Wearing Memories: Clothing and the Global Lives of Mourning in Swaziland

Abstract

This article situates a cultural phenomenon of women’s memory work through clothing in Swaziland. It explores clothing as both action and object of everyday, personalized practice that constitutes psychosocial well-being and material proximities between the living and the dead, namely, in how clothing of the deceased is privately possessed and ritually manipulated by the bereaved. While human and spiritual self-other relations are produced through clothing and its material efficacy, current global ideologies of immaterial mortuary ritual associated with Pentecostalism have emerged as contraries to this local, intersubjective grief work. This article describes how such contrarian ideologies paper over existing global aspects of people’s entangled relations with the dead – in three biographies of women and their objects – thus showing that memory work is not limited to people, goods, or ideas that flow between nations and expanding notions of the global and gendered practices of personhood.     

Review of Forms of Intersubjectivity in Infant Research and Adult Attachment.

Reviews the book, Forms of Intersubjectivity in Infant Research and Adult Attachment by Beatrice Beebe, Steven Knoblauch, Judith Rustin, and Dorienne Sorter (2005). In this book, the authors use their 10 years of collaborative work to produce an in-depth and well-constructed discussion of verbal and nonverbal forms of intersubjectivity as observed in the treatment setting and as evidenced by data generated from more mainstream child development studies. They move beyond the lack of integration between these related though often dramatically disconnected disciplines and build on infant researchers' understanding of "prereflective" caregiver-child interactions to offer a new theory of intersubjectivity that enhances our understanding of the clinical interaction with adult patients. This book is not for those therapists who are interested in learning well-specified, new interventions to use in their psychotherapy practice. It is also not suggested for those clinicians who do not have some background in psychoanalytic theory and practice. It is, however, recommended for those clinicians who work psychodynamically and are interested in developing their awareness of the nonverbal aspects of treatment and the co-construction of the therapeutic encounter. This book would also be useful to those in the field of psychotherapy research as it poses new questions about the nature of the therapeutic process and suggests the importance of examining the role that implicit, nonverbal interactions play in psychotherapy. Beebe, Knoblauch, Rustin, and Sorter's book is well constructed, persuasively argued, and highly recommended. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Structures of Subjectivity: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Phenomenology.

Contends that since Kohut's death, a new generation of self psychologists continues to push forward into the areas he pioneered. In Structures of Subjectivity, Atwood and Stolorow offer a valuable new perspective within this psychoanalytic movement. They present their perspective in the form of a well-organized, comprehensive framework that speaks to the fundamental issues of psychoanalytic psychology--personality, development, psychopathology, and clinical theory and technique. The foundation for this psychological framework consists of the intriguing concepts of "structures of experience" and "intersubjectivity." At the heart of Structures of Subjectivity lies an epistemological dilemma about the nature of psychoanalytic phenomenology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why Hell is other people: Distinctively human psychological suffering.

Just as there is remarkable continuity between the structures, abilities, and behaviors of closely related species, so too are there equally remarkable differences. Because only our species has evolved the social cognitive mechanisms that enable a heightened sensitivity to the minds of others, only our species suffers the psychological consequences. Using Sartre's famous play No Exit to illuminate the interplay between evolved psychology and social conscious experience, I show how theory of mind is both biologically adaptive and the common denominator in distinctively human types of psychological suffering. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Relationality: From Attachment to Intersubjectivity.

Review of book: Relationality: From Attachment to Intersubjectivity by Stephen Mitchell, Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press, 2000, 173 pp. Reviewed by Timothy J. Zeddies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Contexts of being: The intersubjective foundations of psychological life.

Reviews the book, Contexts of being: The intersubjective foundations of psychological life by Robert D. Stolorow and George E. Atwood (see record 1992-98615-000). In this book, the authors present a well-organized and systematic presentation of their intersubjective approach to psychotherapy. This book represents the culmination of at least the past thirteen years of Stolorow and Atwood's research program. They make good use of the limited space by addressing some of the most pivotal concepts in the field of psychotherapy. This work is likely to become a recognized contribution within the history of psychotherapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Working intersubjectively: Contextualism in psychoanalytic practice": Reply to Curtis (1999).

Comments on R. C. Curtis's (see record 2003-01834-002) review of Working Intersubjectively: Contextualism in Psychoanalytic Practice (1997) by Donna M. Orange, George E. Atwood, and Robert D. Stolorow. Orange discusses the purposes and functions of scholarly citation and Curtis's misunderstanding of the authors' critique of technical rationality. Orange notes that their contextualism is not equivalent to the dialectical acceptance of opposites with which Curtis confuses it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Couple therapy from the perspective of self psychology and intersubjectivity theory.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 25(2) of Psychoanalytic Psychology (see record 2008-03991-018). Throughout the article, "Couples therapy" should read as "couple therapy," and "self-psychology" should read as "self psychology."] Central tenets of self-psychology and intersubjective systems theory (e.g., Stolorow & Atwood, 1992) are applied to the understanding and treatment of couple. The concepts of selfobject needs, unconscious organizing principles, and learned relational patterns are used to conceptualize common couples difficulties. A treatment approach is outlined, involving: (1) listening from within each partner's subjective perspective; (2) establishing a therapeutic dialogue through which each partner's selfobject needs, ways of organizing experience, and patterns of relating can gradually be empathically illuminated and transformed; and (3) facilitating new relational experiences with the couples therapist and eventually between the partners. Four concepts of self psychology that are particularly useful with some of the most challenging aspects of couples work are then discussed. Finally, the judicious use of directive interventions with couples is discussed as consistent with this perspective. A case example is used throughout the paper to illustrate key points. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Considering "self-ful" desire.

Excessive anxiety about being selfish can, paradoxically, lead to an unconsciously motivated lack of concern about the impact of one’s desires on others. That which is repudiated by the patient as "not me" may become enacted between the patient and analyst, and then become subject to formulation and exploration. Two cases are presented in which excessive worry over selfishness creates unconsciously motivated self-centered behavior, and resulting relationship difficulties and transference-countertransference enactments. The author suggests that extreme anxiety over selfishness may be partially engendered by a lack of intersubjective recognition of desires in early life. The notable lack of language in English that embraces the positive aspects of self-interest is also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in the reconstruction of dissociated schemas; converging perspectives from psychoanalysis, cognitive science and affective neuroscience.

Therapeutic change involves integration of emotion schemas that have been dissociated. Two types of avoidant dissociation are distinguished: primary dissociation dominated by fragmentary emotional memories; and secondary dissociation involving initial encoding of more organized memories whose meaning is avoided. Reconstruction of dissociated emotion schemas occurs through the referential process which includes three basic components: arousal of the subsymbolic affective core of a dissociated schema in the treatment relationship; connections of subsymbolic processes to symbolic representations in narratives and interactions in the session; and reflection leading to reorganization of the schema. The role of enactive perception and embodied communication as underlying intersubjectivity in the referential process is reviewed. Variations in states of awareness associated with each phase of the process, in both analyst and patient, and their effects on therapeutic change are examined. Current work in cognitive science and affective neuroscience supporting this process model is reviewed. This formulation is largely compatible with Freud's early theory of recollection and “associative working-over” with new emphasis on subjective state and the relational context. Studies of the referential process provide a potential interface between investigations of psychotherapy process and basic cognitive science and neuroscience research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)