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Freud
Kinds of Freud Selected AbstractsABDICATION OF A FATHER: SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE FREUD,JUNG CORRESPONDENCE1BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHOTHERAPY, Issue 3 2008James V. Fisher abstract This paper explores one dimension of the complex relationship linking Freud and Jung as revealed in their correspondence between 1906 and 1912. It focuses on Freud's adoption of Jung as his heir, particularly in terms of his repeated proposal to Jung ,to continue and complete my work by applying to psychoses what I have begun with neuroses'. The paper tracks the fate of this proposal in the words of these two men and suggests that the ambivalence of both can be seen as an expression of an unconscious dynamic portrayed in Shakespeare's King Lear, a dynamic characterized by the author as the developmental task of ,heriting'. Emma Jung captured the heart of the dilemma of ,heriting' in her question to Freud: ,Doesn't one often give much because one wants to keep much?' Although the trajectory of the heritage Freud sought for his ,adopted eldest son', ,crown prince' and ,successor' was not the same as that of the tragedy of Lear, it was no less poignant in its tensions and disappointments , even for a time in its reversal of the ,heriting', and finally in the disintegration of the relationship. [source] ,In saying yes he says farewell': T. J. Clark's FreudCRITICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2002Lyndsey Stonebridge [source] What it Means to be a Stranger to OneselfEDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY, Issue 5 2009Olli-Pekka Moisio Abstract In adult education there is always a problem of prefabricated and in many respect fixed opinions and views of the world. In this sense, I will argue, that the starting point of radical education should be in the destruction of these walls of belief that people build around themselves in order to feel safe. In this connection I will talk about ,gentle shattering of identities' as a problem and a method of radical education. When we as adult educators are trying to gently shatter these solidified identities and pre-packed ways of being and acting in the world, we are moving in the field of questions that Sigmund Freud tackled with the concepts of ,de-personalization' and ,de-realization'. These concepts raise the question about the possibility of at the same time believing that something is and at the same time having a fundamentally sceptical attitude towards this given. In my article I will ask, can we integrate the idea of learning in general with the idea of strangeness to oneself as a legitimate and sensible experiential point of departure for radical learning? [source] Wittgenstein, Freud, Dreaming and Education: Psychoanalytic explanation as ,une façon de parler'1EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY, Issue 5 2008James D. Marshall Abstract Freud saw the dream as occupying a very important position in his theoretical model. If there were to be problems with his theoretical account of the dream then this would impinge upon proposed therapy and, of course, education as the right balance between the instincts and the institution of culture. Wittgenstein, whilst stating that Freud was interesting and important, raised several issues in relation to psychology/psychoanalysis, and to Freud in particular. Why would Wittgenstein have seen Freud as having some important things to say, even though he was sharply critical of Freud's claims to be scientific? The major issues to be considered in this paper are, in Section 1, the scientific status of Freud's work,was it science or was it more like philosophy than science; the analysis of dreams; rationality, and dreams and madness. Section 2 considers Freud and education, including the indignity of Freud's notion of ,the talking cure.' Section 3 considers psychoanalytic explanations not as theory but as a manner of speaking: ,une façon de parler.' [source] Culture, Charisma, and Consciousness: The Case of the RajneesheeETHOS, Issue 4 2002Professor Charles Lindholm This article outlines the basics of a theory of charisma drawn from a synthesis of the classic texts of Weber, Marx, and Freud. This abstract theoretical perspective is then applied to an analysis of the charismatic religious cult led by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Emphasis is placed on the methods used to inculcate loyalty infollowers and on the personal history and psychic capacities of the leader. [source] On the Genealogy of Moral Pleasure1GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 3 2009Duncan Large ABSTRACT This article explores the problematic relation between pleasure and morality in German thought, from the Enlightenment aesthetics of the eighteenth century through to early twentieth-century psychoanalysis. Specifically, by focusing on the status and function of pleasure in the moral analyses of Kant, the post-Kantians Schiller and Schopenhauer, then Nietzsche and finally Freud, it argues for a shift in emphasis, over this period, from the moral evaluation of pleasure to a recognition of the pleasurable value of morality. Along the way, it traces the German reception of the Discourse on the Nature of Pleasure and Pain (1773,81) by the Milanese philosopher and economist Pietro Verri. [source] ,Aus Blut und Schmerz geboren': Maternal Grief and the Poetry of Frida BettingenGERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 3 2008Catherine Smale ABSTRACT This article analyses the impact of maternal grief on the literary creativity of the Expressionist poet Frida Bettingen (1865,1924). Examining the depiction of maternal love which emerges in Bettingen's later poems and her ambivalent attitude towards writing as a form of therapy, it argues that her verse offers an alternative to the responses to loss outlined by Freud in his essay on mourning and melancholia. Finally, the article explores the ways in which Bettingen's ambivalence leads her to experiment with the poetic medium. She engages with and adapts contemporary discourses in order to situate her grief within the collective response to the losses of the First World War whilst still retaining a sense of the private significance of her son's death. [source] The Poetics of Pathology: Freud's Studien über Hysterie and the Tropes of the ,Novelle'GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 1 2006Petra Rau Freud's self-conscious reflections on the ,Novelle' in his first major work, Studien über Hysterie, have sometimes been interpreted as rhetorical remarks in which his writerly ambitions came to the surface. This article argues that the case histories of hysteria and the genre of the ,Novelle' (particularly the psychopathic or psychographic nineteenth-century ,Novelle') share a poetics of pathology. Indeed their common features (dependence on symbolic condensation, central traumatic events and narrative gaps, exegetical challenges and hermeneutic paradoxes, the self-reflexive narrator, framing devices) suggest that the psychopathic ,Novelle' provided Freud with the means to legitimise his representation of psychoanalysis and hysteria. Like the case history, the psychopathic ,Novelle' is concerned with validating and interpreting idiosyncratic pathological semiotics. Yet like the ,Novelle', Freud's case histories suffer from a contagion in which representation is infected with, and by necessity performs, the pathologies it claims to map and cure. This article suggests that at the heart of the poetics of pathology is a hermeneutic aporia that allows for intertextual transfer but that also deconstructs the novellesque as well as the psychoanalytic project and renders it impossible. [source] Two Influential Theories of Ignorance and Philosophy's Interests in Ignoring ThemHYPATIA, Issue 3 2006SANDRA HARDING Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud provided powerful accounts of systematic interested ignorance. Fifty years ago, Anglo-American philosophies of science stigmatized Marx's and Freud's analyses as models of irrationality. They remain disvalued today, at a time when virtually all other humanities and social science disciplines have returned to extract valuable insights from them. Here the argument is that there are reasons distinctive to philosophy why such theories were especially disvalued then and why they remain so today. However, there are even better reasons today for philosophy to break from this history and find more fruitful ways to engage with systematic interested ignorance. [source] Freud's Oedipus and Kristeva's Narcissus: Three HeterogeneitiesHYPATIA, Issue 1 2005SARA BEARDSWORTH The paper shows that three heterogeneities in Freud and Kristeva (unconscious/conscious, semiotic/symbolic, and imaginary/symbolic) expose the historical emergence, significance, and demise of psychic structures that present obstacles to our progressive political thinking. The oedipal and narcissistic structures of subjectivity represent the persistence of two past, bad forms of authority: paternal law and maternal authority. Contemporary psychoanalysis reveals a humankind going through the loss of this past in a process that opens up a different future of sexual difference in Western cultures. [source] Elitism in psychoanalysis in the USA: narcissistic defense against cumulative traumas of prejudice and exclusionINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES, Issue 1 2007Joann Ponder Abstract Psychoanalysts in the USA have been perceived as élitist and exclusionary. It is hypothesized that this behavior services as a narcissistic defense against feelings of marginalization and inadequacy, stemming from experiences of prejudice, loss, and exclusion in the past. It is further hypothesized that there has been an institutional and multigenerational transmission of cumulative traumas that originated with Freud and the European psychoanalysts. The roots and history of the narcissistic defense are examined, as well as its manifestations in American training and practice today. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] An object relations approach to studying prejudice with specific reference to anti-semitism: the long-term use of a lethal apocalyptic projectionINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES, Issue 1 2007Clyde Friedman Abstract Prejudice seems to be part of the human condition. The specific prejudice of anti-Semitism has affected Jews for at least 2300 years with, at times, horrendous consequences. What psychodynamics are operating in prejudice in general, and in the specific prejudice of antisemitism? What has caused such a small group to be targeted by such long-standing enmity? Will prejudice or antisemitism ever end or do groups need scapegoats and do the Jewish people fit the scapegoat profile? This article reviews some of the psychodynamics as described by Freud, Klein, Fairbairn, Bion, and others that make people susceptible to fear and prejudice, and to the particular prejudice of antisemitism. Mention will be made of some of the historical, religious, and sociological dynamics that contribute to antisemitism. With reference to Object Relations theory and the Apocalyptic-Messianic myth present in monotheistic religions, an explanation is suggested as to how prejudice and antisemitism become lethal on an individual and large-group scale. Hitler is referred to as a specific illustration of this phenomenon. Some case examples from the writer's clinical practice are also utilized to further illustrate the psychodynamics presented. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Community feeling and social interest: Adlerian parallels, synergy and differences with the field of community psychologyJOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2008Russell A. King Abstract The field of community psychology has generally elided the insights of depth psychology and the traditions of Freud, Adler and Jung. Implicitly rejecting the notion of the unconscious, community psychology favours conscious, pragmatic agency. Whereas depth psychology is commonly associated with treatment modalities, community psychology argues that psychotherapy is ultimately unnecessary when prevention strategies are adequately deployed. In the critical and community psychology literature psychotherapy is often derided as both ,individualistic' and inefficient. Adlerian psychology, which espouses a method of psychotherapy, nevertheless holds key points of synergy with community psychology. To distinguish the school from psychoanalysis Alfred Adler named his approach ,Individual Psychology', which could obscure its' social orientation. Like community psychologists, Adlerians similarly argue for a sense of cohesive community as crucial to mental health. They have also adopted an ecological holism as core epistemology, and argue for reducing the necessity of psychotherapy by working in tandem on community-based prevention strategies. The authors consider the rationale for community psychology's distance from the depth psychologies whilst arguing that the unconscious could, if engaged with analytically, provide the discourse with radical new insights. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] In the margins of scientific dialogue: Evart Van Dieren contra psychoanalysisJOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, Issue 1 2003Jaap Bos Ph.D. Psychologist Evart Van Dieren (1861,1940), a Dutch general practitioner who had a passionate aversion against psychoanalysis, wrote two particularly polemical books contra Freud but nevertheless did not succeed in generating much response. In this paper, some of his objections against psychoanalysis are briefly examined and compared with some present day arguments against Freud by Grünbaum and Crews, with the purpose of finding an answer to the question: What does it take to be a successful or unsuccessful critic? © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Psychoanalytic Criticism of ShakespeareLITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 3 2006David Mikics Why has Shakespeare proved such profitable ground for psychoanalytic study? Part of the answer lies in the affinity between theatre, not just Shakespeare's, and psychoanalytic practice, an affinity recognized by Freud when he adapted Aristotle's idea of catharsis to his own "talking cure." This essay traces psychoanalytic criticism of Shakespeare from its origins in the work of Freud and Ernest Jones through studies by Jung, Rank, Lacan, Norman Holland, and others. In conclusion, the author presents a practical example of psychoanalytic Shakespeare criticism: a reading of The Tempest drawing on the object relations school of D. W. Winnicott. [source] The Gambler: (re)placing the desire of moneyNEW ZEALAND GEOGRAPHER, Issue 3 2005Stephen Horton Abstract:,The Gambler conjures a world of myth: not as a fiction of human consciousness but as unconscious image-language. Its ambition is to write geography as material subject. In tracing the discourse written in the built environment the text ranges over the analyses of Marx and Freud and into the gestural worlds of Kafka and the blood sports of the ancient Colosseum. It discovers the myth of New Zealand horse racing, written in pictures in the local pub where virtual racing, abstracted from the living world, (dis)plays on the television screen. Here, finally, The Gambler comes to terms with loss. [source] Meaning-making in the aftermath of sudden infant death syndromeNURSING INQUIRY, Issue 3 2006Guenther Krueger The reconstruction of meaning in the aftermath of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is part of the grieving process but has to date been poorly understood. Earlier theorists including Freud, Bowlby and Kübler-Ross provided a foundation for what occurs during this time using stage theories. More recent researchers, often using qualitative techniques, have provided a more complex and expanded view that enhances our knowledge of meaning reconstruction following infant loss. This overview of representative contemporary authors compares and contrasts them with the longstanding models that are being supplanted within the emerging field of thanatology. Understanding parental reactions within this new framework can help healthcare professionals in dealing with those affected by SIDS and provide a more empathic and sensitive approach to individual differences. Parents' own accounts of their post-SIDS experience are consistent with these newer theories. Comprehending how parents cope and reconstruct their lives is an important element in providing appropriate psychological support services. [source] Rogues of Modernity: Picaresque Variations in the Postcolonial Genre of the Enlightenment MissionaryORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 2 2006Ian Almond The article examines the representation of the ,Enlightenment missionary' in a number of postcolonial texts, both Indian and Turkish. Moments where the individual becomes so enamoured of a certain aspect of Western culture - Freud, Proust, Chopin - that he seeks, upon his return, to disseminate this ,new' knowledge to as many of his fellow villagers as possible. The figure of the picaro, traditionally understood as an alienated, roguish, rootless protagonist, thereby finds in postcolonial literature a new manifestation. This article examines not only how the arrival in India of ,enlightenment' thought created such picaresque figures, but also how novelists such as Upamanyu Chatterjee depict the failure of the Enlightenment project as producing a similar genre of disillusioned protagonist. [source] After Freud: Phantasy and Imagination in the Philosophy of ReligionPHILOSOPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2008Beverley Clack Philosophers of religion have tended to focus on Freud's dismissal of religion as an illusion, thus characterising his account as primarily hostile. Those who wish to engage with psychoanalytic ideas in order to understand religion in a more positive way have tended to look to later psychoanalysts for more sympathetic sources. This paper suggests that other aspects of Freud's own writings might, surprisingly, provide such tools. In particular, a more subtle understanding of the relationship between illusion and reality emerges in his theory, that itself offers a useful way of understanding the meaning and significance of religion for the human animal. By exploring these sources a view of religion emerges which connects it closely with the processes of imagination and creativity. Under this view, religion is more than just a set of hypotheses to be proved or disproved. In religion, we have access to the most deeply rooted wishes and anxieties of the human heart, and thus its investigation enables a deeper understanding of what it is to be a human being. [source] Blanche wittman's breasts: the aetiology of the split between body, trance, and psychoanalysisPSYCHOTHERAPY AND POLITICS INTERNATIONAL, Issue 3 2010Asaf Rolef Ben-Shahar Abstract Since its inception, psychoanalysis deeply engaged itself with questions of autonomy and influence, seeking to minimize the analyst's impact in order to allow for self-direction and uninterrupted growth. The relational turn in psychoanalytic thinking challenged the hermetic fantasy of the therapist's2 positioning as a blank slate and, having recognized the inevitability of influence, has sought to involve and incorporate the therapist more fully within the therapeutic dyad. However, some prejudiced practices are still at place. Since Freud's abandonment of hypnosis and touch, the therapeutic use of both trance and touch have been largely alienated from the psychoanalytical milieu. As a consequence, research and clinical applications of both disciplines developed disconnectedly, and became fragmented. This paper suggests that Freud's initial reasons for abandoning the practice of hypnosis and the use of touch were politically and socially embedded. The paper traces the original split between psychoanalysis, hypnosis and touch to a strategic juxtaposition of establishing psychoanalysis as science in-par with physics. It suggests that both trance and touch represented highly relational, unmediated challenges to the therapeutic dyad, which Freud was unable to incorporate into his practice at the time. This dissociated split is presented through examining Charcot's performance-hypnosis with Blanche Mary Wittman. The paper then sets to briefly discuss the nature of relational body-psychotherapy and relational hypnosis, demonstrating their relevance to modern relational psychoanalytic thinking. The alienation between these three disciplines results in loss of valuable fertilized dialogue which could enrich and inform practitioners from all three disciplines, and facilitate the amalgamation of a cohesive relational framework. Today, the sociocultural conditions allow for reintegration of these valuable aspects of human connection: trance and touch. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Re-visiting Freud, Jewishness and the otherPSYCHOTHERAPY AND POLITICS INTERNATIONAL, Issue 2 2007Dominik Havsteen-Franklin Abstract This paper is written in response to the book Hate and the Jewish Science by Stephen Frosh (2005). The central questions being explored are ,is psychoanalysis a Jewish science and what are the implications of the authors findings?' The response is written very much using the contextual material of Frosh's book and makes reference to many of the general themes outlined, such as the Jew as other, the Jewish relationship to Yahweh and the contrasting relationship with God in Christianity. The subject of Jungian psychology is also explored in terms of a religious dimension that is omitted in Freud's works. There is also some discussion about generalisation as an inevitable problematic when discussing race and culture. Matte Blanco's concepts of symmetrical and asymmetrical modes of being are summarised to help offer a formulaic view on the processes of using logic to make generalisations through relative simplification. Finally, there is an exploration of variable dynamic relationships to an internal other that illustrates the potential conflict through a sense of superiority between other-centricity and egocentricity. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] How translations of Freud's writings have influenced French psychoanalytic thinking,THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 4 2010Jean-Michel Quinodoz Translations of Freud,'s writings have had a lasting influence on psychoanalytic thinking in France. They have, all the same, given rise to some conceptual distortions as regards the ego and the id, the ideal ego and the ego ideal, and splitting. Lacan's ,return to Freud,' certainly reawakened interest in Freud,'s writings; however, by focusing mainly on Freud,'s early work, Lacan's personal reading played down the importance of the texts Freud wrote after his metapsychological papers of 1915. The fact that there is no French edition of Freud,'s complete works makes it difficult for French psychoanalysts to put them in a proper context with respect to his developments as a whole. The Oeuvres Complètes [Complete Works] edition may well turn out to be the equivalent of the Standard Edition, but it is as yet far from complete , and, since the vocabulary employed is far removed from everyday language, those volumes already in print tend to make the general public less likely to read Freud. In this paper, the author evokes certain questions that go beyond the French example, such as the impact that translations have within other psychoanalytic contexts. Now that English has become more or less the lingua franca for communication between psychoanalysts, we have to face up to new challenges if we are to avoid a twofold risk: that of mere standardization, as well as that of a ,Babelization' of psychoanalysis. [source] Marie Bonaparte, her first two patients and the literary worldTHE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 4 2010Rémy Amouroux Marie Bonaparte (1882,1962) played a critical role in the development of psychoanalysis in France. Her clinical activity is not well known yet she was one of the first female French psychoanalysts. The journalist,writers Alice and Valerio Jahier were Bonaparte's first two patients. She conducted this dual analysis with Rudolph Loewenstein (1898,1976). Alice and Valerio exchanged analysts on several occasions. During his analysis, Valerio began corresponding with Italo Svevo (1861,1928), the author of La Coscienza di Zeno, who imparted his doubts on the therapeutic merits of psychoanalysis. Valerio described his difficult analysis in his letters to Svevo. Bonaparte consulted Freud on the subject, but was not able to prevent Valerio's suicide in 1939. The Princess of Greece encouraged Alice in her vocation as a writer and enabled her to benefit from her connections in literary circles. On the margins of this unpublished story of the two analyses, which is based on archived documents recently made available, we discover the importance of the links which were formed , around Marie Bonaparte , between psychoanalysis and literature. In addition to Italo Svevo, we come across the acerbic writer, Maurice Sachs, as well as the famous novelist, Stefan Zweig. [source] Thinking in the space between Winnicott and LacanTHE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 5 2009Deborah Anna Luepnitz The author, following André Green, maintains that the two most original psychoanalytic thinkers since Freud were Donald Winnicott and Jacques Lacan. Winnicott, it has been said, introduced the comic tradition into psychoanalysis, while Lacan sustained Freud's tragic/ironic vision. Years of mutual avoidance by their followers (especially of Lacan by Anglophone clinicians) has arguably diminished understanding of the full spectrum of psychoanalytic thought. The author outlines some basic constructs of Winnicott and of Lacan, including: their organizing tropes of selfhood versus subjectivity, their views of the "mirror stage", and their definitions of the aims of treatment. While the ideas of Winnicott and Lacan appear at some points complementary, the goal is not to integrate them into one master discourse, but rather to bring their radically different paradigms into provocative contact. A clinical vignette is offered to demonstrate concepts from Lacan and Winnicott, illustrating what it might mean to think and teach in the potential space between them. [source] The concept of the death drive: A clinical perspectiveTHE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 5 2009Otto Kernberg This paper discusses Freud,'s theory of the death drive in the light of clinical experience with severely self-destructive personality disorders, and contemporary object relations theory. Repetition compulsion, sadism and masochism, negative therapeutic reaction, suicide in depressed and in non-depressed patients, and destructive group processes are explored from this perspective. The paper concludes that the concept of the death drive is clinically relevant, but that this condition needs to be traced to the general dominance of aggressive affects as the primary etiological factor; only under severely pathological circumstances does this dominance lead to a focused drive to self-destruct. [source] ,My capital secret': Literature and the psychoanalytic agonTHE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 5 2009Vera J. Camden Taking as my departure point Freud,'s unequivocal claim in The Question of Lay Analysis that psychoanalytic education should include "the history of civilization, mythology, the psychology of religion, and the science of literature" (Freud, 1926b, p. 246),I advocate for an integration of psychoanalysis with the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences in psychoanalytic training. Foundations in these fields are not only acceptable as preliminary to clinical training but will also provide the diverse intellectual climate that is urgently needed in psychoanalytic institutes whose discursive range is often quite narrow. To provide one example of the salutary effect of such disciplinary integration on clinical practice, I illustrate how the transformative power of literature provides compelling metaphors for the psychoanalytic encounter. Through an example drawn from within my own experience as literary critic and psychoanalyst, I describe the ways that the troubling tensions in Milton's Samson Agonistes functioned to illuminate, for me, an analysand,'s ,capital secret'. [source] Murdered father; dead father: Revisiting the Oedipus complex,THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 4 2009Rosine J. Perelberg This paper recovers the notion of the sacrifice of sexuality as the central, tragic, element of the oedipal structure. This notion has been largely abandoned in the psychoanalytic literature that has tended to reduce the oedipal structure to processes of exclusion. The paper traces the development of the theoretical and clinical transformations of Freud,'s ideas on the role of the father and suggests that they allow us to more fully comprehend the Oedipus complex proposed by Freud. A paradox is explored: the killing of the father is, in Freud,'s view, the requirement for the creation of the social order which, from then on, prohibits all killings. The father, however, has to be killed metaphorically only, as the actual exclusion of the father lies at the origin of so many psychopathologies from violence to the psychoses and perversions. The paper analyses the fundamental asymmetry that is present in the Oedipal structure and suggests that the three elements of the oedipal triangle constitute the law (of the dead father, that institutes the sacrifice of sexuality), desire (for the lost object) and identification (with both father and mother). Two clinical examples are discussed. In the first, one can identify a perverse structure in which the father has been murdered; in the second, there is a progressive construction of the dead (symbolic) father in the analytic process. [source] Dreaming as a ,curtain of illusion': Revisiting the ,royal road' with Bion as our guideTHE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 4 2009James S. Grotstein One of Bion's most unique contributions to psychoanalysis is his conception of dreaming in which he elaborates, modifies, and extends Freud,'s ideas. While Freud dealt extensively with dream-work, he showed more interest in dreams themselves and their latent meaning and theorized that dreams ultimately constituted wish-fulfillments originating from the activity of the pleasure principle. Bion, on the other hand, focuses more on the process of dreaming itself and believes that dreaming occurs throughout the day as well as the night and serves the reality principle as well as the pleasure principle. In order for wakeful consciousness to occur, dreaming must absorb (contain) the day residue, and transfer it to System Ucs. from System Cs. for it to be processed (transformed) and then returned to System Cs. through the selectively-permeable contact-barrier. Dreaming, consequently, allows the subject to remain awake by day and asleep by night by its processing of the day's residue. Bion seems to conceive of dreaming as an ever-present invisible filter that overlays much of our mental life, including perception, as well as attention itself. He further believes that dreaming is a form of thinking that normally involves the collaborative yet oppositional (not conflictual) activity of the reality and pleasure principles as well as the primary and secondary processes. He also conflates Freud,'s primary and secondary processes into a single ,binary,oppositional' structure (Lévi-Strauss, 1958, 1970) that he terms ,alpha-function', which constitutes a virtual model that corresponds to the in-vivo activity of dreaming. He further believes that the analyst dreams as he or she listens and interprets and that the analysand likewise dreams while he or she freely associates. [source] ,The healing power of love': The literary/analytic bond of marriage in Freud's essay on GradivaTHE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 3 2009Dorit Ashur Freud,'s declared position regarding the management of ,transference love' advocated ,abstinence', objectivity and even ,emotional coldness in the analyst'. However, his essay on Jensen's Gradiva reveals an identification with an involved and responsive ,maternal' analytic position associated with theorists such as Ferenczi, Balint and Winnicott. These theorists attribute the origins of transference love to the pre-oedipal stage, shaping their analytic model on the basis of the early relationship with the mother. Freud generally had difficulty identifying with such a position, since it entailed addressing his own inner feminine aspects. Yet a literary analysis of his ,Gradiva' reveals this stance in his textual performance, i.e. in the ways in which he reads and retells Jensen's story. Freud,'s narration not only expresses identification with Zoe, the female protagonist, but also idealizes her ,therapeutic' conduct, which is closer in spirit to that of object-relations theorists. His subtext even implies, however unintended, that an ideal treatment of transference love culminates in a psychical ,marriage' bond between the analytic couple, a metaphor used by Winnicott to describe the essence of the mother,baby (analyst/patient) bond. Freud,'s reading process is itself analogous to Zoe's ,therapeutic' conduct, in that both perform a creative and involved interaction with the text/patient. [source] Off the beaten track: Freud, sound and music.THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 5 2008Statement of a problem, some historico-critical notes The authors note that the element of sound and music has no place in the model of mental functioning bequeathed to us by Freud, which is dominated by the visual and the representational. They consider the reasons for this exclusion and its consequences, and ask whether the simple biographical explanation offered by Freud himself is acceptable. This contribution reconstructs the historical and cultural background to that exclusion, cites some relevant emblematic passages, and discusses Freud's position on music and on the aesthetic experience in general. Particular attention is devoted to the relationship between Freud and Lipps, which is important both for the originality of Lipps's thinking in the turn-of-the-century debate and for his ideas on the musical aspects of the foundations of psychic life, at which Freud ,stopped', as he himself wrote. Moreover, the shade of Lipps accompanied Freud throughout his scientific career from 1898 to 1938. Like all foundations, that of psychoanalysis was shaped by a system of inclusions and exclusions. The exclusion of the element of sound and music is understandable in view of the cultural background to the development of the concepts of the representational unconscious and infantile sexuality. While the consequences have been far reaching, the knowledge accumulated since that exclusion enables us to resume, albeit on a different basis, the composition of the ,unfinished symphony' of the relationship between psychoanalysis and music. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||