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Work and perversion
(2012)
Recent theories and practices in human resources management indicate the possibility of the complete control of man over his environment as well as himself. Analysis of this new concept from a psychoanalytical viewpoint shows a close relationship between control strategies that are part of some management practices and perversion, generating research elements for managers and other professionals in the mental health field.
Women behind the couch
(2012)
Psychoanalysis today is increasingly turning its sights on narcissistic and borderline states, in which archaic forms of defense predominate and accordingly burden the analytic setting. Mental function suffers, and psychic pain cannot be experienced as a mental emotional experience. As a result, the whole situation tends towards the direction of enactment. In such cases, interpretations are not enough, at least on a primary level. Instead, there should be a possibly lengthy period of containment of this archaic nonverbal communication within the psychic space of the analyst in order give it meaning and subsequently remit it into the potential space between the analyst and the analysand in the analytic setting. It has been increasingly accepted by the psychoanalytic community that the analyst's response towards the analysand's transference is likely to contain elements that come from the analyst's own mental and affective processes. Such a holistic view of countertransference is open to acknowledging, and even embracing, the subjectivity of the analyst in the analytic process. The analyst's affective reaction toward and involvement with his patients, which is absent from the classic description of countertransference, turns the latter concept into a valuable and reliable tool for understanding severe pathology within an intersubjective frame of interaction. This paper presents the clinical case of a middle-aged man with narcissistic disorder and an incapacity to mourn. It describes the course of the interaction within the analytic pair that, in a setting of intersubjectivity, worked toward reconstructing the patient's sense of loss and absence.
This article offers a sympathetic appraisal of Erich Fromm’s concept of narcissism as it relates to the emergence, sustenance, and resolution of authoritarian violence. The discussion is first placed within the methodological debate over the analytic operations that are required for an adequate understanding of authoritarian violence, explaining why a psychoanalytic perspective is necessary. The focus then shifts to Fromm’s take on the Freudian concept of narcissism, before proceeding to explore in some depth his account of the symbolic mechanisms and contextual climate that must combine in practice in order for narcissistic energies to be channeled into authoritarianism and violence. Attention in this regard is paid both to the populace and governing elites. The article concludes with a short exposition of Fromm’s notion of benign narcissism, from its specific content to the conditions of its possibility.
Veterans and Brain Disease
(2012)
The recent developments in brain science research suggest that terms such as >consciousness< or >unconscious< can be discussed not only on a psychological or psychoanalytic basis, but also on a neurobiological one. The work of several investigators indicates that, through the mechanisms of brain plasticity, an unconscious internal reality can be formed that probably plays a key role in the determination of the subject. The functions of the amygdala can be a good example for visualizing this type of mechanism. Mirror neurons may also play a key role in human development during the prelinguistic stages of life.
Transformations and the rebirth of the true unconscious subject: An intersubjective perspective
(2012)
The transformations that lead to the rebirth of the true-unconscious-subject-as-I (TUs-as-I) in the unconscious of the patient's mind is discussed. The TUs-as-I is the vehicle and main exponent of self-realization, the basis of the intention for freedom of will, for creative motive, and for the construction of meaning. The unconscious ego is the representative of the TUs-as-I, and in cases where it has been devitalized, the patient's unconscious ego/me is lost, broken, or has become >dead.< It is suggested that, in the analytic situation, apart from serving as an external object available for the patient's unconscious imaginary identification, the analyst as the Other also functions as an external Subject, who invites the analysand to respond to his discourse/logos as a supposed-to-be Subject and to identify with his symbolic call. If the patient accepts the call and responds, transformations of his ego/self structures take place that lead to rebirth of the TUs-as-I, to a regenesis of new ego structures, and to a catastrophic change of the >dead imaginary ego-object formations.< The present work discusses certain factors and issues that facilitate the regenesis process, the emergence of a >live true self,< and offers clinical material for the issues discussed.
The worker in postmodernity
(2012)
The author takes a historical approach to the concept of work in an effort to clarify the place and function that, in contemporaneity, capitalism delegates to the worker. She takes into account the fact that the use of the word in question is restricted to the category of wage-earners and/or the unemployed. As a reference, she adopts Freud's structural theory which, from the beginning, has supported the civilizing and acculturation processes. Starting from that point – the structure, which necessarily implies the use of identifications as the foundation of the subject – this leads to a review of the difference between the worker's health and illness.
This article examines some consequences of Lacan's statement that defines the Freudian unconscious as the >ideal worker.< As this statement takes its fundaments from Marxist theory of the relations between capital and work, it becomes necessary to make explicit some Marxian concepts that Lacan seems to mobilise. The unconscious, as Lacan claims, >does not think, nor calculate, nor judge<: the unconscious just >works.< In order to verify the consistence of this thesis, Freud's The interpretation of dreams, and more specifically aspects of what can be called the potential of expression of the dream, is revisited. Condensation, displacement, and consideration of representabilty are the concepts used by Freud in order to explain, in his own words, the >dream work.< Here, I intend to demonstrate the applicability of the concept of work to Freud's metapsychological arguments, and how the unconscious works to adapt the processes of representation and presentation of the desire in molds that are, simultaneously, imagistic and verbal.
The purpose of this essay is to consider the role and the meaning attributed to the concept of >work< by an analysis of Freud's cultural writings. It concludes that there are important deficiencies in Freudian theorization about this topic which have led to the naturalization of man and society and, as a result, to an ahistorical view of social processes. These deficiencies have been frequently pointed out in the criticism made of Freud's work.
The time–space upheavals that characterise so-called globalization have been translated into virtual flows, the flow of objects, and population flows with differentiated impacts within the strata of the population. This paper studies a Mexico–United States migratory circuit in which the analysis focuses on the way in which subjectivities and social identities are destructured and reconfigured in a peasant population of indigenous origin that has been forming a transnational community with migrants established in Long Island, New York. The reconstruction of a structural framework and a transnational culture becomes a substratum that allows for the emergence of new social subjects such as grandmothers, autonomous women, and young people. The psychic dynamics of losses and appropriations, of unresolved ambivalences, interact with the sociostructural processes. The US–Mexico border, a cause of physical, emotional, and symbolic rupture, appears as one of the axes of comprehension for transforming the subjectivities and the intersubjective networks. A dialogue is attempted with a psychoanalytic and sociopsychoanalytic approach, which is vital in these contexts.
At the centre of subjectivity lies the interdependence between passion and sense of responsibility. Passion is nourished by misacknowledgment (possessive desire) and acknowledgment (hatred) of the other as a subject at the same time. In the crescendo of this contradiction, the subject discovers that he is the hated subjectivity of the object that makes him alive and desirable. He discovers that he loves the object for the same reason he hates it. He must protect the object of his passionate love if he wants to keep this love alive, and this is when the sense of responsibility for the others is born. The passage from passion (passionate subject) to responsibility (responsible subject) is neither automatic nor direct. The child has to gasp his mother's subjectivity in order to responsibly protect it. What makes this possible is hysterical identification, which is both identification and relation, with her. Hysterical identification allows the child to extend the boundaries of his existence in order to make it eccentric to the original, undifferentiated core of his own subjectivity. The other becomes co-constitutive of the subjectivity, and the particular of the subjective experience meets the universal of the intersubjectivity at the point where they constitute each other.
This text discusses the evolution that has taken place since the beginning of psychoanalysis and that continues into contemporary practice. It focuses specifically on the causes and modalities of this evolution and its possible assessment in relation to the teachings of Freud. Addressed to a consulting patient, early psychoanalysis was constructed around successive discoveries in the research process, and the importance of the analyst's personality for the therapeutic process has been increasingly recognized. Due to the discovery of transference and countertransference, as well as the study of the analyst–analysand pair, current psychoanalytic practice can be described as intersubjective. Contemporary psychoanalysis entails no longer the study of a specific subject, but rather that of the relationship between the two participants and their joint work as a means to deduce and ultimately change the modalities of the analysand. This is a more and more common and widespread treatment model, although there are differences in terms of the conception of intersubjectivity. This paper cites analysts and groups of analysts involved in this subject, and the nuances of their approaches reflect differences in ideology. Baranger's >field theory,< for instance, is discussed in general terms. Its known origins and consequences for the practice of each member of the analytic pair are discussed, along with their common work and eventual changes.
Psychoanalytical identity is more like a process than a state, reflecting the balance between the self and the expectations of the reference group. But what is the common ground where psychoanalysts can refer to facing changes in psychoanalytic theory and practice, especially in the direction of the intersubjective paradigm? In this paper, the traditional psychoanalytic attitude of an objective interpretation of the inner world of the patient is contrasted to the position that is the result of the intersubjective conception of the psychoanalytic process. The latter assigns the role of a co-player to the analyst. This has far-reaching consequences for the concept of abstinence, which are developed in this paper against a background of a short clinical vignette.
The psychoanalytic encounter (Begegnung) is the starting point of the analyst's and analysand's journey. For this journey to be productive, it is necessary for the analyst to be able to identify with the analysand, thus being able to feel and understand what he or she feels. Both analyst and analysand contribute to this mostly unconscious identification. Sometimes, however, a merging relationship can be created as a result of traumatic traces and unresolved transference conflicts in the mind of the analyst. This merging, excluding any >third< between the analyst and the analysand, can provide shelter from the psychic pain of mourning the loss of the other, but can also hinder development and creativity. This is when the working-through of the analyst's countertransference can allow the analytic thought to be the >third< and the merging relationship to be interrupted. The differentiation of the analyst is the necessary precondition for the subsequent differentiation of the analysand. This paper discusses this situation based on a clinical case in which a dream of the analyst initiated her reflective process and, by working through the countertransference, the analytic process was facilitated.
Today, much of psychoanalysis has moved beyond Freud, both methodologically and theoretically. I understand Freud to have been always either explicitly or implicitly committed to the view that psychoanalysis is a science, if only at times as an aspirational goal. The question I intend to raise in this article is not whether psychoanalysis is scientific, but rather whether it should still consider itself so in the light of contemporary theoretical physics' ever greater dependence on mathematical assertions that have not to date been validated by experimental conformation. Bestowing the appellation of science to superstring theory, >the theory of everything,< is at present a self-crowing by its adherents taken as a hereditary birthright. I view the relation between psychoanalytic theory and contemporary theoretical physics as a parallelism – a parallelism between approaches to conceptualisation rather than a reduction of disciplines.
This paper discusses the notion of mental health from the perspective of the social context in which such a notion has to exist, and has to be fostered or otherwise, by that key social activity in a democracy that is education. In particular, it considers this topic by way of reviewing a thoroughgoing analysis of ‘society and sanity’ presented over a half century ago by Erich Fromm in his >The Sane Society<. The links to and an implications for a PCP understanding of mental health in the light of the ideas of Fromm and some later thinkers are discussed.
Evidence from recent electroencephalographic and magnetoencephalographic sleep studies is reviewed in relation to consciousness and dreams, two fundamental issues in psychoanalytic theory and practice. The rich dynamics of the macro- and microstructure of human sleep indicate specific brain disintegrating mechanisms as underlying the loss and alteration of consciousness in non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and REM sleep, respectively. Transient state changes and dynamic interactions between elements of sleep graphoelements (i.e. K-complexes and spindles) are described; these, beyond their involvement in controlling consciousness level, may support the consolidation or modification of therapeutic experiences. Higher powers than in awake-state gamma-band electrographic activity (known to underlie cognitive processes), which we observed in specific medial prefrontal cortical areas, are proposed to support content in dreaming (REM) and mentation (NREM). These areas lie in remarkably close proximity to the >default system< and >theory of mind< areas, which may be parts of the neural correlates of intrapsychic and intersubjective processes. Specific activations of limbic circuits were observed in REM sleep in consistency with the emotional content of dreams. Current brain imaging technology in sleep studies offers new opportunities to explore the mechanisms underlying consciousness and dreaming, a unique area of convergence between biology and psychology.
The present paper reports on a study carried out over three years in two companies in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. It aimed to give employees an opportunity to talk over and rethink their difficulties and present problems, usually associated with other people who interfered in their professional and personal relationships. We believe that, through acknowledging their issues and accepting the responsibilities assigned to them, a greater quota of creative power could be released in them, generating wellbeing and positive results, both at home and at work. Our intervention was not psychotherapy. However, we gave time for reflection, which in turn gave personal meaning to the problems presented by the employees and thereby lessened their suffering.
Psychoanalysis, religion, philosophy and the possibility for dialogue: Freud, Binswanger and Pfister
(2012)
This article considers the longstanding disciplinary tensions between psychoanalysis, religion, and philosophy. It argues for a cross-disciplinary understanding of human experience by examining the relationship of Sigmund Freud to his two Swiss colleagues, Ludwig Binswanger and Oskar Pfister. In contrast to Freud's avowed atheism and pronounced ambivalence on philosophy, Binswanger and Pfister both professed a strong religious sensibility and philosophical outlook. The article juxtaposes their theoretical divergences on religion and philosophy with personal interactions and correspondence. The relationship of Freud to Binswanger and Pfister is instructive for understanding the historical and contemporary interaction of psychoanalytic theory and practice with other disciplines and diverse viewpoints. The dialogical spirit that connects the three protagonists constitutes a critical engagement with learning and is essential to psychoanalysis today.
Psychoanalysis is becoming an impossible profession within the public welfare system in Sweden
(2012)
The preconditions for psychoanalytic practice within the Swedish public welfare system are analyzed in this article. Psychoanalysis remains a one-to-one treatment and relies on the analyst's capacity to use his or her own subjective response. The development of the psychoanalytic process is dependent on unconscious reality, making it impossible to work with a model that has a strict relation between diagnosis, treatment method, and result. Objectivity and the desire to predict treatment outcomes characterize the immanent logic in the complex system of laws and recommendations that affects most practices within the field of medicine. As a consequence of this development, psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy are marginalized, since our treatment methods are not adapted to the present industrialization and economization of the medical health sector, with the result that the preconditions for psychoanalytic training have changed dramatically. The exclusion of psychoanalysis from the national health insurance scheme is a demanding challenge at a time when the Swedish welfare model is undergoing fundamental changes.
Psychoanalysis and Politics. Exclusion and the Politics of Representation, London (Karnac) 2012.
(2012)
Psychoanalysis and job-related dilemmas in the post-modern era: A way out or a pact with the Devil?
(2012)
This paper aims to study the subject–work–organization relationship from the viewpoint of psychoanalysis. Modern organizations now demand a new professional profile. The subject struggles to deal with this new scenario, which offers him new possibilities to articulate enjoyment and desire. Which role does psychoanalysis play with regard to new challenges brought to the contemporary era? Is it possible to think of psychoanalysis as a way out of job-related dilemmas of Post-Modernity, or would psychoanalysis be risking establishing a pact with devil?
Although Freud's theory was born from an observation of individual phenomena and psychological suffering, Freud did not fail to relate and apply it to culture, to the social, and even to the arts and religion. In many of his texts, he dealt with social issues from the psychoanalytic viewpoint. Reviewing these texts and Freud's theories, this paper intends to show evidence of the applicability of the psychoanalytic perspective in current society and in contemporary organizations. In other words, Freud's work remains as ever present and relevant.
What are the implications of the new management models, which are typical of contemporary organizations, on the subjects who depend on their work for a living? Which are the new symptoms and pathologies that define contemporary organizations? What could psychoanalytical studies contribute towards a greater understanding of the contemporary modes of subject–work–organizations relations? As answers, we should stress the relevance of deeper conversations between organizational studies and psychoanalysis, as in its extension it will offer significant potential with regard to new gazes and theoretical–methodological approaches that will allow broader visions with regard to the multiple facets that characterize the complexity of current of subject–work–organizations relations.
In a 2002 article that appeared in El País, the Spanish writer Javier Cercas allies himself with other scholars who have argued that during the time of its publication he Family of Pascual Duarte (1942) by Camilo José Cela, served as an apologia for Franco’s dictatorship. Following the ideas articulated by Erich Fromm in Escape from Freedom (1941) about fascism as a reaction against the effects of individual isolation in the modern era, I relate Cerca’s political interpretation of the Family of Pascual Duarte with existential and psychological readings of the novel. I argue that the moral decline of Pascual Duarte is the result of his inability to live up to the existential burden of freedom in the seemingly uncaring, anarchical and meaningless universe associated, from the Nationalist perspective, with the political and social programs of the Second Republic. While Pascual tries to elude this responsibility through various mechanisms of escape, primarily through practices of submission and domination, the lack of any legitimate authority to submit to or of any sphere in which he can legitimately assert his own authority, leads Pascual to unwittingly present his meaningless and immoral life as a case for the reassertion of a dictatorial regime.
The author follows Bion's, Ogden's and the Barangers’ formulations on the intersubjective field of analysis and begins with the hypothesis that, if the analytic situation aspires to mental growth and not just to insight, the new relationship becomes of particular importance. He presents the clinical case of a patient whose archaic relationship was experienced as a rather depriving one. The initial phase of analysis had periods of incomprehension but allowed for a certain degree of interpretive work. In the second phase, it seemed that the intersubjective relationship and interaction created a >field< towards growth.
In this paper, it is argued that the psychoanalytic situation can be considered as an intersubjective field of interactions (psychoanalytic field) involving both patient and analyst. These interactions constantly transform the psychoanalytic field. The dream paradigm of the psychoanalytic session is also discussed. The theoretical arguments are illustrated with clinical vignettes.
This thesis is a statement about a series of paintings based on an invented dollhouse object that conveys the artist’s identity and placement in the world. Through this essay, the artist represents the home as a space that fosters the recovery and rebirth of invisible energy, >ki< and examines ideas of transience, interconnection, and rebirth in the mysterious flow of >ki< in the home. Also the artist will explain her own view about being an artist, the methodologies and specific techniques of her paintings, and her artistic direction for the future.
Introduction
(2012)
In his approach to understand psychoanalytical knowledge and practice, Igor A. Caruso, one of the founders of IFPS, started with a traditional Christian anthropological view on human development. His early conception of psychosocial disturbances described the loss of cognitive and social ability as a loss of orientation on objective values of human responsibility and attachment.
Referring to Existentialist Philosophy, Caruso later on transformed his view on neurosis into a concept of individual alienation of transcendence. In the 1960s, he conceived psychosocial development as an on-going individual dealing with social and collective alienation of human nature, life and work. The process of becoming a cultural person obliges the ego to face his individual unconscious drive demands as well as the unconscious demands of the society.
Caruso’s stays in Latin America – esp. in Brazil – caused him to reinforce the interference of materialistic theories on socialisation with psychoanalytic knowledge of individual unconscious dynamics. He understood the psychoanalytic situation as a ‘micro-social model’ which symbolizes the collective and the individual alienated conditions as well as the possibilities of solving the alienation in an individual and cultural process.
In the 1970s, Caruso’s conception was understood as a Freudo-Marxist point of view on alienated psychosocial reality.
With his view on psychoanalytical treatment as a dialectic and relational process – intra- and interpersonal – Caruso demanded a psychoanalytical responsibility within the collective changes, which in a historical view on the IFPS can be understood as a part of a common identity within the early federation.
In his approach to understand psychoanalytical knowledge and practice, Igor A. Caruso, one of the founders of IFPS, started with a traditional Christian anthropological view on human development. His early conception of psychosocial disturbances described the loss of cognitive and social ability as a loss of orientation on objective values of human responsibility and attachment.
Referring to Existentialist Philosophy, Caruso later on transformed his view on neurosis into a concept of individual alienation of transcendence. In the 1960s, he conceived psychosocial development as an on-going individual dealing with social and collective alienation of human nature, life and work. The process of becoming a cultural person obliges the ego to face his individual unconscious drive demands as well as the unconscious demands of the society.
Caruso’s stays in Latin America – esp. in Brazil – caused him to reinforce the interference of materialistic theories on socialisation with psychoanalytic knowledge of individual unconscious dynamics. He understood the psychoanalytic situation as a ‘micro-social model’ which symbolizes the collective and the individual alienated conditions as well as the possibilities of solving the alienation in an individual and cultural process.
In the 1970s, Caruso’s conception was understood as a Freudo-Marxist point of view on alienated psychosocial reality.
With his view on psychoanalytical treatment as a dialectic and relational process – intra- and interpersonal – Caruso demanded a psychoanalytical responsibility within the collective changes, which in a historical view on the IFPS can be understood as a part of a common identity within the early federation.
The healing dynamics of psychosis are examined in this article. It is concluded that psychosis might have the following positive and compensating functions: a satisfaction of urgent needs and a realization of urgent goal settings that previously appeared unattainable; the avoidance of and coping with unbearable reality, harmful influences and stress, and/or trauma; the upgrading of social-emotional and cognitive capacities/awareness and effectiveness; the enhancement of self-realization and authenticity; and intrapsychic maturation. The therapeutic implications of these findings are also discussed; in addition, an outline for integrative theory of constructive functions in psychosis and a clinical vignette are presented.
The legacy of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research has been a powerful force for critically understanding social reality. Erich Fromm was one of the early and best known members of the Institute. Fromm emphasized the centrality of culture and interpersonal relations in the construction of the psyche. The unconscious was not only the location for buried repressed matter but also for the imaginative potential of the human person. He is a forgotten and neglected contributor to the story of the Institute having been written out of this history. This retrospective of his ideas explores his work in the light of the recent work of Juergen Habermas who is also an active but less controversial engager with the psychoanalytic tradition. The implications for adult education will be addressed. The paper outlines Fromm’s radical reinterpretation of psychoanalysis emphasizing the importance of social existence as distinct from the impact of instincts; key concepts of the market, commodity fetishism and automaton conformity; The implications for adult education in the tradition of radical (Freire) and transformative learning theory (Mezirow) and addressed and make connections between Habermas and Fromm that further the project of critical theory. Both attempted in different times to identify and realize the potential of (though neither used the term) of lifelong learning as part of the process of bringing about a more just and caring society and a shared attention to the importance of having free conversations about how the emancipated life might be created and sustained.
Ferenczi's 1929 claim that >no analysis can be regarded … as complete unless we have succeed in penetrating the traumatic material< resonated deeply in Freud, influencing his last works. According to the author, it reactivated in Freud the same traumatic memories that were at the heart of his self-analysis, letting them resurface in the 1936 essay >A disturbance of memory on the Acropolis,< in the striking simile of the Loch Ness monster. The image of >the sea-serpent we've never believed in< is then analyzed and used as a sounding lead for Freud's self-analysis. The transformation of the love-object into an attractive monster, which is found as a recurrent pattern in Freud's life and work, hints at the centrality of the combined figure of woman and serpent in mythology, in psychoanalysis, and in Freud's self-analysis. Finally, the background of the >memory disturbance< on the Acropolis is traced back to the woman patient who had dreams of gigantic snakes. It is suggested that the patient might be Emma Eckstein and that a still unexplored thread exists, which runs through the foundation of psychoanalysis, connecting the surgical operation of Emma, the Irma dream, and the Acropolis incident.
Foreword
(2012)
Erich Fromm and Universal Humane Experience: Application in the Aesthetic Domain for Art Educators
(2012)
The author outlines a unique transdisciplinary method for studying fear and fearlessness, with emphasis on a new conceptualization >World’s Fearlessness Teachings< (i.e., Fearlessness Tradition) and their critical importance, across time and cultures, to better manage and teach fear management in the 21st century. Extracts from the author’s new book >The World’s Fearlessness Teachings: A Critical Integral Approach to Fear Management/ Education for the 21st Century< (University Press of America, 2010) are included. The paper concludes that >experts< in the area of fear management/education are generally unwilling to try a transdisciplinary approach because it is more work and less pragmatic. The author admits his methodology is radical, while grounded in an evolutionary realismidealism model, and few >experts< in fear management are interested in it, so far. The field of Education ought to lead this (r)evolutionary approach and utilize the resource of the World’s Fearlessness Teachings to do so.
Despite readily available facts and figures regarding human-caused natural degradation, a large portion of the public still refuses to believe that the environment is suffering because of our actions. This refusal to believe, paired with a lack of environmental motivation, has become so evident that it recently attracted the attention of scientists and psychologists attempting to account for it from various perspectives. The disbelief in, for instance, climate change, is hard to explain without referring to a mechanism best described as >environmental denial<. Analysis shows that people may be prone to deny anthropogenic environmental damage because their personal identity, as well as the quest for meaning in their lives, depends upon a consumerist modus vivendi. Consciously or unconsciously faced with the dilemma of either accepting that this lifestyle endangers the life of the planet (as well as their and their children’s well-being), and thus accepting its consequences and the responsibility for change, or refusing to believe that the environmental degradation is occurring in the first place, they choose the latter option. This choice is also motivated by the lack of sound alternatives around which new, >greener< identities could be built. Thus any attempt at changing public opinion regarding anthropogenic environmental degradation, as well as any strategy that advocates putting an abrupt end to our environmentally damaging practices, is not likely to be successful if it neglects to provide new footing for identity building.
As a psychoanalyst, I believe that conscious mental phenomena (such as feelings) are not epiphenomenal to the workings of the brain. Feelings evolved for good biological reasons; they make specific contributions to (unconscious) brain functioning. Notwithstanding all the philosophical complexities, the interactions between consciousness and unconscious brain functions are causal interactions. The tendency of modern neuroscientists (and biological psychiatrists) to marginalise consciousness in relation to how the brain works is likely to lead them badly astray. I illustrate this view by trying to address the question: why does depression feel bad?
The article traces the main stages of the history of psychoanalytic social psychology in German speaking countries. Beginning with Freud, it illuminates the Freudomarxists, Critical theory, the developments during the 1960ies and 70ies and of ethnopsychoanalysis, followed by an illustration of central topics of psychoanalytic social psychology (in- and exclusion, authoritarism and right-wing extremism, as well as the aftermath of the National Socialism and the fields of subject and gender). Reflections on a psychoanalytic-oriented empirical social research complete the text.
In her contribution, the author first deals with the general characteristics of the countertransference process and then sets forth her metapsychological hypotheses, which aim to describe the different psychic stages and movements in the analyst's mind during such process. This exploration intends to encompass its intrapsychic, interpsychic, intersubjective, and objective aspects. Her proposal aims to fulfill a twofold purpose. First is to place the countertransference process as a sort of theoretical-technical >hinge< between Freud's lines of thought imbued with the features of the modern age, and those trends influenced by postmodern ideas that put forward the opposition between the analyst's >objectivity< and his >subjectivity,< casting doubt on any possibility of being objective in our clinical practice. Her second aim is to appeal to the >witch metapsychology< and go deeper into the understanding and description of the constituent psychical movements of the process mentioned. In this case, countertransference is also suggested as a theoretical-clinical >hinge< that may help to overcome the >intrapsychic-intersubjective< opposition, based on the assumption of the predominance of one or another of these approaches during the course of an analytic therapy. This contribution attempts to add to those theoretical comprehensive trends that go beyond certain extremely confrontational positions that frequently arise in contemporary psychoanalytic discussions.
Contemporary neuroscience has demonstrated the radical plasticity of the brain – its ability to change with experience at the synaptic, circuitry, and whole-brain levels – which has profound implications for neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and their interrelationship. With the concept of neural plasticity as an ongoing mobilization of neural form, neuroscience converges with psychoanalysis, which has built its theory and therapeutic practice on the flow of forms in the unconscious. We have attempted to integrate evidence and ideas from contemporary neurobiology, neurophysiology, psychopharmacology, and post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory, mainly based on Lacan, Bion, and Winnicott, and we suggest that the recovery of form, as a tool of investigation in these fields, may promote a neuroscientifically informed psychotherapy. We also suggest that plasticity captures the primacy of the dynamic, interactive surface of both intrapsychic and intersubjective processes and allows a conceptualization of the unconscious, facilitating a new understanding of psychic trauma. It is also compatible with the idea of the subject versus the ego of the unconscious, unconscious transformations, intersubjectivity, and freedom of will. We conclude that a new area of research has been identified at the interface between neuroscience and psychoanalytic theory, with promising epistemological, scientific, and therapeutic implications.
Black holes: Some notes on time, symbolization, and perversion in the psychodynamics of addiction
(2012)
Through a historical survey of the psychoanalytical reflection on depression the author shows how, after the first works by Freud and Abraham on the topic, it has developed (at least at an implicit level) according to two basic explanatory orientations. By separative orientation, the therapeutic evolution of depression aims at the substantial abandonment of the investment (already impaired by affective ambivalence) in certain objects, or their internal representatives/derivatives, having high narcissistic value. According to restorative orientation, the overcoming of depression is connected, instead, to the possibility of maintaining or re-establishing that investment, at least at a level of internal derivatives. By referring to one of his clinical treatments, the author underlines the greater significance of the separative orientation, together with the necessity of considering the restorative dimension only as a partial and secondary function of the therapeutic dynamic of depression.
Through a historical survey of the psychoanalytical reflection on depression the author shows how, after the first works by Freud and Abraham on the topic, it has developed (at least at an implicit level) according to two basic explanatory orientations. By separative orientation, the therapeutic evolution of depression aims at the substantial abandonment of the investment (already impaired by affective ambivalence) in certain objects, or their internal representatives/derivatives, having high narcissistic value. According to restorative orientation, the overcoming of depression is connected, instead, to the possibility of maintaining or re-establishing that investment, at least at a level of internal derivatives. By referring to one of his clinical treatments, the author underlines the greater significance of the separative orientation, together with the necessity of considering the restorative dimension only as a partial and secondary function of the therapeutic dynamic of depression.
In his paper, the author considers >the humans’ love of themselves, of their perfection and self-preservation.< He shares Al-Ghazali’s postulate >humans love the eternity of their being< and highlights the presence of this idea in the doctrine of Christianity, in the conceptions of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) and Erich Fromm (1900–1980).
The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse found that members of Catholic congregations in Ireland abused children in institutions which they ran on behalf of the State for much of the 20th century. Drawing from Erich Fromm’s moral psychology, it is argued that members took out the suppression of their individual freedom in hostility towards the children and themselves through forms of submissive and authoritarian behaviour. This is seen as one probable explanation which affected some members. The reason members suppressed their freedom was to find psychological security through embracing a Catholic theology which emphasised self-abnegation. Poor economic and social conditions are also seen as factors which contributed to members not developing a healthy relation to their own freedom. The article concludes that those who work in caring professions need to have security in their own freedom.
The nature of the psychopathology of individuals with eating disorders always requires special understanding. In the case presented in this article, the psychodynamics of the patient's bulimia needed to be thought in relation to her mother's anorexia and the transgenerational transmission of her unmourned trauma. The article will focus on the pathological vampiric tie between mother and daughter, whose bulimia served to saturate the maternal void left by the traumatic losses, actualizing the illusion of their union through a common erotogenic zone, the belly. Special emphasis will be given to the powerful phenomena of bodily countertransference experienced by the analyst, who had to contain the patient's massive projections into her own body and to work through the raw inner tensions and sensations in order to create an intermediate space of thinking between them.
To introduce an archival protocol of a >Debate about methods in the social sciences, especially the conception of social science method represented by the Institute<, held on 17 January 1941 at the Institute of Social Research in New York, the article focuses on certain conflicts in substance and terms of discourse among members of the Institute, with special emphasis on Franz Neumann’s distinctive approaches, notwithstanding his professed loyalty to Max Horkheimer’s theory. These are seen to arise not only from Neumann’s assignment as bargaining agent for the Institute and his distinctive relations with American colleagues, but also from their different orientations to the conflicted legacies of Weimar.