Chimeras: Immunity, Interpenetration, and the True Self

Abstract

In Greek mythology, the Chimera was an awesome fire-breathing monster with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent, but in medicine, a chimera is a person composed of two genetically distinct types of cells. I learned from a fascinating ar ticle on immunity (Holloway, 2007) that human chimeras were first discovered when it was found that some people had more than one blood type. Most of them proved to be "blood chime ras," that is, nonidentical twins who shared a blood supply in the uterus. But many more people are microchimeras and carry smaller numbers of foreign blood cells that may have passed across the placenta from their mother, or persist from a blood transfusion or in vitro fertilization. When patients need a new heart or other organ transplant, they are put on a lifelong regimen of drugs to suppress their im mune system, because otherwise the immune system would reject the transplant as a foreign organism. But although these drugs permit transplants and save lives, they also have debilitating and sometimes deadly side effects, because the weakened immune sys tem has trouble fighting off viruses and cancers. Some years ago a well-known transplant surgeon named Thomas Starzl made an interesting discovery. He had brought to gether many of his former patients, including some he had oper ated on in the early 1960s. He learned that some of them had stopped taking their immunosuppressant drugs a long time ago, but were still in very good health. Starzl tested these patients and discovered that they were microchimeras, that is, that they had foreign donor cells in various tissues and blood. For Starzl, these shared cells were the key to implant tol

The contributions—An overview and integration of the special issue in honor of Sheldon Bach.

“…the patient’s rejection of transplants, foreign cells, or foreign identities, and by projection we mean that the patient is trying to donate his or her cells that are foreign to the analyst, a donation that we would normally reject with all the force that our own narcissistic defense immune system can muster. (Bach, 2011, p. 40)…”

“…It is tempting to go over Bach’s work in historical order but here I will look at how he implicitly describes transference states that occur at different points of a treatment. In one of his later articles (Bach, 2011), he writes about types of “transfusions” that occur between the analytic couple. He sees resistance asthe patient’s rejection of transplants, foreign cells, or foreign identities, and by projection we mean that the patient is trying to donate his or her cells that are foreign to the analyst, a donation that we would normally reject with all the force that our own narcissistic defense immune system can muster.…”

“…He sees resistance asthe patient’s rejection of transplants, foreign cells, or foreign identities, and by projection we mean that the patient is trying to donate his or her cells that are foreign to the analyst, a donation that we would normally reject with all the force that our own narcissistic defense immune system can muster. (Bach, 2011, p. 40)Bach is relating a type of exchange that is similar to foreign cells being exchanged “between a mother and a fetus.” Thus, at the beginning of a treatment the analyst must be able to accept donations that fill their psyches with an experience that feels as if there is a foreign entity placed inside of them. Further in the analyst’s listening they must share their experience with the patient so that there are both a fusion and a transfusion taking place.…”

From a Pictogram to a Symbol: Working with a Transgender Patient in an NHS Gender Clinic Using Piera Aulagnier's Theory of Identity Formation

“…In contrast, perhaps the physical change and a concrete connection with the fantasized gendered self would be sufficient to comfort A. 's unsettled mind and would bring the peace, as in the process of chimerization described by Bach (2011), where allowing uninterrupted transference promotes and strengthens the patient's 'immune system and identity formation' (p. 42).…”

States of self-surrender.

“…In a series of articles published over the last few decades (Bach, 1975(Bach, , 1977(Bach, , 1994(Bach, , 1998(Bach, , 2001(Bach, , 2002a(Bach, , 2002b(Bach, , 2008(Bach, , 2011(Bach, , 2016Bach & Schwartz, 1972), I have suggested that although there are many ways of conceptualizing and organizing states of consciousness, I find it clinically useful to think of them in terms of the actor's subjectivity, which I call subjective awareness, or of the spectator's self-observational awareness, that is, in terms of these dual abilities to be both the subject and the object, both the experiencer and also the observer of one's own states. At the extreme of being the subjective actor, we are totally immersed in our own self experience, a state of self-absorption and obliviousness to the other that may be related to extremes of depression or of elation and mania.…”