ABSTRACT The research presents a psychoanalytic analysis of Gustav Möller’s The Guilty with the psychological experience of the protagonist Asger Holm from the perspectives of Freudian and Lacanian thought. Applying Freud’s repression and guilt, combined with Lacan’s symbolic order and the Real, the analysis discusses how the interactions within the claustrophobic environment of a call center are the vehicle for addressing his repressed guilt for a previous act of violence. The research utilizes qualitative psychoanalytic film analysis, with scenes chosen because of their psychoanalytic significance, transcribed including dialogue and nonverbal communication, and coded for signifiers associated with Freudian and Lacanian categories. Reflexivity on the part of the researcher is recognized as part of the interpretative process. The minimalist story of the film and its dependence on sound cues highlight both the inner struggle of the protagonist and the transference mechanisms involved. Comparative perspectives come from recent research, e.g., investigations into unconscious cinema desire and extending of Lacanian principles to artificial intelligence, that bring into perspective the wider relevance of psychoanalytic theory in contemporary media research. This study highlights the continuing applicability of psychoanalytic theory to film research and its ability to untangle rich character psychologies within spare cinematic structures.

ABSTRACT The author explores how the sense of self develops in relation to the object. The self is conceived as a dialectical entity comprising subject and object. Awareness of psychic reality within the subject is understood to first reside as a realization in the object. This experience is internalized by the subject forming the sense of self. The interaction may represent a creative or an abortive intercourse. The analyst is required to relinquish degrees of their own subjectivity to be permeable to the mind of the patient. The author proposes a helical Grid, a revision of Bion’s Grid, to describe this process and develop analytic intuition.

ABSTRACT Imagination allows us to explore the unknown, transcend the limitations of present reality, and break free from the confines of the past by creating fictional scenarios that generate new insights about ourselves and the world. While fantasy serves to gratify frustrated unconscious needs, imagination seeks to know the unknown and transcend the constraints of reality and temporality. In supervision, imagination is essential, as the supervisor and supervisee reflect on past therapeutic events in which only the supervisee participated as the therapist. Through their imaginative engagement, they enliven the presented therapeutic interaction and uncover new meanings in their dialogue concerning the emotional needs and motivations of the patient and the therapist, as well as the development of the therapeutic process. The paper elaborates on how, by imagining therapeutic scenes from the therapist’s perspective, the supervisor can access the supervisee’s phenomenological perception. By imagining omitted details, the supervisor can better contextualize the therapeutic interaction, and by imagining the supervisee’s internal dialogues with an internal supervisor, the supervisor can assess clinical capacities and uncover new dimensions of the supervisee’s professional identity. A vignette from supervision illustrates how imagining details excluded from the therapeutic narrative can shape and enrich the supervisory process.

ABSTRACT This article offers a psychoanalytic reading of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis as a clinical archive of psychic collapse under neoliberal conditions. It examines how Gregor Samsa’s transformation into a monstrous, biologically unspecified insect represents the repressed, the symbolic foreclosure, and the subject’s libidinal entanglement with systems of labor, familial duty, and institutional authority. Kafka’s oneiric narrative is interpreted not simply as symbolic fiction, but as a diagnostic text that condenses unconscious trauma in somatic form. The analysis places Gregor’s monstrosity as the embodiment of unconscious resistance to a social order demanding constant productivity, self-discipline, and normative compliance. The article highlights the affective costs of repression in a late capitalist era, where suffering is moralized and psychic disintegration made invisible. While rooted in literary analysis, it also addresses clinicians and researchers by mapping psychic structures recognizable in contemporary clinical practice – passivity, exhaustion, and fragmentation sustained by ideological belief. In doing so, this study contributes to both the literary and psychoanalytic discourses on the intersection of psychic suffering, social systems, and symbolic loss. Kafka’s fiction reveals how literature can function as a domain of unconscious inscription, representing collective distress through the poetics of physical distortion and symbolic rupture.

ABSTRACT In her article, Gullestad criticises dichotomic normative views on sexuality and gender, and raises rightful concerns regarding the treatment of trans people. Unfortunately, her approach may be seen as a tendentious treatment of a highly complex matter. The present review aims to complement Gullestad’s article. The tendentiousness of the article shows in: 1. The confusion of transgender as a fluid identity aim. 2. Failure to recognise the change in many official treatment policies due to a lack of firm conclusions on the effects and risks of treatments. 3. Neglect of vulnerable groups: An Increased number of minors seeking trans-treatment on unidentified grounds, although the officials warn about a greater risk of unbalanced treatment decisions. 4. A light attitude to regret regarding radical and irreversible treatments for minors. 5. Uncritical manifestation of a risky categorical attitude of affirmation. 6. Unnuanced and anti-scientific critique of the psychoanalyst’s implicit question of why. 7. Lack of psychodynamic dialectics: the reciprocal relationship between sexual and gender stability and fluidity. Contrary to Gullestad’s suggestion, the contribution of psychoanalysis depends on increasing knowledge through broadening and deepening the implicit question of why. The review suggests that increased knowledge could liberate psychoanalysts from rigid categorical attitudes of watchful waiting or affirmation.

ABSTRACT In two earlier papers appearing in this journal, the critical question, ‘How does psychoanalytic supervision work’, was considered and a question-answering model was proposed: the Contextual Psychoanalytic Supervision Relationship Model (CPSRM). In this follow-up commentary, I again take up that all-important ‘how does supervision work’ question and propose some simple but important key revisions to the CPSRM.

ABSTRACT In this paper, I draw attention to the state of mind of the analyst whilst engaging in psychoanalysis. I suggest that practicing psychoanalysis represents a state of mind. Paradoxically, however, analysts are required to relinquish their degree of subjectivity, to temporarily lose the integrity of their state of mind, in the service of helping the patient develop a mind of their own. This is done through identification with internal objects via projective identification in unconscious phantasy and forms the basis of a shared dream, namely the transference-countertransference. In this regard, I suggest that psychoanalysis constitutes a particular orientation in scientific endeavour exploring the blurring of boundaries between the observer and that which is observed. I link this to theory of mind and theories of consciousness. Psychoanalysis can be conceived of as a science of the experience of mind.