BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

EDITORIAL

Volume 12, Number 2, Winter 1995, pp.145-146

Bion once said that feelings are one of the few things which analysts have the luxury of being able to regard as facts. Yet in this important area there is a theoretical gap. Psychoanalysis has often been criticized for not having worked out a theory of affect and it is true that there is no systematic examination of emotional states in the literature, nor a useful description of the psychology of emotional arousal. As we know, Freud approached the question of affect by beginning with the notion of pleasure and unpleasure. Freud described emotions as derivatives of instincts, as quantities of energy that disturb homeostatic equilibrium and which, unless they are discharged, are transformed into anxiety. Now, in modern British psychoanalysis and object relations theory, we no longer tend to take the view that emotions are tensions that need to be discharged, but more that they are states of mind that wax and wane within relationships and that emotions must be accepted and lived with. Far from getting in the way, as Freud thought, feeling states constantly accompany us, intrinsically interesting and enriching in themselves, a guide to our actions and something we like to share with others. In fact, we believe that the trouble really begins when we try to get rid of feelings. What moves us, touches us or gives us anxiety or pain is what we need to think about and try to understand. This activity constitutes symbol formation, assigns structure in the unconscious and orientates us within a stable and reliable psychic world. In thinking about feeling, we bring order to the turmoil that is so often the inheritance of childhood and the flux that accompanies us through life.

The British Journal of Psychotherapy and the Freud Museum cosponsored a conference entitled "How do we think about feelings?" last spring in which André Green presented a paper which contributes to the theoretical gap in affect theory. His ideas are rooted in a Freudian framework but he has strong reservations about the importance of infant research in furthering psychoanalytic argument. He proposes four types of emotional experience - tonality, feelings, emotions and passions - and describes their power to infuse and spread, to invade and overwhelm. They affect fantasy and all mental representations, and Green outlines the relationship of affect to these psychic structures and to consciousness and unconsciousness. Three more papers that elaborate how affect and idea combine to create meaning in clinical work were presented at the conference by Rosine Perelberg, Luis Rodriguez de la Sierra and Eric Rayner. The conference was chaired by David Bell whose commentary on the Green and Perelberg papers is included here.

There has been some disagreement about Klein's concept of 'position' and what she meant by 'overcoming' the paranoid-schizoid position. Meira Likierman takes a careful look at Klein's texts, discussing the tragic motif in the loss of the object and the morality of the depressive position, contributing to the evolution of Kleinian theory as psychic growth. Irma's dream is the focus for Siân Morgan's paper on the origins of psychoanalysis and dream theory, postulating that the unknown 'navel' of the dream is the point of contact with the unknown of feminine desire which resists penetration and interpretation. This is the unconscious struggle between light and dark, between patriarchal and matriarchal power, symbolizing loss. In another paper, Paul Coombe writes about the Cassel Hospital as the setting for the treatment of a mother and child in an unusual case of salt poisoning, in which progress in the case was marked by increased depressive-level functioning.

In our multi-cultural world there are many occasions for clashes between cultures and their different values, standards and myths, and the clashes between cultures within our own field of psychotherapy are an obvious case in point. This makes it imperative to address the issue of conflict negotiation and resolution and how differences can be contained in an ethos that deals with plurality fairly. Dennis Brown offers a model for transcending cultural differences based on the biology of the couple and the family. In this there is movement from a primitive morality to a mature ethics that he argues extends beyond the tragic view of Klein's other-directed reparative morality and which includes the concerns of the self.

The work of Ruth Barnett and Judith Elkan with groups of people who came to England with the Kindertransporte is reported in this issue, with moving accounts of the conflict over knowing and not wanting to know what this traumatic experience of separation and loss meant in their lives. Recreation and repetition of the traumatic events so often took place instead of processing and thinking about them, these experiences that 'nothing could ever put right'.

With the demand for audit of both public and private psychotherapy services comes the problem of how to conduct and to report audit projects. Jale Punter reports on an NHS department of psychoanalytic psychotherapy audit, which will perhaps inspire other reports in this important area. Finally, this issue features group analysis in that we present two group papers and several book reviews.

The next issue will include the last Clinical Commentary under the aegis of Marie Bridge, whom we thank for her work over the past years. We welcome the new organizer of this section, Katherine Arnold, a member of the Centre for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, the ACP and the Women Therapists Referral Service, who will begin presenting the Commentaries in Volume 13.