A atenção psicológica: reflexões entre psicanálise e cinema

In this dissertation, I propose a Lacanian analysis of the a-thetic structure of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Adopting the Lacanian theory of the Name of the Father as a critical tool, I will treat Hamlet as a psychic apparatus in which the Name of the Father is absent from the signifying system of Hamlet’s psychic reality. Without the Name of the Father working as the quilting point to regulate the signifying system of this psychic apparatus, the signifying space of Hamlet’s psychic reality drifts back to the a-thetic structure dominated by the endless movement of inscription between presence and absence characteristic of Derridean differance. The first chapter, “The Father Between Being and Non-Being,” sets out to demonstrate that the Name of the Father in Lacanian theory is not a living person, but a paternal metaphor of the Desire of the Mother, a dead father working as the quilting point to regulate the signifying activity for the production of the presence of time and space in the subject’s psychic reality. The appearance of the ghost lingering between being and non-being thus indicates the malfunction of the Name of the Father in the signifying system of Hamlet’s psychic reality, in which “the time is out of joint” between past and future for Hamlet. The second chapter, “The Father’s Equivocal Voice in the Demand for Revenge,” reexamines the relation between the “indifference” in the Desire of the Mother on the one hand, and the Derridean “differance” inherent in the father’s demand for revenge on the other. In her hasty remarriage with Claudius, Gertrude demonstrates an attitude of “indifference” in Hamlet’s psychological world, thus bringing the consequence of differance in the father’s demand for revenge in Hamlet’s psychic reality. Given this equivocal demand for revenge, Hamlet is situated in an ambiguous position between victim and victimizer on the one hand, and between past and future on the other. Without a desire to guide him in the psychic reality, Hamlet tries to reconstruct the virtual space of signifying system of his psychic reality with his “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy. Without the Name of the Father working as the quilting point to uphold the signifying system, however, there is always a gap in the signifying space of Hamlet’s psychic reality; with this gap, Hamlet’s attempt to reconstruct the signifying system of his psychic reality is doomed to failure. The third chapter, “In Search of the Father Outside the Desire of the Mother,” demonstrates that the appearance of the gap due to the absence of the Name of the Father ultimately brings the signifying structure of Hamlet’s psychic reality down to a vanishing point of the infinite regress characteristic of mirror reflection. Finally realizing that it is the ambiguity in the Desire of the Mother that is behind the vanishing point of his psychic reality, Hamlet adopts the position of the object instead of the subject in his task of revenge, thus accepting everything arranged by Claudius and Gertrude. In this potion as an active object, Hamlet is given an alternative leverage point to restructure the signifying structure of psychic reality, by rewriting the purloined “letter” of Claudius with the sign-et of Old Hamlet as the Name of the Father. In sum, by taking Hamlet as a psychic apparatus in which the Name of Father is absent from the signifying system of Hamlet’s psychic reality, I highlight the “a-thetic” structure embedded within the play, thus trying to explain the “uncanny timeliness” of Hamlet in the history of literary criticism.

The author begins by pointing out that the psychoanalytical method and the concept of the unconscious are necessary conditions if the concept of psychic reality is to maintain its psychoanalytical relevance. She emphasises the importance of the concept of Nachträglichkeit, or retroactive assignment of new meaning, as a link between the concepts of psychic reality and historical truths on the one hand and decentred listening and misunderstanding on the other. Recalling the Freudian development of the concept of psychic reality, she stresses that 'the other' is present from the outset in the constitution of the psyche; she discusses the relations between intrasubjectivity and intersubjectivity in the transference and concludes that, through the function of 'listening to listening', misunderstanding becomes the royal path to the discovery of the patient's psychic reality. Some clinical examples are discussed in detail to illustrate the function of decentred listening. The author's viewpoint is not based on criteria concerning a correspondence, or lack of correspondence, between psychic reality and material reality. Her aim is to link psychic reality and historical truths as a way of overcoming solipsism.

A noção freudiana de "realidade psíquica" merece ser interrogada a partir do conceito kantiano de transcendental, uma vez que ela levanta a questão das condições de possibilidade da experiência; e isso a partir de um ponto de vista tríplice: o do aparelho psíquico, de sua estrutura e da atividade inconsciente; o ponto de vista da obrigação moral; e o da experiência estética. Em cada caso, os embaraços de Freud para determinar um fundamento empírico deixam perceber ao mesmo tempo a tentação e a resistência para com a explicação transcendental. Mas isso pode também conduzir a uma revisão do conceito filosófico de "realidade".

Discute-se a relação entre as noções freudianas de realidade material e realidade psíquica, procurando responder se essas duas noções podem ser compreendidas a partir de uma polarização. Com esse objetivo, foram analisados textos de Freud em que tal discussão é privilegiada. Conclui-se que a melhor maneira de conceber essa relação não é pela via de uma mera polarização ou oposição, e que realidade material e psíquica devem ser vistas como noções ao mesmo tempo equivalentes e distintas.

Commençons par écarter tous les faits. Quelques réflexions freudiennes et lyotardiennes sur la réalité psychique

Précarité psychique et dispositifs d'intervention clinique

The category “Truth” is one of the philosopher Richard Rorty’s interests. It can be related to Freud’s “psychic reality”, a key category in psychoanalytic formulation. In both authors, there is a conception of deflated truth. They refuse the existence of an absolute and objective truth, endowed with a hidden essence to be revealed, according to the cartesian model; otherwise, they assume the argument that truth is a construction (Freud), a linguistic entity (Rorty). For both, there is no possibility to the language being to reach to the real world: his experience is mediated by language. Rorty leaves the concept of "intrinsic nature" of human being, exploring the contingency of language. Freud problematizes the issue of reality, in the tenuous border between material and psychic reality, this one pointing to subject’s truth. In this sense, there is no revealed truth from the outside, but subject’s truth in his idiosyncratic dimension.

To clarify the concepts of critical realism, subjectivity, and subjectivism, distinctions are drawn among ontological subjectivism, moral subjectivity, psychological subjectivity, and epistemological subjectivism. Psychological subjectivity, including the ongoing affective life of the analyst, is an essential aspect of the analyst's response to the patient, and may either facilitate or distort an adequate observation of transference and countertransference dynamics and of the psychic reality of the patient. Subjectivism in current psychoanalytic literature involves an argument that there is an "irreducible" subjectivity in the analyst, who is bound to see things from an incorrigibly personal point of view, such that there is no substantial subject-object differentiation between analyst and patient. Issues of authoritarianism in the analyst, or of pathological certainty, should not be confused with the issues of epistemological objectivism. The concept of critical realism or scientific objectivism includes the essential idea that there is no pure knowledge, no complete knowledge, that often evidence is insufficient for knowledge of some aspect of nature, and that care must be to taken understand what is sufficient knowledge in a given area, in this case clinical psychoanalysis. The question is raised whether "projective identification" makes the sorting out of "what comes from whom" impossible. It is argued that when free association is sufficiently facilitated, when there are enough corrections of the distortions wrought by transference and countertransference, when defenses are analyzed, and when sufficient subject-object differentiation is recovered, the analyst can get to know enough of the patient's psychic reality for the therapeutic and scientific purposes of psychoanalysis.

Transference: Psychic reality and material reality.

The common sense relates reality as given. Phenomenology shows up reality is more differentiated than our given conscience presents. It is qualified Husserl's concept of reality in everyday clinics. Firstly it is resented the difference between psychic reality and material reality ( Wirklichkeit). It is also distinguished object and thing from thing sketch. Then on it is correlated data from schizophrenia and obsession neurosis. Clinical evidences and phenomenological analysis show thing sketch is not modified in obsession neurosis. But it is in schizophrenia. The hypothesis that thing sketch is corrupted in schizophrenia by language is analyzed. More on it is shown links with this hypothesis and perception and rhetorical production.

Considering various arguments in Hume’s Treatise, I reconstruct a Humean argument against personal identity or unity. According to this argument, each distinct perception is separable from the bundle of perceptions to which it belongs and is thus transferable either to the external, material reality or to another psychical reality, another bundle of perceptions. Nevertheless, such transference (Hume’s word!) is entirely illegitimate, otherwise Hume’s argument against causal inference would have failed; furthermore, it violates private, psychical accessibility. I suggest a Humean thought experiment clearly demonstrating that, to the extent that anything within a psychical reality is concerned, no distinction leads to separation or transference and that private, psychical accessibility has to be allowed in the Humean argument for personal identity or unity. Private accessibility and psychical untransferability secure personal identity and unity. Referring to the phenomenon of multiple personality along the lines of the Humean argument for personal identity or unity, I illustrate both private accessibility and a possible notion of one and the same person distinct from his/her alters or psychical parts. Finally, I show why Parfit’s Humean argument against personal identity must fail.

Material reality, historical reality, psychic reality

Transference: Psychic reality and material reality.

The contrasting perspectives of historical (actual, material) truth as opposed to narrative (intrapsychic) truth in psychoanalytic reconstruction parallel the controversial shift in Freud's thinking from a traumatic theory of neurosogenesis to a greater emphasis on fantasy and psychic reality. Freud and analysts since have sought to tease apart psychic and material reality as they dovetail in the transference. However, published cases in which a patient's memory of a childhood trauma turned out to be a verifiable fantasy or false belief and not an actuality appear to be remarkably scarce. This paper describes a case in which the patient indicated that in early childhood she had been subjected to antimasturbatory measures and finally to clitoridectomy that had ongoing traumatic effects. The case strikingly illustrates how a false memory of shock trauma may represent effects of strain traumatization interacting with fantasy and the state of drives and ego development in early childhood. It also highlights issues in the areas of trauma and memory, historical and intrapsychic truth, and the theory and technique of psychoanalytic reconstruction. Although it may not always be possible in the psychoanalytic situation to differentiate actual and plausible past events, in some cases the distinction between these perspectives on truth has clinical relevance that is more than academic.

Freud's monumental shift to the fantasy theory heralded the view that "it is psychical and not material reality" which is our sole domain of inquiry. Yet despite theoretical agreement and cogent technical admonitions against concerning ourselves with absolute or "external" truths, psychoanalytic listening betrays a stance in which the analyst attunes to a reality other than that of the patient's inner world, assuming the position of arbiter--even if a silent one--of what is or is not "distorted" in the patient's perceptual experience. The central impact of perception as a significant component of the patient's inner experience--past and present--goes unattended. Clinical examples from differing theoretical persuasions are reviewed to demonstrate this occurrence. An alternative mode of listening is considered which assumes an underlying shift in outlook, suspending any notion that we can "know" what is "correct" in the patient's perception, while sharpening attunement to its clinical impact--as may be evidenced by a shift in affect or state, a turn of phrase, or the transient appearance of a symptom or old behavior. It is argued that such a stance will lead to a more singular focus on the patient's psychic reality, permitting the emergence of a deepening realm of psychic phenomena, enhancing the capacity of self-observation, and richly facilitating the reconstructive process.