A Spinozan lens onto the confusions of borderline relations

'Fascination', 'contagion' and naming what we do: rethinking the transcendent function

Taking 'The psychology of the transference' (Jung 1946) and 'Problems of modern psychotherapy' (Jung 1931) as its text, this paper begins by challenging the usefulness of the term 'transcendent function' in contemporary debate about the nature of 'imagination and psychic transformation in analysis'. It argues that Jung's language in The Practice of Psychotherapy (CW 16)-fascination, suffering, infection, influence-is closer and truer to the experience it describes than the philosophically inspired terms transcendent function and conflict of opposites. His ideas in these writings anticipate later trends in psychoanalytic theory concerning countertransference and the effect of one mind on another, and constitute a theoretical basis for the concept of mutual transformation. Jung's radical insistence on an analytic relationship founded on mutual unconsciousness as the locus of transformation cannot, it is argued, be satisfactorily accounted for by the traditional terminology.

Jung's dissociable psyche and the ec-static self

Much of Jung's later work assumes that the self is an a priori phenomenon in which centripetal dynamics dominate. There is, however, another current in Jung's writings which recognizes the self to be an emergent phenomenon. This view is increasingly prevalent in post-Jungian discourse, and Louis Zinkin's exploration of a post-Jungian-constructivist model of the self can be seen as part of this tendency. My paper privileges an emergent understanding of the self by focusing on the 'unravelling', 'de-centring', centrifugal experiences of otherness in the psyche. It offers a post-Jungian reading of a number of writers who have been influenced by the psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche and proposes a model of the self which focuses on our fantasies, terrors and longings about coming undone and bringing others undone. This model is then linked to Judith Butler's understanding of the self as an ec-static phenomenon, in which the self is, of necessity, outside itself, such that 'there is no final moment in which my return to myself takes place'. I suggest that Jung's early clinical researches into the dissociability of the psyche and the clinical tools which he developed as a result of this work are especially suitable for engaging with these emergent, centrifugal dynamics.

A perspective on the patterns of loss, lack, disappointment and shame encountered in the treatment of six women with severe and chronic anorexia nervosa

This paper explores how the aggressive fantasies and energies expressed in anorexic self-hatred can be recycled to become the basis of psychological growth and recovery. This shift is made possible by focusing on the telos of the analysand's psychological system as it expresses itself through her illness, and using Clark's idea that sanity is a form of recycled madness. It also draws on Jung's view of the unconscious as an active and purposive agent, and libido as a neutral psychic energy which can serve different purposes. I discuss a number of clinical vignettes, focusing on the hard, ruthless, defiant and hateful aspects of (what might appear to be) 'monstrous' anorexic behaviour, and the kinds of countertransference reactions these behaviours can provoke. I also explore what these kinds of behaviours might represent in terms of multi-generational family dynamics, as well as mother-daughter dynamics. At the core of the paper is the idea that the capacity to use aggression in clear ways, but within the limits of conscience, is essential for the protection of one's physical and psychological boundaries. Without the capacity to defend oneself, and the ability to decide quickly and clearly when it is right to risk hurting the other in order to do so, one cannot take any level of risk in life, or draw close to the other. I suggest that for recovery from anorexia to occur, the aggressive, self-hateful, destructive energies which are so central to the illness need to be recycled into these kinds of awarenesses and life-skills.