning of symbols in linguistics and other academic disciplines. It is less well known that she modified the theoretical conceptualization of her observations in the light of Bion's development of the theory of container‐contained. Perhaps because of the clinical usefulness, little serious criticism has been made of either the original theory or its modification. In this paper, an appraisal will be made of these major conceptualizations. This paper looks again at the theory she used to make the distinction between normal symbols ‘proper’, or representations, and the concrete symbolic equation associated with the primitive or psychotic defences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a brief résumé of Winnicott's approach to psychoanalysis through a reading that emphasizes his interest in the capacity to be as a fundamental acquisition of human subjectivity. This interest continued throughout his life. The paper argues that it is closely related to his interest in analytic communication and the emphasis in his paper ‘Communicating and not‐communicating leading to a study of certain opposites’ of the importance clinically of the patient's right not to communicate and the analyst's acceptance of it. It refers briefly to the richness of the arena opened up by his idea of the incommunicado self and its implications for both theory and practice. Three clinical vignettes are included to demonstrate Winnicott's way of working. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended to offer a foundation for comparison of the approaches of Wilfred Bion and Donald Winnicott. In particular, I try to plot the oscillation of Bion's clinical method from his early Group period at the Tavistock Clinic (up to around 1950) when he emphasized countertransference; his part‐object interpretation method in the 1950s after his analysis with Klein when he and colleagues were experimenting with the psychoanalysis of people in psychotic states (1953–59); and then his return to his investigation of the intuitive approach to clinical data, around 1965–70. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

abstract In a psychoanalytic career spanning three decades, Nina Farhi (1943-2009) worked primarily with people who had survived near impossible emotional and psychological circumstances. In a series of clinical papers, she theorized the ways in which her patients had managed to preserve embryonic self-states against all odds and the arduous, imaginative and resourceful psychoanalytic work required to transform these vestiges of survival into creative living. This paper traces the evolution of Farhi's clinical thought, from her surprising and fresh uses of particular concepts of Winnicott's to her original re-working of some of Marion Milner's foundational insights. It explores the ways in which Farhi's clinical practice was original and the clinical and theoretical legacy she leaves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces a series of topics discussed within this issue, including one on the necessary conditions for diversity within psychoanalytic thinking as a factor of creativity and progress, and the treatment of anorexia.

This paper undertakes a return to a key moment in the development of Kleinian psychoanalysis in post-war Britain, focusing on the Kleinian clinic of psychosis during the period. Through a reconsideration of a seminal paper by Hanna Segal, it seeks to address the following question: given the originality of Klein and her colleagues at that time, why did they adopt such a rigid approach to innovation in the clinical treatment, if not the theorization, of the psychoses? By focusing on some of the ways in which extra-clinical factors, especially the institutional politics from within which the Kleinian clinical orientation was forged, this paper hopes to contribute to a broader understanding of certain factors influencing the emergence of distinctive theoretical and clinical cultures. Making use of insights from philosopher of science Ian Hacking in conjunction with Segal's own notion of 'symbolic equations', it is argued that there is a 'symbolic equation' in the Kleinian failure, at the time, to metaphorize or interpret Freud's technical prescriptions for psychoanalysis, resulting in a symbolic equation between their clinical technique and the hypothesized symbolic equations of their patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented which discusses several reports within the issue on topics including pschoanalyses and Psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Chapter 7, on the patients apparent deadness and obsessionality, takes further Bergstein's conviction that nameless experiences, those that should have been registered and represented by the primary object, can still be registered (adequately for the first time) through the countertransference - thereby becoming tangible to the patient. One of the strengths of the book is how it combines a good balance of theoretical discussion with detailed work from Bergstein's encounters with his patients, which he uses to illustrate his argument. Bergstein also draws our attention to an important paper by Jim Rose ([8], p. 113), which is still under-recognized, and under-appreciated, but very relevant to the case Bergstein is making. [Extracted from the article]

In this paper, the author looks at some central psychoanalytic themes through the lens of literature. In literary criticism, it is clear that we construct a meaning with the help of certain formal principles. In literature, we also know that fiction differs from documentary or scientific prose. The literary critic thinks that, specifically in fiction, one may find new formal principles and, through that, new perspectives on reality. With the help of these literary constructs, the author looks at character, transference, therapeutic change and truth/reality in psychoanalysis. The argument is elaborated in relation to a clinical example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores psychoanalytic definitions of creativity and presents a creatively relational approach working with clients presenting with cultural issues and illustrates this with a clinical example. The author explores her personal and historical contribution to the countertransferential elements of this article using the autobiographical and ethnographical to examine the emergence of and dependence on creativity. Linking the arts and psychoanalysis, she elucidates the relationship between what is personal and what is political and asks the audience as they read to keep considering what might be personal for them. She reviews concepts of Winnicott and Klein's creative in psychological terms; that of an active demonstration of the ego being different from the creative as the production of an object, the commonality being the creation of a new stimulus. She considers a case example from a socio‐genetic perspective to demonstrate the creative as a response to trauma. Holding the view that an urgent need and therapeutic responsibility exists for new creative measures she concludes that it is in the articulation of the therapist's unconscious psychic reality where the potential lies to actively acknowledge and avoid the deepening of existing societal fissures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An Anglo‐American group of analysts recently dialogued on the theoretical differences in the work of W.R. Bion and D.W. Winnicott. This group heard keynote papers (Hinshelwood and Caldwell) that surveyed the work of Bion and Winnicott, which were commented upon (Oelsner and Goldberg). Preceding this event was an all‐day, Tavistock Group Relations Conference, in which half of the attendees (N=35) participated in varying group experiences that focused on the analysts’ ‘group selves’ as a needed fourth leg to their traditional tri‐partite training. In this regard, the implicit authority structure of having British analysts give keynote papers to a group of American analysts came under examination. The organizers of the Regional Bion Symposium (Aguayo and Lundgren) both introduced this work, then compared some of Bion and Winnicott's key differences: these findings both verged towards and away from each other. While both theorists moved the psychoanalytic ‘internal world’ paradigms of Freud and Klein in an intersubjective direction, each did so in a distinctive way. Lastly, the conference organizers comment on how the structure underlied the freedom of attendees to articulate diverse views in the context of the analyst's individual and group identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has been five years in the making, since I have run a series of seminars about poetry and psychoanalysis at the Tavistock Clinic for non‐clinical students. The title comes from a poem by John Berryman (1914–72), ‘Dream Song 29’ ( , p. 77), and it sums up how in this seminar we have tried both to feel what we feel in an authentic way when reading a poem, and think about the links it may have with the central core of the students’ study, which is psychoanalysis. Are the two disciplines in any way complementary? Can unconscious phantasy be tapped into via the medium of poetry? In this paper I hope to show that while there are profound differences between poetry and psychoanalysis there are also similarities, as the work with students has highlighted. I also include three brief clinical vignettes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author is using Bion's model of the digestive process, among other models, in order to think about how teaching of theory can be approached as a task and undertaken in practice. Beginning with the ideas of Plato, she discusses how new ideas may be best conveyed, and how psychoanalytic theory teachers (using the teaching of Melanie Klein's ideas here to make her points) may make what they teach acceptable and 'digestible' to students. She uses some material from a theory group as well as a baby observation group, and concludes that in group teaching the responsibility for the taking on and elaboration of ideas - a process of digestion - is shared by the teacher and by the group. As psychoanalytic workers need to be able to 'manage uncertainty' in daily practice, this state of mind can usefully also be held by the theory teacher. The process of digestion will vary according to the composition of any group, drawing out different facets of understanding in both 'teachers' and 'learners', and may well draw on other vertices beyond that of psychoanalysis. These links will aid the process of digesting ideas, and will also be evident in the author style, structure and content of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author has written a paper about her sense of hopelessness in working psychoanalytically with two female patients. She found that these feelings were reflected in supervision through the parallel process. She was greatly helped by Betty Joseph's paper, 'Addiction to near death', where she found many similarities between that author's patients and her own. Eventually, through consideration of other literature and reflecting on her own experiences, she reached the conclusion that until she could allow herself to be immersed in this sense of hopelessness, it was not possible to genuinely connect with her patients. Any hope to be found, had to be reached through an authentic interaction, which means that the sense of hopelessness had to be tolerated for long periods of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]