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This paper presents evidence that Bion's epistemological contributions drew on the work of R. B. Braithwaite, a British philosopher of science, more than has generally been acknowledged. Braithwaite introduced the "scientific deductive system", a term Bion adopted. It proposed that empirical scientific methods could be applied to immaterial subjects of study, including "unconscious mental processes" (Braithwaite 1953, ix). Bion's private work journal, collected in Cogitations, documents Braithwaite's direct influence throughout its entries, particularly in one dated 10 January 1959, entitled "Scientific method" (Bion 1959b). This paper reviews relevant elements of Braithwaite's work, and examines Bion's "Scientific method" and samples from his epistemological work to argue that one of Bion's goals was to bring an empirically based scientific model to psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice. More than a matter of academic interest, Braithwaite's work lends pragmatically useful context to understand Bion's theoretical and clinical intentions in greater depth. It also suggests the main reasons why his project did not come fully to fruition, which led Bion to turn from the scientific deductive system towards his later developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses three dimensions that contribute to the constructions of the infantile, as they inform different psychoanalytic perspectives: the infantile body; the infantile mind; and the infantile psyche. Brief reviews of our current knowledge of the infant's physical state and earliest mention, derived from observational and experimental methodologies are presented; raising the question whether psychoanalysts should incorporate such knowledge or rely solely on clinical data. Further, the sources in Freudian texts that legitimate reconstructions of the infantile psyche are examined, while also noting theorists who have chosen alternate approaches. The paper concludes with the assertion that the dimensions which are determined as most germane to a psychoanalyst's construction of the infantile will depend ultimately upon their usefulness in establishing intersubjectivity with patients in clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The starting point for this paper is Freud's thinking about the length of psychoanalysis and the conditions for ending it. His psychoanalytic treatments were intense, but varied greatly in length. Freud's assertion that deep psychological changes take time is still topical; however, the length of time has gradually increased. Available documentation from psychoanalytic training institutes, and findings from empirical studies, indicate that the mean length of psychoanalysis ranges from between three to seven years, and varies between different countries and periods. A recent survey among Swedish psychoanalysts found a mean length of 5.7 years and a wide variation in length from 1.5 to 12 years. Discussions in a seminar group on endings and the qualitative follow-up survey showed that a unique combination of factors determined the duration of psychoanalysis in each individual case. We briefly review the potential determinants of the treatment length and the different meanings of time in open-ended psychoanalytic treatments. To conclude, we stress the need for systematic clinical and empirical studies of determinants and the underlying processes behind the different lengths of psychoanalyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a summary of the careers of the psychoanalysts Madeleine and Willy Baranger and the context in which their ideas developed. It will outline their training contributions in Latin American psychoanalytic associations, which culminated in the foundation of the Uruguayan Psychoanalytic Association. The theory of the bipersonal field, later known as the intersubjective field, will be described. This was conceptualized to study the analytic situation when problems of stagnation arise in the analytic process and focuses on the common, unique unconscious phantasy created between analyst and analysand. The concept of the "bastion" and the notion of the "second look" directed toward the intersubjective field will be described as well as the differences between the theory of the intersubjective field and the concept of enactment. The repetition of the analyst will be considered, in particular when the analyst only uses one theory. The distinction between Klein's early Oedipus and the Freudian Oedipus complex, which the Barangers considered to be two different concepts, will be explored. The essential points of Madeleine Baranger's article on "bad faith" will be presented. Finally, the concept of resignification and the use of theoretical complementarity will be highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Covid pandemic required the implementation of restrictions, my patients have been concerned with their experience of time, which seemed distorted by the state of emergency impacting on our lives, and often elicited the feeling of inhabiting a dystopian world. There appear existential demands for subjective meaning, especially when the fear of death is so intense it appears uncontainable. The state of uncertainty impacts upon the sense of the future, and hence on desire and hope: affect states that emerge primarily from the internal world. Within the framework of Western thought, time is linear (Cronos), cyclical and recursive (Aion) or fugitively punctual (Kairos). These figures of time implicate the interaction between the internal and external world within a first-person account. The paper focuses on Kairos - that critical moment where the subject's sense of reality through attention serves self-protective functions and leads to action. Kairos is also the temporality of trauma. Vignettes from two patients, of different ages and in different phases of analyses, illustrate the subjective vicissitudes of Kairos, depending on the state of the self, ego, and biographical inscriptions in a wider human chronology. Freud's equation: perception=attention=time captures the psychic work and significance of the temporality of Kairos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When re-read today, "On arrogance", a very brief paper Bion wrote in 1958, reveals its extraordinary topicality. We can think of it both as a commentary on Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and as an essay on the "disease" of psychoanalysis. In both cases, lying at its centre is the triad of curiosity–stupidity–arrogance that drives us to know the truth "at any cost". In this paper Bion redefines the crime of Oedipus (and therefore of psychoanalysis) around epistemic instinct and no longer around sexuality; he unveils the objectifying attitude of the analyst he revolutionizes the understanding of negative therapeutic reactions. The analyst's "psychosis" (or that of psychoanalysis) finds expression in the phenomena of wanting to become a psychoanalyst, of aspiring to be "scientific" (as opposed to gaining a hermeneutical understanding), of wanting to tell the patient what he believes to be the truth, and finally of looking "down upon" his patients and colleagues. Anticipating the themes of Transformations and A Memory of the Future, "On arrogance" lays the groundwork for a cogent criticism of the ideology of psychoanalysis and an effective ethical re-foundation of the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

His most recent paper, "The Analyst's Listening: For, To, With", appeared in the I IJP i last year, and his book I Creative Repetition and Intersubjectivity i was published in 2020 by Routledge. Bruce is a training and supervising analyst and Faculty Member at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, New York, and a member of the Boston Change Process Study Group; he has previously served on the editorial boards of the I Psychoanalytic Quarterly i and I Psychoanalytic Dialogues i . I have been involved with the I IJP i since 2005, reviewing many papers on a whole host of different subjects and from all the different regions of psychoanalysis, and from 2017 becoming the UK Regional Editor. [Extracted from the article]

Freud's "repetition compulsion" and Winnicott's "breakdown" are two divergent concepts that both arise out of an effort to think the unthinkable of death and annihilation. The relationship between these concepts will be examined in terms of their clinical, psychoanalytically theoretical, and philosophical aspects. Freud spoke of the "fright" of trauma, which threatens the functioning of the psychic apparatus, but then he devised a representational conception of death, leading to the hypothesis of the death drive. Winnicott rejected the latter yet he made direct reference to Freud in his theory of trauma. A clinical vignette will show how a represented element (repetition) and an unrepresented element (breakdown) interact in repetition compulsion, leading to the thesis that the compulsory nature of repetition compulsion originates in the threat of breakdown, which also involves the environment (the analyst). This leads to further reflections on the different and yet mutually expository paths that Freud and Winnicott took to make death and annihilation available to thought. An investigation into the temporal structures of repetition and breakdown shows that breakdown involves a breakdown of represented time and therefore cannot be assigned to any point in time. Lastly, on the basis of clinical material, the question is raised as to how an action that represents breakdown can come about: witnesses who interpret an event as an intentional action play a decisive role here. The paper concludes with comments on the implications for treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to distinguish between conscious and unconscious conceptions of objects. I will argue that we consciously ascribe different properties to the same object based on their coexistence in time and space. For example, the colour and flavour of an apple are ascribed to the same object as they relate to the same spatiotemporal location. However, since there is no reference to time in unconscious thinking, we cannot ascribe properties unconsciously to objects based on spatiotemporality. Instead, I hypothesize, properties are unconsciously ascribed to the same object based on the drive they satisfy. This hypothesis accounts for substantial unconscious processes such as condensation, displacement, splitting and certain linguistic features of unconscious thinking. Moreover, it enables the identification of a type of suppression of unconscious content—logical suppression—used to classify levels of personality organization. The clinical merit of this hypothesis will be presented through various case reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alternating a return to Freud's propositions in the well-known paper "Why War?" revisited with her own hypothesis of a feminine-maternal matricial third sitting at the origin of ethics conceived as responsibility towards the other, the author refers to Levinas's reflections on the phenomenon of war. She relates in particular to his introduction of Totality and Infinity, to passages from Difficult Freedom, as well as to one of his later works, which, in an interesting resonance with contemporary violence, is called: From the Sacred to the Holy. While contributing clinical illustrations or elements connected with the Israeli socio-political context in which she practices, the author focuses on the tension between the reality of wars and the aspiration for peace which she sees as related to a nostalgia to intimacy, that is to the feminine-maternal residing in every human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through reexamination of Freud's thinking on the "compulsion to repeat", including detailed study of his Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), this paper brings to the fore a central tension in Freud's thinking on the roles narcissism and love in his foundational view of the person. While Freud conceptualizes the person as self-serving, aiming primarily to maximize personal satisfaction in accordance with the "pleasure principle," he develops an alternative view of the person as primarily loving, desiring to truly encounter the other and reality, even if painful, and guilty when he fails to do so (largely because of conflicting narcissistic/destructive aims). This basic loving desire is associated with Eros and the life instincts, which, counter to what is commonly thought, is what Freud ultimately posits as lying beyond the pleasure principle. From this perspective, narcissistic pleasures become associated with death. The paper goes on to show how while Freud struggled to conceptually ground the view of the person as contending with his desire to love and inevitable inner obstacles to it, Kleinian psychoanalysis takes this view as basic and develops it further. One significant development finds expression in ideas on how the desire to love is not only non-narcissistic, but, rather, is self-sacrificing. Clinical implications are noted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article "The narcissistic difficulties presented to the observer by the psychosomatic problem," by P. Marty.

A letter to the editor is presented in response to an article by Joseph Aguayo that was published in the previous issue about the psychoanalytic study on memory and desire.

This paper suggests that being black in a white majority world attracts powerful racist projections whose cumulative effect can be deeply traumatising, a problem that has not received due attention in mainstream psychoanalysis. This theme is developed through a description of how this difficulty, and the patient's inner response to it, came to light at the beginning of an analysis. The patient, who grew up as the only brown-skinned child in his white family and community, and without a father, suffered from a lifelong preoccupation with men's genitals. On the couch he experienced extreme bodily discomfort that he sought to relieve through violent sexual thrusting; the paper describes how the stance of negative capability was employed to investigate the dynamics underpinning this. This brought to light the patient's experience of racist projection and intolerance on the part of his objects, as well as his identification with them. The importance of recognising and naming these experiences, gradually and as evidence permits, are seen as central in engaging him. The paper ends by discussing how the analyst's blackness may have facilitated this development, and underlines the urgency of addressing the neglect of these matters in the mainstream of our largely white profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

She was, however, also equally aware of the difficulties involved in treating adolescents and that the transference relationship in the treatment of severely disturbed adolescents can be experienced with particular intensity by both patient and analyst (Laufer and Laufer [16], 171). (Laufer [5], 163) In [10] Laufer wrote a paper on "Active and Passive Identifications and the Relationship to the Body in Adolescence". The relationship to the body (which Eglé later formulates as the body being an " I internal object i ") is one of the central lines of enquiry that Eglé developed in connection to adolescent pathology (M. E. Laufer [11]). Graph I would like to share my sadness about the death of Eglé Laufer and to give a brief account of some of her main contributions. [Extracted from the article]

In this paper the relationship of the analytic pair in treatments with the aid of digital media is investigated as to how it is experienced in a double virtual relationship in which the other is not physically present. The author argues that 'remote analysis' promotes a regression to idealised object imagoes because it is located in a double virtual space—that of the medium and that of psychoanalysis. Both spaces involve an attack on or at least a destabilisation of the defence and so target the domain of the virtually immortal wishful impulses (Freud, 1933, p. 73). With reference to a case example, the author discusses how previously suppressed biographical memories that had only been perceived as physical experience and pain could be lived through in double virtuality and experienced so that they became undeniable for the patient and accessible to working through. As a result emotional insight and deeper understanding were achieved. The psychic reality of the unfulfilled longing became palpable and could be overcome in the virtual space of remote analysis and analysis in person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper takes up Wisdom's (1964) little known but significant critique of Bion's book, Learning From Experience. While Wisdom appreciates Bion's clinical and theoretical innovations, he criticised the at times confusing structure of themes that were not sufficiently segregated, the extraneous use of mathematical notation, and the scientific/deductive part of Bion's monograph. In deploying a crucial distinction from Wisdom's critique, one that separates the scientific/deductive aspect of Bion's work from its clinical/inductive trajectory, the author offers an approach to reading Bion's complex text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translations of summary This manuscript, dated 1941, is a class on technique taught by James Strachey to first-year candidates at the British Psychoanalytical Society ( BPS), located in the Archives of BPS. As the last of three written manuscripts on transference interpretation, it offers an opportunity to trace the development and subtle shift in Strachey's thinking following his 1934 paper (Strachey, 1934, 1937). The lecture is striking in its precise language, and in the complexity of the issues discussed. Through the use of an optical metaphor, the magic lantern, Strachey illustrates transference, what is therapeutic about a transference interpretation and describes projective identification and some aspects of counter-transference without naming them as such. Strachey makes a persuasive case for careful attention being paid to the analytic situation, the 'artificially simplified relationship between analyst and patient' with systematic comparison to psychotherapeutic techniques of support and reassurance, which he argues lead to only temporary and limited results. The author argues that Strachey continues to be influenced by Klein's developmental, technical, and object relational theories as was already evident in his 1934 paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the regular peer review process, authors can often feel forced into a somewhat passive position for much of the time: the process I am describing will provide authors with an opportunity to get active. That is, the paper itself can be removed on request by an author, but the title, abstract, author's name (unless anonymous), formal reviews, decision letters, and user comments will all remain permanently on the site. This will serve as an invaluable educational tool, and it will also demystify the review process (we commonly receive the feedback that authors are scared to submit to the I IJP i : open peer review demonstrates that all submissions are treated equally, with respect, and with great value to the author). [Extracted from the article]

This paper tries to answer the question: what is it about the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis that makes it fundamental? The paper argues that the fundamental rule is fundamental to psychoanalysis because it is fundamental to human being that we are animals who think and speak and understand ourselves in logos – that is, in a special form of responsibility-bearing language. We learn how we bear these responsibilities by learning how to take a Sabbath-like rest from them. The fundamental rule is fundamental because in its very structure it probes deeply into and thus reveals and thus gives practical access to the beings we are. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper is demonstrated the clinical usefulness of Freud's last and revolutionary drive theory of life drives and the death drive. The concept of the death drive is shortly discussed as a psychic force leading to deconstruction, fragmentation, dissolution, disinvestment of the self and object, a decrease of liveliness, and finally to the psychic agony paralyzing the self and object. Freud's unbinding and Green's disobjectalization are psychic processes leading to the above results. Variations of life drives and the death drives, and compulsive repetitions are illustrated in sessions of the patient who suffers from psychic agony (absence of emotions and desires), paralyzed self and objects, and blind repetition compulsions. The main goal of this paper is an investigation of enlivening interventions when the treatment is blocked by impasses caused by the death drive influences. These interventions are understood as facilitations of life drives and have different names depending on various clinicians and their differing theories: reclamation (Alvarez), resuscitation (Šebek), the enlivening object (Director), rehabilitation (Fonagy, Target), a new beginning (Balint), a birth (Borgogno). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of trauma on the capacity for representation. Profound trauma hobble the mind's ability to represent (give meaning to) emotional experience, which results in a diminished capacity for thinking, the breakdown of symbol formation and the emergence of concrete modes of cognition. The author begins with Freud's (1920) views on the nature of trauma, in particular his notion of a protective shield (Reizschutz) that envelops the psyche, and moves on to current theories that address the object relational aspects of this 'shield,' with a specific focus on the importance of an internal parental couple (Brown, 2011; Herzog, 2005) as a vital component of that protective shield. In addition, a theory of trauma from a Bionian perspective is offered that builds on two previous papers of the author (Brown, 2005, 2006) which are augmented by contributions from the French Psychosomatic School. Lastly, an extensive clinical vignette from the analysis of an adolescent male is offered to illustrate the near total collapse of his psychic functioning and a compensatory regression to a psychosomatic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawn from five years of experience in the web-based Psychoanalytic Community Collaboratory, this paper explores implications of the 'community turn' in psychoanalysis for roles, methods, clinical theory, and training. With participants from many parts of the world, the Collaboratory has become a creative generator of projects including documentary films, community memorial initiatives, and mental health interventions in highly stressed communities. The Collaboratory's unique pedagogy offers valuable experiential learning about the complex intersubjective dynamics common to group and community life. Through reflection on the interpersonal dynamics of three critical incidents, we illustrate the interplay of intra-psychic and political aspects of identity--what we have termed 'relational citizenship', an intersubjective self-state in which the individual and the sociopolitical are psychically linked and where the challenges of identifying with and belonging to one or more collectivities are recognized and negotiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legalisation of assisted dying, including euthanasia and physician assisted suicide, is increasing in countries across the world and constitutes a key contemporary debate, reflecting social changes, in which two views of suicide conflict; that (1) rational reasons justify assisted suicide, providing dignity and control of terminal illness and (2) suicidal wishes are driven by unconscious and disturbing internal conflicts. In this paper we explore the unconscious motives and meanings of requests for assisted suicide. Although there is a paucity of psychoanalytic literature on the subject, and an absence of practice examples, we make two links, firstly, with the literature of palliative and end of life care, and, secondly, with psychoanalytic understanding of suicide, in order to develop the view that unconscious factors are crucial to understanding requests for assisted suicide. We provide an illustrative case example of psychodynamic psychotherapy with a 94-year-old woman, drawing out theoretical and practice implications. We show that unconscious factors and motives lie behind apparently rational requests for assisted suicide, and attention to these through psychoanalytically informed treatment can bring about therapeutic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a long tradition of psychoanalysis in the community in France. The first psychoanalysts working in public institutions did so in places such as the network of the Offices publics d'Hygiène sociale (OPHS), initially intended to treat tuberculosis, infant mortality, etc., after the Second World War. The introduction of psychiatric care in the community mobilized a genuine interpenetration of psychoanalysis and psychiatry. In 1953, the SPP founded the Centre de Consultations et de Traitements Psychanalytiques, and in 1955 Victor Smirnoff created a children's centre. In 1958, Philippe Paumelle created the Association de Santé mentale du 13ème arrondissement de Paris (ASM 13), a pilot project, implemented in 1960 as "district psychiatry", which is France's national policy of community psychiatry. In the consultation centres of these psychiatric districts, called centres médico-psychologiques (CMP), psychotherapy is provided by clinical psychologists, who are largely psychoanalytic in orientation. In 1972, Pierre Marty and Michel Fain created what would become the Institut de Psychosomatique in 1978. In 1974, ASM 13 created its own Centre de psychanalyse with Jean and Évelyne Kestemberg, specialising in psychotic and borderline pathologies. The activities and theoretical contributions of these psychoanalytic public centres are presented in this paper, with attention to: the distinction between treatment and consultation; the introduction of a new approach to psychosomatics; the description of a psychotic relation to the object as fetish; the research about free treatment and its implications. Currently, the situation of psychoanalysis in France is divided between the medical authorities who reject psychoanalysis in the name of evidence-based medicine, and the persistence of psychoanalysis in both public and private practice. More generally, it appears that the central issue at stake is the conception of the 'psychic human being' and psychic causality in Western societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today in Italy, a group of psychoanalysts works according to Field Theory. In this paper I would like to show that a line of thought from the beginnings of Field Theory in physics, philosophy and psychology leads to the conception of the field of Antonino Ferro and Giuseppe Civitarese. The assumption of a continuous dynamic and a direct relationship between all parts of the field is fundamental for the conception of the analytic field. These parts have a field-dependent identity and are different in sum than when the parts are taken on their own. To trace the evolution of field-theoretical psychoanalysis, I describe the epistemological context in which Kurt Lewin developed Field Theory. I will add selected theoretical elements from works by Georges Politzer and José Bleger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychoanalysis has made a singular contribution to our understanding of how we live with the past; most importantly, the concept of "deferred action" (it will become clear why I wish to retain the English translation) challenges the association of causality with a particular temporal direction, that is, the earlier-to-later direction of causal efficacy. The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of "backwards causation" (as it were) based on an application of the theory of object-use to the problem of memory. I begin with some introductory comments on Winnicott's theory of object-use, before presenting clinical observations on a patient's emerging sense of the past. In the theoretical discussion that follows, I consider the problem of memory in light of the clinical example. A discussion of the continued importance of "deferred action" is presented together with the introduction of the concept of "reclamation" as a type of re-descriptive memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Months following the traumatic termination of my analysis I engaged in self-analytic work in which I was able to rework the events of the termination and their significance in terms of my history. Fundamental differences between my self-analytic process and that of my formal analysis led me to consider how termination may affect the ensuing self-analytic process. In this paper, I look at aspects of termination that have to do with the dissolution of symbiotic ties with the analyst; I will try to show that relinquishment of the frame provides an impetus both for consolidation and reworking of an identification with the analyst, which may enable the analysand to develop a personal way of thinking about the unconscious that differs from that of the analyst. I further suggest that there are inevitable limitations to the analytic process which manifest in the development of irreducible bastions, and that the dissolution of the frame at termination provides an opportunity for self-analytic resolution of those bastions which may allow self-understanding beyond what could have been attained within the formal analytic setting. Finally, I offer some speculations on how these processes may have played out between Freud and Fliess in Freud's self-analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translations of summary The paper deals with imagination and its failures from a psychoanalytic perspective. We offer a definition of imagination failures and suggest how they can be interpreted as an opportunity to learn from experience. In order to show that the topic has a concrete and not only speculative significance we consider the public report on September 11 as a case study. The report was published by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States after a long investigation of the facts and circumstances relating to the September 11 attacks. The document has been the object of strong criticisms, as we argue in the paper. Both the document and some of the critiques that it received focus, however, on significant aspects of the debate about imagination, such us the fragility of imaginative thought, its dependence on unconscious desires and its plurality of outcomes: a plethora of imaginaries can in fact be developed at any time, from the same set of information about reality. We comment on these aspects and reinterpret them from a Bionian perspective. The concepts of 'unthinkability', 'imagination failure' and 'depressive position' are used to inform the necessity of dealing with an evolving and conflictual geopolitical scenario. Particular attention is paid to the proposal of 'routinizing, even bureaucratizing, the exercise of imagination' within the institutions that deal with National Defense. This possibility is discussed in depth in order to suggest how it may be concretely implemented. In conclusion, a strong case is made for the usefulness of psychoanalytic reflection in the arena of relationships among countries, with particular emphasis on the new terrorist challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(g) Shame plays a huge role in the upbringing of Yune, the shame of the parents and of Yune herself - and that again is (at least also) culturally based, as it would be in a high-context culture. It can be assumed that many translations today will have been compiled by translation machines. Letter to the Editor of the IJP Dear Editor, It is with great interest that I read the papers composing the "Analyst at Work" section in issue 2/2021 of the I IJP i . [Extracted from the article]

The article presents the discussion on cannibalistic fantasies underlying some core mechanisms in psychoanalysis. Topics include psychoanalytic papers on trichotillomania and trichophagy in particular the pulling and eating of pubic hair; and understanding as enactments of helplessness and rage over abandonment as an avoidance of awareness of annihilation anxieties.

The article discusses the study conducted by French psychoanalyst Paul-Claude Racamier on narcissistic perversion. It acknowledges knowledge of Racamier in international psychoanalytic literature, his collaboration with several psychiatrists including Serge Lebovici and Philippe Paumelle, and his opposition to psychoanalytic theories of fellow psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. The novel approach introduced by Racamier in dealing with perversions particularly narcissism is also explored.

A large and significant portion of contemporary psychoanalytic theory has given up on the drives. The shift toward object relations in the 1940s and 50s, the scepticism about metapsychology in the latter half of the twentieth century, and a general confusion about the coherence of Freud's drive theory have all contributed to their slow decline in prominence. There are legitimate criticisms of the drives that deserve attention but the drives themselves require a careful examination before any successful defence of their place in the metapsychology may be mounted. The current paper provides an account of the drives informed by the intellectual history of German and English thought related to the drives and instincts as they came to Freud. This history allows us to clearly distinguish between "drive" (or Trieb) and its conceptual neighbour "instinct" (or Instinkt). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an examination of the history of Strachey's work as the editor of the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, work that was shaped by the internal strife within British psychoanalysis and the great international conflict of the Second World War. From the primary sources it has been possible to give an account of how he came to be in charge of the Journal, why he was suited to the role, and also to provide an example of what he was like as an editor dealing with colleague-contributors. It is argued that due to his long-held belief in free speech and candour, and because he was committed to resisting to the utmost a split within the British Psycho-Analytical Society, James Strachey wanted to make both the papers and the ensuing discussions of the Controversies public through the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. As described here, that did not happen in a simple way but he succeeded in publishing papers directly related to the debate by fostering investigation into the subject of internal objects. He also gave space in the Journal to new writers and a plurality of theories, including the nascent object relations theories of D.W. Winnicott and John Bowlby. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In psychoanalysis, the question of child's play owes its fame to child psychoanalysts. Before the emergence of child psychoanalysis, however, Sigmund Freud had evoked the question of child's play in his works many times. Surprisingly, his views on play remain generally underestimated - with the notable exception of the famous "fort-da" game that, by irresistibly attracting innumerable comments to itself, has come to overshadow, in the author's view, the whole Freudian conception of play. This paper therefore aims at archeologically re-examining this notion in the Freudian corpus. It intends to show that, far from being limited to an object of study as "interpreted," play is also called upon for what it offers heuristically as "interpreting," especially when Freud is faced with metapsychological obstacles. Two main strands of this theoretical conception of play are identified (a "deficit" and a "surplus" conception). The paper then highlights how the Freudian conception of play is intimately linked to his melancholy theory of the psyche and of culture. Finally, the paper changes tack in order to briefly suggest that this reconsideration of play might have psychoanalytic implications on two issues, namely the status of child's play in analysis and the more general question of interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In "Communicating and Not Communicating Leading to a Study of Certain Opposites," Winnicott introduces the radical idea that communicating with subjective objects is "cul-de-sac" communication (communication not meant for any external or internal object), but which nonetheless endows every aspect of one's experience with "all the sense of real." He conceives of the "main point" of his paper to be the idea that "each individual is an isolate, permanently non-communicating, permanently unknown, in fact unfound." I suggest that the "main point" is more inclusive and might be stated as: each individual needs equally to be found (recognized, but not exposed) and to be unfound (an incommunicado isolate). Winnicott warns that when an analysis has reached the depths of the patient's personality, interpreting destructively introduces what is "not-me" too close to the core self, so "the analyst had better wait." An unstated question arises: what does the analyst do while he waits other than remaining silent? I respond to this question by giving clinical examples from my own clinical work. Winnicott ends the paper with the language of poetry in his effort to communicate something of the mystery of being that is "absolutely personal" to each of us. Winnicott at the end of his paper sheds the language of prose and adopts the language of poetry in what I view as his effort to communicate something of the mystery of being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forty years after its publication in 1977, The Piggle has recently provoked new interest among researchers. Most notably, the real “Gabrielle” has shared her story with D. Luepnitz and the analytical community. Joining in this vibrant discussion, this paper aims at shedding new light on the case by focusing on The Piggle as a “set-up,” namely on the heterogenous ensemble of discursive and non-discursive elements which determined the analytical process. This reconsideration, although grounded in a Lacanian framework, supposes opening a dialogue between the French and English-speaking literature on the case. Three issues are at stake. First the paper intends to uncover the logic at work in the cure, studying it from the perspective of the analyst and the child, but also from that of the parents. Second, this triple focus is key to a reconsideration of the set-up of psychoanalysis with children more generally—in so far as it questions the function of infantile neurosis and what Winnicott calls “psychoanalysis partagé.” Third, it will look at the powerful effects of co-writing and co-publishing with the parents—considered as part of the set-up itself rather than exterior to the process of the cure—on the analytical outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the reparative quality of delusional systems. The Author explores and expands Freud’s notion of delusion as an ‘attempt at reparation’. Even if a delusion is mostly the consequence of hatred of reality and an omnipotent idealized construction to protect the ego from persecutory anxiety stemming from a destructive superego, its content and function show greater complexity. The function of a delusion is not just to protect the ego but also to protect the object (the analyst in the session) from the patient's violence. In order to show the coexistence in delusional systems of manic defensive aspects with proper depressive reparative ones, the Author presents detailed clinical material from the analysis of an adolescent patient who suffered from intense persecuting voices that negated her right to be alive. The paper proposes that understanding the fluctuation and manifestation of reparative unconscious phantasies, the recognition of their depressive aspects and of their specific function as they are lived out in the transference relationship is central to the development of psychic change in psychotic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing analytic work to solving riddles denudes the analyst's function, doing to their role what my patient was, in her excited state, in part wanting to do to her analyst. In her paper "Meeting the Sphinx" ( I IJP i 103: 965-978), Emma Lunbeck elaborates on a patient's dream I had reported in my paper about a Kleinian account of the Oedipus complex ( I IJP i 85: 731-748). So patient and analyst may "both face the Sphinx" (Lunbeck, 973), but from quite different standpoints. [Extracted from the article]

This paper presents H. D.'s dialogue with Freud on the theme of time and timelessness. Freud presented a conception of time that varied in accordance with the various levels of consciousness. But while linear time is presented in Freud's writing as an essential part of development and mourning, timelessness has not been fully developed as such. A discussion of Freud's conception of time is followed by a reading of H. D.'s memoir Tribute to Freud. H. D. offers a series of reminiscences of different periods in her life, with an emphasis on her analysis and on Freud. The reading of the memoir presents an intense and stimulating narrative of the encounter with Freud at the time of analysis and in après-coup. This translation revolves around timelessness as a path into a realm of imagination and fantasy, not sufficiently acknowledged by Freud as such, yet crucial to H. D.'s quest for an innovative poetic voice. The significance and elusiveness of timelessness is discussed using ideas from André Green and Walter Benjamin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analytic approaches to listening have favored something that is more akin to vision, consequently shaping the technique, aims and understandings of psychoanalysis in terms of the production of understandings and meanings. The aural aspects of listening have mostly been subsumed under this emphasis on the visual. Two models of analytic listening based in the visual are initially presented, listening-for, and listening-to. Illustrations show how listening in these approaches emphasize "seeing" (i.e. discovering or creating conscious understandings or meanings) pertaining to unconscious contents. A third mode of listening, listening-with, based in an aural approach, seeks neither understanding nor meaning thought to be hidden, in need of (co)construction, or needing to be made figurable. Listening-with does not seek to symbolize content either already there or understood to be present as unrepresented. Content is not what is listened for or to, understanding or meaning not the goal. Instead it is an abiding within a space not only of not-knowing but of not trying to know. Exploring the unlanguaged from this latter perspective will involve those portions of the analysand's mental life that are never transformed analytically into symbolized content, as well as experiences involving the patient's mental life that do not call for any such transformation or understanding. The first part of this paper will feature a theoretical discussion of these modes of listening and the second part will illustrate the conception of listening-with via three vignettes selected from the literature, each demonstrating different aspects of the position. These modes of listening are considered to not operate exclusively of each other, but are heuristically separated for the current investigation in order to highlight attention to listening to phenomena existing outside of symbolization or referentiality, phenomena that may never take a form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author suggests that dreams are an expressive means through which the psychic apparatus delineates, construes and communicates an issue it is faced with. It is shown that there are substantial differences between this approach and more classical understandings of the nature and function of dreaming. Instead of laying emphasis on dream work as a defence system or as outlets of unconscious drives, the author highlights two further aspects of dreaming: (1) that in and through dreaming the psychic apparatus has developed a specific capacity to identify and express questions, problems and emotional experiences with which it is confronted, in a complex spiral and vertiginous way, as described in the paper; (2) that dreams encapsulate kernels of experience into "engrams" by constantly searching for ways of addressing and readdressing emotional experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the psychoanalytic treatment of a woman patient during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the setting was profoundly disrupted and was transferred from in-person psychoanalysis to telephone sessions. Drawing on Bleger's formulations on the construction of the analytic frame and on André Green's on the function of the framing structure in the construction and elaboration of phantasy life, the case study shows how, in the absence of the physicality of the setting, the most primitive anxieties about the symbiotic relationship with the mother were expressed and contained in the transference and countertransference in the analysis. The author offers some considerations about the notion of "background of the uncanny", derived from Yolanda Gampel, which draws attention to the challenges when both patient and analyst are inserted into the same traumatic wider context. It is suggested that the production of an art object by the patient during this period represents a step in the elaboration of the work of mourning and towards symbolization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enactment as a psychoanalytic concept was coined by Jacobs in 1986. Since then, it has developed within the psychoanalytic community as a concept. Originally, enactment described an aspect of countertransference expressed through subtle actions within the analytic process, as distinct from noisier performances that fall within the spectrum of "acting out". Nowadays, the concept of enactment poses some difficulties that should not be ignored. As a theoretical concept, enactment has a complex epistemological position, and as a clinical concept it sheds light on contemporary psychoanalytic practices. This paper explores the results from an empirical and conceptual research work, focusing on the history, translations and usages of the term "enactment", and its comparison with related terms. It will also consider the epistemological perspective regarding the current status of enactment as a scientific concept and its relationship with the psychoanalytic theoretical field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author has covered a range of issues to define concepts in psychoanalytic terms that are missing from psychoanalytic theory: the social, social subjectivity, the pain of the social, unpredictability, and uncertainty. First, she reconsiders social pain and social suffering from the perspective proposed by Freud in 1921 in terms of three psychic spaces – intersubjective, intrasubjective and transsubjective – which she considers to be different from one another, and she proposes that pain is manifested in different modes in each of these spaces. Second, she defines the concept of the social, separating it from the mass and proposing the concept of the collective as truly social. She emphasizes that the collective takes on its subjectivating potential when being together builds a "bond" (vínculo). Third, she considers that belonging to a "social" collective creates the illusion of being protected from uncertainty and unpredictability. She identifies uncertainty as a vínculo-regulating psychoanalytic principle that is manifested as perplexity. Finally, at the end of the paper, a section titled "A few situations" includes examples of daily clinical work with patients who have been tortured or who experience political threats or a threat to their lives due to losing their jobs and, as a result, their livelihoods. The final case, which describes an entire session, shows the dynamics of transference–countertransference in working with these situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Repetition Compulsion has been the source of much controversy and perplexity. From it's clinical introduction in 1914 in Remembering, Repeating and Working Through to it's metapsychological elaboration in 1920 in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, it has occupied a central position in Freud's thinking. Especially in regard to his later work, it can be seen to be intrinsic to his final dual instinct theory, his theories of the Death Instinct, trauma, memory, binding and action and to the clinical challenges and theoretical changes that led to the formulation of his second topography. This paper will trace the evolution of the concept in Freud and in certain post-Freudian authors, especially Edward Bibring, Winnicott and Scarfone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the repetition compulsion as a composite structure and explores the elements that are involved in it. After examining the difference between playful repetition, which promotes psychic development, and the repetition compulsion, which obstructs psychic change, the author discusses Freud's models of the repetition compulsion (as the return of the repressed vs an expression of the death drive). Further elements that contribute to the repetition compulsion include the role of a primitive, punitive superego, the persistence of raw, unsymbolized elements, obsessional doubt, the retreat into timeless states of mind as well as a re-entry mechanism in certain psychotic patients. Finally, the failure of reparative processes seems to be a central mechanism in sustaining the repetition compulsion. Brief clinical vignettes illustrate the author's arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]