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`One of the most interesting theorist in contemporary psychoanalysis, Bollas emphasizes both the creativity of subjectivity itself and the key place of experience in the formation of psychical constructions and fantasy′ - Anthony Elliott, Centre for Critical Theory, University of the West of England This eclectic collection of essays reflects the far-reaching, multi-dimensional influence of Christopher Bollas. Bollas galvanises our understanding of what happens when people encounter the objects - the endlessly variegated content - of external reality. Each of us has our own unique idiom through which we endow objects - a painting, a football, a stranger - with special meaning. Bollas has added depth to our understanding of these relationships with vitality rarely found in psychoanalytic writing. The contributors to this volume offer definitions and illustrations that make Bollas′ thought accessible for those approaching his work for the first time and illuminating for those more familiar with his canon. The Vitality of Objects reveals the possibilities for self-expression and growth that figure in the process of object relations and shows how and why thinkers and artists from so many different perspectives are attracted to Bollas′ thought.

Using Christopher Bollas’s concept of transformational object, the author reflects on George F. Handel’s “How Beautiful Are the Feet” as a song that has sustained him and informed his vocational self-understanding as a pastoral theologian. The author reflects on the role of his mother and paternal aunts in fostering a model of care that instilled in him a sense of hope. The author concludes by reflecting on the kinetic quality of pastoral theology and the need to reclaim an agile, even playful understanding of hope.

This article draws from the life and work of George Bellows (1882–1925), a noted American painter at the turn of the twentieth century, in relation to his art instructor, Robert Henri (1865–1929), to envision pastoral relationships that foster spontaneous self-expression and the embrace of intrapsychic complexity in contemporary American boys and young men. It examines cultural trends and male psychosexual struggles that bolster undue self-screening at the expense of archaic, semiconscious desires to see and to be seen, to know and to be known. By identifying with artwork, artist, and art instructor, ministers or mentors aspire to evoke and enrich several facets of their own and their protégé’s self-experience, designated here the unedited self, the unmanifested self, and the unencumbered self.

In this essay, the author engages the Moses, a sculpture by Michelangelo, as a transformational object. He does so in light of psychoanalytic interpretations of the statue, including Sigmund Freud’s (who referred to his essay on the Moses as “a joke”), as well as three psychoanalytic interpretations after Freud. While drawing on and combining features of all of these psychoanalytic interpretations, the author makes particular use of Moshe Halevi Spero’s interpretation to affirm a reading of the Moses as representing a paternal figure who not only gives up his anger (and power to castrate) but also actively nourishes his children like a nursing mother. The author also understands Freud’s essay on the Moses to be a form of teasing, which, in part, is why it has been a transformational object for him.

This paper investigates the psychological nature of the guru-disciple relationship in the context of the guruyoga, a religious path centred on the figure of the spiritual master. In many guruyoga forms, in both traditional Indian and Westernised versions, the guru is perceived as a living embodiment of the divine (gurudeva). Devotion to the guru and identification with him are considered the means of attaining liberation. Using a psychoanalytic approach and drawing, among others, on Christopher Bollas, the author delves into the problematic of identification with the master, in terms of transformational processes and quest for the transformational object. Accordingly, identification with the guru may be understood as a long process of religious maturation, during which a simple imitation of the ideal guru (and more importantly, the disciple’s fantasy of merging with the guru treated as the omnipotent object) has to be superseded by the genuine transformational processes of both a psychological and a religious kind.

Este artigo tem como objetivo analisar, a posteriori, uma experiência clínica vivida em um contexto institucional. Trata-se de um paciente que frequentava um grupo centrado em torno da música e que apresentou transformações subjetivas e relacionais. Investigamos os elementos da experiência vivida com esse paciente, que propiciaram as transformações. Nossa hipótese é de que esses elementos são principalmente de caráter estético, de modo que consideramos que foram as experiências estéticas vividas por ele que levaram às transformações. Consideramos a dimensão estética da experiência musical e também aquela que faz parte do encontro interpessoal vivido entre o paciente e o coordenador do grupo. A estética é aqui compreendida não em seu caráter restritivo à filosofia do belo ou da arte, mas sim em seu sentido mais primário, isto é, como experiência vinculada ao campo do sensível. Resumos This article aims to analyze, a posteriori, a clinical experience lived in an institutional context. It is the experience with a patient who attended a group centered around music and who presented subjective and relational transformations. We investigate the elements of the experience that led to such transformations. Our hypothesis is that these elements are mainly of an aesthetic nature, so we consider that it was the aesthetic experiences lived by the patient that led to the transformations. We consider the aesthetic dimension of the musical experience and also that which is part of the interpersonal encounter lived between the patient and the group coordinator. Aesthetics is understood here not in its character restricted to the philosophy of beauty or art, but rather in its most primary sense, that is, as an experience linked to the field of the sensitive. Cet article vise à analyser, a posteriori, une expérience clinique vécue en contexte institutionnel. Il s’agit d’une expérience avec un patient qui a fréquenté un groupe centré autour de la musique et qui a présenté des transformations subjectives et relationnelles. Nous avons étudié les éléments de l’expérience qui ont conduit à de telles transformations. Notre hypothèse est que ces éléments sont principalement de nature esthétique, nous considérons donc que ce sont les expériences esthétiques vécues qui ont conduit aux transformations. Nous considérons la dimension esthétique de l’expérience musicale et aussi celle qui fait partie de la rencontre interpersonnelle vécue entre le patient et le coordinateur du groupe. L’esthétique est entendue ici non pas dans son caractère restrictif à la philosophie de la beauté ou de l’art, mais plutôt dans son sens le plus premier, c’est-à-dire comme une expérience liée au champ du sensible. Este artículo pretende analizar, a posteriori, una experiencia clínica vivida en un contexto institucional. Se trata de una experiencia con un paciente que asistió a un grupo centrado en la música y que presentó transformaciones subjetivas y relacionales. Investigamos los elementos de la experiencia que llevaron a tales transformaciones. Nuestra hipótesis es que estos elementos son principalmente de carácter estético, por lo que consideramos que fueron las experiencias estéticas vividas las que propiciaron las transformaciones. Consideramos la dimensión estética de la experiencia musical y también la que forma parte del encuentro interpersonal vivido entre el paciente y el coordinador del grupo. La estética se entiende aquí no en su carácter restrictivo a la filosofía de la belleza o del arte, sino en su sentido más primario, es decir, como experiencia vinculada al campo de lo sensible.

Matthew’s parables of the treasure and pearl are commonly interpreted as a call to give all one has for the kingdom. In this article, I argue that the experience brought about by the objects is instead the point of these parables. In psychoanalytic terms, the treasure and the pearl represent what Bollas ( 1987 ) calls the transformational object. The search for the transformational object is inspired by the infant’s earliest memory of the sudden internal and external transformation brought about by the ministrations of the mother. In adult life, it continues in a search for aesthetic or cultural objects that are identified with the metamorphosis of the self. From this perspective, I explore how the objects of treasure and pearl evoke an emotionally dense transformation to be experienced. The kingdom of heaven is like the surprising object, able to joyfully transform our world. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like the experience of surrendering to the beautiful object, for which we have sought.

Melancholy is not only about sadness, despair, and loss. As Renaissance artists and philosophers acknowledged long ago, it can engender a certain kind of creativity born from a deep awareness of the mutability of life and the inevitable cycle of birth and death. Drawing on psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the intellectual history of the history of art,The Melancholy Artexplores the unique connections between melancholy and the art historian's craft. Though the objects art historians study are materially present in our world, the worlds from which they come are forever lost to time. In this eloquent and inspiring book, Michael Ann Holly traces how this disjunction courses through the history of art and shows how it can give rise to melancholic sentiments in historians who write about art. She confronts pivotal and vexing questions in her discipline: Why do art historians write in the first place? What kinds of psychic exchanges occur between art objects and those who write about them? What institutional and personal needs does art history serve? What is lost in historical writing about art? The Melancholy Artlooks at how melancholy suffuses the work of some of the twentieth century's most powerful and poetic writers on the history of art, including Alois Riegl, Franz Wickhoff, Adrian Stokes, Michael Baxandall, Meyer Schapiro, and Jacques Derrida. A disarmingly personal meditation by one of our most distinguished art historians, this book explains why to write about art is to share in a kind of intertwined pleasure and loss that is the very essence of melancholy.