Psychic Apparatus Research Articles

A METAFÍSICA FREUDIANA: UM ESTUDO PARA A DEMARCAÇÃO METODOLÓGICA DA FILOSOFIA FREUDIANA A PARTIR DE KANT

Da exposição oferecida por Kant em seu tratado Investigação sobre a evidência dos princípios da teologia natural e da moral (1764), aproveitamos as observações acerca da forma metodológica adequada às investigações em filosofia, distinguindo-a daquela que é própria da construção do conhecimento matemático. Essas observações servirão de base para uma tentativa de aproximação entre a forma metodológica oferecida pela metafísica, entendida como ontologia, e a metapsicologia freudiana que poderá, então, ser concebida como uma ontologia funcionando no interior de sua psicologia. Nosso intuito é entender a metapsicologia freudiana como obediente à forma metodológica que atribuímos à ontologia. Nesse sentido, a metapsicologia freudiana funcionaria como um tipo de gerador/processador de conceitos psicológicos muito fundamentais. Tomaremos o exemplo da concepção da série qualitativa prazer-desprazer, como apresentada no Projeto de uma psicologia, para descortinar o surgimento de um princípio geral para o funcionamento do aparelho psíquico: o princípio de constância. Em seguida, nos encarregaremos de mostrar que o esforço de fundamentação conceitual de Freud o conduz, quase vinte e cinco anos depois, a uma profunda reconsideração do lugar desse princípio no seio de sua teoria, principalmente com a análise da hipótese de que todos os organismos partilhariam de uma tendência ainda mais fundamental que a busca pelo prazer: a pulsão de morte.

Associativité, symbolisation et entropie : propositions théoriques et cliniques

ObjectiveFree association is a founding concept of psychoanalytical therapies that refers to the way the patient will more or less freely pass from one representation to another. It helps to explore psychic reality and is also a therapeutic method useful in different clinical settings. Our goal, in this work, has been to study associativity with a double stance from psychoanalysis and cognitive neurosciences. Such an approach could help to improve the link between clinical and cognitive models. It also fosters our understanding of psychological processes during psychotherapy. Materials and methodsWe first propose a global overview of the historical origins of the concept of associativity in psychoanalysis. We analyze, in particular, how Freud started to develop the principles of free association with Emmy Von N. and how he progressively improved the definition and the use of this concept. We also study how associativity is closely related to the distinction between primary and secondary processes. We then expose and cross the psychoanalytical approach with research about associativity coming from cognitive neurosciences and neuropsychoanalysis. The impact of these research is finally analyzed from the point of view of clinical practice. ResultsAssociativity appears as a fruitful concept situated at the intersection between psychoanalysis and neurosciences. A first bridge is proposed between the research of Daniel Kahneman (System 1/System 2) and the distinction developed by Freud between primary and secondary processes. The notion of free energy is then analyzed as a common concept to psychoanalysis and cognitive models, especially in the work of Karl Friston concerning the way the brain tends to reduce free energy. Recent research about affective consciousness and default mode network research is also considered as being useful in order to study associativity through the concept of free energy and entropy. Associativity appears, from this point of view, as a way for the psyche to integrate high and low degree of entropy at different levels of organization of the brain. ConclusionsSymbolization is linked to several and specific forms of associativity processes. We propose to call “primary associativity” a first form of associativity that deals with primary processes. By contrast, secondary associativity rather concerns the impact of these processes at higher level of the psychic apparatus. The transition of one form of associativity to the other has a strong impact on the psychotherapeutic efficacy. We propose more precisely to call this transition process “transmodal symbolization”.

Recovering the psychic apparatus

In this paper I intend to describe the work of recuperation of the psychic apparatus of a patient as a way of achieving the elaboration of psychotic parts and of making possible the development of ...

Revenge/Porn: Django Unchained, Terence's Eunuchus, and the Role of Roman Slavery in the American Imagination

Revenge/Porn: Django Unchained, Terence’s Eunuchus, and the Role of Roman Slavery in the American Imagination RICARDO APOSTOL Slavery is sexy. Just ask Thomas Jefferson. Ask any reader of Fifty Shades of Grey, or, for that matter, any viewer of Caligula, Spartacus, Sebastiane, Fellini’s Satyricon , or a whole host of Roman sexploitation flicks. There is no point in denying it: slavery and sex have always gone hand in hand (not least among its disturbing aspects), unsurprising since it is in the very nature of the institution that one person receives complete control over the body of another, to do with as they will; and whether as living institution or fantasy , people have taken advantage of, and continue to take advantage of, slavery as a way of getting their kicks. I can hear the hue and cry already: “Classicist condones slavery and rape!” No, not by a long shot. If anything, this essay is a buzzkill. It seeks to elucidate the link between a particular use, for purposes of entertainment, of ancient Rome in the modern imagination, and aspects of sexual enjoyment which consumers of that entertainment would rather not think about. I want to force readers to confront the source of that enjoyment, thus perhaps ruining it for them. Like one part of its source material, and any good revenge fantasy, this enterprise is all about the return of the repressed, with predictably messy results for the guilty, who may not have even realized their guilt before the superego kicks their door down, guns a-blazing. 1. film structure and psychic apparatus guilt is an absolutely necessary part of the equation. Since guilt requires conviction, I will have to say a few words arion 23.1 spring/summer 2015 about the choice of Django Unchained and the Eunuchus, to prove that they’re not random lines of argument but rather two crosshairs aimed squarely at something within our collective psyche. These two comedies (for such they are) bear marked structural similarities: both tell the story of an intelligent , tricky slave working to secure illicit sexual favors for their inept and boorish masters (Calvin Candie, Chaerea) from another slave (Broomhilda, Pamphila) over whom somebody else bears a prior claim (Django, Thais), and who turns out to be essentially free. The central subterfuge on which the plot depends consists of sending a free man dressed as a slave (Django, Chaerea), a character over whom the shadow of castration looms but never lands, into the household where the female object of desire is kept, to take her for his own. A flamboyant bit part gets much attention, but is ultimately frustrated (Dr. King Schulz and Thraso, respectively; this part exists because in both cases there are odd doublings among protagonists and objects to give the storyline further richness). And finally, quite improbably and against all odds, free man and suddenly free woman reunite while the churlish enemy gets what he deserves, although everything is just slightly too morally ambiguous for comfort (at least for sensitive members of the audience—both works are designed to appeal on multiple levels). The observant reader will have noticed that I elided one structural pair in the above description, since upon it hinges the major contrast between the two works, and the starting point for my discussion. The tricky slave in Eunuchus is Parmeno, member of a proud lineage of subordinate trickster-heroes that includes such worthies as Figaro and Plautus’ Sosia. One difference, though, perhaps, is that Parmeno in the Eunuchus may be involved in shadier shenanigans than is commonly the case among his cunning confraternity; this may render him a slightly tarnished version of a normally quite Teflon-coated troupe. This is not at all clear, however. There is debate about how outraged certain moralistic members of the Roman audience may revenge / porn 92 have been, but we have no evidence of widespread condemnation of the play, for whatever such silence is worth. More anecdotally, I can say from my own teaching that the vast majority of students to whom I’ve taught the play in a vain effort to incite them to outrage have given Parmeno a pass, but only after I have...

The Freudian Psychic Apparatus: A Biopolitics of Resistance and Alteration

The Freudian Psychic Apparatus: A Biopolitics of Resistance and Alteration

Subjetividade, alteridade e desamparo nos tempos atuais

Este trabalho vai ao encontro do que foi realizado ao longo da teoria freudiana: contextualizar o homem em sua ordem social circundante e pensar as relações que se estabelecem na configuração do laço social. O objetivo é refletir sobre as possibilidades de outras articulações metapsicológicas, que permitam compreender a relação dos dispositivos contemporâneos criados para lidar com odesamparo, e as implicações de seu uso recorrente na condição desejante.Para tanto, nos deteremos a propósito das tensões entre as três instâncias do aparelho psíquico: id, ego e superego. Analisando as relações que estruturam o laço social, conseguimos repensar proposições psicanalíticas consagradas, tais como alteridade, desejo, pulsão e seus destinos.

Mourning the dead, mourning the disappeared: The enigma of the absent–presence

Freud's interest in the impact of death on the living goes back further than Mourning and Melancholia (1917e, [1915]). In Totem and Taboo (1912–13) Freud noted the ambivalence of the emotions we experience in relation to the dead. In this paper, I focus on Mourning and Melancholia as a landmark in the understanding of both the normal and psychopathological aspects of mourning and depressive processes in human beings. Mourning and Melancholia bridges Freud's first and second topographic theories of the psychic apparatus and constitutes for many authors the foundation of his theory of internal object relations. With this psychoanalytic understanding of mourning as a framework, I discuss ‘special mourning processes,’ such as the those confronted by psychoanalysts in Argentina when treating the relatives of thousands of people who were ‘disappeared’ by the military dictatorship in the 1970s; they are ‘special’ in the sense that the external reality [which] constitutes the starting point of the psychic mourning process, as described by Freud, is absent. I argue that the ‘absent–presence’ of the body as an enigmatic message initiates a special mourning process that bears certain characteristics of, and is isomorphic to, Laplanche's seduction theory.

Imagining Counter-Dispositif: The Case of Money Through Servitude, Slavery, Abolition and Free Labour

The paper explains how money as a master dispositif had guided history through institutions of servitude, slavery, its abolition and free labour through networks of human relations. The first section of the paper deals with the idea of money as dispositif. Second section explains how the motive of accumulation of wealth had driven the early modern Europeans into slave traders. Third section explains the abolition of slavery is in continuity with the motive of accumulation. It is explained, the free market for labour is a further extension of the logic of wealth accumulation through control and domination. The fourth section opens the discussion towards imagining counter-dispositif.Dispositif is naturalised power, the second nature that works from within as our mentality organising our thought patterns, attitudes, behavior and actions. It is an internal singularity, habitus, functioning as strange attractor in enabling us to abstract sense from the chaos of experiences. The internal singularity is an affect of historical and biographical engagement with the network of the socius that empowers us to be culturally conditioned sense making beings. Master dispositif is the deep singularity that draws other cleavages of mentalities towards it ‘naturally’ figuratively comparable to a deep valley drawing streams towards it. In this paper, I argue, money beyond its multiple appearances and usages such as, means of exchange, currency, cash apparatus, or financial statement is a master dispositive, primarily an internal psychic apparatus, drawn from our collective historical ontology, that rules our subjective perceptions.The central argument here is that, qua the master dispositif, money has an agential role in guiding history. For instance, though the institutions of servitude, slavery, slavery-abolition, and free-labour appear to us a progress from servitude to freedom I argue, they are just various manifestations in historical junctures since money as a master dispositif has possessed our internal cartography of pathways and ‘progress’. Said in Heideggerian terminology thrown into money’s dispositif is the state of das-man. Human subject moments, as truth moments and authentic freedom, if have to have liberative expressions, that should be through overcoming the eclipse of the Self and not in that being subjected to the dispositif that overwhelms.

The psychic envelopes in psychoanalytic theories of infancy.

This paper aims to review the topic of psychic envelopes and to sketch the main outlines of this concept in infancy. We first explore the origins of the concept in Freud's “protective shield” and then its development in adult psychoanalysis before going on to see how this fits in infancy with post-Bionian psychoanalysis and development. Four central notions guide this review: (1) Freud's “protective shield” describes a barrier to protect the psychic apparatus against potentially overflowing trauma. It is a core notion which highlights a serious clinical challenge for patients for whom the shield is damaged or faulty: the risk of confusion of borders between the internal/external world, conscious/unconscious, mind/body, or self-conservation/sexuality. (2) Anzieu's “Skin-Ego” is defined by the different senses of the body. The different layers of experienced sensation, of this body-ego, go on to form the psychic envelope. This theory contributes to our understanding of how early trauma, due to the failures of maternal care, can continue to have an impact in adult life. (3) Bick's “psychic skin” establishes the concept in relation to infancy. The mother's containing functions allow a first psychic skin to develop, which then defines an infant's psychic space and affords the infant a degree of self-containment. Houzel then conceptualized this process as a stabilization of drive forces. (4) Stern's “narrative envelope” derives from the intersection between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. It gives us another way to conceptualize the development of pre-verbal communication. It may also pave the way for a finer distinction of different types of envelopes. Ultimately, in this review we find that psychic envelopes in infancy can be viewed from four different perspectives (economic, topographical, dynamic, and genetic) and recommend further investigation.

Making Up the Judge's Mind A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Legal Reasoning and the Role of the Judge

An essay about legal reasoning and the judicial role from the perspective of psychoanalytic theory. Its thesis is that recourse to explanatory concepts outside of the discipline of the law – here, psychoanalytic theory – is necessary in order to understand how judges decide cases, and why we trust them. The argument has four parts. First, I suggest that legal training and practice requires the construction of a distinct psychical apparatus, with the ordinary, personal Uber Ich/Ich, joined by a legal Uber Ich/Ich. Then I look to the concept of phantasy to explain how, while remaining true to their oath to decide matters only according to the law, a judge’s personal experiences do influence their judgments. The third section describes the roles splitting and repression play in enabling a judge to do her job; that section ends with a note about the limits of the defences. The final substantive part rises above the world of the individual judge to consider the necessity, and implications of, part-object relating in the litigation process.

Séparation entre perception et conscience : proposition d’un modèle psychologique de l’appareil psychique

PurposesThis paper aims to progressively build a psychological model of the psychic apparatus. MethodThe starting point for our model is a theoretical option validated earlier: the separation between perception and consciousness. By studying the action of an external stimulus inside the psychic apparatus – the conditions, the results and the trajectory of this action – we consider the appropriateness of defining and locating two distinct systems, an unconscious followed by a preconscious in the psychic space consequently appearing between body and consciousness. Finally, once all relationships between the different parts of the model are established, we provide the latter with defence processes, including a repressive process. ResultsThe psychic apparatus is made of two similar blocs, each with its own memory system: at first, the unconscious records the sensory activity of the body and associates an affective value to it; the preconscious then records the figurative activity of the consciousness and replicates the perceptive and affective content of the unconscious in a new type of material that enables remembrance. The unconscious is the dynamic centre of the psychic apparatus and allows communication between body and consciousness. It can animate its own material (the unconscious representations) through perceptive associations and generate processes that have to be recognised as true unconscious thoughts, full of affects and possibly subject to repression. The preconscious has no momentum or affective dimension of its own; it is only the psychic bridge that enables consciousness to receive the associative work of the unconscious. DiscussionBy considering the psychic apparatus in its adaptive function – a system to encounter the world perceptively and react to this experience affectively – we lean towards cognitive psychology, but without losing sight of Freud's theory. Unconscious, preconscious and repression, as we see them, are not exactly Freudian, but are no stranger to metapsychology. Our model stands between cognitive psychology and metapsychology, it does not validate the primacy of consciousness over the unconscious, or that of the unconscious over consciousness. Instead, it considers the entanglement between them: consciousness is in the end an extension of the unconscious and does not function without it. ConclusionEach theoretical proposal along our work attempts to account for many clinical and experimental facts. We hope to bring a different light and new answers to phenomena such as infantile amnesia, dreams, remembrance, and “double consciousness” well known by Binet and his contemporaries.

Splitting of the Mind and Unconscious Dynamics

Abstract Freud and Breuer proposed the concept of splitting of the mind and described it in various clinical cases and the concept was later developed in studies by Klein, Kohut, Kernberg and others. These basic clinical findings were also confirmed by later studies using Rorschach projective test documenting that splitting in mental structures may be observed in phantasies and associations reflecting cognitive and affective contents related to conflicting interpretations of objects, other persons and the self. Altogether these data indicate that splitting represents a specific form of dissociation resulting from a conflict that leads to splitting of the ego and other parts of the psychic apparatus into separated subsystems. In this context, splitting and dissociation do not mean different terms even they are used in different contexts for description of specific conditions that may occur in various mental disorders.

«Психика» и «личность» в отсутствии «души» и «духа»

The cultural-historical conditions and reasons of the extinction of the notion of soul from the scientific psychology lexicon are described. The foundations of its return are given. The premises and concrete methodological ways for this are outlined. The comparative analysis of the usage of notions "soul", "spirit", "psyche", "person", and derivatives — "soulful", "spiritual", "psychical", "personal", is conducted. The features of outside and inside aspects of soul and the ways of their presentation and classifying with respect to the different levels of psychical apparatus are described. It is concluded that a new period of relations between psychology and philosophy is being established, and that there is a necessity of founding and developing a new science — the philosophy of psychology.

Kant with Sade with Dostoevsky: The Voice, the Object and the Limits of Representing in Bobok

This paper explores the dialectic of a subject constructed through these ‘gazes’. The gaze in this psychoanalytic re-reading of Dostoevsky’s story Bobok is reinterpreted through the function of what we will term the ‘aural gaze,’ which is elaborated as the invocatory function of the psychic apparatus or voice. By means of these psychic functions, which come to expression in the plot and structure of Dostoevsky’s novella, a world is constructed in which the subject not only ‘looks’ or is ‘looked-at’ but is listened to and made to speak.

A clivagem psíquica e o paralelismo discursivo na clínica psicanalítica

O ponto de partida da discussão é a constatação clínica de um paralelismo discursivo, em alguns pacientes, entre duas modalidades de enunciados que, apesar de coexistirem lado a lado, jamais estabelecem relações conflitantes ou formações de compromisso. Nossa hipótese é de que o paralelismo discursivo em questão é efeito de uma clivagem psíquica. A base para a discussão é o modelo de aparelho psíquico da"Carta 52".

Sobre ciúmes e erotomania: reflexões acerca de um caso clínico

Este artigo aborda os temas do ciúmes e da erotomania a partir de um caso clínico. O ciúme foi retomado partindo de sua manifestação primordial na gênese da constituição do psiquismo em direção a seus desdobramentos patológicos. A erotomania foi abordada a partir do referencial psiquiátrico clássico e não daquele encontrado nos atuais manuais diagnósticos. A articulação dos dois temas, embora não tenha visado qualquer intenção diagnóstica, apontou para uma posição subjetiva regressiva, de estruturação narcísica, delirante e com frágil conjugação do corpo.

Die inneren Gruppen in der Gruppe – Zur Bedeutung transgenerationaler Übertragungen für das Konzept der Gruppen-Matrix

The transgenerational transmission of experiences - especially of traumatic quality or of denied conflicts of guilt - is a main topic in psychoanalytic thinking and treatment since some decades. In the following generations those experiences which are unconsciously transmitted by scenes, produce fantasies and symptoms. Their meanings only can be deciphered by reverting to significant biographic fragments of the former generations. This aspect is also touched in Freud's term of an "emotional heritage": For him the unconscious first is a cultural one before it is reproduced in the individual. The communication of encoded messages presupposes a differentiated psychic apparatus - which is required for the development of culture and civilization, ergo for the living of humans in social groups. This article asks for the meaning of transgenerational transmissions for our understanding of the matrix as a psychosocial network in which mental processes and their interpretations are constantly generated and changed in a co-constructive manner.

Vicissitudes of psychic pain as a structuring matrix for mental growth

The intention of the author is to further the knowledge on pain, based on a review of the concept of psychic pain as found in Freud, Klein, Bion, and French authors, with the objective of clarifying as far as possible the nature and vicissitudes of pain. After this review, the author describes a case in which she proposes that psychic pain is made up of three essential elements: the first is the overflowing of great quantities that cannot be contained; the second is an intense and immediate defense to protect the psychic apparatus from destruction; and the third is the “return of the foreclosed.” At the end of the paper, the author makes her final, subjective considerations.

From the EEL to the EGO: Psychoanalysis and the Remnants of Freud's Early Scientific Practice

While numerous historiographical works have been written to shed light on Freud's early theoretical education in biology, physiology, and medicine and on the influence of that education on psychoanalysis, this paper approaches Freud's basic comprehension of science and methodology by focusing on his early research practice in physiology and neuranatomy. This practice, taking place in the specific context of Ernst Brücke's physiological laboratory in Vienna, was deeply concerned with problems of visuality and the revelation of hidden organic structures by use of proper preparation techniques and optical instruments. The paper explores the connection between such visualizing practices, shaped by a physiological context as they were, and Freud's later convictions of the scientific status of psychoanalysis and the function of its method as means to unveil the concealed structure of the "psychical apparatus".

The scenic function of the ego and its role in symptom and character formation

The author argues that the scenic function of the ego permits the situationally appropriate representation of an unconscious, infantile configuration – that is, of a relatively stable, personality‐based drive scene having the same status as latent dream thoughts. The products of conflict elaboration (symptoms, etc.) are manifested in different ways in accordance with the conditions of the relevant situation. The contents of the drive scene are created by the psychical apparatus on the basis of infantile perceptions and are revealed in screen memories. The capacity for situationally appropriate representation is apparently bound up with the mobile drive, including its narcissistic transformations. Desexualization (in the sense of neutralization) renders scenic elaboration impossible. The drive derivatives withdrawn from the scenic configuration contribute to ego organization and the formation of character traits, which no longer vary according to the situation, but can only be modified by a change in personality structure itself. It is as yet unclear whether a process of resexualization can make them amenable once more to analytic work. The form of narcissistic libido that can assume a scenic configuration is closely related to primary narcissism. Its manifestations, which may likewise emerge in situation‐dependent symptom formations, appear accessible to analysis.