Psychoanalytic Contributions Research Articles

Tudo começa no hospital: narrativas maternas sobre a hospitalização do bebê cronicamente adoecido

This study investigated mothers’ narratives about their chronically ill babies' hospitalization at a public maternity hospital in São Paulo, during 2022, based on thematic analysis of four semi-structured interviews. The main qualitative data from interviews were analyzed concerning its psychoanalytic contribution, organized by three central themes. Interviewed mothers seemed to have found possible ways to perform the maternal function and bond with their babies. Their experiences were affected by ambivalent feelings and psychic suffering that demands mental health care. The aim was to come closer to this reality, remarking original motherhood experiences and the importance of developing caregiving practices worried about the needs of parental figures and their babies in the context of hospitalization and illness.

Inscribing a new page in the history of Ukrainian psychoanalysis during the wartime: The call for contributions

AbstractThis correspondence introduces several distinct current efforts by Ukrainian psychoanalytic practitioners and researchers from various clinical, scholarly, and applied fields to support the sustainable development of psychoanalytic training and work in the context of the ongoing 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Among these developments are (a) the translation of the classic and contemporary psychoanalytic texts into the Ukrainian language, (b) the promotion of Ukrainian psychoanalytic contributions within Ukraine and abroad, and (c) the support of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy as an evidence‐based practice to be officially recognized in Ukraine. The initiatives were integrated with the launch of a scholarly peer‐reviewed online open‐access journal—the Ukrainian Psychoanalytic Journal—which has been confirmed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science as a scientific periodical. In addition to describing these initiatives, this contribution serves as an invitation to international psychoanalytic audiences to contribute to these processes, including via workshops on psychoanalytic writing and publication, joint panel discussions, or collaborative research projects with Ukrainian psychoanalytic professionals. We also welcome submissions of original previously published (with copyright permission) or unpublished papers to be translated and published in the Ukrainian language.

NÃO É NINGUÉM, É O PROFESSOR! SOBRE A FIGURA DOCENTE E O SEU OFÍCIO

ABSTRACT: This article aims to examine how efforts that seek to replace the personality of the teaching action by the impersonal technicality of its activity affect the teacher and the teaching profession. The discourse of technicization of education, a discourse structured around the intended completeness, centrality, and autonomy of the technical and methodological dimension of education, conceives education as an activity that does not require the presence of someone, the presence of a subject to whom it is possible to enjoy a place of action and enunciation. What does the teacher do in the face of efforts to reduce teaching to an activity guided by the logic of factory production, marked by the automated repetition of processes that are independent of the uniqueness and personality of the one who performs it? Would this condition be related to the complaints, illnesses, feelings of devaluation, and impotence frequently mentioned by teachers? The examination of these questions will be done in the light of a phenomenology of human activities, as conceived by Hannah Arendt, and of writings that seek to understand education from the contributions of psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalytic Contributions to Psychodynamic Psychiatry: Freud's Anxiety Theory.

In many academic centers a generation of psychiatrists has undergone training with little or no exposure to Freud's contributions to our profession. Our profession is diminished if we ignore Freud's remarkable insights into the human psyche. Not only does Freud give us a comprehensive theory of human nature-of our mental life and its psychopathology-his concepts are foundational to dynamic psychiatry and its psychotherapeutic application. This article describes one of his core concepts: Freud's theory of anxiety.

From Black Hole to Potential Space: Discussion of Barbara Pizer’s “‘Eva, Get the Goldfish Bowl’: Affect and Intuition in the Analytic Relationship”

ABSTRACT This discussion of Barbara Pizer’s “‘Eva, Get the Goldfish Bowl:’ Affect and Intuition in the Analytic Relationship” locates her paper in the trajectory of her psychoanalytic contributions through 2005, centering around the analyst’s disciplined, reflective mindfulness as she creatively applies her personhood to both contain and enliven the analytic process. Specifically, it addresses her use of what she terms the “outrageous interpretation” as it connects implicitly with the affective experience trapped within the as-yet unrepresentable regions of her patient’s subjectivity. Using as metaphor her patient Julian’s ideas about black holes in the universe, this discussion suggests how Barbara Pizer delivers affective energy into psychologically imploded spaces, transforming a black hole into a potential space. Final comments focus on the caregiver and loneliness, and some speculations regarding Julian’s adamantine repetitions.

What would Freud have made of it? Notes on a “normal pathological organization” within contemporary psychoanalysis

AbstractPsychoanalytic discourse in relation to the situation in historic Palestine is subject to both ideologically‐based and anxiety‐driven inhibitions and restrictions that conflict with the discipline’s claim to be able to “stay with” difficult issues, to “think the unthinkable”. This situation is understood as a social pathology, and its impacts are explored through a literature review (explaining the paper’s length). It considers works that directly seek to protect Zionism from its critics, and texts whose purpose is to demonstrate the relevance of psychoanalytic concepts to the study of social injustice. The qualities of this contemporary discourse are considered alongside Freud’s comments on the conditions for freedom of thought within psychoanalysis, and the example he provided in his comments on politics and society. Rather than a psychoanalytic contribution to understanding an issue of public concern, the paper attempts to describe aspects of psychoanalytic culture itself. It aims to facilitate deeper reflection amongst clinicians, on both an individual and collective level, regarding their contemporary engagement with coloniality and the social responsibilities of the psychoanalytic community.

Karl Abraham, The Origins of Projective Identification and The Day of Atonement

Karl Abraham, one of Melanie Klein’s analysts, undoubtedly influenced Klein in her clinical and theoretical thinking. Abraham was arguably the first analyst to focus on character, as well as the relationship between bodily experience and object relationships—central to the concept of projective identification. His writing on mourning (like Klein’s, intensely personal) described identificatory processes with the lost object. In a lesser known essay, Abraham applied some of these ideas to the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. Through examination of this lesser known paper, this article describes how Abraham initiated ideas around the concept of projective identification, and then extends Abraham’s early ideas to a more contemporary understanding of the concept. This extension represents a contemporary elaboration of a psychoanalytic contribution to a study of ritual, which was of great interest to many early psychoanalysts—among them, Abraham.

Making presidential re-elections indefinite: a psychoanalytic contribution to the case of the Ecuadorian Citizens’ Revolution

President Rafael Correa (2007–17) was the leader of the Ecuadorian Citizens’ Revolution advanced by his movement Alianza País. Although a former critic of indefinite presidential re-elections, in 2014 Correa asked his bloc of parliamentarians to abolish presidential term limits. His request was approved and the constitution was amended. How can we account for Alianza País’ sudden decision to abolish presidential term limits, considering it had ratified these limits as recently as 2008? This article conducts a discourse analysis of the argument in favour of indefinite presidential re-elections in Ecuador. Courtesy of Lacanian psychoanalysis, in this article I argue that the Citizens’ Revolution’s shift can be fruitfully explained if we consider how the transgressive logic of enjoyment operates in ideology.

Psychoanalytic contributions in distinguishing willful ignorance and rational knowledge avoidance.

Psychoanalytic contributions in distinguishing willful ignorance and rational knowledge avoidance.

Failed but Not Forgotten: A Psychoanalytic Contribution to Understanding Hieroglyphics

Failed but Not Forgotten: A Psychoanalytic Contribution to Understanding Hieroglyphics

Revue critique sur le potentiel du numérique dans la recherche en psychopathologie : un point de vue psychanalytique

ObjectivesThis paper proposes a critical review with the objective of reflecting on what is involved in the integration of digital tools in patient observation through the example of digital phenotyping, which is an emerging method in mental health. The review situates the place of psychoanalysis in this international context of observational research in psychopathology. MethodA corpus has been selected on the situation of numerical phenotyping in the context of the debate on mental health classifications and on the problematic field of the digital, from the point of view of the international psychoanalytical literature. In order to reconstruct this field, we selected critical texts that situate the current debate on epistemological orientations in mental health, the available literature concerning digital phenotyping as a method of investigation in mental health research, as well as the psychoanalytical literature that situates the problematic field resulting from this orientation in relation to the challenges of digital technology, both from a clinical and methodological point of view. ResultsThe use of smartphones is now one of the avenues explored that should be considered when thinking about the ethical issues involved. It appears that psychoanalysis has a specific perspective on the challenges of digital technology and mobile phones in the lives of subjects, which demonstrates its place in the interdisciplinary debate. DiscussionThis critical reflection allows for a discussion that goes beyond subjects’ digital behavior. The exploration of the literature allows us to discuss the problem of reductionism in mental health as an obstacle to grasping the specifics of clinical issues. ConclusionThe network theory is thus convened as a model of a holistic approach in which the contribution of psychoanalysis could be restituted.

Looking at oneself in the mirror of the others. Modelisation and implications of a study on human reflexivity starting from semiotics and psychoanalysis

The mirror is a very widespread tool in human life. It works as an optical device that recreates the image of an object placed in front of it. The relation of the human being with the mirror is very important: we find a pervasiveness and diffusion of mirrors in everyday life, but also in stories and legends, in folklore and mythology. At a certain step of his development, the child is able to recognise himself in the reflected image of a mirror. We observe a strong cultural intra-subjective and inter-subjective recursivity in the construction of the mirroring experience as a model of truth and lie, identity and otherness, knowledge and ignorance. Starting from the debate between two semioticians - Umberto Eco and Juri Lotman - on the semiotic value of the mirror, the authors develop the topic of reflexivity as a psychic process by examining it in the light of various psychoanalytic contributions. Reflexivity and the psychodynamic relationship with one's own reflected image are developed by centralising the importance of an ongoing and deeply dialogic process between identity and otherness, continuity and transformation.

Psychoanalytic reflections on the conditions of possibility of human destructiveness

ABSTRACT This paper explores the psychoanalytic contribution to the understanding of war. It takes as its frame of reference the conditions of possibility in the human subject that form the basis for the detonation of such extremes of destruction. Starting with key papers of Freud that address this malaise of our “civilization” it goes on to consider the contributions from the Kleinian school (particularly Money-Kyrle and Segal). The argument is situated within a frame of reference which views the psychoanalytic contribution as part of what the author terms an interdisciplinary conversation. The paper concludes with some more general considerations regarding the horrors of our contemporary world.

Cuestionamientos al encierro en el devenir sujetos Diálogos del psicoanálisis con la pedagogía social Autores/as Ana Lía López Brizolara DOI: https://doi.org/10.36496/n130.131a5 Palabras clave: Adolescencia, Institución, ciencias sociales, sociedad, subjetivación, desubjetivación, abandono, resiliencia Resumen Este trabajo nos ofrece aportes psicoanalíticos para pensar los procesos de subjetivación en situaciones de encierro en niños y adolescentes. La autora dialoga con las propuestas de

This piece of work gives us psychoanalytic contributions in order to reflect upon the processes of subjectivation in children and adolescents in lockdown situations. The author exchanges with Diego Silva Balerio’s proposals coming from Social Pedagogy concerning the attention to children and adolescents in maximum vulnerability situations and the alternatives to hospitalization and discharge. The author takes up the question: Can family roles be substituted? What is at stake when this happens? She also proposes to reflect upon the way inwhich the effect of the power device and the effect of structural helplessness combine in internment centers. Some aspects of adolescence are described and their urgency when facing questions about existence and identity and how to understand this in lockdown situations.

Politics and Clinic in Possible Work with Public Schools: Contributions of Psychoanalysis

Resumo Este artigo é um relato da experiência de uma proposta de extensão da psicanálise a outros campos de saber, neste caso o da educação e o da saúde mental. Para tal, as intervenções apresentadas descrevem parte da trajetória de uma equipe de pesquisa inicialmente vinculada à Faculdade de Psicologia da Universidade de Vassouras. A partir de práticas de atendimento com suporte na teoria psicanalítica a crianças, adolescentes e respectivos familiares que não encontravam acolhimento em dispositivos públicos de saúde e assistência da região, e de observações e análises de campo que revelavam discursos medicalizantes nas escolas, em 2018, a pesquisa foi reorientada e passou a ser partilhada com a organização não governamental Chega Junto, criada tanto com o intuito de contribuir para a transformação de discursos e práticas engessantes em espaços burocratizados como de participar da formação continuada dos profissionais que se interessam pela contribuição da psicanálise ao trabalho no contexto de suas escolas e pela maneira como esta rede se constrói. A proposta se concretiza por meio do trabalho cotidiano teórico e prático do grupo de pesquisa, e envolve diferentes intervenções. Foram utilizados autores referentes a ambos os campos de saber mencionados como base para discussão teórica. Por meio dos resultados apresentados, constataram-se mudanças significativas nas atitudes dos alunos, equipe escolar e na própria dinâmica entre eles, o que expressa a possibilidade de transformações através da oferta de espaço de voz e escuta dos sujeitos em meio ao coletivo.

EM DEFESA DA CONSIDERAÇÃO DO CORPO ERÓGENO NOS ESTUDOS ORGANIZACIONAIS

ABSTRACT This article aims to contribute to the study of corporeality in the field of organizational studies from the perspective of the psychoanalytical notion of the erogenous body. Investigations into corporeality and the psychoanalytical framework exist in organizational studies, but there is also a lack of psychoanalytical contributions with specific regard to the body in this field. We demonstrate that this gap exists by revisiting the question of corporeality in organizational studies, starting from the rationalist origins of the kinship between anatomopathological medicine and the theory of organizations. We then present the psychoanalytical conceptualization of the erogenous body starting with its rupture from anatomopathological medicine. In conclusion, we present an extensive ethnographic study of the body in investment banks and discuss how the notion of the erogenous body can throw light on the impasses found in it.

Challenges for the Future of Psychoanalysis.

This paper summarizes the current crisis of psychoanalysis in its relations to the scientific and cultural environment. It proposes tasks to assure the survival and contributions of psychoanalysis as science, profession, and humanistic discipline. It proposes emphasis on empirical research in the boundaries with the neurosciences and social psychology, and the development of an infrastructure for research linked to its educational program. It proposes renovation in training, abolishment of the training analysis system, and systematic teaching and research on the psychoanalytic psychotherapies focused on specific pathologies. This overall proposal stresses the need to collaborate and potentially integrate psychoanalytic institutions within university settings, and the development of active interdisciplinary engagements with other sciences and the community at large. Finally, it stresses the role of contemporary object relations theory to reunify the presently diverging schools of psychoanalytic theory and technique.

“Think like a mountain ”-“ to think of Oedipus ”: a psychoanalytic contribution to environmental ethics

ABSTRACT The guilt and shame of participating in an indecent consumerist way of life that causes climate change and mass extinction of species inflicts a moral wound on us. This moral wound arouses an indignation of which the “Greta generation” is one of the spokespeople, and it involves developing an ethic of relations between our species and non-human species. We must learn to “think like a mountain”, in the words of Aldo Leopold, that is to say in an ecosystemic way, in order to accept our true place in the biotic community of microorganisms, flora and fauna: that of “children of the biosphere”, a biosphere on which we are as dependent as an infant is its parents. The author argues that developing such an ethic requires a work of culture to think about new environmental paradigms, especially the fact that humanity endlessly artificializes nature, even its own nature, to the detriment of the wild part of them. Can the Œdipal situation, its taboos and its respect for fecundity be extended to our biotic family?

Editorial introduction: Psychoanalytical perspectives on the COVID‐19 pandemic

International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic StudiesVolume 18, Issue 2 p. 109-120 EDITORIAL Editorial introduction: Psychoanalytical perspectives on the COVID-19 pandemic Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, Corresponding Author Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-2421-2564 University Medicine Johann Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany German Psychoanalytical Association (DPV), Frankfurt a. M., Germany Correspondence Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, Am Ebelfeld 1 A, D-60488 Frankfurt a.M., Germany. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorHeribert Blass, Heribert Blass orcid.org/0000-0002-8004-1288 German Psychoanalytical Association (DPV), Düsseldorf, GermanySearch for more papers by this author Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, Corresponding Author Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-2421-2564 University Medicine Johann Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany German Psychoanalytical Association (DPV), Frankfurt a. M., Germany Correspondence Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, Am Ebelfeld 1 A, D-60488 Frankfurt a.M., Germany. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorHeribert Blass, Heribert Blass orcid.org/0000-0002-8004-1288 German Psychoanalytical Association (DPV), Düsseldorf, GermanySearch for more papers by this author First published: 03 June 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/aps.1707Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume18, Issue2Special Issue: Psychoanalytic Contributions to Understanding the COVID‐19 PandemicJune 2021Pages 109-120 RelatedInformation

“Our difficult job is to take a unified view of the patient … ” (Winnicott) Psychosomatic work in a children’s hospital

ABSTRACT We present our work as psychoanalysts in the interdisciplinary psychosomatic unit of a paediatric hospital. As the starting point for our work we use Winnicott’s understanding of the psychosomatic dilemma delineated in his paper on psychosomatic illness in its positive and negative aspects. The central hypothesis is that splitting the medical field into many highly specialized fields can be understood as a display of the psychosomatic patients’ inner need for splitting and their defence against integration. Based on four case examples from different developmental periods, we demonstrate the interconnectedness of the relational environment, developmental processes, and psychic and biological conditions, and show how early experiences of threat and deprivation can cause the soma–psyche unit to fragment. Drawing on several psychoanalytic psychosomatic schools, we delineate treatment principles of the psychoanalytic contribution to the interdisciplinary work and of the individual psychoanalytic treatment.