Psychoanalytic Standpoint Research Articles

Decoding Desires: The Subconscious Motivations of Fan Fiction Authors

Fan-Fiction, originating from early science fiction, has become a popular culture, fuelled by the digital age and online communities. Fan-fiction is a creative technique in which fans actively connect with current media texts by creating their own stories, frequently reinventing and building on the established worlds and characters of their favourite source material. From a psychoanalytical perspective, it offers a secure environment in which young people may project their unconscious desires and thoughts onto the characters and settings they love. They can virtually experience events that could be controversial, banned, or otherwise deviate from society standards by inventing alternate narratives. Despite its easy accessibility, it can also be a source of objectification, inappropriate content, fluctuating writing quality and stereotypes, which could morbidly influence the psyche of young authors and readers. This study investigates fan-fiction from a psychoanalytic standpoint, concentrating on its diverse themes and attractiveness to the Fan-fiction community, aiming to understand its effect on its prosumers.

National character in the view of psychoanalysis

In the current context of globalization, alongside the prevailing trend, each nation-state still retains its distinctive national characteristics. These are the typical and unique features that each community contributes to the cultural heritage of humanity. In that sense, the character of each nation, expressing its identities and personalities, has always held a peculiar allure for researchers. However, national character is a rather nebulous concept, challenging to grasp, both relative and universal. Therefore, it remains an open concept, amenable to various approaches in psychology, sociology, ethnology, anthropology, value studies, and cultural studies. While psychoanalysis and national character may initially appear unrelated, national character is ultimately influenced by factors residing in the collective unconscious. Hence, if one seeks to discern the personality of a nation, psychoanalysis provides a promising avenue. From this perspective, the study of national character from a psychoanalytic standpoint can be considered quite unique and advantageous, deserving of attention. This article examines national character as a representation of a nation’s unique identity from a fresh psychoanalytic perspective, offering insights into the national character of various nations, including Vietnam.

Attribute to the Inner Self of the Characters in Wuthering Heights

The psychoanalytic reading expands the horizon of literary criticism and explores the state of mind of the characters as well as the author who created them. This article aims to explore the psychological insight into characters and the negative implications of psychological issues. Sigmund Freud was an Austrian psychoanalyst (1856-1939), is well-known for his theory of Id, Ego, and Superego which are the three components that determine the psychological behaviour of the characters. Known as the structural theory of personality, Freud’s theory highlights the significance of innate psychological tensions in shaping actions. As individuals progress from childhood to adulthood, Freud believed that the conflict between their id, ego, and superego evolves. The id is described as the unconscious part of the mind driven by instincts and emotions, while the ego represents rational and realistic thinking. When one is active and awake, one relies on their ego or conscious mind. It is by this mind one expresses their desires, has rational thoughts, and makes decisions. The superego influences the way the conscious works, which is drawn from social orders and cultural codes. These are analyzed through the study of the psychological understanding of characters in the novel, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte published in 1847. As a critic, Margaret Willy writes, that Emily Bronte shows some surprisingly modern psychological insights in Wuthering Heights, showing that the novel is always viewed from a psychoanalytic standpoint and states it as “strikingly modern”. In the psychological analysis, the character Heathcliff illustrates the symbol of the id who remains in the unconscious state of life, Catherine depicts the symbol of the id in her childhood and the symbol of ego in her adolescence, the character Edgar Linton represents the symbol of superego who is an educated gentleman with proper behaviour, morality, civilized and well-cultivated culturally. As a whole, Wuthering Heights reveals the themes of love, desire, revenge, loneliness, independent lifestyle, failure of love, and the cunningness of characters to attain their goal out of their id, ego and superego of characters.

A Journey of Emotional Tumult Life of Surrogacy in Amulya Malladi’s A House for Happy Mothers

The paper focuses on the theme of surrogacy, which has socially placed on a podium as a cultural construct over a women’s psyche rather than a biotic disposition with special reference to the novel A House for Happy Mothers by Amulya Malladi. The dispute is on the cause of thriving fertility treatment and surrogacy clinics in India where reproduction is not a mere connatural biological activity but a commodity, a blooming business where concords has endorsed between parties. Poverty compelled the women to enter the exploitative work and highly reliant relationships with the doctor of surrogacy clinic and the hiring parents for example, the protagonist Asha decides to be a surrogate because of her son to have a better education whereas the other protagonist Priya wanted desperately to have her own child through surrogacy. The experiences of the intended mother and surrogate mother who yearned for their needs and their journey of self-discovery leads into heartache, loss and the happiness that comes with helping others and their bond to voyage a new life and rehabilitated optimism to each other into the world. In this context, the novelist proceeds with the polemical leitmotif of surrogacy through the lives of surrogate mother and hiring mother. The aim of the paper focuses on the emotional tumult life of surrogacy in a psychoanalytic standpoint of the characters in A House for Happy Mothers and the contribution that the characters were being determined in their own way and the anecdote that draws them together becomes a light of goodness and happiness.

Distinguishing between neurosis and psychosis: discourses on neurosis in colonial Korea.

This article analyses the origins and formation of medical and social discourses on neurosis in colonial Korea. With the introduction of Western medicine after the Opening of Korea in 1876, neurasthenia and hysteria began to be understood as neurotic diseases, and their importance was further highlighted during the colonial period of 1910-45. The article also addresses the role of neuropsychiatry in forming discourses on neurosis. In medical communities during the colonial period, the main source of these discourses gradually shifted from internal medicine to neuropsychiatry. In particular, Korean neuropsychiatrists distinguished between neurosis and psychosis as a way to reinforce their authority. Neuropsychiatrists tried to explain the temperamental and environmental factors of neurosis from a psychoanalytic standpoint.

Analog Desires: On Stranger Things and the Logics of Nostalgia

This paper examines the relation between Stranger Things (Netflix, 2016–) and the omnipresence of nostalgic tropes within current mediascapes. Nostalgia for the 1980s is already a well-examined subject within film and media studies, yet there remains much to say about the ties between nostalgia and desire. As with any desire considered from a psychoanalytic standpoint, nostalgia is focused on an impossible object that is conceived in retrospect. After comparing the object of nostalgia with the functioning of the object-cause of desire as it is conceptualized in psychoanalytic thought, this paper argues that the nostalgic desire expressed within the series is situated around the very shift from the analog to the digital. It is argued that nostalgia within Stranger Things emerges from the remediation of analog media and technologies, and that its relation to desire emanates from the very lack that is retrospectively situated at the heart of digital media.

Thoughts from French Psychoanalysis on the Absence of Corporeality in the Unconscious of Emerging Complex Cognitive System

In this text we answer at the same time to two recent interesting works of Giancarlo Minati and Luca Possati in which they both called to work on the development, one from the part of the computer side, and the other of the humanities one of an IA unconscious in complex cognitive systems as an experiment to come to more anthropomorphic machines, performance added by the unconscious will not be addressed in this paper. We gathered many sources in psychoanalysis to help us understand what could be the barriers dressed against us. In the light of Lacan, Anzieu, Leclaire and Winnicott amongst others we tried to explain how having a body, in the biological sense, makes a difference with recreating—this is a typical human preoccupation—an unconscious in IA. Of course, from a French psychoanalytic standpoint there are many conservative objections, while some can be easily overcome, the matter of innate desire and body seems an understandable concern. It is also important to consider the interesting conjecture of Possati (i.e., a computer can be a projective identification object); while we only may say that it is a transitional object in the sense of Winnicott. Also, we can study further within psychotherapy the behaviour of the patient and therapist, with an algorithm we developed. In the end we address the objection of French postructruralist psychology objections to the creation of a human-like unconscious and advise the experimenting of Possati’s theory with our device.

The Thought Bubble and Its Vicissitudes in Contemporary Comics

The Thought Bubble and Its Vicissitudes in Contemporary Comics Vera J. Camden (bio) In a 2017 New York Times article, Jonah Bromwich asks the question: "Why are all of our words in bubbles?" Pointing to the decision by Apple, Facebook, and Twitter to put all messages in the comics form of bubbles, he notes how the rounded edges convey a softer, more receptive graphic format in which to receive information. So, Bromwich consults comics expert Scott McCloud, who explains the psychology of such a graphic design decision: "bubbles created a consistent amount of negative space around words, which was desirable from a graphic standpoint." Bromwich then suggests, "The rounded edges of text bubbles also gave messages a soft, friendly connotation. That's an element especially useful in texted communication, where tone and body language are absent" (2017). Such negative space in the text bubble cushions the ambiguity or other anxious effects of uncontained text, softening the sharp edges of letters by friendly, rounded shapes. The rounded shapes of a Facebook Messenger or iMessage text derive from the comics page; the rounded shapes of thought bubbles and speech balloons draw forth "tone and body language." Yet the thought bubble and the speech balloon are quite distinct devices and serve very different functions in the comics medium. My discussion of the vicissitudes of thought bubbles pivots on the uniqueness of this comics convention. As I take up the particularly embattled fate of the thought bubble in contemporary comics, my claim will be that the current, demonstrable trend in mainstream comics publishing to banish this friendly and familiar vehicle of expression in comics not only limits the expressive range of comics as a medium, but also, from a psychoanalytic standpoint, reveals a reaction against and a purging of affect and thought itself from the comics page. I will conclude by gathering up a few [End Page 603] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Sina Grace, Nothing Lasts Forever, 2017, p. 77. [End Page 604] hopeful and creative examples of contemporary comics that deliberately resist the trends of corporate comics publishers. While keeping up with current comics style, these comics artists deliberately retain the centrality of the thought bubble and the complex internal life to which it points. The parallel grammar of comics and text messages juxtaposed on the page from Sina Grace's graphic memoir, Nothing Lasts Forever, shows the thought bubble and the speech balloon in spontaneous reciprocity (Figure 1). But this dynamic also highlights that the two devices are different: they come from different places in the comics' character and they work differently in the narrative progression. The thought bubble precedes the text message. It is literally in a bubble and private—we can see rotating bubbles when someone is typing a response to our message, suggesting the other person is now thinking. The text message encapsulated in a shape akin to the speech balloon records thought—as in diary keeping—but it is not thought. The text message has the status of speech in this comic. It aims to replicate speech with its back and forth pattern. Thought, on the other hand, leads to more thought, associatively, and unless it is put into words and speech, privately. The play between the thought bubbles and the speech balloons in this panel capture how the character's internal anxiety, desire for support, and hope for a response gets conveyed in speech in the immediacy of the move from internal to external. As suggested by this comics panel, Grace debates whether or not to text his ex-boyfriend, Cash. Through the dialogue of texts, he realizes that he needs Cash. The thought bubbles provide access to the internal pain of the character and his neurotic thoughts, while his texts translate almost instantaneously into text message "speech balloons" that reach out to his friend. Both devices reveal human motivation, both depict human desire, and both, as Grace says, "advance the narrative, in any event" (2017, p. 77). But this contemporary example clearly illustrates the contrast between the two different domains of process and product. Thought bubbles have traditionally functioned in comics to offer insight into the life of a character even...

The Therapist's Transition.

Eager to distance himself from the clinical mistreatment and theoretical arrogance shown toward a gender-variant population, a self-identified cis-gendered male clinician-researcher narrates his experiences, difficulties, and doubts from a psychoanalytic standpoint in his interactions with a transgender adult in an institutional setting. He thus addresses from a pluralistic perspective the intrapsychic concerns and sociocultural norms that contribute to the patient's suffering, as well as the therapist's own vulnerability and countertransference challenges in this situation. By reflecting on the very traps that he fell into when writing a previous version of this article, the author proposes a focused narrative, co-signed by his supervisor, to provide the reader with a cautionary tale of how easily a clinician's efforts to understand may devolve into objectifications embedded in the history of analytic thinking.

Scholars (Not) Investigating Srebrenica. Academic Feuds and Other Shortcomings

AbstractFifteen years after the publication of the Srebrenica report by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), the Srebrenica genocide has not become subject of more scholarly and historical research. On the contrary, academics prefer to keep their hands off the topic, confining themselves to ‘theoretical’, ‘reflexive’, or ‘moralistic’ reflections on the work done by the NIOD team. Symptomatic of the current state of inertia and diminishing professional standards is the recent book by the Dutch historian and psychologist Eelco Runia in which he attacks the NIOD report from a psychoanalytic standpoint.

Writing the Desire that Fire Bore: Emergent Motherhood in Hélène Cixous's The Book of Promethea

ABSTRACTUnderstood as a socially expected and historically significant event in most societies, motherhood signifies women’s adulthood, a time of life shaped by matrimony and child-rearing within heteropatriarchy. Motherhood may be a cause for celebration for women who identify with their procreative role; however, as a normative institution it limits the range of our understanding of potential maternal experiences. In the face of such oppressive maternal codes, I propose an emergent motherhood: a nonbiological, nonessentialist, and inherently queer concept that challenges fundamental assumptions about maternity and empowers women to sound their own politics of procreative desire through embodied practices of writing. I anchor my argument on the French psychoanalytic feminist standpoint that exposes the unconscious role of language in women’s ideological suppression, particularly as explicated in Hélène Cixous’s work. I take Cixous’s The Book of Promethea—primarily a work of love relishing the complexities of relationships—as an exemplar of a woman writing with the body to experience the creative, political, and poetic joys of linguistic expression that an emergent motherhood offers.

Localizar el sujeto y la subjetividad en la prevención de la deserción en la educación superior

En el artículo se aborda el análisis de los modelos propuestos en materia de promoción de la permanencia, desde la retención y persistencia académica, enfatizando los que están sustentados en enfoques psicológicos e interaccionales. Se retomó la Teoría de la autodeterminación y los modelos desde ella propuestos, para sugerir tres categorías que permitan introducir criterios cualitativos desde la teoría psicoanalítica en el estudio de los factores asociados a la promoción de la permanencia académica desde el análisis de la subjetividad. Integrar el elemento subjetivo a los modelos de promoción de la permanencia estudiantil abre un campo de trabajo de investigación que poco se ha abordado. Se realizó una crítica a la prevención de la deserción en masa desde la generalidad de modelos y metodologías factoriales desde los que se ha descuidado el análisis del caso por caso pudiendo ser esta una de las razones de la poca efectividad de los modelos de retención.

Revisiting Dr. Rosen: Villain or unjustly-treated innovator?

This paper analyzes the life and the work of Dr. J.N. Rosen, who pioneered attempts to treat psychosis from a psychoanalytic standpoint at a time when conventional approaches advocated pharmacological and physical treatments. His psychotherapeutic technique, which became known as “direct analysis,” divided opinion among practitioners and later attracted a degree of notoriety as the result of several law suits following the deaths of patients under his care. This paper reviews the major publications on direct analysis, examines the events that brought it into contact with a hostile mass media, and reassesses the contribution of the approach to psychotherapy. With certain reservations, Rosen is adjudged to have been an outstanding clinician who pre-empted modern attitudes to the treatment of psychotic individuals, but the theoretical basis of his work, about which his closest collaborators were tellingly unable to fully agree, fails to provide an adequate account of how it helped those who were mentally ill.

Introduction to “Cognitive Cervantes”: Integrating Mind and Cervantes’s Texts

En este articulo introductorio se justifica la importancia de incorporar los estudios cognitivos a la critica cervantina, y se presentan los articulos que conforman esta coleccion especial. ********** THE SENSES, FEELINGS, INTERPLAY of minds, development of characters, and their well-defined voices and subjectivities constitute some of threads of narrative fabric woven by Cervantes. This fabric, which seems to never fray or fade with passage of time, leaves modern reader still standing in awe of and behavioral dynamics between master and squire, well as humanity infusing representation of characters in Don Quixote. This special cluster presents a collection of essays that incorporate approaches to study of Cervantes's texts. Cervantes represents first effort to bring together work of scholars examining Hispanic literature, and more specifically Cervantes's writings, in relation to human cognition. (1) With its focus on and its processes, approach facilitates examination of dimension of literary texts, which is particularly salient in Don Quixote and other Cervantine texts. Salvador de Madariaga's Guia del lector del QUIJOTE published in 1926 is perhaps first foray into this dimension of Cervantes's texts. Subsequent studies of Don Quixote have largely been carried out by medical doctors or from a psychoanalytic standpoint and have often centered on its protagonist and his alleged madness, particularly those coming from medical field. (2) essays in this issue, however, focus for most part on Sancho (Jaen, Reed, Wagschal, Wehrs, and Connor) and less central figures; female characters like Marcela and Dorotea (Wehrs); or outsiders (to borrow Amy Williamsen's term) like Zoraida (Wehrs), Ricote (Wehrs, Connor), Maritornes (Wagschal), and even Rocinante (Wagschal). They also consider aspects of novel that have not been sufficiently explored, such as embodiment and intentionality, two main themes that pervade nascent field of Spanish literary studies. Finally, it is important to note that a approach to Don Quixote is especially innovative and relevant to Cervantine studies, not only because it allows us to take a step further in our investigation of novel, but also because of its dialogue with both early modern and present-day knowledge about mind. Such dialogue is made possible by interdisciplinary nature of field. (3) Following a brief discussion of this interdisciplinary nature, I will briefly introduce above-mentioned areas of study (embodiment and theory of mind) and will review, in second half of this introduction, individual essays, highlighting promise each holds for study of Cervantine and early modern texts. Cognitive literary studies is an interdisciplinary endeavor with des to realm (the sciences) as well as to a variety of literary traditions, chiefly English tradition, but also Spanish, French, German, etc. The sciences are not a monolithic enterprise. In fact, they represent a variety of disciplines and areas of study whose focus is understanding of mind/brain. (4) As Howard Mancing reminds us in his overview essay, there are two levels of inquiry and discussion when talking about human cognition: mind and brain, brain being physical organ and its activity. To borrow his description, the is what brain does. In essays, discussion may be taking place on one or both of these levels, and readers should be cognizant of this fact. Therefore, a cognitive scientific or (cognitive) psychological approach will mainly refer to mind or study of mental processes and will make no claim as to neurology of brain. …

Resilience, Mentalization, and the Development Tutor

The present article first theoretically defines the term “resilience” from the clinical psychoanalytic standpoint, in view of differentiating normal development from pathological development following trauma. It then formalize two essential processes underlying resilience: mentalization and the ability to identify a developmental tutor . We studied two Romanian 12-year-old twin girls who exhibit opposing adaptations following multiple, cumulative traumas (premature birth, early severe deficiencies, parental maltreatment, parental abdication and abandonment). The study is a projective clinical study that uses a pluridimensional methodology (interviews, storytelling test, Rorschach test, and house-drawing test). The clinical data obtained clearly demonstrate the importance of two major axes in accounting for resilience or maladjustment in the face of trauma.

Transición psicológica de significado a sentido.

Este trabajo presenta un enfoque que define un modelo de construcción de sentido (sensemaking) subyacente a la transición psicológica en un ambiente educativo, aunque no se limite a este tipo de impostación. La transición psicológica tiene que entenderse como ese cambio consistente en pasar de un estado de equilibrio psicológico (por ejemplo: la identificación con cierta visión del mundo) a otro. Este enfoque deriva de nuestro punto de vista que combina tanto la teoría socio-constructivista como la psicoanalítica, y que evidencia dos niveles de análisis: el contenido de la representación y la dimensión afectiva latente, quién actúa como marco simbólico a través del cual la "construcción de sentido" tiene lugar. Según nuestro modelo la transición psicológica tiene que definirse más propiamente como un cambio en la estructura afectiva de sentido. En este sentido presentamos nuestro modelo teórico junto con una metodología de análisis consecuente. Con el objetivo de ejemplificar y validar nuestro enfoque, examinamos el caso de jóvenes que entran en el instituto en las escuelas italianas. Este estudio describe las representaciones de los estudiantes en una transacción de roles. Esta demuestra, que, a pesar de las profundas modificaciones de las representaciones ligadas a su ingreso en el instituto, la dimensión latente de la construcción de sentido no cambia.

Abjection and aesthetic conflict in Boccaccio'a (L)Isabetta

In 1982, the Italian literary critic Mario Lavagetto asked five other critics to comment on Boccaccio’s tale of Lisabetta (fifth story, fourth day in the Decameron). This combined effort of different readers working on the same text could also be interpreted as their attempt to unravel the secret of its extraordinary fascination. This article aims to explain this power, drawing on Julia Kristeva’s notion of abjection and Donald Meltzer’s concept of aesthetic conflict. Both interpretive categories would appear to be particularly useful in making sense of the central scene of the narrative where Lisabetta digs up Lorenzo’s corpse and cuts off the head. Closely connected with its enduring fascination, this scene of sheer horror is both the centre and the key to the plot. From a psychoanalytic standpoint, it also has a metatextual function, in that it seems to allude, indirectly, to the very mechanism by which a strong aesthetic impact is produced in the reader (and indeed, in anyone having an aesthetic exper...

De la subjetivación a la apropiación. Aportes del psicoanálisis a los problemas del aprender

El presente artículo dará cuenta de una breve revisión conceptual del problema del aprendizaje desde la teoría psicoanalítica a partir de las dificultades que los sujetos presentan en éste. Para tal efecto, se revisan autores postfreudianos que enmarcan su labor de investigación y escritura en torno a problemáticas vinculadas a lo educativo.

<i>Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:</i> Feminist Interpretations/Jungian Dreams

This article is a feminist deconstruction of the film Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets . It explores the underlying symbol system at work beneath a veneer of politically correct treatment of gender issues. This symbol system is read mythically from a feminist and psychoanalytic standpoint, exposing its deeply patriarchal and Biblical substructure. Themes such as the myth of the child redeemer, blood symbolism, and Eve and the serpent as found in Genesis are explored. The film is read as a societal dream in the Jungian sense, pointing to a collective mythology that responds to an oppressive view of the feminine.

Psychoanalytic Observations on the Location of Meaning in Patients with Reduplicative Paramnesia

This paper presents a clinical psychoanalytic examination of the location of meaning of the symptoms in patients with reduplicative paramnesia. The examination is set up first by a consideration of the countertransference problem—of awareness in another—to prepare for the views on the cases of reduplicative paramnesia. The psychoanalytic viewpoint is then contrasted with the psychiatric and neuropsychological perspectives. These differences are used to demonstrate a psychoanalytic standpoint in the debates about the location of meaning. Some conclusions are also drawn about the limits of empathy, the charitable requirements for interpretation, and when interpretation is likely to be an effective intervention.