"Shared Realities" Nominated for 2015 Gradiva Award - NAAP

"Shared Realities," edited by Mark Winborn and published by Fisher King Press has been nominated for the 2015 Gradiva award - awarded annually by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis - for the best published, produced, or publicly exhibited works that advance psychoanalysis. The final determination for the nominees will be made during the NAAP annual meeting November 14th in NYC.

Winborn's "Shared Realities" Reviewed in JAP

Mark Winborn’s book (editor and contributor), Shared Realites: Participation Mystique and Beyond (Fisher King Press), is reviewed in the September 2015 issue of the Journal of Analytical Psychology (Vol. 60, #4, pp. 563-565). The review is written by Stephen Bloch of the South African Association of Jungian Analysts (SAAJA). The volume includes several IRSJA contributors - Pamela Power, Dianne Braden, Deborah Bryon, Jerome Bernstein, and John White – as well as Jungian analysts and psychoanalysts from other societies and countries (Marcus West, Robert Wasksa, Michael Eigen, and Francois Martin Vallas). 


From the review: "This book is an engaging and enriching exploration of a key Jungian term which is often overlooked. It is a concept that one often thinks one has grasped and integrated. On reading this panoramic spread of papers one becomes aware of the generative significance and clinical usefulness that a full understanding of this concept brings. Moreover, as the more psychoanalytically based authors demonstrate, participation mystique may well be the area of intersection between analytical psychology and broader psychoanalytic thinking. The result is a comprehensive sense of how the concept is understood and utilized by contemporary analysts."

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/…/10.…/1468-5922.12170_2/full

Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond - Conclusion

  

From Mark Winborn (Ed.). Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond. Fisher King Press, 2014.

CONCLUSION

The concept of participation mystique has evolved and expanded in range since C.G. Jung adopted it from Lucien Lévy-Bruhl approximately 100 years ago. The analyst authors who contributed to this volume have explored the concept from fresh perspectives. No longer can participation mystique accurately be utilized as a label to describe the psychological orientation of ‘primitive’ people or be considered an undeveloped or non-psychological way of being. When viewed through the perspective offered by the authors of these chapters, the concept provides a contemporary lens for perceiving “the sympathy of all things.”[1] Participation mystique is better used to describe the complex mix of unconscious and implicit connections/influences that exist: between people, people and animals, people and their environment (including nature), and sometimes between people and things. Because the nature of participation mystique is complex, it sometimes facilitates the analytic process and sometimes obstructs – depending upon our response to the field that has been constellated.

The ongoing developments in quantum physics, complex systems theory, field theory, and philosophy emphasize the inter-relationship of all things in ways never imagined several generations ago. As philosopher Dan Zahavi puts it, “the three regions ‘self ’, ‘others’, and ‘world’ belong together; they reciprocally illuminate one another, and can only be understood in their interconnection.”[2] The conceptual framework created by Jung anticipated the developments of the intersubjective movement in psychoanalysis.[3] As such, we can think of participation mystique as being almost synonymous in function with intersubjectivity, but also as a term which moves beyond the realm of ‘subjectivities’ to include other elements of our environment and the environment itself. Jung’s concept of participation mystique also includes the influence of the collective psyche which is not present in intersubjective theories.

The preceding chapters illustrate the current vitality of the concept. Our desire is that participation mystique will begin to be seen as a broadly reaching concept – an element of which can be found in many other analytic terms and experiences.  These chapters highlight the importance of engaging with each other and our environments from the perspective of participation mystique; a perspective which permits a deeper empathic engagement with our patients and the world to emerge.  

Mark Winborn, PhD, NCPsyA
Editor, Shared Realities

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[1] C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1961, 138. In this passage Jung used this phrase to describe the common foundation of the collective unconscious but it many ways it better describes the experience of participation mystique.

[2] Dan Zahavi, “Beyond Empathy: Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (2001): 151–167.

[3] Intersubjective psychoanalysis emerged, in part, out of the influence of phenomenological 
philosophy.

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Full sample chapter available at the Fisher King Press link.

Francois Martin-Vallas: The Transferential Chimera and Neuroscience

Chapter excerpt from Francois Martin-Vallas  (2014). The Transferential Chimera and Neuroscience, Chapter 9 in Mark Winborn (Ed.). Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond. Fisher King Press, 2014.

In this chapter, I will examine the question of the participation mystique in neuroscientific terms. Recent developments in neuroscience now enable us to start creating links between our clinical practice, especially the analysis of the transference, as Jung conceptualized it in The Psychology of the Transference and my concept of the transferential chimera.

In Greek mythology, the chimera is a composite beast, born of Echidna and Typhon, as was her sister, the Sphinx. With a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a snake’s tail, she is a devastating monster who spews out flames and devours any humans who fall in her path. In science, specifically in biology, the chimera is an entity or piece of tissue made up of two cell populations of distinct genotypes, arising from two distinct zygotes: thus within one individual here is the coexistence of cells with alien DNA baggage. In everyday language, be it in English or French, the word chimera denotes an illusion impossible to attain in reality. Finally, in the field of psychoanalysis, Michel de M’Uzan uses the word “chimera” to denote the inter-space of the transference as an autonomous dynamic born of the analytical encounter. It is in this last sense that I propose to use it in the field of analytical psychology, to emphasize the autonomous dynamics of the transference, as well as the fact the it emerges from the encounter of the analyst with the analysand as a new psychic reality. That is also why, in this text, I talk about it as a neo-reality or a neo-system. These points are developed in my 2006 and 2008 papers.

Jung’s original intuition about the analysis of the transference was to highlight the deep role the analyst plays in the treatment process. It was probably his misadventures with Sabina Spielrein which gave rise to his painful awareness of this, as witnessed in his correspondence with Sabina and with Freud. It caused him to ask Freud to include a period of personal analysis in psychoanalytic training, which was granted. At the root of the affair was obviously his realization that the transference not only unfolds in the patient but also in the analyst; hence, his use of the notion of participation mystique, a term coined by Lévy-Bruhl.

My argument for the concept of a transferential chimera was motivated by the perceived need to add a further dimension to Jung’s approach. It seems to me that the phenomenon of the transference is not only largely unconscious, but it is moreover, independent in part, both of the analysand and his analyst. It appears from my clinical experience, that the encounter between the analyst and the analysand may in fact be the basis of an emergent psychical neo-reality, with its own logic, its own evolution and its own way of functioning relatively independently of the two protagonists involved in the treatment. Put another way, if participation mystique is an essential part of the transference as Jung predicated, then it is likely to be the source of an emergent psychical dynamic which will have a considerable bearing on the direction that the relationship between the analyst and analysand might take.

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Jerome Bernstein - Healing Our Split: Participation Mystique and C.G. Jung

Chapter excerpts from Jerome Bernstein  (2014). Healing Our Split: Participation Mystique and C.G. Jung, Chapter 8 in Mark Winborn (Ed.). Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond. Fisher King Press, 2014.

 It is important to remember that Jung was observing and trying to understand the ‘primitive mind’ through the lens of his ‘civilized’ mind. Projecting and fitting what he thought he was observing into categories understandable to him was unavoidable since he had no other frame of reference. Apparently it did not occur to him to try to go beyond "understanding" by putting himself into the psychic and spiritual frame of mind of these ‘primitives’ nor did he have the experience to do so. He observed and analyzed them, as well as their culture and spiritual practices, but did not share or participate in these aspects of their psychic life with them. Nor was he consciously aware that he was observing a highly complex cosmological psychic system that, from the perspective of the Native American, was less linear; reflecting a sense of a Great Round where time is more circular than linear. In such a system, there is no ‘beginning’ to the cosmological story as such; where ‘creation’ ‘happened’ (was told as Story) as opposed to being ordained by a "higher power" or resulted from thought as opposed to thinking; where Story and particularly story-telling itself is the sustaining power of life. He also was likely unaware of the profound differences in language structure between verb-based oral traditional language where words, according to Tewa Professor Dr. Gregory Cajete, "that describe the world emerge directly from actively perceived experience," and more noun-based Western Logos language which is more abstract and conceptual, i.e. more removed from the experience itself. And we now know that language, particularly language structure, has a profound adaptive and interactive relationship to and with culture and therein with the spiritual orientation of that culture...

Rather than being "supernatural" (or "transpersonal") the world – life -- is transrational as well as rational. This distinction is essential because of the confusion between the "supernatural" which trumps the rational (reason) and ‘makes no sense,’ and what I call the ‘transrational,’ which transcends the binary Logos concept of rationality but poses no contradiction to the rational. It is a different experience and because it does not trump the rational, neither makes sense nor doesn’t make sense. It is what it is. From within this framework, science and its offspring, technology, take their rightful place in the evolution of consciousness. Segal asserts that science properly replaces myth – I prefer the word ‘story’ – as "the explanation of the world." It is this confusion around the "logical" and the "prelogical" that confounds and which in Jung’s thought is the cause of dissociation in the Western psyche and specifically its organ of consciousness, the Western ego construct. The problem was in labeling participation mystique as "prelogical" in order to make it fit into the Western Logos frame. The need was and remains to recognize that participation mystique was and is a different manifestation of the reality of the psyche...

We need a consciousness that can perceive and relate to the whole of psychic reality. Nature has its own set of rules, and we need to come to understand and respect those rules better than we do. What is urgent is to bring the psychodynamic of reciprocity into engagement with the psychodynamic of dominion and therein bring balance to our over-inflated self-annihilating Western ego.

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Discussing Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond on Shrink Rap Radio

Mark Winborn, PhD, editor of The Psychoanalytic Muse, is interviewed by Dr. David Van Nuys of Shrink Rap Radio. In this podcast, Dr. Van Nuys is interviewing Dr. Winborn about the release of the edited volume "Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond" by Fisher King Press which re-examines Carl Jung's concept of Participation Mystique and a variety of related concepts, such as projective identification. The subject is approached from a variety of clinical, theoretical, and experiential perspectives. Dr. Winborn's co-authors come from the depth psychological traditions of Analytical Psychology and Psychoanalysis and hail from across the United States, United Kingdom, and France. Shrink Rap Radio (www.shrinkrapradio.com) is an online podcast which interviews a wide variety of mental health professionals and others in the healing arts. The interview can be heard or downloaded at Shrink Rap Radio along with a huge library of previous interviews, including a 2013 interview with Dr. Winborn about his earlier book - "Deep Blues: Human Soundscapes for the Archetypal Journey."

Robert Waska - Klein's Projective Identification and Jung's Participation Mystique

"Contemporary Kleinian thinking includes the idea of projective identification as the core of all transference phenomena and most patients’ internal world of phantasy conflict. Klein’s discovery of the paranoid-schizoid position, the depressive position, and projective identification have set the stage for contemporary clinical understanding of our patients’ struggle with object relational issues.

Jung’s concept of participation mystique  involves a mystical connection, or identity, between subject and object in which the subject cannot clearly distinguish himself from the object but is bound to it by a direct relationship which amounts to a partial identity. It is a transference relationship in which there is an influence directed at the person or thing. As a result, there is an identification with it. Participation mystique involves a non-differentiation of subject and object and hence a primitive unconscious state. This is also a characteristic of the mental state of early infancy and of the unconscious adult mind. Jung’s concept is very similar if not identical to the Kleinian notion of projective identification, especially in terms of the blurred reality between self and other, the influence upon object, and the subsequent identification that takes place. Modern Kleinian treatment utilizes the concept of projective identification as central to understanding human functioning and the moment to moment clinical situation. Steiner states:

[Klein introduced] the concept of projective identification (Klein, 1946), in which splitting is followed by projection of the split-off fragments, which are consequently disowned and attributed to someone else. The motive for projective identification can be so varied (Rosenfeld, 1971) that it is always necessary to specify in detail what the particular aim is at any time. The result, however, although varying in extent, is always a denial of separateness between self and the object, and a consequent depletion of personal resources, as well as a distortion of the object, which is experienced as if it contained the disowned attributes.

One of the most important consequences of the theory of projective identification is that it enables us to formulate the aim of psychoanalysis in new terms. According to this model, the aim of psychoanalysis is to help the patient to achieve an integration and to regain parts of himself that have become unavailable because they have been split off and projected.

Projective identification is not always pathological and with a suitably receptive object can serve as an important form of primitive communication (Bion, 1962). It is a vital part of all human interaction but serious and chronic pathology results if projections become irreversibly bound to the objects they enter and cannot readily be restored to the self.

Betty has elaborated the term by focusing on moment to moment subtle interaction between patient and analyst in which the patient manages to manipulate and shape the analyst into feeling and thinking in certain ways that are congruent with the patient’s phantasies about self and object. These are interpersonal patterns, particular ways of talking, and certain styles of relating that push and pull the analyst to adopt certain feelings, attitudes, and approaches that are enactments of the transference. This understanding of projective identification is very similar to Jung’s idea of the “influence” upon the object that creates certain identifications in the participation mystique dynamic." (pp. 97-98)

Chapter excerpt from Robert Waska (2014). Modern Kleinian Therapy, Jung's Participation Mystique, and the Projective Identification Process, Chapter 4 in Mark Winborn (Ed.). Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond. Fisher King Press, 2014.

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Full sample chapter available at the Fisher King Press link.