The colourless canvas: Representation, therapeutic action and the creation of mind

Abstract

Freud’s initial formulations viewed psychoanalysis as working towards the rediscovery of psychic elements – thoughts, feelings, memories, wishes, etc. – that were once known – represented in the mind, articulatable, thinkable – but then disguised and/or barred from consciousness. His subsequent revisions implicated a second, more extensive category of inchoate forces that either lost or never attained psychic representation and, although motivationally active, were not fixed in meaning, symbolically embodied, attached to associational chains, etc. Following Freud’s theory of representation, the author conceptualizes these latter forces as “unrepresented” or “weakly represented” mental states that make a demand upon the mind for work and require transformation into something that is represented in the psyche, if they are to be thought about or used to think with. This paper describes, discusses and presents illustrations of this transformational process (figurability),that moves intersubjectively from unrepresented or weakly represented mental states to represented mental states, from force to meaning, from the inchoate to mental order.

Key words:

• metapsychology
• construction
• figurability
• representation
• unrepresented psychic states
• enactment
• representational imperative
• intersubjectivity

Notes

1. He maintained this distinction when he introduced the structural theory (Freud, 1923, p. 24).

2. The theoretical frame that I am using should not be confused with that of Stern (1997), who writes of ‘unformulated experience.’ In contrast to Freud, Stern does not believe that the unconscious may contain organized, articulatable (i.e. ‘represented’ in the sense in which I will be using the term here) but repressed elements and/or mental states. Hence, he constructs his theory only in terms of dissociation and not in terms of repression.

3. I shall use the term, Experience, with a capital E, to indicate raw, existential Experience in contrast to the more ordinary ‘experience’ with a small e, which refers to that which is potentially knowable and amenable to self‐perception and self‐reflection. While aspects of ‘small e experience’ are sometimes unconscious, they are organized psychic elements that are potentially knowable, articulatable and contained within the psyche. In contrast, Experience with a capital E, like Bion’s (1970)O, can never in its unmodified form be known or contained within the mind as thought or perception and is most usefully thought of as pre‐psychic or proto‐psychic. I will further assume, following Bion (1970), that ‘Experience’ is inherently traumatic unless and until it can be transformed into something containable within the mind, i.e., into ‘experience.’ So, for example, the capacity to use what we colloquially would call ‘a traumatic event ‘and turn it into a work of art would, according to this formulation, be an example of Experience (= the raw, unmodulated happening) being transformed into experience (= the perceived and articulatable version of that Experience) and then the latter being further transformed into the work of art.

4. See Ahumada (1994) and Levine (1999) for contemporary discussions of these problems.

5. Although there is controversy surrounding what best to call this process of transformation and movement from unrepresented to represented mental states, I shall follow the usage preferred by Botella and Botella (2005) and refer to it as an act of ‘psychic figurability.’

6. Jean‐Claude Rolland (1998) speaks of a ‘compulsion to represent’ [compulsion de représentation].

7. Note that while the word ‘image’ is used, presentations may go beyond visual, pictographic presentations and may occur in any sensory modality.

8. Elsewhere, I have termed this ‘true thought’ (Levine, 2011a).

9. The fact that the presence of these failed areas of representation might be marked by the appearance of rigid pathological organizations, which are associated with overly rigid, destructive and aggressively imbued phantasies and objects – i.e. ‘representations’ of another kind – adds a complexity to the theory that requires further explication. Suffice to say for now that Green (2005a, 2005b) has discussed the ways in which decathexis and foreclosure produce discontinuities and absence (negative hallucinations, psychic voids) in one’s internal world, i.e. failures of representation, that are often marked and defended against by pathological organizations and object relations.

10. See, for example, Lecours and Bouchard (1997) for an attempt to distinguish different levels of mental ‘inscription.’

11. This is the assumption behind Ferro’s (2002) extension of the Barangers’ (2009) Field Theory: insofar as any narrative dialect must refer back to and reflect the alpha and beta elements from which it is derived, then any set of narrative dialects should be numerous, but not infinite.

12. Cassorla (in press) has described how the unwinding of a temporary stalemate may begin with and even require an unconscious, jointly created enactment, which not only gives form to something nascent, not yet or only weakly represented, but also calls attention to its emergent existence.

13. To the extent that each of us, even the healthiest neurotic, has an unstructured, unrepresented portion of our mind (i.e., the majority of the Id), then each of us will have the capacity to and the need for transformative activity of the kind I am describing. In the treatment of neurotic patients, however, this work may rely more on the patient’s internalized capacities for figuration and so be less dependent upon the co‐constructive activity of the analyst and therefore less easily noticed.

14. See also Mitrani (1995), who refers to these phenomena as ‘unmentalized.’

15. It is in part for this reason that recent authors (e.g. Green, 2005a, 2005b; Hoffman, 1994; Levine, 2011b; Levine and Friedman, 2000; Natterson and Friedman, 1995; Ogden, 1994a; Stern, 1997; Stolorow et al., 1994; Widlöcher, 2004, among many others) have described some meanings that emerge in analysis as being ‘co‐constructed’ or derived intersubjectively. The need to give articulatable form to that which is unrepresented or weakly represented (i.e. that which is pre‐psychic‐ or proto‐psychic) may also account in part for the emphasis on interpretation of the here‐and‐now of the analytic session.

16. “Somatic outcomes are & attempts – presumably last‐ditch attempts – to mobilize a reparative aim in ‘another’ [e.g. the analyst], whose value as an object is at the relevant time imperceptible and uncertain” (Aisenstein, 1993, p. 371).

17. See also Bion (1962, 1970, 1992) on ‘dream work alpha’ and myths (Bion, 1963) and Ogden (2004) on ‘dreaming the patient’s undreamt dreams.’

18. Ferro (2002) has described how such flashes may appear as visual pictograms, which he suggests may reflect newly created alpha elements. See also Rocha Barros (2000).

19. While Ogden’s third clinical example moves in the direction I am trying to describe –“There was a spontaneous/unplanned quality to the intervention/question, whose meanings the analyst began to recognize and silently verbalize only” (1994b, p. 221) after the action took place – his emphasis seems to be on the analyst’s using action to express and convey meanings to the patient that the analyst had already thought out and articulated for him or her self (e.g. p. 229, example 1).

20. The unconscious, unintentional, spontaneous nature of Botella’s initial action also distinguishes it from other formulations of non‐interpretive therapeutic actions, such as Alexander’s corrective emotional experience (Alexander and French, 1946) and Bibring’s (1954) manipulation, which are seen as conscious, thought out and intentional.

21. For an elaboration of the concept of void, see Lutenberg, 2007.

22. This has implications for our understanding of countertransference. If the analyst’s act of figurability does not work for both patient and analyst, then no matter how successful it is for the analyst’s psychic economy, from a therapeutic perspective, it may be tantamount to a defensive withdrawal from the patient.

23. This case has been described elsewhere (Levine, 2009).