Madeleine Baranger

Bio: Madeleine Baranger is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Psychoanalytic theory & Unconscious mind. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 9 publications receiving 593 citations.

The analytic situation as a dynamic field

Abstract: This paper discusses the consequences of the importance that recent 3 papers assign to the countertransference. When the latter acquires a theoretical and technical value equal to that of the trans...

The infantile psychic trauma from us to Freud: pure trauma, retroactivity and reconstruction

Abstract: In the works of Freud, the concept of childhood psychic trauma evolves in the direction of increasing complexity. The authors maintain that this expansion corresponds to a new conception of retroactive temporality (Nachtraglich), which is precisely the one we use in the analytic process of reconstruction and historicization from the present toward the past. We are thus led to differentiate the extreme form of the unassimilable 'pure' Trauma, nearly pure death drive, from the retroactively historicized forms which are reintegrated into the continuity of a vital flow of time that we 'invent' in analytic work.

The mind of the analyst: from listening to interpretation

Abstract: The analyst demands two somewhat contradictory attitudes of himself: on the one hand, he listens and interprets on the basis of his theoretical knowledge, experiences and scheme of reference and, on the other, he must open himself to the new, the unforeseen and the surprising. His work, from listening to interpretation, is situated within a context that includes the history of the treatment as well as the history of the analysand, which is in the process of reconstruction. This context determines the moment of the interpretation (which may vary), i.e. the point ot urgency of a given session. This point denotes the moment when something emerges from the unconscious of the analysand and the analyst believes that it must be interpreted. It is something that occurs within the intersubjective field, which embraces both participants and has its own, partly unconscious, dynamics. This configuration or unconscious fantasy of the field constitutes the common source from which both the discourse of one partner and the other's interpretation spring. The moments of blockage in the dynamics of the field, the obstacles in the analytic process, invite every analyst to take a 'second look' at the field, focusing on the unconscious intersubjective relationship which determines it. Focused either on the analysand or on the field, the interpretation can perform its two dialectically complementary functions: it may irrupt into the disguises of the patient's unconscious, or it may allow him to synthesise and reconstruct his history and identity.

Process and non-process in analytic work

Abstract: The 'talking cure', named by Anna O. and discovered by Freud, has been widely expanded and diversified throughout our century. Our objective in this paper is to underline several points which seem to define the analytic process. We believe that forthcoming progress in psychoanalysis must arise from the study of clinical experience at its frontiers, at its topmost limits, in its failures. For this reason, we have concentrated our search on the analytic non-process, in the very places where the process stumbles or halts. This has led us to propose the introduction of several terms: 'field', 'bastion', 'second look'. When the process stumbles or halts, the analyst must question himself about the obstacle. The obstacle involves the analysand's transference and the analyst's countertransference, and poses rather confusing problems. The arrest of the process introduces us fully into the nature of its movement, its inherent temporality. If the process is to continue, then by what main-spring can we accomplish it? We describe this particular dialectic of processes and non-process as a task of overcoming the obstacles which describe its success or failure.

Processus et non-processus dans le travail analytique.

Abstract: La «talking cure», ainsi nommee par Anna 0. et decouverte par Freud,s'est largement repandue et diversifiee au cours de ce siecle. Nous avons pour objectif dans cet article de mettre en evidence plusieurs points qui nous semblent definir le processus analytique. Nous pensons que les futurs progres en psychanalyse proviendront de l'etude clinique des frontieres, des limites et des echecs de la psychanalyse. C'est la raison pour laquelle nous avons centre nos recherches sur le non-processus analytique, c'est-a-dire sur ses butees. Ceci nous a amenes a introduire les termes suivants : « champ », « bastion », « second regard ». Lorsque le processus achoppe, l'analyste doit s'interroger sur les obstacles qui sont en cause. Ces obstacles qui ont trait au transfert de l'analysant et au contre-transfert de l'analyste soulevent des problemes complexes. L'arret du processus nous confronte directement a la nature du mouvement et de la temporalite qui lui sont inherents. Si le processus doit se poursuivre, quels sont les moyens a mettre en œuvre ? Nous definissons cette dialectique propre aux processus et aux non-processus comme un travail visant a surmonter les obstacles qui determineront sa reussite comme son echec.

The analytic situation as a dynamic field

Abstract: This paper discusses the consequences of the importance that recent 3 papers assign to the countertransference. When the latter acquires a theoretical and technical value equal to that of the trans...

The Analytic Third: Implications for Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique

Abstract: The author views the analytic enterprise as centrally involving an effort on the part of the analyst to track the dialectical movement of individual subjectivity (of analyst and analysand) and intersubjectivity (the jointly created unconscious life of the analytic pair--the analytic third). In Part I of this paper, the author discusses clinical material in which he relies heavily on his reverie experiences to recognize and verbally symbolize what is occurring in the analytic relationship at an unconscious level. In Part II, the author conceives of projective identification as a form of the analytic third in which the individual subjectivities of analyst and analysand are subjugated to a co-created third subject of analysis. Successful analytic work involves a superseding of the subjugating third by means of mutual recognition of analyst and analysand as separate subjects and a reap-propriation of their (transformed) individual subjectivities.

On the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis.

Abstract: The author discusses therapeutic action as addressed in contributions by Klein, the post-Kleinians, and Willy and Madeleine Baranger. He highlights the roles played by psychoanalytic listening and psychoanalytic neutrality in therapeutic action, and presents a detailed clinical vignette to illustrate his points.

The psychoanalytic process and its components.

Abstract: Certain problems in defining the psychoanalytic process emerged during the five years in which a COPE study group was attempting to clarify the concept. There was agreement about the bed-rock criteria to be included in a definition: e.g., transference, resistance, a dynamic unconscious, intrapsychic conflict, defense, infantile sexuality, insight which causes change, and change which brings insight. The disagreements centered on the locus of the psychoanalytic process, the best way to conceptualize change, and the methodological problem of validating whether specific interventions cause specific claimed effects. Confusion about how to account for the interactional aspect of the psychoanalytic situation in a manner consistent with a one-person psychology emerged as an important source of the difficulty in arriving at a satisfactory definition of the psychoanalytic process.

Transformations in dreaming and characters in the psychoanalytic field

Abstract: Having reviewed certain similarities and differences between the various psychoanalytic models (historical reconstruction/development of the container and of the mind's metabolic and transformational function; the significance to be attributed to dream-type material; reality gradients of narrations; tolerability of truth/lies as polar opposites; and the form in which characters are understood in a psychoanalytic session), the author uses clinical material to demonstrate his conception of a session as a virtual reality in which the central operation is transformation in dreaming (de-construction, de-concretization, and re-dreaming), accompanied in particular by the development of this attitude in both patient and analyst as an antidote to the operations of transformation in hallucinosis that bear witness to the failure of the functions of meaning generation. The theoretical roots of this model are traced in the concept of the field and its developments as a constantly expanding oneiric holographic field; in the developments of Bion's ideas (waking dream thought and its derivatives, and the patient as signaller of the movements of the field); and in the contributions of narratology (narrative transformations and the transformations of characters and screenplays). Stress is also laid on the transition from a psychoanalysis directed predominantly towards contents to a psychoanalysis that emphasizes the development of the instruments for dreaming, feeling, and thinking. An extensive case history and a session reported in its entirety are presented so as to convey a living impression of the ongoing process, in the consulting room, of the unsaturated co-construction of an emotional reality in the throes of continuous transformation. The author also describes the technical implications of this model in terms of forms of interpretation, the countertransference, reveries, and, in particular, how the analyst listens to the patient's communications. The paper ends with an exploration of the concepts of grasping (in the sense of clinging to the known) and casting (in relation to what is as yet undefined but seeking representation and transformation) as a further oscillation of the minds of the analyst and the patient in addition to those familiar from classical psychoanalysis.