Quadrant Winter 2002

September 11, 2001:
Soulful, Political, Psychological Reflections
— Robin van Löben Sels, V. Walter Odajnyk, Luigi Zoja

The terrorist attack in New York City happened out of the blue — literally, out of the clear, blue skies on the lovely morning of September 11, 2001. It left the city in shocked mourning, with hundreds dead, and thousands buried beneath gigantic piles of debris, still smoldering. In those of us who survived, it spawned enormous fear, and anger, and grief. The world changed, not only Manhattan and the United States of America.

The aftermath of this catastrophic tragedy has sent tsunami-like repercussions across the globe. Terror reduces us to the fundaments of the psyche, and terror’s own awful logic brings out a kind of fundamentalism in us all. Terrorism unleashes the dogs of war. In the bitter, ironic light of such a spiritual “complex” — and spiritual it is, whether we call it religious or not — how can the soul stay in being? In the light of a terrible and twisting spirituality — our religious nature at war within itself — what happened, and happens to the soul? …

Persephone’s Path (Part 1) — Anastasia Prentiss

Hecate looked on with worried eyes. Demeter had labored for fifteen hours and finally moved into transition. The call to surrender all that is known and familiar, to surrender to the body’s knowledge and to live or die trying — these were the only possible outcomes, and the decision was always between the mother and the realm of the Goddess. Hecate had seen many women drift into the place between the worlds, and too often she had seen Hades’ chariot in all its horrible glory come to take them. Nonetheless, watching from the outside was awe-inspiring. She longed to help Demeter surrender, to trust. Speaking softly as she stood to prepare a place for the coming infant, Hecate said, “Surrender is the path to birth in all things, and trust makes it easier to release the pain.” …

A Shadow of a Snarl: An Illustration of Guggenbühl-Craig’s Theory of Psychopathy in Toni Morrison’s Novel Sula— Steven F. Walker

What makes psychopaths different from the rest of us? Why are we charmed by them — in literature, and, as Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig insists we often are, in life? And, what is most important for Guggenbühl-Craig is his question: what do we have in common with them? “No analysis is finished,” he writes in The Emptied Soul: On the Nature of the Psychopath, “until we clearly recognize our empty or at least half-empty spaces; our inner deserts” (p.xi). Guggenbühl-Craig concludes that the presence in the geography of our psyche of unacknowledged psychopathic streaks — “inner deserts” — makes the study of psychopathy of compelling concern to all of us. Sometimes this is not easy to accept. No easier is his conclusion that therapy rarely, if ever, provides a cure for psychopathy. …

Developments in the Concept of Synchronicity in the Analytic Relationship and in Theory — J. Marvin Spiegelman

Since Jung introduced his concept of synchronicity a half-century ago, the idea and the word have taken wing in the popular imagination and entered into general consciousness. Even popular songs make use of it. Despite general recognition and understanding, however, there has been little follow-up research into this idea in academic and analytic circles, other than to explain it or present examples. Marie-Louise von Franz provides a major exception in her works Number and Time (1974) and On Divination and Synchronicity (1980), which elaborate the concept in both mathematics and fairy tales. Another exception is found in the work of the astrophysicist Professor Victor Mansfield of Cornell University, who has written an excellent book on the topic with many examples and significant criticism of the concept (Mansfield, 1995). My own work on synchronicity in the transference relationship as a variant on the mind-body, matter-spirit issue addresses the topic in the analytic process itself (Spiegelman 1996). The following remarks on the further development of Jung’s concept of synchronicity will summarize the work of all three of the foregoing authors and are divided into two sections: (1) synchronicity in the analytic relationship and (2) theoretical questions. …

Spirit and the Other in Culture and Clinical Practice — Kathryn Madden

In the current dialogue between culture and psychoanalysis, the emphasis is primarily upon exploring how the psyche impacts culture and how culture impacts the psyche. Psychoanalysts are encouraged to become more conscious of ethnic, racial, and gender differences as well as the distinctions of diverse symbols within specific cultures.

I would like to address this dialogue under the rubric of Spirit and the Other with the purpose of exploring the spiritual dimension of clinical practice. I will first give concrete illustrations from a six-year treatment, then offer some definitions of Spirit and the Other and, finally, underscore what, in the meeting of psychoanalysis, spirit, and culture, I feel gives us cultural breadth while sustaining clinical depth. …