Refine
Language
- English (107) (remove)
Document Type
- Articles (79)
- Dissertations (13)
- Books (4)
- Reviews (4)
- Forewords (3)
- eBook (1)
- event Report (1)
- Interviews (1)
- Necrologues (1)
Year of publication
- 2020 (107) (remove)
By integrating data from general psychology and perinatal clinical psychology with neuroscience and psychoanalysis, the author discusses the relations between memory and consciousness, the aim being a unitary definition of the concept of unconscious. Nobody has a brain that can be the same as any other person's: the biology of memory lies in neural networks that have been constructed in the brain of that specific person by their experience. From the fetal stage, each brain progressively learns its own individual functions during its relational neuropsychic development. The author underlines how the continuous emotional biological work of the brain, together with a person's entire relational life, produces the construction of the whole functional and individual mindbrain. The whole construction is memory and this is unconscious; indeed it may be the true unconscious. From the continuous silent work of the mindbrain of a person, some forms of conscious level may emerge in his individual's subjectivity: some functioning of mindbrain makes what an individual person can consciously remember. The unconscious is only what appears in some form in an analyst's consciousness, at some specific moment in his relationship with a patient, and which the analyst translates into some form of his verbal interpretation.
There are shared humanistic tendencies in Erich Fromm’s views and the ideas of Eastern Orthodoxy. The comparative method of this paper focuses on similarities between Fromm’s humanistic psychoanalysis and Orthodox Christianity, while noting differences between them. In his works Fromm mentioned religious approaches, but he mostly referred to Protestantism (as a development from teachings of Martin Luther and John Calvin) and more rarely to Catholicism. Both streams have differences with Eastern Orthodoxy which is traditional for Russia. The individualism common to the western protestant model is contrasted with the community spirit, which is common to Russian culture and to the view of life of Russian Orthodoxy in particular. First, Fromm wrote about overcoming negative modes of life (such as estrangement or alienation) inherent to the first model, through adopting the second model. Second, humanistic views should be marked in ideas of Erich Fromm and Eastern Orthodoxy. The ideas of Erich Fromm and Eastern Orthodoxy are both based on a perception of a human being as a distinct whole personality, who should perceive as basic the values of self-development, love, creative self-realization, freedom, and responsibility. Also, free and whole personality cannot be formed without being a part of community of other persons, which is a very important point for both.
In the light of Philipp Sarasin's work in Darwin und Foucault: Genealogie und Geschichte im Zeitalter der Biologie, the article delineates a genealogically articulated naturally produced culture and a cultured nature and discusses the genealogical implications of a carnal, becoming self in a world that could rightly be justified >as an aesthetical phenomenon.< The article demonstrates the historicity and processual materiality as a conceptual platform for a combination of the notions of experienced carnality and a socially constructed body, demonstrating such a historically embedded carnal body as a binding agent for the >social constructivist< and >biologist< approaches in sciences. Thus, the article builds a framework for the articulation of senseful, processual materiality on the backdrop of a nature-culture continuum via genealogy, suggesting the necessity for change of tone in the communication of human and life sciences via the understanding of a culturally endowed biology.
A Frommian perspective on the socio-psychological structure of post-fascism in liberal democracies
(2020)
My research explores Erich Fromm’s social theories of narcissism, alienation and authoritarianism for the purpose of linking those theories together, thereby analysing current populist phenomena as an extension of a fascist development in terms of Enzo Traverso’s conception of post-fascism. In my view, Fromm’s critical social theory of narcissism, which pertains to his two other theories, has great potential to unravel current political issues in liberal democracies that are generally tackled in terms of populism. Through a demonstration of the theoretical scope of Fromm’s social theory, which sheds light on pathological social and political phenomena in historical continuity, I argue that the primary tasks of Critical Theory in Frommian terms are to divulge the sources of fascist orientations in seemingly democratic practice and to offer appropriate remedies for these difficulties. In this light, I conclude that in terms of a Frommian social theory of narcissism, fascist types of politics thrive even in advanced liberal-democratic countries, taking the form of authoritarian populism, particularly where society rests on a narcissistic character structure intertwined with an authoritarian orientation.
This paper investigates hopes and fears connected with work as an analytic psychotherapist, in a sample of trainees attending the Italian Training School for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (SPP). Candidates were asked to complete a questionnaire with open-ended questions. In the first analysis, we found trainees to be interested in learning an effective therapeutic method to treat patients. Their wish was for a serious, demanding, but nonjudgmental training, which could support the development of both a thoughtful way of using their thinking process and a rigorous clinical method, while respecting their individuality and personality. We asked our candidates whether theoretical concepts and issues related to the analytic method effectively helped them transform difficulties in perspectives. Theoretical tendencies and authors considered to be useful in modern clinical areas such as Internet addiction disorders, Hikikomori (severe social and relational retirement in adolescence), children's school problems, and problems connected with dimensions of parenthood (e.g. LGBT parenting) were explored. A sense of inadequacy when first dealing with difficult clinical situations, and fears about the realistic difficulties of psychotherapy as a trade, today, in Italy, were found. Considerations on the psychoanalytic educational program and on the importance of workgroups were proposed.