Primitive Mental States

A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Origins of Meaning

Jane Van Buren, Shelley Alhanati, Jane Van Buren, Shelley Alhanati

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317723431
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Traditional psychoanalysis relies on the presence of certain meaning-making capacities in the patient for its effectiveness. Primitive Mental States examines how particular capacities including those for symbolising, fantasising, dreaming, experiencing and finding meanings in those experiences, can be taken for granted. Many of us lack these capacities in certain dimensions of our minds making traditional psychoanalysis ineffective.

In this book, international contributors are brought together to consider a radical evolution in contemporary psychoanalytic theory developed from a combination of ultrasound studies, infant analysis, and observation of mothers and babies. These findings demonstrate how much mental life exists even before birth and considers unevolved, unborn and barely born aspects of the self such as the birth of emotion and the birth of alpha functioning.

Topics covered include:

• prenatal imprints on the mind and body
• difficult to treat patients
• non-verbal, non-symbolic, disembodied states of being
• early relational and attachment trauma.

Illustrated throughout with original data and extensive clinical discussions from some of the biggest names in the field, Primitive Mental States will be a useful resource for students and seasoned analysts alike.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction: Primitive mental states and the origins of meaning
• 1 "Orphans of O": The negative therapeutic reaction and the longing for the childhood that never was
• 2 Experiencing emotions, avoiding emotions: Between Hercules and Puss-in-Boots
• 3 Incorporation of an invasive object
• 4 The theory of transformations and autistic states. Autistic transformations: A proposal
• 5 A binocular view of adhesion: From prenatal contiguity to postnatal appetite
• 6 The trauma of conception: Cellular memory
• 7 Thoughts without a thinker
• 8 Nothing comes from nothing: Failed births, dead babies
• 9 The origins of the unconscious: Framework of the future mind
• 10 Pre-verbal language in the treatment of a mother and infant: A clinical exploration
• 11 Transformations of early infantile experience: A six-month-old in psychoanalysis
• 12 'Talk to me baby, tell me what's the matter now': Semiotic and developmental perspectives on communication in psychoanalytic infant treatment
• Index