On love, hate and knowledge

On wabi sabi and the aesthetics of family secrets: Reading Haruki Murakami'sKafka on the shore

Family secrets are commonly considered as a defense mechanism that conceals shameful content and evades guilt. As shame and guilt threaten narcissistic perfection, secrecy functions as a self-protective mechanism by evading acknowledgment of imperfection, thus conceptualizing imperfection as a psychological threat. However, the meaning of perfection and imperfection is culturally grounded, and, therefore, our understanding of family secrets may gain better understanding by examining different cultural perspectives of perfection/imperfection. In this context, we can gain insights to the process of family secrets through wabi sabi, a Japanese aesthetic ideal and philosophy that stresses imperfection as the basis for harmony. In this paper, I suggest an interpretation of family secrets that draws on wabi sabi aesthetics. The paper's main argument is illustrated through a careful reading of Murakami's Kafka on the shore, presenting wabi sabi of family secrets as distinguished aesthetics and a potential source for mental transformation and growth.

The Relevance of Bionian Thinking to the Treatment of PTSD Patients

Analysts who conduct trauma-focused treatments have much to learn from Wilfred Bion's contributions to the understanding and treatment of PTSD. Concepts such as catastrophe and catastrophic change can illuminate the subjective experience of PTSD patients, the beta screen concept sheds light on dissociative phenomena, and, as shown in a clinical vignette, the analyst can use his alpha function to transform the patient's fragmented raw material into alpha elements. A second clinical vignette shows how during a cognitive intervention the analyst can impart this alpha function to the patient and use his reverie to help the patient assimilate previously intolerable fragments into a coherent narrative. Finally, the idea of knowing mental pain (Bion's K) is discussed in relation to the processing of traumatic memories.

The culture of family secrets

In mainstream psychology, family secrets are usually discussed in terms of intra-psychological processes. However, the sense making of the family, which is a multilayered system, is mediated through culture. Hence, a complementary intersubjective perspective is inevitable for understanding secrecy formation. Merging psychoanalytic ideas with cultural-semiotic analysis, the current paper explores the relationships between three complementary levels of secrecy formation: the macro-level of cultural mediation, the mesoscopic-level of family dynamics, and the micro-level of intra-psychological processes. This perspective is developed and illustrated through an in-depth reading of Amir Gutfreund’s novel, Our Holocaust.

Penultimate interpretation

Interpretation is at the center of psychoanalytic activity. However, interpretation is always challenged by that which is beyond our grasp, the 'dark matter' of our mind, what Bion describes as ' O'. O is one of the most central and difficult concepts in Bion's thought. In this paper, I explain the enigmatic nature of O as a high-dimensional mental space and point to the price one should pay for substituting the pre-symbolic lexicon of the emotion-laden and high-dimensional unconscious for a low-dimensional symbolic representation. This price is reification--objectifying lived experience and draining it of vitality and complexity. In order to address the difficulty of approaching O through symbolization, I introduce the term 'Penultimate Interpretation'--a form of interpretation that seeks 'loopholes' through which the analyst and the analysand may reciprocally save themselves from the curse of reification. Three guidelines for 'Penultimate Interpretation' are proposed and illustrated through an imaginary dialogue.

Psychosomatic symptoms as biomarkers: transcending the psyche-soma dichotomy

Following the advancement in understanding dynamical systems, the author presents a novel metaphor of psychosomatic symptoms as low-dimensional biomarkers. This metaphor, which transcends the old binary of psyche-soma, resonates with classical psychoanalytic concepts and with Matte-Blanco's idea of repetition as indicative of dimensionality reduction. The relevance of this metaphor for explanation, diagnosis, and treatment is illustrated through a case study of a male patient suffering from hyperprolactinemia.

Empathy: from mind reading to the reading of a distant text

In the psychoanalytic literature empathy is commonly discussed as a form of "mind reading", which is deeply associated with the capacity to mirror the other's mental state. In this paper, I propose an alternative perspective on empathy as the process of reading a distant text. This perspective is illustrated through a Talmudic story and by weaving a thread between Bakhtin, Bion and Lacan. The paper concludes by pointing to the danger of empathy as a hidden form of projective identification that provides the reader with a false sense of control rather than with negative capability for otherness.