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Biomedical subjects

T H Ogden

Publications and source records attributed to T H Ogden.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

The dialectically constituted/decentred subject of psychoanalysis. I. The Freudian subject.

Central among the irreducible elements that define a psychoanalytic understanding of man is Freud's conception of the subject, and yet this theme remained a largely implicit one in Freud's writing. The Freudian conception of the process by which the subject is constituted is fundamentally dialectical in nature and involves the notion that the subject is created and sustained (and at the same time decentred from itself) through the dialectical interplay of consciousness and unconsciousness. The contribution of psychoanalysis to a theory of subjectivity involves the formation of a concept of the subject in which neither consciousness nor unconsciousness holds a privileged position in relation to the other; the two coexist in a mutually creating, preserving and negating relationship to one another. The principle of presence-in-absence and absence-in-presence subtends the dialectical movement between conscious and unconscious dimensions of subjectivity.

Freudian Theory↗
PubMed1992

The dialectically constituted/decentred subject of psychoanalysis. II. The contributions of Klein and Winnicott.

The present paper focuses on the contributions of Klein and Winnicott to a psychoanalytic conception of the dialectically constituted and decentred subject. Klein's idea of 'positions' represents a conception of the subject constituted in the creative and negating dialectical interplay of fundamentally different modes of attributing meaning to experience. The Kleinian subject is decentred in psychological space and in psychoanalytic time. The concept of projective identification provides the elements of a theory of the creation of the subject in the context of a psychological-interpersonal dialectic. The subject for Winnicott is not coincident with the individual psyche: 'There is no such thing as an infant [apart from the mother]'. Winnicott's notion of the creation of the subject in the psychological space between mother and infant involves a conception of the on-going constitution of the subject in the simultaneity of forms of dialectical tension between at-one-ment and separateness, internality and externality, I and me, I and Thou.

Humans↗
PubMed1991

Analysing the matrix of transference.

In this paper, the background experiential states forming the matrix of transference are discussed in terms of the interplay of three modes of generating experience: the autistic-contiguous, the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive. Portions of three analyses are discussed in an effort to illustrate clinically some of the ways in which analytic technique is shaped by an understanding of the predominant mode or modes of experience forming the context of the transference-countertransference at any given moment. There is a focus on the ways in which the analyst's interventions must often be directed to the contextual level, or matrix, of transference (for example, the significance of the way the patient is thinking, talking or behaving) before it becomes possible to address other interrelated aspects of transference (for example, the unconscious symbolic meanings of what the patient is thinking, saying or enacting).

Adult↗
PubMed1989

On the concept of an autistic-contiguous position.

The development of British object-relations theory over the past twenty years can be viewed as containing the beginnings of an exploration of a realm of experience that lies outside of the states of being addressed by Klein, Winnicott, Fairbairn and Bion. In this paper, the idea of an autistic-contiguous position is proposed as a way of conceptualizing a psychological organization more primitive than either the paranoid-schizoid or the depressive position. This mode of organizing experience stands in a dialectical relationship to the paranoid-schizoid and depressive modes: each creates, preserves and negates the others. The autistic-contiguous mode is a sensory-dominated, pre-symbolic mode of generating experience which provides a good measure of the boundedness of human experience and the beginnings of a sense of the place where one's experience occurs. Anxiety in this mode consists of an unspeakable terror of the dissolution of boundedness resulting in feelings of leaking, falling or dissolving into endless, shapeless space. Principal forms of defence, ways of organizing and defining experience, types of relatedness to objects, and avenues to psychological change in the autistic-contiguous position are discussed and clinically illustrated.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

The threshold of the male Oedipus complex.

The transition into the male Oedipus complex is complicated by the fact that there is no "change of object" as in female development. For the boy, the mother is both the object of preoedipal attachment to an omnipotent internal object and of oedipal desire for an external whole object. The psychological-interpersonal movement into triangulated oedipal object relations is mediated by the elaboration of mature forms of primal scene fantasies in conjunction with the development of a "transitional oedipal relationship" to the mother.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

On potential space.

In this paper, I have proposed that Winnicott's concept of potential space might be understood as a state of mind based upon a series of dialectical relationships between fantasy and reality, me and not-me, symbol and symbolized, etc., each pole of the dialectic creating, informing, and negating the other. The achievement of such a dialectical process occurs by means of a developmental advance from the 'invisible oneness' of the mother-infant unit to the subjective 'three-ness' of the mother-and-infant (as symbolic objects) and the infant (as interpreting subject). Failure to create or maintain the dialectical process leads to specific forms of psychopathology that include the experience of the fantasy object as a thing in itself, the defensive use of reality that forecloses imagination, the relationship to a fetish object, and the state of 'non-experience'. The 'processing' of a projective identification is understood as the re-establishment of the recipient's capacity to maintain a dialectical process (e.g. of me and not-me) that had been limited in the course of the recipient's unconscious participation in the projector's externalized unconscious fantasy.

Borderline Personality Disorder↗
PubMed1976

Psychological unevenness in the academically successful student.

Among students seen is psychoanalytic psychotherapy, there is a group who present the paradoxical clinical picture of great academic success alongside of quite primitive features in other aspects of their psychological functioning. This article offers an early developmental formulation of this aspect of these students. A clinical description of these patients is presented, including the observation that for each the early mother-child relationship seems to have been characterized by a predominant focus on maternal needs. A case history and summary of therapy of one of these students is discussed. Aspects of the mother-child relationship are explored by means of historical data, memories, and most important, through various transference and countertransference manifestations. The nature of this early relationship is then discussed in terms of the work of Donald Winnicott and Masud Khan. Finally, an overview of therapy is presented along with a discussion of some forms of resistance and some countertransference problems that often arise in the course of therapy with such students.

Achievement↗
PubMedDate not supplied

A developmental view of identifications resulting from maternal impingements.

This paper attempts to understand in early developmental terms one of a group of patients who demonstrate a powerful identification with a conflicted aspect of their mother. In addition to the strong identification with the maternal pathology, the group is characterized by a history of maternal impingements (Winnicott) through which the infants were exposed to the conflicted psychological state of the mother. A case history of a psychoanalytic psychotherapy emphasizes the vicissitudes of the transference and countertransference. The patient presented had been exposed to premature awareness of separateness from the mother as a result of the maternal impingements. The identification with the maternal pathology is seen primarily as a defensive attempt to create the illusion that the characteristics of the impingements were actually a creation of the patient herself. This defensive identification was strengthened by the mother's inability to be responsive to the patient, except in so far as the patient entered into the "beam" of the maternal pathology. Parts of the work of Melanie Klein, Winnicott and Greenacre which make up the theoretical context for the developmental formulation of the type of identification under discussion are presented and several clinical implications of the developmental formulation are discussed.

Adult↗