@article{Zepf, author = {Zepf, Siegfried}, title = {Psychoanalytic treatments and empirical research on their efficacy: A commentary}, series = {International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 29 (No. 2, 2020), pp. 096-103.}, journal = {International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 29 (No. 2, 2020), pp. 096-103.}, abstract = {The author summarizes the problems inherent in nomological approaches examining the efficacy of psychoanalysis as a form of treatment. He argues that nomologically oriented research operates with assumptions lacking empirical foundation and, moreover, that studies of this type merely give the impression of the effectiveness of psychoanalytic therapies while overlooking the specificity of the psychoanalytic method. He suggests that research into psychoanalytic treatments should not be subjected to a nomological conception of science, and that structural analysis of treatment courses should be examined and systematized within the frame of psychoanalytic treatment theory relative to their outcome. Given this approach, and provided that the theory of treatment is based on conceptual common ground, such studies would enable a prognostic conclusion that psychoanalytic treatments are successful, providing that the sequences generalized in the treatment theory do actually take place in treatments that take patients' individuality into account.}, language = {en} } @article{ZepfSeel, author = {Zepf, Siegfried and Seel, Dietmar}, title = {Do under-3s think of day-care centers as >home from homescientistic self-misunderstanding<}, series = {International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 25 (No. 3, 2016), pp. 157-168.}, journal = {International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 25 (No. 3, 2016), pp. 157-168.}, abstract = {This paper centres on Habermas's judgement that when Freud assesses psychoanalysis as a natural science, this constitutes a scientific self-misunderstanding. The author discusses Brenner's conviction that Freud's view is not a misunderstanding but is true for psychoanalysis and rejects his conclusion. In the author's view, Freud's assessment of psychoanalysis must be seen as a misunderstanding whose basis lies in its subject. Unconscious figures assert themselves under the repetition compulsion in the same manner as natural laws, each of which asserts itself beyond individual consciousness. It was the discovery of the unconscious that led Freud to conceive of psychoanalysis as a natural science and it seems that this conception is rooted in the structural identity between unconscious and natural processes. Freud's misunderstanding of pseudo-nature as nature seems to be indebted to his energy concept. As it is impossible to deduce psychic energies and their distribution by means of the psychoanalytic method, this being dependent on language, the author recommends replacing the economic metapsychological viewpoint by an affective one. The author goes on further to discuss the object of psychoanalytic investigation, the psychoanalytic method used to acquire knowledge, and the function held by metapsychology.}, language = {en} } @article{Zepf, author = {Zepf, Siegfried}, title = {Consumerism and identity: Some psychoanalytical considerations}, series = {International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 19 (No. 3, 2010), pp. 144-154.}, journal = {International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 19 (No. 3, 2010), pp. 144-154.}, abstract = {The author examines the role that the buying of commodities plays in the identity formation of the individual. He concludes that it is nowadays no longer the instrumental utility value but a psychical utility value that influences the decision to buy a commodity and that the psychical utility value can have different functions for consumers. In neurotically structured individuals, normal consuming can end in an identity extension where the individual identifies transitively unconscious scenes with those in advertisements, thus making these unconscious scenes conscious in their guise. When individuals are mainly narcissistically structured, an >identity of commodities< can be found, that is, a non-personal identity formation mediated by commodities in which the individuals identify reflexively with the scenic figures from Internet games, movies, television programs, and commercials.}, language = {en} } @article{Zepf, author = {Zepf, Siegfried}, title = {Libido and psychic energy - Freud's concepts reconsidered}, series = {International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 19 (No. 1, 2010), pp. 003-014.}, journal = {International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 19 (No. 1, 2010), pp. 003-014.}, abstract = {The author examines different definitions and applications of the terms >psychic energy< and >libido.< With regard to the >psychic energy< terminology, he shows that its application and usage relate in particular to the perspective of Brenner and not to Freud's definition. He argues that Freud uses the term >psychic energy< as a synonym for >libido,< and not >libido< as a synonym for >psychic energy.< It is demonstrated that in Freud's view, up until 1914, >libido< relates to manifestations of bodily sexual tensions, and subsequently this term applies to the manifestations of sexual energy in the psychic field. The author rejects this change in terminology and also challenges Freud's attempt to use dynamic-economic considerations as an explanatory device for epistemological reasons. Freud's concept of energy is inconsistent with the meaning of energy as defined in the physical sciences, and whereas the metapsychological topographical, dynamic, and structural viewpoints have a solid foundation in the representational world to which the psychoanalytic process affords unique access, this is not true of the economic viewpoint. It is claimed that bodily tensions only exist in the representational world in the form of affects, so that, in the author's opinion, the economic viewpoint should be abandoned in favour of an affective one. In the context of the endeavour to obtain pleasure and avoid unpleasure adduced by Freud, this viewpoint focuses on the relationships between affects and the different elements of the representational world, thereby serving as the subject of metapsychological investigation.}, language = {en} } @article{Zepf, author = {Zepf, Siegfried}, title = {Some notes on Freud's concept of conversion}, series = {International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 24 (No. 2, 2015), pp. 77-87.}, journal = {International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 24 (No. 2, 2015), pp. 77-87.}, abstract = {The author investigates conversion, the process by which psychic contents are transformed into bodily symptoms. The author concludes that this process cannot be explained by libido theory or by assuming the existence of a psychic energy. He argues that although Freud was convinced that >the leap from a mental process to a somatic innervation … can never be fully comprehensible to us,< this process is, nonetheless, comprehensible in terms of Freud's own conceptualisation. To understand this process, one must take the characteristics of the primary process to which the >replacement of external by psychical reality< belongs as radical as his thesis of a hallucinatory wish fulfilment. This thesis includes not only the hallucinatory satisfaction of instinctual wishes, but also the hallucinatory satisfaction of the desire to avoid unpleasure, which is understood as a process by which the internal conditions of this affect are displaced from the presentational world into perceptions via conversion.}, language = {en} } @article{ZepfSeel, author = {Zepf, Siegfried and Seel, Dietmar}, title = {Psychoanalysis and political economy}, series = {International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 31 (No. 1, 2022), pp. 003-011.}, journal = {International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 31 (No. 1, 2022), pp. 003-011.}, abstract = {The authors examine the influence that psychoanalysts' economic situation has on the current state of psychoanalysis, particularly focusing on the situation in Germany and employing a perspective afforded by Marxian commodity analysis. Their analysis brings them to conclude that, in psychoanalysis, the suspension of truth value, the tolerance shown towards contradictory concepts, the lack of conceptual criticism, and the exclusion of sociocritical issues seem to be effects of psychoanalysts' interest in realizing the exchange value of their psychoanalytic treatment and their accompanying lesser interest towards its use value.}, language = {en} }