Where Words Trap the Mind: The Bewitchment of Psychotherapy
Abstract
When psychotherapists reify the concepts they are using to describe human experiences, both therapist and patient are likely to end up with befuddled thinking, and become unable to grasp the lived experience of the emotional turmoil the patient is struggling with. In this context, proper use of language is of vital importance, and the first task of the psychotherapist is to think clearly about the words she uses. This essay attempts to clarify some of these issues, and to discuss their relevance to the practice of psychotherapy.
References
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The Psychology and Psychotherapy Journal, 5, 398-402.
Solms, M. (2013). The conscious id. Neuropsychoanalysis, 15, 5-19
Solms, M., & Turnbull, O. (2002). The brain and the inner world: An introduction to
the neuroscience of subjective experience. London, UK: Karnac.
Wells, A. (2000). Emotional disorders and metacognition: Innovative cognitive
therapy. Chichester, UK: Wiley.
Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality. London, UK: Tavistock.
Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical investigations. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Wollheim, R. (1993). The mind and its depths. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
& M. Patrick (Eds.). Off the couch: Contemporary psychoanalytic
applications (pp.176-193). London, UK: Routledge.
Buchanan, B. W. (2010). Oedipus against Freud: Myth and the end(s) of humanism in
Twentieth-Century British literature. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto
Press.
Casement, A. (2004). Who owns psychoanalysis? London, UK: Karnac.
Casement, A. (2011). The interiorizing movement of logical life: reflections on
Wolfgang Giegerich. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 56, 532-549.
Casement, P. (2006). Learning from life: Becoming a psychoanalyst. London, UK:
Routledge.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1983 {French original published in 1972; original
English translation published in 1977}) Anti-oedipus: Capitalism and
schizophrenia. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Ellenberger, H. F. (1970). The discovery of the unconscious: The history and
evolution of dynamic psychiatry. New York, NY: Basic Books
Favero, M., & Ross, D. R. (2003). Words and transitional phenomena in
psychotherapy. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 57, 287-299.
Fenichel, T. (2015). Uncanny belonging: Schelling, Freud and the vertigo of freedom.
PhD Dissertation, Boston College Department of Philosophy.
Ffytche, M. (2011). The foundation of the unconscious: Schelling, Freud and the birth
of the modern psyche. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Gellner, E. (1985). The psychoanalytic movement. London, UK: Granada.
Giegerich, W. (1996). Opposition of ‘individual’ and ‘collective’ - psychology’s basic
fault: reflections on today’s Magnum Opus of the soul. Harvest: Journal for
Jungian Studies, 42, 7-27.
Giegerich, W. (2004). The end of meaning and the birth of man. Retrieved from:
www.cgjungpage.org/pdfdocuments/EndofMeaning.pdf
Giegerich, W. (2012). What is soul? New Orleans, LA: Springer.
Grünbaum, A. (1984). The foundations of psychoanalysis: A philosophical critique.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Heaton, J. M. (1979). Theory in psychotherapy. In N. Bolton (Ed.), Philosophical
problems in psychology (pp. 176-196). London, UK: Methuen.
Heaton, J. M. (1993). The sceptical tradition in psychotherapy. In L. Spurling (Ed.),
From the words of my mouth: Tradition in psychotherapy. London, UK:
Tavistock/Routledge.
Heaton, J. M. (1997). Pyrrhonian scepticism: A therapeutic phenomenology. The
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 28, 80-96.
Heaton, J. M. (2010). The talking cure: Wittgenstein on language as bewitchment and
clarity. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Home, H. J. (1966). The concept of mind. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis,
47, 42-49.
Kaplan-Solms, K., & Solms, M. (2000). Clinical studies in neuro-psychoanalysis.
London, UK: Karnac.
Kircher, T., & David, A. (2003). Self-consciousness: an integrative approach from
philosophy, psychopathology and the neurosciences. In T. Kircher & A. David
(Eds.), The self in neuroscience and psychiatry (pp. 445-473). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Lear, J. (1998). Open minded: Working out the logic of the soul. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Lear, J. (2004). Psychoanalysis and the idea of a moral psychology: memorial to
Bernard Williams’ philosophy. Inquiry, 47, 515-522.
Lear, J. (2005). Freud. Abbington, UK: Routledge.
Lear, J. (2009). Technique and final cause in psychoanalysis: four ways of looking at
one moment. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 90, 1299-1317.
Lear, J. (2014). Mourning and moral psychology. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 31,
470-481.
Lemma, A. (2003). Introduction to the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
Chichester, UK: Wiley.
Levin, F. M. (2003). Mapping the mind: The intersection of psychoanalysis and
neuroscience. London, UK: Karnac.
Lomas, P. (1981). The case for a personal psychotherapy. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Lomas, P. (1994). Cultivating intuition: An introduction to psychotherapy. London,
UK: Penguin.
Lomas, P. (1999). Doing good? Psychotherapy out of its depth. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
McGrath, S. J. (2011). Is Schelling’s nature-philosophy Freudian? Analecta
Hermeneutica, 3, 1-20.
Mogenson, G. (undated). Response to Wolfgang Giegerich’s “Reflections on today’s
Magnum Opus of the soul”. Retrieved from:
www.ispdi.org/images/stories/PDFdocuments/Reply_to_Giegerich.pdf
Oppenheim, L. (2005). A curious intimacy: Art and neuro-psychoanalysis. London,
UK: Routledge.
Phillips, A. (2007). After Strachey. London Review of Books, 29, 36-38.
Phillips, A. (2014) Becoming Freud: the making of a psychoanalyst. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1981). Hermeneutics and the human sciences (Edited and translated by J.
B. T. Thompson). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Sandoval, J. M. (2013). The challenge of Giegerich. Talk given at C. G. Jung Institute
of Los Angeles. Retrieved from:
www.jennifersandoval.com/Giegerich%20for%20Beginners.pdf
Sartre, J-P. (1974). Between existentialism and Marxism. London, UK: NLB.
Shotter, J. (1993). Conversational realities: Constructing life through language.
London, UK: Sage.
Smail, D. (1987). Psychotherapy as subversion in a make-believe world. Changes:
The Psychology and Psychotherapy Journal, 5, 398-402.
Solms, M. (2013). The conscious id. Neuropsychoanalysis, 15, 5-19
Solms, M., & Turnbull, O. (2002). The brain and the inner world: An introduction to
the neuroscience of subjective experience. London, UK: Karnac.
Wells, A. (2000). Emotional disorders and metacognition: Innovative cognitive
therapy. Chichester, UK: Wiley.
Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality. London, UK: Tavistock.
Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical investigations. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Wollheim, R. (1993). The mind and its depths. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Published
25-Jun-2018
How to Cite
Li, C. (2018). Where Words Trap the Mind: The Bewitchment of Psychotherapy. Language and Psychoanalysis, 7(1), 84-105. https://doi.org/10.7565/landp.v7i1.1584
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