Freud's Interpretation Research Articles

On female melancholia in migration: Interpretations from Turkish-Muslim culture with a case vignette

Today, melancholia is no longer used as a separate clinical picture in psychotherapeutic diagnostics. Instead, the symptoms are subsumed under major depression or dysthymia and understood as a disease concept. In both Freud's interpretation and in the artistic, Islamic, poetic, and medical-historical approaches in Turkish culture, melancholia is understood in a richer way than just in terms of a “disease-like disorder.” This article aims to emphasize the broader understanding of melancholia within the Turkish-Islamic context and illuminate intersections with psychoanalysis. Since the Islamic faith occupies an important place in the treatment and popular understanding of mental disorders both historically and to the present day, religious and mystical aspects related to melancholia are also considered in this article. A case vignette of a melancholic migrant woman with Turkish roots is used to trace the psychodynamic movements in her treatment. In order to follow this patient’s psychoanalytic process, the theoretical explanations in the first part of the article provide the sensibilization for a deeper understanding of the cultural and religious aspects important to the inner dynamics of this woman.

The Alchemical Oedipus: Re-Visioning the Myth.

The Oedipus myth is foundational to depth psychology due to Freud's use of Sophocles' play Oedipus Rex in the creation of psychoanalysis. But analytical psychology's engagement with the myth has been limited despite the importance Jung also places upon it. The absence of a developed Jungian response to Oedipus means the myth's psychologically constructive elements have been overlooked in favour of reductive Freudian interpretations. I examine whether analytical psychology can fruitfully re-engage with Oedipus by reinterpreting his story as a paternal rebirth. This is achieved by reincorporating those parts of the myth that occur before and after the period portrayed in Oedipus Rex. Such a move reintegrates Oedipus' father, King Laius, into the story and unveils important parallels with the alchemical trope of the king's renewal by his son. Using Jung's method of amplification, Oedipus is recast as Laius' redeemer and identified with the archetype of psychological wholeness, the Self. The contention is that such an understanding of Oedipus supports a clearer recognition of the potentially generative quality of human suffering, restoring to the myth the quality of moral instruction it possessed in antiquity.

Œdipe ou le savoir qui condamne

ContextThis article is a study at the temporal and thematic intersection of the treatment of the myth of Oedipus in theater. It is based on dramatic works from the Antiquity to the contemporary period. This article does not claim to make a relevant contribution to a purely psychological (or psychoanalytic) debate. However, as Jean-Pierre Vernant maintains, dramaturgical study provides a transdisciplinary perspective necessary for reflection. GoalsEchoing the words of Hervé Castanet “Psychoanalysis does not give air to literature - on the contrary, when applied, it stops questions and problems” (himself inspired by Lacan's remarks in “Lituraterre”), this study seeks to highlight the plurality and richness of the questions asked by different playwrights. Based on the words of Christiane Page “we do not know what an author wanted to say, we are faced with what he has written, and the links that are woven between the work and its reception depend as much on its artistic approach as well as the reading which is made of it” we will thus seek to demonstrate the restrictive aspect of the Freudian interpretation of the myth of Oedipus. MethodThis article presents itself as a comparative dramaturgical analysis of the rewritings of the myth, enriched by theoretical contributions from plural disciplinary horizons: philosophical, aesthetic and anthropological. ResultsThe study of dramatic works allows us to put the Oedipus complex and its myth into perspective. The dramaturgical analysis proposes to go beyond the Freudian understanding of the myth and the character but also acts as a witness to social and societal developments and the impact of the theorization of the complex. InterpretationsThe myth, a tragedy of heredity, goes beyond the complex, depicting an Oedipus victim of destiny and himself and questioning the notion of responsibility. The myth seeks to portray human duality through the representation of an Oedipus with an ambivalent image, going beyond his popular image.

Terada Torahiko, a Physicist and a Haikai Poet

Terada Torahiko is known as a scientific essayist in Japan, but hardly anyone knows he was a haikai poet as well as a physicist. According to him, haikai poetry and physics are two different ways of conceiving Nature, both valid and perhaps complementary to each other. Seeing his research in physics looking for regularities in apparently irregular phenomena in everyday life, we may say his haiku haikai spirit is manifest there and that he was pioneering a new science such as the one developed later by Ilya Prigogine. His association of haiku haikai poetry and Freudian interpretations of dreams leads us to rethink the relation between science and literature. This paper examines Terada's poetics as well as his research in physics in order to see how one can associate the Two Cultures separated from each other for such a long time.

The War of Nerves: Inside the Cold War Mind by Martin Sixsmith

<i>The War of Nerves: Inside the Cold War Mind</i> by Martin Sixsmith

Dream Work in Clinical Practice: Guidelines Toward a Triangular Situation

Since the publication of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams over a century ago, there has been a surprising dearth of systematic treatment in the psychoanalytic literature on ways to address dream interpretation in practice and in training. It is argued here that dreams remain a royal road to the unconscious and that understanding can be enriched through the application of a methodical approach which incorporates a range of different theories (despite their having generated major rifts in the history of psychoanalysis). In earlier research, I developed a four‐part sequential ‘model in theory’ for organizing, comparing and integrating contributions from different theorists to dream interpretation. The present article reports on the model's usefulness for examining case material. Analysis of three case vignettes from experienced clinicians revealed that the model's constructs hold good for examining real‐life dream material, which also suggests its applicability as a basis for training. Further work with the vignettes gave rise to a related ‘model in practice’ for understanding dream work in therapy as a triangular situation in which the dream, the patient, and the practitioner have distinct roles. Applying these models to case material, as illustrated in this paper, indicates their potential for further exploration, and to use in the structure, design and practical implementation of learning and training that specifically addresses work with dreams.

Losing Freud

Losing Freud

Psychoanalysis, the Sufi, and the Story

Psychoanalysis, the Sufi, and the Story

Dirty Jokes and Bawdy Songs: The Uncensored Life of Gershon Legman

Dirty Jokes and Bawdy Songs: The Uncensored Life of Gershon Legman

Nathaniel Hawthorne in Context, by Elbert, Monika M., editor.

<i>Nathaniel Hawthorne in Context</i>, by Elbert, Monika M., editor.

Freud’s Oedipus Complex in the #MeToo Era: A Discussion of the Validity of Psychoanalysis in Light of Contemporary Research

The Oedipus complex is a child development construct developed by Sigmond Freud that asserts that all children experience sexual desire towards their opposite sex parent, and failure to accept this “truth” can lead to mental health issues. Freud also asserted that children are not harmed by acts of sexual violence. In contrast, the #MeToo movement is a global incentive aimed at creating an awareness of the harm that sexual violence can cause. In many regards, #MeToo is a reaction against a systemic failure to prevent sexual violence from occurring in the first place. By contrasting Freudian ideas with #MeToo, I argue that the enduring popularity of Freud and his psychoanalytic ideas is a negative influence on culture. In the light of contemporary research from cognitive psychology, psychosocial considerations, child development, and trauma-informed practices, Freudian ideas can be proven to be fallible. Moreover, dispelling misleading assumptions about sexual desires is a beneficial endeavour towards reducing the likelihood of future sexual violence. Additionally, I explore Freudian interpretations of mythology and propose that he misappropriated ancient belief systems.

The Hysteric Rebels: Rethinking Radical Socio-Political Transformation with Foucault and Lacan

The Hysteric Rebels:Rethinking Radical Socio-Political Transformation with Foucault and Lacan Claudia Leeb (bio) 1. Introduction The hysteric was an important subject for Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault, insofar as s/he sheds light on the ways in which knowledge, truth and power converge in scientific discourses. Furthermore, both thinkers turned to the hysteric subject, because s/he exposes the ways in which scientific discourses produce the hysteric subject, "woman," as a subordinated being. Finally, both thinkers discussed the hysteric subject to find an answer to the question: how we can theorize the political subject, who not only resist but radically rebel against power structures that subordinate us in modern capitalist societies?1 Foucault and Lacan are rarely brought into conversation with each other, particularly when it comes to theorizing political subjectivity. One reason for this is Foucault's own reservations towards psychoanalysis,2 and the reservations harbored by contemporary scholars who draw on Foucault, who are mostly opposed, if not hostile, to Lacan. These scholars suggest that Lacan, in contrast to Foucault, either operates with a repressive notion of power,3 conceptualizes the symbolic domain as an all-powerful force,4 or gives up on the subject altogether,5 and as such he is (unlike Foucault) of no use when it comes to theorizing political subjectivity. However, such pitting of Foucault against Lacan misses the ways in which both thinkers theorize subject constitution in relation to discourse, and most importantly, how both thinkers elaborate the hysteric as the political subject who not only resists but transforms power structures in a particular—namely capitalist—society, which is a topic that has so far been overlooked in the literature. Furthermore, both thinkers assist in shedding light on Freud's classic interpretation of the "hysteric" Dora,6 as an example of a scientific master discourse on hysteria aimed to discipline her into the norm of the bourgeois, female and heterosexual subject. I show that hysteric symptoms are not the result of an individual pathology, but rather the oppressive societal norms and power structures along the lines of class, gender, and sexuality against which Dora rebelled. [End Page 607] While thinkers have pointed to the ways in which Freud's interpretation of the Dora case spun off into the master's discourse (Verhaeghe, 1999; Mahoney, 20005; Cottet, 2012, Gammelgaard, 2017),7 these thinkers did not elaborate on the ways in which the hysteric's (Dora's) discourse not only resisted but radically transformed the master's discourse. Also, while some thinkers have foregrounded the ways in which Dora was a victim of patriarchal and heteronormative power structures (Mitchell, 1982; Moi, 1985; Rose, 1985, Gammelgaard, 2017), these thinkers missed the ways in which such power structures were enmeshed in capitalism, which aimed to discipline the hysteric into classed, gendered and sexed norms against which Dora successfully rebelled.8 This paper also contributes to foregrounding another dimension of Lacan's thought. While most Lacanian-inspired thinkers suggest that it is the psychoanalytic discourse, and in particular the "psychoanalytic act," that brings radical change about,9 they have largely ignored is what Lacan had to say about hysteria and the ways it is connected to the psychoanalytic act. This paper shows that the psychoanalytic discourse, which we find on the other side of the master's discourse, unfolds through the hysteric's discourse.10 Furthermore, because the psychoanalytic discourse often spins off into the master's discourse (such as Freud's discourse on Dora), the hysteric's discourse remains the main discourse in a position to radically transform power. Furthermore, while some thinkers who assess Lacan's reading of the hysteric (Dora) point to the ways in which (unconscious) knowledge is on the side of the hysteric (Verhaeghe, 1999, Soler, 2006, Giraldo, 2017), these thinkers do not elaborate on the ways such knowledge can lead to radical change.11 In bringing Lacan and Foucault together, I do not aim to cover over their differences. One important difference is that for Lacan, the rebellion of the hysteric is the result of knowledge located in the unconscious, which comes to surface in her/his symptoms, whereas for Foucault the hysteric rebels in her/his knowingly lying about...

When dreaming is believing: Extending the findings to favorite celebrities

Building on the findings of Morewedge and Norton (2009) we hypothesized and found that our 157 college participants selected the Freudian interpretation of dreams over three other interpretations as the one most likely to be true. We also hypothesized that participants randomly assigned to read a brief script of a positive-, compared to a negative-imaginary dream about their favorite celebrity would score higher on meaningfulness of the dream. We found marginal support for this hypothesis. As predicted, participants who selected the Freudian interpretation of dreams as “most true” did score higher on a scale designed to measure meaningfulness of the imaginary dream about their favorite celebrity than those participants who selected any of the other theories of dream interpretation. Contrary to our prediction, participants randomly assigned to read a brief script of a positive-, compared to a negative-imaginary dream about their favorite celebrity did not score higher on the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS). Participants who selected the Freudian interpretation of dreams as “most true” scored higher on the CAS than those participants who selected any of the other theories of dream interpretation. Discussion focused on the extension of Morewedge and Norton’s (2009) findings on motivated interpretation of dreams beyond the realm of social relationships to parasocial relationships, specifically to dreaming about celebrities.

The Dream of the Royal Road: Psychoanalysis and the Post

The Dream of the Royal Road:Psychoanalysis and the Post Ross Truscott (bio) Dreams are the bearers of repressed wishes—this is the thesis that arrived in 1900 with the publication of Sigmund Freud's Interpreta-tion of Dreams: dreams provide hallucinatory gratification of wishes associated with the first stages of life, which are disguised, under the watch of psychic censorship, through what Freud calls dream-work, primarily through condensation and displacement. There is a widely held assumption that Freud's method for analyzing the distortions of repressed wishes can be applied to any number of textual objects, that one can, as Marjorie Garber puts it, "read culture as if it were structured like a dream" (9). Or, as Claudia Lapping puts it, "symbolic associations between elements in diverse discursive artefacts can be interpreted in a similar way to the patient's associations to the elements of a dream" (43). According to this assumption, to which Freud appears to lend Interpretation, one can use it as a methodological resource to read almost anything. It has been an enabling assumption not least for scholars of postcoloniality, who have read colonial discourse as if it were structured like a dream. For Stuart Hall, for instance, racism, no longer brazen, often highly censored, functions "rather more like Freud's dream-work than like anything else" (15). Or, as Robert Young argues from a different angle, Interpretation offers "a possible way of reading the invisible, the subaltern, those whose forms of public representation distort their fundamental being" (2014, 375). Compelling as these and other postcolonial interventions have been, this kind of application of psychoanalysis no longer seems to me quite that straightforward, and not only on account of the differences [End Page 69] between dreams and others kinds of wish fulfillment to which Freud draws attention. Certainly not when it comes to reading letters psychoanalytically—letters but also, potentially, the colonial archive in general, insofar as it is composed, at least in large part, of documents sent through the post. Freud first outlines his thesis of wish fulfillment through an analysis of one of his own dreams, the specimen dream. He had, he explains, been treating a young woman, Irma—a pseudonym Freud gives her—for hysteria, though the treatment had broken off for the summer vacation. The treatment, Freud notes, had relieved some of her anxiety but had not eradicated her symptoms. A colleague of Freud's and friend of Irma's family, Otto in Freud's account—another pseudonym—had paid him a visit the previous day, and Freud had questioned him about her state. "Better, but not quite well," was Otto's response, in which, Freud states, he "detected a reproof" (1900, 131). Anxious about the failure of the treatment, Freud wrote out Irma's case history, intending to send it to Dr. M., a senior in Freud's medical circle—Josef Breuer—from whom Freud sought justification for his treatment of Irma. After which, still occupied with the case, he fell asleep and dreamed the following: A large hall—numerous guests, whom we were receiving [empfangen].—Among them was Irma. I at once took her on one side, as though to answer her letter [ihren Brief zubeantworten] and to reproach her for not having accepted my "solution [Lösung]" yet. I said to her: "If you still get pains, it's really only your fault." She replied: "If you only knew what pains I've got now in my throat and stomach and abdomen—it's choking me"—I was alarmed and looked at her. She looked pale and puffy. I thought to myself that after all I must be missing some organic trouble. I took her to the window and looked down her throat, and she showed signs of recalcitrance, like women with artificial dentures. I thought to myself that there was really no need for her to do that.—She then opened her mouth properly and on the right I found a big white patch; at another place I saw extensive whitish grey scabs upon some remarkable curly structures which were evidently modelled on the turbinal bones of the nose.—I at once called in Dr M., and...

The Dream of the Royal Road: Psychoanalysis and the Post

The Dream of the Royal Road:Psychoanalysis and the Post Ross Truscott (bio) Dreams are the bearers of repressed wishes—this is the thesis that arrived in 1900 with the publication of Sigmund Freud's Interpreta-tion of Dreams: dreams provide hallucinatory gratification of wishes associated with the first stages of life, which are disguised, under the watch of psychic censorship, through what Freud calls dream-work, primarily through condensation and displacement. There is a widely held assumption that Freud's method for analyzing the distortions of repressed wishes can be applied to any number of textual objects, that one can, as Marjorie Garber puts it, "read culture as if it were structured like a dream" (9). Or, as Claudia Lapping puts it, "symbolic associations between elements in diverse discursive artefacts can be interpreted in a similar way to the patient's associations to the elements of a dream" (43). According to this assumption, to which Freud appears to lend Interpretation, one can use it as a methodological resource to read almost anything. It has been an enabling assumption not least for scholars of postcoloniality, who have read colonial discourse as if it were structured like a dream. For Stuart Hall, for instance, racism, no longer brazen, often highly censored, functions "rather more like Freud's dream-work than like anything else" (15). Or, as Robert Young argues from a different angle, Interpretation offers "a possible way of reading the invisible, the subaltern, those whose forms of public representation distort their fundamental being" (2014, 375). Compelling as these and other postcolonial interventions have been, this kind of application of psychoanalysis no longer seems to me quite that straightforward, and not only on account of the differences [End Page 69] between dreams and others kinds of wish fulfillment to which Freud draws attention. Certainly not when it comes to reading letters psychoanalytically—letters but also, potentially, the colonial archive in general, insofar as it is composed, at least in large part, of documents sent through the post. Freud first outlines his thesis of wish fulfillment through an analysis of one of his own dreams, the specimen dream. He had, he explains, been treating a young woman, Irma—a pseudonym Freud gives her—for hysteria, though the treatment had broken off for the summer vacation. The treatment, Freud notes, had relieved some of her anxiety but had not eradicated her symptoms. A colleague of Freud's and friend of Irma's family, Otto in Freud's account—another pseudonym—had paid him a visit the previous day, and Freud had questioned him about her state. "Better, but not quite well," was Otto's response, in which, Freud states, he "detected a reproof" (1900, 131). Anxious about the failure of the treatment, Freud wrote out Irma's case history, intending to send it to Dr. M., a senior in Freud's medical circle—Josef Breuer—from whom Freud sought justification for his treatment of Irma. After which, still occupied with the case, he fell asleep and dreamed the following: A large hall—numerous guests, whom we were receiving [empfangen].—Among them was Irma. I at once took her on one side, as though to answer her letter [ihren Brief zubeantworten] and to reproach her for not having accepted my "solution [Lösung]" yet. I said to her: "If you still get pains, it's really only your fault." She replied: "If you only knew what pains I've got now in my throat and stomach and abdomen—it's choking me"—I was alarmed and looked at her. She looked pale and puffy. I thought to myself that after all I must be missing some organic trouble. I took her to the window and looked down her throat, and she showed signs of recalcitrance, like women with artificial dentures. I thought to myself that there was really no need for her to do that.—She then opened her mouth properly and on the right I found a big white patch; at another place I saw extensive whitish grey scabs upon some remarkable curly structures which were evidently modelled on the turbinal bones of the nose.—I at once called in Dr M., and...

"I May Allow Myself to do This": Conflict in Freud's Writing of The Interpretation of Dreams.

An autobiographical interpretation of latent meanings in Freud's Interpretation of Dreams is undertaken in order to explore oedipal themes in Freud's writing and their role in his resistance to writing the book. By looking at how the book performs its message, in presenting a collection of Freud's personal dreams that talk to each other and inspire meaning-making, we can see how readers are drawn into the role of interpreters/analysts. This process makes the oedipal myth palpable long before Freud mentions it. It also illustrates an analytic process that analysts are all required to follow. Finally, the process reveals something in Freud that could be apprehended only after his ideas were conveyed-the unending process of interpretation, in which every conclusion gives rise to new ideas, inspiring new conclusions.

Judith and Beatrix: Oedipal Echo-Effects in Kill Bill

Quentin Tarantino's monumental epic Kill Bill is more than a formal tour de force, or cinematic "eye-candy." Underlying the deadly love story between Bill and the much younger Beatrix Kiddo is a story of incestuous desires and their violent consequences. The sword-wielding Beatrix is likened to Judith, the hero of the Apocrypha, and Freud's interpretation of that story, which is seen as both the virgin's revenge against her "defloration" as well as the daughter's ambivalence towards the father whose love must be denied, is key to understanding the deeper meanings of the film. This essay on "Oedipal Echo-Effects in Kill Bill I/II" examines this and other ways that the film's latent meaning, like the opening song (Bang Bang My Baby Shot Me Down) that echoes throughout the film, is based on childhood, infantile desires.

Freud's Roman Holiday: Dismembering Civilization and its Discontents

Freud's Civilization and its Discontents (1930) reveals the dynamics of dismemberment or death drive within Freud's text and literary interpretation. Freud's main source for his archeological analogy derives from Lanciani, exponent of the destruction of ancient Rome. Lanciani argued that man was responsible for the destruction of Rome: Freud argues that civilization is responsible for man's unhappiness. Freud's archeological sources cannot help but be read by today's readers in the light of the later destruction of European civilization, especially Jewish civilization, during World War II. Freud's pre-World War II text thus manifests a form of Nachträglichkeit or traumatic return of the past in the future.

From Die Traumdeutung to The Squiggle Game: A Brief History of an Evolution.

It is often possible to retrace the history of a new concept or a new technique, identifying precursor and reflections that would lay the foundations for the birth of something "new". This also applies to the "squiggle game" of Donald W. Winnicott, one of the Winnicottian "creations" in which the distinctive signs of its fatherhood are more evident as, at the same time, are evident several debts to other scientists: from Freud's interpretation of dreams, through Jung, Klein and Fordham to Milner's "free drawings".

Moral Experience and the Unconscious

Moral Experience and the Unconscious Steven Groarke In a fascinating paper, where the stakes are a good deal higher than the modesty of its tone might suggest, Edward Harcourt requires us to think again about the ethics of psychoanalysis. We should not allow ourselves to be misled by Harcourt's tendency to downplay the ambitious reach of his argument. Indeed, Lacan demonstrated what is at stake here by drawing attention to the "originality of the Freudian position in ethical matters" (1986/1992, p. 11). Lacan may be relied on, more obviously than anyone else I can think of in the Freudian field, as a counterweight to the assimilation of psychoanalysis to moral philosophy. A stenographer began to transcribe Lacan's seminars starting in 1952 and, reflecting on matters some 20 years later, Lacan claimed that "of all the seminars that someone else is going to bring out, [L'éthique de la psychanalyse (1959–1960)] is perhaps the only one I will rewrite myself and make into a written text" (1975/1998, p. 53). Clearly, Lacan considered the seminar important enough to warrant special attention and, in my view, it is one of the most significant psychoanalytical and philosophical works on ethics in the Freudian tradition, a counterpart, as Certeau (1986, p. 60) points out, to Freud's masterwork on religious history in Moses and Monotheism. It is not surprising that Harcourt makes no mention of Lacan or L'éthique in an otherwise wide-ranging and eclectic paper. Unlike Harcourt, Lacan did not view the ethics of psychoanalysis of a piece with Aristotelian ethics, or with a style of ethical theory based on notions of arete, right habits, and a rational conception of the life of eudaimonia in which the good for human beings can be identified with reference to the nature of human experience. More pointedly, psychoanalysis on Lacan's reckoning is not a type of education in the excellence of character, and he certainly did not think that analysts needed a better theory of maturity. Rather, taking his bearings toward the real from Freud, he privileged the discipline of Ananke or necessity over the ends of virtue. As opposed to the defining continuities in Harcourt's argument regarding classical and psychoanalytic ethics, Lacan (1986/1992, p. 11) emphasized "the interval between Aristotle and Freud." On this view, which is one that I share, the Freudian interpretation may be counted as an ethical event, precisely, to the extent that the 'interval' provides an opening over against the tradition. As far as I know, the vast majority of moral philosophers have shown little or no interest in psychoanalysis, although among those philosophers who have engaged seriously with psychoanalytic theory, John Cottingham (1998) is notable for allowing that the Freudian concept of the unconscious has profound implications for the ethical task of determining the conditions of human fulfillment. If, as Cottingham (1998, p. 140) argues, "we take the central problem of moral philosophy to be that of how we should live our lives to the full…then psychoanalytic theory uncovers a fundamental flaw in the idea that we can reach that [End Page 137] goal by the application of a rationally laid plan." Lionel Trilling (1951) spoke in the same vein for variousness and possibility, for the potentialities of life, against a narrowing of mind modeled on the use we make of it in everyday, organizational tasks. The same holds for Cottingham as for Trilling and Lacan: psychoanalysis announces and inaugurates a new discourse on the human predicament. And developing requisite habits of virtue on the Aristotelian model of ethics, for instance, does not meet the fundamental Freudian challenge that there is something in the human psyche, an irreducible tendency to self-disruption (Lear, 2000), which repeatedly resists the principle of reason. Lacan (1973/1977, p. 33) insisted more vociferously, perhaps, than anyone else that the "status of the unconscious … is ethical." Nevertheless, he maintained that the logic of the unconscious cannot be stated in the vocabulary of traditional moral philosophy. Although the moral philosopher, at best, aims at finding ways in which we can rationally agree about what matters, the unconscious is precisely that about which we want to know...