Discovery Of Psychoanalysis Research Articles

Psychodynamically Oriented Psychopharmacotherapy: Towards a Necessary Synthesis.

The discovery of psychoanalysis and of psychotropic medications represent two radical events in understanding and treatment of mental suffering. The growth of both disciplines together with the awareness of the impracticality of curing mental suffering only through pharmacological molecules—the collapse of the “Great Illusion”—and the experience of psychoanalysts using psychotropic medications along with depth psychotherapeutic treatment, have led to integrated therapies which are arguably more effective than either modality alone. The authors review studies on the role of pharmacotherapy with psychoanalysis, and the role of the analyst as the prescriber. The psychotic disorders have specifically been considered from this perspective.

Do detalhe à história: Comentário do texto de Iannini “A psicanálise Freudiana entre ciência e arte”

Além do comentar o texto de Iannini sobre a convergência entre a atitude científica e o pensamento estético na escrita de Freud, o objetivo desse artigo é questionar a suposta confiabilidade de um critério meramente positivista de cientificidade na fundamentação do trabalho psicanalítico. Em um primeiro momento, acompanhando alguns de seus comentários estéticos, escritos sob o anonimato no seu ensaio sobre o Moises de Michelangelo, veremos como Freud admite que o método para o reconhecimento da autoria das obras de arte, desenvolvido pelo médico italiano Giovanni Morrelli, exerceu considerável influência sobre ele, antes mesmo da descoberta da psicanálise. Este método consistia na observação de detalhes singulares periféricos das obras de arte, do mesmo modo como a psicanálise dispensaria atenção a traços pouco notados e coisas secretas para lançar luz sobre o inconsciente. Mais tarde, esse mesmo método teria sido atribuído também ao tipo de investigação levada a cabo pelo Sherlock Holmes de Conan Doyle, ao ser batizado por Carlo Ginzburg de paradigma indiciário, ou método presuntivo. Em um segundo momento, entretanto, recusaremos essa mesma tradição sherlockiana, ao sugerir que a atitude científica de Freud deva ser reconhecida mais na lisura de seus procedimentos investigativos e na retidão intelectual, que o levava a reconhecer limitações e as falhas de toda a investigação, do que na resolução definitiva de um quebra-cabeças, e aproximaremos nossas análises à leitura hermenêutica e pragmática da psicanálise. Finalmente, tomaremos distância também dessa última, ao mostrar que a persistência da pesquisa arqueológica de Freud sobre o sentido dos sonhos, dos sintomas e dos distúrbios de memória para melhorar a dinâmica do tratamento aproxima a psicanálise da perspectiva materialista de Benjamin, que recusa a noção de tempo finito e fechado e linear, em apoio a uma concepção não progressista, positivista e desenvolvimentista da história.

The Body, Sexuality, and Sexual Difference

Freud’s discovery of psychoanalysis can be seen as a new discursive and conceptual arrangement which radically displaced the prevailing conceptual paradigms developed by the natural and historical sciences during the nineteenth century. These more familiar paradigms, however, continue to dominate the reception of psychoanalysis today, in the form of debates between those who see Freud’s legacy as anticipating arguments for the social and historical construction of sexuality, and those who see Freud and Lacan as maintaining a covert appeal to naturalism or essentialism, through their purportedly ahistorical and formalist arguments about sexuality. From a genealogical point of view, both these interpretations remain bound to the very paradigms that psychoanalysis was intended to displace. As a result, the conceptual distinctiveness of psychoanalysis tends to disappear in the very course of its reception. This problem can be seen in Freud himself, and Foucault was one of the first to diagnose this difficulty, in his work on Bataille and transgression.

Freud e la Magna Grecia Metamorfosi del viaggio ‘esotico’ tra antico e nuovo immaginario

A close relationship of interdependence exists between Freud's love for Italy and the discovery of psychoanalysis. Italy was, for him, the Other Stage on which to represent his Oedipal story in a phantasmical way. Freud would go to Italy, following an almost compulsive itinerary: seeking the trail of his paternal identification, as well as the site and images of a mysterious femininity that would lead him to an ecstatic contemplation, not only of the many Venus and Madonnas of the great Italian masters, but of the most humble, archaic Sicilian statuettes too. It is important to bear in mind that the stages of these journeys in southern Italy are not less meaningful than the Roman ones: as Freud felt the need, no longer deferrable, of a period in Sicily before his final trip through Rome in 1913. After visiting the ruins of Pompei and Paestum in 1902, which surely stimulated his interest in Jensen’s Gradiva, Freud was driven to travel to Sicily in 1910, accompanied by Sandor Ferenczi. This journey was stormy for the young disciple who implored the maestro for his love, yet the latter, mindful of his old passion for Fliess, declined him severely.

Technology and Freudian Discontent: Freud’s‘Muffled’ Meliorism and the Problem of Human Annihilation

This paper is a comprehensive investigation of Freud’s views on technology and human well-being, with a focus on ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’. In spite of his thesis in ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’, I shall argue that Freud, always in some measure under the influence of Comtean progressivism, was consistently a meliorist: He was always at least guardedly optimistic about the realizable prospect of utopia, under the ‘soft dictatorship’ of reason and guided by advances in science and technology, in spite of due recognition in his later years of the possibility of annihilation through technological advances in warfare. The possibility of human annihilation, then, muffled Freud’s meliorism. Freud’s ‘muffled meliorism’, however, was not a quiet commitment to viewing technology as something good. Ultimately, Freud steered a middle course between techno-advocacy and techno-antagonism. The technologies of science, like the discoveries of psychoanalysis, were tools for humans that could be used for human betterment or, as war showed, for human degeneration.

Inventing Freud

Written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Freud's birth, this paper construes Nina Coltart's statement that "if Freud did not exist it would be necessary to invent him," with its implicit comparison of Freud to God, to refer to (a) the things that Freud taught that are incontrovertibly true; (b) the unavoidable subjectivity in all judgments of Freud; and (c) the resemblances between psychoanalysis and religion. This last comparison is likewise seen to have both positive and negative aspects. Freud's ideas have inspired many people, yet he unscientifically arrogated sovereign authority over psychoanalysis. Freud's admirers are reminded of his extreme difficulty in admitting he was wrong and changing his mind when he should have known better, while his detractors are encouraged to consider the evidence supporting many of Freud's core tenets and to recognize that his discovery of psychoanalysis is indeed one of the supreme achievements in human history.

Em defesa de um clínica de orientação psicanalítica em ciências da educação

Trata-se de um percurso transdisciplinar de uma professora universitária que se inicia como professora de matemáticas, mas que há anos dedica-se à orientação de pesquisadores no campo das ciências da educação a partir da psicanálise. O percurso é marcado pela descoberta da psicanálise na elaboração da própria relação com o saber. O texto apresenta os remanejamentos epistemológicos implicados no trabalho de pesquisa. Em particular são desenvolvidos dois eixos: o lugar singular que ocupa a clínica psicanalítica no campo da pesquisa em educação frente à psicologia de um lado, e as questões relativas à produção e validação da investigação assim orientada, desenvolvida pela autora e pelos pesquisadores sob sua orientação.

Buddhism, death, and the feminine.

This article is an attempt to elucidate how certain developmental issues and conflicts are constellated in non-Western theologies. Despite a prevailing view of Buddhism as a philosophy of detachment that enlightens us about our illusions and the psychological causes of our suffering, numerous Buddhist texts also evidence marked disgust for the body and physical decay, disparage the putrescing body as a real thing, and, finally, blame women for death and contamination. It is the task of clinicians to trace the origins of ideas, feelings, and pathological character structures in their patients. Psychohistorians and psychologists of religion, on the other hand, attempt to shed light on constellations of emotional arrest and injury, the determinants of motive, fantasy, and imagination in historical individuals, groups, and cultures. While this task may seem epistemically complicated, and indeed any psychological methodology may be justly susceptible to a variety of criticisms, the discoveries of psychoanalysis may be invoked to identify certain specific patterns of behavior and fantasy that might not be discerned as clearly without a psychological lens. When one examines the fecal obsessions of Martin Luther,

John Watson's paradoxical struggle to explain Freud.

John Watson was fascinated by the discoveries of psychoanalysis, but he rejected Freud's central concept of the unconscious as incompatible with behaviorism. After failing to explain psychoanalysis in terms of William James's concept of habit, Watson borrowed concepts from classical conditioning to explain Freud's discoveries. Watson's famous experiment with Little Albert is interpreted not only in the context of Pavlovian conditioning but also as a psychoanalytically inspired attempt to capture simplified analogues of adult phobic behavior, including the "transference" of emotion in an infant. Watson used his behavioristic concept of conditioned emotional responses to compete with Freud's concepts of displacement and the unconscious transference of emotion. Behind a mask of anti-Freudian bias, Watson surprisingly emerges as a psychologist who popularized Freud and pioneered the scientific appraisal of his ideas in the laboratory.

Françoise Dolto (1908–88)

Her brief experience of paediatrics and her subsequent discovery of psychoanalysis gave Francoise Dolto access to a therapeutic practice enabling her to apply ethical principles that were in conformity with her view of the human person. This path led her to develop a prophylaxis, put to the test in various institutional projects, with a ‘socializing’ or ‘educational’ value.

Reviews and Short Notices

Reviews and Short Notices

Freud's Discovery of Psychoanalysis: The Politics of Hysteria

The merit of William McGrath's book on Sigmund Freud's discovery of psychoanalysis lies in the grounding of the discovery in the real world of political fact. This is not to disclaim McGrath's acute awareness of psychological factors in Freud's early life that were also instrumental. In fact, the book is an excellent integration of the politically real and the psychologically meaningful— both were crucial in molding the direction of Freud's thought. The political life of fin de siecle Vienna is seen as background and also as representation for the projection of Freud's fantasies. Freud's early identification with the biblical Joseph and Moses was a means for the projection and organization of psychological conflict with his father and brothers. An early disappointment in his father's passivity when confronted by an anti-Semitic attack led to an identification with the Carthaginian Hannibal, who strove against the Romans. In his adolescence, Freud was a

Freud's Discovery of Psychoanalysis: The Politics of Hysteria

Freud's Discovery of Psychoanalysis: The Politics of Hysteria

Review of Freud's Discovery of Psychoanalysis: The Politics of Hysteria.

Review of Freud's Discovery of Psychoanalysis: The Politics of Hysteria.

Freud's Discovery of Psychoanalysis: The Politics of Hysteria

Freud's Discovery of Psychoanalysis: The Politics of Hysteria

The episodic psychoses of Vincent van Gogh.

During his adult life Vincent wrote more than 700 letters, mostly to his brother, Theo. Early in this correspondence he said to Theo, “Do you want me to continue writing about everything the way I have lately, telling you the thoughts that come into my mind without being afraid of letting myself go, without keeping back my thoughts or censoring them?” (15, Letter 169). These letters, written before the discovery of psychoanalysis, constitute an act of self-revelation comparable in many ways to that of the modern psychoanalytic patient. The detailed introspective data contained in them provide a unique opportunity for understanding the syndrome of episodic behavioral disorders. They suggest, in particular, how Vincent's episodic psychoses both interfered with and augmented his unique creativity. It is proposed that bursts of electrical activity within the limbic system are associated with an inspirational thought (an experience often referred to as a “brainstorm”) or a new perception of the world similar to the psychedelic experience induced by hallucinogens. If more prolonged, the behavior becomes maladaptive and includes self-defeating impulses (dyscontrol action). If still more persistent, there occurs an episodic psychotic reaction accompanied by overwhelming painful emotions, hallucinations, delusions, and confusion with a consequent loss of personal identity. This is a frightening interruption of one's life style or life flow. Vincent's letters dramatize all of these stages of limbic “seizural” activity. Such bursts of seizural activity within the limbic system can be induced not only by psychological stress but also metabolic disequilibrium, external toxins, such as alcohol, and pertinent for Vincent's situation, a convulsive constituent of absinthe (thujone). Thus, psychological and neurophysiological mechanisms are complementary and not contradictory. It is proposed that for Vincent, Limbic system sensitivity, physical neglect, absinthe abuse, and repeated psychological stress, as well as strength of character, creative temperament, innate artistic ability, and disciplined development of his artistic skills provided a rare combination of coincidences which in part explains why Vincent's life was a shambles and his artistic creativity unique.

THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS TO THE STUDY OF PSYCHOSIS

The interest of general psychiatry in the discoveries of psychoanalysis, and of psychoanalysis in the study of psychoses, have both greatly increased in recent years. In consequence, many of the contributions of psychoanalysis to the study of psychosis are widely known. But they are often looked at with various distortions of perspective. Thus a few enthusiasts consider them a complete explanation of psychotic phenomena. Others regard them as incidental and fail to recognize the almost revolutionary impetus they have given to all branches of modern psychopathology. Still more common has been the error of considering one aspect of the contributions of psychoanalysis to the study of psychosis as though it were the whole. The recognition of sexual symbols in schizophrenic thought, for example, are not infrequently regarded as Freud's chief contribution to this disease. Or the demonstration that the psychotic individual seeks pleasure in infantile ways is labeled a fixation,