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In this paper the author considers Descartes' place in current thinking about the mind-body dilemma. The premise here is that in the history of ideas, the questions posed can be as significant as the answers acquired. Descartes' paramount question was 'How do we determine certainty?' and his pursuit of an answer led to cogito ergo sum. His discovery simultaneously raised the question whether mind is separate from or unified with the body. Some who currently hold that brain and subjectivity are unified contend that the philosopher 'split' mind from body and refer to 'Descartes' error'. This paper puts forward that Descartes' detractors fail to recognise Descartes' contribution to Western thought, which was to introduce the Enlightenment and to give a place to human subjectivity. Added to this, evidence from Descartes' correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia supports the conclusion that Descartes did in fact believe in the unity of mind and body although he could not reconcile this rationally with the certainty from personal experience that they were separate substances. In this Descartes was engaged in just the same dilemma as that of current thinkers and researchers, a conflict which still is yet to be resolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short paper was presented to a conference in honour of the 60th year of the JAP and was one of others that acknowledged the contribution of Michael Fordham. The subtitle refers to the paper's overview of Fordham's published oeuvre and the particular place of the Journal of Analytical Psychology, for which he was the founding editor . Fordham's contribution to a Jungian-based model of development is discussed, with reference to his papers in the British Journal of Medical Psychology. The paper notes miscellaneous pieces from Fordham's commentaries, obituaries, papers and reviews which capture not only the development of Fordham as a thinker but also his character. There is discussion of his reviews of Melanie Klein's Envy and Gratitude and manuscripts by Erich Neumann. A reminiscence of Fordham as supervisor is recounted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses clinical papers within the issue that focus on how analytical psychologists can work with patients who have entrenched relational problems.

Over three decades ago, John Bowlby argued for psychoanalysis to seek beyond its own parameters if it was to maintain its claim to be a science. Since then there has been a wealth of relevant research from various fields. While this has been instrumental in the development of my own work, this paper concerns learning from the patient. The paper begins with a premise: interpretative analytic work requires three-dimensionality (self, other and object). Although interpretative work may be ingrained in our professional identity, this triangulation may or may not exist in our patients in any stable way. The paper continues with a brief developmental account of how early archetypally-shaped shifts in the infant's field of interest establish the experiential components of three-dimensionality. From there, observational and clinical material with a toddler and a young boy describe how early relational deficits hindered their capacities for three-dimensionality. Yet both were able to engage with the therapist and to become active in the creation of three-dimensionality within their own minds. Implied in this work are considerations for working with patients for whom interpretations do not work. Michael Fordham's comments on 'working out of the self' are linked with the art of what we do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the publication in this journal of two of Fordham's unpublished papers selected by James Astor (2010, 55, 5), the editors have asked me to select a further two. I have chosen two clinical pieces, one clinical notes and the other notes that refine his previous thinking, which Fordham wrote at the end of his life. Both are examples of the way Fordham continued throughout his analytic work to turn to patients as his primary source of learning. Fordham presented the first piece, 'A case study', to Parkside Clinic in 1988. Its subject is his last child patient, a nine-year-old boy with behaviour problems that destroyed the analytic frame. The second is clearly for an SAP (Society of Analytical Psychology) audience and written probably around 1992-93. It is titled 'Some comments on transference and countertransference' and contains material from the patient who has become known through papers in this journal as 'K'. The two pieces are presented together within a commentary rather than separately with footnotes, in order to provide some context for Fordham's thinking in his late years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's comments on the paper "Transcendent Function or Group Dysfunction?," by Virginia Humphrey and Beth Barmack. She says that it focuses on the ending of psychoanalytic infant observation and its impact on the members of observer group. She also discusses the authors' mistaken interpretation of group dysfunction as transcendent function. She says that attention is given to an observer's counter transference, a technical concept which is loosely defined in the paper.

The article presents the author's comments on the paper "Transcendent Function or Group Dysfunction?," by Virginia Humphrey and Beth Barmack. She says that it focuses on the ending of psychoanalytic infant observation and its impact on the members of observer group. She also discusses the authors' mistaken interpretation of group dysfunction as transcendent function. She says that attention is given to an observer's counter transference, a technical concept which is loosely defined in the paper.

The author of the article offers an opinion and a response regarding understandings of the self in relation to an ongoing debate with her colleague Warren Colman. The article discusses the views of Michael Fordham, Jungian psychology, development of the child, and emergence. Other subjects mentioned include archetypes, wholeness, and phenomenology.

This paper concerns the self as Fordham came to conceive it after a conceptual analysis of Jung's use of the term. Fordham identified a contradiction in Jung's usage, and resolved it by reserving ‘self’ for a definition of the psychosomatic entirety of the individual, and using a separate term for referring to expressions of the self in human experience (e.g. symbols). Fordham tentatively suggested that the latter be termed the ‘central archetype’, although this was neither developed nor dropped. I explore the value of this term from a developmental perspective and, more specifically in terms of the deintegration of psyche out of an early psychosomatic unity. This draws upon infant research and an observation of a 14-month old boy. Finally, further developments are briefly described and illustrated, whereby pre-symbolic expressions of the central archetype become symbolic and come to reflect what was for Jung, the ‘ultimate’, ‘Formation, Transformation, Eternal Mind's eternal recreation’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about Fordham's contribution to Jung's studies on the self. It opens with the epistemological dilemmas inherent in the subject, before moving on to an account of Fordham's research into the incompatible ways Jung used the term ‘self’. There is a description of Fordham's model, which covers his concepts of the primary self, deintegration, reintegration, self objects, self representations, and individuation in infancy. There is a section which discusses areas in which Fordham apparently diverged from Jung, including how these were reconciled by Fordham's developmental approach. These areas include the definition of the self as totality or archetype, the mind-body relationship, the ‘ultimate’, the origins of the archetypes, and the primary self, the self and the sense of self. It concludes with an extension to Fordham's outline of a resolution to Jung's incompatible definitions. This draws upon the concept of the central archetype of order and how its unfolding is evidenced towards the end of the first year of infancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I try to show that inherent in healthy development are emotional experiences that are the stuff of trauma. Failure to reintegrate these experiences means that they can serve as a resonating board for difficulties in later life, adding to their traumatic impact. Focusing on global changes that occur at the end of the first year, I exemplify these developments with an infant observation and show how a six-year-old boy's failure to integrate them contributed to his experiencing a normal life event as a trauma. I then offer clinical material from the analysis of a man to demonstrate how later life events resonated with early experience associated with this period. All are linked to a complex pattern of object relations I have come across clinically, whereby feelings of grief associated with an idealized object are split off from feelings of grievance against an object experienced as persecutory because of its perceived superior status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Jungian concept of identity and distinguishes it from projective identification and participation mystique, which also refer to nondifferentiation between self and object but involve projective mechanisms. Clinical work by Fordham and a psychoanalytic infant observation are used to illustrate early perceptual operations defined by experimental researches. These operations are understood to be expressions of the primary self which manifest themselves before the structuring necessary for normal projective identification. This paper attempts to describe an intersubjective experience between mother and baby that allows for their separate ways of relating, but does not depend on projective mechanisms that can exist only after there has been adequate development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates into the developmental origin of language. Elucidation of infant observation; Behavioral pattern of both infant and mother; Language center of the brain.

In this paper, I have tried to re-examine my understanding of early psychic processes and contents. This has involved comparing and contrasting the ideas of Jung, Klein, Isaacs, and Fordham, with an emphasis on the contributions of Fordham. Fordham's postulate of a primary self that deintegrates and reintegrates is a model of the mind that combines structure and dynamics, and which, moreover, helps to describe what is observed in infant observations and infant research. Infant observation has been used to illustrate these concepts, and clinical material used to show how the same concepts can be used to describe impairments to psychic development. To pursue this study I have had to construct for myself models that describe and explain. I am aware that they are just as inaccurate as they might be accurate, because they imply that there is an answer to the questions I am asking, and that there is a way of describing and explaining what 'the answer' is. 'Nature is always too strong for principle', wrote Hume (Hume 1751, p. 121), and this is particularly true of the ultimately unknowable self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary self postulated by Fordham draws upon both psychic and bodily structures to unfold needs and potentials in the external world. In this paper I have presented some thoughts on the role of the ear and of hearing in bringing the neonate into relationship with its mother and broader environment in early deintegrative processes. The ear serves as an important organ not only in receiving sound, but also in orientating the neonate in relation to the world and to its mother's body, and perceiving and sustaining a sense of self. When in infancy the sense of hearing is lost, the spontaneous activities of the self appear to operate in a compensatory way, enhancing the operations of viable organs of perception. This speculation was drawn from a series of observations of a deaf baby girl. The most significant negative result of deafness is the way it affects body image. Deaf children feel not only different about not being able to hear and speak like others, but, far more profoundly, also excluded from the intercourse between others, living on an everyday basis with the primal scene predominant in the mind. The nature of this experience, as I have tried to show, was illustrated by material from work with a profoundly deaf girl. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pays tribute to the late Dorothy Davidson, founder of the Child Analytic Training within the Society of Analytical Psychology.

Presents an abstract of the article "The Therapeutic Utilization of Countertransference," by W. Steinberg published in the 1989 issue of the journal "Quadrant."