Social | Psychoanalytic | Work

In this podcast lecture, I will discuss some (but definitely not all) of the concepts that make up the much broader field of Lacanian psychoanalysis.

I've struggled to prepare for these lectures. I've struggled a lot. I've spent many years working to understand Lacan's ideas and his ideas' effects on psychoanalysis.

I encountered Lacan when I was a doctoral student. He was a massive challenge, most people found him too difficult, but I stuck with it. And I've been at it for years now. For me, Lacan is not new and novel. Thinking as a Lacanian has become natural and normal for me.

So, what I'm going to try to do in this podcast lecture is remember that for most of you, Lacan is someone you don't know anything or don't know much about. You're in that new and novel phase that I was in back when I first encountered Lacan as a graduate student.

I hope that I'll be able to talk about these concepts in a way that will (1) get you more interested in them and (2) help you get started if you decide to explore this stuff more. It's going to be hard, but I'll try my best.

Let's get started.

Iterative work...

To start with, I want to draw your attention to some of the ways Lacan's work is similar to Freud's work.

• One of the ways that Lacan and Freud are similar is that they both produced many content.
• Both Freud and Lacan's ideas change over time; their work is iterative...
• And they were both clinical theorists.
• This is a fact --the fact that they were clinicians– is important because for both Freud and Lacan, the work they were doing in the clinic, the work they did with patients, with analysands, was the thing that drove the theoretical work they produced and refined over time.

Phases & Moments

Lacan's work can be divided into phases. One of the ways that many (not all) people who study Lacan break up his work is into an early stage that focuses on the imaginary, a middle stage that focuses on the symbolic, and a late period that is focused on the real, within those phases, there are moments.

During these phases, Lacan would publish papers, give talks, and conduct a seminar (which we can think of as a class or series of lectures). A specific paper, talk, or a series of lectures in his seminar, would be a moment within one of these more extensive phases.

The First Two Phases & The Big Ideas within Those Phases

The Imaginary Period: Work from the early phase focuses on how human beings, particularly infants who don't yet talk, form an unconscious and an ego and how they start to "make sense" of what is happening inside and outside of their bodies.

One of the ways that I think about this period is that it is interested in forming a coherent identity.

The Symbolic Period: In this work's middle or symbolic phase, Lacan focuses on how language (as a symbolic system) and communication/miscommunication affect the human subject. In this phase, Lacan shows how people use language, or a system of signification, to produce what we could call thoughts or complex ways of understanding or "making sense" of their experiences. This phase would interest people who want to understand how thinking about, talking about, or writing about what we have experienced helps us to "process" those experiences. Or, to put it differently, how talking can help to do things like

• De-escalate situations
• Attempt to work through complex trauma
• Or, if you're someone who is into neuroscience stuff, how talking about what has happened to you effects the way the brain is "weird." (i.e., the impact of speech on the body)

I tend to think of this period of Lacan's thought as helping to explain how we learn, internalize, and then make use of different systems like

• Language (how to express one's self and understand how others express themselves)
• Laws/rules (written laws/rules... "No Trespassing!")
• Social/behavioral norms (i.e., unwritten rules of society, culture, or family)

This is the phase where people have a pretty well-formed identity, and now they want to make sure that identity behaves in the correct way.

Anyone really interested in getting all A's is someone with a very symbolic concern.

Both the Imaginary & Symbolic Periods: Both of these periods tend to focus on how people create meaning, or how they make sense of things that happen inside of our bodies and outside of our bodies, and how these experiences impact or effect our bodies.

Sometimes we can see people combining imaginary identity stuff with symbolic stuff to create what Lacanians often call a semblant (sometimes a semblance). Semblants are powerful cr...

Hi,

Welcome to the fourth in a series of podcast lectures, which will focus on the work of Donald Winnicott. This lecture follows lectures on the work of Melanie Klein and Ronald Fairbairn, and I'll be referring back to concepts I talked about in those prior lectures. So, while it is not essential to have listened to those prior lectures, I think this lecture will make more sense (the maximal amount os sense) if you have.

Having said that: I want to make something clear right away. I really like Winnicott. He is my favorite in-Lacanian psychoanalyst.

Here are a few of the many reasons I think Winnicott, and his work, is so cool.

1. He is funny: The footnote about a revolver in a paper on technique.
2. The story about "inner cows"
3. He says wonderfully beautiful poetic things.
4. "For my patients, who have paid to teach me."
5. "It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found."
6. He was not afraid to be an emotional man.
7. He was sad for what I think are the right reasons.
8. He would speak in ways that were understandable.

Hopefully, this has piqued your interest in the work of this wonderful thinker. Let's get started...

Winnicott was a pediatrician

Winnicott was a pediatrician before he became a psychoanalyst. So he knew a lot about how parents (in particular mothers and infants interacted). Some things Winnicott noticed:

1. When a baby is born it is 100% dependent on the mother to survive.
2. Even though the mother and infant are separate bodies, for a time they are still linked by a powerful mental and emotional bond that is not like any other bond.
3. He believed that if this bond was supported by others (fathers, other family members, society, etc.) the result would be the development of a healthy person.
4. He also believed that this bond could not last, that at a certain point the mother and baby would need to separate more. (The baby needed to stop depending on the mother's capacities and start the process of developing its own capacities --such as soothing, eating, talking, etc.) Winnicott knew this would be difficult for both mother and baby, and, again believed the mother and baby needed to be supported throughout this separation process.

In many ways, Winnicott (and Klein who supervised Winnicott) brought the figure of the mother into psychoanalysis, which had been very preoccupied with the figure of the father. (See the Oedipus complex.)

Next we will do an overview and summary a few of Winnicott's concepts of:

1. The infant's fantasy of omnipotence experienced as if it were real
2. The good-enough mother (i.e., the good-enough parent, or good-enough clinician, teacher, friend, etc.))

Fantasy of omnipotence

The infant needed to experience this fantasy as real so that it could feel safe, secure, and not be flooded with adrenalin and cortisol as it developed. However, after a certain point this fantasy needed to be left behind.

Failure & the good-enough mother

The not good-enough mother (or social worker) can't tolerate negative spontaneous behaviors

Moving away from parent/child relationships for a moment – This still happens a lot in many clinical relationships! The effect is the patient creates a "character" they play to please the clinician. (The same way a child plays the part of the sort of child they think their parent wants them to be.)

True self & False self

Fairbairn is one of the more difficult-to-understand thinkers we will be tackling in this class. His work is not easy to read, and I'd even say it is impossible to read if you don't already have a good grasp of Freudian concepts. This is because (I think) so much of what Fairbairn is doing is trying to show what he thinks Freud got wrong.

As I prepared for this it became apparent to me that I could talk for several weeks about Fairbairn, but I don't have weeks, so I'm going to do my best to distill Fairbairn's robust thinking into something that might be useful to you.

Freud v. Fairbairn

Both Freud and Fairbairn believe the fundamental source of human motivation originates in the unconscious. However, there are two main areas where Fairbairn's ideas are based on Freud's ideas and radically different from Freud's.

1. Libido (investments of love) – Fairbairn sees it as relationship-seeking rather than drive satisfying.
2. The Ego (structure) – Fairbairn sees it as a structure that forms...

Review: Freud's structural model

Freud saw the structure of the human mind divided up in the following way.

• The id (Fairbairn says this does not exist)
• The ego
• The super ego

Fairbairn's structural model

In my opinion, your text does not do a great job explaining this, so here is my attempt to share with you how I understand Fairbairn's structural stuff.

For Fairbairn our ego is who and what we are, and how healthy or unhealthy our ego (who and what we are) ends up being is totally contingent on relationships with other people.

1. Central ego (identity) – This is more like Kohut's "self," the who and what we are in the world we share with other people.
2. Then there is the unconscious part, which has two sub-parts. These are "split off from" which is the term Fairbarin uses instead of repressed. I don't really understand why...
3. Libidinal ego (or internal cheerleader) – An internalized phantasy of a nice, caring, responsive, respectful, naturing, parent... which effectively convinces the person that they can safely try things, and even if they don't work out things won't be a disaster.
4. Anti-libidinal ego (or internal saboteur) – An internalized phantasy abusive parental sort of thing. The internalized critic, which is constantly telling someone they messed up, they are going to be rejected, or hurt, or some other bad thing.

It seems to me, in Fairbairn's model either the libidinal or anti-libidinal ego is dominant. The dominant structure is determined by the sort of relational experiences a person has as an infant, child, and adolescent. Generally speaking...

• If the person has more good than bad the libidinal ego will be more dominant. The person will have higher levels of self-esteem, more confidence, all that good stuff.
• If the person has had more bad than good the anti-libidinal ego will be more dominant, and the person will be more defensive, emotionally unstable, and all that bad stuff.

Hopefully, this makes that a little more clear to you because I need to move on to the next topic where Fairbairn was different than Freud.

Review: Drives & Satisfactions | Instincts & Pleasure

Freud saw things this way:

• Instincts are tied to pleasure, we do what our instincts do, and we feel good. This helps keep a body alive. Human beings and animals have instincts in common.
• However, people, unlike animals, are not satisfied with pleasure alone. Human beings have a drive, a force that compels them to get something that they don't need but enjoy. Persuing our drives brings satisfaction.

Fairbairn on libido as relationship-seeking

In effect, Fairbairn is saying people need relationships. The sorts of relationships we need change over time, but we always need relationships with other people to help us live good lives. A life without relationships would be horrible.

Fairbairn saw that people always try to connect with other people and form meaningful relationships with family members, mentors, friends, romantic...

Hello,

This is the second in a series of podcast lectures on Object Relations Theories. This podcast lecture, and the several that will come after it, will focus on one specific object relations thinker. I hope that this will result in several short podcast lectures that add to what your text had to say about each of these thinkers.

I also want these podcast lectures to help those of you who might want to use one of the object relations thinkers in the case study paper that you will be writing for this class.

However, I ask that you keep in mind that these podcast lectures are extremely brief summaries of some extensive theory that was developed over many years. So, if something in these lectures gets your attention, I hope you'll then go and do further reading of the thinker's work.

This specific podcast lecture will focus on the work of Melanie Klein, who is the person who I would say is...

1. The thinker who really establishes object relations as a new branch of psychoanalytic thought and practice.
2. And I would also go so far as to say that Melanie Klein is the "mother of psychoanalysis."

Review:

For today's review, I want to remind you about something we have covered before in other podcast lectures. I want to remind you of it because it is such an important concept for how object relations theories think about human relationships.

The concept is Transference.

After talking about transference, I want to introduce a new but related idea: Phantasy.

1. You will recall in the previous podcast lecture; I talked about how the relationships we have with our parents or whoever our primary caretakers are, for better or for worse, form the blueprint we use to develop all other subsequent relationships.
2. I hope this will remind you of what I said about transference even earlier in the semester. Transference is when we transfer in what? The power differential that existed between ourselves and our parents, or early primary caretakers, into current relationships.
3. Another way we could think about transference is by calling it an effect of a phantasy (spelled with a ph as opposed to with an f). A phantasy is another term used by Melanie Klein, who we will talk about in a moment, to signify a powerful unconscious assumption about the world (meaning the social world) and how we fit into the world. Even though it is called a phantasy, it is important to note that that does not mean it is wrong. Phantasies are usually the result of experiences.

Klein

First, I want to talk about something amazing that Klein did: She was one of the first people to use what we call "play therapy" nowadays, and in so doing she expanded psychoanalysis into a therapeutic modality that could be used with children.

However, Klein did not only work with kids. She did a lot of work with kids, but she also worked with adults.

One of the many things that makes Klein's work so interesting is the way that it focused on two very common emotions that people struggle with:

• Anxiety and
• Depression.

In both instances, Klein's work grows out of Freud's insight on repressed desires. I want to start by exploring Klein's insights on anxiety.

In effect, Klein was able to see in children's play and adults' dreams, free associations, slips, etc., a desire to be aggressive. This desire was powerful. However, it was frequently repressed (i.e., it became unconscious). When this desire was repressed, one of the effects was that people were anxious that they might one day lose "control" or "lose their temper," and the repressed aggression would erupt.

What is significant about this is the idea that while we can be anxious about external things or scared that something bad will happen to us because of things in the extern...

Hello!

This is the first of two podcast lectures that will cover Object Relations Theories. You, my astute listener, will notice that I said object relations theories --plural. I did not say theory --singular. This is important! Your text pointed out.

A note on the text

I'm just going to come right out and say this: I think this chapter is not so good because it tried to include too much content. I don't know about you, but for me, the result is feeling like I just rode a roller coaster of theory, where concepts and ideas went whipping past me faster than I could process them.

If that's how you feel, I hope that this podcast lecture will help to add to what you read and contextualize it a bit more. I hope that you'll feel like you've got a better grasp of these ideas at the end.

Review

Some of the theories we have already covered use the term object relations.

• Ego psychology uses it as an ego function.
• Self-psychology talks about self-objects, which is a version of object relations.
• Freud talked about drive objects, which would be the object that our drive desires and will pursue no matter what.

So, object relations should not be a totally new term. However, object relations theories represent an entire body of thought that takes object relations and makes it the primary focus of psychotherapeutic work.

Overview of similarity:

Before we get into some specific thinkers, I want to talk about some of the main ideas that I think you'll see in all object relations theories. (You might find these ideas expressed differently from one thinker's work to the next, but I think what the ideas represent is more similar than different.)

1. The term object refers to other people in the world. It is used to differentiate other people from the person who experiences or who is subjected to these other people. For example: In an infant-child relationship, from the infant's perspective, the mother is the object, and the infant is the subject. The infant is subjected to the mother. This is reversed if we look at things from the mother's perspective.
2. Object relations theories tend to focus on the process of a person coming to experience themselves as separate from other people but connected to them through relationships.
3. Not all objects nor all relationships are equal. Some objects and some relationships are more important than other objects.
4. Object relations theory focuses on relationships between people being more crucial to personality development and formation than interpsychic forces, such as drives.
5. Another way to say this would be that we learn how to be who and what we are through being in relationships with other people. The most important others will be our primary caretakers. For better or worse, this early relationship with our caretakers provides the sort of "baseline" or "blueprint" to which other relationships will be compared. Some thinkers, such as Peter Fonagy, have called these relational blueprints "internal working models" or IWMs for short.
6. People create and then continually revise an inner map of how they relate to other people and how others relate to them. This could be as simple as "I don't get along well with so and so." This map is created out of memories, fantasy (and phantasy).

My take on Object Relations Theories

I think object relations theories get right because relationships are important. Our significant relationships have a massive effect on who we are and what we become over time.

If our relationships are good, if they are not abusive or traumatic, it is far more likely that we will turn out better than if these relationships are abusive and significantly traumaize us. (The Adverse Childhood Experience | ACEs scores matter!)

What I'm more skeptical about is this:

• The idea that a therapist or analyst (with who you will spend not that much time) can correct for damage done.
• I think it is a theory that might overplay being satisfying to patients, and if the practitioner is not careful, underplay the value of optimal frustration.

That's in for this podcast lecture:

In the following lecture, I'll discuss specific theorists who produced what we recognize as object relations theories.