Martin Stanton
Encyclopedia
Martin Stanton is a writer
, teacher
and psychoanalyst. He is known for his pioneering work in establishing Psychoanalytic Studies as a distinct and thriving academic subject that is now taught in universities around the world - he founded the first prototype Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Kent
in Canterbury
, UK, in 1986. He is equally known for his innovative and challenging work on the nature and function of unconscious processes. This began this with his first book Outside the Dream (1983) - and originally and free-associatively
explored the vital impact of Lacanian thinking on contemporary psychoanalysis
at that time (when Lacan
was largely unknown in the English-speaking world). The book was equally a poetic account of Stanton’s own early personal engagement with psychoanalysis. He spent much of the 1970s training to be an analyst in Paris
, and was a student at the Ecole Normale Superieure
, where he attended classes and lectures by Gilles Deleuze
, Felix Guattari
and Michel Foucault
, whose teaching variously resonates in the footnotes to the book.
He followed Outside the Dream with a critical introduction to Sandor Ferenczi
(1991) -- which was the first major study of the pioneer Hungarian psychoanalyst, and this provoked a widely celebrated "Ferenczi renaissance" (Berman, 2002) in both the psychotherapeutic and cultural worlds. In the 1990s, he opened up large avenues in Ferenczi's thinking that were previously undiscovered, above all the critical value of utraquism
– or the productive and free-associative use of analogies - in analytic work with unconscious processes, in particular the use of the analogy of the teratoma
(an embryonic form of tumour) to engage with the after-effects of sexual abuse
.
In Paris, Stanton also became closely linked with the work of the French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche
, and, through him, became actively involved in seminal debates on the central role of afterwardsness
in the unconscious psychological process of trauma
. These debates are now generally referred to under the general title of the new seduction theory. In this context, in 1998, Stanton launched his own notion of the bezoaric effect, which was developed from an analogy with animals’ production of bezoar
stones from progressive digestive regurgitation
s in wild and desert terrain (1998). At the same time, his book Out of Order (1997) presented an extensive critical review of his own contributions in the light of his psychoanalytic forebears, Ferenczi, Balint, and Laplanche.
In this context, Out of Order was clearly written to re-connect psychoanalytic clinical work to its founding revolutionary impetus in the residual unconscious
, and help people gain the strength and insight to remain open to unpredictable and unforeseen change, and to challenge their world, rather than conform and adapt to increasingly confined norms.
distorts and actively diminishes the elaborative complexity of conscious and unconscious life – notably by imposing set forms of linear causality
(such as dialectics), and privileging projective ego-based thought-process over introjection (which centrally concerns the impact of feeling/sensations on thinking). He chooses rather to explore the alternative dynamics generated within the interactive space between primary feeling/sensations and cognitive process. A central focus here is the elaborative feeling/thought dynamic that follows a primary feeling/sensory input (introjection
) – or the particular inner-outer reverberations that follow once the psyche is struck or hit by something. First of all, there are psychic contusions – psychic elaborations which evolve like bruises which brighten and darken, colour-up, and shift around feeling/sensation pin-point triggers (which Stanton calls contundors). Then there are the imago
s, the amalgams generated from various bits of visual/sensation material that randomly stick together to form an evanescent image or sound that freeze-frames the on-going narrative. Finally, there are the set interactive systemic structures of effect, generated by primary feeling/sensory introjections, that form initially around contundors, and then subsequently progressively elaborate after-effects around imagos. Stanton has so far introduced and elaborated on the following general interactive systemic structures:
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
and psychoanalyst. He is known for his pioneering work in establishing Psychoanalytic Studies as a distinct and thriving academic subject that is now taught in universities around the world - he founded the first prototype Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Kent
University of Kent
The University of Kent, previously the University of Kent at Canterbury, is a public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom...
in Canterbury
Canterbury
Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....
, UK, in 1986. He is equally known for his innovative and challenging work on the nature and function of unconscious processes. This began this with his first book Outside the Dream (1983) - and originally and free-associatively
Free association
Free association may refer to:*Free association , a clinical technique of psychoanalysis devised by Sigmund Freud*Free Association, a musical group formed by David Holmes for the Code 46 soundtrack...
explored the vital impact of Lacanian thinking on contemporary psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
at that time (when Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
was largely unknown in the English-speaking world). The book was equally a poetic account of Stanton’s own early personal engagement with psychoanalysis. He spent much of the 1970s training to be an analyst in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and was a student at the Ecole Normale Superieure
École Normale Supérieure
The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...
, where he attended classes and lectures by Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
, Felix Guattari
Félix Guattari
Pierre-Félix Guattari was a French militant, an institutional psychotherapist, philosopher, and semiotician; he founded both schizoanalysis and ecosophy...
and Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
, whose teaching variously resonates in the footnotes to the book.
He followed Outside the Dream with a critical introduction to Sandor Ferenczi
Sándor Ferenczi
Sándor Ferenczi was a Hungarian psychoanalyst, a key theorist of the psychoanalytic school and a close associate of Sigmund Freud.-Biography:...
(1991) -- which was the first major study of the pioneer Hungarian psychoanalyst, and this provoked a widely celebrated "Ferenczi renaissance" (Berman, 2002) in both the psychotherapeutic and cultural worlds. In the 1990s, he opened up large avenues in Ferenczi's thinking that were previously undiscovered, above all the critical value of utraquism
Utraquism
Utraquism was a Christian dogma first proposed by Jacob of Mies in 1414. It maintained that the Eucharist should be administered "in both kinds" — as both bread and wine — to all the congregation, including the laity...
– or the productive and free-associative use of analogies - in analytic work with unconscious processes, in particular the use of the analogy of the teratoma
Teratoma
A teratoma is an encapsulated tumor with tissue or organ components resembling normal derivatives of all three germ layers. There are rare occasions when not all three germ layers are identifiable...
(an embryonic form of tumour) to engage with the after-effects of sexual abuse
Sexual abuse
Sexual abuse, also referred to as molestation, is the forcing of undesired sexual behavior by one person upon another. When that force is immediate, of short duration, or infrequent, it is called sexual assault. The offender is referred to as a sexual abuser or molester...
.
In Paris, Stanton also became closely linked with the work of the French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche
Jean Laplanche
Jean Laplanche is a French author, theorist and psychoanalyst. Laplanche is best known for his work on psychosexual development and Sigmund Freud's seduction theory, and has written more than a dozen books on psychoanalytic theory...
, and, through him, became actively involved in seminal debates on the central role of afterwardsness
Afterwardsness
'In one sense, Freud's theory of deferred action can be simply stated: memory is reprinted, so to speak, in accordance with later experience'. It is, in other words, a 'mode of belated understanding or retroactive attribution of sexual or traumatic meaning to earlier events.....
in the unconscious psychological process of trauma
Psychological trauma
Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a traumatic event...
. These debates are now generally referred to under the general title of the new seduction theory. In this context, in 1998, Stanton launched his own notion of the bezoaric effect, which was developed from an analogy with animals’ production of bezoar
Bezoar
A bezoar is a mass found trapped in the gastrointestinal system , though it can occur in other locations. A pseudobezoar is an indigestible object introduced intentionally into the digestive system....
stones from progressive digestive regurgitation
Regurgitation (digestion)
Regurgitation is the expulsion of material from the mouth, pharynx, or esophagus, usually characterized by the presence of undigested food or blood.Regurgitation is used by a number of species to feed their young...
s in wild and desert terrain (1998). At the same time, his book Out of Order (1997) presented an extensive critical review of his own contributions in the light of his psychoanalytic forebears, Ferenczi, Balint, and Laplanche.
In this context, Out of Order was clearly written to re-connect psychoanalytic clinical work to its founding revolutionary impetus in the residual unconscious
Unconscious
Unconscious might refer to:In physiology:* unconsciousness, the lack of consciousness or responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuliIn psychology:...
, and help people gain the strength and insight to remain open to unpredictable and unforeseen change, and to challenge their world, rather than conform and adapt to increasingly confined norms.
Work
Stanton’s work strongly opposes the core strategies of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, notably in the way in which it aims to "manage" the production of symptoms of mental disorders. Above all, he sets out to expose how the prioritisation of cognitionCognition
In science, cognition refers to mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science...
distorts and actively diminishes the elaborative complexity of conscious and unconscious life – notably by imposing set forms of linear causality
Causality
Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....
(such as dialectics), and privileging projective ego-based thought-process over introjection (which centrally concerns the impact of feeling/sensations on thinking). He chooses rather to explore the alternative dynamics generated within the interactive space between primary feeling/sensations and cognitive process. A central focus here is the elaborative feeling/thought dynamic that follows a primary feeling/sensory input (introjection
Introjection
Introjection is a psychoanalytical term with a variety of meanings.Generally, it is regarded as the process where the subject replicates in itself behaviors, attributes or other fragments of the surrounding world, especially of other subjects...
) – or the particular inner-outer reverberations that follow once the psyche is struck or hit by something. First of all, there are psychic contusions – psychic elaborations which evolve like bruises which brighten and darken, colour-up, and shift around feeling/sensation pin-point triggers (which Stanton calls contundors). Then there are the imago
Imago
In biology, the imago is the last stage of development of an insect, after the last ecdysis of an incomplete metamorphosis, or after emergence from the pupa where the metamorphosis is complete...
s, the amalgams generated from various bits of visual/sensation material that randomly stick together to form an evanescent image or sound that freeze-frames the on-going narrative. Finally, there are the set interactive systemic structures of effect, generated by primary feeling/sensory introjections, that form initially around contundors, and then subsequently progressively elaborate after-effects around imagos. Stanton has so far introduced and elaborated on the following general interactive systemic structures:
- the bezoaric effect – a post-traumatic systemic effect - which progresses like the successive regurgitations of mountain and desert animals, as well as humans in extremis, which shift and re-work undigested material until all the feeling and meaning is extracted, and only the bezoar stone – the traumatic jewel – remains. 'In the bezoaric effect...unconscious elements of traumatic experience shift, realign and transform through communicative exchange in therapy'.
- the caddis effect – a defensive systemic effect – which progresses in a similar way as the caddis insect constructs its defensive pupaPupaA pupa is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation. The pupal stage is found only in holometabolous insects, those that undergo a complete metamorphosis, going through four life stages; embryo, larva, pupa and imago...
-case, by surrounding the ego-core with bright and beautiful shiny ready-mades from the surrounding cultural environment. - the karaoke effect - a transcendent sublime systemic effect – where the set narrative links between thoughts and feelings suddenly disengage along zip lines (immortalized by Barnett NewmanBarnett NewmanBarnett Newman was an American artist. He is seen as one of the major figures in abstract expressionism and one of the foremost of the color field painters.-Early life:...
), and transpose into an independent and often contradictory narrative. As with karaokeKaraokeis a form of interactive entertainment or video game in which amateur singers sing along with recorded music using a microphone and public address system. The music is typically a well-known pop song minus the lead vocal. Lyrics are usually displayed on a video screen, along with a moving symbol,...
, a pre-formed ready-made potential space opens to take centre-stage and burst into song, and - the medusa effect – an anxiety-producing systemic effect – where primary-sourced feeling-sensations stick like glue, then ensnare the critical function of thinking. Like a jellyfishJellyfishJellyfish are free-swimming members of the phylum Cnidaria. Medusa is another word for jellyfish, and refers to any free-swimming jellyfish stages in the phylum Cnidaria...
(also called a medusa), the medusa effect generates a glutinous mass which spreads out tentacles to sting and progressively deaden the subject. It installs panic as an automatic reflexReflexA reflex action, also known as a reflex, is an involuntary and nearly instantaneous movement in response to a stimulus. A true reflex is a behavior which is mediated via the reflex arc; this does not apply to casual uses of the term 'reflex'.-See also:...
, which is activated precisely at the point where thought-cycles are switched off by primary feeling-sensations. The medusa effect also evokes OvidOvidPublius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
’s MedusaMedusaIn Greek mythology Medusa , " guardian, protectress") was a Gorgon, a chthonic monster, and a daughter of Phorcys and Ceto. The author Hyginus, interposes a generation and gives Medusa another chthonic pair as parents. Gazing directly upon her would turn onlookers to stone...
, the beautiful woman raped by PoseidonPoseidonPoseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...
, who AthenaAthenaIn Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...
subsequently transforms into a snake-locked monster, who turns all who gaze on her into stone. PerseusPerseusPerseus ,Perseos and Perseas are not used in English. the legendary founder of Mycenae and of the Perseid dynasty of Danaans there, was the first of the mythic heroes of Greek mythology whose exploits in defeating various archaic monsters provided the founding myths of the Twelve Olympians...
manages to behead her without stone-transmogrification, by looking at her image reflected in his shield – and so inspires further reflection on the role of observation in working with anxietyAnxietyAnxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. The root meaning of the word anxiety is 'to vex or trouble'; in either presence or absence of psychological stress, anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness,...
and panicPanicPanic is a sudden sensation of fear which is so strong as to dominate or prevent reason and logical thinking, replacing it with overwhelming feelings of anxiety and frantic agitation consistent with an animalistic fight-or-flight reaction...
.