Papers by Jose Saporta MD
Physics of Life Reviews, 2024
Discussion of paper in same journal by Salvatore, Palmieri, De Luca, et al. (2024) on the role of... more Discussion of paper in same journal by Salvatore, Palmieri, De Luca, et al. (2024) on the role of affect in pertinizing objects and aspects of the experiential field and an early mapping of the world into broad affective categories. Affect categories are a low dimensional way of initially making sense of the world, which become later elaborated into meanings of higher dimensionality, including cultural meanings. My discussion elaborates the utility of varied dimensions of affective experience for clinical psychotherapy. As for affect as an embodied response to the world, I present Fanon (1968) as an example of how cultural meanings and our affective responses to them burden the body. I raise questions about the notion of psychopathology representing low dimensionality of meaning making, presenting the Borges (1942/1986) character of Funes the memorious as .an example of psychopathology with high dimensional meaning making. I raise questions about the authors' model which seems to suggest a subject standing apart from and affectively mapping the world rather than embedded in the world, changing and being changed by it. I also contrast the model under consideration with the ideas of John Dewey and his notion of "situation", as a qualitative, felt whole, making pertinent objects in the field, The felt qualitative whole involves affect but is more than affect.
Rivista di Psicologia Clinica. Teorie e metodi dell'intervento, Sep 1, 2022
This paper addresses, from the perspective of a psychotherapist, a proposal for unifying psycholo... more This paper addresses, from the perspective of a psychotherapist, a proposal for unifying psychology under some form of conceptual umbrella, as advanced by Salvatore and colleagues in this current issue of Rivista di Psicologia Clinica. My response raises conceptual and practical questions. The unhappy history of universal models in psychoanalysis illustrates personal, social, and political dynamics that interfere with finding and implementing such models. There is no neutral meta-position; any meta-position is subject to challenge according to its angle, methods, and interests. The question may not be whether, a priori, psychology should be unified, but whether it will turn out to be so. Generalized scientific models applied to psychotherapy may not be close to how people understand and talk about themselves. Psychotherapists are likely to incorporate general principles and models without much rigor and as metaphors to justify and shape change in accord with cultural values rather than to describe or explain. Given different conceptual categories in psychology, natural/causal and humanistic, universal principles or models could be so general and abstract as to constitute philosophy more than science. Balancing assimilation and accommodation, or general stability with local level instability, allow for complexity, flexibility, and responsiveness to unique local conditions for human meaning systems - individual and collective, and for the academic disciplines that study them. Pluralism or polyphony may be an alternative meta-position which allows therapists to flexibly draw from scientific and humanistic perspectives, and from folk psychology, along with personal training and life experience, soft-assembled at the moment of contact with the messy subjectivity of the other.
This paper is a response to Salvatore, Picione, Bochicchio et al’s. (2021) application of psychoa... more This paper is a response to Salvatore, Picione, Bochicchio et al’s. (2021) application of psychoanalysis to understand and remediate current socially destructive processes. The authors conceptualize current ant-social tendencies as due to primary process thinking and meaning making brough about by the dominance of affect in the social field. I present some questions and challenges, including: revisions of Freud’s concept of primary and secondary process, the ubiquity of affect links and primary process associations in all social life, the notion that affect is not discharge but is the link to the other and to meaning, a qualitative analysis of prosocial emotions in contrast to the authors’ apparently quantitative and mechanistic analysis, and some alternative psychoanalytic formulations of social problems and of the relationship of the individual and the social. I propose that some destructive social phenomena prevalent today, rather than being manifestations of primary process-affective meaning making, are due to failure of social institutions to cultivate the right emotion in the right measure and failure to cultivate prosocial attitudes, values, and capacities, subject to qualitative analysis.
Routledge eBooks, Mar 8, 2018
Chapter in: Psychoanalysis in China, Edited by David Scharff and Svere Varvin. Karnac. 2014.
Anxiety research, Oct 1, 1991
The recognition that trauma is qualitatively different from stress and results in lasting biologi... more The recognition that trauma is qualitatively different from stress and results in lasting biological emergency responses following traumatic experiences may account for the biphasic trauma response, and the accompanying memory disturbances. The past decade has seen rapid advances in our understanding of the underlying biology of this "physioneurosis". In addition to classically conditioned physiological reactions, changes now have been demonstrated in startle response in people with post-traumatic stress disorder and in central nervous system catecholamine, serotonin, and endogenous opioid systems. This paper reviews the research data which have demonstrated changes in these systems and explores how these biological changes may be related to the characteristic hyper-reactivity, loss of neuromodulation, numbing of responsiveness, dissociative states, and memory disturbances seen in PTSD. There is growing evidence that trauma has different biological effects at different stages of primate human, development. This article relates these findings to the studies which have demonstrated clear linkages between childhood trauma, and a variety of psychiatric disorders, including borderline personality disorder, and a range of self-destructive behaviors.
Psychoanalysis on Line: The Tele-Analytic Setting , May 8, 2017
Explores the role of the physical space in which psychotherapy takes place in shaping the process... more Explores the role of the physical space in which psychotherapy takes place in shaping the process and meaning that emerges, in contrast to psychotherapy over video conferencing. Discusses also the effect of physical space and context on subjectivity and meaning. The discussion makes use of notions from the poetics of space and notions of embodied and extended cognition in contrast with a Cartesian model of meaning being transmitted between talking heads. Considers how human connectedness and subjectivity may expand and adapt to new virtual spaces.
Springer eBooks, 1993
ABSTRACT the biological response to trauma is examined / present a detailed analysis of the rapid... more ABSTRACT the biological response to trauma is examined / present a detailed analysis of the rapidly growing literature on the psychobiology of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) / review the attempts to understand a trauma's impact on neurological functioning / [examine] the core symptomatology of PTSD and then summarize the literature on the neural structures (e.g., limbic system, locus coeruleus) which play specific and general roles in the production of symptom manifestation the following neural subsystems and behavioral phenomena are analyzed and then placed into a comprehensive and integrated summary: autonomic hyperreactivity and intrusive reexperiencing, numbing of responsiveness, developmental levels and the effects of trauma, the limbic system, noradrenergic and serotonergic pathways, endogenous opioid system, and the role of the locus coeruleus and related structures (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, Oct 15, 2000
PubMed, 1995
The authors examine the process of taking an initial history of childhood abuse and trauma in psy... more The authors examine the process of taking an initial history of childhood abuse and trauma in psychodynamic psychotherapy. In exploring the advantages, complexities, and potential complications of this practice, they hope to heighten the sensitivities of clinicians taking trauma histories. Emphasis on the need to be active in eliciting important historical material is balanced with discussion of concepts that can help therapists avoid interpersonal dynamics that reenact and perpetuate the traumas the therapy seeks to treat. Ensuring optimal psychotherapeutic treatment for patients who have experienced childhood trauma requires attention to the following concepts: a safe holding environment, destabilization, compliance, the repetition compulsion, and projective identification.
Revista de Artes Marciales Asiáticas, Jul 17, 2012
Neuropsychoanalysis, 2000
This is a small and quite readable book by one of the great figures in cognitive neuroscience. Mi... more This is a small and quite readable book by one of the great figures in cognitive neuroscience. Michael Gazzaniga has published hundreds of scientific articles and numerous books, textbooks, and edited scholarly works. He is famous for his seminal research on commisurized (split-brain) patients. The lofty expectations with which I turned the first page of this, his most recent book, no doubt contributed to my disappointment as I turned the last. The Mind's Past is meant for the educated lay reader. The title captures Gazzaniga's central thesis: that a core function of mind is to construct an illusory past in which we feel that we know what we are doing as we do it, and where actions seem to flow from our conscious will. The mind's past is different from the brain's past, in that the latter has done its work before "you" know it. The self is a "spin doctor." The fictions of the self and the self as fiction are a central concern for psychoanalysts. A discussion of the neurologic foundations of such fictions would be interesting to many of us. Gazzaniga situates himself on one side of a fundamental debate about how the brain is constructed, how it develops, and how it functions. Unfortunately, he does not spell out or elaborate both sides of the debate. I was left wanting a more balanced and detailed exposition of these contrasting perspectives. Gazzaniga's first premise is that the brain is a collection of specialized systems, and that "brains accrue specialized systems through natural selection." He contrasts his position with his understanding of connectionism, as represented by Sejnowski of the La Jolla group, who sees the brain as an all-purpose learning device that transforms itself as the result of experi265
RIVISTA DI PSICOLOGIA CLINICA, Sep 1, 2022
This paper addresses, from the perspective of a psychotherapist, a proposal for unifying psycholo... more This paper addresses, from the perspective of a psychotherapist, a proposal for unifying psychology under some form of conceptual umbrella, as advanced by Salvatore and colleagues in this current issue of Rivista di Psicologia Clinica. My response raises conceptual and practical questions. The unhappy history of universal models in psychoanalysis illustrates personal, social, and political dynamics that interfere with finding and implementing such models. There is no neutral meta-position; any meta-position is subject to challenge according to its angle, methods, and interests. The question may not be whether, a priori, psychology should be unified, but whether it will turn out to be so. Generalized scientific models applied to psychotherapy may not be close to how people understand and talk about themselves. Psychotherapists are likely to incorporate general principles and models without much rigor and as metaphors to justify and shape change in accord with cultural values rather than to describe or explain. Given different conceptual categories in psychology, natural/causal and humanistic, universal principles or models could be so general and abstract as to constitute philosophy more than science. Balancing assimilation and accommodation, or general stability
Rivista di Psicologia Clinica (The Italian Journal of Clinical Psychology), 2022
This paper addresses, from the perspective of a psychotherapist, a proposal for unifying psycholo... more This paper addresses, from the perspective of a psychotherapist, a proposal for unifying psychology under some form of conceptual umbrella, as advanced by Salvatore and colleagues in this current issue of Rivista di Psicologia Clinica. My response raises conceptual and practical questions. The unhappy history of universal models in psychoanalysis illustrates personal, social, and political dynamics that interfere with finding and implementing such models. There is no neutral meta-position; any meta-position is subject to challenge according to its angle, methods, and interests. The question may not be whether, a priori, psychology should be unified, but whether it will turn out to be so. Generalized scientific models applied to psychotherapy may not be close to how people understand and talk about themselves. Psychotherapists are likely to incorporate general principles and models without much rigor and as metaphors to justify and shape change in accord with cultural values rather than to describe or explain. Given different conceptual categories in psychology, natural/causal and humanistic, universal principles or models could be so general and abstract as to constitute philosophy more than science. Balancing assimilation and accommodation, or general stability with local level instability, allow for complexity, flexibility, and responsive-ness to unique local conditions for human meaning systems ‒ individual and collective, and for the academic disciplines that study them. Pluralism or po-lyphony may be an alternative meta-position which allows therapists to flex-ibly draw from scientific and humanistic perspectives, and from folk psy-chology, along with personal training and life experience, soft-assembled at the moment of contact with the messy subjectivity of the other.
International Journal of Psychoanalytic Education: Subject, ACTION, and Society , 2021
This paper is a response to Salvatore, Picione, Bochicchio et al’s. (2021) application of psychoa... more This paper is a response to Salvatore, Picione, Bochicchio et al’s. (2021) application of psychoanalysis to understand and remediate current socially destructive processes. The authors conceptualize current ant-social tendencies as due to primary process thinking and meaning making brough about by the dominance of affect in the social field. I present some questions and challenges, including: revisions of Freud’s concept of primary and secondary process, the ubiquity of affect links and primary process associations in all social life, the notion that affect is not discharge but is the link to the other and to meaning, a qualitative analysis of prosocial emotions in contrast to the authors’ apparently quantitative and mechanistic analysis, and some alternative psychoanalytic formulations of social problems and of the relationship of the individual and the social. I propose that some destructive social phenomena prevalent today, rather than being manifestations of primary process-affetive meaning making, are due to failure of social institutions to cultivate the right emotion in the right measure and failure to cultivate prosocial attitudes, values, and capacities, subject to qualitative analysis.
The apace and place of Psychoanalytic treatment: A philosophical meditiation, 2017
Explores psychotherapy over video conferencing versus therapist and patient sharing the same phys... more Explores psychotherapy over video conferencing versus therapist and patient sharing the same physical space. Considers the roll of physical space in shaping subjectivity and shaping the meaning that emerges in psychotherpy
Psychoanalysis Online 3, 2018
Uploads
Papers by Jose Saporta MD