Lorsque l’intersexuation rencontre la psychanalyse. Entre norme et renouvellement théorique

Reviewed by: Love and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison's Later Novels by Jean Wyatt Todd McGowan (bio) Love and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison's Later Novels. Jean Wyatt. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2017. 248 pp. There is no shortage of critical attention directed at Toni Morrison's novels, but this critical attention has seldom invoked psychoanalytic theory. The one conspicuous exception to this truism among Morrison's critics is Jean Wyatt, the author of the most important essay on Morrison's most important novel—"Giving Body to the Word: The Maternal Symbolic in Toni Morrison's Beloved" (1993). In her new book Love and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison's Later Novels, Wyatt has returned to the conjunction of psychoanalytic theory and Morrison's novels with a most welcome result. Not only does Wyatt advance the cause of understanding Toni Morrison with this book, but she also shows how Morrison's novels themselves function as the source for psychoanalytic revelations. The theoretical point of departure for Wyatt in this work is Jean Laplanche. Taking up Laplanche's understanding of Nachträglichkeit (which Wyatt translates as afterwardsness and which others have rendered as belatedness), as well as his concept of the enigmatic signifier, Wyatt shows us a Toni Morrison who sheds new light on the relationship between trauma and love and who provides an alternative way of thinking about community, one compatible with psychoanalytic theory despite its inherent suspicion of the possibility of subjects coexisting together. The premise of Love and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison's Later Novels is that a major shift occurs in Morrison's literary career with the publication of Beloved. Almost universally acclaimed as Morrison's greatest novel, Beloved reveals the historical trauma of slavery as a fundamental barrier whose distorting power never ebbs. Slavery inserts itself within the dynamic of the mother and child, with the result that this relationship suffers from either a traumatic break or from an over-proximity deriving from the attempt to compensate for this break. Once slavery enters into the maternal equation, there is no way out. Morrison paints a radically pessimistic picture of the chances for love in Beloved, but the novels that follow, as if [End Page 114] in response to the bleakness of Beloved, become much more sanguine. According to Wyatt, Morrison begins to see love emerge as a possibility because we have the ability to re-signify the past. The past may be determinative, but it is always open to change through the process of Nachträglichkeit. This concept, first developed by Freud and then expanded on by Laplanche, concerns a traumatic encounter that the subject experiences as insignificant when it occurs. It is only afterward, when the subject develops a symbolic framework, that the encounter becomes traumatic, or more specifically, that the subject actually experiences it as such, as if the trauma had hung in the air waiting to be activated by the changed situation. Whereas Freud sees Nachträglichkeit only in cases of trauma and its belated effects, Laplanche, following the lead of Jacques Lacan, recognizes it in every childhood encounter with the other. The initial encounter with an other always involves a fundamental ambiguity about the other's desire, and it is only subsequently that we resolve this ambiguity into some sort of signification. Laplanche states, "What is crucial is the fact that the adult world is entirely infiltrated with unconscious and sexual significations to which adults themselves do not have the code. Furthermore, there is the fact that the infant does not possess the physiological or emotional responses corresponding to the sexualized messages it is being offered; in short, the child's means of constituting a substitutive or temporary code are fundamentally inadequate" (1992/1999, p. 127). The child experiences a desire without a signification and only later can make sense of it. As Laplanche sees it, the traumatic past does not determine the future. It is the future signification that gives sense to the past that precedes it. This has, Wyatt contends, radical implications for how we conceive of love. Love is possible because we can change the past, because we can, through Nachträglichkeit, break from...

The conflicts individuals with ambiguous sexual characteristics suffer from are not the result of genetic features but of the rigid and dichotomous gender order, which is currently undergoing a renaissance. This also applies to individuals with an uncertain gender identity. In the best interests of the child a concept of gender seems necessary, that goes beyond a binary separation and allows gender-specific intermediary stages in the personal development of identity. Such a gender concept can be developed following psychoanalytic theories. The present discourse contains a scale of connecting factors for a differentiated and less normative conceptualization of gender development. Starting from Freud's concept of constitutional bisexuality, Robert Stoller's theory, which has been firmly rooted in the mainstream of psychoanalysis for more than 40 years, will be critically reviewed. By involving Reimut Reiche's and Jean Laplanche's arguments, a continuative psychological gender theory will be drafted, which does not normatively and reductively claim the demarcation of gender, but rather opens up a space for gender diversity.

Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist (2001) presents Lauren Hartke’s (36), a body artist, work of mourning in the form of a stage performance called “Body Time”. The experimental narrative of the body performance reflects the collapse of the boundaries between subject and object, internal and external, body and mind, time and space, and memory and art. Lauren cannot overcome the shock over her husband’s, Rey Robles (64), loss because he tragically commits suicide. After her husband’s death, she discovers an uncanny stranger, Mr. Tuttle, in her house, who mechanically repeats words in a nonsensical context, dissolves the boundaries between space and time through confusing grammatical tenses, and reanimates the conversations between Lauren and Rey by mimicking their voices. Signifying simultaneously an external and an internal other, Mr. Tuttle exhibits Lauren’s subjectivity-in-crisis. When Lauren’s work of mourning is analysed by using Jean Laplanche’s psychoanalytical theories, it is observed that Lauren is not detaching herself from her lost other, as is in Freudian definition of the work of mourning, by healing herself through art. On the contrary, she detaches herself from her lost other to re-attach herself to the other in order to construct a new form of subjectivity. Laplanche discusses this process by drawing an analogy between mourning and Penelope’s weaving/unweaving a shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes. For him, Penelope is weaving/unweaving this shroud to mourn Ulysses, not Laertes. By identifying a similar relation between Lauren’s mourning and her body art, this article argues that what renders Lauren’s mourning traumatic is the feeling of guilt she represses in the face of loss. Through the use of Laplanche’s theoretical concepts such as “enigmatic message,” “afterwardsness,” and “weaving/unweaving,” this article further discusses how Lauren’s body art unweaves her childhood trauma, her mother’s early death, to weave her subjectivity in relation to her dead others.

In 2023, THE A-SANTAMARIA PSICOANALISIS MEXICO ASSOCIATION planned the Online Conversations of W. Bion to generate dialogues with outstanding colleagues about the divergences and convergences of Bion with the work of André Green, Jean Laplanche, Ignacio Matte Blanco and D.W. Winnicott. The need to share thoughts about these authors' works and their links with others, facilitated widespread international dialogues about these authors and placed them all in a field of exchange, debate and challenge. The Online Conversations underlined the new dimensions in which Bion and Winnicott placed psychoanalytic theory and technique. Five outstanding presentations illustrate their understanding and grasping of these dimensions, each followed by an author exchange. These authors provide an in-depth inquiry into a wide range of topics: Angela Joyce looks at object constancy and absence through the lens of Winnicott's (1977) The Piggle; Dominque Scarfone examines the concept of contact barriers among Freud, Bion and Winnicott; Howard B. Levine discusses absence, failure and the negative in the work of Bion, Winnicott and Green; Lesley Caldwell links the works of Bion and Winnicott in addressing being alone and with others, and communicating and not communicating; finally, Rudi Vermote shows how Bion's and Winnicott's views on regression and formlessness complement each other.

Theory plays a crucial role in clinical choices, group formation, and organizational culture and politics. Theoretical positions seem based on reason and observation, but other motivations are often involved-belonging, recognition, and even concrete rewards, such as referrals and organizational positions. Established ideas can constrain new perspectives and observations that can enhance analytic theory and practice. I query the theory of infantile sexuality, critiquing several different theories' images of infancy: Freud's, Ego Psychology's; Melanie Klein's and Jean Laplanche's. I question both the analogy between infancy, psychic “primitivity,” and severe psychopathology (especially psychosis) and the idea that sexuality and aggression are the primary, endogenous motives. Rather than the essential “first causes” from the beginning of life, they are among an array of motives of interest to analysis. None of this precludes the core analytic ideas about the unconscious, primary process, object relations, fantasy, transference, and the salience of the inner world.

Introduction This essay explores the psychoanalytic work of Lou Andreas-Salomé, specifically in relation to theories of the development of the ego. That Andreas-Salomé's writings have received so little attention is especially regrettable in light of the many ways in which they anticipate current discussions. Andreas-Salomé perceives an inconsistency in Freud's thinking on the formation of the ego; she senses, even when she does not explicitly state, that in this respect his theories need reworking. The topic of ego development has played a central role in the debates between mainstream and French psychoanalytic theorists. Whereas in Freud's time other psychoanalysts (especially Jung and Adler) rejected Freud's concept of sexuality because they thought he overemphasized its importance for the development of the self, today his concept of sexuality is accepted by most French analysts (though not by many others), but his account of the development of the ego is widely challenged. This holds true not only for Jacques Lacan but also for Catherine Clément, André Green, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Jean Laplanche. Here I focus on Kristeva's writings and the writings of Lacan that influenced her, examining the theories of both in relation to those of Andreas-Salomé. I am concerned, above all, with Andreas-Salomé's rethinking of Freud's theory of ego development, but I would also like to elucidate the points of connection between her work and the theories of Lacan and Kristeva. 1 [End Page 813] Theories of Ego Development: Freud, Lacan, Kristeva Many social critics of psychoanalysis object to Freud's theory of the earliest development of the self. Their revisions, however, often presuppose an innate striving for a self, which is precisely what Freud thought needed to be investigated. How does a newborn child, this bundled mass of flesh, which cries when it is hungry or in pain, become a person? How does an ego emerge? It is in the context of such questions that Lou Andreas-Salomé's psychoanalytic writings are best located. Freud presents two versions of the development of the ego. From his formulation of the two principles of mental functioning (1911), he surmised that there must be an agency mediating between wish and reality. In the Introductory Lectures, he states that the "transition from the pleasure principle to the reality principle is one of the most important steps forward in the ego's development" (1916-17, 357). He posits that the ego emerges when our drives are not satisfied and serves to mediate between the reality principle and the libido. Indeed, he ascribes the function of reality-testing to the ego. In "A Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of Dreams," he writes: "We shall place reality-testing among the major institutions of the ego" (1917a, 233; italics in original); and in "Mourning and Melancholia" he again refers to reality-testing as one of the central functions of the ego (1917b, 247). It seems, however, that Freud himself was not completely convinced by his presentation of the ego as developing out of the conflict between the reality principle and the pleasure principle. In The Ego and the Id (1923), he radically revised his earlier conception and depicted the ego as a precipitate of internalized identifications, especially those of the child with its parents during the Oedipus complex. Neither Lacan nor Kristeva accepts Freud's depiction of the ego as an agency that arises through contact with external reality, but both are deeply influenced by Freud's later theory of an ego that arises through internalized identifications. Both believe, however, that a preoedipal form of identification must inaugurate the ego. Freud himself acknowledges such a possibility, albeit only once, when he alludes in The Ego and the Id to [End Page 814] identification with the "father of one's own personal prehistory" [Vater der persönlichen Vorzeit...

This chapter analyses the film through the prism of psychoanalytic film theory, through Freud’s notion of the ‘return of the repressed,’ with a Lacanian twist. It theorizes that the film stages the return of the repressed Real of feminine sexuality, where the figure of the black chador-clad female vampire, stands for the (Lacanian) Real of feminine sexuality, which in Islamic and Sh’ite legal theory (fiqh) is imagined to possess an inherent surplus enjoyment (jouissance) that can destabilize the social-symbolic order. In this sense, female sexuality unimpeded functions as a source of terror to the ideology of the Islamic Republic. The film therefore stages the return of the repressed desire embodied in the female vampire who haunts the male inhabitants of Bad City, representative of the dark underbelly of Tehran or Iran. The film theorizes a feminist emancipatory core at the heart of the film where the vampire Girl stands for the call to all women to revolt against the patriarchal symbolic order. The theoretical contributions of this chapter are the crossing of wires between psychoanalytic horror film theory and second wave psychoanalytic film theory, through a Lacanian intervention apropos the standard Freudian theory of ‘the return of the repressed.’

Led Around by the Nose

Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical theories can be used with reference to the analysis of literary works. Reading novels, poems and other compositions through the lens of psychoanalysis gives the opportunity to analyse and evaluate the works of literature in their genesis and presentation. Freudian doctrine can be considered as a reading tool that allows the investigation of the enigmatic areas of human experience and, therefore, its main contribution to literature is related to the discovery of hidden aspects of the text, of the writer and of the reader as well. In this article, the main characters of two Victorian novels, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are analysed with reference to Freud theories concerning the tripartite structure of the mind (Id, Ego and Super-Ego) along with the Oedipus complex, the analysis of dreams and other aspects of sexuality. Several passages from the two works are highlighted and discussed according to the psychoanalytical theories with a main focus on the characters: Heathcliff and Catherine and then Jane and Mr. Rochester. The importance of the interpretative capacity of psychoanalysis is widely emphasized. Key words: Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis, literary analysis, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre.

This chapter describes about the connection between the question of femininity and the construction of psychoanalytic theory. But the question of sexual difference – femininity and masculinity – was built into the very structure of the illness. But while bisexuality explained why men and women could be hysterics, it did not account for why it was their femininity that was called into play. And yet – with all the difference in the world – in Sigmund Freud's theory, libido remains 'masculine' and it is not that repression is feminine, but that femininity is repudiated. For Freud the final formation of the human psyche is coincident with the psychological acquisition of the meaning of sexual difference. Freud talks of splitting where Klein perceives 'split-off parts' which can be communicated to the analyst by projection. Freud's theory is a myth, a story of a story – the subject's narrative structuring of him – or herself.

The foremost implication of the Freudian theories of adolescence has been that the analyst enters into an alliance with the patient's developmental process. During sessions, stock is routinely taken of the adolescent patient's defenses and drive fixations. The interpersonal and object relations theories of adolescents' character formation varied with each other and also with the assumptions of classical Freudian metapsychology. Yet, Sullivan, Fairbairn, and Winnicott all stressed relatedness in character formation. They each urged that the attitudes of the actual person in significant relationships, as well as the internal representations of the self and the object, shaped the character tendencies of the child or adolescent. Sullivan was very outspoken about his belief that there could be no uniformly valid theory of character, because people are unique. However, for Sullivan, the needs for the validation of self-worth, and for freedom from anxiety, were universal stimuli for the increasing organization of character trends. In both interpersonal theory and object relations theories, dissociative processes were of paramount importance as defensive operations. Dissociation by the adolescent resulted in further instances of ego splitting (for Fairbairn), of the bad me (for Sullivan), and of the false self (for Winnicott). Fairbairn, and to some extent Winnicott, used the language of classical Freudian theory in order to shape an object relations theory of adolescent development. In spite of their theoretical differences, Sullivan, Fairbairn, and Winnicott spoke with a singular voice in dismissing the exclusive significance of libidinal fixations in character consolidation. I now wish to review Freud's case of Dora as an addendum to this short critical appraisal. The analysis of Dora readily lends itself to a discussion of the confluence of the psychoanalytical models' clinical theories. Dora's unfortunate experience in treatment offered a compelling example of the precariousness of adolescents' adjustment in the midst of developmental and family turmoil.

Every individual possesses unique psychological traits that distinguish them from others in society and their surrounding environment. Especially, it is evident when discussing the subconscious awareness (Id), as one of the three components of Freud's psychoanalytic theory –the Id, the Superego, and the Ego. The charismatic personality of the individual plays a significant role in transcending social and religious boundaries, as well as moral restraints, by addressing desires that override shame and principles. Challenges often appear in understanding and analyzing the personality of such individuals when examining literary works, particularly in terms of the psychological state of the characters and how they achieve their goals. In this context, Freud's psychoanalytic theory, which explores the personality of the author and the characters in the subconscious mind, reveals the underlying purpose and hidden messages of the author. The level of subconscious awareness (Id), considered a reservoir of diverse suppressed desires and instincts rooted in human psychology since childhood, embodies this mystery and explores those repressed facets. These aspects, suppressed by the author throughout their life, are reflected in the protagonists and characters of works that delve into the subconscious. This study, titled A Study of the Level of Subconscious Awareness (Id) Related to Individual Consciousness in the Stories of Ismail Hajani in Payv Magazine –Based on Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory applies the concept of subconscious awareness (Id) to individual consciousness. It highlights both the visible and repressed sides of the author, exploring their psychological state, the suppression and restraint of desires throughout various stages of life, and how these aspects are mirrored in their short stories published in Payv magazine.

Sara Kane's (1971-1999) name is almost always associated with “In-Yer-Face Theatre because her plays belong to this new type of drama. The present paper attempts a Psychoanalytic Study of Sarah Kane's play Blasted aiming at discussing the new sensibility, 'in-yer-face theatre', presenting Sarah Kane as a typical example and then interpreting her play psychoanalytically by applying Sigmund Freud's theories of psycho-analysis. The paper falls into three main parts: The first section gives a brief theatrical background of the play; the second is devoted to Sarah Kane's Blasted. It provides a plot summary of the play and Section Three is a psychoanalysis of the play applying Freud's concepts and theories of psychoanalysis. The paper ends with a brief conclusion which sums up the results of the study.

This study aims to explore an in-depth understanding of Kim Ji Young's personality in the film "Kim Ji Young, Born 1982" in the context of patriarchal culture using Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory. The research method used is a qualitative method using note-taking technique. We used Sigmund Freud's theory, specifically concepts such as id, ego, and superego, to help us understand the inner conflict experienced by the main character. We also analyzed various events in the film that depict Kim Ji Young's experience as a woman in a society dominated by patriarchal values. The results of this study show that Kim Ji Young experiences complex internal conflicts while performing her role as a woman in a patriarchal culture. Freud's theory helps us understand how these conflicts arise and affect her personality. In addition, this study also emphasizes the important role of family environment, society, and childhood experiences in shaping Kim Ji Young's personality. This research has important implications in understanding the role of women in a patriarchal society and how psychoanalytic theory can be used to analyze characters in works of art such as films.

This study discusses the role of music in maintaining mental health through the concepts psychodynamic with id, ego, and super-ego in Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory. The method used is a literature review by searching relevant articles and journals from online databases. The analysis results indicate that music therapy can help individuals express difficult emotions, such as pain, sadness, or anger. In Freud's theory, healthy self-expression and emotional expression are essential for good mental health. Music therapy promises to improve mental health by providing an integrated experience with the emotions that occur when music is played. Previous studies also showed results in line with these findings, but further research is still needed to understand more deeply how music therapy can help improve mental health and how music therapy can be integrated with other therapeutic approaches. These findings indicate novelty in applying Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory in the use of music therapy as a tool for improving mental health.