Warren Colman
Biographic Data
| ID | 5445495 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Warren Colman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Warren |
| FAMILY NAME | Colman |
| SIGNATURE | COLMAN W |
| AFFILIATIONS | St. Albans UK |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 127 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Thinking the unthinkable
From my experience of working with her as the editor of many of her papers, this paper seeks to elucidate the late Alessandra Cavalli's clinical and theoretical approach to analytic work through a study of the editorial process her papers went through on their way to publication. This highlights a consistent theoretical synthesis integrating Klein, Fordham, Bion, Matte-Blanco and Ferrari in an archetypal structure that was firmly rooted in Jung. …
Commentary on ‘Noah’s Ark’ by Alessandra Cavalli
Psychotherapy as a skilled practice
While psychotherapy is related to both science and art, it is primarily a craft activity requiring the development of skilful practice, epitomized by the discipline of the analytic attitude. In terms of the forms of knowledge outlined by Aristotle, this places psychotherapy in the realm of 'technê' (arts and craft) rather than epistêmê (science). In particular, the technê of psychotherapy is concerned with the development of phronesis (practical …
Jean Knox in conversation with Warren Colman
Response to Hugh Gee's ‘A simple statement about the concept of archetypes’
Are Archetypes Essential
This paper distinguishes between Jung's theoretical discourse regarding the archetypes and his phenomenological account of numinous experience. For this author, the initial attraction of 'my Jung' came from both the vivid Romanticism of his descriptions of the anima and the apparent 'ground of being' offered by his theory of archetypes. However, the essentialism inherent to archetypal theory in general and the anima in particular has necessitated…
Soul in the world
Whilst the loss of a sense of living connection with the material world is mainly associated with the scientific revolution in seventeenth century Europe, it can be traced back to Plato's introduction of a hierarchy between soul and body. Jung's attempted solution to this – esse in anima – is ingenious but maintains the Cartesian split by which the aliveness of the world is reduced to a projection of psychic forces (the archetypes). An alternativ…
The wrong side of history
Psychoanalysis (including analytical psychology), once a pioneering and forward-looking movement of the early 20 th century has now become a conservative backward-looking 'tradition'. After considering some of the internal problems associated with this historical change such as idealization and tribalism, some ways forward are suggested - a focus on clinical excellence as practical craft, openness to the unknown and engagement with others beyond …
A revolution of the mind
George Hogenson's 2001 paper 'The Baldwin Effect: a neglected influence on C.G. Jung's evolutionary thinking' developed the radical argument that, if archetypes are emergent, they 'do not exist in the sense that there is no place that the archetypes can be said to be'. In this paper, I show how Hogenson's thinking has been seminal to my own: it is not just archetypes but the mind itself that has no 'place'. The mind is a dynamic system, emergent …
Bounded in a nutshell and a king of infinite space
This paper explores the implications of developments in phenomenological biology for a reconsideration of synchronicity and the self. The enactive approach of Maturana and Varela aims to reformulate the relation between biological organisms and the world in a non-Cartesian way, breaking down the conceptual division between mind and world so that meaning can be seen as a function of the species-specific way in which an organism engages with its en…
James Astor in conversation with Warren Colman
In this interview with Warren Colman, James Astor speaks about his development as a Jungian analyst from his own experience of personal analysis in the 1960s to his recent retirement from clinical practice. The discussion covers his long association with Michael Fordham, the child analytic training at the SAP, the infant observation seminars with Fordham and Gianna Henry through which Fordham was able to make new discoveries about infant developm…
Bringing it all back home
This paper traces the similarities between the cluster of influences that informed my own training and practice as a British developmental Jungian analyst and those that led to the creation of intersubjective and relational analysis in America. Having outlined five main themes of relational analysis, I show how these were anticipated by several trends in British analysis, especially the work of R.D. Laing and the theory of couple interaction deve…
Reflections on knowledge and experience
As analysts become more experienced, theoretical knowledge becomes more integrated and implicit and is gradually transformed into the practical wisdom (phronesis) described by Aristotle. While this leads to greater freedom in ways of working, it remains conditional on the consistent disciplined practice represented by the analytic attitude. In the context of my own development as an analyst, I suggest that increasingly the analyst works from the …
Reply to Wolfgang Giegerich's ‘A serious misunderstanding
Synchronicity and the meaning‐making psyche
This paper contrasts Jung's account of synchronicity as evidence of an objective principle of meaning in Nature with a view that emphasizes human meaning-making. All synchronicities generate indicative signs but only where this becomes a 'living symbol' of a transcendent intentionality at work in a living universe does synchronicity generate the kind of symbolic meaning that led Jung to posit the existence of a Universal Mind. This is regarded as…
Symbolic objects and the analytic frame
With reference to two patients who brought material objects to their sessions (previously discussed in Colman 2010a, 2010b), this paper reconsiders the pre-eminent role of verbal communication in analysis. I suggest that the privileging of words over action derives from Freud's view of the mind in which only that which can be put into words can become conscious. Following Stephen Mitchell (1993), I discuss the way that this view has become relati…
The analyst in action
This paper describes some similarities and differences between contemporary approaches to analysis as practised by 'Freudians' and 'Jungians' in London today. It aims to contribute to mutual understanding between different schools of analysis by showing how the analyst's interventions can only be understood in terms of the theoretical context from which they arise (cf. 'the analyst's preconscious', as discussed by Hamilton [1996]). A discussion o…
Mourning and the symbolic process
This paper describes the analysis of a patient whose difficulty symbolizing absence had prevented her from being able to mourn the loss of her father in her adolescence. Through a series of symbolic enactments and synchronistic events, she was eventually able to carry out a mourning ritual that enabled her to lay her father to rest. Some implications for symbolization are discussed, developing Segal's view of symbol formation as reparation: symbo…
Response to Umberto Galimberti
Reply to Astor's ‘Are Urban and Colman really in opposition over Fordham's model of the self?’
Theory as metaphor
This paper investigates the relationship between clinical knowledge and psychological theory and considers the implications for clinical writing. I argue that clinical knowledge is a way of understanding rather than a body of facts and compare clinical material to 'texts' that generate multiple and indeterminate meanings. Analytic theories, which represent the crystallization of ways of understanding clinical phenomena, have an inherently metapho…
On being, knowing and having a self
This paper(1) takes the distinction between being conscious ('core consciousness') and knowing that one is conscious (self-reflexive consciousness) as a starting point for differentiating between three different aspects of the self: 1) the overall process of psychosomatic being which we share with all living creatures and which expresses itself through action (self as totality), 2) the conscious awareness of knowing the self that is a peculiarly …
Symbolic conceptions
The idea of the third which appears in Jung's concepts of the transcendent function and the coniunctio also occurs in several psychoanalytic theories concerning the emergence of reflective and symbolic thought in childhood development (defined here as the development of 'imaginal capacity'). Noting the way this process is often conceived in terms of the metaphor of sexual intercourse leading to 'conception', this paper suggests that such images n…
Imagination and the imaginary
This paper argues that real imagination depends on the capacity to acknowledge the absence of what is imagined from the world of material actuality. This leads on to a view of symbol formation as the operation of the transcendent function between the opposites of presence and absence. 'The imaginary' is contrasted with this as a defensive misuse of imagination that attempts to deny 'negation' where negation is defined as all those aspects of the …
Sexual metaphor and the language of unconscious phantasy
This paper investigates the attempt to find a 'bedrock' for psychic life in the idea of unconscious phantasy. Through a detailed examination of the development of the concept of unconscious phantasy, especially in Kleinian discourse, it is argued that unconscious phantasies are inherently metaphorical and have no 'concrete' existence in the unconscious. The use of unconscious phantasy as metaphor enables a 'two-way' form of interpretation that de…
Imagination and the imaginary
This paper argues that real imagination depends on the capacity to acknowledge the absence of what is imagined from the world of material actuality. This leads on to a view of symbol formation as the operation of the transcendent function between the opposites of presence and absence. 'The imaginary' is contrasted with this as a defensive misuse of imagination that attempts to deny 'negation' where negation is defined as all those aspects of the …
Symbolic conceptions
The idea of the third which appears in Jung's concepts of the transcendent function and the coniunctio also occurs in several psychoanalytic theories concerning the emergence of reflective and symbolic thought in childhood development (defined here as the development of 'imaginal capacity'). Noting the way this process is often conceived in terms of the metaphor of sexual intercourse leading to 'conception', this paper suggests that such images n…
Sexual metaphor and the language of unconscious phantasy
This paper investigates the attempt to find a 'bedrock' for psychic life in the idea of unconscious phantasy. Through a detailed examination of the development of the concept of unconscious phantasy, especially in Kleinian discourse, it is argued that unconscious phantasies are inherently metaphorical and have no 'concrete' existence in the unconscious. The use of unconscious phantasy as metaphor enables a 'two-way' form of interpretation that de…
On being, knowing and having a self
This paper(1) takes the distinction between being conscious ('core consciousness') and knowing that one is conscious (self-reflexive consciousness) as a starting point for differentiating between three different aspects of the self: 1) the overall process of psychosomatic being which we share with all living creatures and which expresses itself through action (self as totality), 2) the conscious awareness of knowing the self that is a peculiarly …
Bringing it all back home
This paper traces the similarities between the cluster of influences that informed my own training and practice as a British developmental Jungian analyst and those that led to the creation of intersubjective and relational analysis in America. Having outlined five main themes of relational analysis, I show how these were anticipated by several trends in British analysis, especially the work of R.D. Laing and the theory of couple interaction deve…
Reflections on knowledge and experience
As analysts become more experienced, theoretical knowledge becomes more integrated and implicit and is gradually transformed into the practical wisdom (phronesis) described by Aristotle. While this leads to greater freedom in ways of working, it remains conditional on the consistent disciplined practice represented by the analytic attitude. In the context of my own development as an analyst, I suggest that increasingly the analyst works from the …
Synchronicity and the meaning‐making psyche
This paper contrasts Jung's account of synchronicity as evidence of an objective principle of meaning in Nature with a view that emphasizes human meaning-making. All synchronicities generate indicative signs but only where this becomes a 'living symbol' of a transcendent intentionality at work in a living universe does synchronicity generate the kind of symbolic meaning that led Jung to posit the existence of a Universal Mind. This is regarded as…
Mourning and the symbolic process
This paper describes the analysis of a patient whose difficulty symbolizing absence had prevented her from being able to mourn the loss of her father in her adolescence. Through a series of symbolic enactments and synchronistic events, she was eventually able to carry out a mourning ritual that enabled her to lay her father to rest. Some implications for symbolization are discussed, developing Segal's view of symbol formation as reparation: symbo…
Theory as metaphor
This paper investigates the relationship between clinical knowledge and psychological theory and considers the implications for clinical writing. I argue that clinical knowledge is a way of understanding rather than a body of facts and compare clinical material to 'texts' that generate multiple and indeterminate meanings. Analytic theories, which represent the crystallization of ways of understanding clinical phenomena, have an inherently metapho…
A revolution of the mind
George Hogenson's 2001 paper 'The Baldwin Effect: a neglected influence on C.G. Jung's evolutionary thinking' developed the radical argument that, if archetypes are emergent, they 'do not exist in the sense that there is no place that the archetypes can be said to be'. In this paper, I show how Hogenson's thinking has been seminal to my own: it is not just archetypes but the mind itself that has no 'place'. The mind is a dynamic system, emergent …
Are Archetypes Essential
This paper distinguishes between Jung's theoretical discourse regarding the archetypes and his phenomenological account of numinous experience. For this author, the initial attraction of 'my Jung' came from both the vivid Romanticism of his descriptions of the anima and the apparent 'ground of being' offered by his theory of archetypes. However, the essentialism inherent to archetypal theory in general and the anima in particular has necessitated…
The wrong side of history
Psychoanalysis (including analytical psychology), once a pioneering and forward-looking movement of the early 20 th century has now become a conservative backward-looking 'tradition'. After considering some of the internal problems associated with this historical change such as idealization and tribalism, some ways forward are suggested - a focus on clinical excellence as practical craft, openness to the unknown and engagement with others beyond …
Bounded in a nutshell and a king of infinite space
This paper explores the implications of developments in phenomenological biology for a reconsideration of synchronicity and the self. The enactive approach of Maturana and Varela aims to reformulate the relation between biological organisms and the world in a non-Cartesian way, breaking down the conceptual division between mind and world so that meaning can be seen as a function of the species-specific way in which an organism engages with its en…
The analyst in action
This paper describes some similarities and differences between contemporary approaches to analysis as practised by 'Freudians' and 'Jungians' in London today. It aims to contribute to mutual understanding between different schools of analysis by showing how the analyst's interventions can only be understood in terms of the theoretical context from which they arise (cf. 'the analyst's preconscious', as discussed by Hamilton [1996]). A discussion o…
Psychotherapy as a skilled practice
While psychotherapy is related to both science and art, it is primarily a craft activity requiring the development of skilful practice, epitomized by the discipline of the analytic attitude. In terms of the forms of knowledge outlined by Aristotle, this places psychotherapy in the realm of 'technê' (arts and craft) rather than epistêmê (science). In particular, the technê of psychotherapy is concerned with the development of phronesis (practical …
Soul in the world
Whilst the loss of a sense of living connection with the material world is mainly associated with the scientific revolution in seventeenth century Europe, it can be traced back to Plato's introduction of a hierarchy between soul and body. Jung's attempted solution to this – esse in anima – is ingenious but maintains the Cartesian split by which the aliveness of the world is reduced to a projection of psychic forces (the archetypes). An alternativ…
Reply to Wolfgang Giegerich's ‘A serious misunderstanding
Aspects of Anima and Animus in Oedipal Development
This paper aims to insert the contrasexual archetype into the dynamic narrative of the Oedipus complex. Jung used the terms 'anima' and 'animus' to classify observed phenomena but did not explore the developmental origins of these phenomena in terms of personal history and experience. Some typical manifestations of anima and animus are described and shown to be rooted in the vicissitudes of Oedipal development. The contrasexual archetype is initi…
Thinking the unthinkable
From my experience of working with her as the editor of many of her papers, this paper seeks to elucidate the late Alessandra Cavalli's clinical and theoretical approach to analytic work through a study of the editorial process her papers went through on their way to publication. This highlights a consistent theoretical synthesis integrating Klein, Fordham, Bion, Matte-Blanco and Ferrari in an archetypal structure that was firmly rooted in Jung. …
James Astor in conversation with Warren Colman
In this interview with Warren Colman, James Astor speaks about his development as a Jungian analyst from his own experience of personal analysis in the 1960s to his recent retirement from clinical practice. The discussion covers his long association with Michael Fordham, the child analytic training at the SAP, the infant observation seminars with Fordham and Gianna Henry through which Fordham was able to make new discoveries about infant developm…
Reply to Astor's ‘Are Urban and Colman really in opposition over Fordham's model of the self?’
Tyrannical omnipotence in the archetypal father
This paper sets the archetypal relationship between the tyrannical, devouring father and his sons in the context of a disjunction in the parental couple (syzygy) whereby the role of the maternal feminine is eclipsed and excluded. This is shown to originate in an omnipotent defence against infantile dependence on the mother. Successful liberation from the father's tyranny requires the restoration of mutuality between the internal couple. Although …
Love, Desire and Infatuation
Erotic love is a universal experience with all the features of numinous archetypal experience. Indeed, for many people it may be their closest brush with the divine. Prior to Plato the spiritual and sexual aspects of the erotic spirit seem to have been fused but Plato introduced a distinction between physical and sexual love that opened up a conflict between them that has not yet been healed. It is proposed that love is an experience of the imagi…
Aspects of Anima and Animus in Oedipal Development
This paper aims to insert the contrasexual archetype into the dynamic narrative of the Oedipus complex. Jung used the terms 'anima' and 'animus' to classify observed phenomena but did not explore the developmental origins of these phenomena in terms of personal history and experience. Some typical manifestations of anima and animus are described and shown to be rooted in the vicissitudes of Oedipal development. The contrasexual archetype is initi…
The Journal of Analytical Psychology's Internet Discussion Forum
Internet Discussion Forum
Tyrannical omnipotence in the archetypal father
This paper sets the archetypal relationship between the tyrannical, devouring father and his sons in the context of a disjunction in the parental couple (syzygy) whereby the role of the maternal feminine is eclipsed and excluded. This is shown to originate in an omnipotent defence against infantile dependence on the mother. Successful liberation from the father's tyranny requires the restoration of mutuality between the internal couple. Although …
Sexual metaphor and the language of unconscious phantasy
This paper investigates the attempt to find a 'bedrock' for psychic life in the idea of unconscious phantasy. Through a detailed examination of the development of the concept of unconscious phantasy, especially in Kleinian discourse, it is argued that unconscious phantasies are inherently metaphorical and have no 'concrete' existence in the unconscious. The use of unconscious phantasy as metaphor enables a 'two-way' form of interpretation that de…
Imagination and the imaginary
This paper argues that real imagination depends on the capacity to acknowledge the absence of what is imagined from the world of material actuality. This leads on to a view of symbol formation as the operation of the transcendent function between the opposites of presence and absence. 'The imaginary' is contrasted with this as a defensive misuse of imagination that attempts to deny 'negation' where negation is defined as all those aspects of the …
Symbolic conceptions
The idea of the third which appears in Jung's concepts of the transcendent function and the coniunctio also occurs in several psychoanalytic theories concerning the emergence of reflective and symbolic thought in childhood development (defined here as the development of 'imaginal capacity'). Noting the way this process is often conceived in terms of the metaphor of sexual intercourse leading to 'conception', this paper suggests that such images n…
On being, knowing and having a self
This paper(1) takes the distinction between being conscious ('core consciousness') and knowing that one is conscious (self-reflexive consciousness) as a starting point for differentiating between three different aspects of the self: 1) the overall process of psychosomatic being which we share with all living creatures and which expresses itself through action (self as totality), 2) the conscious awareness of knowing the self that is a peculiarly …
Response to Umberto Galimberti
Reply to Astor's ‘Are Urban and Colman really in opposition over Fordham's model of the self?’
Theory as metaphor
This paper investigates the relationship between clinical knowledge and psychological theory and considers the implications for clinical writing. I argue that clinical knowledge is a way of understanding rather than a body of facts and compare clinical material to 'texts' that generate multiple and indeterminate meanings. Analytic theories, which represent the crystallization of ways of understanding clinical phenomena, have an inherently metapho…
The analyst in action
This paper describes some similarities and differences between contemporary approaches to analysis as practised by 'Freudians' and 'Jungians' in London today. It aims to contribute to mutual understanding between different schools of analysis by showing how the analyst's interventions can only be understood in terms of the theoretical context from which they arise (cf. 'the analyst's preconscious', as discussed by Hamilton [1996]). A discussion o…
Mourning and the symbolic process
This paper describes the analysis of a patient whose difficulty symbolizing absence had prevented her from being able to mourn the loss of her father in her adolescence. Through a series of symbolic enactments and synchronistic events, she was eventually able to carry out a mourning ritual that enabled her to lay her father to rest. Some implications for symbolization are discussed, developing Segal's view of symbol formation as reparation: symbo…
Synchronicity and the meaning‐making psyche
This paper contrasts Jung's account of synchronicity as evidence of an objective principle of meaning in Nature with a view that emphasizes human meaning-making. All synchronicities generate indicative signs but only where this becomes a 'living symbol' of a transcendent intentionality at work in a living universe does synchronicity generate the kind of symbolic meaning that led Jung to posit the existence of a Universal Mind. This is regarded as…
Symbolic objects and the analytic frame
With reference to two patients who brought material objects to their sessions (previously discussed in Colman 2010a, 2010b), this paper reconsiders the pre-eminent role of verbal communication in analysis. I suggest that the privileging of words over action derives from Freud's view of the mind in which only that which can be put into words can become conscious. Following Stephen Mitchell (1993), I discuss the way that this view has become relati…
Reply to Wolfgang Giegerich's ‘A serious misunderstanding
James Astor in conversation with Warren Colman
In this interview with Warren Colman, James Astor speaks about his development as a Jungian analyst from his own experience of personal analysis in the 1960s to his recent retirement from clinical practice. The discussion covers his long association with Michael Fordham, the child analytic training at the SAP, the infant observation seminars with Fordham and Gianna Henry through which Fordham was able to make new discoveries about infant developm…
Bringing it all back home
This paper traces the similarities between the cluster of influences that informed my own training and practice as a British developmental Jungian analyst and those that led to the creation of intersubjective and relational analysis in America. Having outlined five main themes of relational analysis, I show how these were anticipated by several trends in British analysis, especially the work of R.D. Laing and the theory of couple interaction deve…
Reflections on knowledge and experience
As analysts become more experienced, theoretical knowledge becomes more integrated and implicit and is gradually transformed into the practical wisdom (phronesis) described by Aristotle. While this leads to greater freedom in ways of working, it remains conditional on the consistent disciplined practice represented by the analytic attitude. In the context of my own development as an analyst, I suggest that increasingly the analyst works from the …
A revolution of the mind
George Hogenson's 2001 paper 'The Baldwin Effect: a neglected influence on C.G. Jung's evolutionary thinking' developed the radical argument that, if archetypes are emergent, they 'do not exist in the sense that there is no place that the archetypes can be said to be'. In this paper, I show how Hogenson's thinking has been seminal to my own: it is not just archetypes but the mind itself that has no 'place'. The mind is a dynamic system, emergent …
Bounded in a nutshell and a king of infinite space
This paper explores the implications of developments in phenomenological biology for a reconsideration of synchronicity and the self. The enactive approach of Maturana and Varela aims to reformulate the relation between biological organisms and the world in a non-Cartesian way, breaking down the conceptual division between mind and world so that meaning can be seen as a function of the species-specific way in which an organism engages with its en…
Soul in the world
Whilst the loss of a sense of living connection with the material world is mainly associated with the scientific revolution in seventeenth century Europe, it can be traced back to Plato's introduction of a hierarchy between soul and body. Jung's attempted solution to this – esse in anima – is ingenious but maintains the Cartesian split by which the aliveness of the world is reduced to a projection of psychic forces (the archetypes). An alternativ…
The wrong side of history
Psychoanalysis (including analytical psychology), once a pioneering and forward-looking movement of the early 20 th century has now become a conservative backward-looking 'tradition'. After considering some of the internal problems associated with this historical change such as idealization and tribalism, some ways forward are suggested - a focus on clinical excellence as practical craft, openness to the unknown and engagement with others beyond …
Response to Hugh Gee's ‘A simple statement about the concept of archetypes’
Are Archetypes Essential
This paper distinguishes between Jung's theoretical discourse regarding the archetypes and his phenomenological account of numinous experience. For this author, the initial attraction of 'my Jung' came from both the vivid Romanticism of his descriptions of the anima and the apparent 'ground of being' offered by his theory of archetypes. However, the essentialism inherent to archetypal theory in general and the anima in particular has necessitated…
Psychology (24 works) · Philosophy (21 works) · Philosophy (19 works) · Psychoanalysis (19 works) · Epistemology (18 works) · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications (16 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology (9 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Linguistics (7 works)