Negative hallucinations, dreams and hallucinations: The framing structure and its representation in the analytic setting

Abstract

This paper explores the meaning of a patient's hallucinatory experiences in the course of a five times a week analysis. I will locate my understanding within the context of André Green's ideas on the role of the framing structure and the negative hallucination in the structuring of the mind. The understanding of the transference and countertransference was crucial in the creation of meaning and enabling the transformations that took place in the analytic process. Through a detailed analysis of a clinical example the author examines Bion's distinction between hysterical hallucinations and psychotic hallucinations and formulates her own hypothesis about the distinctions between the two. The paper suggests that whilst psychotic hallucinations express a conflict between life and death, in the hysterical hallucination it is between love and hate. The paper also contains some reflections on the dramatic nature of the analytic encounter.

Love and melancholia in the analysis of women by women

“…My patient Maria developed a series of bodily symptoms in the course of her analysis. I understood the convulsive twitching that she showed throughout many months on the couch as “the concrete experience of her contact with me, where she felt both excited and attacked by me.” They expressed her experience of a maternal intrusion that felt murderous in the transference, as well as her bodily discharge of her murderous and erotic feelings towards me (Perelberg, , p. 24, ; see also Perelberg, ).…”

“…Might it be that a bodily identification is more easily available in the analysis of women by women analysts as their bodies resemble each other? This raises interesting questions about the way in which the body of the analyst might be internalized at the perceptive level and reach representation as a framing structure in the course of an analysis (Perelberg, , ).…”