Alienation | Alien self | Anxiety | Self representation | Sense of a core self |
Sinking feeling | Suppression as a defense | Symbiotic orbit.
Alien self: term coined by Peter Fonagy, Gyorgy Gergely, Elliot Jurist, and Mary Target (2002) for those self-states which have emerged as a result of inappropriate and inadequate mirroring by childhood caregivers. Lacking well-attuned mirroring, the child internalizes a mismatched mental state as a part of the self. This causes internal disorganization and presses for projection outwards. Fonagy and co-authors refer to such split-off and projected parts as the ‘alien self’.
Akhtar, Salman. Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis.
London, GBR: Karnac Books, 2009. p 10.
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Alienation: a
sense of estrangement from the emotional connections and values of one’s family
and society. To a certain extent, this is expected during adolescence. However,
more marked feelings of this type suggest psychopathology. ‘Alienation’ is also
evident during the early phases of immigration from one country to another. In
distinction of this relatively phenomenological level, the term Alienation: a
sense of estrangement from the emotional connections and values of one’s family
and society. To a certain extent, this is expected during adolescence. However,
more marked feelings of this type suggest psychopathology. ‘Alienation’ is also
evident during the early phases of immigration from one country to another. In
distinction of this relatively phenomenological level, the term
Akhtar, Salman. Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis.
London, GBR: Karnac Books, 2009. p 10.
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Anxiety: refers
to an unpleasant and dysphoric sense that something bad and potentially disastrous
is about to happen. Anticipation of danger mobilizes defensive operations and
binds the tension. What could not be ‘bound’ by such ego manoeuvres is left
over as the consciously experienced ‘anxiety’. This is accompanied by myriad
physiological manifestations including palpitation, sweating, difficulty in
breathing, frequency of urination, etc. While these symptoms can also accompany
fear, ‘anxiety’ and fear differ in their nature and origins. ‘Anxiety’ is a
response to an internal and unconscious danger, and fear is a reaction to a
readily regognizable threat from external reality. Within psychoanalysis,
‘anxiety’ plays a crucial role, since symptoms of psychopathology are viewed as
attempts to avoid this experience. As far as the causation of anxiety is
concerned, Sigmund Freud had two theories. His first theory (Freud, 1895d) held
that anxiety is caused by libido that is not adequately discharged; the concept
of ‘actual neurosis’ (see separate entry) was a corollary to this perspective.
His second theory (Freud, 1926d) viewed anxiety as a response to a threat to
the individual; this threat emanated from a sense that he or she was about to
face a re-creation of the ‘danger situations’ (see separate entry) typical of
childhood. Freud also distinguished between ‘automatic anxiety’ and ‘signal
anxiety’ (see separate entries); the former resulted from being overwhelmed by
danger and the latter by anticipating danger. Anxiety hysteria: Wilhelm
Stekel’s (1908) term for what would today be called phobic neurosis or, simply,
phobia. In ‘anxiety hysteria’, the libido, which is separated from the original
pathogenic idea by repression, is not converted into a somatic symptom, but set
free in the shape of anxiety (Freud, 1909). This anxiety is subsequently bound
to a specific object, creating a morbid fear of it.
Akhtar, Salman. Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis.
London, GBR: Karnac Books, 2009. p 24.
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Self representation:
coined by Heinz Hartmann (1950) and elucidated in detail by Edith Jacobson
(1954, 1964), the term ‘self-representation’ is meant to denote the
‘unconscious, preconscious, and conscious endopsychic representations of the
bodily and the mental self in the system ego’ (Jacobson, 1964, p. 19). By
definition, a ‘self-representation’ is a subjective view of the self which may
or may not correspond with the other’s more objective assessment of the
subject’s self. During early infancy, ‘self-representation’ is fleeting and
ill-synthesized. However, within increasing ego consolidation and
drive-differentiation, ‘self-representations’ become organized as clusters
under libidinal and aggressive drives. Still later, ‘pooled self-representations’
(Spiegel, 1959) yield composition and unified identity; this structure of ‘self
constancy’ (see separate entry) shows minimal fluctuations under drive
pressures (Kernberg, 1967, 1976a; Mahler, Pine, & Bergman, 1975). However,
the coalescence of different self-representations does not mean that they
cannot come apart under states of aggression or that, at a deeper level, some
self-representations continue to exist closer to affect and action potential
than others (Eisnitz, 1980).
Akhtar, Salman. Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis.
London, GBR: Karnac Books, 2009. p 260.
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Sense of a core self:
according to Daniel Stern (1985), this forms the second step in the formation
of the infant’s self; the first being the ‘sense of an emergent self’ (see
separate entry). The ‘sense of a core self’ begins at two to three months of
age and is manifest via a greater sense of ownership and agency of one’s action
and a more active and coherent engagement with the interpersonal surroundings.
Stern challenges the view that, from the second to seventh or ninth month, the
infant is in a state of symbiosis with the mother and only slowly emerges from
that enmeshment (Mahler, Pine, & Bergman, 1975). He proposes that forming a
‘core self’ is the infant’s first order of business, and emergence of such a
self happens earlier. His timetable ‘reverses the sequencing of developmental
tasks: first comes the formation of self and other, and then is the sense of
merger-like experience possible’ (p. 70). Stern goes on to delineate the four
axes around which an organized ‘sense of a core self’ emerges. These include
(1) self agency (a growing sense of authorship of one’s actions and
non-authorship of those of others); (2) selfcoherence (an experience of being
whole and centred); (3) self-affectivity (experiencing patterns of emotions);
and (4) self-history (feeling a sense of continuity in one’s experience, a
sense of the enduring nature of subjectivity). According to Stern, the ‘sense
of core self’ results from the ‘integration of these four basic
self-experiences into a social subjective perspective’ (p. 71). Besides such
consolidation of the self as opposed to other, there are also developments with
others that contribute to the sense of core self. Interactions with others that
evoke a sense of aliveness, excitement, and vitality, both as an object of
their gaze, so to speak, and as a subject with changing feelings which, owing
to their repetition, become increasingly familiar. Such ‘core relatedness’ and
the rapidly developing bridges between the infant’s and mother’s subjective
worlds also enrich the infant’s ‘sense of core self’.
Akhtar, Salman. Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis.
London, GBR: Karnac Books, 2009. p 261.
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Signifier:
Jacques Lacan’s (1977) term for a linguistic element (e.g., a syllable, word,
or phrase) that gives meaning to that which is signified by it. However,
objects, relationships, and acts can also serve as ‘signifiers’. ‘The single
condition which characterizes something as a signifier, for Lacan, is that it
is inscribed in a system in which it takes on value purely by virture of its
difference from the other elements in the system’ (Evans, 1996, p. 187). Since
all psychic systems are contextbound, internally or externally, and therefore
forever shifting, a ‘signifier’ can never have a single or fixed meaning.
Akhtar, Salman. Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis.
London, GBR: Karnac Books, 2009. p 266.
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Sinking feeling:
in a contribution on the ‘sinking feeling’ or the ‘hollow in the pit of the
stomach’, John Hitchcock (1984) suggests that it reflects the acceptance of a
repudiated piece of reality and that ‘this event, while manifested at any
libindinal level of organization, has separation as a common denominator’ (p.
328). Essentially, the ‘sinking feeling’ is a ‘screen sensation’ (see separate
entry) and serves simultaneously as a somatic defence and a somatic recall of
experiences of separation and loss.
Akhtar, Salman. Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis.
London, GBR: Karnac Books, 2009. p 267.
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Suppression as a defense:
the conscious attempt to put something out of one’s mind, called ‘suppression’,
has received relatively little attention in the psychoanalytic literature. An
outstanding exception to this is the remarkable paper by David Werman (1983).
Werman points out the interchangeable use of ‘suppression’ and ‘repression’
(see separate entry) in early psychoanalytic writings (e.g., Freud 1900a, p.
235, 1905c, p. 134) as well as in the English language. He cites Charles
Brenner (1955), who suggests that the two concepts might lie on a continuum and
that there might be intermediate stages between them, and George Vaillant
(1977) who regards ‘suppression’ among the major mature defence mechanisms. All
in all, he concludes that suppression involves the ‘volitional elimination from
consciousness, by any means, of undesirable thoughts, feelings, or bodily
sensations . . . (this) may be the conscious equivalent of certain unconscious
defence mechanisms such as isolation or reaction formation’ (p. 413). As an ego
mechanism, ‘suppression’ might be of help in affect regulation, conflict
avoidance, and the unfolding of developmental and adaptive processes (Hsu,
1949).
Akhtar, Salman. Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis.
London, GBR: Karnac Books, 2009. p 278.
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Symbiotic orbit:
for an infant and and a growing child, mother is the centre of the universe.
Tied to her by an ‘invisible bond’
(Mahler, Pine, & Bergman, 1975, p. 25) or a ‘psychic tether’ (Akhtar, 1992a), he or she can only venture a
certain distance away. The circumference of this imaginary circle of the
child’s sojourn constitutes the ‘symbiotic orbit’. According to Margaret
Mahler, Fred Pine, and Anni Bergman (1975), this orbit includes not only the
mother but ‘all parts and attributes of mother— her voice, her gestures, her
clothes, and the space in which she comes and goes— which form the magic circle
of the symbiotic mother– infant world’ (p. 203).
Akhtar, Salman. Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis.
London, GBR: Karnac Books, 2009. p 279.
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