There are a number of currents flowing into the ND2.0 blog experiment. These reflect, differently, some certainty and uncertainty about the nature and purpose of the blog.
First, going into it, we understand that from a small, unpredictable email discussion list, members of the list will self-select to have a relationship to the blog as non-reader, or reader, or reader/participant.
Presumably the level of engagement of any list member with the blog has something to do with their sympathy/antipathy with a perception of the blog as a purposeful medium and “catch-basin” for their own engagement.
Second, there are specific announced vision/mission assertions with respect to the blog. These have already made the attempt to attract engagement, and, they also exist as a speculative suggestion about the future purpose of the blog.
Third, as I’ve mentioned, because the list is small and use of the blog as an expressive medium can be marked to actual participants, names can be named in the sense of knowing who is actually using the blog to express stuff.
Fourth, and maybe paradoxically, the list has come alive to some extent because of the ND2.0 initiative. This development could be quantified given that list activity is measurable over 13+ years.
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But what is the business of the list? In the run up to the blog development, over the past 8+ (?) years, it might be hard to describe the business of the list, since its unpredictability is partly a matter of how activity levels reflected ambivalence about its originating mission; how the group–over time–shrunk in size of membership; and, how uncertain any mutuality of purpose became over time.
(Since then we’ve surveyed some of these considerations, but it is my opinion this survey reveals a strange set of data that reads like an idealization. Again, this is seemingly the case to me because names can be named. If we strip away from postings all stuff related to the ND2.0 initiative, I don’t think we come up with a picture of the list as a predictably active place to generate responses to one’s, as-it-were, call.)
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The question about what the future of ND2.0 is, or futures are, is more settled than what the future of the list is. This is so even if the former represents an imagined state of future development.
Yet, I return to the idea that we can name names with respect to assessing inclinations. Well, *****, this interests, perhaps, only me!
Just from my own perspective, I “see” the blog as supposing an organic development based in inclination of a tiny subset of the list. Right now: Stephen and Eldon. It seems the blog grips Jer and Mike and Frank. Maybe Simon. But there isn’t any reason right now to assume exactly how gripping the blog is within the list overall.
Also, already and necessarily, a sub-set mini-list has broken out of both the list and blog so as to imagine the future of the ND2.0 experiment. This–at least–makes sense to me personally because it seems better to have this discussion outside of the ambivalent field of the list. which is to suggest what I’ve already stated: I see no reason to care much about what the list thinks about a project the list is ambivalent toward. Of course in using the term “list” in this way I’m pointing at the people who are ambivalent.
[related-links]
Book Review: Traumatic Experience in the Unconscious Life of Groups.
The Fourth Basic Assumption: Incohesion: Aggregation: Massification
(Earl Hopper)
Jaime Ondarza Linares
Hopper’s central point is that ‘in the context of basic assumptions in general, Incohesion: Aggregation: Massification is a basic assumption, and if so, is it a fourth basic assumption or a first assumption?’ As is well known, the three Bionian Basic Assumptions constitute a protomentality to which individuals in a group, who are polarized in a particular valence, conform as a defence against psychotic anxieties which are mostly conceived according to Kleinian principles. Hopper claims that the model of ‘human development’ of the independent psychoanalyst implies that the fear of annihilation and the fear of separation is rooted within the traumatogenic process and is at the heart of the human condition. And – ‘It follows that there are at least four psychotic anxieties and at least four defensive or protective basic assumptions’. It also follows that incohesion should be called the first basic assumption. Hopper postulates a ‘pre-schizoid position’ (remembering Hodgen’s ‘autistic contiguous position’) in which the development of crustacean and amoeboid defences against the fear of annihilation are constructed. The concept and the significance of trauma is essential. The fourth (or ‘first’) basic assumption ‘develops within the context of a traumatogenic process within a transgenerational context’. Thus the b.a. is generated in a relational process (pathogenesis) and subsequently the affected members tend to perpetuate it in the social unconscious, being re-enacted (personalized) in groups under special (pathoplastic) conditions.
I would like to mention in passing some related thought: the traumatogenic process introjected during the pre-schizoid position of individual members, constitutes not only a protomental and predominantly transient projective status as in the classical Bionian A.B., but a sort of relational stigma or pre-structure, that could be located in a ‘metapsychological topos’.
Group Analysis 2004:37
The eminent Earl Hopper provides many excellent articles in the journal Group Analysis.
Available via Sage Journals, and especially so during their free trial, the one that ends very soon, and the one you’re all going to tell your local academic library about. eh?
The context for this excerpt is very particular. However, I’m offering it for the closing reference to baO.
excerpt from:
THE FORGOTTEN SELF:
With the Use of Bion’s Theory of Negative Links
Rafael E. Lopez-Corvo
THE FALSE SUB-SELVES
Winnicott originally polarized false and true selves. However, Winnicott’s false self can be considered as containing two false subselves as well (Lopez-Corvo 1996), one complying or pleasing, which I refer to as the “complying false-self,” and another aggressive, which I call the “negativistic false-self.” The latter is often confused with a true self 1
POLARIZATION OF THE FALSE SELVES
The “complying false self” attempts to deceive an imaginary castrator projected into the outside object by providing that object with what the patient believes that object wants. This false subself is related to early oral fixations. The, other, “negativistic false self.” is hidden, vengeful, and related to anal-sadistic early object relations, which usually determine certain forms of acting out. This negativistic false self is the complete opposite of the complying false self and attempts to provide the outside object with exactly the opposite of what the patient believes that object wants. Between the two false selves a paranoid-schizoid circularity takes place, where a great need to comply and deceive induces castration anxiety and fear of “fusing” with the object’s desire, of just becoming the object’s wish and changing into a lie. This fear increases the need for a negativistic false self as a Psychoanalytic Review, 93(3), June 2006 ! 2006 N.P.A.P. 364 RAFAEL E. LOPEZ-CORVO way of attacking the castrator and providing the patient with an identity, albeit a negative and false one.
THE COMPLYING FALSE SELF The complying false self represents a universal form of defense, present to a greater or lesser degree in most patients, although more obvious in borderline pathologies. It characterizes a pleasing behavior with the purpose of deceiving, pacifying, and controlling a possible castrator, determining the direction of the transference as well as of interpretations. It could be described as an inversion of the natural order of desires, where the Other’s wish is privileged over the wish of the self.
II.
BION’S THEORY OF LINKS
Bion referred to the phenomenology of three links, +L (love),
+H (hate), and +K (knowledge), as well as negative ones: −L, −H, and −K. According to him, “negative” links do not represent opposite emotions: for instance, −L is not equivalent to +H. About −L and −H, as far as I can determine, Bion said very little, whereas about −K he was much more explicit (Lopez-Corvo, 2003, pp. 36–37, 93–94). Positive links are related to truth, while negative ones are associated with lies and evacuatory processes. The former are the product of a “maternal reverie,” which can be observed during normal growth, when a mother–child relationship is established as a container–contained interaction dominated by a “commensal” link, that is, when the three variables involved— self, object, and the relationship between them—all benefit from each other. In this condition the baby projects his feelings inside the mother, for instance, that he is dying, and then reintrojects them after the mother has changed them into something more bearable to the baby’s mind. This condition represents a basic model where the apparatus for thinking thoughts will be structured as well as the growth of K (knowledge). On the other hand, if the situation were dominated by envy—baby’s and mother’s— the baby would split and project his feelings inside the breast together with envy and hatred, which would hinder the possibility of establishing a container–contained relationship of a “commensal” type. Under such circumstances, the breast is felt to enviously denude all good and valuable elements capable of metabolizing the baby’s fear of death, and in its place it will force back denigrated residues that will determine the manifestation of a high level of anxiety, or in Bion’s terms, a “nameless terror.” It corresponds to a container–contained interaction between the baby and the breast, represented by Bion as −K. Such a condition is serious indeed because not only does the breast not mitigate the fear of death, but it also takes away the desire to live (Bion, 1962, pp. 97–99). 368 RAFAEL E. LOPEZ-CORVO
Because complying is not real love and revenge is not true hate, the false selves are related to negative links, where the “complying false self” corresponds to −L, and the “negativistic” one to −H. Though we might promptly agree with complying being equal to −L, there might be some disagreement as to why −H should not be considered true aggression. It is possible that Bion’s use of the term “hate” was not as accurate as Freud’s use of the term “aggression.” however, Bion may have preferred to use hate because he was referring to an emotion and not to a drive. In any case, what seems to be important is to discriminate between what we might call a true or a false feeling of hate. Why should the aggression present in the vengeful behavior of a negativistic false self be considered false? I believe the difference depends not so much on the nature of the feeling itself, but on the nature of the object toward which the emotion is being expressed. For instance, aggression expressed in transference toward a “father- like” internal object projected into the analyst is not true aggression against the analyst; instead, it represents false hate or −H, aimed at a narcissistic object placed outside by means of projective identification mechanisms. Such aggression can also be directed toward an internal object, in ways I have previously described as mechanisms of self-envy (Lopez-Corvo, 1994, 1995). Both the compliant and the negativistic aspects of the false self are related to mechanisms of projective identification present in the paranoid-schizoid position. They are defensive against an awareness of the process of mourning toward separateness of the object and one’s dependence upon it, conditions that are present in the depressive position and of a true self. In summary, I hypothesize a direct relationship between Bion’s concept of negative links −L and −H, on the one hand, and the complying and negativistic false selves, on the other. Furthermore, a significant amount of false self, as observed in borderline pathologies, induces a state of −K, which could be considered an empty self. Winnicott (1960) declared that the false self hides the true self; I add that not only does the false hide the true, but the former also hinders, alienates, proscribes, and forgets the latter, making it impossible for the true self to evolve. Expressed in terms of the theory of links, this formulation can be stated in the following way: −L and −H induce a THE FORGOTTEN SELF 369 condition of −K, of “without-ness,” which I propose to call an empty or “forgotten self.”
THE FORGOTTEN SELF
What I referred to as the forgotten self is also not a true self. The true self is just possibly parallel to Bion’s O, similar to the becoming of time, something that takes place and then vanishes, because it only exists while it is becoming, as in Plato’s description in the epigraph to this paper. The forgotten self, on the other hand, has a negative presence that stays still until it is changed with the help of insight. It is a “minus self” directly linked to minus knowledge or −K.
excerpt – THE FORGOTTEN SELF<
full paper
Menaggio was very quiet, especially at night, and we found it difficult to find anywhere to eat. So we ate at the hotel café, which provided regulation pasta and salad. Breakfast there was also typical of Italy so far—a croissant (or brioche, they call them) with some sugary coating—the ones without sugary coating are called ‘salade’ as far as I can discern, and are meant to contain ham and cheese—a glass of fresh orange juice, a pot of flavoured yoghurt, and either tea or coffee. We liked the café so much, though, we brought down our laptops and stayed there for an hour or so working on preparation for the Bologna seminars, the lake out one window, and the neck-straining snow-capped mountain out the other.
- view from the cafe of the hotel du lac, menaggio
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A 2 vector schema, based in two dichotomies. Drawn from our list channel discussion I will add to this schema, and, create several more, This kind of schema has been popularized ever since the Boston Consulting Group brought out its market growth matrix. Yet, the representation of 2 factor data using quadrants has ancient origins.
Group Entry Schema
This schema is merely a ‘take.’
Added later. The take is about a general schema, not a snapshot of a particular group. The attempt here is to characterize easy/difficult entry conditions along two different valuations of variability discoverable as
problems of entry.
A schema such as this one is problematicized the more it is reified.
This noted, it is not impossible to imagine, (imagination being what it is!) that real world valences could be attached to the ‘circles’ if there was a means for assessment.
I can’t help it—when I see LHR being attached to my baggage, I get a feeling which is hard to explain. A sense of romance, of promise, of something bigger than me creeps into my mind. It isn’t something you explain in words, but the feeling is there, from just those letters, by themselves, intimating I am going somewhere of great significance. This feeling does not come from seeing the letters SYD either, even though it means I will be going home. It might evoke these feelings if the code for SYD was instead KFS for Kingsford Smith, similar to NY’s main airport being JFK. It does not come when I see NRT, although those letters also speak to me of excitement, visual interest, a world of wonder and possibilities to come. No, it is LHR which creates a special sense. A sense of history and staid conservancy overlaid with memories and feelings from the late 20th century when London was the centre of the cultural universe for a young me interested in fashion, music, and art. It means the place where Concorde regularly took off and landed, and the place which handles the highest frequency of air traffic in the world. It means I am travelling to the capital of the English-speaking world, a cornucopia of a place, a multicultural circus of a place, an old-fashioned, hip-hopping, vibrant and miserable place.
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