Mark J. Blechner
Encyclopedia
Mark J. Blechner is an American psychologist and psychoanalyst. He has developed and researched new ideas in a number of areas: dreams
, gender
and sexuality
, HIV
/AIDS
, psychotherapy
and the interface between neuroscience and psychoanalysis (neuro-psychoanalysis
). He has charted the patterns of irrationality in human thinking that characterize psychopathology
, clinical neurological syndromes, dream phenomena, conceptions of gender, and prejudice
.
, which is common in dreams, two aspects of cognition do not match each other; the dreamer is aware of the disjunction, yet that does not prevent it from remaining. For example, it is common to dream something like “it did not look like my mother, but I knew it was her.” Physical appearance and actual identity do not match. The perception of the identity of the person is disjunctive from whom the person looks like. In waking life, most sane people would assume that they mis-saw or mis-identified the person, and correct for it, but not necessarily in dreams.
There are also disjunctive cognitions of time: it is common to dream “I was an adult in the house I grew up in.” It is much rarer for an adult to dream “I was a child in my present house.”
”, Blechner’s term for an incomplete fusion of two objects, such as “something between a swimming pool and an acqueduct” or “something something like the lock of a door or perhaps a pair of paint-frozen hinges.” Rules about which objects may be combined in interobjects remain to be specified. Disjunctive cognitions and interobjects contribute to our understanding of the rules of dream formation and irrational thinking, which Blechner calls “The Grammar of Irrationality.”
, the first psychoanalytic clinic specializing in the psychological treatment of people with HIV and their caregivers. When the relatively effective “triple cocktail” treatments became available in the mid-1990s, his focus shifted from issues of death and dying to issues of restructuring a life after one felt doomed to death (the “Lazarus syndrome
”) and issues of HIV-transmission, “bareback sex” and the balance of risk, pleasure, and safety.
He has studied the unconscious biases and fears about masculinity and femininity, and their variation across cultures and time periods. He has noted the malleability of concepts of perversion, which included masturbation
in the 19th Century and oral sex in the early 20th Century, and sought the removal of stigma and the diagnosis of psychopathology of behaviors that are consensual and do not harm another person. He has studied the rules of irrational thinking that underlie prejudices against groups based on race, religion, and sexual orientation. He links the fear of same-sex marriage
to the “von Domarus principle” by which things that are merely associated with one another are seen to have a causal relationship. For example, a schizophrenic may think, “If my mother’s name is Mary, and Mary is the mother of God, then I am God.” When under great emotional pressure, most people are capable of this sort of irrational reasoning. Thus a frightened heterosexual may unconsciously reason: If homosexuals are allowed to be married, and I am married, then I may be a homosexual. And if I make it impossible for homosexuals to marry, and I am married, then I will make it impossible for me to be a homosexual.
’s “mutual analysis” by proposing that psychoanalysts consider the attributions of patients seriously without prematurely foreclosing on the question of whether or not the patient is projecting. Blechner calls this “working in the countertransference.” To characterize fluid self-attributions, Blechner extended the personifications of Harry Stack Sullivan
– good-me, bad-me, and not-me – to include the “maybe-me,” with both psychoanalyst and patient considering the possibility of different attributions. He has also argued for the consideration of real but dissociated psychological elements of mental illnesses that are routinely seen in the early 21st Century as biologically-based, such as panic attacks and depression
Uncovering such dissociated psychological causation requires expert psychiatric interviewing.
Blechner received his doctorate in psychology from Yale University
. His interests there encompassed both cognitive neuroscience and clinical psychology. His dissertation discovered that about 30% of the population cannot hear the difference between major and minor chords in root position, which may account for the relative harmonic simplicity of much popular music. He has taught at Columbia University
, New York University
, and the William Alanson White Institute
of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Contemporary Psychoanalysis
.
Dream
Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, philosophical intrigue and religious...
, gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
and sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
, HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
/AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
, psychotherapy
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a general term referring to any form of therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client or patient; family, couple or group...
and the interface between neuroscience and psychoanalysis (neuro-psychoanalysis
Neuro-Psychoanalysis
Neuro-psychoanalysis is a movement within neuroscience and psychoanalysis to combine the insights of both disciplines for a better understanding of mind and brain.-Theoretical Base: Dual Aspect Monism:...
). He has charted the patterns of irrationality in human thinking that characterize psychopathology
Psychopathology
Psychopathology is the study of mental illness, mental distress, and abnormal/maladaptive behavior. The term is most commonly used within psychiatry where pathology refers to disease processes...
, clinical neurological syndromes, dream phenomena, conceptions of gender, and prejudice
Prejudice
Prejudice is making a judgment or assumption about someone or something before having enough knowledge to be able to do so with guaranteed accuracy, or "judging a book by its cover"...
.
Disjunctive Cognitions
Blechner has identified certain unusual percepts, which do not strike us as bizarre in our dreams, although they would in waking life. In disjunctive cognitionDisjunctive cognition
Disjunctive cognition is a common phenomenon in dreams, first identified by psychoanalyst Mark Blechner , in which two aspects of cognition do not match each other. The dreamer is aware of the disjunction, yet that does not prevent it from remaining...
, which is common in dreams, two aspects of cognition do not match each other; the dreamer is aware of the disjunction, yet that does not prevent it from remaining. For example, it is common to dream something like “it did not look like my mother, but I knew it was her.” Physical appearance and actual identity do not match. The perception of the identity of the person is disjunctive from whom the person looks like. In waking life, most sane people would assume that they mis-saw or mis-identified the person, and correct for it, but not necessarily in dreams.
There are also disjunctive cognitions of time: it is common to dream “I was an adult in the house I grew up in.” It is much rarer for an adult to dream “I was a child in my present house.”
Interobjects
It is also common for a dream to include an “interobjectInterobject
An interobject is a phenomenon of dreams, in which there is a perception of something that is "between" two objects. The term was coined by Blechner in his book The Dream Frontier. Interobjects differ from typical dream condensations in which two objects are fused into one. Instead the condensation...
”, Blechner’s term for an incomplete fusion of two objects, such as “something between a swimming pool and an acqueduct” or “something something like the lock of a door or perhaps a pair of paint-frozen hinges.” Rules about which objects may be combined in interobjects remain to be specified. Disjunctive cognitions and interobjects contribute to our understanding of the rules of dream formation and irrational thinking, which Blechner calls “The Grammar of Irrationality.”
Oneiric Darwinism
Dreams may contribute to the formation of new ideas. Blechner’s theory of “Oneiric Darwinism” (oneiric = related to dreams; Darwinism=a selectionist model of the creation of ideas) proposes that some dreams create “thought mutations” – new ideas that can be developed if useful, or discarded if useless or maladaptive, much as Darwinian evolutionary theory proposes that genetic mutations can lead to improved survival. Most people dream five or more times per night, although few of those dreams are remembered. Oneiric Darwinism proposes a function for the majority of dreams of which we are never aware or do not remember.Dream interpretation
Blechner has argued that the most anxiety-provoking interpretations of dreams may result from asking the dreamer, “Have you ever experienced what happened in the dream or something like it?” He has proposed that in dreams, we see the operation of the brain producing meaning that does not need to be communicable. This leads to phenomena like predicates with omitted subjects, similar to inner speech and pictorialized metaphors, that can make dreams difficult to understand.AIDS and HIV
In the 1980s, Blechner specialized in the psychological issues of people with AIDS. He founded, at the William Alanson White InstituteWilliam Alanson White Institute
The William Alanson White Institute, founded in 1946, is an institution for training psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. It is located in New York City, USA, on the Upper West Side, in the Clara Thompson building....
, the first psychoanalytic clinic specializing in the psychological treatment of people with HIV and their caregivers. When the relatively effective “triple cocktail” treatments became available in the mid-1990s, his focus shifted from issues of death and dying to issues of restructuring a life after one felt doomed to death (the “Lazarus syndrome
Lazarus syndrome
Lazarus syndrome or autoresuscitation after failed cardiopulmonary resuscitation is the spontaneous return of circulation after failed attempts at resuscitation. Its occurrence has been noted in medical literature at least 25 times since 1982...
”) and issues of HIV-transmission, “bareback sex” and the balance of risk, pleasure, and safety.
Gender and Sexuality
Blechner also studied issues of sexuality, gender, and sexual orientationSexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
He has studied the unconscious biases and fears about masculinity and femininity, and their variation across cultures and time periods. He has noted the malleability of concepts of perversion, which included masturbation
Masturbation
Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...
in the 19th Century and oral sex in the early 20th Century, and sought the removal of stigma and the diagnosis of psychopathology of behaviors that are consensual and do not harm another person. He has studied the rules of irrational thinking that underlie prejudices against groups based on race, religion, and sexual orientation. He links the fear of same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage is marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or social gender. Supporters of legal recognition for same-sex marriage typically refer to such recognition as marriage equality....
to the “von Domarus principle” by which things that are merely associated with one another are seen to have a causal relationship. For example, a schizophrenic may think, “If my mother’s name is Mary, and Mary is the mother of God, then I am God.” When under great emotional pressure, most people are capable of this sort of irrational reasoning. Thus a frightened heterosexual may unconsciously reason: If homosexuals are allowed to be married, and I am married, then I may be a homosexual. And if I make it impossible for homosexuals to marry, and I am married, then I will make it impossible for me to be a homosexual.
Psychoanalysis: Technical Approaches
In psychoanalytic technique, Blechner has developed the progressive approach of Sándor FerencziSándor Ferenczi
Sándor Ferenczi was a Hungarian psychoanalyst, a key theorist of the psychoanalytic school and a close associate of Sigmund Freud.-Biography:...
’s “mutual analysis” by proposing that psychoanalysts consider the attributions of patients seriously without prematurely foreclosing on the question of whether or not the patient is projecting. Blechner calls this “working in the countertransference.” To characterize fluid self-attributions, Blechner extended the personifications of Harry Stack Sullivan
Harry Stack Sullivan
Harry Stack Sullivan was a U.S. psychiatrist whose work in psychoanalysis was based on direct and verifiable observation .-Life and works:Sullivan was a child of Irish immigrants and allegedly grew up in an...
– good-me, bad-me, and not-me – to include the “maybe-me,” with both psychoanalyst and patient considering the possibility of different attributions. He has also argued for the consideration of real but dissociated psychological elements of mental illnesses that are routinely seen in the early 21st Century as biologically-based, such as panic attacks and depression
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
Uncovering such dissociated psychological causation requires expert psychiatric interviewing.
Blechner received his doctorate in psychology from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. His interests there encompassed both cognitive neuroscience and clinical psychology. His dissertation discovered that about 30% of the population cannot hear the difference between major and minor chords in root position, which may account for the relative harmonic simplicity of much popular music. He has taught at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
, and the William Alanson White Institute
William Alanson White Institute
The William Alanson White Institute, founded in 1946, is an institution for training psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. It is located in New York City, USA, on the Upper West Side, in the Clara Thompson building....
of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Contemporary Psychoanalysis
Contemporary Psychoanalysis
Contemporary Psychoanalysis is a quarterly academic journal for the dissemination of progressive psychoanalytic ideas. For decades, the journal, which was founded in 1964, was the only one to publish articles from all schools of psychoanalysis, including interpersonal, relational, Freudian,...
.