Linda Carter on the Transcendent Function and Emergence Theory

"I will consider the transcendent function as a central therapeutic process which has the potential to effect change in analysis. This central concept was first described in 1916 by Jung as an intrapsychic phenomenon although one can feel its presence in what many would see as the intersubjective matrix of ‘The psychology of the transference’. In reading the work of Beebe (2002), Sander (Amadei & Bianchi 2008), Tronick (2007) and Stern and the Boston Change Process Study Group (1998), resonances to the transcendent function can be registered but these researchers seem to be more focused on the interpersonal domain. In particular Tronick’s concept of ‘dyadic expansion of consciousness’ and ‘moments of meeting’ from the Boston Change Process Study Group describe external dyadic interactions between mothers and babies and therapists and patients. In contrast, Jung’s early focus was on the intrapsychic process of internal interaction between the conscious and the unconscious within an individual. From an overall perspective, the interpersonal process of change described by infant researchers, when held in conjunction with Jung’s internal process of change, together form an overarching whole in which the dyad may be viewed as part of a complex adaptive system whose emergent properties include a transformation of individual consciousness via dyadic interactions.

Emergence is a current concept that we can read backward into Jung’s work on the transcendent function. It could be said that it is through the dynamic interaction of lower level elements in a scale free network2 that a supraordinate self emerges and transcends its antecedents. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, as is the case with the mind emerging from the body, brain and environment. This notion has highly significant implications for analysis, science and theology, among many other fields. From Beebe’s point of view, emergence is the engine of change that results from the integration of the mutual co-ordination of parts within an interactive, co-created system (personal communication, May 2009).

Jung’s notions of the transcendent function are in many ways harmonious with a systems perspective. First, there is a conjunction of opposites. Then the complementary/compensatory nature of the unconscious in relation to onesided consciousness leads to emergence of the symbol. And finally, a new and complex entity, a synthesis not a fusion of antecedents, is presented. The result is a transformed attitude and the birth of a sense of wholeness.

According to Jung (1916/1960, para. 146), ‘the suitably trained analyst mediates the transcendent function for the patient, i.e., helps him bring conscious and unconscious together and so arrive at a new attitude’. In addition, Jung’s oft quoted lines analogizing the analyst/patient relationship with chemical interaction and mutual transformation resonates with contemporary views of both self and mutual regulation within an interactive field. As I see it, the emergence of the transcendent function is highly dependent on the reflective function of the individuals and the dyad within a co-constructed field. Indeed, the analyst’s successful history of experiences with the transcendent function, grounded in healthy interactive relationships, provides a holding environment for the emergence of evermore complex systems intrapsychically and with outer others. One could say that this view offers an understanding of the mechanics of containment which differs from Bion’s notion of projective identification. There is a move here toward mutual influence which fits well with Jung’s diagram of conscious/unconscious connections between the king and queen in ‘The psychology of the transference’. It should be noted, however, that analytic bidirectional influence is asymmetric and that if reflective function in the patient is limited, then the analyst carries symbolic understanding for the dyad while the patient’s abilities in this area are in the process of emerging. The symbolic attitude and reverie of the analyst provides a nutritive environment for the development of the patient’s ability to think and imagine about himself and interactions with others (see Bovensiepen 2002, p. 253)." (pp. 218-219)

Linda Carter (2010). The transcendent function, moments of meeting and dyadic consciousness: constructive and destructive co-creation in the analytic dyad. J. of Analytical Psychology, Vol 55, pp. 217-227.

Alan Sugarman on the Therapeutic Action of Mentalization

"Clarifying that we help our patients change by promoting a process of insightfulness has the potential to reduce the unfortunate tendency to artificially separate interpretation from the relationship with the analyst as the mutative factor in the psychoanalytic process. Central to this technical approach is the importance of attending to the formal organization of patients' minds, as key mental structures and modes of mental functioning are manifested in the interaction between patient and analyst. This emphasis on facilitating a process of insightfulness, with its goal of helping patients achieve and maintain a stable ability to mentalize, wherein key mental functions, not just contents, are subjected to self-reflection and affectivecognitive self-knowledge, reverses figure and ground and the traditional emphasis on knowing just unconscious mental content.

This approach is based on the idea that‘mentalization accounts for a continual, never-ending transformation of psychic contents through the multiplication and organization of representations. This permits the emergence of mental contents and structures of increasingly higher levels of complexity, leading to symbolization and abstraction’ (Lecours and Bouchard, 1997, p. 857). Our technical challenge becomes how to promote this process. Most patients show either circumscribed inhibitions of this process or a failure to have attained advanced modes because of early developmental interferences. A variety of benefits accrue from patients gaining insightfulness at an abstract-symbolic level of functioning (Bram and Gabbard, 2001). Self-other boundaries are strengthened as patients gain a cognitive-affective awareness that they have differentiated and conflicted minds that affect their behavior, and that others do also. Empathy improves with the realization that others' minds may be organized and function in different ways, or contain different feelings and beliefs. Interpersonal interactions are more easily understood and navigated by patients who can mentalize symbolically. Relationships feel safer as patients come to realize that others' actions are dictated by their mental functioning. Reality testing is facilitated, separation-individuation is promoted, and the primacy of secondary-process thinking is enhanced by symbolic mentalization. Finally, affect regulation is improved so that emotions can serve a signal function and not be experienced as overwhelming.

Promoting insightfulness improves self-regulation because patients' minds are better able to maintain homeostatic equilibrium as both their functions and contents become subject to conscious self-reflection and symbolic processing. Thus, patients' sense of self-as-agent are expanded. It should be noted that the role of the past has not been mentioned in this discussion of insightfulness. That is because this perspective does not emphasize the recovery of memories of the past as a crucial element in mutative action. Epistemological questions can be raised regarding whether it is even possible to do this with ‘memories’ of the past. Regardless, learning to mentalize symbolically seems most easily accomplished in the interactional field (Aron, 1996; Levenson, 1972; White, 1996) as patients transfer the organization and contents of their minds into it. Certainly memories from the past usually emerge as patients gain greater access to the workings of their minds. But this is a by-product of good analytic work, it is not essential to structural change. Some patients do need us to help them to understand regressions to or fixations at action modes of experiencing and communicating in terms of their pasts. These explanations are often necessary because patients can feel such shame or anxiety about their actions being seen and put into words. Their shame or anxiety needs to be assuaged before they can reflect more abstractly on the action. Some would argue that such shame or anxiety should be explored verbally instead of bypassed, i.e. Paul Gray (1994). In theory, this approach would be optimal. But some patients' shame or anxiety is experienced at such a concrete, action level that similarly concrete interventions may be necessary. Thus, the point of the genetic reconstructions that are sometimes necessary is not to help patients change by becoming aware of previously repressed mental content. Instead, it is a nonverbal confrontation that shame and/or anxiety are not necessary because their actions are understandable and containable. Hence, the impact lies with the analyst's nonverbal communication, not the content of his reconstruction, except insofar as the content is necessary to catch our patients' attention. Once again, technical interventions are guided by the dictate to promote symbolic insightfulness. This requires greater openness to ways of intervening with patients and deeper thinking into the impact of our interventions. So long as we maintain a commitment to freeing up our patients' mental processes, the more likely we are to transform and liberate their symbolic capacities (Friedman, 2002)." (pp. 980-982)

Alan Sugarman (2006). Mentalization, Insightfulness, and Therapeutic Action: The Importance of Mental Organiation. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, Vol. 87, pp. 965-987.

Joseph Cambray on the relationship between archetypes, empathy, synchronicity and emergence theory

Joe Cambray is the current president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology.

"As noted, in terms of symmetry in psychological systems, empathy permits a temporary symmetrizing, linking Self and Other (person or object) in a unifying field. For therapeutically useful psychological reflection to emerge from this state of immersion a breaking of the transitory symmetrization will need to occur eventually. This can then lead to the full emergence of empathic understanding. Empathy then is a connecting principle that links us to our world in ways that feel deeply meaningful, especially when we can step back and reflect on our experience (that is, upon breaking the symmetry). As we have seen, the causes that activate the empathic systems are often unconscious with a psychoid quality, that is, beyond our capacity for awareness and can feel as an acausal coincidence. Therefore, I suggest that there can be a synchronistic field dimension to our empathic experiences . . . One of the most distinctive aspects of C. G. Jung’s model of the psyche is his postulation of a core level, the collective unconscious, operating underneath the personal conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind. This deeper layer is comprised of the network of all archetypes, where archetypes are the formal patterns, without content, the universal propensities of psychological life capable of expressing themselves across the spectrum of human experience from the instinctual to the sublime. When realized concretely, archetypes manifest through affect-laden images of a transpersonal nature, often with a numinous quality. As discussed in chapter 3, there is a scale-free or fractal quality . . . we can note that this mirroring "net" metaphorically offers the viewer a wholly interconnected universe, in which all of the parts are interdependent and mutually conditioned. These tenets also form the core of a holistic, emergentist viewpoint, ascendancy in the analytic world. As previously mentioned, Jung presaged this network model in various remarks about the interwovenness of the archetypes in the psyche, the deepest source of human patterns and hence, implicit, the source of all wisdom . . . In the language of Jungian psychology, the energizing or activation of an archetypal node is frequently referred to as a particular pattern having "constellated," for example, the propensity to face adversity with determination to vanquish it may reflect the constellation of a heroic archetype in a person’s life. However, such activations by their nature are transgressive of any view of a person as a wholly isolated entity; inner and outer environments are necessarily part of the full pattern, also in accord with the finding on mirror neurons. At deeper levels the psyche is not a closed system but opens into a field of interactions among individuals, a network with strong and weak links that can become self-organizing." (pp. 80-82)

Joseph Cambray (2009) Synchronicity: Nature and Psyche in an Interconnected Universe. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press.

Danielle Quinodoz (et al) on the Audacity of Being a Psychoanalyst

Below are excerpts from throughout the paper which, taken together, form a meditation around the idea of audacity in the analytic process:

"The analyst has to find within him- or herself the audacity to be a psychoanalyst . . . Should analysts let their own minds resonate in tune with those of patients? In our work group, we tend to think that this may well be a first step towards a better understanding of the transference: letting oneself be taken over before being able to understand. Letting oneself go in this way may be proof not of negligence but of the analyst's involvement in a distressing moment during the session. It will in fact be easier to do this if there have been previous similar occasions on which the analyst has managed to break free of such situations; with an appropriate degree of confidence in their basic personality structure, analysts can find the audacity to do this . . . How can we find the necessary audacity to accept the unpredictability of psychoanalysis as well as its limitations, the audacity to express our difficulties and our failures?. . . If I myself dare to be an analyst, perhaps supervisees, through introjective identification, will discover in themselves the audacity to be analysts too . . . Daring to be a psychoanalyst does not demand any spectacular degree of audacity, but a much more modest everyday kind, one that may go unnoticed because it later seems quite natural. Nevertheless, psychoanalysts have to accomplish some deep internal processing before they can perceive in all simplicity what is going on inside them in the encounter with the patient in an analytic session. In our work group, we realized just how difficult it could be in that solitude we share only with ourselves to do away with an attitude of pretentiousness and become aware of feelings inside us of which we disapprove. How are we to dare to listen to our countertransference feelings without unconsciously censoring those that appear to be negative? How are we to dare to accept patients whose anxieties and difficulties remind us of our own? How are we to dare to enter, even momentarily, into certain worlds that seem to us to be completely mad, the better to understand them? That audacity is possible only if we can accept not only the limitations of psychoanalysis but also those that are within ourselves. This implies that, whatever the stage we have reached in our professional development, we have to admit to ourselves not only our successes but also our difficulties and our failures in order to be able to learn from them; it implies also that we have the courage to discuss these with our colleagues."

Quinodoz, Danielle; Candy, Aubry; Olivier Bonard; Genevieve DeJussel & Bernard Reith. (2006) Being a Psychoanalyst: An Everyday Audacity. Inter. J. of Psychoanalysis . Vol. 87, pp. 329-347.

Beebe, Cambray, and Kirsch on Individuation and Ethics

"At the core of Jung's approach to psychological treatment is his belief that clinical analysis catalyzes a natural developmental process that wants to take place anyway. If the work on the patient's complexes is pursued diligently in a spirit of honest dialogue, it may be rewarded by the patient's willingness to enter a dialectical relationship to the unconscious. Out of such a relationship, not only the resolution of conflict between ego and unconscious but also the energy-laden symbols that foster individuation are likely to emerge. None of this relieves the patient from responsibility for an ethical life. Rather, individuation moves toward the consciousness that enables an ethical standpoint to develop." (p. 239)

John Beebe, Joseph Cambray and Thomas Kirsch (2001). What Freudians Can Learn From Jung. Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 213-242