Interpretation as Hypothesis Davids, M. Fakhry
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association,
12/2023, Volume:
71, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Two distinct spaces can be seen as operating in a session—a private one in the analyst’s mind, where formulations take shape, and one shared between patient and analyst, in which interpretations are ...offered. By maintaining a focus on the here and now in the latter space, taking care to protect it from intrusions from the analyst’s theory except as hypotheses (in the form of interpretations derived from those formulations) aimed at eliciting unconscious responses that further the analytic inquiry, a basis for analytic work is established that aligns with ordinary scientific processes: theory is generated in the mind of the researcher, and hypotheses derived from it are tested systematically in a laboratory setting. Self-understanding that develops out of such an arrangement can then be seen as based on evidence, minimizing the role of suggestion. This line of thinking is illustrated with excerpts from the beginning of the analysis of a depressed patient. In developing areas of theory, when reliable evidence is particularly important, this way of working holds promise. In this case evidence was systematically gathered that led to the formulation of a model of internal racism.
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2.
Psychoanalysis and black lives Davids, M. Fakhry
International journal of psychoanalysis,
09/2020, Volume:
101, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This paper suggests that being black in a white majority world attracts powerful racist projections whose cumulative effect can be deeply traumatising, a problem that has not received due attention ...in mainstream psychoanalysis. This theme is developed through a description of how this difficulty, and the patient's inner response to it, came to light at the beginning of an analysis. The patient, who grew up as the only brown-skinned child in his white family and community, and without a father, suffered from a lifelong preoccupation with men's genitals. On the couch he experienced extreme bodily discomfort that he sought to relieve through violent sexual thrusting; the paper describes how the stance of negative capability was employed to investigate the dynamics underpinning this. This brought to light the patient's experience of racist projection and intolerance on the part of his objects, as well as his identification with them. The importance of recognising and naming these experiences, gradually and as evidence permits, are seen as central in engaging him. The paper ends by discussing how the analyst's blackness may have facilitated this development, and underlines the urgency of addressing the neglect of these matters in the mainstream of our largely white profession.
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Neutrality remains a key concept underpinning the psychoanalytic attitude, but its operation in the clinical setting must be reconfigured if the countertransference is to be used as a source of data, ...conveyed by projective identification. Subjective responses thus mobilized in the analyst need to be processed before attention can return to the evenly suspended state, from which greater objectivity flows. Theory, internalized as part of the analyst's emotional learning, operates preconsciously in the session; in clinical work with racial matters this includes, crucially, familiarity with internal racism, of which a model is briefly described. These ideas are illustrated via two clinical vignettes in which these themes are traced.
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Jane Caflisch's discussion (this issue) of white liberal guilt is recognized as a bold and ground-breaking exploration of how the Kleinian concepts of paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions may ...shed light on the question of reparation for racial injustice. I suggest that, in addition to persecutory and depressive guilt, melancholic guilt also operates in racist mind-sets, and constitutes the more serious obstacle to reparation. Guilt of this sort prompts defensive repetition, thereby perpetuating racist mind-sets and acts and taking one further and further from the possibility of reparation. On the other hand, the more normal interplay between persecutory and depressive guilt, which is illustrated through a clinical vignette, is seen as opening up a path to reparation. Brief vignettes are offered illustrating points about melancholic guilt and how a culture of facing rather than evading persecutory guilt enabled an opportunity for reparation to be recognized and used.
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5.
Mourning in America Zeavin, Lynne; McClure, Mary Margaret; Hamer, Forrest ...
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association,
10/2022, Volume:
70, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
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6.
In Memoriam: Adib Jarrar Davids, M., Fakhry; Mazarweh, Gehad
International journal of applied psychoanalytic studies,
December 2017, Volume:
14, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
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7.
Thinking Space Davids, M. Fakhry
2014, 20180424, 2013, 2018-04-24, 2013-10-18
eBook
Thinking Space was set up to develop the capacity of staff and trainees at the Tavistock Clinic to think about racism, and other forms of hatred toward difference in ourselves and others. Drawing on ...Bion's (1962) distinction between 'knowing' and 'knowing about', the latter of which can be a defence against knowing a subject in a deeper and emotionally real way, Thinking Space sought to promote curiosity, exploration and learning about difference, by paying as much attention as to how we learn (process) as to what we learn (content).
This book is a celebration of ten years of Thinking Space at the Tavistock Clinic and a way of sharing the thinking, experience and learning gained over these years. Thinking Space functions, among other things, as a test-bed for ideas and many of the papers included here began as presentations, and were encouraged and developed by the experience.
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9.
The impact of Islamophobia Davids, M Fakhry
Psychoanalysis and history,
2009, Volume:
11, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Muslims, as members of minority communities in the West, grow up against a background of everyday Islamophobia. I suggest that the Muslim self internalized in such a setting is denigrated (Fanon ...1952), a problem usually grappled with during adolescence when identity formation is the key developmental task. This typically involves the adolescent taking on polarized positions and embracing extreme causes. Following the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks Islamophobia intensified, which can be understood, at the psychological level, as an internal racist defence against overwhelming anxiety. Within that defensive organization, which I describe, fundamentalism is inscribed as the problematic heart of Islam, complicating the adolescent's attempt to come to terms with the inner legacy of everyday Islamophobia. I explore these themes through a case study of a young man who travelled to Afghanistan in the 1990s, and by brief reference to Ed Husain's "The Islamist" and Mohsin Hamid's novel "The Reluctant Fundamentalist".
This paper contains the main points I made in my two keynote presentations to the New Zealand Association of Psychotherapy (NZAP) conference in April 2015. The theme of mourning, and especially ...facing the aggression involved in this process, runs through it. The first section describes my emotional experience when coming face to face with the devastation left by the Canterbury earthquakes, and I draw attention to the importance of mourning in freeing up the energies required to adapt and to rebuild. I draw attention to the scale of loss to be faced, and raise an anxiety that aggression mobilised by this process may be difficult to bear, and be displaced onto the long-term project of turning a monocultural profession into a bicultural entity that acknowledges explicitly that it exists in a country that is home to both Māori and Pākehā. The second section has two aims. Firstly, I provide a detailed clinical illustration of my work, which is located within the psychoanalytic tradition, in order to make explicit my conceptualisation of a patient’s difficulties and show how these emerged in our work together. Secondly, I endeavour to show how difficult it is to integrate experience within a new cultural milieu alongside representations that stem from our original one — our “native” world of self and others. The patient I describe in my clinical example used her cultural difference as a defence — a deeply ingrained one — to protect herself from the pain of mourning and thus the possibility of moving on. I go on to discuss this material with special reference to its relevance for the development of the profession in a bicultural Aotearoa New Zealand. Waitara Kei tēnei tuhinga ngā aronga matua o ngā kauhau matua e rua i hoatu e au i te Wānanga a NZAP i te marama o Paenga-whāwhā 2015. Ko te tangihanga te kaupapa, inarā te whakarae i te riri i roto i tēnei tikanga. Ka whakaatahia aku wheako whaiaro i te kitenga ā kanohi i te parawhenua i whakarērea iho e ngā rū i Waitaha, ā ka whakaarohia ake te whai tikanga o te tangihanga hai tuku i ngā pūngao hei urutaunga hei whakahou. Ka huria ngā aronga ki te titiro ki te whānui o te paekura hai taki, te whakapikinga ake o te mānukanuka tērā pea ka uaua rawa te mau i te riri ka puea ake i tēnei mahi ā, ka waiho ki te taha ki te huring mahi akonga ahurea tūtahi ki tētahi mea kākanorua.E rua ngā whāinga o te wāhanga tuarua. Tuatahi, ko te whakaatanga whānui o taku mahi haumanu, te ture pū tātarihinengaronga, kia āta mārama ai taku whakaahuatanga o ngā raruraru o te hāura ka whāki ai i pēhea te putanga ake o ēnei i roto i ēnei mahi. Tuarua, ka nanaiore au ki te whakaatu i te uaua o te whakauru wheako ki roto i tētahi atu nohoanga ahurea i te taha o ngā tūnui o te ao toi waia o te whaiaro me ētahi atu. I whakamahia e te hāura whakaahuahia e au i roto i taku tauira haumanu tōna ahurea hai pākati — toka ana te mau — hei ārai i a ia mai i te mamae o te tangihanga, ā, tērā pea te haere whakamua. Ka tuhia tēnei kōrero me te huri ki tōna hāngaitanga mō te whakapakaritanga o te akonga i roto i te kākanotanga o Aotearoa.
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