Affect and Pictographic Image
The Constitution of Meaning in Mental Life
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8972860 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Elias Mallet da Rocha Barros (IBM (United States), corresponding author) |
| Year | 2000 |
| Volume | 81 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 1087-1099 |
| Publication date | 2000-12-06 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The International Journal of Psychoanalysis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-7578 • E-ISSN: 1745-8315 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1516/0020757001600435 |
| PMID | 11144851 |
| OpenAlex | W2008634502 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 31 |
The author explores the processes of revealing, creating and working through new meaning in mental life and relates these processes to specific methods of producing representations of emotional experience through their transformation into unconscious symbolism in the form of imagery. Drawing on several dreams and other experiences from a detailed clinical case, the author argues for the value of considering three interpenetrating levels of meaning that operate simultaneously in mental life, namely hidden meaning, absent meaning and potential meaning: 'hidden' meaning resulting from dynamic forms of repression, absent meaning from a pregnant pressure exerted on psychic life by unconscious internal objects whenever any new emotional situation confronts the ego. Absent meaning is not just waiting in the unconscious to become explicit in a unique form. It is in its very nature to remain partially absent and it can never be rendered wholly conscious. All symbolic constructions that are expressed at first by unconscious imagery found especially in dreams are attempts to capture and represent the absent meaning. The concept of potential meaning refers to experiences produced by the interpretation of absent meaning, and consists of a specific case of this latter. Potential-meaning, when interpreted, rearticulates meanings on a specific symbolic field, and opens up new experiential possibilities, thus creating new meanings that expand the possibilities for emotional development. The author's ideas draw on the formulations of Aulagnier, Bion, Ferro, Green and Khan
Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy · Linguistics · Meaning (existential · Psychic · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Unconscious mind · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Philosophy · Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications
Trauma precoce e ligações psíquicas, um estudo psicanalítico
A Discussion of “The Analyst’s Necessary Nonsovereignty and the Generative Power of the Negative”
What does the presentation of case material tell us about what actually happened in an analysis and how does it do this
An essay on dreaming, psychical working out and working through
Canaries in the Mind
À propos de « Des rêveurs en leur “rêvoir”
Rêve et rêverie
Bion and Thinking
When the Analyst Becomes Stupid
On a Soma-Psychotic Part of the Personality
Transference
Reflections on the clinical implications of symbolism
From bastion to enactment
The work of the human mind
Searching for the analyst’s reveries
Field theory
The psychoanalytical intuition and reverie
The basic traumatic situation in the analytical relationship
Psychosomatic breast and alexithymic breast
The analyst’s listening
Frame, setting, process, and movement
Whose Bion
The colourless canvas
Clinical implications of Bion’s thought
Non‐discursive expressive elements and their role in the construction of meaning in the analytical situation
Whose bion
Transformations in dreaming and characters in the psychoanalytic field
The analyst’s implicit alpha‐function, trauma and enactment in the analysis of borderline patients
The capacity to tell a joke
Transformations at the Dawn of Verbal Language
When language builds a wall, instead of a bridge – on the transmission of unrepresented mind
| Unique citing works | 31 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,29 |
| Citation span | 2002 - 2025 (24) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 30 |