Psychoanalysis

The existence of the 'primal horde' is central to Sigmund Freud's theories on the beginnings of totemism and incest taboo in humankind. In this paper, I begin by considering Freud's theory and examining his sources, namely J. J. Atkinson and in particular, Charles Darwin. By Freud's own admission, the 'primal horde' had never been observed. I investigate the possibility that such a social structure ever existed. I consider the evidence as sourced from Charles Darwin and examine the possibility that Darwin's words were misinterpreted. Freud's idea of the 'primal horde' was generally accepted in anthropological circles early in the twentieth century as evidenced by Geza Roheim's enthusiastic support. I review how this theory lost favour in later times by considering the opinion of William Schmidt.

On April 22, 2013, Greek Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox Metropolitans of Aleppo, Paul (Yazigi) and Yohanna (Ibrahim), were abducted en route to their city from the Turkish borders, after accomplishing a ‘humanitarian mission’ in turbulent Syria. Since then, Facebook activists have been expressing their thoughts and emotions via different means, in several forms, and for various objectives. This paper takes a close and analytic look at some such and related posts and comments associated with Metropolitan Paul (Yazigi). As a matter of fact, such ‘virtual’ expressions, like ‘real’ prayers, might increase compassion and solidarity on one hand, and lead to frustration when they remain unfulfilled on the other. Finally, this paper aims at suggesting better and probably healthier Ecclesiastical reasoning and praxis, specifically, at reconsidering some traditional beliefs and practices and at proposing a new how-to deal with emotions during turbulent times.

The last works of the Hungarian psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi are defined by a theory of the formation of the psyche that is paradoxical: that the psyche comes to be only insofar as it is dissolved. Driven forcefully into existence through being traumatically affected, the Ferenczian subject comes to life through a work of a certain death that continually forces fragmentation. Rejecting the "constitutional" theories of pathogenesis in the contemporary works of Freud, Ferenczi arrives at a radical rethinking of affect that is foreign to notions of drives, emerging neither from the individual psyche nor belonging to it in any sense.

Pascal Quignard notes that the works of the 17th century painter Georges de La Tour serve as snares for the eye. The paintings present themselves as visual surfaces that arrest the gaze and enfold it within an enigma that lies on another plane entirely. La Tour's The Fortune-Teller fashions this enigma through the question of fate – not an individual fate, but one that lies always behind us. Passed from hand to hand, generation to generation, from image to image, this fate is not foreign to psychoanalysis, as it is born from an encounter with the visual surface of the dream. La Tour's image catches us in an indefinite movement, from the visual surface, to that of language, to another, one which will have remained behind the back, unseen, and unheard. The Fortune-Teller works a disarticulation of bodies, faces and hands in which the symbol of fate is made to appear.

"In the work leading up to his “Confusion of tongues Between Adult and the Child” essay, Sándor Ferenczi posits
death as an operative principle within trauma that is neither the usual concept nor that which Freud designates as
the death drive. this death is not the terminal event in which the psyche comes to an end, but rather death stands
at the very beginning of a subjectivity that is always traumatically constituted. the ego, as Ferenczi implies, comes
into being only through a progressive response to shocks that are not “outside” of the child, but which give the
possibility of this inside/outside dichotomy; it is the result of a series of events in which the ego emerges always as
a “dying to.” If from his theory of Genitality, the preferred metaphor is of a gesture of autotomy, it is only through
this act of severing that the autos can come to be.
the labor of death is one that severs, but from what does it sever if the subject is only the product of this process,
its aftereffect? Ferenczi references the “omniscience and supreme wisdom” of the infantile state, a wisdom that,
if it is anything, refers to the permeability of the infant to affect, which it would receive without mediation and
without event. the work of death would be the severing of an affective tissue that would not be individual, thus
forcing individuation."

"Not all memories are equally welcome in awareness.
People limit the time they spend thinking about unpleasant
experiences, a process that begins during encoding,
but that continues when cues later remind someone of
the memory. Here, we review the emerging behavioural
and neuroimaging evidence that suppressing awareness
of an unwelcome memory, at encoding or retrieval, is
achieved by inhibitory control processes mediated by
the lateral prefrontal cortex. These mechanisms interact
with neural structures that represent experiences in
memory, disrupting traces that support retention. Thus,
mechanisms engaged to regulate momentary awareness
introduce lasting biases in which experiences remain
accessible. We argue that theories of forgetting
that neglect the motivated control of awareness omit a
powerful force shaping the retention of our past."

In this workshop, we will discuss the ways in which virtual encounters unlock new and innovative avenues of sociality not available previously. This will be done through an analysis of avatar body collisions or meetings, specifically in either a therapeutic or an educational context. The vast field of difference and diversity that Second Life opens up enriches, in a way impossible in real life, a being-with thereby potentially making an avatar embodiment a novel means of transformation.

I argue that Žižek's Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism presents us with a radically original variety of metaphysics both in terms of Žižek's own intellectual development and the history of philosophy. Rather than being concerned with the study of being qua being, Less Than Nothing proclaims that we ought to investigate nothing qua nothing inasmuch as contemporary physics demonstrates that the more we analyze reality the more we find a void, this latter now in matter of fact exhibiting the traits of ultimate reality rather than the order of the perceived universe. Before arriving at this, however, I demonstrate how Žižek is led to contemporary physics in order to overcome inherent limitations in his own previous metaphysics of Hegelian inspiration. If thinking substance as subject imposes upon us the recognition that substance as a self-articulating totality of necessity is an illusion, subject being nothing but a synonymous for its constitutive tension with itself, if we are to explain how this weakly structured nature does not collapse upon itself we must go further. In this manner, Less Than Nothing outlines one way in which we must step beyond Hegel to find new metaphysical solutions for impasses that have emerged out of thinking the obscure ground of the psychoanalytic subject.

""Computer-assisted content analysis has identified that the narrative pattern of linguistic variables associated to regressive states, i.e., primary process language and body boundary imagery, follows a fifth polynomial degree curve that reflects Underhill’s (1911) five-stages of development in Christian mysticism. This study investigated the narrative pattern of primary process language and body boundary imagery in the discourses of mystical and psychotic altered states of consciousness (ASC). The mystical discourse were based on Saint Teresa of Avila’s (1567) mystical writing in "The Way of Perfection”, and the psychotic discourse is Daniel Paul Schreber’s (1903) autobiographical writing “Memoirs of My Nervous Illness”. The results showed that neither the religious-mystical text nor the psychotic text confirmed Underhill’s five-stage hypothesis. The narrative patterns of primary process language and body boundary imagery are discussed in relation to religious and psychological literature, and contemporary psychoanalytic theories.


References

St. Teresa of Avilia (1567). The Way of Perfection. (E. A. Peers Trans.) Retrieved from http://www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/way.html

Schreber, D. P. (1955). Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. (I. Macalpine & R. A. Hunter Trans.). London: Dawson. (Original work published 1903)

Underhill, E. (1911). Mysticism: A study in nature and the development of spiritual consciousness. London: Methuen.""

""The awareness of physical boundaries and their relationship to psychological dimensions has recently encouraged a greater interest in the linguistic enquiry of altered states of consciousness (ASC). In particular, experiences of religious-mystical and psychotic ASC have been associated to common phenomenological features, including changes in body boundary awareness and the Freudian (1900) principle of primary process functioning (Prince & Savage, 1966).

Previous empirical research employing computer-assisted content analysis focussed predominantly on the frequencies and regularity patterns of body boundary imagery and primary process language in religious texts (Wilson, 2009; West, 1991) and language of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia (West & Martindale, 1988; Fisher, 1970). Surprisingly, linguistic research has not assessed to what extent body boundary imagery and primary process language differ and overlap linguistically in discourse of mystical and psychotic ASC.

Consequently, the present study aimed to assess the strength of associations between body boundary imagery and primary process language in the discourse of mystical and psychotic ASC. It was predicted that body boundary imagery and primary process language would be positively associated in both discourse types. The mystical discourse was based on the English translation of Saint Teresa of Avila’s (1567) "The Way of Perfection” and the psychotic discourse was based on the English translation of Daniel Paul Schreber’s (1903) autobiographical writing “Memoirs of My Nervous Illness”. The latter text specifically formed the basis of Freud’s (1911) classical case study on paranoid schizophrenia, whereas Saint Teresa of Avila has been regarded as one of the principal Spanish mystics of 16th century and a key figure in the reform of the Carmelite order.

The Body Type Dictionary (BTD) (Wilson, 2006) assessed the frequency of body boundary imagery and the Regressive Imagery Dictionary (RID) (Martindale, 1975, 1990) measured the frequency of primary process language. The RID and BTD were applied to both discourse types through the use of the PROTAN content analysis software program (Hogenraad et al., 2003), which calculated the occurrences of body boundary and primary process language within the segments of the mystical (N = 43) and psychotic text (N = 31). The results indicated that the psychotic text used higher frequencies of penetration imagery, z = -2.92, p < .01, and primary process language, z = -6.88, p < .001, as compared to the mystical text. Consistent with the research hypothesis and previous research assumption (Wilson, 2009), penetration imagery was highly positive associated with primary process language, τ = .29, p < .01, in the religious-mystical text. The psychotic text reflected a highly positive association between penetration imagery and barrier imagery only, τ = .47, p < .001, and thus the research hypothesis was partly rejected.

The presentation will draw on contemporary psychoanalytic literature and psychological theories to discuss the function of body boundary awareness and primary process cognition in religious-mystical experiences and formal schizoid thought disorder.


References
Avilia of, St. Teresa (1567) (translated by E. Allison Peers). The Way of Perfection. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/way.html

Fenichel, O. (1945). The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis. New York: Norton.

Fisher, S. (1970). Body Experience in Fantasy and Behaviour. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Fisher, S., & Cleveland, S. (1958). Body Image and Personality. New York: Van Norstrand Reinhold.

Freud, S. (1900/2001). The Interpretation of Dreams (Standard Edition 4). London: Hogarth Press.

Freud, S. (1911/2001). Psychoanalytic Notes upon an Autobiographical Account of a case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides) (Standard Edition 12). London: Hogarth Press.

Hogenraad, R., Daubies, C. & Bestgen, Y. (1995). Une théorie et une méthode générale d’analyse textuelle assistée par ordinateur. Le système PROTAN (PROTocol ANalyzer). (Version du 2 mars 1995) [A general theory and method of computer-aided text analysis: The PROTAN system (PROTocol Analyzer), Version of March 2, 1995] [Computer program]. Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: Psychology Department, Catholic University of Louvain.

Martindale, C. (1975). Romantic Progression: The Psychology of Literary History. Washington, DC: Hemisphere.

Martindale, C. (1990). The Clockwork Muse: The Predictability of Artistic Change. New York: Basic Books.

Prince, R. & Savage, C. (1966). Mystical states and the concept of regression. Consciousness and Cognition, 15, 500-539.

Schreber, D. P. (1903). Memoirs of My Nervous Illness.

West, A. N. (1991). Primary process content in the King James Bible: The five stages of Christian mysticism. Computers and the Humanities, 25, 227-238.

West, A. N., & Martindale, C. (1988) Primary process content in paranoid schizophrenic speech. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 149, 547-553.

Wilson, A. (2009). Barrier and penetration imagery in altered states of consciousness discourse: replicating the five-stage model of Christian mysticism in the Bible. In W. Oleksy & P. Stalmaszczyk (Eds.), Cognitive Approaches to Language and Linguistic Data: Studies in Honor of Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, pp. 357-372. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Wilson, A. (2006). Development and application of a content analysis dictionary for body boundary research. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 21, 105-110.""