A clinical seminar on Spinoza and Bion: a conversation between Miller AND Koritar.

The present transcript follows an online discussion held on April 3, 2022, between Ian Miller, author of Clinical Spinoza: Integrating His Philosophy with Contemporary Therapeutic Practice (2022), and Endre Koritar.

The Unwelcome Child as a Dynamic Construct of the Terrorist Mind.

Psychoanalytic discourse on the dynamics of the terrorist mindset has been challenged by the absence of clinical work with terrorists in the literature. This paper proposes Ferenczi's concept of the unwelcome child as a dynamic construct of the terrorist mind. Unwelcome children have weak life instincts and correspondingly high death instincts. Clinical material from the analysis of an unwelcome child is presented which suggests that a sense of anomie and alienation from social ties may lead to a fundamentalist mind set which may potentially lead to a search for meaning in terrorist acts. The struggle between life and death instincts is demonstrated in the clinical material, with life instinct tipping the scales in this instance. Self-preservative survival instinct is proposed as the theoretical construct for life instinct in contrast to Freud's libido theory. The unwelcome child represents an object relations theory of the death instinct. Unwelcome children are likely a widespread phenomenon with significant social consequences.

The Leader's Hypnotic Influence and the Creation of Alternate Reality.

Psychoanalysis has traditionally been an insular practice by analysts in their offices sequestered from any outside intrusion. However, in recent years a demand for psychoanalytic perspectives on the underlying dynamics of political figures and social phenomena has arisen. Media representatives have increasingly approached psychoanalysts for insight into such conditions as narcissistic personality disorder, compulsive lying, delusional thinking, when attempting to understand the irrational machinations of authoritarian leaders. Here, we will not be investigating the individual psyche, but rather the relationship between psyche and the culture of the populace (i.e., the polis). This paper considers the complex underlying dynamics of leaders' hypnotic influence and the creation of an alternate reality.

Working Out Phantoms in Trans-Generational Transmission of Trauma.

The concept of Trans-Generational Transmission of Trauma (TTT) is explored through a clinical presentation of a young man in search of a history buried by negation, disavowal, and foreclosure of the ravages of traumatic beginnings of unwelcome children. Transmitted down the generations as phantoms buried in crypts of the psyche, they emerge generations later as holes in the self manifested as a sense of meaninglessness, alienation, and feeling outcast. Historicization of the buried past can bring symbolic representation to phantoms and disperse their influence. Social consequences of unwelcome children are discussed as some may choose violence against others as a solution to their excessive death drive.

Relaxation in Technique Leading to New Beginnings.

This paper explores how standard analytic technique may result in a repetition of past traumatic experiences in the transference and countertransference analytic situation. Relaxation and elasticity of technique can lead to re-integration of previously fragmented ego functions, and in remembering and re-experiencing of previously repressed symbolic representations of fragmenting past traumatic experiences, resulting in neocatharsis and working through, thus healing wounds and scars sustained in self development. This healing process will be described through a detailed depiction of an analytic process introducing relaxation of technique, in a response by the analyst, to the patient's Orpha (self-protective) function. Responsiveness to the patient's implicitly or explicitly expressed needs, in the analytic space, may require a departure from standard technique for a deeper level of dynamic work where symbolization of unrepresented emotional experiences becomes possible.

Surviving deadness in the analytic experience.

The transference/countertransference (third space) analysis is considered to be central in the therapeutic effectiveness of the analytic process. Less emphasis has been placed on the actual experiences of analyst and analysand in the conflictual reenactment of third space experience and its resolution. This paper recounts the shared experience of a patient who was silent throughout most of the analysis, and my reaction, in fantasy and enactment, to this disturbing experience-both for him and for myself. I argue that it is the affective re-experiencing of past repressed trauma in the analytic space that has a therapeutic impact, leading to growth in the patient and also the therapist. I contrast Freud's emphasis on insight, making the unconscious conscious, with Ferenczi's suggestion that the therapeutic impact lies in the repetition of past traumatic experience in the analysis but with the possibility of a different outcome with a more benign object, leading to symbolic representation of repressed trauma. Re-experiencing and symbolization, in the third space, of past traumatic experience can be an exit point from the endless repetition of trauma in internal and external object relations, leading to a new beginning in the patient's life. Immersed in the experience of deadness in the analysis, which had become a dead womb, the struggle to remain alive and thinking led to a rupture out of the dead womb, like the Caesura of birth, into aliveness and the ability to mentalize what had previously remained unmentalized.

Flirting with death: the role of father in containment of sexually perverse behavior.

The author demonstrates, through clinical case illustration, how sexual perversion is linked to traumatic early separation-individuation processes. The illusion of fusion with a seductive and gratifying mother-introject led a young man into the risky business of unprotected gay sex with strangers. The pleasure-seeking child and enabling mother narrative was played out in the transference/counter-transference relationship threatening to pervert the analysis. Authoritative limit setting re-introduced a potent, previously castrated, father figure into the patient's inner world and gave the patient impetus to separate from the undifferentiated mix-up between mother and child, resulting in containment of dangerous sexual behaviors.