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"Confusion of Tongues": Difficulties in Conceptualizing Development in
Psychoanalytic Theories
Abstract Recent attempts to integrate the
richness of an intrapsychic analytic focus with the actuality of social
interactions as explicated by developmental research have been obstructed by a 'confusion
of tongues' between linear and dynamic models.
In keeping with a tendency to conceptualize complex phenomena in terms of
primary oppositions rather than integrative dialectics, there appears to be an
underlying ambivalence towards valuing nonverbal versus verbal understandings.
The author gives a brief overview of the development of nonverbal and
symbolic ways of understanding self and world, using Matte-Blanco's
conceptualization of symmetrical versus asymmetrical processes as a framework
for understanding the dynamic interplay between these two modes of
understanding. Using the work of
Klein as an example, she highlights two interrelated problems that stem from our
tendency to think in terms of linear models: 1) developmentally later events
become valorized over those that precede them temporally, and 2) pathology and
development become confused.
Recently, analysts have attempted
to integrate the richness of an intrapsychic analytic focus with the actuality
of social interactions as explicated by developmental research (Seligman, 1998,
1999). Of particular note has been
the similarity of what Stern (1985) has described as the 'affective attunement'
and 'intermodal matching' that characterize nonverbal communications
between parent and child, to that between analyst and analysand (cf. Edkins,
1997; Rayner, 1992). One difficulty
in attempts to integrate these separate lines of understanding, has been a 'confusion
of tongues' so to speak, between and within the two types of models.
These confusions have pervaded both lines of thinking, in which theorists
have attempted to outline linear progressions of development, only to be
confounded by the disjunctive aspects that necessitate a more dynamic model,
such as those based on conceptions offered by the 'new' physics, in which growth
is more interactive, and less bound by the conventions of time and space (cf.
Spruiell, 1993). Observational
studies offer crucial insights that enhance our understanding of both
intrapsychic and intersubjective processes, and also offer some cautions
regarding our tendencies to oversimplify, over-analogize, and thereby obfuscate
rather than enhance understanding. In this paper I consider two
interrelated problems that stem from our tendency to think in terms of linear
models: 1) developmentally later
events become valorized over those that precede them temporally, and b)
pathology and development become confused in what Fonagy (1996) has described as
a 'tacit assumption of an isomorphism between pathology and development that
permits bidirectional causal inference from childhood to pathology and vice
versa' (p. 405). One theoretical viewpoint that
helps to elucidate the conceptual power of a more interactive model is the work
of Matte-Blanco (1975, 1988), who attempts to explicate less conscious phenomena
through his elaborations of 'symmetrical relationships' between seemingly
disparate elements. Symmetrization
is an important aspect of what Stern (1985) describes as 'intermodal matching',
in which similarities in one dimension become translated into another dimension.
Matte-Blanco (1975) notes that the unconscious functions largely
according to the logic of symmetrical processes, in which being-like is the same
as being. As objects become grouped according to classes, there is a
tendency towards over inclusiveness, as important distinctions are not made
between like things. This tendency
is amplified in the presence of strong affect;
intense affective experiences seem to be stored in such a way that any
facet that has been linked to the experience can evoke a resurgence of the
affect (Bucci, 1997a), thereby encouraging symmetrization. Recent cognitive models of the
mind are consistent with Matte-Blanco's theoretical framework.
For example, Barsalou's (1992) conceptualization of 'frames theory'
offers a way of understanding how previous experience constrains present and
future by defining which aspects of an object or interaction will be salient.
The depiction of mind as model comes from disparate sources, including
Bion (1962), Bowlby (1980), Sandler (1994), Stern (1994) and Johnson-Laird
(1983). Fonagy (1994) notes that model
theories differ from more linear, stage
perspectives, in the latter assumption of the invariance of the mental
operations at work across time. The
critical feature distinguishing between these two types of theories would seem
to be whether or not differing types of mental operations are seen as
progressive or interactive. Our tendency to conceptualize
development in terms of linear progression is quite strong.
For example, although Fonagy (1994) argues for an interactive view, he
refers to aspects of primary process as 'vestigial‚ structures that are more
strongly dominated by concrete aspects of experience, which give way to the more
complex and conceptual relationships' (p. 64) that come to supercede previous
organizations. It is not clear from
these passages to what extent he is referring to more complex processes per se,
or valorizing the verbal symbolic realm. His
reference to 'primary process thought' punctuates the confusion between primary
process as a nonverbal or symmetrical mode of thinking, versus primary process
as a developmentally prior and presumably less developed or complex mode of
thinking. This type of confusion is rampant
in the psychoanalytic literature, in which there is a deep appreciation for the
incredible complexity and subtlety of unconscious processes, and yet there is
also a tendency to refer to them as developmentally prior to, or more 'primitive'
than, conscious thought. One facet
of this dilemma would seem to be our difficulty in conceptualizing processes
that are multi-dimensional (Johnson-Laird, 1989).
The problem, according to Matte-Blanco (1975), lies in the limits
inherent in dimensionality, so that facets of reality that are incomprehensible
due to the limitations of our frame of reference, may become comprehensible
given a wider frame. For example,
no process can be understood without the frame of time;
omitting that dimension gives lie to the entire concept, making it,
literally, incomprehensible. Space
serves a similar framing function; many
of our concepts have little meaning isolated from the contexts within which they
occur. Matte-Blanco (1988) links
dimensionality to unconscious processes, which operate in a space of a higher number of dimensions than that of our perceptions
and conscious thinking‚ (p. 91, author's italics).
In contrast, many analytic theorists have proposed lines of development
in which growth proceeds from the more simple to the more complex.
This usually means a movement from nonverbal (less conscious) to verbal
forms of understanding and communication. However,
while the nonverbal does precede the verbal, there appears to be a bifurcation
in development that takes place, whereby the nonverbal (or more primary process)
becomes distinguished from, yet continues to develop alongside, the verbal
(characterized by greater secondary elaboration). These two interactive modes of understanding have been
characterized by Matte-Blanco (1975, 1988) as the symmetrical versus
asymmetrical domains of experience. Both
facilitate our efforts to make sense of the world, from the more primary
knowings, which tend to be understood through similarities (symmetry), to the
more elaborated understandings of the verbal, rational mind.
Nonverbal awareness tends to be characterized by a greater degree of
symmetry, whereas the verbal domain tends to be characterized by greater
distinctions between like things, as a system of categories is developed whereby
the world may be more explicitly ordered. Analytic understanding is
informed significantly by the nonverbal domains of experience, termed variously '
empathy'‚ 'countertransference', or, less favourably, 'intuition'. However,
the prize of psychoanalysis has tended to be the interpretation, whereby our
understandings are depicted in verbal form, delimited by whatever theoretical
structures inform our categorizations of experience.
Although we have an appreciation of our capacity to put forward our
internal understandings in the form of primary process material, such as that
found in dreams, we tend to be suspicious of these depictions, preferring
translations in verbal form over enactments.
And yet, theorists and clinicians also point appreciatively to the
nonverbal level of interactive understanding and working through that occurs
within the analytic process, beyond any necessary capacity to translate those
interactions (cf. Winnicott, 1971). In holding verbal understandings
as the goal, we seem to reassure ourselves as to the primacy of intellect over
affective understanding; the
triumph of reason over affect. In
contrast, Ogden (1994a) depicts his conception of 'interpretive action', which
he describes as 'the analyst's communication of his or her understanding of an
aspect of the transference-countertransference to the analysand by means of
activity other than verbal symbolization' (p. 220).
However, he still invokes the reassurance of reason:
'An important aspect of
interpretive action is the analyst's consistent, silent, verbal formulation of
the evolving interpretation. In the
absence of such efforts, the idea of interpretive action can degenerate into the
analyst's rationalization for impulsive, nonreflective acting out' (Ogden,
1994a, p. 233) - as though the verbal domain is less susceptible to
rationalization than the nonverbal. As observational studies have
come to the fore within the psychoanalytic literature, there has been a greater
appreciation of the nonverbal realm of experience. This is often termed 'pre-verbal', which would seem to be the
source of many confusions as to the primacy of affect over cognition and how we
are to value the nonverbal domains of experience that are an ongoing source of
information and understanding. There
has been a tendency to attribute adult cognitive processes to the child's mind,
as, for example, in the work of Klein (cf. 1930, 1946).
However, whether or not she is accurately describing the experience of
the infant, Klein's depictions of the nonverbal realm of experience have opened
up important vistas within analytic theory and treatment.
The infant of concern within the analytic hour is the infant as
experienced by the analysand; no
other infant exists. Grotstein
(1999) states it thus: 'the
Kleinian infant is not only the retrospectively contemplated infant of actual
historical infancy. It is also the
"once and forever infant," the, "virtual infant," the
continuing analytic infantile subjective, "third"' (p. 195).
This infant was formed within an intersubjective world that persists
only in those residuals that exist within the mind of the analysand and 'analytic
third' (Ogden, 1994b). The latter
becomes important as a way of introducing sufficient discrepancies within the
rigidified infant self to be able to reflect upon the possibilities inherent in
knowing/being that self. The
infant/self is one entrée into the world of sensory experience, an avenue
towards rediscovering aspects of the nonverbal self that have eluded conscious
awareness. In this way, Klein‚s work
affirms the importance of attending to that which feels primitive within us, and
appears to be stored and accessed in very different ways than verbal
understanding and awareness. These
domains are addressed within the literature as differences between procedural
and explicit memory systems that, like primary and secondary process, each have
distinctive characteristics and yet interact in important ways.
In thinking about conflicts and confusions that arise within and between
observational and theoretical views of the origins of symbolic processes, it is
important to have some understanding of the interactive reciprocal relations
through which both verbal and nonverbal symbolic processes develop. Nonverbal Underpinnings of Symbolization Our earliest experiences are
sensory, beginning with the primary rhythms between foetus and mother.
We come to know self and other through the early dyadic interchanges that
become prototypical experiences that inform all later interactions (Beebe &
Lachmann, 1998; Beebe, Lachmann, & Jaffe, 1997).
Even when these interactions occur before the advent of symbolization per
se and are outside of explicit awareness, aspects of experience become encoded
in ways that later serve as signs or symbols, becoming an important part of the
unrepressed unconscious or 'implicit memory' (Schacter, 1992).
These implicit, nonverbal ways of knowing become the basis for
understandings that have been termed variously 'procedural knowledge (Clyman,
1991; Fonagy, 1998) or 'implicit relational knowing' (Stern et. al. 1998).
Although less accessible to conscious, verbal, rational thought, they
inform our understandings of self, other, and world, through our recognition of
patterns (Charles, 1999; Stern, 1994). The capacity to take in sensory
information at a very basic level and to form impressions through the patterning
of this data, is the foundation upon which is built all later learning.
Memories of very early experiences, occurring before the acquisition of
language, become stored within the body and are expressed as sensations rather
than in more highly elaborated symbolic form (Innes-Smith, 1987).
In this way, early experiences of sensory attunements and misattunements
are remembered in ways that may be quite profound and pervasive, and yet not
easily accessible to conscious awareness. Affective
memory appears to exist prior to, and to some extent separate from, cognitive
memory, thereby exerting an influence on secondary processes whether or not the
affect becomes conscious (Bucci, 1997a; Krystal, 1988). Implicit memories may be carried
via sensorimotor patternings of affect, arousal, motivation, and well-being (Bretherton,
1990) and may be understood through their patterning, whether or not we can
consciously represent or name these patterns.
For example, early experiences of resonance with a responsive other - of
feeling held‚ (Winnicott, 1971) or contained‚ (Bion, 1962, 1963) -
facilitate the development of the infant's own capacities for self-soothing and
self-containment (Schore, 1994). This
type of affective attunement forms the basis of amodal experiences (Stern,
1985), in which information is translated from one sensory modality into another
while preserving the underlying form or pattern.
As categorical distinctions become elaborated, they facilitate the
process of making finer discriminations in, and thereby making sense of, self
and environment. In our earliest experience, there
is both self and other. The
capacity to know‚ one's experience is grounded in early interactions,
constrained by the quality of those early attachment relationships (Fonagy &
Target,1999). Growth entails
movement from greater symmetrization or psychic equivalence‚ (Fonagy &
Target,1998) towards greater differentiation.
As the distinction between self and other becomes clearer, the capacity
for perspective develops, and with it the capacity for empathic awareness of the
other. The ability to distinguish
between symbol and object - to note asymmetry among like things - facilitates
the continuing dialectic through which internal and external realities can be
integrated, elaborated, and communicated (cf. Segal, 1957). This process may mirror the
development of thinking, as well, in movements from primary experience towards
greater conceptualization. The 'sensory
floor' (Grotstein,1987) of experience has been described by Ogden (1989) as an 'autistic
contiguous position'‚ from which there is a direct sensory experience of basic
forms or patterns that have fundamental 'meanings' (in the loosest sense of the
word) in terms of basic bodily states or stasis.
Although Ogden (1989) has depicted this as a separate position (in
addition to those delineated previously by Klein), it may be more usefully
conceptualized as one facet of the paranoid-schizoid position, moving along a
continuum towards a greater dimensionality, as experience builds upon
experience. According to Klein
(1957) and her followers, in the paranoid-schizoid position the basic form or
sensation becomes more richly elaborated, yet remains essentially unlinked -
fragmented. It is then in the
depressive position wherein the elaboration takes on the dimensionality of
perspective - what we most often term 'meaning', in the sense of 'understanding'
or 'knowing-about'. This sequence
would seem to move from an emphasis on primary to secondary process, from what
Matte-Blanco (1975, 1988) describes as the symmetrical mode of being into the
realm of disjunctions wherein elaborated meanings can be verbalized and
exchanged. At the one extreme, we have the
experience as such; Matte-Blanco
(1975) suggests that 'the sensation is, in
itself, a primary experience, which is irreducible to description, though we
constantly try to describe it. The
same is true of symmetrical being: . . . it does not happen, but just is'
(p. 101, author's italics). At the
other extreme, we have the abstraction. These
two modes of understanding form a complex dialectic within which sensory
experience becomes transformed into verbal thought, and verbal thought becomes
realized via primary experience, in their ongoing interplay as alternately
container and contained (Bion, 1963). The capacity to form abstractions enables
the individual to move beyond that which is literally 'known' in a derivative
sense, to that which might be 'known' in the sense of understanding, and
facilitates the communication of that knowledge at a verbal level.
However, at times it is the capacity to enact what has eluded verbal
understanding that facilitates communication and thereby brings us closer to
that very understanding (Kumin, 1996). Therein lies the paradox.
Psychoanalysis, in spite of the deep appreciation for the nonverbal
underpinnings of experience, has traditionally been framed in terms of verbal
understandings. And yet, it is our
primary knowings that help to organize and give meaning to our experiences.
Bion (1965) notes that transformations do not solely occur in verbal
form, moreover verbal knowing can actually impede the person's ability to be in
a different place with themselves. Knowing-about
can become an 'autistic object' (Tustin, 1980), of sorts, a second skin or empty
shell that protects one from learning through experience, and thereby precludes
any real understanding (Charles, in press). Some
Confusions Between Linear and Interactive Models Sense experience is fundamental
to our understandings of self and world. However,
a linear view trivializes its profound and complex ongoing effects (cf. Stern,
1994). For example, Klein's
theories have been very useful in opening a productive discussion of early
preverbal experiences, and yet they are tainted by problematic developmental and
psychopathological assumptions that have persisted in the works of those who
have followed, in the focus on pathological rather than normative processes (cf.
Grotstein, 1996). In spite of her
later comments noting the recursive nature of the connections between the
paranoid-schizoid and the depressive positions, by which the verbal informs the
nonverbal and vice-versa (cf. Klein, 1963), Klein's (1957) depiction of the
paranoid-schizoid position as susceptible to working through in infancy or early
childhood, suggests the type of linear model that is at odds with our
functioning as living beings (Ingold, 1990; Kulka, 1997). Bion's (1965) depiction of the
paranoid-schizoid and depressive modes as essentially interrelated, whereby
fragmentation of the known thought makes way for further elaboration, is more
consistent with infant observational studies.
These support a dynamic model of two different and yet interrelated ways
of knowing, termed variously the nonverbal and verbal, the implicit and
explicit, the symmetrical and asymmetrical.
Ogden (1989) affirms this type of model by looking at the ongoing
interplay between domains of experience; however,
his views still appear to be value-laden in terms of his depiction of 'primitive'‚
rather than what might be more usefully conceptualized as 'primary', modes of
experience. Although
verbal/rational ways of knowing become more salient over time, they do not take
the place of, nor are they necessarily more complex than, more implicit ways of
knowing. It may be our greater comfort in
western culture with verbal ways of knowing that encourages us to be suspicious
of the less defined, for us, language of the senses, in spite of articulate
voices to the contrary (cf. Bion, 1963; Marks & de Courtivron, 1981;
Winnicott, 1963). Attempts to bring
this deficit to the fore may also be found in explications of 'women's ways of
knowing' (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986), and in the
elaboration of what Wrye and Wells (1994) have termed the 'maternal erotic
transference/countertransference', depicting ways of knowing within the analytic
space that emerge experientially, in the language of primary sensation.
Belenky and her colleagues (1986) distinguish between understanding,
predicated upon personal acquaintance with the object, which 'involves intimacy
and equality between self and other', versus knowledge, which 'implies separation from the subject and mastery
over it' (p. 101). These are two
very different ways of approaching a subject (or object), predicated upon very
different assumptions and leading to different kinds of understandings.
The former would appear to be built upon the more nonverbal ways of
knowing, whereas the latter tends to be built upon the more verbal track of 'received
knowledge'. Ironically, as we attempt to
master our emotions, there is a tendency to dis-own and disavow our own
experience, leaving us at the mercy of verification from external sources.
In this way, ideas about 'growing up' are often synonymous with growing
away from self. Received knowledge
comes to preclude understanding, in
the sense that Bion (1977) uses the term. In
our zeal to illuminate the relevant dimensions of complex processes, attempts to
simplify often serve to obscure, as we collapse dimensions and dichotomize
experience. In this way, succession
is insufficiently distinguished from progression, as is primitive experience
from pathology. This results in
unresolved contradictions, as, for example, in Klein's depiction of the
paranoid-schizoid stance, which is often depicted as a defensive function, in
terms of unlinking (Bion, 1967), although it is also depicted as a progressive
stage towards the capacity for reflective thought, the foundation of our more
implicit ways of knowing. Through Klein's (1946) depiction
of the paranoid-schizoid position in terms of processes of fragmentation,
pathology and development become confused.
There is a presumption of an incapacity for reflective thought,
contiguous with an incapacity to link experiences in meaningful and symbolic
ways. Contrary to many other
aspects of her conceptualizations, this trivializes the multiple and complex
meanings contained within the infinitely rich realm of the unconscious.
Perhaps part of the problem lies in Klein's focus on anxiety rather than
attachment, which leads her to highlight the fragmentation of the
paranoid-schizoid position versus the ostensibly more 'adaptive' mourning for
lost omnipotence characterizing the depressive position. Ogden's (1989) depiction of a
third, 'autistic-contiguous' position, although very useful in terms of
articulating an important aspect of experience, also amplifies certain dilemmas
inherent in Klein's original conception of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive
positions as a developmental progression, as well as those regarding the
relative value of each of these modes of experience. In keeping with the pathological frame often associated with
the positions described by Klein, Ogden defines the autistic-contiguous position
as 'a psychological organization in which sensory modes of generating experience
are organized into defensive processes in the face of perceived danger' (1989,
footnote, p. 31). Although this is
depicted as a sensory dominated mode of experience, it is more narrowly defined
in terms of surfaces: 'psychic
organization is derived in large part from sensory contiguity, that is,
connections are established through the experience of sensory surfaces "
touching" one another' (Ogden, 1989, footnote, p. 31).
Ogden describes experience in this mode in terms of external form,
depicted, somewhat counter-intuitively, as a container with no contained.
In this way, the autistic-contiguous position does not partake of the
sensory realm, but rather merely bounds the edges of it. Following Bion, Ogden (1989) also
views these three positions in dialectical relationship to one another, so that
each informs and intertwines with the other.
He notes the essential interplay between the containing function of the
depressive mode, in which possibilities are closed down, versus the
destabilization of assumed equations that characterizes the paranoid-schizoid
mode, in which new possibilities are opened up.
Klein (1957) suggests that in normal development, paranoid and schizoid
trends are overcome and integrated during the period she calls the depressive
position. However‚ complete and
permanent integration is in my view never possible. For under strain from external or internal sources, even well
integrated people may be driven to stronger splitting processes‚ (Klein, 1957,
p. 233). In this statement, we see
Klein struggling to accommodate to the existential reality of the ongoing
interplay between these two modes of experience, and yet caught by her own
linear sense of the greater adaptiveness of one mode over the other. In Ogden's (1989) model, there is
a greater appreciation of the inherent and essential value of each position:
'the paranoid-schizoid mode is the principle source of the immediacy of
concretely symbolized experience' (p. 45), whereas the autistic-contiguous mode
'provides a good measure of the sensory contiguity and integrity of experience'
(p. 45), and the depressive mode is the 'principle medium through which
historical subjectivity and the richness of symbolically mediated human
experience is generated' (p. 45). However,
in his attempt to depict this third position in terms of boundedness, Ogden
(1989) seems to talk about the earliest time of life as though one had no
insides; it is as though the
anxiety becomes the larger reality. His
notion of 'normal autism', which he describes in terms of experiencing solely
the surface of one's self, contrasts strikingly with how one might imagine the
reality of the infant, whose world must inevitably begin with a mass of
sensation, both internal and external. In
contrast, the experience of self as surface would seem to be a defence against
both one's own interiority and the exteriority of the impinging outer world.
One problem may arise from the depiction of the autistic-contiguous and
paranoid-schizoid positions as defensive positions against knowing, in contrast to the depiction of the depressive
position as a move towards knowing,
again valorizing this position. Alternatively,
the depressive position might be depicted as a move towards tolerating knowing
by moving away from the body experience into the verbal realm. If these positions, as defined,
are each seen as various modes of not-knowing, of moving away from what
Winnicott (1960) described as 'true-self', then what are the corresponding modes
of being that they represent a movement away from?
The verbal realm of the depressive position may represent the resolution
of nonverbal anxieties, doing away with the intolerability of loss by defining
it in such a way that it becomes tolerable.
Perhaps the autistic-contiguous mode, in a positive sense, moves towards
soothing (rhythmicity), affirming existence;
the paranoid-schizoid mode moves towards affirming experience; and the
depressive mode moves towards affirming links, as, in the absence of concrete
links, we move towards the creation of imaginal links.
The attendant anxiety, for all three, is associated with the potential
de-creation of that which is being affirmed in terms of primary links with
self-experience and with other. Bion (1962) illustrates the
importance of distinguishing between moving towards awareness (knowing) and
moving away from it. He describes
mentation in terms of an awareness of patternings, which may or may not be
verbal in nature. The sense
impression, as thing-in-itself, undigested or elaborated, would seem to
approximate the early infant‚s sensory experience, thereby subsumed under what
Ogden refers to as the autistic-contiguous position, which become elaborated in
the paranoid-schizoid position. Ogden's
depiction of a third position seems to break down most particularly when
considering the etiology of thought. If
the autistic-contiguous mode stands at one end of a continuum of sensory
experience, of which the term paranoid-schizoid describes the greater portion,
how useful is the additional term? Although
it speaks to important disturbances in self-function, its deficiency is in line
with its definition; it has no
substance, but rather would seem to describe the surface, or boundary, of the
paranoid-schizoid position. Even
more pointedly than the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, it suffers
the same fate; when the terms come
to stand for the developmental levels that they purport to portray, they lose
their potency precisely because they are not discontinuous levels in a linear
progression. The conceptual difficulty would
seem to stem, at least in part, from confusions between succession versus
progression, and associated presumptions of pathology.
In tracing the etiology of thought, there is first the sense experience,
which becomes linked with other experiences;
it becomes patterned. However,
the complexity of these processes defies linear models, particularly as factors
arise that oppose these linkings, described by Bion (1965) in terms of 'beta-screen'
and other defensive functions that annihilate meaning or feeling.
This opposition, according to Bion (1962), is resolved to the extent that
the individual is able to tolerate frustration sufficiently to be able to
reflect on his or her experience. This
capacity for reflection has been referred to by Klein in terms of the depressive
position, often equated with the capacity for verbal thought.
However, the capacity for abstraction (in terms of understanding
patterned phenomena) in the nonverbal realm is insufficiently appreciated or
understood, as is the problem of translation from one domain into the other. There are some domains in which
this translating function happens more easily, as, for instance, in the realm of
dreams, in which we make known to our verbal mind that which has eluded it (or,
perhaps more to the point, it has managed to elude).
Developmental and affect theories show how too much or too little
frustration precludes the development of adaptive mechanisms whereby
affect-regulation becomes an implicit function, rather than an explicit goal or
a prescribed and proscribed way of living.
These constraints also determine the extent of whatever cannot be thought
about without threatening the resources at hand, thereby encouraging avoidance
rather than attempts towards modification.
Without sufficient sense of capacity, thought itself becomes dangerous,
as does play, which moves so easily into the realm of the unexpected.
As routine becomes safety, the capacity for growth is severely impeded. In contrast to depictions of the
paranoid-schizoid position as fundamentally pathological, Grotstein (1996) notes
that there are adaptive functions, as well. For example, he equates the schizoid mechanisms associated
with this position with Freud's (1900) conception of the dream work.
In addition, Klein's depiction of the paranoid-schizoid position
highlights what current infant researchers are finding to be a crucial marker of
a secure sense of self: what Main
(1995) describes as the ability to reflect coherently on one's experiences, and
Fonagy and his colleagues (1995) describe as 'reflective self-functioning'.
Pre-reflective nonverbal experiences 'are registered at the unspoken
levels of how it feels to be oneself in one's body . . . and how it feels to be
oneself with someone else' (Seligman, 1999, pp. 136-137).
This would seem to be the essential, foundational aspect of experience
that underlies any real understanding of self or other (Bion, 1962; Ogden,
1989). For Winnicott (1960, 1963),
this is the basis of 'true self' experience, which derives directly from the
world-as-experienced, with origins in the earliest sensations experienced in the
presence of the mother, coming 'from the aliveness of the body tissues and the
workings of the body functions . . . . It is closely linked with the idea of the
Primary Process, and is, at the beginning, essentially not reactive to external
stimuli, but primary' (1960, p. 148). Verbal Versus Nonverbal Ways of Knowing Our conceptualizations often
impede our capacity to understand complex phenomena. The fact that emotional knowing appears to develop from the
nonverbal towards the verbal over time (Bucci, 1997b; Emde, 1999), does not mean
that one form gives way to the other, or that one is more functional than the
other, as the Kleinian positions might suggest. Klein's conceptualizations enrich our understanding by
pointing towards the emergent chaos that is a function of development in complex
systems (Nicolis & Prigogine, 1981; Kincanon & Powel, 1995).
However, fragmentation can occur as easily in the verbal as in the more
primary realms. In some ways,
disconnection, in the sense of differentiation, is more largely a function of
the secondary than primary processes. For
example, Bion (1967) points to the defensive functions of unlinking bits of
experience that cannot be linked to one another without undue anxiety.
In this way, the known in one sphere (the nonverbal) becomes repudiated
by that which is known in another sphere (the verbal).
In contrast, both growth and understanding rely upon recursive
experiences, in which we move back and forth between verbal and nonverbal
knowings, in ongoing attempts towards greater synthesis, which Bion (1965) terms
'transformations in O' (towards 'ultimate reality').
The interplay between the
nonverbal and the verbal ways of knowing may be more usefully conceptualized as
a bifurcation in development, as the verbal capacities develop from, and along
side of, the nonverbal capacities. Often,
when we look at the etiology of thought, or of interrelatedness, the presumption
is that the goal or high point would be rational, verbal means of thought and
communications. So, for example, as
we begin to view thought in accordance with the dimensions laid out by Klein,
moving on a continuum from sensory experience per se, through unlinked fragments
of experience, towards the establishment of links through the categorization and
interrelationships between and among parts that is characteristic of the verbal,
rational mode, we would be condensing two semi-separate lines of knowing into a
false continuum. This would seem to
be the type of error Matte-Blanco (1975, 1988) warns of, as he notes how the
limitations of our perceptual capacities often impede our ability to envision
the dimensionality of experience. As
a result, dimensions are collapsed into a misleading view of certain 'realities',
as, in the current instance, two very different ways of knowing are brought into
opposition with one another, when they might be more usefully viewed as
informing one another within a multi-dimensional field. This type of false dichotomy
creates confusion even as it ostensibly moves towards clarity.
In some ways, it is rather like looking through the eye of the camera;
as the field becomes clearer, the ground gives way, and vice versa.
There appears to be a confusion of dimensions as observations regarding
psychotic processes become confabulated with notions of normative developmental
processes. In order to de-fuse these dimensions, it may be useful to
look at the pre-verbal and the verbal as two interacting systems of knowing,
working, as Matte-Blanco (1975) suggested, according to different sets of rules,
and yet continually in interaction with one another. All understanding is built upon
experiences of sameness and difference. Affective
awareness, in particular, becomes elaborated as 'repeated observations of an
object form functionally equivalent classes and prototypic images' (Bucci,
1997b, p. 195). These form what
Bowlby (1973) and others have described as 'working models' of self and other,
based upon the individual's history of affective interchanges.
Optimally, our sensory and affective awarenesses work in conjunction with
our capacities for abstract, categorical thinking.
However, the literature on infant observation now converges with
theoretical work exploring the development of mentalization processes to
highlight the importance of attending to the more elusive sensory knowings that
both structure and represent our ways of communicating and understanding. Some functions, such as reverie,
transcend issues of verbal versus nonverbal.
However, there are other functions, such as processes of generalization
and abstraction, that tend to distinguish between these two realms.
The concrete is the basis for any real understanding, whereas abstraction
has 'the effect, by removing the concrete and particular, of eliminating aspects
that obscure the relationship of one element to another' (Bion, 1962, p. 52).
However, abstraction may not always be a function of verbal meanings, but
rather pertains to semantic relations that may or may not be verbal in form
(Johnson-Laird, 1989). The
interplay between these two levels of experience is not so different from
physiological processes that go on without our awareness, and yet can be
affected by both conscious and unconscious thoughts.
What analysis offers us is a way to understand and communicate semantic
relations that had been un-known in the verbal domain. A lack of appreciation of the
nonverbal channels leaves our thinking insubstantial and trivialized, cut off
from its roots. Life at either
extreme obviously has its drawbacks, but our culture seems to elevate the verbal
channels to a point where meaning is diminished. Bion (1962) exhibits a rich appreciation of the essential
dialectic between the concrete and abstract, using an explicit model as a means
of representing reality so that constantly conjoined elements can be abstracted,
separated, arranged, and tested against further experience.
He thereby enjoins us to move beyond the realms of forced symmetrization
or disjunction that constrain our ability to think constructively and creatively
about these processes. Conclusion We have much to gain in
integrating understandings based on psychic development with those based on
observational data from infant/caretaker dyads. However, there are also hazards, as we begin to confuse
developmental time with psychic processes that operate both in time and outside
of it. An appreciation of the
intertwining and interweaving of the verbal and nonverbal domains of experience
may help us to value each without pathologizing either.
Otherwise, we create one more inherently irresolvable yin versus yang,
male versus female, mind versus body dilemma, in which the point is lost in the
creation of an artificial opposition between what may be more usefully seen as
separate and yet intertwining modes, wherein the gestalt comes to carry meanings
that are inconceivable from either dichotomized position.
Bion's dialectic model and Matte-Blanco's depiction of the symmetrical
and asymmetrical modes of understanding would each seem to provide an avenue
towards conceptualizing new models that can integrate these dichotomies without
losing the richness of the nonverbal mode or the discriminatory power of the
verbal. Observational studies
remind us that our intrapsychic and interpersonal realities are grounded in the
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Marilyn Charles is a Training and
Supervising Analyst with the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council, and Adjunct
Faculty in Clinical Psychology at Michigan State University.
She is in private practice in East Lansing, Michigan. Marilyn Charles, Ph.D. 325 Wildwood Drive East Lansing, MI
48823-3154. |