Back to Table of Contents
cultured individuals. Subsequently, Bion also referred to a state of mind in which ideas or thoughts had never been conscious and/or unconscious and whose origin is out of reach: “... the nearest I can get to giving it a provisional title, is the inaccessible state of mind. ...” (Bion 1997, p. 50). In reference to proto-emotions , Bion (1974, 1975) proposed the term ‘sub-thalamic fear’. He defined it as a type of fear that is not controlled by the mind and, therefore, does not acquire meaning. Sub-thalamic fear refers to bodily manifestations of remnants of prenatal parts involving the adrenal glands and adrenaline secretion, which are activated at certain moments, leading the individual to unthoughtful fight and flight reactions. Korbivcher hypothesizes that Bion in his last works may be perhaps starting to formulate in this way a category of phenomena akin to unintegrated phenomena . Consequently, she argues for inclusion of that kind of phenomena in the theory of Transformations. Unintegrated transformations , per Korbivcher, are characterized by intense non-mental bodily manifestations. They are developed in an unintegrated domain, resulting in the absence of the delimitation of the self and of the notion of a separate object. A state of permanent threat and vulnerability and a state of terror of losing the notion of existence itself are some of the invariants in unintegrated transformations. Autistic phenomena evolve from unintegrated phenomena . Thus, they are related but have different characteristics. In unintegrated states, the relationship between “me” and “not-me” is not established by projective identification, as in neurotic and psychotic areas, or by adhesive equation, as in the autistic areas. In these states, there is no adhesion or identification with an object. There is no discrimination of interior or exterior. By contrast, the self-spreads, causing the state of a permanent threat of falling, spilling or dissolving. In these circumstances, the individual typically reacts by attempting to create autistic protective maneuvers as a means of obtaining a more cohesive state through his body. Unintegrated transformations provide the expansion of the analyst’s observation field to the unintegrated part of the personality beyond the autistic part. So, the analytical field expands to areas that are not yet integrated, in which the notion of a boundary that can hold emotional content together has not been developed. Taking the notions embodied in “Transformations” as a model, autistic and unintegrated transformations modify the understanding of autistic phenomena and unintegrated phenomena. The analyst becomes involved in the context of the emotional experience shared with the patient, and his observations emerge as a link from a chain of successive movements deriving from the pair’s interaction (Korbivcher, 2005. 2010, 2013b). The proposal of autistic transformations and unintegrated transformations allows the analyst, based on his emotional experience, to identify autistic and unintegrated phenomena in neurotic patients as well, with the ensuing consequence of having an added opportunity to transformatively affect them. It is necessary to point out, however, that by proposing autistic transformations, one is dealing with mental configurations of autistic characteristics rather than with pathological
940
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online