Salt-tolerant Acidihalobacter and Acidithiobacillus species from Vulcano (Italy) and Milos (Greece).

Ferrous iron- and sulfur-oxidizing Acidihalobacter species and similar so far unclassified bacteria have been isolated from the islands of Vulcano (Italy) and Milos (Greece), specifically from where seawater was acidified at sulfide-rich geothermal sites. Acidithiobacillus species which tolerated concentrations of chloride that inhibit most Acidithiobacillus spp. were also isolated from sites on both islands: these were At. thiooxidans strains and an unclassified species, Acidithiobacillus sp. strain V1. The potential of salt-tolerant acidophiles for industrial application in promoting copper extraction from mineral sulfides where chloride is naturally present at concentrations which would inhibit most acidophiles, or where seawater rather than fresh water is available, appears to be limited by the sensitivity of ferrous-iron oxidizing Acidihalobacter spp. to copper. However, tolerance of copper and chloride shown by At. thiooxidans strain A7 suggests it could oxidize sulfur and benefit acid leaching if ferric iron or copper was provided as the primary oxidant of sulfide ores.

Quasisimultons in Thermal Atomic Vapors.

The propagation of two-color laser fields through optically thick atomic ensembles is studied. We demonstrate how the interaction between these two fields spawns the formation of copropagating, two-color solitonlike pulses akin to the simultons found by Konopnicki and Eberly [Phys. Rev. A 24, 2567 (1981)PLRAAN0556-279110.1103/PhysRevA.24.2567]. For the particular case of thermal Rb atoms exposed to a combination of a weak cw laser field resonant on the D1 transition and a strong sub-ns laser pulse resonant on the D2 transition, simulton formation is initiated by an interplay between the 5s_{1/2}-5p_{1/2} and 5s_{1/2}-5p_{3/2} coherences. The interplay amplifies the D1 field at the arrival of the D2 pulse, producing a sech-squared pulse with a length of less than 10 µm. This amplification is demonstrated in a time-resolved measurement of the light transmitted through a thin thermal cell. We find good agreement between experiment and a model that includes the hyperfine structure of the relevant levels. With the addition of Rydberg dressing, quasisimultons may offer interesting prospects for strong photon-photon interactions in a robust environment.

Transformations at the Dawn of Verbal Language.

In this essay the author describes some of the transformations that occur as one moves from preverbal functioning to verbally symbolic language. In preverbal experience, there is a direct connection between the sign and what is signified. An infant or child signifies displeasure by throwing his food or other objects to the floor. Much of the emotional tie between mother and infant and patient and analyst is communicated in this way. When a transformation occurs from preverbal to verbally symbolic language, as occurs in early development and as one interprets a dream, meaning is not merely translated, meaning is created. On acquiring verbally symbolic language, a "space" mediated by an interpreting subject opens between the symbol (for instance, the word guilt) and the symbolized (the experience of guilt) and a new subjectivity is created. On entry into verbally symbolic language, one becomes able to experience oneself in a qualitatively different way; one becomes both subject and object, I and me; one becomes able to experience a far broader range of feelings and types of thinking. Helen Keller's account of her experience of acquiring verbally symbolic language is drawn upon.

Giving Back What the Patient Brings: On Winnicott's "Mirror-Role of Mother and Family in Child Development".

The author offers a creative reading of Winnicott's (1967) "Mirror-role of mother and family in child development." Winnicott presents the idea that a pivotal experience in the process of the infant's coming into being as himself is the mother's communicating to the infant, by the look in her eyes, what she sees there when she looks at him. In the absence of the experience of being seen, the infant's capacity to feel real and alive atrophies. The author fleshes out Winnicott's thinking by suggesting that just as the infant comes more fully into being as he sees himself in his mother's eyes, so too, the mother comes more fully into being as a mother as she sees herself in the infant's eyes. The paradigm shift that Winnicott has contributed to psychoanalysis is reflected in the clinical work he presents: (1) the goal of psychoanalysis is no longer the enrichment of the patient's self-understanding; rather, the analytic goal is the patient's coming more fully alive to himself; and (2) the analyst helps the patient achieve this end not by making astute interpretations but by allowing the patient to experience the pleasure of making discoveries of his or her own.

Rethinking the concepts of the unconscious and analytic time.

The author proposes ways of rethinking the concepts of the unconscious and time in the analytic setting, including the very existence of the unconscious. Freud (1915) stated that the success psychoanalytic thinking has in making inferences about the patient's unconscious makes the existence of the unconscious "incontrovertible." The author submits that this success does not establish the existence of the unconscious; rather, the inferences we think we make about the unconscious are inferences about consciousness itself - the totality of our experiences of thinking, feeling, sensing, observing, and communicating with ourselves. The author then offers thoughts about a second analytic concept, the experience of time in the analytic setting. He conceives of there being two inseparable sorts of experiences of analytic time that stand in a dynamic relationship with one another: diachronic time (clock time) and synchronic time (dream time). In diachronic time, time is sequential; one thing leads to another. In synchronic time, all time is contained in the present. In analysis, childhood trauma is experienced for the first time (in synchronic time) in the co-created subjectivity of patient and analyst.

Ontological Psychoanalysis in Clinical Practice.

The author describes and then clinically illustrates what he terms the ontological dimension of psychoanalysis (having to do with coming into being) and the epistemological dimension of psychoanalysis (having to do with coming to know and understand). Neither of these dimensions of psychoanalysis exists in pure form; they are inextricably intertwined. Epistemological psychoanalysis, for which Freud and Klein are the principal architects, involves the work of arriving at understandings of play, dreams, and associations; while ontological psychoanalysis, for which Winnicott and Bion are the principal architects, involves creating conditions in which the patient might become more fully alive and real to him- or herself. The author provides clinical illustrations of the ontological dimension of psychoanalysis in which the process of the patient's coming more fully into being is facilitated by the experiences in which the patient feels recognized for the individual he is and is becoming. This occurs in an analysis in which the analyst and patient invent a form of psychoanalysis that is uniquely their own.

A hand therapy protocol for the treatment of lunate overload or early Kienbock's disease.

We describe a hand therapy protocol aimed at unloading the wrist and increasing blood supply to the wrist, specifically to the lunate. The protocol was used in a series of patients with clinical radial wrist pain, dysfunction and changes on wrist imaging studies. The patients were not candidates for surgical treatment. Application of the therapy protocol improved objective and subjective parameters such as pain and motion, and may provide a viable treatment option for patients with lunate overload or early Kienbock's disease that are not candidates for surgery.

Like the belly of a bird breathing: On Winnicott's "Mind and its Relation to the Psyche-soma".

In "Mind and its relation to the psyche-soma," Winnicott reinvents the concept of psyche-soma by viewing it as a set of experiences located neither in the body nor in the brain, and in fact, not located anywhere. Psyche, in health, is understood to be the imaginative functioning of mental processes, and soma is understood to be the experience of physical realness and aliveness. Winnicott offers a clinical illustration of work with a patient who feels unreal to herself. He describes a juncture in the analysis in which the patient's somatic functioning is everything, while Winnicott, by feeling his own breathing and watching the patient breathe, knows that she is alive. This is the beginning of her becoming able to experience her breathing (soma) and imagining (psyche) as real, alive, and her own.Among the concepts Winnicott alludes to, and that I develop, are (1) the idea that in his clinical work Winnicott not only lives an experience with the patient, he also brings an unspoken structure of meaning to the experience, and the two are inseparable; and (2) the idea that Winnicott introduces a set of terms and a way of thinking that is independent of the differentiation of conscious and unconscious mind (Freud's topographic model). These ideas include aliveness and deadness, realness and unrealness, being and disruption of being.

A novel splint for proximal interphalangeal joint contractures: a case report.

Proximal interphalangeal (PIP) joint contractures are notoriously difficult to treat. Best results are obtained with early mobilization and splinting, though a high level of adherence is critical for a good outcome. A new roll-on splint that aims to increase motion with minimal difficulty was used. The patient described here with moderate PIP joint contractures (30°-60°) was treated successfully using this splint. The splint design and therapy protocol are described. The patient was treated for 12 weeks with good adherence to therapy and splinting. Total active motion increased by 87% in the index finger and 108% in the ring finger. Grip, pinch, and tip-pinch strengths increased. The Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand score improved from 26.7% to 2.5%. At 3 months, the patient returned to work. Though this case illustrates some of the advantages and disadvantages of the new splint, further study is necessary to evaluate the splint and compare it with other existing forms of treatment for PIP joint contractures.

What alive means: On Winnicott's "transitional objects and transitional phenomena".

In his reading of Winnicott's "Transitional objects and transitional phenomena," the author views Winnicott as engaged in offering a way of conceiving of the fundamentally human task of creating states of being in which the individual's ideas, feelings, and bodily sensations come to feel alive and real to him or her. The author proposes that the concept of paradox captures something of both the idea and the experience of transitional objects and phenomena. The author then looks closely at the new clinical illustration that Winnicott presents in the fourth and final version of his paper. He discusses what he views as Winnicott's most evolved form of clinical practice. The author also takes up Winnicott's idea of "the negative," a state of being in which the gap, the amnesia, the death is all that feels real, while the presence or memory of the object feels unreal. The author offers an illustration of clinical work in which a significant alteration of the analytic frame provides a context in which the patient is able to begin to experience feelings that feel real and alive to him.

Why read Fairbairn?

The author offers a close reading of portions of Fairbairn's work in which he not only explicates and clarifies Fairbairn's thinking, but generates ideas of his own by developing concepts that he believes to be implicit in, or logical extensions of, Fairbairn's work. Among the unstated or underdeveloped aspects of Fairbairn's contribution that the author discusses are (1) the idea that the formation of the internal object world is always, in part, a response to trauma (actual failure on the part of the mother to convey to her infant a sense that she loves him and accepts his love); (2) the notion that the infant's unceasing efforts to transform the internalized relationship with the unloving mother into a loving relationship--thus reversing the effect on his mother of his (imagined) 'toxic love'--is the single most important motivation sustaining the structure of the internal object world; and (3) the idea that attacks on oneself for the way one loves, while self-destructive, contain a glimmer of insight into one's own self-hatred and shame regarding one's endless, futile attempts to change oneself (or the rejecting object) into a different person. The author, using his own clinical work, illustrates the way he makes use of his understanding of the 'emotional life' of internal objects to facilitate the patient's emotional growth.

On three forms of thinking: magical thinking, dream thinking, and transformative thinking.

The author believes that contemporary psychoanalysis has shifted its emphasis from the understanding of the symbolic meaning of dreams, play, and associations to the exploration of the processes of thinking, dreaming, and playing. In this paper, he discusses his understanding of three forms of thinking-magical thinking, dream thinking, and transformative thinking-and provides clinical illustrations in which each of these forms of thinking figures prominently. The author views magical thinking as a form of thinking that subverts genuine thinking and psychological growth by substituting invented psychic reality for disturbing external reality. By contrast, dream thinking--our most profound form of thinking-involves viewing an emotional experience from multiple perspectives simultaneously: for example, the perspectives of primary process and secondary process thinking. In transformative thinking, one creates a new way of ordering experience that allows one to generate types of feeling, forms of object relatedness, and qualities of aliveness that had previously been unimaginable.

Toward a Revised Form of Analytic Thinking and Practice: The Evolution of Analytic Theory of Mind.

The author tells the stories of the inception of mind that is developed in the work of five analytic theorists whom he sees as central to the evolution of a new and fertile form of psychoanalytic thinking and practice: Freud, Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, and Bion. The conception of mind presented by each of these authors moves from that of an apparatus for thinking (in the work of Freud, Klein, and Fairbairn) to that of a process located in the very act of experiencing (in the work of Winnicott and Bion). The work of each of the theorists constitutes a radical transformation of thinking relative to those who have preceded and those who follow him or her. The author, in telling the "stories" of the emergence of mind and the concept of mind according to each of these theorists, offers not only his own narrative structure and clarifications of their work, but also his own interpretations and extensions of their ideas.

On becoming a psychoanalyst.

One has the opportunity and responsibility to become an analyst in one's own terms in the course of the years of practice that follow the completion of formal analytic training. The authors discuss their understanding of some of the maturational experiences that have contributed to their becoming analysts in their own terms. They believe that the most important element in the process of their maturation as analysts has been the development of the capacity to make use of what is unique and idiosyncratic to each of them; each, when at his best, conducts himself as an analyst in a way that reflects his own analytic style; his own way of being with, and talking with, his patients; his own form of the practice of psychoanalysis. The types of maturational experiences that the authors examine include situations in which they have learned to listen to themselves speak with their patients and, in so doing, begin to develop a voice of their own; experiences of growth that have occurred in the context of presenting clinical material to a consultant; making self-analytic use of their experience with their patients; creating/discovering themselves as analysts in the experience of analytic writing (with particular attention paid to the maturational experience involved in writing the current paper); and responding to a need to keep changing, to be original in their thinking and behavior as analysts.

Kafka, Borges, and the creation of consciousness, Part I: Kafka--dark ironies of the "gift" of consciousness.

The ways in which Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges struggled with the creation of consciousness in their lives and in their literary works are explored in this two-part essay. In Part I, the author juxtaposes a biographical sketch of Kafka with a close reading of his story "A Hunger Artist" (1924), in which a character (whose personality holds much in common with that of Kafka) spends his life in a quasi-delusional state starving himself in public performances. The hunger artist's self-awareness (of having lived a life devoid of the experience of love and mutual recognition) is achieved in the context of an interpersonal experience in which he has, in fact, found/created "the food [he] liked," that is, an experience of loving and being loved, of seeing and being seen, of being aware of and alive to his own imminent death. This fragile, paradoxical state of consciousness is sustained for only a moment before it is attacked, but not entirely destroyed.

Kafka, Borges, and the creation of consciousness, Part II: Borges--a life of letters encompassing everything and nothing.

The ways in which Kafka and Borges struggled with the creation of consciousness in their lives and in their literary works are explored in this two-part essay. In Part II, a biographical sketch of Jorge Luis Borges is juxtaposed with a close reading of one of his fictions, "The Library of Babel" (1941a). In this story, the universe is an infinite Library, a psychological/literary space comprised of books that contain everything that has ever been or ever will be written. By the end of the story, Borges becomes a character in his own fiction. This development was paralleled in Borges's "real life" as he invented a persona named "Borges," a literary creation that allowed Borges to become a character in a story that was his life. The essay concludes with a comparison of the ways in which Borges and Kafka each used writing as a way of creating his own distinctive form of consciousness, and, in so doing, contributed to the creation of twentieth-century consciousness.

On talking-as-dreaming.

Many patients are unable to engage in waking-dreaming in the analytic setting in the form of free association or in any other form. The author has found that "talking-as-dreaming" has served as a form of waking-dreaming in which such patients have been able to begin to dream formerly undreamable experience. Such talking is a loosely structured form of conversation between patient and analyst that is often marked by primary process thinking and apparent non sequiturs. Talking-as-dreaming superficially appears to be "unanalytic" in that it may seem to consist "merely" of talking about such topics as books, films, etymology, baseball, the taste of chocolate, the structure of light, and so on. When an analysis is "a going concern," talking-as-dreaming moves unobtrusively into and out of talking about dreaming. The author provides two detailed clinical examples of analytic work with patients who had very little capacity to dream in the analytic setting. In the first clinical example, talking-as-dreaming served as a form of thinking and relating in which the patient was able for the first time to dream her own (and, in a sense, her father's) formerly unthinkable, undreamable experience. The second clinical example involves the use of talking-as-dreaming as an emotional experience in which the formerly "invisible" patient was able to begin to dream himself into existence. The analyst, while engaging with a patient in talking-as-dreaming, must remain keenly aware that it is critical that the difference in roles of patient and analyst be a continuously felt presence; that the therapeutic goals of analysis be firmly held in mind; and that the patient be given the opportunity to dream himself into existence (as opposed to being dreamt up by the analyst).

Elements of analytic style: Bion's clinical seminars.

The author finds that the idea of analytic style better describes significant aspects of the way he practices psychoanalysis than does the notion of analytic technique. The latter is comprised to a large extent of principles of practice developed by previous generations of analysts. By contrast, the concept of analytic style, though it presupposes the analyst's thorough knowledge of analytic theory and technique, emphasizes (1) the analyst's use of his unique personality as reflected in his individual ways of thinking, listening, and speaking, his own particular use of metaphor, humor, irony, and so on; (2) the analyst's drawing on his personal experience, for example, as an analyst, an analysand, a parent, a child, a spouse, a teacher, and a student; (3) the analyst's capacity to think in a way that draws on, but is independent of, the ideas of his colleagues, his teachers, his analyst, and his analytic ancestors; and (4) the responsibility of the analyst to invent psychoanalysis freshly for each patient. Close readings of three of Bion's 'Clinical seminars' are presented in order to articulate some of the elements of Bion's analytic style. Bion's style is not presented as a model for others to emulate or, worse yet, imitate; rather, it is described in an effort to help the reader consider from a different vantage point (provided by the concept of analytic style) the way in which he, the reader, practices psychoanalysis.

Reading Harold Searles.

Through a close reading of two of Searles's papers, the author explores not only what Searles thinks, but the way he thinks and how he works with patients. Searles makes use of a form of emotional responsiveness to the transference-countertransference that entails a seamless continuity of conscious and unconscious receptivity and thought. His unflinchingly honest descriptions of what is occurring in the transference-countertransference seem, as if of their own accord, to generate original clinical theory, for example, a reconceptualization of what is entailed in the successful analysis of the Oedipus complex. He demonstrates his own distinctive form of analytic thinking and interpreting, which the author describes as 'turning experience inside out'. Searles, in clinical example after clinical example, transforms what had been the invisible, unnameable emotional context of the patient's experience into verbally symbolized psychological content that is thinkable and speakable. In the final section of the paper, the author discusses an important (and unexpected) complementarity of the work of Searles and Bion. Searles's work provides clinical shape and vitality for Bion's often abstract theoretical constructions, such as the concept of the container-contained, the human need for truth, and the relationship of conscious and unconscious experience. At the same time, Bion's work provides a broader theoretical context for Searles's work.

DREAMING THE ANALYTIC SESSION: A CLINICAL ESSAY.

This is a clinical paper in which the author describes analytic work in which he dreams the analytic session with three of his patients. He begins with a brief discussion of aspects of analytic theory that make up a good deal of the context for his clinical work. Central among these concepts are (1) the idea that the role of the analyst is to help the patient dream his previously "undreamt" and "interrupted" dreams; and (2) dreaming the analytic session involves engaging in the experience of dreaming the session with the patient and, at the same time, unconsciously (and at times consciously) understanding the dream. The author offers no "technique" for dreaming the analytic session. Each analyst must find his or her own way of dreaming each session with each patient. Dreaming the session is not something one works at; rather, one tries not to get in its way.