Psychoanalytic Thinking Research Articles

Mothers’ Milk and Mothers’ Time: Childcare Advice and the Conceptualization of Demand Feeding in Post-1945 Britain and Italy

AbstractThis article draws on childcare advice to investigate the shift from breastfeeding by the clock to feeding on demand in twentieth-century Britain and Italy, to demonstrate that it was not just mothers’ bodies, nor what they fed their children, but their time that was subject to political, medical, and cultural attention. The comparative approach highlights the convergences and divergences in breastfeeding advice, illuminating the interactions with political and intellectual currents, as much as social and economic patterns. ‘Scientific motherhood’ and the promotion of feeding by the clock dominated in Britain and Italy at the beginning of the century, and persisted under fascist initiatives to regulate breastfeeding. Some existing differences, however, contained the seeds of greater divergence after 1945 in the two countries. Shaped by differing intersections of medical, psychoanalytic, and feminist thinking, the uneven shift to the concept of demand feeding slowly took root in Britain in the post-war period, but in Italy only in the context of 1968 counter-cultural ideas. The 1970s brought the conversation back to a point of convergence between Britain and Italy in the feminist recognition of the complexities of balancing the ‘rights and duties’ of mothers and children when it came to feeding babies.

Metaphoric, metonymic and psychotic somatoform dissociation

The present paper seeks to propose, using a combination of psychoanalytic and linguistic thinking, a distinction between three degrees of symbolicity across the somatoform dissociative continuum: the metaphorical, in which there is a symbolic connection between the somatoform phenomenon and the traumatic content, the metonymic, which constitutes a revival of the traumatic experience without the ability to reflect on it, and the psychotic, in which the somatoform phenomenon is experienced as ego-syntonic, thus neither causes distress nor evokes thinking. Three clinical vignettes demonstrate how the higher the degree of symbolization, the more effective the therapeutic process. Finally, a fourth vignette demonstrates how acoustic association in the therapist's countertransference can constitute an antidote to the patient's acoustic dissociation, allowing the reclaiming of the capacity for linking.

“Nothing is funnier than suffering”. Sport as a comic and perverse aesthetic practice

ABSTRACT The article takes up diverse strands of psychoanalytic thinking to investigate how desire is manifested in male team sporting environments. In particular, it is posited that sporting desire shares a remarkable structural similarity to the joking relationship in that they both work through the overcoming of obstacles. In doing so unconscious desires are long-circuited and only emerge in radically altered form, upending traditional gender and sexual subjectivities in the process. The paper explores the concept of desire from perspectives that are either straightforwardly psychoanalytic or heavily influenced by psychoanalytic thought. Initially, I examine desire from a Freudian viewpoint before looking at how Jacques Lacan extended Freudian analysis through a linguistic lens. I then explore desire in terms developed by Gilles Deleuze before turning, in the second part of the paper, to an examination of the work of George Bataille to consider the desire of sport through the mechanism of the joke to trace the complex routing that it often takes.

Climate change: the psychological impact of climate anxiety and trauma: understanding from the psychotherapeutic encounter

ABSTRACT Anthropogenic climate change has been a crisis that human beings have spent decades being in denial of, at great cost to nature, biodiversity and ultimately to ourselves. Facing the reality of this crisis and the damage done to the natural world has been unbearable and places us in touch with primitive anxieties about our own destructiveness. There is hope that our species can take a different path than the current one of living beyond our means. Some momentum towards change is beginning to occur: but will meaningful change be expedited soon enough to protect our struggling planet? The focus of this paper is to explore how psychoanalytic thinking can provide a deeper insight into the anxiety that the climate crisis is bringing to the fore, especially in young people who are wary of adult figures and institutions that are not seen to be doing enough to address this issue. Through the work of child and adolescent psychotherapy with a young person, the impact of climate change is considered in terms of the relationship between internal and external worlds. Also discussed is the importance of the psychotherapist themselves in bearing the reality of the climate crisis and its accompanying anxieties, especially when working with climate anxiety and climate trauma in our patients.

Investigating D.H. Lawrence's Persona in Late Poems During the Savage Pilgrimage: A Psychoanalytic Approach

The academic field of literary criticism or literary theory has long taken advantage of the covert connection between literature and psychoanalysis, as this study did when it employed a psychoanalytic technique to analyze a literary work. Psychoanalysis is one of the contentious and unappreciated literary criticism philosophies among many readers (Hossain, 2017, p. 41). The persona or the character of the literary work is one of the literary methods. This study seeks to identify the late persona in D.H. Lawrence's final three collections of poetry, which were composed near the time of the author's death due to extremely poor health. The study of a writer's unintended message is referred to as psychoanalytical critique. The investigation's main point of interest is the author's biographical background. The main goal is to look at the unconscious components of a literary work in the context of the author's upbringing. It is a technique for correctly and critically understanding the literary material. Additionally, it is a type of psychoanalytic reading. We can understand literary texts better by using psychoanalytical thinking. We can swiftly master the subject matter thanks to the manipulation of the literary text and the sharper picture it produces. Psychoanalytical critique is one of the most fundamental reading strategies for comprehending the psyche (Ahmed, 2021, p. 2).

L’anti-Œdipe du point de vue de la philosophie des sciences et des perspectives foucaldiennes du savoir-pouvoir

BackgroundFreud identified his theory of the Oedipus complex as his greatest scientific contribution, made it the centerpiece of his clinical theory of the etiology and cure of the psychoneuroses, and adamantly defended it throughout his life. The theory dominated psychoanalysis for almost a century and determined how the problems of countless patients were interpreted. However, recent scholarship suggests that the arguments Freud used to support the theory are unsound and that, far from being harmless pseudoscience, the Oedipal theory constitutes an oppressive form of Foucauldian “knowledge-power” that rearranges family relationships in sociosyntonic but emotionally harmful ways. Continued identification of psychoanalysis with Oedipal theory poses an obstacle to fresh psychoanalytic thinking and psychoanalytic credibility. To liberate psychoanalysis from its Oedipal shackles, a clear understanding of the theory's faulty origins and deleterious effects is essential. Objectives and methodsThis paper distills the conclusions of two recent books that consider how and why Freud staunchly defended the Oedipal theory and the deleterious effects on the modern family that resulted. After the failure of his seduction theory, Freud developed the Oedipal theory to defend his central theoretical claim, the sexual theory of neuroses. However, the Oedipal theory remained an entirely ad hoc, scientifically unpersuasive defense without novel evidential support less dependent on psychoanalytic method, which had also been cast into doubt by the seduction theory's failure. Freud attempted to provide such “more direct” evidence in the case of Little Hans, on which my analysis focuses. Regarding the evaluation of Freud's evidence, the method is philosophy-of-science logical reconstruction, analysis, and evaluation of the arguments Freud offered. Regarding the theory's effects, the method is neo-Foucauldian analysis of how acceptance of the theory changed family power relations — that is, the theory's knowledge-power. ResultsI identify four pivotal arguments Freud presents in the Hans case to support Oedipal theory. Each argument is brilliant as a logical construction but unsound when compared to the evidence of the Hans case history. I then analyze the knowledge-power of the Oedipal theory as it appears in the Hans case as well as in modern family life. Acceptance or awareness of the theory serves to create a sense of danger in mother-son physical affection, leading to separation of children from parents — especially at bedtime — and thus protection of the marital bed in the new era of egalitarian sexual and emotional marriage that started at about the time that Oedipal theory was proposed. ConclusionsFreud's arguments defending Oedipal theory are brilliantly conceived, but Freud misreads the facts of the Hans case so that his arguments are unsound. In failing to confirm novel predictions, Freud's Oedipal theory remains ad hoc and scientifically unacceptable. It was nonetheless widely accepted because of its distinctive knowledge-power, which supported the evolving nature of marriage in a way that limited parent–child interaction, co-sleeping, and affection. The theory of the Oedipus complex of both false and harmful, and in clinical intervention it is a form of theoretical counter-transference.

Anti-Oedipus from philosophy of science and Foucauldian knowledge-power perspectives

BackgroundFreud identified his theory of the Oedipus complex as his greatest scientific contribution, made it the centerpiece of his clinical theory of the etiology and cure of the psychoneuroses, and adamantly defended it throughout his life. The theory dominated psychoanalysis for almost a century and determined how the problems of countless patients were interpreted. However, recent scholarship suggests that the arguments Freud used to support the theory are unsound and that, far from being harmless pseudoscience, the Oedipal theory constitutes an oppressive form of Foucauldian “knowledge-power” that rearranges family relationships in sociosyntonic but emotionally harmful ways. Continued identification of psychoanalysis with Oedipal theory poses an obstacle to fresh psychoanalytic thinking and psychoanalytic credibility. To liberate psychoanalysis from its Oedipal shackles, a clear understanding of the theory's faulty origins and deleterious effects is essential. Objectives and methodsThis paper distills the conclusions of two recent books that consider how and why Freud staunchly defended the Oedipal theory and the deleterious effects on the modern family that resulted. After the failure of his seduction theory, Freud developed the Oedipal theory to defend his central theoretical claim, the sexual theory of the neuroses. However, the Oedipal theory remained an entirely ad hoc, scientifically unpersuasive defense without novel evidential support less dependent on psychoanalytic method, which had also been cast into doubt by the seduction theory's failure. Freud attempted to provide such “more direct” evidence in the case of Little Hans, on which my analysis focuses. Regarding the evaluation of Freud's evidence, the method is philosophy-of-science logical reconstruction, analysis, and evaluation of the arguments Freud offered. Regarding the theory's effects, the method is neo-Foucauldian analysis of how acceptance of the theory changed family power relations — that is, the theory's knowledge-power. ResultsI identify four pivotal arguments Freud presents in the Hans case to support Oedipal theory. Each argument is brilliant as a logical construction but unsound when compared to the evidence of the Hans case history. I then analyze the knowledge-power of the Oedipal theory as it appears in the Hans case as well as in modern family life. Acceptance or awareness of the theory serves to create a sense of danger in mother-son physical affection, leading to separation of children from parents — especially at bedtime — and thus protection of the marital bed in the new era of egalitarian sexual and emotional marriage that started at about the time that the Oedipal theory was proposed. ConclusionsFreud's arguments defending Oedipal theory are brilliantly conceived, but Freud misreads the facts of the Hans case so that his arguments are unsound. In failing to confirm novel predictions, Freud's Oedipal theory remains ad hoc and scientifically unacceptable. It was nonetheless widely accepted because of its distinctive knowledge-power, which supported the evolving nature of marriage in a way that limited parent–child interaction, cosleeping, and affection. The theory of the Oedipus complex is both false and harmful, and in clinical intervention it is a form of theoretical countertransference.

Psychoanalytic view of Jacques Lacan on love

Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was not only a French psychoanalyst, but also a Western psychoanalytic thinker and a prominent name in the history of psychoanalysis by teaching lectures and holding weekly seminars, he made significant changes in psychoanalysis, taking Freud’s psychoanalysis to another stage and giving a philosophical dimension to Freud’s thought, which is why we call him the Freud of France. In addition to psychoanalysis, philosophy and linguistics are two of Lacan’s most important fields of work. This research is an attempt at Lacan’s psychoanalytic view of love. The research considers the foundations of the concept of love in Lacan’s psychoanalysis and then develops it towards Lacan’s philosophical views. At the same time, Lacan’s psychoanalytic view of love is related to desire, lack, need, desire, and unconsciousness as the basis of language, narcissism, and Lacan’s psychoanalytic system, which consists of three aspects: real, imaginary and symbolic. Finally, the principle of love in Lacan’s psychoanalysis is to “give what you are not”. This forms a major part of the basis of this research. To arrive at a comprehensive view of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis of love, an attempt has been made to answer the following questions: Does Lacan’s psychoanalysis provide us with anything concrete about love? The essence of love in Lacan’s psychoanalysis gives us a picture of Lacan’s psychoanalytic method of desire. Why does a lack of Lacan’s psychoanalysis define the phenomenon of love? The essence of love in Lacan’s psychoanalysis gives us a picture of Lacan’s psychoanalytic method of desire. We have also reached several conclusions, the most important of which is that the research is an attempt to discuss the various characteristics of love in Lacan’s psychoanalysis, which are reflected in Lacan’s work Psychoanalysis speaks more precisely than love.

Identity or Identification? Why the Difference Between These Concepts Matters

This paper examines two major issues related to the concept of identity. The first of these concerns the place of this concept in psychoanalytic theory and practice, particularly taking note of its limited presence in the psychoanalytic literature of the British School of psychoanalysis. My argument is that the concept and phenomena of identification has been preferred to that of identity in the discourse of British Object Relations and considers why that might be the case. The second issue concerns the salience of the concept of identity in contemporary political and cultural debate, as this has come to denote differences of a socially-constructed kind such as those of race, gender, ethnicity, and religion. In this context, the idea of identity has become an important point of reference in much recent psychoanalytic thinking. The significance of this development will be considered in its relevance for psychoanalytic and wider social practices.

Психоанализ и христианство. Теоретическая динамика

The subject of this research is the psychoanalytic theory of religion and the evolution of its interpretation of Christianity. The dynamics of theoretical development is represented by three main epochs of development. First, it is worth considering the prerequisites from which psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytic theory of religion originated. In Western Christian culture, the intellectual thought of the XIX–XX centuries is fueled by the Enlightenment era, the philosophy of the “death of God” and scientific progress. But psychoanalysis is initially in a twofold position: it exposes primitive ideas about religion, and at the same time there is a lot of evidence that the symbolism and revelations of intuition embedded in the Judeo-Christian religion are included in its structure. The next milestone is the reign of existentialism and the development of postmodern thought. The understanding of the spiritual aspects of the human subject is significantly deepened. Psychoanalytic thinking about religion perceives existential intuitions and turns out to be an ally of Christianity. Finally, the third stage, when by the beginning of the XXI century there is a characteristic request of the New Time for the transformation of previous knowledge about religion and religiosity, from the side of psychoanalysis there are a number of important discoveries about the subject. The dialogue of religions and psychoanalysis is becoming extremely relevant and, as this study shows, modern psychoanalysis has worthy answers to the problem of Christianity in the post-Christian (secular) world. The research is based on the theory of religion, in addition to the theory of Freud, by such authors as G. Bataille, J.Lacan, Y.Kristeva, as well as modern psychoanalytic developments in the field of studying the reality of a religious subject, presented on the intellectual scene over the past decades. In conclusion, conclusions are given regarding the general discourse of psychoanalysis and Christianity.

‘The Genie's Out of the Bottle’: The Impact of Working Online with Individual Psychodynamic Psychotherapy for Therapists and Clients, and its Lessons for Psychodynamic Training

The forced move to online work in 2020 was initially greeted with consternation by many in the psychoanalytic world, but adaptation was subsequently accomplished by many with successful results for clients. At WPF Therapy where individual psychodynamic psychotherapy is offered by therapists in training, we did a qualitative and participative study with clients, trainees and supervisors to explore how these groups felt about online work. A participative and pluralistic approach was chosen to achieve a fuller and more balanced understanding. Eighteen trainees interviewed each other, 19 supervisors contributed through focus groups and individual interviews, and eight clients’ perspectives were explored in individual interviews. The findings were that working online offered different and exciting opportunities for therapy, including the unconscious processes which are central to the psychodynamic modality. This has implications for future psychodynamic training since new phenomena need to be incorporated into psychoanalytic thinking and practice. While results did not support replacing in‐person therapy, there was support for a combined approach in future. As one participant said: ‘The genie's out of the bottle now’, something has happened which cannot be stopped.

Mourner’s Kaddish and Its Connections: Psychoanalytic Thoughts on Mourning in the Jewish Religious Context

Mourner’s Kaddish and Its Connections: Psychoanalytic Thoughts on Mourning in the Jewish Religious Context

All that glitters is not gold: The application of psychoanalytic principles to community mental health

AbstractThis special issue on community mental health focuses on the ways in which several innovative mental health programs across the United States have risen to the challenge of incorporating psychodynamic principles into their clinical practice. Contrasted with these domestic programs are reports from a number of countries in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East in which local clinicians describe how community mental health programs in their countries are tackling these issues. In this introduction, we emphasize factors common to the populations these authors serve, the organizational challenges they face, and the successes they achieve by way of their skill, creativity, and perseverance. We underscore the ways in which they articulate how psychoanalytic thinking, training, and practices have evolved in response to lessons learned and changing political, economic and cultural climates. We conclude that applied psychoanalysis, and particularly psychoanalysis applied to community mental health has, in some ways, been at the forefront of change in psychoanalytic practice in general. The modifications made by those in community mental health are viewed as necessary accommodations for both the communities served and for the psychoanalytic enterprise itself.

Community mental health, psychoanalysis, and freedom: The case of Palestine

AbstractThe authors describe community mental health in Palestine from several vantage points: Palestine's historical and current context of military/political violence under Israeli occupation, its health care system and system of mental health care, and the status of its mental health staffing and training. Vignettes illustrate characteristic challenges and opportunities for Palestine within the domain of mental health. The roles of cognitive behavioral therapy and psychoanalytic thinking are discussed in terms of current practice, with an eye toward policy planning for a fully integrated model of health care delivery. The authors argue that the values of justice, freedom, and human rights are fundamental to well‐being, and that the theory and practice of community mental health must support active resistance to violation of these principles.

Weaving between and beyond tribal states of mind: revisiting our identity as child psychotherapists

ABSTRACT In this paper, the authors try to understand the concepts of tribe and tribalism and their effect on our professional identities as child psychotherapists. Firstly, we will define these concepts and retrospectively go through the history and way that child psychotherapy developed and became a profession in its own right. Hearing about the trauma of war and the schisms within the profession between the different groups/tribes (Kleinians and Post Kleinians, Independents and Anna Freudians) motivated us to explore the defensive mechanisms that still keep us, as a profession, apart and divided. We have employed in this paper psychoanalytic and group analytic thinking, as well as some anthropological and neuroscientific perspectives, which all offer us some in-depth ideas about the processes involved and the ways that the different groups of thought within the profession are still kept apart. We will also look beyond these tribal states of mind, suggesting ways of collaborating and debating, to further enrich our theories and clinical practice.

Individual Psychology in 2023

Individual Psychology in 2023 Jon Sperry and Len Sperry We are most pleased to share this open issue with you. This issue consists of five noteworthy articles that offer clinical and theoretical applications of Individual Psychology. These editors' notes were written during an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. As the war rages on, many of our Adlerian colleagues have embodied the spirit of social interest by housing Ukrainian refugees, offering counseling services to Ukrainians in need of mental health services, and donating funds for various essential items. We are hopeful that the Adlerian community will continue to find ways to support and contribute to those experiencing unnecessary suffering and who are geographically displaced by this war. This issue begins with an article titled "Freud's Disavowal of Adler and Adler's Subsequent Influence on Psychoanalytic Thought," by Richard Watts, Noah Thorne, and Marina Bluvshtein. This article is particularly meaningful, as its original version was written by Richard Watts while he was a doctoral student. He informed us that this will be his last publication because of his current health status. As editors, we are beyond grateful to Richard for his various articles, conference presentations, and other contributions to this theory. The next article, by Shantell A. Johnson, Natalie Noble, Lily Slavin, and Timothy Hartshorne, offers a wonderful contribution to the CHARGE and Individual Psychology literature in "Fathers and CHARGE Syndrome: Impact on the Life Tasks." The authors present their study that examined how 93 fathers of children with CHARGE syndrome experience the life tasks. They examined the challenges and resiliency of the fathers faced with parenting a child with this rare genetic condition. Len Sperry's article, "Adlerian Case Conceptualization and Therapy: The Pattern-Focused Approach," compares his pattern-focused case conceptualization and psychotherapy approach to the more common way in which Adlerian therapy is conceptualized and practiced. Described are the [End Page 423] clinical value, indications and counterindications, and the evidence base of this new approach. Then case material illustrates similarities and differences between the approaches. Calvin Armerding presents a timely article, "Contemptuous Political Partisanship: An Adlerian Conceptualization and Call to Action." The increasing ideological polarization in the United States and around the globe makes political compromise or cooperation seem almost impossible. Armerding conceptualizes this sociopolitical trend with an Adlerian framework and also proposes that Adlerians must model healthy political engagement by engaging in Gemeinschaftsgefühl in political discourse with one another and their respective communities. The final article, by Philip Davis, an internal medicine physician, reviews an article written by Rudolf Dreikurs in 1934 that highlighted the mind–body connection for a patient with gastrointestinal symptoms and psychological symptoms. Davis's article, "Rudolf Dreikurs Speaking Truth Across the Ages," identifies the present-day relevance of Dreikurs's original article in his daily practice, particularly with patients experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms. [End Page 424] Copyright © 2022 University of Texas Press

Freud's Disavowal of Adler and Adler's Subsequent Influence on Psychoanalytic Thought

Freud's Disavowal of Adler and Adler's Subsequent Influence on Psychoanalytic Thought

Babies in therapy, psychoanalytic interventions for infants and their parents.

Babies in therapy: The study "Psychoanalytic interventions for infants and their parents" conducted on infants through the lens of psychoanalysis and clinical work with both parents and infants all contribute to our knowledge of the nature of early relationship disorders. Psychoanalytic theory's concepts of the depressive position, early defense mechanisms, transference, and psychosomatic reactions to depressive emotions are shown to be crucial in clinical cases, giving therapists new tools for intervention and increasing efficiency. Psychoanalysts have researched the long-lasting effects of early disappointments and the sense of being helplessly abandoned; they emphasize that a disruption in the relationship with the caregiver can produce a psychic economy oriented on the avoidance of anxiety, leaving less energy for development. New parents and their sick infants can benefit from early therapies with therapeutic potential and the possibility of preventing future narcissistic pain issues if they are based on psychoanalytic thinking and knowledge of early symptoms.

The Pandemic and Its Shadow. Feminist Theoretical and Art Discourses on Trauma and Community in COVID-19

This article explores the philosophical and psychoanalytic trajectories of conceptualizing the Covid-19 pandemic as ‘collective trauma’, and considers what would be the risks, but also productive possibilities, of such a theoretical move. the context of this inquiry is the so-called ‘shadow pandemic’ – the drastic increase in domestic violence globally, which accompanied introduction of lockdowns as a measure of containing the impact of Covid-19 on public health infrastructures. For the women who were victims of violence during the lockdowns, the discourse of ‘sheltering’, ‘isolation’ and ‘staying home’ has carried antithetical meanings to the o6cially sanctioned ones – those were meanings of threat, danger, harm, and death. Drawing on the work of two feminist psychoanalytic thinkers, Julia Kristeva and Jacqueline Rose, and on installations by bio-artists Anna Dumitriu and Flo Kasearu, I argue against notions of the pandemic as an external traumatic event that disrupted societies and communities worldwide. Rather, the ‘shadow pandemic’ suggest that there is a more complex, even intimate, relation between the pandemic, violence, and gendered productions of sociality.

Two modes of being together: The levels of intersubjectivity and human relatedness in neuroscience and psychoanalytic thinking.

The notion of intersubjectivity has achieved a primary status in contemporary psychoanalytic debate, stimulating new theoretical proposals as well as controversies. This paper presents an overview of the main contributions on inter-subjectivity in the field of neurosciences. In humans as well as—probably—in other species, the ability for emotional resonance is guaranteed early in development. Based on this capacity, a primary sense of connectedness is established that can be defined inter-subjective in that it entails sharing affective states and intentions with caregivers. We propose to define such a form of inter-subjectivity as contingent, since the infant’s early abilities for resonance do not imply the more generalized capacity to permanently conceive of the relationship outside the realm of current interactions and the infant-caregiver’s mutual correspondence of internal states. This form of connection, hence, results in a self-referential, bodily, and affectively codified, context- and time dependent, like-me experience of interactions. The gradual maturation of brain structures and processes as well as interactive experiences allow proper intersubjectivity exchanges, grounded on new intentional and representational capacities, to evolve. In this more mature form of intersubjectivity, the individual is allowed to conceive of her own psychic space both as distinct and as possibly connected with the other’s contents and experience, even in the absence of current behavioral indicators of such correspondence. This multi-layered model of intersubjectivity, which is embraced by current neuroscience research, seems to allow for new interpretations of psychoanalytic models of human relatedness based upon classic clinical observations.