Freudian Metapsychology Research Articles

La métaphysique bergsonienne et la métapsychologie freudienne : le deuxième dualisme pulsionnel en question

This article aims to contrast Freud's metapsychology with Bergson's metaphysics. Our main objective is to analyze the second instinct theory so as to reveal that its theoretical foundations are linked to the primacy of the negative, properly exposed by Bergson in Creative Evolution.

Specters and Cryptonyms of Return. Polyphony in the Postmemorial Novel Sefer by Ewa Lipska

The article discusses polyphonic narrative strategies typical of postmemorial prose on the exampleof Ewa Lipska’s novel Sefer, framing it through references to Bakhtin’s categories of polyphony,non-co-presence and the two-voice word, on the one hand, and to concepts of postmemory (MarianneHirsch’s category) and hauntontology (Jacques Derrida’s concept), Nicolas Abraham andMária Török’s cryptological theory, and the Freudian metapsychology of the secret, on the other.The polyphonic nature of the text refl ects the dynamics of intergenerational transmission of trauma,revealing a subjectivity haunted by traces of violence that take the form of extensive allusions andtextual tropes. Lipska deconstructs the postmemorial model of the narrative of return, questioningthe reparative abilities of acts of imagination.

Crime and the metaphysical animal

ABSTRACT This essay considers how we talk in moral terms about crime and punishment using a framework that comes from psychoanalysis. The idea of the human as a metaphysical animal, an animal that thinks and loves, is given a naturalistic explanation in Freudian metapsychology as it was developed by Melanie Klein and Hans Loewald. While the former helps us understand the desire to punish as the enjoyable return of pain for pain, the latter indicates how mature human beings seek to pursue a sense of wholeness. This understanding of moral psychology is applied to thinking about criminal justice where three ethical stances are identified, the vindictive, the vindicative and the validatory. The vindictive and the vindicative represent a compromise formation in law which excludes a broader validatory process aimed at truthful human reconciliation.

Hyperactivity of the default mode network in schizophrenia and free energy: A dialogue between Freudian theory of psychosis and neuroscience.

The economic conceptualization of Freudian metapsychology, based on an energetics model of the psyche's workings, offers remarkable commonalities with some recent discoveries in neuroscience, notably in the field of neuroenergetics. The pattern of cerebral activity at resting state and the identification of a default mode network (DMN), a network of areas whose activity is detectable at baseline conditions by neuroimaging techniques, offers a promising field of research in the dialogue between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. In this article we study one significant clinical application of this interdisciplinary dialogue by looking at the role of the DMN in the psychopathology of schizophrenia. Anomalies in the functioning of the DMN have been observed in schizophrenia. Studies have evidenced the existence of hyperactivity in this network in schizophrenia patients, particularly among those for whom a positive symptomatology is dominant. These data are particularly interesting when considered from the perspective of the psychoanalytic understanding of the positive symptoms of psychosis, most notably the Freudian hypothesis of delusions as an "attempt at recovery." Combining the data from research in neuroimaging of schizophrenia patients with the Freudian hypothesis, we propose considering the hyperactivity of the DMN as a consequence of a process of massive reassociation of traces occurring in schizophrenia. This is a process that may constitute an attempt at minimizing the excess of free energy present in psychosis. Modern models of active inference and the free energy principle (FEP) may shed some light on these processes.

What a shame! Restorative justice's guilty secret

AbstractIn this article, I address a long‐standing issue confronting restorative justice: its shaky ethical foundation. Leading restorative justice theorists have pursued an ethics of shame that has marginalised guilt (and remorse). The resulting shame‐oriented concepts do not adequately capture the complex moral and psychological phenomena that the ethics of restorative justice requires. In part, this is because theorists have failed to account for the depths, not only of guilt, but of shame as well. These depths, I argue, are to be found in Freudian metapsychology. Guilt and shame have primitive and mature forms. It is only through understanding the difference between these formations that we can see how it is that the mature formations are related in ways that are essential to understanding restorative justice. I conclude that that the mature guilt‐and‐shame complex developed in the article provides the grounds for an adequate ethical foundation for restorative justice.

The Function of Metapsychology – Study of an American Controversy, 1970s–1980s

This article explores the controversies triggered by Freud's metapsychology, specifically the American critiques of the 1970s – Heinz Hartmann, Merton Gill and David Rapaport, Robert Waelder, and Lawrence Kubie for ego-psychology, leading into Roy Schafer, George Klein and again Merton Gill for hermeneutics, Emmanuel Peterfreund and Charles Brenner for positivism, before concluding with a summary of more inventive engagements with metapsychology including that of Joseph Sandler and André Green. The article argues that in the name of empirical or clinical evidence, the American critiques tried to reintroduce a subjectivity made of data into the heart of psychoanalytic theory and as a result, replaced the subject of the unconscious with a new figure of the subject not only transparent to itself, but also transparent to two main forms of discourse: the hermeneutic discourse, on the one hand, and the positivist discourse, on the other.

The Failure and Reality of Sublimation: Psychoanalytic Ontology and Revolution

Occupying a privileged position in psychoanalytic thought, sublimation—the process in which the sexual instinct becomes social—is notably undertheorized and notoriously criticized, to some extent as the embodiment of the methodology and politics of psychoanalysis. As a way of elucidating the concept, this article addresses political critiques of sublimation by situating it in Freud's metapsychology and elaborating its speculative theorization. Critics put psychoanalysis in the context of the power structures that it takes for granted as real to show that it imposes on the subject the failure to accede to reality and the failure of its desire—a double bind supposedly finalized by sublimation. In contrast, expositors of Freud's metapsychology draw on its positing of a more complex relation between failure and reality to assert sublimation as real and libidinal. Even as sublimation may be sexual by other means, however, it is premised on the libido's failure to shape social reality. Seemingly compromising it, sublimation's repetition of the condition it is supposed to solve in fact hints at a definition of reality beyond the reality it ostensibly upholds. Freud illustrates this in his analysis of Leonardo, which I reread to highlight sublimation as the realization of desire in its failure and psychoanalysis as reflecting a common sense of reality to embed in it, indeed realize through it, another reality bearing foreclosed desires.

Réformer les concepts genrés de la métapsychologie

ContextCertain concepts of Freudian metapsychology appear gendered in their formulation, contingent on an era in the history of science, when natural science and the humanities were less distinct. ObjectivesTo reflect on an updated glossary of metapsychology. MethodTo draw inspiration from the writings of Paul B. Preciado and queer authors, then to examine Freud's own position on psychosexuality, in order to propose a new approach to these concepts without altering their scientific basis. ResultsThis update of the vocabulary of psychoanalysis seems possible for certain concepts, useless for others. ConclusionA collective reflection seems necessary to insulate certain concepts of Freudian metapsychology from a gendered conception.

O dualismo pulsional e suas exigências

O principal objetivo do presente trabalho consiste em explicitar como a exigência de manter o dualismo das pulsões na metapsicologia de Freud vincula-se estreitamente ao conceito de pulsão como elasticidade orgânica ou como a expressão da inércia da vida orgânica.

Da ontogênese à filogênese: uma velha diretriz metodológica de Freud em "Além do princípio do prazer"

Este trabalho visa a mostrar que se pode identificar uma diretriz metodológica a qual guia as especulações de Freud em Além do princípio do prazer e que foi concebida pelo autor no manuscrito de 1895 Projeto de uma psicologia. Ela se prestou a criar condições para o recurso a explicações de ordem ontogenética e filogenética para os fenômenos detectados pela clínica freudiana. A fim de mostrar esses aspectos, primeiramente se resgata a referida diretriz em Projeto de uma psicologia e se a identifica, em seguida, em Além do princípio do prazer com vistas a, enfim, buscar fornecer contribuições não apenas ao esclarecimento dos recursos freudianos à filogênese e à ontogênese como também ao vislumbre da importância desses domínios na metapsicologia freudiana e das possibilidades de relação entre a psicanálise e a biologia que se abrem a partir desse belo e desafiador ensaio de Freud escrito a um século.

Repression: A Critical Assessment and Update of Freud's 1915 Paper.

The concept of repression has been relegated to the periphery in current psychoanalytic theorizing. This is in part due to a reflexive and ill-informed avoidance of Freudian metapsychology, and in part due to preoccupation with 'primitive' and 'deeper' states of mind, a perspective that presumes that repression operates exclusively in 'higher level' or 'neurotic' forms of psychopathology. A careful scrutiny of psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice does not uphold such compartmentalization. Repression is ubiquitous in mental life. It contributes to normality (e.g., onset of latency), undergirds the 'psychopathology of everyday life' (e.g., parapraxes), exists alongside splitting in severe character disorders (e.g., borderline patients "forgetting" their appointments) and, by permitting a modified return of exiled mental contents, gives birth to neurotic symptoms as well as creative imagination. Taking Freud's seminal discourse on repression (in: Repression. Standard Edition, vol 14. Hogarth, London, pp 141-158 1915a) as its starting point, this paper elucidates the complex, nuanced, and pervasive nature of this defense. It deconstructs Freud's unitary concept of repression into four implicit binaries and updates his proposals in the light of contemporary psychoanalytic theory. The paper offers clear guidelines for clinical applications of these ideas.

The flesh made word: critical realism, psychoanalysis, and the ontology of love

ABSTRACT This essay considers the two-way relation between critical realism and psychoanalysis. Critical realism vindicates and deepens our understanding of ontology by drawing on the sciences for which it underlabours. From its original through its dialectical and metaReal forms, critical realist ontology develops its relation to psychoanalysis. (1) In its original form, it relates depth ontology to the psychoanalytic discovery of the unconscious, ideas of mental mechanism and unconscious motivation. (2) Dialectical critical realism develops the general ontology/ particular science relation to psychoanalysis by focusing on complexity and interelationality through concepts such as the compromise formation, entity relationism, dispositional identity and holistic causality. (3) There is further convergence around an ontology of love, where critical realism in its metaReal form may draw on Freud’s later structural metapsychology. This strand in Freudian metapsychology considers love central to the human animal who feels and thinks. These capacities ground the possibility of deep metaphysical (metaReal) experience.

Réflexions à trois voix sur la conscience

ContextThere are multiple models of consciousness in psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Hence constant questions about the definitions of this concept. AimThanks to a “three-voice” reflection on consciousness (two psychoanalysts and a neurologist-neuropsychologist), this paper outlines the multiple constructions and definitions of consciousness for psychoanalysts, neuropsychologists, and certain philosophers. MethodThis paper is based on a review of the issue in the fields of psychoanalysis and neuroscience. ResultsConsciousness remains a concept that has received relatively little attention from psychoanalysts. Similarly, consciousness for neuropsychologists remains an object of study in full evolution, both in relation to its definitions and, in relation to its links with brain functioning. There are various points of view on this concept and on the modalities of confrontation between psychoanalysis and neuroscience, both among psychoanalysts and among those who refer to neuropsychology. ConclusionThis can only encourage a great deal of caution in the construction of models that are still under debate, in the temptations to modify Freudian metapsychology through attempts to locate consciousness in the brain, and in the modalities of confrontation between psychoanalysis and neuroscience.

Le temps, entre psychanalyse et biologie

ContextThe French-speaking psychoanalytical movement, which has stubbornly clung to Freud's first topography, has shown little interest in the physiology to which the inventor of psychoanalysis attached so much importance as the foundation of psychology. Anglo-Saxon neuropsychology has followed the opposite path, that of Theodule Ribot (“Physiology is first”), William James (“I see a bear, I tremble, I am afraid”) and Noam Chomsky (“A genetically determined language ability specifies a certain class of humanly accessible grammars”). ObjectivesThis paper seeks to compare current physiological knowledge about the functioning of living organisms over time (cycles) and about the effect of the conscious representation of time on the vicissitudes of the drives (“preconscious sphincterization”). MethodWe are conducting a comparative study of, on the one hand, current data from biology (chronobiology) and neurophysiology (synchronization of neural networks) concerning orientation in time, and, on the other hand, what Freudian metapsychology can say about the construction of psychological temporality (atemporality of unconscious processes, discontinuity of pre-conscious processes, instantaneity of consciousness, pathologically “exploded” time). ResultsThe result is an attempt to bring together the concepts of neural synchronization, psychological investment, and symbolization. It is also, through the presentation of Endel Tulving's work on memory systems, an attempt to link the emergence of different memories (cognitive modules) and certain stages of the child's libidinal and objectal development (emotional modules). ConclusionBetween neuropsychoanalysis and neurosepticism, the conclusion addresses the following questions: how is this neurophysiological knowledge useful for the psychoanalyst's clinical work? Could the epistemic isolation of the clinician result in a shrinking of his symbolic field that would be detrimental to listening to contemporary patients?

O perigo da leitura literária: questões para o campo da psicanálise

Starting from a scenario composed of illustrations about the danger of reading in the field of social imagery, this paper, enrolled between psychoanalysis and literature, aims to highlight questions about the effects of literary reading. Of theoretical nature, the present work is based on considerations of literary criticism, on the one hand, and, on Freudian metapsychology, on the other. In the field of literary criticism, authors such as Jauss and Iser, who emphasize aesthetic reception and the effects of the text, support our hypothesis that the literary work requests the reader to a creative participation during reading. In the field of psychoanalysis, Freud supports our supposition that the aesthetic effect can also be thought from the problematic of the sublimation. Considering the implication of sublimation from the benign and iatrogenic consequences of literary creation, we questioned whether reading would serve as a remedy or poison for the reader.

Abschlussbewegungen: Goethe, Freud, and Spectral Forms of Life

Abschlussbewegungen:Goethe, Freud, and Spectral Forms of Life Bryan Klausmeyer On June 21, 1831—less than a year before his death on March 22, 1832—Goethe writes to his friend and fellow botanist E. H. F. Meyer, "Daß ich nahe am Ende meiner Laufbahn noch von dem Strudel der Spiraltendenz ergriffen werden sollte, war auch ein wunderlich Geschick" (LA 1.4:251; That I, at the end of my life, should still be seized by the vortex of the spiral tendency, was also a wondrous fate).1 Here Goethe alludes to his discovery late in life of a "Spiraltendenz" (spiral tendency) said to inhere in all plants, a claim that he first put forth in his late essay "Über die Spiraltendenz der Vegetation" (1830–31; "The Spiral Tendency of Vegetation"). In the introduction to that text he asserts: "Wir mußten annehmen: es walte in der Vegetation eine allgemeine Spiraltendenz, wodurch, in Verbindung mit dem vertikalen Streben, aller Bau, jede Bildung der Pflanzen, nach dem Gesetze der Metamorphose vollbracht wird" (FA 24:777; We must assume that a universal spiral tendency presides in vegetation through which, in connection with vertical striving, every structure, every formation of plants, is realized according to the laws of metamorphosis). Although Goethe insists that his new theory of the spiral tendency ought to be understood as conforming to and buttressing his first published treatise on plant metamorphosis from 1790, his letters, notes, and journal entries attest to the profound difficulties he encountered in bringing this later discovery into harmony with his earlier botanical theory. In light of this unacknowledged problematic in his published scientific writings, I would like to begin this article by delving further into Goethe's fascination with the spiral in order to show how his revisions to the theory of metamorphosis some forty years later call into question the viability of key aspects of his morphological method. More specifically, while numerous scholars have persuasively argued that Goethe's initial treatise on the metamorphosis of plants is grounded in a method of "anschauende Urteilskraft" (intuitive judgment), which depends on the morphologist's ability to unite the "Geistes-Augen" (eyes of the mind) with the "Augen des Leibes" (FA 24:432; eyes of the body),2 scant attention has been paid to the problems introduced by Goethe's later theory of the spiral tendency, which resists such ocular dissection. This is because the spiral tendency appears as an uncanny force at the threshold of perception; rather than attaining a determinate shape or form, it continually eludes representation, manifesting itself as a monster, specter, and even as an abyssal "Strudel" (vortex) within the field of vision. [End Page 163] Second, I argue that the problem of perception introduced by the spiral tendency can only be understood in relation to Goethe's belief that the latter is not opposed to, but closely associated with, the possibility of death, an assertion that undermines the teleological and vitalist assumptions inherent in his earlier theory of metamorphosis. On the basis of Goethe's view of the spiral tendency as a force toward death, which imbues the latter with an economy of motion to which he lends aesthetic dignity, I will conclude by analyzing the compelling correspondences between Goethe's idea of the spiral tendency and Sigmund Freud's conception of life in Jenseits des Lustprinzips (1920; Beyond the Pleasure Principle). Taking as his starting point the claim that the lifespan of an organism can be regarded as an "Umwege zum Tode" (detour to death), Freud substantially revised his previous neuroeconomic theories of the mind by introducing into psychoanalytic discourse his new theory of the "Triebe" (drives) as a counterpart to prevailing biological ideas. At the same time, Freud's metapsychology—like Goethe's morphology—also raises questions of representability in a radical way by drawing attention to the limits of discursive knowledge in relation to observation and intuition. Through this comparison it will be shown how Goethe and Freud not only conceive of life in relation to death, but also how both proceed methodologically by way of numerous detours—Umwege—into the contemporaneous discourses of the sciences of life, and thereby transgress the boundaries between the human...

Get Out: A Study of Interracial Dynamics in an Unrepaired and Unrepentant America-A Modern Day Racial Horror.

Get Out: A Study of Interracial Dynamics in an Unrepaired and Unrepentant America—A Modern Day Racial HorrorBryan K. NicholsBryan K. NicholsBryan K. Nichols, PhD, received his doctorate from UCLA. His early professional experiences included being a trainer and trainer of trainers in the Effective Black Parenting Program and conducting numerous trainings in the Dealing With Anger Program, designed for African-American youth. Currently, Dr. Nichols is a Los Angeles-based clinical psychologist whose practice focuses on teens, families, adults, and couples. He is a long-time consultant with a community-based organization where he has been the supervising psychologist for a Los Angeles gang prevention and intervention program.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:April 2018https://doi.org/10.1521/prev.2018.105.2.223PDFPDF PLUS ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations AboutREFERENCESAlford C. (1990). 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How does Paul Ricoeur apply metapsychology to collective memory?

The concept of “abused collective memory” gathers two of Ricœur’s main lines of concern: history and psychoanalysis. The article aims to explain how this convergence was possible, especially, when the transposition of the Freudian metapsychology from the individual to the collective level was hindered by the Ricœurian emphasis on the Freudian libidinal economy. Our hypothesis is that this convergence required two intermediate steps. The first one gathered psychoanalysis and history within the larger framework of otherness as flesh. The second step was a transcendental turn, which would lead Ricœur to inquire about the structures of collective existence that make it possible to apply psychoanalytic categories at that level, rather than considering how this transposition can be done. By taking this turn Ricœur found that a phenomenology of the capable human being was the condition of possibility of a temporal ontology, and then, could describe this ontology as the condition of possibility of his phenomenology.

Eros and Thanatos: A Nondualistic Interpretation: The Dynamic of Drives in Personal and Civilizational Development From Freud to Marcuse.

The Freudian theory of drives gave prominence to the idea that there is an inherent principle of entropy, a tendency for dissolution of life, referred to as the Death drive, or Thanatos. Freud recognized a counterbalancing tendency for sustaining life, known as the Life drive, or Eros. The psychoanalytical expounding of the struggle of Eros and Thanatos in the context of the civilizational process sparked the philosophical critique of civilization. Although Freud tended to consider repression an indispensable dimension of this process, the author proposes in this paper that Herbert Marcuse's political critique took Freud's metapsychology further philosophically, suggesting a nondualistic interpretation of Freud's position.

Análise Crítica dos Pressupostos e Fundamentos Conceituais da Escola de Psicossomática de Paris

Resumo Este artigo apresenta uma análise crítica do quadro teórico da Escola de Psicossomática de Paris. Pretende-se demonstrar a hipótese de que tal matriz conceitual está sustentada em uma concepção iluminista de subjetividade, que concebe o corpo como algo a ser dominado pela mente. Argumenta-se que tal concepção se manifesta de forma implícita na hipótese defendida pelos autores dessa escola, segundo a qual a vulnerabilidade do indivíduo ao adoecimento somático seria resultante de uma insuficiência fundamental ou passageira do funcionamento mental. Demonstra-se que tal enunciado é herdeiro da concepção de psiquismo formulada no âmbito da metapsicologia freudiana, na qual a mente é entendida como um aparelho destinado a possibilitar a descarga de excitações, sobretudo as provenientes do próprio corpo (pulsionais).