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Betrayal

Twenty-seven year old Carla sits crying in my office, her eyes red, shredded tissues in her lap. “I can’t believe it happened again,” she says. “I thought Martin was different – kind, sensitive. I couldn’t imagine him being unfaithful. I don’t understand why this keeps happening to me!”

And that, I think to myself, is exactly the question. Carla is tall, attractive, shapely, smart, articulate, funny and yet Martin is the third man who’s been unfaithful to her. For the moment, however, Carla needs to deal with the immediacy of her pain.

“I thought I’d surprise him,” she continues. “Bring us Thai food for lunch. I knew he’d be writing. Or I thought he’d be writing. I didn’t even register the strange car in his driveway. Until he didn’t answer the door. I rang and rang. My stomach started to get all queasy. He finally answered in a bathrobe, tried to make some feeble excuse, but I’m not stupid. I threw the food at him and ran. I wanted to key the girl’s car as I went, but I knew that would be dumb. So here I am, betrayed again. What’s wrong with me?” she asks, beseechingly.

Odd, I muse, I had a similar experience with a man I dated 40 years ago, showing up at his door only to find him with another woman. I was both devastated and enraged. But that was a long time ago, those feelings long gone, not distracting me from my role as therapist.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you, Carla. But I do think it’s important to understand why this scenario does keep repeating. What are your thoughts?”

“I don’t know!” she responds, crying. “My parents have been together for over 40 years. I’d be shocked if my father ever cheated on my mother.”

“And your mother?” I ask.

“What!?” she says, furrowing her brow. “You’re asking if my mother ever cheated on my father?” she asks, incredulously.

I nod.

“That’s impossible. My mother was the least sexual person around.”

“Is that because she’s your mother or …?”

“My mother pulled away when my father tried to be affectionate. And sometimes I could hear them arguing. He was frustrated.”

“So why are you so sure he was never unfaithful?”

“Because he wasn’t that type.”

“Obviously, Carla, I’m not saying that your father was unfaithful. I have no idea. But I do think it’s interesting that you’re so convinced he wasn’t.”

Shaking her head, she says, “My father stressed the importance of good moral values, insisted we go to church, lectured us on being good people. He’s a wonderful man.”

I’m surprised by Carla’s naiveté. I think of the people I’ve known – both men and women - who were unfaithful to their partners. Many of them were good people.

“Two questions. Do you think only “bad” men are unfaithful? And are there similarities between the men you’ve dated and your father?”

“Actually, Martin reminded me of my father. He even looks a bit like him.” She smiles uncomfortably. “You think I have an Oedipal thing going with my father?”

“What do you think?”

Carla looks out the window. After a pause she says, “My father put up with a lot from my mother. She’s difficult, demanding, cold, particularly to him. He dotes on me. I love him a lot so, yes, maybe I’m kind of in love with my father.”


Well, I think to myself, that opens up lots of possibilities. Does Carla choose unavailable men so that she can remain faithful to her father? Is her father more of a womanizer than she thinks and is she choosing men who are like her father? And if they’re like her father does the relationship feel incestuous so that she unconsciously does something to subvert it? If her mother is cold, is she choosing men like her mother to try to win in the present that which she lost in the past? Does she try to be not her mother and end up being too smothering and intense? Lots of questions, none of which will be answered today.

“How do you feel, Carla, about being kind of in love with your father and how does it affect your relationships?”

“I don’t know. Right now, all I know is that I’m sad. I’ve lost again.”

“As in you’ve lost Martin and lost your father again?”

“I haven’t lost my father,” Carla declares emphatically.

“Except that he’s with your mother, not you,” I respond gently.

“Oh, I get it. I don’t know. This has gotten too Freudian.”

“It’s time for us to stop for today, but you opened up lots of things today and I’m sure we’ll get back to them.”

Enemies on the Couch. Why is War Endless?

Interview with Vamik Volkan, M.D.

By: Donna Bentolila

Dr. Volkan, psychoanalyst, four time nominee for the Noble Peace Prize, spoke with me in October of 2013 regarding the development of large group identity that results in brutal confrontations amongst groups due to ethnic, religious or political differences.

History shows us that human beings have fought and killed each other since time immemorial. The advance in civilization has not been sufficient to arrest this aggression. The urgent problems faced by our world today lead us to think that this problem will continue to exist, perhaps in an even broader scale, due to the technological advances allowed by science.

Vamik Volkan is particularly schooled in these matters. In his professional career he has dedicated his life as observer, mediator and participant, to the study of ethnic conflicts, civil wars, terrorist attacks, identification with political leaders, and possible ways to intervene with adversarial groups who have long been in conflict with one another.

Dr. Vamik Volkan was born in Cyprus, is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry of the Virginia School of Medicine, Emeritus training Analyst of the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, Past President of the International Society of Political Psychology, Member of the Psychoanalytic Society of Virginia, The Turkish North-American Society of Neuropsychiatry and the American College of Psychoanalysts.  Dr. Volkan is also the Senior Erik Erikson Scholar at the Erikson Institute of Education and Research of the Austen Riggs Center, Stockbridge, Mass.  He has been awarded honorary Doctorates from the University of Kuopio, Finland, and from the University of Ankara in Turkey.

For almost three decades, Dr. Volkan coordinated interdisciplinary teams in multiple problematic areas around the globe. He was able to engage important representatives of “enemy groups” in order to sustain non-official dialogues for long periods of time. His work in this field has allowed him to develop new theories regarding the behaviors of large groups in times of peace and in times of war.

Dr. Volkan was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times, with the support of 27 countries. His wide and fruitful range of publications surpasses well over 40 volumes.  His teaching has addressed clinical questions about mourning, psychotherapeutic technique, psychology of large groups – their ”traumas“ and       “chosen glories”, the intergenerational transmission of trauma, the psychology of terrorist leaders and an autobiographical narration of his international work, including the founding of the Initiative for an International Dialogue.

“Enemies on the Couch: A Psychopolitical Journey Through War and Peace”, is his new book in which he illustrates how psychological factors affect international relations, and how an interdisciplinary group knowledgeable about those factors can advance and help to establish a peaceful coexistence.

My interest in his work is long standing. In 2005 I had the privilege of meeting him personally and beginning an exchange that has continued to the present. The generosity with which he shares his knowledge is admirable and his amazing international trajectory never takes away from the kindness and simplicity that characterize him.

Interview with Dr. Volkan

1) You are a Training and Supervising Analyst for the American Psychoanalytic Association who has worked in private practice. What led you to become interested in questions beyond the individual and to the dynamics of large groups?

In 1979 the then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat went to Israel. When he addressed the Israeli Knesset he spoke about the existence of a psychological wall between Arabs and Israelis and stated that psychological barriers constitute 70 per cent of all problems between these two people. This statement was a turning point in my professional life. The American Psychiatric Association’s Committee on International Affairs of which I was a member was given the task of examining Sadat’s statement. With the blessings of the Egyptian, Israeli and American governments, my colleagues and I brought influential Egyptians, Israelis, and then later Palestinians together for a series of unofficial negotiations that took place between 1979 and 1986. This is how my psychopolitical journey started.

2) Can you tell us how the Virginia Institute for the Study of International Affairs was founded? What are its aims and framework? How has it developed since its establishment in 1987?

When the Egyptian-Israeli unofficial dialogue series ended in 1987, I opened the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction (CSMHI) at the University of Virginia’s School of Medicine. The CSMHI’s interdisciplinary team (made up of psychoanalysts, former diplomats, political scientists and historians) became involved in bringing together influential Americans and Soviets for a series of dialogues at the time when the Cold War was ending. Later we conducted years-long unofficial diplomatic dialogues between Russians and Estonians, Croats and Bosnian Muslims, Georgians and South Ossetians and Turks and Greeks. Apart from bringing opposing political representatives together for psychoanalytically informed psycho-political dialogues at different locations, we also evaluated the psycho-political environments in societies that had experienced massive traumas. For example, we studied Albania after the death of dictator Enver Hoxha and Kuwait after Saddam Hussein’s forces were removed from that country. I also participated in the former US President Jimmy Carter’s International Negotiation Network (INN) activities in the 1980s and 1990s. This helped me to meet many political leaders in various countries and investigate political leader-followers psychology.

I retired from the University of Virginia in 2002 and the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction was closed three years later. During the last ten years I spent several months each year at the Erikson Institute of Education and Research of Austen Riggs Center in Massachusetts as the Senior Erik Erikson Scholar. In 2008 the Erikson Institute became the administrative home of the International Dialogue Initiative (IDI). Lord John Alderdice,Convenor of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords in London and a psychoanalyst, Robi Friedman, a group analyst from Israel and I are co-chairs of the IDI. With the help of two more psychoanalysts from the Austen Riggs Center, Edward Shapiro and Gerard Fromm, we have been bringing influential people from Iran, Israel, Lebanon, West bank, Turkey, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom and United States together twice a year and examining world affairs from different cultural and political views. Meanwhile, for over two years, I was involved in bringing together influential people in Turkey, both Turkish and Kurdish origin, in order to open a dialogue between them and come up with suggestions for the solution for the so-called “Kurdish problem” in Turkey.

I have been involved in international relations for over 30 years. These experiences directed me to begin to develop a large-group psychology in its own right.

3)  In your new book “Enemies on the Couch, A Psychopolitical Journey through War and Peace”, you review some of the work that you have done during the last thirty years in war and conflict zones.  How has your perspective and thinking evolved in regard to what you refer to as “large group identity”?

I use the term “large group” to refer to tens of thousands or millions of people, most of whom will never know or see each other, and who share a feeling of sameness, a large-group identity. A large-group identity is the end-result of myths and realities of common beginnings, historical continuities, geographical realities, and other shared linguistic, societal, religious, cultural and political factors. In our daily lives we articulate such identities in terms of commonality such as “we are Apaches; we are Lithuanian Jews, we are Kurdish; we are Slav; we are Sunni Muslims; we are communist.” Yet, a simple definition of this abstract concept is not sufficient to explain the power it has to influence political, economic, legal, military and historical initiatives or to induce seemingly irrational resistances to change such initiatives. When our large group is attacked, our large group narcissism is hurt, or we are humiliated as Arabs, as Jews, as Americans—we begin clinging to our large group identity.  In certain situations, large group identity becomes much more important than our individual identity. Wars, war-like situations, terrorism, diplomatic efforts, shared losses and gains associated with shared mourning or elation are all carried out in the name of large-group identity. This is true even though this psychological source is usually hidden behind rational real-world considerations—political, economic, legal, and moral.

4) Can you describe what large group psychology is in its own right?

Considering large-group psychology in its own right means making “formulations” as to the unconscious and dynamic aspects of shared psychological experiences and motivations that exist within a large group and that initiate specific social, cultural, political, ideological processes that influence this large group’s internal and external affairs, just as we make formulations about the internal world of our individual patients in order to summarize our understanding of their internal worlds and interpersonal relationships. Let me give an example:

We are very familiar with a person’s externalizing his or her unacceptable self and object images or projecting unacceptable thoughts or affects on another person. This creates a personal bad prejudice. “I am not the one who stinks; my neighbor is the one who stinks!” If we want to understand at least one key aspect of societal prejudice, we will try to describe what happens when a large-group uses externalization and projection. When a large group finds itself asking questions such as “Who are we now?” or “How do we define our large-group identity now?”—usually following a revolution, a war, a humiliating economic trauma, or freedom after a long oppression by “others”—it purifies itself from unwanted elements. Such purifications stand for large-group externalizations and projections. After the Greek struggle for independence Greeks purified their language from all Turkish words. After Latvia gained its independence from the Soviet Union its people wanted to get rid of some 20 dead “Russian” bodies in their national cemetery. After Serbia became independent following the collapse of communism Serbs attempted to purify themselves of Muslim Bosnians and that led to tragedies such as the one in Srebrenica. There are non-dangerous as well as genocidal purifications. Understanding the meaning and psychological necessity of purifications can help to develop strategies to keep shared prejudices within “normal” limits and from becoming destructive.

5)   What would you say is the most important factor as to why humans are often led to raise walls that end up separating communities in conflict with one another?

Even in the present globalized world where persons from different large groups live in locations with mixed populations, most of the time the “other” shared by thousands or millions of individuals is still on the opposite side of some kind of physical border: a legal political border of a nation, a geographical border created by nature between tribes or ethnic groups, or a border created by force when an enemy surrounds another large group.  When there is no extensive conflict between neighboring large groups, a physical border remains simply a physical border; when there is a conflict, the physical border assumes great psychological meaning as the border separating large-group identities.

As a way of handling the opposing large groups’ anxiety, two basic principles begin to govern the interactions between enemies in acute conflict:

1. Two opposing large groups need to maintain their identities as distinct from each other (principle of non-sameness).

2. Two opposing large groups need to maintain an unambiguous “psychological” border between them.

If a political border exists between the enemies, it becomes highly psychological. The aim of creating a psychological border is due to our wish to keep what one large group externalized and projected onto the “other” from returning to the first large group. 

6)  What can you tell us about the manner in which the marks of trauma and historical conflicts are transmitted from generation to generation?

Massive societal catastrophes can occur for any number of reasons, including natural or man-made disasters, political oppression, economic collapse, or death of a leader, but tragedies, brutalities and deaths that result from the deliberate actions of other ethnic, national, religious or ideological large groups called “enemies,” must be differentiated from other types of massive shared trauma. This is because they involve severe large-group identity issues. When the “other” who possesses a different large-group identity than the victims humiliates and oppresses a large group, the victimized large-group’s identity is threatened.

When a large group traumatized at the hand of the “other” cannot reverse it’s feelings of helplessness and humiliation, cannot assert itself, cannot effectively go through the work of mourning and cannot complete other psychological journeys, it transfers these unfinished psychological tasks to future generations. All tasks that are handed down contain references to the same historical event, and as decades pass, the shared mental representation of this event links all the  individuals  in the large group and evolves as a most significant large-group marker (Chosen Trauma). The chosen trauma makes thousands and millions of people designated – "chosen" – to be linked together.

When individuals regress they “go back” and repeat their

childhood ways of dealing with conflicts contaminated with

unconscious fantasies and mental defenses. When a large-group regresses the large-group also goes back and inflames chosen traumas. For example, under Slobodan Milosevic Serbians inflamed the 600-year-old image of the Battle of Kosovo.

When enemy representatives get together for dialogues they become spokespersons for their large groups. When one side feels humiliated they reactivate the images of historical events. For example, while discussing current international affairs, Russians might begin to focus on the Tatar-Mongol invasion or Greeks may refer to the loss of Constantinople; both events occurred centuries ago. When such images of past historical events are reactivated within a large group, a time collapse occurs. Shared perceptions, feelings, and thoughts about a past historical image become intertwined with perceptions, feelings and thoughts about current events. This magnifies the present danger. Unless a way is found to deal with the time collapse routine diplomatic efforts will most likely fail. Today’s extreme Muslim religious fundamentalists have reactivated numerous chosen traumas and glories. We need to study and understand them in order to develop new and hopefully more effective strategies for a peaceful world.

7)  If I understand your correctly, you view the ideas that Freud presents in “Mass Psychology and Analysis of the Ego” as lacking and insufficient in that they only address the intra-psychic.  What can you say about your contribution to this question?  How do your concepts of “large group identity,”  “shared glory” and “shared trauma” complement Freud’s ideas in his work on Psychology of the Masses?

Freud was the great discoverer of the hidden aspects of an individual’s mind. He also described some aspects of crowds and large groups. Generally speaking he told us what a large group means for an individual. Large-group psychology in its own right as I defined above is something new.

8)  In your book you underline how “the other,” being both enemy and friend, can quickly shift from one position to the other. You also remark how enemies are often alike, physically and psychologically. Can you please tell us more about this phenomenon and dynamic?

If someone shoots at you the danger is real. Enemies are both real and fantasized. Since one large-group externalizes and projects many unwanted things into the enemy the latter’s image includes elements that originally belonged to the first large group. In this sense the two opposing large groups become connected.

9)   In your latest book “Enemies on the Couch” you underline the importance of the “Initiative of Interdisciplinary Dialogue” in order to offer models of thinking that can help us to better understand social conflicts.  Please tell us more about this idea.

At the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction (CSMHI) we developed the “Tree Model” to tame conflicts between opposing large groups. The application of this methodology takes years----like it takes years to analyze an individual. It has three basic phases:

1-Psychopolitical assessment of the situation (representing the roots of a tree).

2-Psychopolitical dialogues between influential members of opposing groups (representing the trunk of a tree)

3-Collaborative actions and institutions that grow out of the dialogue process (representing the branches of a tree).

 

In Enemies on the Couch as well as in my several other books I describe this methodology in depth and give illustrations of its application.

10)  As a continuation of the last question, can you tell us how the knowledge that you have gained has helped you to create models to assist large communities after they have undergone massive traumas?

After a trauma at the hand of the “other” there are specific societal responses (due to specific circumstances and historical issues) mostly in the service of protecting and maintaining the large-group identity. There are also typical societal responses. For example, the large-group rallies behind the leader. If the leader cannot maintain “basic trust” severe splits and fragmentations occur within the large group; the large group focuses on minor differences between itself and enemy group; large group members experience increased large-group narcissism (it can be masochistic or malignant narcissism), magical thinking (or religious fundamentalism) and reality blurring; the physical border becomes the boundary of the large-group’s identity; the large group engages in behaviors symbolizing “purification;” the personality organization of the political leader becomes a significant factor in societal/political realities and so on.

After a massive trauma at the hands of enemies, or after a period of political oppression by a government the people in the victimized group experience a shared sense of shame, humiliation, and even dehumanization. They cannot be assertive, because expressing direct rage toward the oppressors would threaten their livelihoods and even their lives. Their helpless anger interferes with their mourning over losses that touch every aspect of their lives, ranging from their dignity to their property, relatives or friends. Shared unfinished psychological tasks are then passed on from generation to generation. So guilt experienced by people belonging to the victimizing group may also be involved in transgenerational transmissions.

How to deal with traumatized societies is a vast topic. The facilitating team needs to spend time in the field in order to assess destructive responses and find “entry points” to tame them. In many of my books, including in Enemies on the Couch, I give detailed examples.

11)  How did you come to consider yourself professionally as a “political psychologist”? Does this self-designation interweave global and personal perspectives?

I am a psychoanalyst working off the couch in order to understand large group psychology and find ways to tame, when possible, some large-group conflicts. I never called myself a “political psychologist”. But, many persons refer to me using this term.

We should also remember that there is no single theoretical or practical point of view or application of political psychology. Since I am also a psychoanalyst, I tried to examine both, conscious and unconscious motivations of how people with different large-group identities behave in peaceful or in stressful times. Other types of political psychologies depend more on the “logical” evaluations of conflicts and on “logical” solutions.

12) History shows us that humans have been slaughtering each other from time immemorial and that man will continue killing and murdering each other, perhaps in even larger numbers given the technological advances man has achieved. How do you understand the place of aggression in human beings? You seem to think, not without a dose of pessimism, that men will continue to slaughter each other.

There are various psychoanalytic theories on “aggression.” From a practical point of view, the human aggression as expressed in large-groups is here to stay. Psychoanalysts need to evolve a large-group psychology in its own right further if we wish to be effective in having a role in societal and international arenas.

Dr. Volkan, thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas on this all important subject for both us as psychoanalysts and for all of humanity.

Nota Bene: A Spanish language translation of this interview first appeared in volume 25 of the cultural online Journal Letra Urbana.

Donna E. Bentolila, L.C.S.W. is a Past President (2014) and a board member of the Southeast Florida Association for Psychoanalytic Psychology (SEFAPP). She is a Teaching Analyst at the Florida Psychoanalytic Institute and a member of the American and International Psychoanalytic Associations. She maintains a private in Boca Raton and in Miami.

An Eye for an Eye

“I’ll never be able to have sex again,” sobs 22 year old Ashley, her face, buried in her hands with her long brown hair falling forwards, her voice barely audible. “I don’t know how I could have been so stupid. I know better. I’m not some dumb freshman, for God’s sake. I know you don’t get drunk at a frat party and go have unprotected sex with some guy you’ve never met before. My life is over!” she wails.

It has been a month since Ashley confirmed that she has herpes. We have been dealing with nothing else since her diagnosis. She is understandably distraught, unable to move beyond the feeling that she has forever ruined her life.

I think about some of the patients who have, over the years, told me about having herpes: The 60 year old woman who felt forever dirtied and punished by God. The session with a man who began by saying he needed to tell me his “secret,” and was then for so evasive, that I became afraid he was going to tell me he had committed murder. The young woman who said she contracted herpes after she had been drugged and raped, only to tell me months later that she had fabricated that story to hide her shame. All tragic stories that forever cast a shadow over the person’s life. And now there is Ashley.

“I can’t believe I’ll never be able to have sex again. I’m only 22. I’ll never get married. Never have children.”

“Ashley, I’m by no means minimizing the pain and difficulty of having herpes, but it doesn’t mean you can’t have sex or get married or have children,” I say, trying to temper Ashley’s overwhelming feelings of despair.

“And risk doing to someone else what that asshole did to me! Never!!”



I think about the anger that almost invariably accompanies contracting herpes: the 60 year old who talked of being punished by God, my fantasy that my male patient might have committed murder, the young woman who fabricated a story of rape. Rage makes its way into the experience one way or another.

“I certainly understand your angry at that guy.”

“Yeah, I’m angry at him. Lot of good that will do me.”

“Well, it’s important that you’re aware of your anger, rather than being scared of it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re angry. You’d love to get back as this guy, but there’s really no way to do that. So you feel powerless and that makes you even more angry.”

“So, yeah, and what does all that mean?”

“You notice, Ashley, that you’re also getting angry with me, which is perfectly all right, but I think it’s an indication of how angry you feel and how easy it is to direct your anger at me or someone else.”

“Sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. It’s just important that we look at what’s happening and try to understand it because I think it’s related to why you think you can never have sex again or get married or have children. I think you’re afraid – not consciously, of course – that your anger would spill over to a new partner, that perhaps you’d want to give him herpes, just as it was given to you.”

“No way” Ashley says, shaking her head emphatically, her hair flying from side to side. “I’d never, ever want to do that to someone else.”

“I know you’d consciously never WANT to harm someone else, but your unconscious desire for revenge is another matter. If you’re afraid of wanting to hurt, you might try to protect others from what you’re afraid is your dangerousness by depriving yourself of the pleasure of sex and marriage and children.”

“But how could I possibly have sex with someone and know I could harm him - especially if you’re saying I want to harm him?”

Although Ashley’s question might sound as though she’s still stuck, I hear some hope for she’s at least considering the possibility of having sex again. I reply, “It’s not that you’d want to harm a new partner, it’s that you might be afraid your anger could be expressed in that way. And the more we can deal with your anger here, the more you know about your anger, the less afraid you would be of expressing it unconsciously.”

Affects and Passions of Our Times.

A Conversation with Lewis A. Kirshner

By: Donna E. Bentolila

 One morning in April of 2013, I spoke with Dr. Kirshner about affects and passions, a topic that investigators and psychoanalysts are re-thinking in light of recent research findings.

Lewis A. Kirshner is a psychiatrist as well as a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute.  He is a long time practicing clinician who is also interested in research. Dr. Kirshner is a former Director of an inpatient Unit of Mt. Auburn’s Hospital and has also worked in the outpatient unit at Harvard Community Health Plan and the Community Mental Health Center at Metropolitan–Beaverbrook. He is the author of Havinga Life, Self-Pathology after Lacan, edited by Routledge University Press in 2004.  He is also the editor of Between Winnicott and Lacan, A Clinical Engagement, a book he published in 2011 (Routledge Press). Dr. Kirshner has published numerous articles in the field of psychoanalysis and is a member of both the American and International Psychoanalytic Associations. He has taught and lectured in the United States and in France.

In your book Having a Life, Self-Pathology after Lacan, you dedicate an entire chapter to the subject of affect. Can you tell us how you understand and conceive of affects?

I think that in that chapter I tried to offer a partial view of affect underlying its symbolic construction. I see this subject as a form of communication, based on the inter-subjective dimension of affect. This is a highly complex topic. What I am most interested in with regards to affect is its function as part of an inter-subjective relationship, as an experience that is framed in a social community structured by symbolic patterns.  I believe that this is the central idea in my thinking and what I attempted to transmit in that book.

The current advances in the neurosciences offer various answers for many psychological processes which emphasize the predominant role that the brain plays. Do you think that the brain plays the most important role in the constitution of affects in human beings?

I find myself much more in this path now than when I wrote my book.  I believe that I have somewhat surpassed my resistances to the advancements of neurosciences and now believe that there is much to learn from this field.  The new developments no longer view the brain as a solitary or isolated organ but instead emphasize that the brains many parts and areas all work together and in conjunction. One needs to understand which parts are active in relationship to certain functions. 

Today there is a new field within the neurosciences which underscores what they call the “social brain.” That is a central idea today in the cognitive and social neurosciences. These sciences understand the brain as an organ that basically develops as an instrument towards subjectivity, which for me is the same as “intersubjectivity.”  I think that this model is transforming into something really important; there is therefore more interest today in the affective tools which infants have at their disposals, which at the onset are manifestations of a discharge of energy. 

At the beginning of life these “tools” are very primitive with regards to the level of the functioning of the brain; they are, however, an important base for what we call affects. Whether one refers to these primitive phenomena as emotions or as early signs of either emotional or affective states, or even as a type of phenomena of discharge, we can notice that they are different. One wonders how many types of affects are at our disposal, some believe in the existence of up to nine: fear, pleasure, joy, fury, disgust, repulsion, etc. These types of signs are very primitive and can be recognized from very early on. Affect, however, requires that they be subjectified, so that one can recognize it oneself and be able to be enter and participate in a human system of exchange.

Then we need the recognition of a human other who is meaningful to us…

Yes of course. The recognition of the other is crucial and the other is also absolutely necessary for our developmental growth.

In this cultural understanding of affect that you propose, what relationship do you find between the body and affect, indeed between affect and language?

Well, like we were just saying all these phenomena refer to very early types of interactions, where certain affects receive a certain type of specific responses that produce an internalization of certain sequences. For example, there are certain affects that may or may not be accepted by the mother, or that she ignores or fails to respond to; this leads to very early distortions in human development.  Therefore, from a strictly developmental perspective, where important research and experimentation is currently taking place, the question for us as psychoanalysts, which also coincides with the development that is taking place in the neurosciences, is that development does not occur simply from the “inside to the outside.” 

It is also not the case of an unfolding of a genetic “potential”; rather, it is the case, and this we need to realize since it is of utmost importance, that development is the result of a process of interaction, where the role of the other is crucial. What most counts in all this, to be sure, is the role of the mother, as well as an entire set of small others who belong to her environment.

The human other, the others who are meaningful, are all crucial in the constitution of affect. But going back to the relationship affect- body, you were telling us that you located it in those very early signs that are expressed in a bodily experience (joy, fear, disgust, etc.) which must become part of a process of subjectification so that they can be recognized and receive a name that allows them to be represented in our consciousness.

Yes, Freud himself had already referred to these very primitive affects in “An Outline of Psychoanalysis.” This is Freud’s great and final last paper.   Andre Green refers to this in some part of his work. Both authors suggest that hysterical attacks involve the discharges of affects related to the precocious sexual experiences of the child. Hysterical attacks are understood in this way, that is to say, as a memory that lives in the body and is acted-out and re-lived.  In that paper, Freud states that affects are memories of early experiences, of phylogenetic experiences.

When Freud speaks of phylogenetic experiences he may mean that these types of affective responses, prior to birth, are like residues that we carry in ourselves of generations and ancestors who have come before us.  This is a use which Freud makes of Lamarckian theory. Green also addresses this issue. He claims that the child’s very early experiences in relationship to his mother concern the body and that these experiences are the most powerful affective reactions. The baby experiences an affective excitation, whether in the form of fear, pleasure, or anger. 

Lacan, for his part, refers to the experience of jubilation which the baby experiences in regards to his own image in the mirror, and for sure he takes into account anxiety.  We can find in Lacan’s work references to this theory of affect, as in Freud, but in my view Green is the author who most develops this topic. He does so when he makes reference to these primitive affects as not yet mentalized, as not yet symbolized or represented, as if they are still in a certain animal level or state.

The other author who has worked on this topic and whom I quote in my book is Sylvan Tomkins. He is a pioneer with regards to these primitive affects and made this topic the center of his theory around human development. The group of analysts from Boston has been very interested in the topic of affect and they have taken it as an example of how we acquire relational knowledge and implicit knowledge.  Personally, I don’t follow that direction so much.

Could you describe for us the affects that you distinguish in human beings? And how do you understand the process by which each subject receives the affective traits with which he or she responds and navigates the world?

I believe that this was the central point in my chapter on affect in my book. There are cultural scenarios that offer patterns regarding the appropriate affective responses in relationship to certain situations, and how these must be interpreted. I focused more on an anthropological perspective. I could think of a myriad of examples where there are obvious cultural differences regarding how one must feel or how one should express one’s affects. The simple fact of maintaining a conversation with someone from another culture, even if it is very similar to ours, leads one to feel a bit outside and to lose some codes, including the way of saying hello to someone.

The example I use in my book is that of an anthropologist who converses with a community that is very different from hers and uses the personal pronoun “I” instead of “us”; her doing so ends up hurting the feelings of the group.  That is something that is really taboo in that  community. The members of the group felt that she was self-centered but what happened was that she had simply used the wrong pronoun. 

Not long ago I was talking with a colleague who supervises with me in a research study that we are doing on psychosis and we were reflecting about the elements that must be present so that a normal social interaction can occur. It is as if there was a script to follow and when it fails one becomes aware that there is something one is not doing correctly.

This reminds me of a term from the neurosciences: “prediction error.” These are two nouns in the neurosciences.  Some are saying that consciousness is related to a “prediction error”. We start an action, and we are not necessarily conscious about it until something doesn’t work right, until something fails. And it is at this point that we become conscious.  This is a theory where one suddenly becomes conscious of what one was trying to do and leads one to make a conscious effort to monitor the process of what one was doing.

I think we can say the same about affect.  We become conscious of what we feel when something fails in the process of affective exchange.  I think that this idea from the neurosciences is very interesting.

Some people experience intense anxiety or they are very impulsive. Could you explain to us how you understand the relationship between affect, the urgency of the drive, and the satisfaction of the drive?

 This subject is probably the weakest part of what I have to say. At least in the way I understand what Lacan says about the drives, is that in the last instance   the object of all these drives is the mother, they attempt to reach the mother, but fail. The subject simply receives something of her, a piece or a partial object. This seems to me to be Lacan’s original idea regarding the drives, namely, that they attempt to re-create a part of some original experience with the mother.

This would also be compatible with Green’s ideas, as a sort of motivational force, but for him Lacan leaves out the affect that associates with the drive and that is what Green underscores and highlights.  I believe that in Seminar XVII Lacan mentions that someone is about to publish on the question of affect and that this person misunderstood him, that he doesn’t know anything. I think he was referring to Green. It would have helped if both ideas ( Lacan’s and Green’s )  about affect could have been clarified.

You know, Green was very sensitive to the ways in which these primitive affects were excitable and pleasurable, but also about the fact that they are excessive or overly painful. And I think that Lacan also takes this question into consideration with his concept of jouissance. This is something that only the psychoanalysts can contribute to, this particular question around the role of this sort of primary driving search of jouissance.

We know all too well that intense emotional experiences can be both pleasurable and painful and that they provoke fear and de-center or destabilize the human subject. And because all this relates to impulsivity, I don’t know, it would seem that they are at different levels. It appears to me to be a discharge phenomenon.

But wouldn’t you say that someone feels or is impulsive when they are experiencing a high level of anxiety?

Yes, it is true, since one of the ways to deal with intense anxiety is through impulsive acts so that it can be discharged; but I don’t know if it is the only source of impulsivity. It certainly is one of them. We also have the question of how we learn to deal with our desires.  Children are generally very impulsive and careless, but that is normal at their age.  Nonetheless, they have to develop a way to mediate their impulses. This is an area of great interest.

What is your idea in relationship to the contemporary approaches of emotions that underline the preeminence of neuroplasticity?

Well, this connects with what we discussed previously. We know about the plasticity of the development of the brain and that it doesn’t follow a purely innate path.  It does follow an innate path in a way, but it is molded and requires exposure to a human other, to human voices, so that the brain can develop. 

The most obvious example is that one needs to listen to language; one needs to hear the phonemes in order to receive language.  The visual cortex, for example, needs to receive visual information to organize itself and develop and I think that the visual image of the other is crucial in order to be able to organize the human face, even if there might be a certain predetermined potentiality.   But in order to really recognize the face of the other, this must relate to a visual exposure.

The same happens with smell and with a variety of networks of neuroplasticity that are at stake in order to enhance and move development forward.  These are the advances of the neurosciences of the last 20 years, but the idea that the networks of neuroplasticity that underline the brain in some sense respond greatly to the experience or encounter with the human other is a fairly recent finding.

If we follow Lacan’s position of underscoring the preeminence of the symbolic, the preeminence of the Other in the birth of subjectivity, couldn’t we say that even if the human infant has a certain innate capacity, without the Other’s support, without the Other’s loving offer, or without the provision offered by the Other, in the manner that Winnicott understands it, the human infant would simply not be able to develop?

Yes, that is a just word “support”, the support of the other, and the idea of the mirror neurons.  Someone presented this theme for us this past week in Boston and told us that, in reality, the brain itself is a mirror system, not just some neurons, and that the brain has developed throughout evolution so as to function within a social frame. And this has to do with the unconscious theme of listening to the voice of the Other; we are listening to these voices all the time and they really change us, even if we are not present. These messages about us truly arrive to mark us.

We were mentioning that throughout the second part of the 20th Century, Andre Green wrote psychoanalytic studies of important value regarding the question of affect.  What else can you add about the contributions of Dr. Green?

Green is an author that I value deeply. I don’t believe him to be the most elegant in his style; sometimes he is a bit arrogant, for example in his book “The Living Discourse”, where he writes about affects and passions.  Yet, I believe that this is one of his best works. Green has tried to synthesize and to present a teaching; he has tried to organize this theme and to see if a consistent model could be developed.  I think that Lacan was not interested in this work; for him this brought about the risk of concretizing things more than what he aspired to. Maybe it is a question of personality styles, of someone who is more of a hysteric rather than someone who is more of an obsessive. I don’t know.

What we can say is that Green really offers us a very broad and profound reading of the question of affects, particularly in The Living Discourse, which is truly a revision of everything which has been thought around this particular topic, in Freud and beyond Freud.  He also makes reference to Lacan in this book and really argues with him there, whereas in other books such as “Private Madness” he is no longer as interested in Lacan.  I believe that his contribution to this topic and question is really important and that he is very rigorous in his research.

Are emotions and passions the same? Which would you say are the emotions and passions more characteristic of the times that we live in?

I was thinking in the question of religious passion, like in the case of the passion of Christ.  Green speaks about this and also about saints.

Lacan does as well. He claims that analysts occupy the position of saints…

And then, what type of passion is that? Would Lacan say that it is a masochistic passion? I don’t know, is it that we as analysts accept all the suffering? I don’t know … And would ask myself what the object of a passion such as that might be.  It does seem different to me to other passions that motivate people, including the great amorous passions; this seems to me really different from the passion of the saints, but maybe the similarity resides in the common amount of suffering that they each carry.

Green refers to passion as a residue of infantile experience, of the intensity of that experience, of an experience which the infant can barely tolerate because it reaches a limit which can de-subjectify, dissolve or annihilate the child. Green speaks about such cases as a question of energy, of discharge phenomena, so perhaps we could claim that passions are more on the side of the quantitative aspects of the drive and that emotions, as affects, might be the part that is more evolved, more developed and socialized of the drives.

What about the passion of hating?

Yes, hatred as a negative passion. We can also find ourselves with the passion to collect, to acquire, to build, to paint, the mania. In France they call it “la petite manie.” Maybe this is at the heart of this question, that we all have our petite manie, our “private madness”. For Green, passion is more closely related to madness, and he understands madness as a passion that exceeds the limits of containment.

I think about the need that Don Quijote had to have a companion like Sancho Panza, who had to be with him all the time.  I think he needed Sancho Panza to calm and soothe him, he had his passions and he needed Sancho to help him modulate them, in order to insure that they would not exceed a certain limit.

Yes, that is really interesting. Well, like Freud says regarding the progress of culture, it has more to do with our capacity of emptying out our passions in order to put them to work.

Anything more regarding the passions of the times we live? You have referred to the religious passion and we could say that such passions have indeed resurfaced in our times and have returned with great vigor and strength.

I an interview I recently gave for French television they asked me what was the life theme most important in Boston. I answered: “Work”. The people of Boston work all the time. Boston is a city of workaholics.  As I remember in Civilization and its Discontents work is central in American society. Maybe religious passion is a reaction against rationalization, globalization and programmation. I don’t know, it’s an interesting question. The passion for control is also important, to control life, what exceeds us, like the fear of death, the fear of existence, the fear of a lack of meaning.  We try to feel that life has a meaning and that we can somehow control it. Well, here we are.

Dr Kirshner, thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas on this all important subject for us psychoanalysts.

Nota Bene: A Spanish language translation of this interview first appeared in volume 24 of the cultural online journal Letra Urbana.

Donna E. Bentolila L.C.S.W. is a past President (2014) and a board member of The Southeast Florida Association for Psychoanalytic Psychology (SEFFAP). She is a Teaching Analyst at the Florida Psychoanalytic Institute and a member of the American and International Psychoanalytic Associations. She maintains a private practice in Boca Raton and Miami.