Psychoanalytic Writings Research Articles

Symbolist Androgyny: On the Origins of a Proto-Queer Vision

This article focuses on artistic and aesthetic practices within the idealist and symbolist movements of the late 19th century in France. It investigates how artists and art critics embraced androgynous imaginaries derived from Greco-Roman antiquity and the Platonic myth, transforming them into tools for social and sexual emancipation and giving rise to a proto-queer vision. An analysis of the art of Alexandre Séon, Odilon Redon, Jeanne Jacquemin, and Léonard Sarluis, in conjunction with the symbolist theories of Joséphin Péladan, Gabriel-Albert Aurier, and Émile Verhaeren, reveals an idealistic pursuit grounded in the union of the masculine and the feminine through the act of creation. Through the examination of artworks, contemporary critical discourse, and the personal correspondence of these art figures, this study posits that the androgyne serves as a heuristic model for a queer art history. The ideal androgyne, as theorized in Freud’s psychoanalytic writings, can function as a methodological paradigm in art studies as a tool for visualizing and conceptualizing homosexuality in art.

Karin Stephen: Bloomsbury's Rebel Psychoanalyst

This paper highlights the important contribution to psychoanalysis made by the psychoanalyst Karin Stephen. Following in the footsteps of other feminist biographers and historians of psychoanalysis, who have worked to bring ‘Freud’s women’ out of the shadows, this article not only focuses on Karin Stephen’s role within the internal political struggles of the British Psychoanalytical Society during the Second World War, but also shows how her psychoanalytic writings can be read in the context of her political activism in the 1930s. Beginning with a biographical account of Stephen’s early life and marriage in October 1914 to Virginia Woolf’s brother, Adrian Stephen, the paper goes on to explore the impact of Karin Stephen’s political activism on her psychoanalytic writing. The article examines Stephen’s arguments, in both her published and her unpublished writings, about the capacity for psychoanalysis to respond to the political crises of the 1930s and 1940s by offering patients freedom from servility to the ‘raging dictator[s]’ within and beyond the inner world of their minds.

L’agent en psychanalyse lacanienne : considérations théoriques et épistémologiques

ObjectivesThe aim of this paper is to conceptualize the term “agent” which appears multiple times throughout Lacan's teaching. The challenge is to produce a coherent theorization of the term in order to properly situate it in the psychoanalytic praxis and to study the influence of North American culturalism on this praxis. MethodWe will examine the evolution of the notion of agent throughout Lacan's teaching. This trajectory begins officially in 1956, then disappears in 1959, only to re-emerge in 1969 in a radically different fashion. It is then a question of specifying what Lacan means by “agent” at each of these periods, and to show how each time he relies on this notion not to conceptualize it as such, but rather to build a dialogue with other psychoanalytic concepts. ResultantsBy following the evolution of the term, we arrive at a conceptualization of the agent as being equivalent to the status of the signifier as such. It is therefore important to distinguish the status of the agent from that of the subject and of the ego, which both seem to not manifest any real activity. The signifier, on the other hand, is that which allows the action to take place. This equivalence is thus implicit yet constant throughout the Lacanian teaching, first as a function in the Oedipal equation and then as an occupation in the theory of discourse. DiscussionOur hypothesis is that the notions of agent and agency are misused in today's psychoanalytic writings. This is due to an American culturalist influence on one hand, but mostly to a hasty interdisciplinarity, which attempts to link psychoanalysis with other disciplines without taking the necessary time to redefine the concepts at hand. Agency is the perfect example: it is defined by cognitive and social sciences and then reused as such by some analysts without redefining it, which leads to a theoretic confusion between the subject and the agent. ConclusionA thorough conceptualization of the agent within the field of psychoanalysis allows us to avoid theoretic confusions due to an interdisciplinarity that doesn’t take the time to redefine concepts. It is therefore important to establish a dialogue between psychoanalysis and other disciplines without it losing its particularities.

Getting to Where We Need to Get: A Meaningful Step Towards Understanding and Remedying White Privilege

ABSTRACT Anen’s paper adeptly uses a racial lens to psychoanalytically examine an important but neglected aspect of racism, namely how white privilege is deeply rooted in narcissistic states of mind. The white psyche and corollaries such as having whiteness as a psychological condition are a current focus of psychoanalytic writers. Anen’s approach adds significantly to this burgeoning inquiry by adapting additional psychoanalytic tools to the inquiry. He ably stretches established and familiar theories of narcissism, shame, internalization, and capacity for aloneness to interrogate white privilege. His additional perspectives give the analytic thinker more adequate scaffolding to hold the tensions of exploring the polarizing topic of white privilege. The openness of Anen’s inquiries and his highly illuminating case example also make room for additional questions such as whether the tools he offers adequately address the underlying hatred of racism and one of its weapons, namely, white privilege.

PUBLICATION ACTIVITY AND PROMOTION OF PSYCHOANALYSIS IN BULGARIA UNTIL THE 1940S. CONTROVERSIES BETWEEN FREUDIANS AND NON-FREUDIANS: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

This article examines the publication activity and popularization of S. Freud's ideas by Bulgarian psychoanalytic authors who worked actively in the period of the 20s - 40s of the 20th century, when it was the peak of the psychoanalytic movement in Bulgaria. With the establishment of communist power on 9/09/1944, our country fell under Soviet influence, and the spread of psychoanalysis was prohibited; Marxist-Leninist philosophy is declared to be the only correct one. The second emphasis is related to the presentation of the discussions and controversies between Freudians and non-Freudians. The role of the journals "Philosophical Review", "Zlatorog", etc., whose editors open their pages widely for the publication of psychoanalytic writings, as well as other psychological and philosophical articles, is emphasized for the dissemination of psychoanalysis. The contribution of the great philosopher Academician Dimitar Mikhalchev in this regard is indisputable. By popularizing the psychoanalytic ideas of Freud (and much less of K. Jung and A. Adler), and also by writing their original psychoanalytic works, Bulgarian psychoanalytically oriented authors contribute to the enrichment of social and intellectual life with new ideas, values, and guidelines of thinking.

Object Relations: How Early Relationships Create Map for Later Ones

Object Relations: How Early Relationships Create Map for Later Ones

The Only Fag Around: Twinship Needs In Gay Childhood.

A number of contemporary psychoanalytic writers have characterized gay childhood as a profoundly isolating experience. Within a developmentally informed self psychological framework, the loneliness of gay childhood is theorized here as a deficit in requisite twinship experience in early life. A detailed clinical example illustrates how these thwarted twinship needs may reemerge in the transference to the analyst, and how patients may escalate their acting out when the analyst misattunes to, or altogether misses, manifestations of twinship longings in the transference. A bridge between Freud's theory of the repetition compulsion and Kohut's theory of selfobject transferences suggests how specific moments of thwarted twinship needs may be repeated within the analytic relationship in an attempt to master the earlier experience. The experience of the analyst being pulled into the patient's attempts at mastery is detailed. A broader theoretical trend is hypothesized whereby psychoanalytic theories may have a pull toward twinship between each other.

First Meetings in Analytic Therapy: Poetics and Pragmatics

In this paper, first meetings in analytic therapy are considered thematically, experientially and pragmatically. Attention is given to how we think and feel about beginning therapy, and how these first sessions can be structured so as to facilitate the start of a collaborative analytic project. The history of ideas about first meetings is reviewed and the perspectives in this paper are located in this unfolding narrative. The contributions of several psychoanalytic writers whose ideas have influenced my own are considered. The focus throughout is on the hopes and anxieties of both patient and therapist and how these emerge experientially and procedurally in first meetings. The relational traditions introduced in first meetings can structure opportunities for collaborative, transformational work over the course of time. The ideas presented in this paper are illustrated by an extended case example.

‘The Unconscious was Another Word for Inspiration’: Adam Phillips on Marion Milner

‘The Unconscious was Another Word for Inspiration’: Adam Phillips on Marion Milner

Reassessing Wilhelm Reich’s Mass Psychology: Libidinality, Authoritarianism and the Rise of Fascism

Explanations for the contemporary rise of fascistic attitudes and activism solely in terms of historical, political, and socioeconomic determinants, because they tend to assume the individual is a “rational actor,” are often limited in their capacity to account for the significance of individual enchantment with, and passion for, authoritarian movements. The article argues for the urgent need for greater understanding of the psychodynamic allure of fascist and authoritarian politics. In this context, Wilhelm Reich’s 1933 essay, “The Mass Psychology of Fascism,” is reassessed. It is suggested that he presents a valid and profoundly significant thesis when he points to the connections among the attraction and ardor for fascism, societal oppression of sexuality, and the individual’s libidinal inhibitions, conflicts, and frustrations. But his essay needs substantial correction and modification in three respects: (1) His ideas about “natural sexuality”; (2) his assumptions about matriarchal bliss; and (3) his pervasive heteronormativity or homophobia. The critique of these three aspects is primarily theoretical but also touches on Reich’s life history to the extent that it contextualizes his blind spots. Finally, it is suggested that, in subsequent psychoanalytic writings on the dynamics of authoritarianism and the rise of fascism (from Theodor Adorno and Erich Fromm, to Christina Wieland and Jonathan Sklar), far too little attention has been paid to the libidinal underpinnings of these phenomena, to which Reich’s thesis should draw our attention.

The Locker Room

ABSTRACTIn this article the author, a trans male psychoanalyst, explores the experience of using the male locker room. The article will seek to formulate this experience using the psychoanalytic writings of Fonagy, Bromberg, and Harris in order to address the collapse of symbolization and nullification of potential space enforced by such traditional and uniquely gendered binary spaces. This author argues that in such spaces, Harris’s conceptualization of gender as soft assembly cannot be upheld under the threat of exposure and the trauma of gender misrecognition.

Richard III : du préjudice à la revendication

ObjectivesThis article sets out to explore the revengeful, retribution logic of Shakespeare's Richard III. MethodsThe method consists in a review of the literature (critical essays, psychiatric and psychoanalytic writings) on this historical play so as to define the central issue. This well-known figure of Shakespearean drama leads us to explore the question of perceived grievances and litigious or querulous paranoia (see Sérieux & Capgras, Clérambault, Lacan, etc) underpinning demands for one's for rights. On this point it is useful to recall the distinction between querulous delusion and interpretation delusion. ResultsMoving from the initial wrong or grievance sustained to a feeling of injustice and then on to the hateful claims precipitating the character into his criminal course, Richard III provides all the clinical components that enable this tragedy to be read in the light of querulous paranoia. The querulant – who sees himself as a victim of the Other – following in from the initial wrong, throws himself body and soul into obtaining reparation (the querulous paranoid subject can be summed up as “reparation is owed to me”). The trajectory chosen by Richer III takes him from being “deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world” to “being determined to be a villain” by removing anyone standing in his way to the throne – or suspected of doing so. DiscussionThus the central element at the outset is the wrong or prejudice sustained (“I that am curtailed of this fair proportion”) that demands retribution at all costs. Richard III, deformed from birth, accuses the Other (“dissembling Nature”, his mother) and wants that Other to pay what is owing, thus inflicting on others the initial injustice. His bloodthirsty, destructive frenzy, his murderous enterprise devoid of any form of empathy, regret, or guilt, the details provided on his childhood and youth, his relationships with the law and with others all contribute to making Richard III above all a querulant or a persecuted persecutor with illusions of grandeur. Thus the central element in the discussion relates to the harm or prejudice sustained – damage that can also be encountered in other forms of psychosis, such as melancholy. The prejudice is interpreted and processed differently according to the person, and in particular according to whether the subject relates the wrongdoing to himself or accuses the Other of being responsible. For Richard III, the Other must be subjected to crime and punishment. ConclusionThe dark figure of Richard III, however terrible, criminal, and full of hate he may be, is even so not indifferent to us, and not without echoes for us. Freud analyzed him in this manner in 1916. In fact, any subject carries within him some sort of feeling of injustice, any subject “has the right” to lay claim to some form of harm or prejuduce, and in a way we are all, on a small scale, querulous subjects. But Richard II shows us in a sense that according to the type of clinical profile to which we belong, the harm or prejudice and the resulting claims for retribution take on very different forms. The morbid claims for retribution by Richard III suggest an egocentric querulous aranoia, or perhaps egocentric querulous psychosis where an “idealism of justice” (Dide) predominates: the subject is intent on justice being done to him.

Between wild thoughts and schoolboy essays: Psychoanalytic reverie and the dreamy, digressive subjects of writing in Robert Walser’s Fritz Kocher’s essays

In this article, I engage the psychoanalytic writings of Donald Winnicott, Thomas Ogden and Wilfred Bion, who proffer maternal reverie – an intimate intersubjective communication between the mother and infant – as an early model for the psychosomatic drifts of form and thought experienced in the analytic encounter. As a way to frame these psychoanalytic dynamics, I turn to Robert Walser’s fictional collection of schoolboy writings Fritz Kocher’s essays, and read the titular character’s various detours and digressions as useful examples of how reverie experience – a space of indeterminate identification between the essay and writer – may be articulated in relation to the needs of writing practice. Since the dream is other to the time of school, Fritz’s contradictory meanings carry the trace of a disturbance that words can never clarify. I also adopt Bion’s conceptualization of the caesura of birth as a way of viewing the breach of meaning in writing as only one possible entrance of many into the infinite figures of signification. Looking at how Fritz’s writing encourages a productive decentering of that which is normally expected of writing students, I end this paper by celebrating the importance of the arbitrary nature of digression.

Post-truth as Symptom: The Emergence of a Masculine Hysteria

ABSTRACT This article investigates the formal dimensions of “post-truth” as a discourse. Specifically, I read post-truth as symptom, not as an “era” or “world.” The emergence of this symptom, the post-truth signifier, directs our attention to an anxiety regarding the desire for truth, rather than its presence or absence in public discourse. Based on Jacques Lacan's theory of discourse in Seminar XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, I argue that the emergence of the term “post-truth” in the popular vernacular epitomizes a masculinized discourse of hysteria. To outline the formal features of post-truth discourse, I draw upon an early use of the term “post-truth” in a 1992 article of the Nation written by screenwriter and playwright Steve Tesich. The article concludes by consulting the critical psychoanalytic writings of Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray to better specify the uniquely masculine form of post-truth hysteria and its implications for public discourse.

Psychoanalysis and the Imaginary: Translating Freud in Postcolonial Egypt

This article imagines psychoanalysis geopolitically by way of an exploratory foray into the oeuvre of Sami-Ali, the Arabic translator of Sigmund Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, author of a large body of original psychoanalytic writings, and translator of the poetry of Sufi masters. Taken together, his writings enable a critical rethinking of the role of the imaginary, the mechanisms of projection, and the epistemology of non-knowledge in the workings of the unconscious. Significantly, such a rethinking of key psychoanalytic concepts drew upon the Sufi metaphysics of the imagination of Ibn ʿArabi. Yet such theoretical work cannot be understood outside of its wider clinical context and the conditions of (im)possibility that structure psychoanalysis within the postcolony. Reconstituting Sami-Ali's early theoretical writings alongside his work with the long-forgotten figures he observed, incarcerated female prostitutes in 1950s Cairo, I argue that his clinical encounters constituted the ground of his theorization of the imaginary within the embodied subject. Attending to the work of translation inherent within psychoanalytic practice – whether from Sigmund Freud's own German writings into French or Arabic, or from clinical practice into theoretical discourse – helps us conceptualize psychoanalysis as taking place otherwise at the intersection of multiple epistemological and ethical traditions.

Psychodynamic approaches to violence

SUMMARYThe assessment and management of violent behaviour in mentally disordered patients are no longer the sole domain of forensic psychiatrists, but are increasingly part of the day-to-day work of all psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Violence risk assessment has become a huge industry, and although the importance of dynamic, as well as actuarial, risk factors is now recognised, a more systematic approach exploring the psychodynamics in the aetiology, assessment and treatment of violent behaviour is often lacking. In this article I revisit some of the key psychodynamic principles and concepts relevant to an understanding of violence, summarising the historical contributions of key psychoanalytic writers on violence and aggression, and exploring the ideas of more contemporary writers working in the field of forensic psychotherapy. A psychodynamic framework for working with violent patients is introduced, focusing on the setting and containment, specific therapeutic interventions and monitoring countertransference reactions.LEARNING OBJECTIVES•Understand historical and contemporary psychoanalytic theories of the aetiology of aggression and violence•Utilise a psychodynamic framework for working with violent patients and offenders•Understand the use of countertransference in the risk assessment and treatment of violenceDECLARATION OF INTERESTNone.

Neurological Foundation of Unconscious and Higher Thinking Processes and the Dynamic Variability of Clinical Presentations

This article reviews selected neuroscientific and psychoanalytic writings with a focus on dynamic variability, unconscious processes and their presence in clinical venues. Two objects are pursued. First is the development of neuron circuity, leading up to higher thought processes and thinking. Second is to elucidate the neuron circuitry of unconscious processes. The goal is to describe the stated objectives and the theme of variability represented in clinical presentations and venues.

Dismantling Clinical Authority in Paterson

This article explores how the relationship between William Carlos Williams and Marcia Nardi as represented by the "Cress" letters in Williams's modernist epic Paterson challenges the doctor/patient and normal/pathological binaries established by clinical practice. It argues that the dialectical tension between the masculine and feminine created by the hybrid construction of Paterson echoes psychoanalytic writings on femininity by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, reading the work in relationship to Michel Foucault's theory of the archive in The Order of Things.

Affective Change in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: Theoretical Models and Clinical Approaches to Changing Emotions

Affective change has been considered the hallmark of therapeutic change in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic writers have begun to incorporate theoretically the advanced understanding of emotional processing and transformation of the affective neurosciences. We ask if this theoretical advancement is reflected in treatment techniques addressing the processing of emotion. We review psychoanalytic models and treatment recommendations of maladaptive affect processing in the light of a neuroscientifically informed model of achieving psychotherapeutic change by activation and reconsolidation of emotional memory. Emotions tend to be treated as other mental contents, resulting in a lack of specific psychodynamic techniques to work with emotions. Manualized technical modifications addressing affect regulation have been successfully tested in patients with personality pathology, but not for psychodynamic treatments of axis I disorders. Emotional memories need to be activated in order to be modified, therefore, we propose to include techniques into psychodynamic therapy that stimulate emotional experience.

Zen Musings on Bion's "O" and "K".

The author defines Bion's use of "O" and "K" and discusses both from the radical nondualist realizational perspective available through the lens of Eihei Dogen's (1200-1253) Soto Zen Buddhist orientation. Fundamental differences in core foundational principles are discussed as well as similarities and their relevance to clinical practice. A case example exemplifies and explicates the abstract aspects of the discussion, which draws from Zen teaching stories, reference to Dogen's original writings, and the scholarly commentarial literature as well as from contemporary writers who integrate Zen Buddhist study and practice with Bion's psychoanalytic writings on theory and technique.