scholarly journals ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ Group-analytic training: inhabiting the threshold of ambivalence is a matter of power, privilege and position

2020 ◽  
pp. 053331642094799
Author(s):  
Alasdair Forrest ◽  
Suryia Nayak
Keyword(s):  
Group Analysis ◽  
Solid Boundary ◽  
Economic Background ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Analytic Training ◽  
The Way

Having in mind those gripped by ambivalence over whether to start, or stay on, the Qualifying Course in Group Analysis, we consider the training as one in ambivalence. We see ambivalence as an asset, not a hindrance. Forsaking familiar notions of ambivalence as weak and anxious, the task is to move towards a confident ambivalence. Using the ambivalent etymology of the word ‘threshold’ as an analytic lens, we use threshold not in the sense of a wooden solid boundary to be overcome, but rather as a threshing room. This article is co-written by two people different in terms of race, gender, sexuality, socio-economic background, age and experience. We argue that understanding the relationship between difference and ambivalence is crucial. This is not only because difference matters in itself. This article argues that ambivalence finds separate expressions through these differences, which act as a symbolic site. Our experience as Manchester trainees proves that threshing of the wheat from the chaff cannot happen on seemingly rigid boundaries. Rather, it happens in thresholds. In all this, examining the way ambivalence functions through power, privilege and position, we return to the ambivalent question: Do you want group analysis? And does it want you?

The anti-science in the culture of group analysis (1)

2020 ◽  
pp. 053331642094213
Author(s):  
Henry Luiker
Keyword(s):  
Group Analysis ◽  
Magical Thinking ◽  
Large Group ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

This is the first of two articles examining the pervasiveness of religious, primitive and magical thinking in the culture of group analysis. I do so through the vehicle of the writings of Patrick de Maré. The article spells out what I believe to be the misunderstandings underlying de Maré’s rejection of causality, evidence and logical argument; calls into question the conventional view of de Maré’s writings as erudite but difficult; and examines the relationship between de Maré’s ideas and the way he takes up the role of large group conductor.

Special Section: Chopping up the Rainbow: Quality Assurance and the Challenge to Group-Analytic Training

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Quality Assurance ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Analytic Training

The discordant conjunction of irreconcilable elements which the title of this paper represents is intended to convey something of the strange nature of the relationship between the discipline of group analysis and the institutions which offer an academic accreditation today. It is a dialogue which I believe is often an uneasy one and I illustrate some of the reasons why I think that may be so. In the process, I also focus on group-analytic concepts which may help analysts to meet the challenge of Quality Assurance.

The Type of Temperament, Mood, and Strategies of Categorization

2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 227-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agata Wytykowska
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Negative Mood ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Processing Capacity ◽  
Affective Value ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

In Strelau’s theory of temperament (RTT), there are four types of temperament, differentiated according to low vs. high stimulation processing capacity and to the level of their internal harmonization. The type of temperament is considered harmonized when the constellation of all temperamental traits is internally matched to the need for stimulation, which is related to effectiveness of stimulation processing. In nonharmonized temperamental structure, an internal mismatch is observed which is linked to ineffectiveness of stimulation processing. The three studies presented here investigated the relationship between temperamental structures and the strategies of categorization. Results revealed that subjects with harmonized structures efficiently control the level of stimulation stemming from the cognitive activity, independent of the affective value of situation. The pattern of results attained for subjects with nonharmonized structures was more ambiguous: They were as good as subjects with harmonized structures at adjusting the way of information processing to their stimulation processing capacities, but they also proved to be more responsive to the affective character of stimulation (positive or negative mood).

Understanding prescription in language. A corpus-based approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-81
Author(s):  
Douglas A. Kibbee ◽  
Alan Craig
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
French Tradition ◽  
Linguistic Behavior ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

We define prescription as any intervention in the way another person speaks. Long excluded from linguistics as unscientific, prescription is in fact a natural part of linguistic behavior. We seek to understand the logic and method of prescriptivism through the study of usage manuals: their authors, sources and audience; their social context; the categories of “errors” targeted; the justification for correction; the phrasing of prescription; the relationship between demonstrated usage and the usage prescribed; the effect of the prescription. Our corpus is a collection of about 30 usage manuals in the French tradition. Eventually we hope to create a database permitting easy comparison of these features.

On (Not) Translating Lacan: Barbara Cassin's Sophistico-Analytical Performances

Paragraph ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-113
Author(s):  
Michael Syrotinski
Keyword(s):  
Machine Translation ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Barbara Cassin's Jacques the Sophist: Lacan, Logos, and Psychoanalysis, recently translated into English, constitutes an important rereading of Lacan, and a sustained commentary not only on his interpretation of Greek philosophers, notably the Sophists, but more broadly the relationship between psychoanalysis and sophistry. In her study, Cassin draws out the sophistic elements of Lacan's own language, or the way that Lacan ‘philosophistizes’, as she puts it. This article focuses on the relation between Cassin's text and her better-known Dictionary of Untranslatables, and aims to show how and why both ‘untranslatability’ and ‘performativity’ become keys to understanding what this book is not only saying, but also doing. It ends with a series of reflections on machine translation, and how the intersubjective dynamic as theorized by Lacan might open up the possibility of what is here termed a ‘translatorly’ mode of reading and writing.

Klein with Lacan: A Study on the Reception of Lacanian Ideas in Uruguay and Its Effects on Clinical Practices (1955–82)

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-361
Author(s):  
Gonzalo Grau-Pérez ◽  
J. Guillermo Milán
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Clinical Material ◽  
Clinical Practices ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Discursive Approach ◽  
The Way ◽  
Clinical Cases

In Uruguay, Lacanian ideas arrived in the 1960s, into a context of Kleinian hegemony. Adopting a discursive approach, this study researched the initial reception of these ideas and its effects on clinical practices. We gathered a corpus of discursive data from clinical cases and theoretical-doctrinal articles (from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s). In order to examine the effects of Lacanian ideas, we analysed the difference in the way of interpreting the clinical material before and after Lacan's reception. The results of this research illuminate some epistemological problems of psychoanalysis, especially the relationship between theory and clinical practice.

FBI and Religion

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Orientation ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Academic Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interdisciplinary Assessment ◽  
Civic Religion ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

This volume is an interdisciplinary assessment of the relationship between religion and the FBI. We recount the history of the FBI’s engagement with multiple religious communities and with aspects of public or “civic” religion such as morality and respectability. The book presents new research to explain roughly the history of the FBI’s interaction with religion over approximately one century, from the pre-Hoover period to the post-9/11 era. Along the way, the book explores vexed issues that go beyond the particulars of the FBI’s history—the juxtaposition of “religion” and “cult,” the ways in which race can shape the public’s perceptions of religion (and vica versa), the challenges of mediating between a religious orientation and a secular one, and the role and limits of academic scholarship as a way of addressing the differing worldviews of the FBI and some of the religious communities it encounters.

Poetic Trespass

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lital Levy
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
Old World ◽  
History And Literature ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
Emile Habiby ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

A Palestinian-Israeli poet declares a new state whose language, “Homelandic,” is a combination of Arabic and Hebrew. A Jewish-Israeli author imagines a “language plague” that infects young Hebrew speakers with old world accents, and sends the narrator in search of his Arabic heritage. This book brings together such startling visions to offer the first in-depth study of the relationship between Hebrew and Arabic in the literature and culture of Israel/Palestine. More than that, the book presents a captivating portrait of the literary imagination's power to transgress political boundaries and transform ideas about language and belonging. Blending history and literature, the book traces the interwoven life of Arabic and Hebrew in Israel/Palestine from the turn of the twentieth century to the present, exposing the two languages' intimate entanglements in contemporary works of prose, poetry, film, and visual art by both Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel. In a context where intense political and social pressures work to identify Jews with Hebrew and Palestinians with Arabic, the book finds writers who have boldly crossed over this divide to create literature in the language of their “other,” as well as writers who bring the two languages into dialogue to rewrite them from within. Exploring such acts of poetic trespass, the book introduces new readings of canonical and lesser-known authors, including Emile Habiby, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Anton Shammas, Saul Tchernichowsky, Samir Naqqash, Ronit Matalon, Salman Masalha, A. B. Yehoshua, and Almog Behar. By revealing uncommon visions of what it means to write in Arabic and Hebrew, the book will change the way we understand literature and culture in the shadow of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

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