Jacob's Ladder

by Klein, Josephine

• ISBN13: 9781855759367
• ISBN10: 1855759365
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-12-01
• Publisher: KARNAC BOOKS

Summary

In this fascinating work, Josephine Klein considers mysticism - a world of ineffable experience - to see if it might have anything to teach those in the therapeutic world and invites the reader to look at newer ways of psychoanalytic thinking. She uses artists and writers of the past to help illuminate contemporary issues.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE Introduction Bach and Handel, transparency and quiddity	1	(24)
Introduction	1	(1)
Definitions: the numinous, the mystic dimension, spiritual realms	2	(2)
How Bach and Handel use language	4	(3)
How Bach and Handel relate to the shadow side	7	(3)
How Bach and Handel match words and music	10	(2)
Transparency and quiddity, words and music	12	(1)
The concept of quiddity	13	(1)
Gerard Manley Hopkins	14	(3)
C.P. Snow, a contrast	17	(2)
Clinical considerations	19	(6)
CHAPTER TWO Methodology, language, focus, limits, assumptions, method	25	(18)
The nature of theories	26	(1)
Definitions	27	(2)
Nouns and verbs, words for things and words for processes	29	(2)
Words for feelings: category affects and vitality affects	31	(2)
The scope of this investigation and its limits	33	(4)
Western, Judeo-Christian assumptions	37	(2)
Problems of selecting from so many sources, and problems of authenticity	39	(4)
CHAPTER THREE To sing in the presence of a lion—to talk about the ineffable	43	(18)
Attempting a natural history of lions: monism and theism	45	(5)
My Lion? Yours? Ours? Positivism and other stances	50	(2)
What is a lion—really? A religious entity?
A collective representation? What?	52	(3)
Is the lion an animal? A symbol? Either? Both?	55	(2)
Ritual	57	(1)
Is the Lion for specialists? Via negativa and via positiva	57	(4)
CHAPTER FOUR The experience of the Holy: Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans	61	(18)
Mysterium tremendum and worship	64	(3)
Mysterium tremendum, quietism and holy living	67	(6)
Worship	73	(2)
Clinical considerations	75	(4)
CHAPTER FIVE Unselfish love—some theories	79	(24)
Unselfish love	81	(1)
Psychoanalytic ideas	82	(3)
Beatrician moments	85	(1)
Recognition: I am known and can know	86	(1)
Kenneth Wright's contribution	87	(3)
Recognition and affect-attunement	90	(3)
Idealizing, and loving what is	93	(2)
Love, affect-regulation, and the reality of other people's rights	95	(1)
The role of the father in the development of unselfish loving and living	96	(1)
The loving parental couple internalized	97	(6)
CHAPTER SIX Love, some examples	103	(24)
Example: the sense of absence, of lack and of longing for love	104	(2)
Love and the life-cycle	106	(3)
Examples of exclusivity sometimes amounting to phobia	109	(1)
Example: a lack of claims secures a father's love	110	(1)
Examples of childishness, eager obedience, and glad submission	111	(2)
Example: love as a (well-intentioned) persecutor, the Hound of Heaven	113	(1)
Examples of fearful and trustful dependence	114	(2)
Examples of happiness in the presence of the loved one	116	(2)
Examples of the more mature forms of loving	118	(6)
Final examples: completion and repose	124	(3)
CHAPTER SEVEN Blurred boundaries and bliss, union, communion and projective processes	127	(22)
The bliss of breakthrough and mended splits	136	(1)
Nature mysticism	137	(3)
The mutual rapture of three united elements	140	(3)
Immanence, transcendence, union, communion, and projective processes	143	(6)
CHAPTER EIGHT Beyond between within above—spatial metaphors and the intersect	149	(10)
Spatial metaphors when talking of people	151	(1)
I and you and we and us	152	(1)
"Us", an intersect	153	(2)
Pencil marks within "I"	155	(4)
CHAPTER NINE Processes in the intersect	159	(44)
Jungian, Freudian, and Kleinian traditions on common ground	161	(2)
Hinshelwood on projective identification	163	(1)
The contribution of mathematical set-theory	164	(1)
Jung's Archetypes; Charles Williams' Images	165	(2)
Williams on indwelling and coherence	167	(2)
Williams on exchange and substitution	169	(3)
Later Jungian examples of a sense of contact with something greater	172	(2)
Experiences of contact with something greater, accompanied by disagreeable loss of the sense of identity: Grotstein, Grotstein's Bion, and Eigen	174	(4)
Bollas, Murray Krieger, and Donald Meltzer on aesthetic moments and the apprehension of beauty—worship	178	(2)
Bootstrap theories of the apprehension of beauty: Likierman and Mendoza	180	(4)
A Freudian post-scriptum on the bootstrap theory	184	(1)
Inspiration and creativity	184	(2)
Martin Buber on the intersects you-and-me and I-and-whatever-else	186	(4)
Relatedness, a form answering to our subjectivity: Harold Searles and Kenneth Wright	190	(5)
With Winnicott in the intersect	195	(4)
Ogden's intersubjectivity	199	(2)
In conclusion	201	(2)
CHAPTER TEN Will and attention	203	(30)
William James, Shand, McDougall, Stout: contemporaries of the young Freud	205	(1)
Fallacies about "The Will", and the function of self-regard	206	(3)
Will experienced as somehow independent of other aspects of the self	209	(1)
Voice from the back of the hall: "What about the soul?"	210	(1)
Early Freudians and the moderation (regulation) of feelings: ego-strength and ego-weakness	211	(4)
Theories from the field of learning: maps and models	215	(1)
Instruction versus introjection or internalization	216	(1)
Introjection (or internalization)	217	(1)
(Not) thinking about a rhinoceros	218	(2)
Paying attention. How and why we do it	220	(3)
Summing up so far, and more on Schore's contribution	223	(3)
What can a good (or bad) object do for a person?	226	(1)
Via negativa and ritual in psychoanalysis and religion	227	(2)
Keeping good objects in good health	229	(4)
CHAPTER ELEVEN Narcissism—the mystics' remedy	233	(28)
Narcissism	235	(2)
Some developmental antecedents of adult narcissism	237	(2)
Via negativa and narcissism	239	(5)
The routinization of charisma	244	(3)
Holy silliness as an anti-bureaucratic anti-obsessional remedy for narcissism	247	(1)
What remedies are there for narcissism?	248	(1)
Culture clashes	249	(1)
Via positiva is a remedy but...	250	(2)
Self-knowledge and self-forgetfulness need each other	252	(2)
Dependence on a good object	254	(2)
Relationship as part of the remedy	256	(4)
Finally: recognition	260	(1)
REFERENCES	261	(12)
INDEX	273