Dear Dr. D’Amour: Relational Psychoanalysis at the Heart of Teaching and Learning

Dr. Lissa D’Amour brings together relational psychoanalysis and developmental theory to offer practitioners of education an opportunity to unify theories of learning into a cohesive “dialectic model of learning and of learning’s refusal” (D’Amour, 2020, p. 142), a unification sorely needed in mathematics education as educators in Alberta feud over ‘back-to-basics’. Dr. D’Amour’s (2020) book, entitled Relational Psychoanalysis at the Heart of Teaching and Learning: How and Why It Matters, attempts to kick-start conversations about the relationships present in classrooms and offers respite from, and an alternative perspective of, the educational behemoth I have become a part of, one that increasingly ignores us humans, the relationships we have and our affective attunement with all that is around us.

ROCKETING SHEEP: AFFECTIVE DISCIPLINE IN ANONYMOUS MOBILE SOCIAL MEDIA JODEL DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The Covid-19 pandemic has sparked online discussion in unprecedented volumes, as citizens use social media to share their opinions and concerns regarding the prevention measures, for instance. Much of such activity takes place under real names on popular platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. However, parallel to these platforms more anonymous spaces remain and flourish, including completely anonymous services such as Secret.ly and Ask.fm, or pseudonymized services such as Reddit. This study focuses on Covid-19 related discussion on mobile social media platform Jodel, an anonymous-by-design social media application that allows messaging users who are geographically close. In this paper, we explore discussions about the Covid-19 pandemic on Jodel in Helsinki, Finland, through the theoretical notion of affective discipline. Our data is collected during a virtual, mobile ethnography that followed the discussions on the #corona channel in Jodel in Helsinki during 2020-21. We argue that the anonymity of Jodel provided its users a space to discuss the restrictive measures in a more relaxed manner than real-name-based social media. This also endows the conversations with deeper and different affective attunement than what public discussion would. While the discussions contain moral judgments, they were also rife with humor, irony and distanced spectatorship of the ongoing pandemic, resonating with the carnivalistic discussion cultures of other anonymous and pseudonymous platforms. We argue that anonymous and ephemeral platforms like Jodel, where identities and histories are nonexistent, bring out the affective dynamics of online discussions, and the related forces that assemble and disassemble communities.

In the mood for disconnection

The needs and desires to disconnect, detox, and log out have been turned into commodities and found their expressions in detox camps, self-help books, and “offline” branded apparel. Disconnection studies have challenged the power of commodified disconnective practices to create real social change. In this article, we build on the notion of affective attunement to explore how disconnection commodities provide differential ways for individuals to respond to the challenges of connectivity, and how they can form larger patterns of resistance that cannot be dismissed as futile. We examine the ambiguity of disconnection commodities through three examples: a smartwatch kill switch and stealth mode features, detox floatation tank therapy, and make-up lines. Our approach turns the perspective from ends to the means of disconnection. We argue that these commodities do not offer hard breaks but they do let users attune to connectivity.

Psychiatrists Report Praecox Feeling and Find It Reliable. A Cross-Cultural Comparison

Background: The psychopathological notion of the Praecox Feeling (PF) refers to an experience of strangeness and bizarreness that arises in a clinician during contact with a patient with schizophrenia. There is evidence that psychiatrists take advantage of this feeling in their diagnostic decisions despite the domination of an operationalized diagnostic approach.Methods: The article presents the results of a survey assessing the self-reported prevalence of the PF among psychiatrists in Poland and compares them with data from West Germany (1962), USA (1989), and France (2017) based on the same survey.Results: The study finds a consistent prevalence of reported feelings suggestive of the diagnosis of schizophrenia among psychiatrists of different cultural backgrounds and times. These feelings are independent of variables such as attitude toward schizophrenia, professional orientation, and professional experience and are considered reliable, even if not the most reliable, by the psychiatrists who have them. The study also finds that intersubjective phenomena, such as problematic affective attunement, gestures, and body language, are considered core to these feelings by the psychiatrists.Conclusions: The evidence confirms that psychiatrists' feelings about patients with schizophrenia are considered diagnostically relevant and calls for more deeply investigating the nature and diagnostic significance of these feelings. The article concludes with some speculations regarding the possible benefits of recognizing the PF in facilitating a psychotherapeutic encounter with psychotic patients.

Posttraumatic Stress

This chapter describes the adaptations of IPT for treating PTSD, the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for PTSD, and the research supporting the use of IPT as a non-exposure treatment for this disorder. This research includes a National Institute of Mental Health randomized trial conducted by the author comparing IPT to prolonged exposure therapy and to relaxation therapy, with quite positive results for IPT. Adaptation includes the importance of affective attunement to counter traumatic numbness. There follow three detailed case examples of IPT treatment of complicated grief, role dispute, and role transition associated with PTSD during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Modern Digital Art Practices and “More-than-Human” Perception

The article analyzes the concept of “more-than-human” perception, the features of which are constructed in the networks of relations, as a result of the interaction and relationships of heterogeneous forces (human activities, animals, bacteria, objects, technologies, etc.). This is not a subjective human perception, personal judgment of individual taste or social “distribution of sensitive”, but the collaborative process of configuring affective “field of the possible things” (define perception) as a result of the participation of multiple actants in the creation of life events, situations, processes, and conflicts. Based on the philosophical ideas of A. Bergson, W. Whitehead, J. Simondon, J. Deleuze, and F. Guattari, the author examines the affective nature of the interaction between the works of contemporary artists and the audience-participants. It is argued that creativity and artistic practice can be reinterpreted as processes of co-creation with the movements of matter formation. It is a way to think of art not as a form, but as a process open to a continuous interval of renewal and invention, which is revealed through the material relations of matter-energy, duration, transitions, and intuition. Through affective attunement techniques, participants organize the movements of matter-en- ergy flows, and each individual perception by the subject-actant becomes a joint “more-than- human” perception. Interactive and participatory works do not reflect reality in aesthetic forms, but instead create new processes, new places of creativity (manifestations of chance), in which the aesthetic is performatively realized before it is understood and reflected by the participants themselves. The text clarifies what constitutes “more-than-human” perception, how it relates to the usual understanding of the sphere of human sensory experience, and how it is implemented when working with modern interactive and participatory art projects.

Gestalt-Terapia e Daniel Stern: Dialogando sobre a Relevância da Corporeidade e da Dimensão Afetiva na Psicoterapia

This paper discusses the importance of the corporal and implicit dimension of the experience for the theory and practice of Gestalt-Therapy psychotherapy. We believe in a model of clinical practice that leans on this affective dimension. We start with a brief exploration of the notion of self as a process of contact, emphasizing the pre-contact and the id function of the self as the moment of the common dimension of the experience we share with the world and with the other. As we understand it, the id function is predominantly sensory, based on corporeality, being configured as a fundamental support for the experience of the difference and the novelty. From this, we propose a dialogue with Daniel Stern, exploring his concepts of vitality affect and affective attunement to affirm that our communication with the other is established not only by the way of speech, by formal thought, explicit and reflective, but also by an affective and vital dimension. From these notions, we discuss the concept of Gestalt-Therapy's awareness, differentiating it from the notion of reflective consciousness and considering it a kind of "bodily knowledge" and implicit experience, apprehended when relating to otherness. Finally, we conclude that psychotherapeutic work and dialogue constitute a relationship of coaffectation that generates deviations, "dis-centerment", and transformations. Palavras-chave : Gestalt-Therapy; Corporeity; Id Function; Awareness; Psychotherapy.

BODILY-AFFECTIVE ATTUNEMENT IN SOCIAL INTERACTION

The paper intends to supplement the studies of emotional affordances of BAA by elaborating on the conception of participatory sense-making as well as developmental studies on joint attention and interattentionality. I address different spheres of expertise from the experience-based phenomenological perspective, which allows exploring the problem both from the first-person and second-person perspectives. This research presents the conception of inter-selfness that carries on M. Merleau-Ponty’s idea of intercorporeality, T. Fuchs’ et al. analysis of intersubjectivity and phenomenologically oriented psychoanalysis by E. Z. Tronick et al., R. Stolorow et al. The mechanism of BAA is presented through the conception of participatory sense-making and the idea of minimal inter-attentionality in developmental studies. The paper presents an emotional affordances scheme that illustrates the emotional regulation of BAA. By examining this process of regulation one could see in what way the self becomes an inter-self in communication. The article also postulates correlation between cultural mediation of emotional affordances and their direct accessibility from the second-person perspective. In the last part of the paper, I examine social interaction from the viewpoint of developmental studies (C. Trevarthen, V. Reddy, M. Carpenter). The developmental perspective supplements the idea of emotional regulation in interaction, by focusing on primary such forms of BAA between a caregiver and a baby, as joint attention and mutual gaze. Herein, I demonstrate how the initial forms of the positive bodily-affective attunement develop into the interattentionality and self-representation practices of the subject. This point could contribute to the theory of personal identity by exploring the process of maturing of the sense of self in its different aspects. The results of the research could be useful for further study of BAA and its pathologies. The results could also be of use for the discussion on non-human or human-like affordance-based technological interaction theory.