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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.
Treatment Resistance and Psychodynamic Psychiatry: Concepts Psychiatry Needs from Psychoanalysis
(2012)
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.