Psychoanalytic Approach Research Articles

‘It’s a struggle’ – the role of the school Health and Well-being Lead in supporting families in poverty

This article explores one primary school’s response to addressing poverty experienced by children and families, within a post-Covid context. It draws on a small-scale qualitative case study exploring the role of the Health and Well-being Lead (HWBL) in a primary school in a relatively affluent market town in the south-east of England. A psychoanalytical approach was taken to understand the data drawing on the researchers different situated experiences and knowledges. Participants included children, parents and staff at the school. All parent participants shared their financial challenges, which they referred to as ‘struggles’, with many relating to the impact of the cost of living and adverse unexpected events. Staff raised concerns about how cuts to support services and funding for schools had contributed to and exacerbated challenges due to long waiting lists and a lack of early intervention. The role of the HWBL was recognised by both parents and staff as an important resource within the school. Integral to this role was a non-judgemental and empathic approach, which created an open and trusting relationship with parents. Despite the apparent success of the role, it was evident that the workload and the increase in ‘struggles’ experienced by families was having an impact on both the HWBL and other staff. While we acknowledge that such a role could benefit other schools, we argue that this will only be successful and sustainable if the government also addresses the need for early intervention, funding and the workload crisis in children’s services and schools.

Faites des parentés psychanalytiques, non des psychanalystes enfants ! De l’institution œdipienne à l’institution affinitaire

ContextPsychoanalytic collectives and institutions that adhere to the psychoanalytic approach seem to be built around a patriarchal Oedipal logic referred to here as “hetero-patriarchal-oedipal.” The emergence of feminist currents in the social sciences and humanities offers new perspectives for understanding the dynamics and mechanisms present in this type of collective structuring exposed to constant conflicts and ruptures. ObjectivesThis work aims to investigate the ways in which psychoanalytic collective bonds of Oedipal essence are constructed and to propose the creation of generative and heterogeneous psychoanalytic kinships that are not solely a reproduction of patriarchal, hierarchical, and defensive family structures subject to the domination of “fathers.” MethodThe author supports her reflection using the qualitative ethnographic method (common in the social sciences and humanities), specifically drawing from her personal experience within psychoanalytic groups and institutions. The data collected from this fieldwork are connected to psychoanalytic theories, critical studies, and feminist perspectives. ResultsThe author's personal experience within psychoanalytic schools and associations attests to the numerous difficulties faced by these training places, which are determined by traumatic “family” fantasies and not, as proposed by Donna Haraway, by symbioses and affinities among the members. Freud turns the Oedipus myth into a familial and social paradigm based on various fantasies: murder, incest, jealousy, rivalry, etc. The laws of the Oedipal father and the structures they generate seem to be reproduced in authoritarian psychoanalytic institutions, resulting in the repression of heterogeneous knowledge. The cyborg model (Donna Haraway) offers a new perspective at the intersection of biology, envisioning institutions that generate new affinities through encounters between different species, implying the breakdown of boundaries between the organic and machinic, human and animal, material and informational, etc. InterpretationThis problematic context suggests the necessary creation of affiliative and generative psychoanalytic connections based on heterogeneous theoretical connections that are not tied to an immutable authority, infantilism, fear of abandonment and exclusion, or the inhibitions of representations trapped within Oedipal complexities.

A Psychoanalytic Approach to Turkish Foreign Policy: Crisis, Disorder, and Disorientation

ABSTRACT What explains Turkey’s current foreign policy disorientation, causing the country to swing from one position to another in a relatively short period of time? We argue that rational arguments do not provide comprehensive explanations of the fluctuations in Turkish foreign policy. By utilising a psychoanalytic approach, this study argues that the relentless radical developments that unfolded at home and abroad in the past decade paralysed the Turkish leadership, disrupting their sense of order in international politics while detaching them from important geopolitical realities. Under this neurotic condition, Turkey’s leadership has engaged in a constant seek for recognition as a key regional player irrespective of how controversial these efforts may be. In making sense of this case, this study builds on the ontological security literature in International Relations and contributes to the existing debates on foreign policy crises by integrating a Lacanian notion of jouissance to the ontological security framework. It shows that the jouissance approach offers a productive lens which captures how an ontologically insecure state like Turkey follows disorderly conducts in international politics and gains satisfaction from it as a way to reassure its ruptured sense of actorness at times of multiple crises.

Psychotherapeutic strategies to reduce dental phobia

Dental phobia should be considered a social challenge, as it is a dental public health problem, since about 5-15% of the adult population globally report severe dental anxiety or dental phobia. Dental phobia has severe consequences for both dental and general health, interfering with the professional and social functioning of people with dental phobia. Therefore, timely and effective management of dental phobia is essential for improving oral health and quality of life for people with dental phobia. In this article, different strategies and techniques for alleviating dental phobia are presented through three therapeutic approaches: the cognitive-behavioural approach, the psychoanalytic approach and the experiential approach.

Psychological Conflict Reflected by Margaret as the Main Character on “Big Eyes” Movie: A Psychoanalytic Approach

Everybody can suffer psychological conflict, whether consciously or unconsciously. It usually happens when someone faces difficulties and finds it difficult to choose among several options. Psychological conflict can also arise when a person lacks strong guiding principles. Big Eyes movie tells about psychological conflicts experienced by Margaret the main actress as a painter. Margaret faced many struggles for hiding all of her husband’s untruth. This paper analyzed psychological conflict reflected by Margaret as the main character on Big Eyes movie and Margaret‘s personality in facing her psychological conflict. The theoritical framework of analysis was Psychoanalytic approach by Sigmud Freud. Based on the result of data analysis, it was found that there were two kinds of psychological conflicts faced by the main character, Margaret, they are pressure and unconfident. Margaret got pressures from her husband because she knew everything about her husband’s popularity and his untruth. Margaret felt unconfident because she had not rational thinking. She trusted her husband’s saying too much, so her husband dominated her easily.

Navigating Anxiety: International Politics, Identity Narratives, and Everyday Defense Mechanisms

Abstract How do individuals navigate international politics and mitigate the anxieties it elicits in the everyday? Giddensian literature on ontological security suggests that (collective) internalized routines and narratives provide a sense of certainty and stability that enable individuals to “go on” with their daily lives. This article adopts a Kleinian psychoanalytical approach to show that when faced with anxiety about their internalized narratives being ruptured, individuals do not necessarily, as Giddens suggests, fall into “chaos.” Rather, they rely on psychodynamic defense mechanisms such as denial and idealization to protect their sense of self and, by extension, maintain a sense of ontological security. The article investigates everyday practices of how people cope with anxiety related to international politics. It focuses on the case of the European Union by analyzing the reactions to political cartoons of participants from eighteen focus groups conducted in Belgium, France, and Italy. The findings provide, in turn, a deeper understanding of individuals’ everyday defense mechanisms in response to threats to collective narratives of being and belonging. The article thereby advances our theoretical and empirical knowledge of how international politics can affect individuals’ everyday life and sense of self as well as shape political behavior and attitudes.

"Dasein" или "поток переживаний": онтологические основания человека через призму феноменологического и психоаналитического подходов

The article addresses the problem of human existence from the standpoint of phenomenological and psychoanalytic approaches. Human existence from the standpoint of phenomenology is revealed by the concept of Dasein – “here is being” – derived from the consciousness of a person whose being is the being of his consciousness. Psychoanalysis considers human existence as a stream of experiences, often of an unconscious nature, as a result of “games of the unconscious”; however, consciousness and living by the consciousness of the irrational unconscious drives have a therapeutic significance in the treatment of mental disorders, and therefore consciousness is of crucial importance in the ontological foundations of psychoanalysis. This confirms the desubjectifying and rationalizing role of the analyst in a psychoanalytic situation. The aim of the article is to consider the ontological foundations of man through the prism of phenomenological and psychoanalytic approaches. As a result, their common and special features were identified, the concept of Dasien analysis was considered, represented by the use of a phenomenological approach to psychoanalysis. The methodology of the study is related to its problem field. The main method of research is phenomenological analysis. The research also relies on a number of general scientific methods: analysis, synthesis, modeling, ascent from the abstract to the concrete, abstraction. When considering human existence, a dialectical approach was used in the context of the study of the relations of the dichotomous pair “consciousness – the unconscious” as the subject-object foundations of existence. Exploring human existence through the prism of phenomenology and psychoanalysis, similarities were revealed in the understanding of the role of rational or conscious processes in human existence in the works of Martin Heidegger and Sigmund Freud. In phenomenology, the intentionality of consciousness was considered as the most essential being, Dasein residing in active actual thinking. In psychoanalysis, consciousness is the possibility of healing from mental disorders, where the awareness and rationalization of the problem become the central tools of psychoanalytic therapy. For Dasein analysis, consciousness is actually equated with human existence; namely, Dasein is a true reality, while not split by the dichotomy of subject-object relations.

Urban space: archetypal models, morphological properties, mythological plots. The methodology of comprehensive study

The object of the study is the cultural space of the city. The subject of the study is the morphological properties and mythological plots of the cultural space of the city (using the example of Komsomolsk-on-Amur). The author examines in detail the complex study of the cultural space of the city in the prism of historical-cultural, philosophical-cultural, psychoanalytic, symbolic, linguistic and semiological approaches. The author's method of exploring urban space has been formed, based on the line of myth (lemniscata Bernoulli). Literary and artistic works have been studied and reviewed to identify archetypal models and their morphological properties of the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Some mythological plots and ways of transforming cultural space are revealed. Special attention is paid to the analysis of artistic texts to identify the artistic image of the cultural space of the city. The description of a number of architectural objects and the interpretation of some decorative elements are presented. The study uses traditional approaches to the study of the cultural space of the city, and also attempts to complement the boundaries of the study based on the interpretation of mythical plots, mythologems using a technematic component – the Bernoulli Lemniscate. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that on the basis of traditional and technematic approaches, the cultural space of the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur is studied based on the analysis of mythological plots of the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, artistic texts, literary and architectural works. The morphological properties of the cultural space of the city are revealed. The main conclusion of the study is that using an interdisciplinary approach in the study of the cultural space of the city, opportunities for its identification have been identified. With the help of technematics or mathematical analysis, interpretation of literary and artistic texts, as well as a comprehensive study of architectural objects and its decorative, expressive means, it became possible to interpret this knowledge as a way to transform the cultural space of the city. This study opens up opportunities for a more thorough study of the myth line as one of the possible options for transforming the city's space, preserving historical, architectural, artistic and literary heritage.

The paradoxical interplay between the British colonial enterprise, masculinity, and reparation in the Caribbean in Lovelace’s The Schoolmaster

Novelist and thinker, Earl Lovelace posits a humanistic revision of postcolonial readings of the concept of reparation in his essays in Growing in the Dark, particularly in “Reparation: For &and From Whom,” and “Working Obeah.” While he does not supplant the fundamental argument that European beneficiaries of slavery should assume some responsibility for the restitution and repair of descendants of Africa, he questions the idea of reparation as an act of dependency, something handed out by the “other,” – be it European or post-independence Caribbean governments. Instead, he imagines reparation to include the agency of the colonial subject who assumes authority and responsibility for his repair. Consequently, while Lovelace recognizes the importance of the social and economic requirements of reparation, he privileges the psychological processes. Earl Lovelace’s, The Schoolmaster provides a useful platform from which to examine the applicability of the author’s reading of the concept of reparation within the framework of repressive and hegemonic framework enforced by the British colonial administration in pre-independence, Trinidad and Tobago. This study investigates the influence of British colonizing policies on the development of masculinity in the pre-independence Caribbean, specifically the ongoing struggle for reparation. Whereas a number of prior studies use the West Indian novel to demonstrate how the crises within masculinities result from patriarchal standards of ownership and control, this study also uses Caribbean fiction to prompt meaningful discussions on the healing of maimed masculinities. Due to the psychological implications encoded in Lovelace’s conceptualization of reparation, this paper, understandably, privileges a psychoanalytic approach.

A Psychoanalytic Approach: Psychopath and Psychosis Phenomena Reflected in the Novella the Fox (1923) by D.H. Lawrence

A Psychoanalytic Approach: Psychopath and Psychosis Phenomena Reflected in the Novella the Fox (1923) by D.H. Lawrence

PSYCHOANALYTICAL APPROACH TO COMPLEX NARRATIVE IN MOVING IMAGE: NOLAN’S MEMENTO

This article explores Christopher Nolan’s Memento as an exemplar of complex narrative in moving images with a psychoanalytical approach. Psychoanalysis has provided a foundation for commentators, film critics and theorists to analyse cinema. By using Freud’s Iceberg Analogy of the unconscious mind, this article examines the parallelism between the emergence of unconscious complex mental states, how they are expressed through emotions and behaviour in moving images and how spectators reflect their unconscious emotions and mental states. The article focuses on Memento and analyses the movie's character and narrative structure. Memento was chosen as Christopher Nolan captured the scary extent of the human mind's complexity and its unconsciousness. Through complex narrative structures, he created associations between audiences’ unconsciousness and negative emotions of repression and stress associated with it, such as helplessness, fear of having no purpose, misjudgement or unfair treatment. This article examines the scene structures in relation to the complexity of narratives and narratives’ relation to Leonard Shelby’s unconscious mind, through the framework of psychoanalysis and interpretivist approaches by utilising psychoanalytic film theory and text analysis. It concludes that the protagonist, Leonard Shelby, has a detached preconscious and conscious and unconscious resulting from not his head injury but unconsciously using it as a psychological shield. The detachment between levels of consciousness is depicted as a moving image in black and white. This provides stability and consistency to Leonard’s version of narratives, which plays the reverse. The analysis of Memento with a psychoanalytical approach evidences the parallelism between Freud’s Iceberg Analogy of the unconscious mind and humans' complex unconscious mental states and how this is depicted in moving image.

Road Rage Behaviour In Movie Unhinged Directed By Derrick Borte Through Psychoanalytic Approaches

Road rage is a phenomenon that involves the connection between human anger and driving performance. This study aims to discover about how road rage is being portrayed in movie Unhinged and to know the interconnection between characters based on their background and motives. This research uses the psychoanalysis theory of Freud in "Unhinged" to discover the characters’ backgrounds and motives. The research adopts a qualitative approach. Through non-numeric data analysis, the study provides an overview of road rage, including its causes and severe consequences depicted in the movie. The examination of various scenes in the movie reveals similarities in the motives of the characters, despite their distinct backgrounds and personalities, which are both explicitly and implicitly explained. By analyzing the backgrounds of the characters, an interconnected negative influence between them is inferred. Ultimately, this study concludes that Unhinged prominently highlights road rage as its central theme, and through a deep analysis of character backgrounds, it unveils the overwhelming burden of thoughts experienced by both individuals, leading to heightened sensitivity on that particular day.

The Many Worlds of Trauma: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

The article presents a multidimensional analysis of trauma. The socio-physiological approach in the first part sets the stage for underlining the role of integrative psychotherapy in addressing traumatic wounds. Drawing from different fields, the study then provides Kazuo Ishiguro's psychoanalytic approach to understanding the relationship between trauma and human existence, with a particular focus on the interplay between memory, identity and chronic emotional disturbances. The study thus explores how fiction can serve as a therapeutic tool, giving voice to characters who either embark on healing journeys or try to conceal their unhealed wounds within self-contained worlds. Through existential parables, therapeutic fiction can delve into the psychological implications of traumas, offering the possibility of acceptance, or even healing, despite the immutable nature of the past. Ultimately, this interdisciplinary analysis aims to deepen one’s understanding of trauma's impact on individuals and society while it highlights the potential for healing and growth in real life through the worlds of fiction.

The Psychoanalytic Work in the City: Psychoanalysis in Critical Social Situations

The present work aims to showcase a psychoanalytic approach to social emergencies in settings that stretch beyond the context of middle- and upper-class private practices. We advocate for the development of new clinical devices of assistance in these situations, grounded in a novel psychoanalytic methodology. Our clinical practice takes inspiration in community clinics set up by Freud and his main followers between the years of 1918 and 1938, and is anchored in quintessential psychoanalytic concepts: the unconscious, drive, repetition and transference. Since our goal is not a mere translation of private clinic practices to the social sphere of the city, it is paramount that psychoanalysis is reinvented so as to enable psychoanalytic listening to be present on streets and public squares as well as on the design of public policies by governmental institutions.

The metaphorical aspect in J. M. Coetzee‘s Age of Iron (1990)

The present study aims at examining the metaphorical aspect in J. M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron. To make the investigation a purposeful one, the Psychoanalytic approach is employed taken Displacement as a means of coexistence and adaptation. The study also seeks to underscore how J. M. Coetzee employs the Psychoanalytic approach in portraying the character of Elizabeth Curren –the protagonist- to convey his contempt toward the oppressive practices of the ruling system of Apartheid in South Africa. In the present novel, Coetzee presents a model of a female white character who is not in line with the practices of the system. Mrs. Curren finds a means of revealing her suppressed feelings in writing a confessional letter to her daughter because of her inability to openly express her adverse attitude toward the ruling system in her community. In a word, the main objective of the study lies in exploring J. M. Coetzee’s vision of the dilemma of both the oppressed and the oppressor South Africans through Metaphor of the body of both the protagonist and the system to convey the theme of his novel.

Les pratiques de soin énergétique en France : phénoménologie et processus psychiques dans les thérapies alternatives

AimsIn this paper, we look at energy healing, a relatively under-studied therapeutic approach in France, despite its strong influence on a wide variety of complementary and alternative therapies. This article attempts to clarify the reasons for the success of these approaches by analyzing the psychic processes inherent in them. MethodTwenty-five therapists (energy therapists, magnetic healers, alternative therapists) were recruited to take part in several semi-directive interviews focusing on the phenomenology of energy healing. The corpus of data was analyzed using a psychoanalytical approach in order to highlight the specific features of these practices. ResultsEnergy healing is a set of therapeutic practices with heterogeneous methods based on the representation of a vital energy. These practices are frequently used in contexts of “ordinary misfortune” that combine persistent somatic symptoms, psychological suffering, and critical stages in life. The practice and effectiveness of energy healing seem to be based on unconscious psychic processes. These processes encourage the emergence of non-ordinary states of consciousness that potentiate processes of psychic transformation. In some aspects, this setting could be compared to a form of mediation in which the therapist uses body and object manipulations to induce psychic effects. DiscussionThe apparently “magical” nature of these therapies polarizes the scientific and media debate around the way in which they do or do not comply with the requirements of evidence-based medicine. The model proposed in this article allows us to move away from these issues and take into account the anthropological aspects of alternative therapeutic systems. ConclusionThe approach developed in this article extends and opens up clinical research on exceptional experiences, by showing that the study of alternative therapies, when it is not solely centered on the question of specific proof of efficacy, offers a fruitful perspective for making more explicit the processes of the caregiving relationship.

김명인 시집 『동두천』에서의 기억의 현재화와 부정적 상징물의 기능

This paper aims to analyze the phenomenon of transition of “us” in Kim Myung-In’s first poetry collection, Dongducheon, from the perspective of liminality. It seeks to elucidate how the author, Kim Myung-In, personally confronts and overcomes his wounds and the contemporary issues of his time. Research on Dongducheon has been bifurcated into a psychoanalytic approach focused on his personal history and a historicist methodology centered around diagnosing societal issues in the 1970s. The “us” to which the poetic subject belongs encompasses orphanages, hometown friends, and a group of teachers. Among these, first, the violent environment of “us” stimulates the suppressed memories of the teacher group’s “us.” The purpose of transitions occurring in liminality is to confront those memories and reconcile with the others involved in a conflicted relationship within those memories. The poetic subject confesses the suppressed guilt from the past through the theatrical act of articulating negative symbols in the rituals. As a result of this transition, the pre-existing “us” of the teacher group is reintegrated into a newly formed “us,” which includes mixed-blood students. The societal position of this reintegrated “us” is a more fundamental stage of life than the violent “us” to which they originally belong. Since this group is virtual, the only reality is the imagination of liminality that enables such virtuality. This imagination is a movement of identification towards the lowest level of social status from their present social position. This identification movement is a social phenomenon of the 1970s that aimed for a class identity with the masses.

‘Beyond the Waking World’: The Significance of Dreams in H.P. Lovecraft’s Works

The horror genre as a whole is often overlooked in research and even less attention is paid to its various subgenres. One such subgenre is cosmic horror or Lovecraftian horror which focuses on the horror of all that is unknowable and incomprehensible. Dreams have been an integral part of folklore and are associated with the unknown. It is, thus, no surprise that they feature heavily in Lovecraft’s short stories, novellas, and poems. This article will utilise textual analysis and a psychoanalytic approach to explore the role that dreams play in the works of H.P. Lovecraft and, by extension, the genre of cosmic horror. A close reading of the short stories “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” (1919), “The Dreams in the Witch House” (1933), and the novella The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1943) show that dreams in Lovecraft’s works stem from the repressed memories and the collective unconscious of the human race and also act as a passage into other worlds and alternate dimensions of a vast, multidimensional cosmos. The findings show that Lovecraft uses these dreams as a device to explore themes and ideas like absurdism, nihilism, alienation and fragmentation which, together with his unique style, puts Lovecraft’s cosmic horror in the ranks of early twentieth-century texts that are considered quintessential modernist works. Spectrum, Volume 17, June 2022: 89-100

Témoigner aux procès après une catastrophe sociale : une tentative de restauration des garants métasociaux démocratiques

ContextThis study explores the subjective and group repercussions of forced disappearance in the context of Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s. To comprehend the dynamics of such state violence, the study draws on a psychoanalytic approach of groups and institutions. The political repression during this era leads to a “social catastrophe” (Puget et al., 1989): following the collapse of democratic meta-social guarantors, the socio-political and institutional context becomes unrecognizable. In the aftermath of numerous crimes legitimized by the juntas, relatives of the disappeared have been fighting for decades against the impunity of the culprits, demanding justice be served. ObjectivesThe study aims to explore the various functions associated with testifying in trials for relatives of the disappeared. MethodAs part of a qualitative study, we interviewed twenty-nine relatives of disappeared people living in Switzerland. We analyzed the semi-structured interviews using thematic content analysis. We present some of the results of the cross-sectional analyses, illustrating them with a case study emblematic of the whole. ResultsFor relatives of the disappeared, testifying in a trial seems to be a royal road to actively participate in the restoration of democratic meta-social guarantors. In doing so, these relatives seek support from a collective and particularly from institutions, especially when these institutions regain their protective function against state violence. By testifying, they contribute to revitalizing narcissistic contracts and, more broadly, attempt to humanize not only the disappeared person but also their relatives and the perpetrators. InterpretationMemory work and the struggle for justice appear to be prevalent in the practices undertaken by close relatives of the disappeared, even fifty years later. Some of these relatives feel invested with a mission to memorialize and denounce political crimes in order to place them within history and to combat systematic erasure of crimes. This mission also allows them to symbolize, as far as possible, the catastrophe and their own history. This research is of course limited by the number of participants and the unique research interview. Further studies on the subjective and group repercussions of such state crimes and their transgenerational impact would be relevant to promote clinical listening to the relatives of the disappeared and their descendants.

Analysis of Individual Behavior Through a Psychoanalytical Approach: A Literature Review

This literature review explores the analysis of individual behavior using a psychoanalytical approach, focusing on critical writings that elaborate on the concepts proposed by Sigmund Freud and related thinkers. Through synthesis and analysis of various articles, this research aims to provide an in-depth understanding of how the psychoanalytical approach is employed to delve into the complexity of individual behavior. The findings of this literature review reveal the evolution of psychoanalytical concepts from Freudian theory to contemporary contributions in psychology. There is a detailed exploration of how the id, Ego, and superego play crucial roles in shaping individual behavior. Additionally, the study highlights the use of the psychoanalytical approach in addressing aspects such as internal conflicts, defense mechanisms, and the impact of past experiences. In the context of the literature review, it is evident that the analysis of individual behavior through the psychoanalytical approach provides profound insights into psychological aspects and significantly contributes to understanding the variations in human behavior. This review presents a comprehensive overview of the development of psychoanalytical theory and how this approach continues to be relevant in understanding individual behavior. The practical implications of this review are also discussed, emphasizing its relevance in clinical settings, education, and personal development