Relational Psychoanalysis

Body psychotherapy can offer practical clinical tools, as well as theoretical conceptualisations, for working with transitional states of consciousness, both individual and dyadic. This paper examines sleep as a transformative space, which is mostly unchartered territory for the other, and through developing Bion's reverie (and further influenced by Meltzer's and Klein's work), offers ways of joining the other – in our body – into spaces of sleep and awakening. The work on the threshold of conscious and unconscious processes, which is also known as transliminal (Fassler, Knox and Lynn, 2006), is characterised by dreamlike dissociative states of consciousness during awakeness. In addition, the author explores the function of sleep and sleepiness in the formation of mother-baby attachment system, and therefore at the formative stages of psychotherapy, and attempts to translate these understandings into clinical practice. Alongside the theoretical review, the paper presents a clinical vignette from groupwork, to demonstrate the technique of working somatically with states of sleep. A. The clock loses its power In my clinic, I often find myself amidst processes between sleeping and awakening. I find during various therapeutic situations, such as dissociation, where splits occur from the body, the heart (emotional disconnection) the head, or different body organs, it is very difficult to work verbally or interpretatively. We may look at dissociation as an organic state of falling into sleep, in the therapist, client, or both. Sleeping in therapy denotes a sleep, which is qualitatively different to its commonplace occurrence. It is a transitional state between sleep and awakeness – a trasliminal state. While sleep states of the client and therapist have been widely discussed in this paper shall focus on two novel aspects: shared sleep of client and therapist, and techniques for shared-sleeping in treatment as part of a practice of active bodily-reverie. Although drawing from psychoanalytic literature, I focus here on clinical psychotherapeutic applications of shared dreaming. To best understand the ideas

is a training and supervising psychoanalyst and faculty member of the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles. He has worked with victims and perpetrators of family, domestic, and sexual violence in Australia for four decades initially as a counsellor of juvenile offenders, then as a child protection worker and, in private practice, a forensic and counseling psychologist. He is a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and Vice President of the Australian Forensic Psychotherapy Association. He is past president of both the Australia and New Zealand Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abuse and the Australian Chapter of the International Association of Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy.

My thesis in this paper is that anxiety plays a central role in the shaping of modern subjectivity and agency.  My argument is that anxiety in contemporary society is distinct from the forms of anxiety that plagued industrial society in that it is a more complete and totalizing phenomenon that acts to constrict selfhood and regress the ego to more primitive states.  As a result, the modern self loses its capacities for civic life and consciousness as anxiety grips the psyche.  In what follows, I will reconstruct the theory of anxiety as a relational, and hence social phenomenon, that interpenetrates with the development of the self.  Next, I will explore the thesis that a civic self is a specific manifestation of our psychic and agentic capacity for cognition and affect for “others,” one that, as it is reduced, is replaced with a need for security and group narcissism. After this, I will explore how the dynamics of contemporary society (what I call the “cybernetic society”) enhances and totalizes anxiety in such a way that withdrawal from civic life gives further impetus to the psyche’s need for connection to stave off existential angst, giving more force to strivings for group identification and exclusion of others.

This short essay on the psychical operations of the Life and Death Instincts, as seen in the Object Relations theories of Melanie Klein, was my first glance at Psychoanalytic Instinct Theory, studied and written in the Spring of 2008. Three years later, in the Autumn of 2011, I was in possession of the entire 24 volumes of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, at my home and able to study them at leisure. A Psychoanalysis research associate on the Psychoanalysis, Literature and Practice Seminar Series at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, suggested I read Freud’s essay the Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Chapter 1 in Volume 18 of the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.

To my dismay the Beyond the Pleasure Principle chaper 1 of volume 18 is a very long essay indeed in 7 parts, but I was curious and had a desire to explore Freud’s writings as it felt like an adventure. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Part 5 of the Beyond the Pleasure Principle essay is where Freud lays down the fundamental components of his Instinct Theory. My essay attached here is British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein’s interpretation, development and use of some of the possible psychical mechanisms and processes that can be said to result from Freud’s Instinct Theories. In this Abstract (also attached as an Appendix to my Kleinian, Life and Death Instincts in Object Relations Theory essay), I am tempted to summarize Freud’s actual Instinct Theory itself, as described in Part 5 of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Vol. 18, p.34-43, as I have never heard it discussed or even mentioned in any Psychoanalytic context and I think it merits attention, especially considering the current Environmental zeitgeist and hegemony that we are all being subjected to.

(Instinct Is Conservative - Journal Article on Freud's Instinct Theory uploaded as a separate word doc.)

In comparison with Klein’s use of Instinct theory, it is plainly evident that she was interested in the functions of instincts as they can be seen operating in everyday life and death experiences and relations, while Freud was much more interested in the very nature of instinct itself. I hope my summary of Freud’s Instinct Theory will show how deep and wide variation in Psychoanalytic theorizing and practice is and how open and attentive Psychoanalytic inquiry and investigation is to an individual theorist’s inherent psychical constitution and conditioned psychodynamics, born of their inner personal/subjective life and death experiences, their external relations with significant others and the external collective conditions that individuals are subjected to. People, individuals/subjects, instinctively find, perceive, understand and even believe what they desire to know and this is one of the reasons why every reader/thinker is biased and projects onto and conditions a text with their own needs, ideas, prejudices, hopes, wishes and delusions. Every past thought and feeling is reawakened and modified by fresh experience through the cycles of time. I certainly can be accused of spinning Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Part 5) text to suit my own interests and purposes, just as Melanie Klein took Freud’s ideas where she and her colleagues in the British School of Psychoanalysis (that was not yet formed at that time) were heading. Individuals have their own agenda, but can’t achieve it without others, as the Psychoanalytic theories of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan have made exceptionally clear, in his own way, for his individual purposes and for the purposes of the collective (professional, social, political, etc.) ideologies that he chose to cathect. There can be no Self, whatever you want to call it - individual, person, human being, human organism, etc. - without an Other, because of the function of the I.

В работе исследуются основные детерминанты затрудненного консультативного взаимодействия. Особое внимание уделяется влиянию личностных особенностей психолога-консультанта на восприятие клиента как трудного во взаимодействии.
Изучается содержание проективной составляющей поля взаимодействия в диаде «консультант-клиент».

1. We look through the mind and we gaze within awareness…becoming aware of awareness is the path of gazing (whether eyes or open or closed)…we can gaze into awareness and we are immediately the field, the field of being. If we look and look for awareness with our mind only blankness arises, a blank state. Sunyata, primordial knowingness is not blankness, it is not blanking out. As we become aware of awareness we enter the gaze, we become the place of the gaze…this gazing from within awareness opens the multidimensionalness….the different dimensions of the field manifest within the gaze, within us. The gaze is both within us and beyond us. Within the gaze, there is neither simple inside nor simple outside. The gaze is place...a vast place beyond inside and outside.

This article charts the influence of the 'medical model' in the field of counselling and psychotherapy, from its origins in the late 19th century to now -the first years of the 21st century. Having initially been taken for granted by Freud as a fundamental paradigm for the work of psychoanalysis at the conception of our profession, over the 100 years since then the 'medical model' has been criticised and questioned as valid for therapy. The article starts from the premise that the 'medical model' implies a dualistic split between practitioner and patient which ring-fences the 'wound' in the patient. That split has been questioned and comprehensively de-constructed by a series of insights into how the patient's wound refuses to be segregated and 'enters': the consulting room, the therapist and even the supervisor. So whilst therapy cannot be subsumed under the 'medical model', neither can it fully be excluded from the therapeutic endeavour, as I spell out in some other writings. Here, though, I focus on its limitations as a dominant framework and mindset for therapists.

עם תום המאה העשרים, שזכתה לכינוי "המאה של הטראומה", היה אפשר לזהות התפתחויות משמעותיות בספרות הפסיכואנליטית על טראומה בהשפעת מגמות שונות בשיח הטראומה הביקורתי ששגשג מחוץ לשדה הקליני. חידושים אלה התאפיינו בניסיון לשכלל את החיבור בין התפיסה הטיפולית ובין הקשריה הפוליטיים ולהביא בחשבון יחסי כוח חברתיים המשפיעים על תהליכים נפשיים ומכוננים אותם. בפרט, החיבור של מושג הטראומה עם מושג העדוּת סייע לכותבות פסיכואנליטיות מהזרם ההתייחסותי להפנות תשומת לב טיפולית לעוולות שלא זכו להכרה פוליטית ולהיבטים חברתיים מוכחשים של סבל ואובדן על רקע דיכוי מתמשך.
המאמר מציג התפתחויות חשובות אלה, ובהמשך מתוארים בו כמה סכנות אתיות ואתגרים העולים מהמפגש בין הפסיכואנליטי לפוליטי, לנוכח הכתיבה הביקורתית על מוסד העדות. קשיים אלה יוצגו על רקע סוגיה סבוכה שזכתה לתשומת לב ביקורתית מעטה יחסית – עדותו של הפוגע וההכרה החברתית בטראומה שלו. נושא זה מעלה הסתייגויות רבות, ובראשן החשש המובן כי הקשבה לעדותו ולסבלו של מי שהפעיל אלימות משמעה פטירתו מאחריות והזנחת התמיכה בקורבנותיו. הבעייתיות תודגם בהקשר של לוחמים ישראלים שנשלחו ונשלחים בשם החברה להפעיל אלימות פוליטית, אשר מייצרת אצל קורבנותיה הפלסטינים טראומה עיקשת ומתמשכת.
הדיון יסייע לזהות פער שהולך ונוצר מחדש בין הכתיבה הביקורתית החוץ-אנליטית לבין השיח הטיפולי: בעוד הראשונה נוטה להתמקד בממד האתי של עדויות הפוגעים ולגנות עיסוק בסבל שלהם, הספרות הקלינית מציעה עמדה לא שיפוטית. עמדה אחרונה זו, שגלומה בה הבטחה לאפשר תהליכי עיבוד ושינוי עמוקים, מעוררת לעיתים אי-נוחות שכן היא אינה מתנה את ההקשבה לפוגע במחויבות מוסרית שלו כלפי הנפגע. בסיום המאמר מודגש הפער בין ההשתהות שמתאפשרת בדל"ת האמות של הקליניקה הטיפולית ובין תהליכים המתאפשרים בפרהסיה, ומוצג כהזמנה לכותבות הפסיכואנליטיות העכשוויות להמשיך ולשקוד על החיבור בין הספֵרות הללו, במטרה לתרום למאמץ הביקורתי ולהתמודדות עם האלימות הפוליטית השבה ומתפרצת בחזרה כפייתית.

The motif of the "Vagina Dentata" appears in various Hindu myths and tales belonging to Indic folklore, yet its iconic relevance extends beyond symbolic and religious fields and overlaps with the wider sphere of the discourses on gender and sexuality. Based upon this premise, the paper aims to illustrate the motif of the "toothed vagina" on two interconnected levels: on the first one, it offers a psychoanalytical codification of the symbol and of the violence connected with the removal of the "teeth," while on the second it scrutinises the "extirpation" in the light of the patriarchal endeavour to subjugate women through abuse and debasement. The concluding part of the paper advances a metaphorical suggestion around the "vagina dentata" symbol, pointing to the resources implied in the affirmation of women's voices in the public domain.

The article introduces discourse analysis as a fruitful approach to psychotherapy change-process research. Extracts are presented from a successfully resolved, client-specified, problematic theme that was selected from a successful 8-session psychodynamic-interpersonal therapy of a female client presenting with a major depressive episode. The study offers a heuristic demonstrating (a) how resolution of the client's problem evolved from implications raised by the client's own description of her predicament and involved the therapist's legitimation of a morally defensible account of the client's actions and (b) how cultural meanings can be brought into the consulting room as intimately personal problems. The implications of studying therapeutic change as a discursive activity comprising the use and negotiation of sociocultural meanings are discussed.

In chapter 10, Linday Finlay writes with Anna Madill , to describe and explain some different ways to analyse data. Four contrasting types of analysis are outlined with practical exemplars: narrative, thematic, discursive and creative. Each type of analysis highlights different aspects and so enables different insights. As such, qualitative analysis is always tentative, partial and emergent....

Gestalt Therapy techniques are considered to be powerful tools for the remobilization of human growth and change. I will attempt to show that the power of these techniques lies in the fact that they are effective ways of dealing with our "internalizations". I will first briefly review object relation theory and then discuss gestalt techniques as they pertain to internal objects.

How to read a text and how to hear a text. How to open words and syllables so that knowledge arises within your own body, within your inner awareness. When you are located in mind alone, when you are located in conceptualness and concrete mind alone, you will be locked in and contained. William Reich described concrete minds as living machines. Concreteness can be described as rigidity, a mode of tense cognitive activity. Strangely enough, concreteness with its compulsiveness, its drivenness can distort the sense of presence and the sense of reality. The concrete mind in its literalness struggles to find the right solution. The literal view can be narrow, highly vigilant and stimulus−stimulation bound. The concrete mind struggles to find the right solution relentlessly. Of course whatever the solution, it never is enough. One becomes stuck in the stimulus of the word and stuck in the signification of the word. The nexus between the signifier and signified is without space and is densely bound.

“The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from
being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human
existence.”
                        Thomas Wolfe

A psychoanalytic look at aspects of Loneliness, with an emphasis on internal factors, further to those described by Melanie Klein, is presented. In particular, importance is given to Paternal Reverie as compared with Bion's concept of Maternal Reverie. Examples from literature and the TV series The West Wing are given, along with a brief clinical example.

In this paper, I look at the dialogue between some relational and intra-psychic models of psychoanalysis, regarding the autonomy of the self. I also describe how certain types of meditation, in particular, Realization Process, can facilitate both the experience of internal cohesion, the sense of oneself as a separate being, and the experience of participating in a fluidly reciprocal self/world matrix. I discuss how the experience of interiority that can be cultivated through meditation leads to the emergence of a subtle, qualitative sense of self and other, enables creativity, and increases one's openness to other people.

Our lack of awareness of Being results in bewildering experience. The intrinsic inner radiance, the inner light of Being arises out of primordial luminous spaciousness, the unbound openness of unbound pure potentiality. When this primordial ground of Being is veiled and obscured by the lack of experiential awareness, we can be locked into dualistic experiences, and consequently the non-dual nature of the field of Being is experientially foreclosed. The sense of indivisibility of all phenomena and awareness is experientially foreclosed. The capacity to see into, feel into and see through the lucidity of phenomena as the very field of Being becomes foreclosed and densified. We then live contained in mind alone. There is no experience of the field of Being. Without the field of Being we easily become things and objects both to our self and to others.

[Daniel Stern and the development of intersubjectivity]

Summary:

This article (in German language) presents some of the main results of Daniel N. Stern's infant and toddler research. His findings and conclusions show a high agreement with Gestalt theoretical positions. From the observation of the interactions of infants with their mothers Stern has demonstrated above all the relationship character of the event. He also supplemented and modified a number of findings and conclusions that had previously been presented by attachment research. For example, attachment behaviour cannot really be understood without understanding the motivation for this behaviour - the need for belonging. Stern works in a differentiated way on the modalities and behaviors that can be used prelingually or without the use of language to build, hold, and regulate relationships. This alone can provide a variety of stimuli for relationships in psychotherapy, whether with children or with adults. The patient is not the individual, but the relationship that this person has with others.

Zusammenfassung:

Der Beitrag stellt einige Hauptergebnisse der Säuglings- und Kleinkindforschungen von Daniel N. Stern vor. Seine Befunde und Schlussfolgerungen weisen eine hohe Übereinstimmung mit gestalttheoretischen Auffassungen auf. Stern hat aus der Beobachtung der Interaktionen von Säuglingen mit ihren Müttern vor allem den Beziehungscharakter des Geschehens herausgearbeitet. Er hat damit auch eine Reihe von Befunden und Schlussfolgerungen ergänzt und modifiziert, die bis dahin von der Bindungsforschung vorgelegt worden waren. So kann etwa das Bindungsverhalten nicht wirklich verstanden werden, ohne die Motivation für dieses Verhalten zu verstehen – das Bedürfnis nach Zugehörigkeit. Stern arbeitet in differenzierter Weise die verschiedenen Modalitäten und Verhaltensweisen heraus, die vorsprachlich bzw. ohne Einsatz von Sprache dem Aufbau, dem Halten und der Regulierung von Beziehungen dienen können. Schon daraus können vielfältige Anregungen auch für das Beziehungsgeschehen in der  Psychotherapie gewonnen werden, ob nun mit Kindern oder mit Erwachsenen. Der Patient ist nicht das Individuum, sondern die Beziehung, in denen diese Person mit anderen steht.

Dr. Sigmund Freud - Psychoanalysis Case Study
Wolf Man - Sergei Pankejeff

From the History of an Infantile Neurosis (1918[1914]),
in An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works, Vol.17, S.E. pg. 1-104.


“The perfect stillness and immobility of wolves… The factors of attentive looking and motionlessness”.
(Freud, 1918, p.33 & 34)


Ayla Michelle Demir
14/02/2013
Clinical Interventions in Psychoanalysis
MA Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Society
Department of Psychology, School of Social Science, Brunel University.

We have two ways of knowing. Our mind knows forms, things, both subtle and gross. Faces, hands, buildings, trees, math formulas, mind knows subject and the mind knows otherness. The mind knows dualities, the mind knows me and you, us and them, and this and that. Mind knows time, mind knows the past, the present and the sense of the future. The mind knows things and entities, the mind knows beings, infinite numbers of beings and things. The mind knows difference. The mind thinks conceptually, feels affectively, imagines through imagery, the mind has sense and the mind has memory. The mind knows dualistically.

In the Gudyargarbha tantra there is this most wonderful verse. Appearances, sounds, and thoughts are the diety, mantra and the state of dharmakaya. What this wonderful language brings forward into our awareness is the amazing understanding that self liberation is the direct experiencing of the appearing of appearances.

For CPD courses and events for counsellors and psychotherapists, as well as Michael's writing, presentations, hand-outs and other resources for practitioners, see: www.integra-cpd.co.uk 'We are all relational, but are some more relational than others?' -completing the paradigm shift towards relationality by Michael Soth

Transgenerational relationships are part of our everyday life. In this paper I will bring forward the argument that they will play an important part in the phenomenon of transference and counter-transference where transgenerational trauma like ghosts are intensely present through their absence.

This paper centers on Sergei Pankejeff, the protagonist of Freud’s “From the History of Infantile Neurosis” (1918), known as the Wolf Man, as presented in the literature that was written about and by him. Approximately five decades after Freud’s case study appeared, Pankejeff was invited to write a memoir of his life and of his experience as analysand (Gardiner, 1971a). This paper offers a comparative reading of the canonical case study and the analysand’s memoir, a reading that centers on the complex matrix of meanings embodied in the act of lifting the veil. The neurotic symptom of the veil in front of the analysand’s eyes is interpreted by Freud as a repetition of his birth in a Glückshaube (the German word for "caul," literally a "lucky hood"). For Freud, psychoanalysis represents the process of lifting the veil, a rebirth of the psyche that accompanies the return of the repressed. The analysand’s memoir, written by the elderly Pankejeff, is understood as a re-translation of Freud’s text, raising questions about psychoanalysis and truth. The Wolf Man’s intention of claiming authorial subjectivity in the face of feeling dispossessed by Freud’s text is understood within the context of what was in fact an interminable analysis.

The Political Mind
The Role of the Unconscious in Political and Social Life

12 May - 13 July 2015

A series of 10 seminars on the Political Mind in the Summer term at the British Psychoanalytical Society (BPAS), Institute of Psychoanalysis, Byron House, 112a Shirland Road, London W9.

Seminar Leader and Organiser: Dr David Morgan, Psychoanalyst.  Institute of Psychoanalysis, Centre for the Advancement of Psychoanalytic Studies.


Programme

1)  May 12: David Morgan "Whistleblowers and Dissent: Moral Good or Self Interest? What are the psychological dimensions of defying a perverse or corrupt authority?"

2)  May 19: John Alderdice "Devoted Actors the psychology of Fundamentalism & Terrorism"

3)  May 26: Sally Weintrobe "Climate change and the culture of uncare"

4)  June 2: Phil Stokoe “The Impact of Power on the Mind of the Politician"

5)  June 9: Josh Cohen "Psychoanalysis and the Politics of Idleness."

6)  June 16: Bob Hinshelwood "Reflection or action: Never the twain shall meet"

7)  June 23: David Bell "All thats solid melts into air: Psychoanalytic reflections on the socio-economic crisis"

8)  June 30: Ruth McCall "The Psychoanalysis of Exclusion."

9)  July 6: Edgard Sanchez "Power and the manipulation of the masses. Third world perspectives."

10)  July 13: Michael Rustin "The Psychology of Neoliberalism"

For more information contact Dr. David Morgan at dhmorgann@gmail.com and Marjory Goodall, Conference & Events Officer, Tel: 020 7563 5016  Email: marjory.goodall@iopa.org.uk

Bookings via Beyond the Couch http://www.beyondthecouch.org.uk/?unique_name=events&item=196

A person's own inner most awareness and the movements within their awareness field bring forth their direct personal experience of their cosmological archetypal field of awareness. This spontaneous event is given to us within the archetypal realm of awareness. The archetypal dimension manifests itself as us, and reveals itself to us through our experience of its self-manifestation.

The act of taking risks in a sexual context is by no means new. One may think immediately of BDSM (Bondage, Domination and Sadomasochism): its associations with tangible pain and the rituals and lifestyles surrounding it render BDSM a clear example of the profoundness and commonplace nature of the fetishisation of sexual risk. Likewise, the variety of ways in which one may engage in BDSM (and the plethora of reasons one may desire it) also show it to be site open to subjective definition. Interestingly however, there are forms of ‘risk sexualisation’ that occur within urban gay communities such as bareback, bug-chasing and chemsex that have particular processes of psychic risk sexualisation unique to – and entangled with – the historical social positioning of the gay male, thus making them distinct from other forms of sexual risk, while sharing similar terrain.

Understanding how the changing social positioning of the gay male has enabled particular sexual practices or ‘sexualisations’ to occur  is a sensitive affair that requires both an understanding of the political, social and medical discourses that embellish the symbol of the gay male in the cultural imaginary, and an understanding of the psychic process that determine how one psychosexually responds to and internalises information – as a gay male - that may influence their sexual desires and practices.

This paper attempts to satisfy the titular question through looking inward at psychoanalysis as a discipline, specifically the work of Melanie Klein, Freud, Bersani and Dean as well as outward towards the object of study: gay sexual risk. By examining the changing relational dynamic between the discipline and object of study, alongside a critical analysis of how psychoanalysis has - at different points - failed and succeeded in explaining gay desires for sexual risk; this paper hopes to offer an answer that speaks to: the ways in which psychoanalysis has changed in its approach to sexual risk; how it deals with modern actualisations of gay sexual risk, and how well its tools can blend with other forms of analysis in order to temper its own inabilities to account for such actualisations.

Timeless awareness is the essence of Dzogchen. Time experienced within timeless awareness is also an expression of the essence of Dzogchen. Dzogchen is an ancient form of Tibetan mystic humanism. Dzogchen makes the essential distinction between mind and awareness. A person can be located in mind alone and locked in time. As a person shifts from being located in mind alone (mindfulness) and goes beyond mind alone (mindfulness), one becomes aware of their own awareness. As we focus our awareness on our own innermost awareness, vast dimensions of awareness begin to open and self-reveal its nature to us. Awareness is a multidimensional experience and this awareness is infinite in its horizons. The innate qualities of awareness are spaciousness or openness or emptiness. Another quality of our awareness is luminous radiance and still another is awareness as energy. Awareness is alive and is both vast stillness and unceasing movement. The Union of Mind and Awareness When a person is able to experience the union of their mind and their awareness, then the person has a simultaneous experience of being in time and in timeless awareness. The mind is the place of thinking, feeling, sensation, memory and imagination and the mind is the mode of knowing singularity and difference in the world. This is the realm of ordinary knowingness and this is the realm of duality. Our mind is the realm of time. This time bound knowing is the knowing of you and I, us and them, this or that in time and place.

In the summer of 2013 at the Tibetan Center in Poolesville, Maryland the great Lama YangThang Rinpoche gave instruction on the practice of the great compassion, or as he described the practice, as being the practice of Absolute Compassion. The instruction was to extend the light of awareness into the world and into the cosmos. Extending the light of awareness into the present moment of a person, extending the light of awareness into the past time of the person and extending the light of awareness into the future time of the person. This truly is the great practice of the great compassion and everyone can practice this extension of the light of awareness. This very proactive praxis brings forth the light within us and fills us with the light of the field of awareness. It is great to practice this vast practice. Of course it takes a boldness of intention and passion of heart. Extending the light of our innermost awareness into the present of those we love, and into the past of those we love, and then extending the light into their future of those we love is self-liberating. The light of awareness illuminates experience, metabolizes experience, opens us into un-bound awareness, undoes fixated-ness, and brings forth luminous intensity. The light of awareness is pure potentiality. The same practice can be used with those whom we hate or dislike or whom disgust us. This practice of extending the light of awareness deepens our own experience of becoming aware of awareness. As we practice extending the light of awareness, awareness itself completely opens up for us and deepens our experience in depth and breath. In time we begin to experience the true secret of this praxis. Timeless awareness begins to be experienced by us and sustained by us. Timeless awareness is the

This book is designed as a reference source for professional psychotherapists, and as a text for a course in psychotherapy. Its purpose is to reach students of psychology, psychiatry, and social work. It claims to "provide the reader with the newest, most creative and most effective" guidance in psychotherapeutic method. The approach is psychodynamic with due recognition of the person and emphasis on interpersonal relationship as a major healing vehicle. The writers are outstanding members in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. Included are Drs. Salzman, Chrzanowski, Schiffer, Rose Spiegel, and Wolman.

There is similarity of the theme of becoming self liberated through the manifestation of appearance in both dzogchen and Heideggarian phenomenology. There is this similarity between the dzogchen meditative awareness tradition as articulated by the 14 th century Tibetan master Longchenpa and the phenomenologist of 20th century philosophy Martin Heidegger.

Donald Winnicott's radical existential psychoanalytic understanding of transitional awareness and transitional relatedness is an amazing and little used doorway for today's psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. In today's cognitive clinical culture we have become cognitions tampering with cognitions. Life as cognition. Existential Ontology Winnicott's creative understanding of our capacity for transitional awareness and transitional relatedness intertwines both our personal psychology and our innermost experience of our own existential ontology. Transitional knowingness intertwines both our mind and our primordial awareness field. Our field of awareness knows the field of Being since awareness is the field of Being. Transitional awareness intertwines both our mind and our psyche. Donald Winnicott's phenomenological understanding of the self radicalizes our sense of self from being a representational picture or cognitive affective schema or synthesis of disparate psychological part's to a fluid sense of self as a direct experiential felt sense of ongoing continuity of Being. Our knowingness though the medium of awareness, opens for us the direct knowing of the experience of Being. The experience of Being is for us our sense of natural spirituality. Our liminal transitional awareness field opens us into the immediate ongoing intimate experience of Being. This experience of Being is of Being within our very own self and of Being within our very own relational life-world. Ordinary Personhood We, as a most ordinary person, can experience the unfolding movement of the experiencing of Being within our own self as our self, and simultaneously, the unfolding experiencing of our own being as the being-ness of Being which is the Being of the world. As we experience the Being .

It is not easy to understand the nature of the guru and understanding the nature of the guru can be bewildering. There is often bewilderment about the guru. One source of the bewilderment is that people think that the guru is an individual person and for most people the understanding that the guru is not a person has been foreclosed. The guru is not a person. And when people see and believe the guru is a person, such a belief will create illusions about the person whom they think is the guru, and their own relationship with the person whom they see as the guru will fall into various forms of the psychology of transference. Moreover, the true and pervasive nature of the guru will be concealed and the power of the guru limited and anthropomorphized, and politicized. To use Heideggerian language the ontic dimension will become the focus and the ontological dimension becomes foreclosed. In fact, the guru is not an entity, the guru is not a thing, and the guru is not even a being. The guru is the field of Being. The guru is the field of Being's manifestation of understanding, manifestation of protection and manifestation of self-revelation. The guru is the radiance of primordial awareness. The contemporary master of Kashmir Shavism, Swami Muktananda would teach, using the language of theology, " the guru is the grace bestowing power of God. " He would also say " The guru is your own innermost awareness and you must get beyond your mind to experience the guru as your own awareness. " Vehicle-ness It is also equally true that a person can be vehicle of the guru. Even you and I can be a vehicle for the guru. The light of the guru can manifest and shine forth through you and me, and through everyone. The power of the guru does not manifest only through institutional religious teachers as some would like you to think, but most often this manifestation is through

Addressing the infant-mother relationship, Laplanche posited that the maternal unconscious serves as an enigmatic message to the infant's unconscious. The infant is unable to translate violent maternal imprinting (immersion) of the life rejection, and the message generates a traumatic internal enigma. When this occurs, the infant's ego takes action to avoid collapse and to survive under the influence of a destructive object. Through a clinical presentation, the author argues that this particular psychosis begins when the infant's death instinct binds to primary narcissism to process the enigmatic trauma of maternal rejection. This dynamic uncovers the possibility of the intersubjective nature of the death instinct. The implications of the intersubjective influences of the analyst's own deadness and aliveness and the implications for the treatment of this psychosis are discussed.

The phenomenology of the unfolding elaboration of our capacity to know Being directly and as well as our experience to know Being through beings is the focus of this paper. I will focus on the phenomenological elaboration of our knowing of mind; the phenomenological knowing of direct awareness and the consequent simultaneous intertwining of knowing through mind and through awareness. This union of our mind and our awareness allows the knowing of Being through beings and knowing the indivisibleness of beings and Being. As the Dakini said to Dudjom Lingpa " You and I are indivisible. " Our paper begins with a phenomenological elaboration of the Two Ways of Knowing. This is a necessary and a most useful distinction for our knowing of both beings and Being simultaneously. The Two Ways of Knowing: Mind Knowing Form and Awareness Knowing Being Mind Knows Form! Our mind knows forms, and things, both subtle and gross. Our mind knows beings and things. Our mind knows subject and our mind knows otherness. Our mind knows dualities .Our mind knows me and you, us and them and this and that. Mind knows time. Our mind knows the sense of the past, the sense of present and a sense of the future. The mind knows entities. Our mind knows difference. Our mind thinks conceptually, feels affectively, imagines through images, the mind senses sensation and the mind has memory. The mind always knows dualistically. Our mind thinks and knows through thoughts, our mind feels and knows through feelings, our mind has sensations, knows through sensation and our mind has fantasy and knows through imagination. The knowledge of our mind is mediated through conceptualization and representational thinking. Our mind can even know the mind of others. However, our mind cannot know Being and our mind cannot know the Being-ness of beings. Our mind cannot experience Being. Our mind cannot know Being directly. Awareness Knows Being! Our awareness directly knows Being and our awareness can directly know the Being-ness of beings. Being itself is not a being and Being manifests beings, infinite numbers of beings. Being manifests Being within beings as their own being. Being itself is not an entity and Being is not a being. Being is not a thing. Being is non-duality. Being knows the non-duality of everything and anything. Being is oneness and pervasiveness. Being is openness, and Being self-manifests as radiant light. Being is compassionate creative resonance. Being manifests presence. Our awareness can know the indivisible presence of the Being-ness of beings within beings and between beings. Being manifests duality, although Being is completely non-dual. By becoming aware of awareness, we experience primordial awareness which is the ground of being, which is Being itself. Awareness is Being. Awareness is Being knowing Being. Being knows Being and is the Being-ness of all the beings. Awareness can be timeless as well as awareness can be in time. Awareness can be timelessness and in time simultaneously.

so clearly shows in his dissertation, between the 8 th and 14 th centuries there were illuminating phenomenological distinctions that were considered essential to understand the great perfection practice of awareness, becoming aware of awareness. These distinctions were primarily made by the Nyingma masters of meditation. The most basic distinction is between the mind of dualistic experience (sems) and the primordial awareness of naturalistic non-dualistic experience or primordial knowingness (ye shes) or (semde). This ye shes is non dualistic knowingness. Unfortunately, many Buddhist texts describe dualism as deluded and non-dualism as non-deluded. This language of delusion is highly prejudiced and is nihilistic in tone and devalues the oneness of the two truths (conventional and absolute reality). They devalue the indivisibility of appearance and awareness and moreover, challenge the validity of the foundational human experience of oneness and difference or duality within non duality. This negative use of language unhappily challenges the divinity of appearance and invalidates the human experience of the Nirmanakaya dimension which is ordinary life. The differentiation and distinction of mind from awareness prevents the bewildering confusion of mind and awareness resulting in the negation of either the experience of non-duality or the experience of duality. Much of the understanding about the difference between mind and awareness was presented in the unfolding of the seventeen Atiyoga tantras that brought forth the heart essence tradition (sying thig). These teachings and instructions are part of the instructional teachings of Dzogchen. These teachings are instructional in the forms of skillful means or praxis for bringing the experience of awareness of awareness into completion. This completion is experiencing the fullness of experience of personal awareness within the vast infinite and multidimensional field of awareness. The essential method is to experience directly and completely primordial knowingness as well as the manifestations of this primordial knowingness such as mind, innermost subjectivity and external phenomenal appearance. Mind, subjectivity and all appearance are the manifestation of primordial knowingness itself. Primordial awareness is the primordial and abiding pervasive condition. Our experience of non-conceptual knowingness or non-conceptual perception opens us to the direct understanding and direct non-conceptual experience that everything and anything is the manifestation of primordial or ground awareness. Primordial awareness is radiance openness or radiant emptiness. Primordial awareness is not simply emptiness alone but the oneness of openness and radiance spaciousness as light. The incompleteness of emptiness alone is recognized by the 14 th century Nyingma master Longchenpa. Awareness is the union of spaciousness and radiance.

For many Native Hawaiians, the banning of our language as the primary medium in schools and the consequent dethronement of our native worldview attacked our psychological wellbeing. The issue of colonization is a site of identity conflict, opening painful wounds inextricably personal, political, and cultural.

This article discusses the psychological violence at the heart of "dialogue initiatives" in the Israel-Palestine "conflict." This article focuses as an example one program called Moving Beyond Violence, that documents the work of Combatants for Peace.  Created by Iriss Singer, the program invites relational psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin to analyze the experience of two figures, Itimar Shapira (a Jewish Israeli) and Bassam Aramin (a Palestinian from the West Bank). In examining the application of her theory of "the Moral Third" and "Third Space" (and "doer and done to"),  this article demonstrates how "dialogue initiatives" (although well-meaning) act a means to legitimate the historical and subjective grievances of the Palestinian people. In turn, these initiatives, in fact, work to establish an "extractive introjection" (in Bollas' words) or a "colonial introjection" (in Lara Sheehi's words), thereby robbing the Palestinian partner in these dialogues of their humanity, historical rights, and demand for true reparation and repair.

It is in the best interest of psychoanalysis that new schools of thought (earlier examples of which are the classical, Kleinian, and self psychological perspectives) evolve. Generating a new school of thought, however, is almost impossible in this postmodern era. The postmodern paradigm in psychoanalysis (intersubjectivity, dialectical constructivism, two-person psychology) does not strive to generate a “true” theory of mind that claims to fit reality, nor does it claim to be another school of thought. The creators of the classical, interpersonal, self psychological, ego psychological, Kleinian, Bionian, Fairbairnian, Winnicottian, and other schools cannot be postmodernists, for they all believed that their theories corresponded to reality and were therefore true. A shortage of analysts who “know the truth” today will make it extremely difficult for new schools of thought to arise in psychoanalysis, or for new and compelling theories and descriptions of the human psyche to be constructed. What is required is for pluralistic psychoanalytic institutions to empower analysts who are actively involved in the pursuit of new ideas and theories in psychoanalysis.

This paper focuses on the utilization of the transitional state of awareness so that a person's existential experience of the borderline situation can be transformed. The Particular ego-self deficits of the borderline situation are elaborated from an existential self -object relations viewpoint. The borderline concern is profoundly existential and ontological. The transitional space of awareness is the doorway into our embodiment of the field of Being which is the field of the Self.

The focus of Dzogchen practice is to experientially understand the nature of our awareness through awareness itself. To be nonconceptually aware of the nature of our awareness is rig pa or open presence.The root or the source of all phenomena is Presence. This word presence is often used by 14th century Longechenpa as well the contemporary Namkai Norbu and many dzogchen masters as the signifier of ground of being, the ground as presence. Contemporary Christian philosophers influenced by existential phenomenology, such as Paul Tillich and Karl Rahner, describe the ground of being and ground of presence as Divinity. In Dzogchen philosophy descriptors are added such as the divine presence, luminous presence, radiant presence, pure presence, immaculate presence.