The Precipitating Factor in Psychoanalysis

    There are events that look as of no big significance, yet they are followed by major changes that eventually prove that those insignificant events were quite significant in a different way. This  is familiar both in individual cases as in political and social cases. They precipitate  change in unexpected way. Changes in those cases are understood only retroactively. They reveal that the sudden  is only so because change was taking unexpected and unnoticeable course.

    I will give two examples from my clinical practice which stand out  in my memory as exemplary to what the word precipitation suggests. To do that it is important to mention that after Lacan published his paper on the “Mirror Stage” the understanding of narcissism had to radically leave the Libido theory behind. I gradually and unintentionally (for a while) recognized a difference between the two types of patients'  associations that relate to who is talking to me. There was the I patient and the me patient. The I talks as the subject of the analysis, and whatever he mentioned came from that person who is lying on my couch, not someone talking to me about him: {She was nice and kind}. The me patient talked to me about himself as the object of the analysis {I felt that she is nice and kind}. The subtle difference is the difference between talking (I am), and talking- about (me says), which directly or indirectly told me about his me. 

    The first patient- Mr. P. was an I patient. At the time he was in analysis it was common to use the psychoanalytic stages of development (Oral, Anal, Phallic) as an additional element in the diagnosis of patients. Mr. P. was an anal character (person) where ‘everything in his life’ was tidy, and his religion (a middle eastern religion) was the only source of rules in his believes and life. One day on the train which he used daily to commute to work he had a dispute with another commuter that resulted in some physical struggle which was immediately stopped by the other passengers. Just using the diagnosis of anality for a second, I would say that: something undesirable skipped the psychological sphincter of Mr. P., and the tidy I had to deal with the untidy nature of !!!!!me. The event was not so aggravating, but it was a psychical straw that broke the back of Mr. P’s rigidity.  The change started with doubting everything about what he thought of himself  and evolved to reveal to him a "me" that was a secret he kept, particularly-since childhood- from his mother.  Analysis of the ‘me’ was the rout to sort of cure, which was limiting a milder anal character to himself and let others live outside his expectations.

The second case was of a typical Egyptian young woman (Twenty-two years old) who was expected to be a me person (the object of anything she talked about, to the degree of not having a speaking I at all (if there was one). She was expected to speak as middle class, well brought up daughter and future wife, and stop being argumentative and a person with an identity. She was expected to speak as upper class well brought up girl, and stop being argumentative. The mother who came with her for the first interview mentioned marriage and the suitability of her daughter for a good match since she is getting a little older than her relatives and friends. The daughter was obvious in her ’childishness’, which was- to me- an undeclared strong mutual dependency  between mother and daughter. So, it was a complicated me kind of patient: the me that mother does not approve of is the me that preserve the interdependency between the two. The me that the patient was keen to acquire and, able to be, was the one the upper class 'Dallo-a' (an Egyptian term of a spoiled brat) is not suppose to have. The analysis was stopped when the patient, after few weeks of getting worse, was not allowed to come to her sessions by orders from her mother. 

Unexpectedly, I got a call from  her brother few weeks later informing me that she was hospitalized for a couple of weeks and she and the rest of the family (except the mother) wanted her back in therapy. I found out that what precipitated her breakdown was her cousin and a friend getting engaged and were supposed to get married soon. He explained the decision to pursue therapy was that after several "bizarre" fights with her mother in which she mentioned things she became aware of in her therapy the mother thought that I am not good for her daughter. The patient became incoherent, and sleepless and had a tendency to be physically violent. Hospitalization was recommended. After two weeks she wanted to go back to therapy and -as the brother mentioned- she was much more mature and serious about her future than anyone even thought that she has ever considered those matters.  The precipitating factor  was seeing with her own eyes what her mother did not want her to see. What she saw was that she was the one who is the main person in any marriage arrangement even if it is a traditional marriage. The precipitating factor was maturity as a requirement for separating from mother's symbiotic attachment to her daughter.

The link between the precipitating factor and the sudden change is a gradual unconscious change to undesirable ways of life, or thinking. What this means is that the precipitating factor is merely a trigger of change that is already ready to be declared but is not. The important factor here for analysts is the gradual but consistent process of interpretation and avoiding the scattered interpretations that do not lead to a definable target. With Mr. P. the  definable target was gradually bring to focus rigidity as a me that is translated in dealing with others as an I. Interpretations only -interpretations- could reveal to the patient the distinction between I and me, because an interpretation shows the patient difference between what is said and what is meant. This point is seldom touched in training, because in the history of the unconscious we were trained to think of it to be hidden and not part of the obvious, while it is always there in front of our eyes and ears. It just has to be brought out of its embeddedness in the obvious.  as an example: Mr. P. was quite concerned and worried about his son's 'Lesse  Fair' attitude regarding spending (twenty dollars a week). I intercepted his concerns as what about the future. This shift in emphasis brough about his anxieties about his son's idealization of him and his anal restrictions. In other words, interpretation is making the implicit explicit and that kind of change would eventually lead to the a precipitating factor of change.  

Interpretation leads to creating a gap between I and me. This gap is where the work of precipitating the cure takes place. When Mr. P. realized that there is an me that he is denying its existence this awareness released several other restrictions he was imposing on himself, like religion and its rituals. 

There is more say at this juncture but I wand to write about is how this model of understanding is also applicable to sociopolitical phenomena. I home to write something about it.

   

 Negation: The Most Primitive Defense Mechanism.

The literature in psychoanalysis shows that the two concepts of ‘defense mechanism’ and ‘reconstruction’ are not of much relevance anymore. The reason- in my experience and opinion- is that analysts got distracted by the new psychoanalytic discoveries  of the sixties and the seventies like the schools and new flashy psychoanalytic stars. Psychoanalysts considered some, if not all, the basics of the early psychoanalysis, matters to sidestep. They let the new generated ideas and the newer issues overtook the center of psychoanalysis, and the past to be ignored. This is a wise idea when the issues at hand is science, theoretical reformulations or matters pertaining to methodology. But Psychoanalysis is an epistemology of the human subject, thus we could improve and make some changes to epistemology but not the human subject himself. Therefore, some old issues have to be revisited and improved, not neglected, or abolished.

As long as our work is ‘analyzing’ (interpreting),then reconstruction is not an old insignificant subject  to be ignored. Moreover, interpreting requires and demands that the analyst has to know  defense mechanisms; because whatever we analyze to reconstruct later is distorted by what was named (hastily) defense mechanism.  What Freud identified as defenses were simply modes of speech of patients who were struggling with implicit unconscious issues. Freud misunderstood those ‘other’ things implicit in regular speech’ as issues defended against. The purpose of this post is to show that proper reconstruction  comes from a proper understanding of the effect of defense mechanisms (implicit meanings) on the patients’ analyzable self.

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Defense mechanisms are always associated to the level of mental maturation of the individual. An infant does not react to mother’s impatience by projection, but maybe by somatization or identification (projection is partly self-identity). Thus, we should always consider  defense mechanisms are part of the subject’s psychological and mental endowment. Similarly, defense mechanisms relate to the subject’s basic personality, i.e.  they reflect the degree of psychical maturity the subject has reached, thus his ability to assimilate the new realties he will be facing. The question is: which decides the other: does defense mechanisms decide the nature of the individual’s personality, or does the basic personality engenders specific defense mechanisms according to the situation.   My answer is that emotional maturation decides the level of sophistication of the activated defense mechanism (Freud, S.E. vol.X1X, 235-242). The significant remark Freud made in that regard is that defense mechanisms are the way the ego determines the nature of the ‘reality’ managed by the subject. Negation, therefore, as a defense mechanism, negates the existence of the real and replaces it with a reality of his creation. The scary demon under the child’s bed is real because the temptation to masturbate is real. This is not projection because the child at that age of phobias does not have a sense of identity that creates the space that allows projection. Thus, reconstruction of the analyzed data requires identifying the defense mechanism that the patient is using. In supervision I noticed that candidates are spontaneously able to make those distinction or need just a hint to bring the issue in focus. raising it  in the subject is seeing in essence  that reality he has to recognize. No wonder that child psychoanalysis (which I knew very little about) would need a different way of reconstruction involving negate reality and the manners it shows the child real wish. The child’s wish is quite  essential in giving the child notions about his difficulties. The child’s wish is the reality he could  deal with. Grown-ups who deny reality make their wishes take the place of their real-life….they live a phantasy life.   

A warning: beware of the politicians’ political opium: Self Deception

 Analysis of non-Analytic Material:

Any analysis, specifically psychoanalysis, is as good as the work of reconstruction that it could generate and follows. This is the criterium of good analytic work. What that means is that whatever we analyze, psychological, political, chemical etc. is as good as it leads to the restructuring the elements of the analyzed product. In psychoanalysis the analytic work is to reach the events, memories, early constructs that contributed to the psychoneurotic structure, and bit by bit reconstruct the patient’s intrapsychic entity.

Something similar is could be done with social phenomena: how to reconstruct the events that preceded the invasion of the Tatars  to West  Asia? or what led to the first world war? The historian’s reach for an answer is identical to the point when a patient decides to seek treatment. This issue is commonly not emphasized enough: The patient does not suddenly or even gradually realizes his need for therapy because that realization is commonly existed before starting the analysis. The difference is in the patient’s realization that his condition is Analyzable, i.e., should and could be reconstructed and understood. Even what we call ‘resistance’ is a manifestation of that realization: when the patient says to the analyst (in nonverbal ways too): “I do not see how what I said could be explained by what you said”, this is not resistance but could be-in some instances- an unconscious hint that the interpretation does not fit with the work of reconstruction. 

I mention this point because “psychoanalysis” is a way of thinking, working, doing something in any area of human nature. It is not merely a technique of psychotherapy. The question is what is the nature of the material we analyze and re-construct? In our clinical work we know that the psychodynamic of a psychosomatic skin rash (an infantile demand for physical contact with the mother) is different from the psychodynamics of hysterical skin rash (a symbolic call for closeness). In the first case there is no interpretation for the rash, and reconstruction will be of the physiology of the body being affected by childhood unresolve relations with the caregivers. In the hysterical condition the work will be on the skin condition as a symbolic message of wish , and as an expression and a request from the analyst for that closeness.

The same issue of analyzing a historical or a social event. A historian with an analytic mind could analyze and understand a political situation, like the one we are witnessing now, and reconstruct it to shed light on several other issues that are part of it, but do not seem to be. An example, this war seems to create material damage that correspond well to the technical advancements in all human tools, of late. Yet, the human casualties compared to the material damage is strangely very low. This is a important point because in reconstructing the whole event of the war there should be a question about the purpose and meaning of this war: is it a conflict of people or a conflict in issues. Personally, I think the Ukrainian war was created by what I mentioned before which is the problems of NATO and it is not a conflict between Russia and the Ukraine.

However, the insistence of the European Union to expand NATO and get physically closer to pressure Russia politically and militarily is related to something completely different. It is like an analytic work getting closer to a patient’s unconscious repression of homosexual tendencies which abhors him.

Thise End of ‘The European Empire’.

In my clinical experience, the strongest resistance (not refusal as a preconscious condition) is a patient coming to realize a latent homosexual inclination, whether in men or women. The homosexuality I mention here has nothing to do with the sexual component it is famous of: it is attraction and captivation in a narcissistic relation with one or more persons of the same sex. The cause of that abhorrence is its complex narcissistic structure that steals the individual sense of identity (complex but necessary to understand to appreciate the importance of transference).  

The European Union is resisting the fact that the whole European Empire is faltering, and the world is not as it was in the last six centuries, i.e., a European Dominion. Africa is no longer divided as colonies of European countries. Asia has two or three greater countries than any European country. South America has finally liberated itself from the American domination and is giving the signs of more new surprises. The USA, as an extension of Europe, is obviously struggling with significant and profound internal social issues. Comprehensively, the European domination (Europe and the USA) of the world is coming to its ends.

Therefore, in reconstructing the present political crisis of the Ukraine  we should consider  more serious and more encompassing historical reasons for it. The decline of Western Empire is behind a political stupid gesture that Russia has to be contained by the force of NATO as a manifestation of the still dominant Wester Europe. Two things should be done: make the world hate Russia and bring it its knees militarily.

Media and Hate:

Although- it goes without saying- the enemy in any war is a hateful entity. Yet, wars cannot be won by hate alone. The other danger of relying on hate as a psychological weapon against an enemy is the ease by which -in desperation- hate could turn into admiration of the successful hateful enemy. This was one of the most serious issues Churchill was aware of during WWII. More importantly, is how much truth is there in the negatives of enemy, i.e., how much lying about the enemy is good. Managing hate- Psychoanalytically speaking- is very important in war because it is the foundation of projection and if it is misused it could affect the process of projection.

The danger in the Ukraine War is that the media reporters are not reporting about their nation and people, thus they are serving a function that does not pertain to themselves. This is exactly like when one says I know how you feel which is a gesture of empathy but far from being of any real effect or value. Thus, it makes the issue more of a psychological quandary because reality- if it existed- it will be impersonal and a dictation from a paid ‘piper’. The other factor is that people are not stupid: they have an unconscious that they store in it what they realize and truly believe. Thus, without managing hate properly the issue could backfire after a while and the Ukrainians will retrieve from their unconscious what was temporarily ignored.

That leads to the question: If the Western empire is dying or dead but still refuses to join the world on equal grounds what will happen.

Failed psychoanalyses tend to create a messy ex-patient. They keep trying other therapists and therapies with no results. Yet, the lucky ones find one or few persoOns who realize the crisis and just keep that person under observation and guidance. The equivalent to that in civilizations is new politicians or thinkers within the defunct civilization or empire who keep it from total collapse and being a political risk. The end of the two Roman empires (west and east) was the creation of nations and union of nations. The Western or the European empire will be forced to occupy a place in the world but not the only empire that existed.

WE WILL BE SAVED FROM THE NOTIONs OF OUR DEMOCRACY, OUR VALUES, OUR SO AND SO.

 

 Analysis of non-Analytic Material:

Any analysis, specifically psychoanalysis, is as good as the work of reconstruction that it could generate and follows. This is the criterium of good analytic work. What that means is that whatever we analyze, psychological, political, chemical etc. is as good as it leads to the restructuring the elements of the analyzed product. In psychoanalysis the analytic work is to reach the events, memories, early constructs that contributed to the psychoneurotic structure, and bit by bit reconstruct the patient’s intrapsychical entity.

Something similar is could be done with social phenomena: how to reconstruct the events that preceded the invasion of the Tatars  to West  Asia? or what led to the first world war? The historian’s reach for an answer is identical to the point when a patient decides to seek treatment. This issue is commonly not emphasized enough: The patient does not suddenly or even gradually realizes his need for therapy because that realization is commonly existed before starting the analysis. The difference is in the patient’s realization that his condition is Analyzable, i.e., should and could be reconstructed and understood. Even what we call ‘resistance’ is a manifestation of that realization: when the patient says to the analyst (in nonverbal ways too): “I do not see how what I said could be explained by what you said”, this is not resistance but could be-in some instances- an unconscious hint that the interpretation does not fit with the work of reconstruction. 

I mention this point because “psychoanalysis” is a way of thinking, working, doing something in any area of human nature. It is not merely a technique of psychotherapy. The question is what is the nature of the material we analyze and re-construct? In our clinical work we know that the psychodynamic of a psychosomatic skin rash (an infantile demand for physical contact with the mother) is different from the psychodynamics of hysterical skin rash (a symbolic call for closeness). In the first case there is no interpretation for the rash, and reconstruction will be of the physiology of the body being affected by childhood unresolve relations with the caregivers. In the hysterical condition the work will be on the skin condition as a symbolic message of sorts, and as an expression and a request from the analyst for that closeness.

The same issue of analyzing a historical or a social event. A historian with an analytic mind could analyze and understand a political situation, like the one we are witnessing now, and reconstruct it to shed light on several other issues that are part of it, but do not seem to be. An example, this war seems to create material damage that correspond well to the technical advancements in in all human tools, of late. Yet, the human casualties compared to the material damage is strangely very low. This is a important point because in reconstructing the whole event of the war there should be a question about the purpose and meaning of this war: is it a conflict of people or a conflict in issues. Personally, I think the Ukrainian war was created by what I mentioned before which is the problems of NATO and it is not a conflict between Russia and the Ukraine.

However, the instance of the European Union to expand NATO and get physically closer to pressure Russia politically and militarily is related to something completely different. It is like an analytic work getting closer to a patient’s unconscious repression of homosexual tendencies which abhors him.

The End of ‘The European Empire’.

In my clinical experience, the strongest resistance (not refusal as a preconscious condition) is a patient coming to realize a latent homosexual inclination, whether in men or women. The homosexuality I mention here has nothing to do with the sexual component it is famous of: it is attraction and captivation in a narcissistic relation with one or more persons of the same sex. The cause of that abhorrence is its complex narcissistic structure that steals the individual sense of identity (complex but necessary to understand to appreciate the importance of transference).  

The European Union is resisting the fact that the whole European Empire is faltering, and the world is not as it was in the last six centuries, i.e., a European Dominion. Africa is no longer divided as colonies of European countries. Asia has two or three greater countries than any European country. South America has finally liberated itself from the American domination and is giving the signs of more new surprises. The USA, as an extension of Europe, is obviously struggling with significant and profound internal social issues. Comprehensively, the European domination (Europe and the USA) of the world is coming to its ends.

Therefore, in reconstructing the present political crisis of the Ukraine  we should consider  more serious and more encompassing historical reasons for it. The decline of Western Empire is behind a political stupid gesture that Russia has to be contained by the force of NATO as a manifestation of the still dominant Wester Europe. Two things should be done: make the world hate Russia and bring it its knees militarily.

Media and Hate:

Although- it goes without saying- the enemy in any war is a hateful entity. Yet, wars cannot be won by hate alone. The other danger of relying on hate as a psychological weapon against an enemy is the ease by which -in desperation- hate could turn into admiration of the successful hateful enemy. This was one of the most serious issues Churchill was aware of during WWII. More importantly, is how much truth is there in the negatives of enemy, i.e., how much lying about the enemy is good. Managing hate- Psychoanalytically speaking- is very important in war because it is the foundation of projection and if it is misused it could affect the process of projection.

The danger in the Ukraine War is that the media reporters are not reporting about their nation and people, thus they are serving a function that does not pertain to themselves. This is exactly like when one says I know how you feel which is a gesture of empathy but far from being of any real effect or value. Thus, it makes the issue more of a psychological quandary because reality- if it existed- it will be impersonal and a dictation from a paid ‘piper’. The other factor is that people are not stupid: they have an unconscious that they store in it what they realize and truly believe. Thus, without managing hate properly the issue could backfire after a while and the Ukrainians will retrieve from their unconscious what was temporarily ignored.

That leads to the question: If the Western empire is dying or dead but still refuses to join the world on equal grounds what will happen.

Failed psychoanalyses tend to create a messy ex-patient. They keep trying other therapists and therapies with no results. Yet, the lucky ones find one or few persoOns who realize the crisis and just keep that person under observation and guidance. The equivalent to that in civilizations is new politicians or thinkers within the defunct civilization or empire who keep it from total collapse and being a political risk. The end of the two Roman empires (west and east) was the creation of nations and union of nations. The Western or the European empire will be forced to occupy a place in the world but not the only empire that existed.

WE WILL BE SAVED FROM THE NOTIONs OF OUR DEMOCRACY, OUR VALUES, OUR SO AND SO.

 

  The Works of Projection in the present Ukrainian War 

The present situation in the world defies all attempts at making sense of cause\effect issues, acting, and reacting\issues. The reason is twofold. We are going through a serious crisis-the Ukraine- that does not show yet how it is going evolve. The other is that we are going and will continue to go through a basic historical evolution that will end the dominance of the Western Empire as it happened with the end of the Roman empire….Chaos and bombastic claims of entitlements.

I should go back to what is in the range of my understanding: the Ukrainian Crisis. The two opposing parties in the Ukraine conflict are not anymore at the same point  they started from. My opinion will not sit well with the supporters of one of the two camps. I think that Russia has not changed much its objective which is related to the practicalities of security and defense (war), while the other camp has shifted the attention of security to focus on depicting the other camp as humanly criminal and  victimizing innocent people for unjust cause. It is impossible to ignore the national and racial issues involved in the western camp’s media. So, what started as Russia invading the Ukraine to stop it from joining NATO became a scene of incriminating it and characterizing her as an uncivilized and war criminal.

What is the benefit gained by the West from making that shift?  The war in the Ukraine is of very limited interest to the rest of the world, and that is, only, if it has any effect outside Europe and the USA! It is just as an item in the news in most countries which is not part NATO. It will have no effect on Nigeria, Chile, Singapore, or Yemen. Therefore, reducing the war to meaningless acts of killing and destroying lives turns the war to be Russian  immorality’ and Russians into immoral in people. However, ‘the psychoanalytic way of thinking about matters’ reveals what is consciously being done, but also reveals the aim of  creating an ‘unconscious’ effect on  people. If there is no clear military message in the news, then there is an implicit -unconscious-message in the same news.

The West calls itself ‘the civilized, free, democratic, and moralistic part of the world. In their attempt to influence its own people-unconsciously-  the media is doing a very slob work of projection. The history and the contemporary actions of the West took, and still takes everywhere they went, is the core of their accusations of Russia. Whatever they are now accusing their adversary the Russians with is what they have practiced everywhere they imposed their will upon before. The West’s colonization of Africa, Opium War, slave trading, Vietnam, the banana republics, making Cuba an international bordello and center of drug trafficking, using  the atomic bomb twice in two days, and lately assassinating the opposition to its influence in South America, etc., etc. is more than enough to confirm the Westerners excel in criminality as they do in other aspects in life. Westerns Projections on the war in Crimea is one more proof of their criminality, as all whom they accuse .

Few Notes on Projection

In early psychoanalysis there was a commonly used term: Defense Mechanism. It was also a psychoanalytic concept denoting warding off unpleasant and rejectionable psychical issues which causes the subject a sense of guilt. The term ‘defense Mechanism disappeared from our vocabulary when we come to understand projection for instance not as defending the ego but as a process engendered by a demand. The guilt behind projection is related to the subject’s inability to sorting out matters pertaining to ‘reality’. So, if I am sure of the reality of a psychical issue projection would separate my wish from my conception and create a situation where knowing is the concern: am I seeing him as the cause or seeing my wish as if it is his!? Directly to the Ukraine: are the Russian criminals or I wish them to be criminal !? Why the question: because the question is: have we provoked Russia by threatening it militarily and ignoring the signed agreement about its security, or we are free to do that without any objection. Again: are they equal to us or we the free world, ta ta ta  are not supposed to be questioned? The answer is no, you do not have the right to impose on others what you call your system of values. The reason is that you are not moralistic enough to talk about VALUES [Doing away with democracy if the outcome is not in your favor Chile and Aliunde]. The western nations in NATO resorted to projecting (their history, nature, narcissism) and expected to see themselves in the mirror they invented for the occasion. The Russians wanted to show the real image.