Violence and Creativity Series: When Words Do Not Mean What They Say. Self-Agency and the Coercive Use of Language - Jean Knox
Date: 30 May 2009
10am - 12.30pm
Chair: Chris Perryer
This paper explores the ways in which humans use speech to coerce, manipulate and control each other through the messages which are hidden within, between and beneath the actual words used, drawing on the plays of Harold Pinter as well as clinical examples.
This kind of coercive communication is linked to the developmental stages of self-agency, especially that of the teleological level, a state of mind that ‘represents others' actions in terms of their concrete and visible outcomes’. At this level, mind is only understood through its visible and concrete effects. Other people are therefore related to in terms of their behaviour (including the visible evidence of their emotions), not their internal world. Words become weapons, not messages for the other person to understand, and this is discussed in terms of Deacon’s concept of indexical communication.
The implications for clinical practice of the teleological level of self-agency are explored.
Jean Knox, MBBS, MRCPsych, PhD, is a Training Analyst of The SAP and former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Analytical Psychology. Currently a Consultant Editor on its board, she is the author of several papers and her most recent paper 'The fear of love' won the Michael Fordham prize for the best clinical paper in the JAP in 2007. She is also the author of the book ‘Archetype, Attachment, Analysis’, published in 2003 by Brunner-Routledge. She lectures widely in Europe and the US. She is in private practice in Oxford.
Chris Perryer is a Member of The SAP, and works in private practice and in two services within the NHS for Eating Disorders and Borderline Personality Disorders.
Venue: The Society of Analytical Psychology
Cost: £25 including coffee or book all five talks in the series for the price of four (£100)
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