Search

This discussion of two related papers on political activism by Bettina von Lieres and Afarin Kohan focuses on the mechanism of transformation from psychic experience into political action. In both papers, the move to political action is seen as a consequence of collectivization, politics being understood as a function of groups, but a distinction is made between brute politics and the elaboration of the political as a psychoanalytic process. The original papers are seen as furthering the aims of social psychoanalysis and community psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article serves as an introduction to a collection of papers that respond to Jonathan Palmer's paper on the role of creativity in psychoanalytic work. The contributors, who are known for their creative approach to psychoanalysis and art, offer their unique perspectives on the theme of creativity in psychoanalysis. They emphasize the significance of creativity, aliveness, and play in the therapeutic process, drawing on personal experiences and artistic references. The papers encourage readers to reflect on their own sources of creative expression and consider the role of creativity in their own analytic encounters. [Extracted from the article]

In their papers, Sally Bjorklund and Hillary Grill investigate the negative impact of the reversal of Roe v.Wade on women's ability to choose when and how to manage their bodies and minds. Bjorklund offers an historical perspective, while Grill presents personal and clinical material to illustrate how misogyny and male dominance are reinforced through the intersection of externally imposed laws, socially transmitted beliefs, and the perpetuation of such beliefs through models of mind that implicitly devalue women—models such as psychoanalysis. Iinvite psychoanalysts to continue to interrogate misogyny while also asking how our clinical work might challenge and change psychoanalytic theorizing about female development, theorizing that continues to pathologize women and valorize male dominance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the relationship between art and psychoanalysis, specifically focusing on the concept of aesthetic experience and its impact on therapy. The authors discuss how aesthetic experiences can lead to transformative change for both patients and analysts, allowing for new approaches to life and the ability to confront difficult experiences. They emphasize the importance of the analyst's involvement and openness in creating an environment for these experiences to occur. The article also touches on the role of creativity in therapy and the analyst's responsibility to nurture the patient's own creative self. Overall, the article highlights the interplay between art and psychoanalysis and the potential for aesthetic experiences to deepen the therapeutic relationship. [Extracted from the article]

"A Fresh Look at Psychoanalytic Technique" is a collection of Fred Busch's important papers on psychoanalysis. The book emphasizes the patient's capacity to think, integrate, and internalize interventions, as well as their increasing participation in the process. Busch highlights the importance of the analyst's interpretations being based on something actively knowable by the patient, rather than relying solely on the authority of the analyst. The book also explores the use of contemporary ego psychology in analysis and the development of the patient's self-analytic function. Overall, the book provides technical recommendations for analytic practice with realistic clinical vignettes. [Extracted from the article]

Rachel Kozlowitz and Kirsten Lentz have challenged psychoanalysis to consider more deeply the impact on analysands when the therapist becomes mortally ill and/or dies, and to make the necessary personal exploration (Kozlowski) and structural and theoretical adjustments in the field (Lentz) required to accommodate this possibility. In this discussion, Blaustein contextualizes their thoughtful arguments in our culture's general aversion to talking about death. Drawing on the work of Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), Blaustein also builds upon the authors' shared recognition that when serious illness or mortality enter the treatment room, the analytic frame must be reimagined and expanded to make room for the positive and loving aspects of the analytic relationship – which may have been latent and unexplored to date – to become manifest and shared consciously between the dyad as a way to help offset the profound feelings of isolation, self-doubt and betrayal often reported by patients whose analysts have died without preparation or warning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In sum, this book is very multifaceted, it covers a lot of ground, it has Eigen's direct response to dozens of critical questions. Only in his late work has Eigen had much to say about a general theory germane to psychoanalysis ( I Image, Sense, Infinities and Everyday Life i ) or more aphoristically and fragmentedly ( I Under the Totem: In Search of a Path i ). Here is some classic Eigen, typical of the flavour of the whole book, from the essay "Psyche Singing", that is picked up in the book's title. Dialogues with Michael Eigen: Psyche Singing: edited by Loray Daws and Michael Eigen, London, Routledge, 2020, 279 pp., £96.00 (cloth), £27.99 (paper), £27.99 (ebook). [Extracted from the article]

My comment on the interdisciplinary study of Heidegger and Freud by Shoshani et al. is focused on the semantic and conceptual differences between these thinkers concerning the meaning of truth and the role of anxiety. Heidegger emphasizes truth as a philosophical goal, whereas for Freud truth is a challenge to study the dynamic functions of the human mind by avoiding predetermined answers. The authors describe convincingly how Heidegger and Freud tread on the same phenomenological terrain. Their approaches differ, however, in their respective goals. For Heidegger, the goal is a new philosophical understanding of the sense of being defined by him as Dasein. For Freud, the goal is to understand the dynamics of the human mind in a two-person clinical relationship. This difference in their goals also implies a difference in their ontological approach. On the other hand, Shoshani et al. highlight the value of Heidegger's view of anxiety as a trigger that calls for a search for increased understanding. According to the authors, this point is important, as it opens a shared humane way to treat people with severely disturbed mental conditions. In this respect, the understanding of the meaning of anxiety by Heidegger can also inspire clinical work and thereby open perspectives common with psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author responds to the critical remarks in the comments by Ferro & Riefolo (2023) and by Fornaro (2023). The main points are, in the first comment, the status of reality in psychoanalysis, enactment, the various conceptions of the unconscious, self-disclosure, and the dialogue between philosophy and psychoanalysis. As for the second comment, on the other hand, the issues addressed concern the interpretation of Husserl's contribution to a better definition of the concept of intersubjectivity in psychoanalysis and methodological aspects related to the use of notions derived from speculative thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to Julie Gerhardt's paper, "Clinical Anecdotes from my Home Office: Privilege and the Haunted House Next Door," I emphasize Dr. Gerhardt's efforts to undertake a transformation in her analytic work and its customary framework. She shares her experience of allowing herself, or even seeking out, an interruption, or even a "disruption," of her usual methods of listening in the service of widening her analytic focus from the strictly intrapsychic, or intersubjective, to include the perspectives that social psychoanalysis allows with regard to the social and cultural patterns that shape unconscious expectations and perceptions. This brought about a transformation in her clinical work, which led to the capacity to make use of a different quality of reverie, a process that she shares with the reader as she moves to more self-consciously include the social as a significant force affecting psychic reality. In addition, I emphasize that it is important to recognize in her account the difficulties and hazards in engineering such an alteration in the analyst's customary ways of understanding and being in relation to patients, and suggest that the process described can be rightly considered one of "self-reparation." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From many years, studies on psychoanalysis were built within a Newtonian framework. Today, with updated contemporary knowledge about quantum physics, we have the opportunity to bring a deeper appreciation to the study of psychoanalysis. Based on the contemporary development of quantum mechanics, I sought to demonstrate how these developments are compatible with psychoanalytic psychotherapy. By illustrating the supervised psychotherapy case below, I sketch a line of thought about a quantum-like modeling in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, specifically in the psychoanalytic listening. Finally, I have proposed ‘Quantum Listening’ eventually transmitting this quantum-like perspective of psychoanalytic listening to the rest of the psychoanalyst community and psychiatrist society in general. Through this paper, I hope to demonstrate how quantum physics is applicable to psychoanalysis. Although it is hard to know how much credence is given to the concept ‘Quantum Listening’, it does add motivation for a more comprehensive understanding of psychoanalytic listening. This short and basic paper is a preliminary to ‘Quantum Listening’ and further research will be carried out afterwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mark Solms' revision of the concept of drive represents the latest in a series of his indepth reviews of the most fundamental Freudian concepts. The movement of neuropsychoanalysis begun in 2000 with the first Congress focused precisely on a neuroscientific definition of affects and emotions. In 2013, Solms proposed a substantial and profound modification of Freud's structural model, motivating his theses which argue that the instinctual id can only be conscious. In the current paper, Solms (2021a) reaffirms and re-evaluates the centrality of drive theory in psychoanalysis and neuroscience as a starting point for understanding conscious and unconscious phenomena, in normality as well in pathology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At times, there may be a bit too much of a I distinction between i self and culture, individual and culture, self, other and culture. Keywords: culture; infant; infantile; politics; psychoanalysis; race and gender EN culture infant infantile politics psychoanalysis race and gender 260 263 4 06/24/22 20220601 NES 220601 This brief essay takes up the interlocking themes articulated in a panel of papers by Margarita Cerejido, Karim Dajani, Orna Guralnik, and Klaus Poppersieker; all of them take up links between our varied ways of approaching culture and "the infantile." Culture, infant, politics, psychoanalysis, infantile, race and gender. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses Freud's presentation on telepathy to his close colleagues at the meeting in the Harz mountains in 1921. It considers the fate of his paper and the reasons why he never published it as a single piece. The development of Freud's ideas about telepathy during the succeeding years and the reasons that prompted him finally to publish his views on thought-transference in 1925 are also considered. The article also discusses the place of the four cases presented in his writings on telepathy over this period, culminating in his new 'lecture' on Dreams and Occultism in 1933. It is suggested that Freud's persuasion that psychoanalysis could credibly account for thought-transference was in part affected by the degree of trust he held in those presenting him with material, but most of all by his own personal experience. Freud held out against opposition from people like Jones on the matter of the worthiness of the subject for investigation, but never succeeded in integrating it more fully into psychoanalysis, and this position is largely unchanged today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss John Riker's article, "A Critique of Stolorow's Erasure of Self Psychology and his Appropriation of Heigegger's Theory of Authenticity, plus the Possibility of an Intersubjective Self Psychology" a paper in which Riker sets out to evaluate Stolorow's intersubjectivity theory and its contribution to psychoanalysis. I attempt to add something to Riker's consideration of intersubjectivity especially as it relates to our shared mortality, a topic addressed by Stolorow in a lifetime of books and papers. I also comment on some of the similarities and differences between the ideas of Kohut and Stolorow, suggesting that to some extent these differences lie more in the distinctive languages coined by the two authors than in the ideas themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both Harris and Howard in their thoughtful papers examine the intersection of the psyche and the social in the context of COVID-19 and racial unrest. The combination of these events has brought into sharp focus the impact of the social on intrapsychic functions. Especially in relation to African Americans and low-income persons, we observe the varied impact of racist and capitalistic driven systemic inequities and the conflicts and resistances that they generate. Psychoanalytic perspectives offer the possibility through reflection, education, and atonement to inform attempts to promote self-care, enlightened interventions, and system change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion focuses on one aspect of Farber's work: the birth of the tango (this issue). The tango was created as a fusion of African and European immigrant culture in Argentina between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first twenty years of the twentieth century. The tango was one of the tools used by immigrants to socialize the pain of the loss of common roots, the lack of identity, and the sense of loneliness. The author reflects on the overlaps between tango and relational psychoanalysis, and muses on the impact of the loss of hugs and embraces in this worldwide pandemic caused by Covid and the collective trauma that it entails. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper by Elizabeth Allison & Peter Fonagy (2016) “When is truth relevant?” (translated in issue no. 1/2020 of Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane) is discussed from the viewpoint of cognitive therapy, in particular of the recent cognitivist perspective influenced by the contributions of the Italian researchers Vittorio Guidano and Giovanni Liotti and by attachment theory. This new perspective within cognitive therapy includes a constructivist approach to knowledge and values the intersubjective dimension of mental processes, with an emphasis to the role of the therapeutic relationship in the treatment strategies. The theoretical and clinical aspects of a dialogue between the cognitivist and the psychodynamic approaches are discussed, in particular regarding the concepts of “truth” and “epistemic trust”; cognitivist and the psychodynamic approaches have specific differences, but old oppositions could be overcome and these two approaches can come closer to each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a comment on Björn Sahlberg's paper on the function of training analysis in the Swedish psychoanalytic association and discusses some aspects of the candidates' personal analysis and supervision. The paper further suggests some possible sources for inspiration and perspective on organizational and educational issues, for example taking an interest in the epistemology of professions, in what the concept of 'reflection-in-action' could mean in the training situation, or in empirical research about the educational models and the practice of psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we describe and demonstrate the value of adopting a psychosocial methodology to explore unique sexual socialisation experiences emphasising the role of reflexivity. Psychosocial methodology emerges from Psychosocial Studies, a "transdisciplinary" area interested in phenomena from "both" a social and personal perspective and in this paper is employed to investigate how sexual socialisation is shaped by psychological processes "and" social relations, and how these can be "thought together" (Frosh & Vyrgioti, 2022). Psychosocial data analytic strategies involve applying narrative and discursive psychology alongside psychoanalytic concepts to understand the possible reasons for a participant's investment in particular discourses, understanding these investments as serving unique unconscious defensive purposes, alongside social functions. To illustrate this, we use data from a Free Association Narrative Interview with an isiXhosa-speaking "Black" socioeconomically disadvantaged woman in South Africa about her experiences of sexuality socialisation within her sister-sister relationship. We show how a psychosocial emphasis traverses traditional boundaries between discourse and affect, talk and experience, researcher and researched, moving across disciplinary spaces. Furthermore, we pay attention to what is frequently considered the background of research - the study context; the emotional quality of the interview encounter between the researcher and participant; the researchers' relationship with one another and their contribution to both the data production and analysis. This emphasis on reflexivity in psychosocial methodology is consistent with the political and philosophical position of Psychosocial Studies that is critical of the reification of disciplinary knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the historical development of psychoanalysis, the solitude of the patient in the session room has evolved over time in the direction that the mind cannot be considered separately from one’s story and external reality. While I was working on writing a discussion paper on Mustafa’s case, I was under the devastating effect of the earthquake disaster that occurred in my country. Therefore, my discussion paper is shaped by my associations of the vulture in Mustafa and Eva’s room and the context in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the capacity to mourn is ubiquitously acknowledged as critical for individual psychic functioning, the impact of this capacity on a collective social level has been examined to a very limited extent in the psychoanalytic literature to date. The two papers that take up this this topic thus bring various critical and complex issues to our attention. After reviewing and commenting on these papers, I discuss how these issues are particularly relevant today to society in general and psychoanalysis in particular. I believe that the ability to mourn is under siege in the Western world at present, with respect to both "macro" mourning that is, mourning for significant losses such as a beloved person, ideal, or country, and "micro" mourning or mourning for losses inherently and unavoidably implicated in choices we make in everyday life. These mourning processes are undermined by the impact of complex socioeconomic parameters on psychic functioning, as evidenced by various internal problems and symptomatology characteristic of our times. In turn, difficulties in mourning contribute to social problems including social injustice, wars and the climate crisis. As psychoanalysts we are called upon to address these issues in our clinical work as well as in our global community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the human relationship to technology, and AI in particular, including the proposition that algorithms are the new unconscious. Key is the question of how much human ability will be duplicated and transcended by general machine intelligence. More and more people are seeking connection via social media and interaction with artificial beings. The paper examines what it means to be human and which of these traits are already or will be replicated by AI. Therapy bots already exist. It is easier to envision AI therapy guided by CBT manuals than psychoanalytic techniques. Yet, a demonstration of how AI can already perform dream analysis reaching beyond a dream's manifest content is presented. The reader is left to consider whether these findings demand a new role for psychoanalysis in supporting, sustaining, and reframing our humanity as we create technology that transcends our abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to provide some clues and red threads through the magisterial work of Eric Santner. The first part takes the point of departure in his book on Schreber (My Own Private Germany) and tries to lay down a basic narrative that subtends most of Santner's work and can be encapsulated by "the secret history of modernity." This narrative is briefly spelled out through the relationship of Schreber the father (the "surplus father" as the continuation of the enlightenment), Doctor Flechsig (the seminal representative of the modern university discourse), and Schreber the son, the embodiment of the symptom of the progress of modernity. The second part of the paper scrutinizes three interrelated concepts proposed by Santner, too muchness, the surplus of immanence, and manatheism, which provide conceptual tools to address the break of modernity. The three concepts are brought into relation with the historical placement of psychoanalysis in modernity, the dialectic of "what remains" and the emergence of the new, and finally with the nature of the exception pertaining to the notion of the surplus. The last part, "the punning of reason," examines Santner's frequent use of puns ("puncepts") as a conceptual strategy to deal with the paradoxes of universality. Punning is taken not as an addition or embellishment but as a poignant way to propose a new status of universality, related to what Lacan named lalangue. The three different perspectives try to show the different ways by which Santner's work addresses the core conundrums of modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deploying a Lacanian conceptual framework, this article interrogates the psychoanalytic underpinnings of Paulo Freire's dialogical method of critical pedagogy. The paper advances the claim that the transformative efficacy of Freirean dialogue is rooted in its unique ability to confront and engage the repressed element of trauma, or what Lacan calls the real. The author suggests that the locus of trauma stands as the elusive, yet central and constitutive axis around which Freire's dialogical engagement turns. Following psychoanalysis' attention to biography, the paper first examines how Freire's personal experience of exile informs his philosophical orientation to being, politics, and education. Turning to a specific classroom event Freire outlines in Pedagogy of Hope, the paper then develops a new interpretation of Freire's idea of naming, and through Lacanian analysis, extends Freire's insight on the relationship between psyche, ideology, and social antagonism. Pushing the idea of class subjectivity in Freire beyond its familiar determinants (namely as an 'identity'), the paper resituates the notion of radical subjectivity in critical pedagogy as the effect of a traumatic loss or gap in the sociosymbolic order of being. The author argues that the 'naming event' in Freire is formally rooted in an encounter with this unconscious gap. To conclude, the paper offers critical educators some new points of departure for conceptualizing the transformative labor of problem-posing dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The clinician who adopts a psychoanalytic approach in a psychiatric context often regards the encounter between two individuals as an interplay of subjectivities, whose mode of being-in-the-world is shaped by their unique historical experiences. Despite some psychoanalytic authors exploring the concept of "contact", it has often been reduced to its similarity with transference and countertransference, with little attention given to its distinctive qualities. This limits psychoanalysis in its ability to conceptualize an unmediated, preverbal encounter between two individuals. In this article, we argue that the dimension of "contact" cannot be equated with transference, and that it constitutes a vital tool for diagnosing and guiding therapy for various clinical conditions commonly encountered in psychiatry. This article is based on theoretical considerations. We first worked on the history of the concept of contact, then of Praecox Gefühl in the works of H.C. Rümke, to which we added the findings of current studies on the relevance of Praecox Gefühl in the diagnosis of schizophrenia and the study of the works of the great phenomenological psychiatrists. In so doing, we aimed to show that contact could be a tool of great use for psychiatric diagnosis, insofar that it allows for a typification of the forms of existence of different patients. H.C. Rümke's investigation of the concept of Praecox Gefühl highlights the unique mode of contact observed in schizophrenia. It is distinct from the feeling of strangeness and involves an intuitive observation of a perceived distance within the clinical relationship. Given that many psychiatric pathologies can cause patients to withdraw from the shared world, we suggest that the notion of Praecox Gefühl , beyond its original designation of the clinician's experience of schizophrenic dissociation and the particularities of the schizophrenic mode of being-in-the-world, may be applicable to other pathologies studied in psychiatric phenomenology. We propose four main forms of contact: the loss of vitality in schizophrenia, the untraceable authenticity of the hysteric, the impossible fluidity in the melancholic, and the failure of anchorage in mania. By approaching contact as a fractal form that reveals the entire mode of the subject's being-in-the-world, this typifying approach goes beyond a purely semiological or etiological reflection and can be diagnostically useful in guiding therapeutic efforts to enhance the subject's capacity to truly engage with others. Our paper focuses on the relationship between contact and what clinicians commonly refer to as an "encounter." It is important to recognize that contact is not always equivalent to an encounter, and that assuming otherwise risks overlooking the possibility that certain relational modalities could actively prevent such an encounter from taking place. These "anti-contact" modalities, exemplified by the Praecox Gefühl , necessitate a focus on the very possibility of being in a therapeutic relationship with the clinician. Therefore, we suggest that clinicians should work to establish the possibility of being in a relation with the patient, prior to attempting to create an encounter. This approach allows for a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which patients can either facilitate or hinder the development of an encounter, and highlights the importance of working on establishing the possibility of a real encounter and being-with the clinician. This paper has sought to challenge the prevailing assumption among psychoanalytically oriented clinicians that contact is merely a sub-dimension of the transferential dynamic. Instead, we have argued that contact warrants specific attention as a tool for both diagnosis and therapy in psychiatry. By examining the example of the Praecox Gefülh , we have proposed a typifying approach that could be applied to the most common clinical entities encountered in psychiatry, based on the clinician's perception of specific modalities of contact within the therapeutic consultation. This reflection on contact and anti-contact is a necessary and contemporary contribution to the psychiatric field, which is increasingly embracing a dimensional approach to psychological pathologies. By prioritizing the dimension of contact, we can deepen our understanding of the nuances of the therapeutic relationship and can enhance our ability to help patients overcome barriers to connection and encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the implications of illness and queerness for the identity Gil de Biedma constructs through his personal diary of 1985. This is a unique case of a Spanish author providing a complex picture of the effect of HIV/AIDS on his own life and work. In addition, the author's diaries are a rare example of Spanish autobiographical writing on illness. Gil de Biedma kept several diaries throughout his life. The last diary, titled "Diario de 1985", is an account of his stay at a French hospital while undergoing treatment for Kaposi's sarcoma. This short diary offers crude yet insightful material on human illness, suffering and the stigma of HIV/AIDS in Spain during the 1980s. By close reading a selection of fragments of the author's diary, utilizing an approach that combines psychoanalysis and social history, this paper exposes the connections between illness, sexuality and identity in Gil de Biedma's autobiographical writing. This paper claims that Gil de Biedma (un)consciously represses naming the illness in his diaries while being very descriptive about the physical symptoms of AIDS and its treatment. This evidences the brutal social and familial pressure to conform to a certain identity, ultimately giving way to a very particular symbiosis between the author's literary persona and his bourgeois self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through pathways of queer theory, Black feminist theory, psychoanalytic theory, and clinical vignette, this paper invites the reader to recognize the ways in which racial capitalism, patriarchy, White supremacy, and other systems of dominance and carceral logics replicate themselves through our play and our clinical life. Considering play and intrapsychic development through the vignette of Alex, the paper offers sociogenic considerations of how social systems are entangled in our object relations, play, and family dynamics. The paper highlights an ethical stance that queers our use of rules, centers Black feminisms of "living otherwise," and invites us to consider what Halberstam calls the "queer art of failure" when thinking about and living out sports and clinical life. The paper offers an inquiry by way of vignette into how we may consider and grapple with oppressive systems that live out interpersonally through unconscious processes, exposing the bonds we have come to believe are necessary to life but that ultimately restrict us from living play, and invites the reader to play with meaning-making between psychoanalysis and social theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Slavoj Žižek's interpretation of drive as a "less than nothing" entity that goes beyond life and death itself in the space of the "undead" is the proper dimension of endurance sports. The question of how far a human can push themselves is open, and limited only by real-life investigation. This paper highlights aspects and potential limits of the drive through three stories of endurance feats: the "Iron Cowboy" James Lawrence who completed 100 Ironman triathlons in 100 days, Courtney Dauwalter who won a 240-mile ultramarathon, and Eliud Kipchoge, the fastest marathoner in history. In each story, a few themes emerge, like the paradox that "discipline is freedom," "feeling alive at the moment of death," and pure jouissance beyond biology. It is not a coincidence that the first marathoner in history actually died after making the famous trip from Marathon to Athens. In the same way, this is exactly the death that endurance athletes strive toward. This paper argues that we should understand this drive as a being-toward-death, as Heidegger's phenomenological analysis in Being and Time holds remarkably for the experience of endurance athletes. But even beyond Heidegger's being-toward-death, as well as various biological explanations for sports motivations, only Jacques Lacan's understanding of drive, and the lamella, yield a satisfying account of these fantastic athletic achievements. As well as the three stories of endurance feats, I incorporate my own experience as an endurance athlete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The very existence of truth, let alone its worth, is currently under attack from many quarters. In the wider culture, disinformation and other forms of misrepresenting the truth spread far and wide, as information conduits proliferate. This paper suggests some reasons for the "anti-truth" trend. Mainstream media have played a role, as have theoreticians from fields as diverse as philosophy, psychoanalysis, science, and literary criticism. "Anti-truth" trends are having a serious impact on psychological treatment, affecting its content and the conception of its goals. This paper suggests some problematic outcomes of this phenomenon for practitioners and patients in various forms of psychotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion expands on the themes of annihilation and what Apprey terms the "no place" of racial- and gender-based violence. Taking examples from their clinical work, all of the authors here reflect on the terror that was instilled in the wake of the White supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia. The terror was not just sparked by the event but by the response of President Trump declaring there were "good people on both sides," that is, that White supremacists were "good" people. This shift indicates a profound sense of institutional betrayal that, as Malin Fors's paper points out, has been central to the United States since the beginning. Integrating ideas from critical race theory, this discussion asks whether psychoanalysis can function to create what Best and Hartman, reflecting on the U.S. history of slavery, termed a "fugitive justice" in the face of what this author considers to be, a foretelling of human extinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion explores and compares the explicit interpersonal method of psychoanalysis of Harry Stack Sullivan and the implicit and until now insufficiently recognized interpersonal method of Sigmund Freud. Interpersonal means interaction via expression of feelings, emotions, and actions, gestures of body and face, and words. The centrality of emotions as motives and movers or action suggests redefining psychic reality as emotional reality. While Freud did not have the word “interpersonal,” invented by Sullivan, he nevertheless acted as an interpersonal psychotherapist both in his prepsychoanalytic period and, thereafter, from his beginnings as a psychoanalyst in 1893. The other purpose of this paper is to promote a new era of collaboration and cross-fertilization between the IPA and other psychoanalytic authors and organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author, who is a sociologist and psychoanalyst, comments upon Wooffitt's analysis of poetic confluence. Using conversation analysis of moments of interaction where one interlocutor says something that bears a strong resemblance to what has just been in the mind of the other interlocutor, Wooffitt suggests that this form of communication has its function in the neutralization of the mental contents of this other interlocutor. In light of material presented by Schegloff in his earlier work, this appears to be a partial function of poetic confluence but not something that is there in all instances. On a conceptual level, psychoanalysis and sociology have had several moments of rapprochement in history. Wooffitt's plea for dialogue is different: rather than focusing on conceptual linkages between the two disciplines, he proposes meeting through empirical studies of the intersubjective and interactional basis of mental phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contours of every psychoanalytic process are shaped by its case formulation. This discussion of Tom Wooldridge’s paper (this issue) of the long-term, psychodynamic treatment of a patient with severe anorexia provides opportunity to demonstrate that formulation derives from aspects of the clinician’s clinical education and personal growth. Wooldridge’s metaphor of the containing functions of the entropic body is extended to include particular paternal functions that an analyst provides his patient and that are suggested in the dialogue of this clinical material. Psychoanalytic case formulation distinguishes it from other aspects of an integrated treatment plan for eating disorder patients; in particular, clinician and patient discover important metaphors and elaborations of personal history that assist in recovery. Thinking through a case from different lenses provides real gratification for the psychoanalyst and a bulwark to assist in potentially life-saving work because of its protective and enriching functions. Drawing upon the metaphors Wooldridge expands upon such as secondary skin formations and the entropic body, I suggest that clinicians who work in the field of eating disorders could draw great benefit from learning more about what psychoanalytic case formulation offers patients. Detailed, evocative case examples such as the one Tom Wooldridge puts forward may be one way to reach this important audience because they bring to life many of the unique features of contemporary psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I question whether Wachtel’s assertion that there are gaps in the relational literature and residues of a one-person psychology is little more than a reflection of the relational tradition, which encompasses a multiplicity of perspectives. This notwithstanding, his paper helpfully addresses a neglected dimension of clinical practice and provides the opportunity to explore the evolution of Stephen Mitchell’s thinking about the baby as a psychoanalytic metaphor. In doing so, I briefly, if somewhat tangentially, discuss the structure of the inner world, the role of memory in psychoanalysis, the nature of transference, and the extent to which early experiences with caregivers influence adult intimate relationships. To further illuminate Wachtel’s theoretical and therapeutic model, I summarize Mitchell’s (2000) case study of Connie, focusing on his detailed inquiry into her everyday relationship with her husband. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the paper "Revision of drive theory" (Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane, 2022, 56, 3: 363-422) Mark Solms (2021a) correctly argues that the basic motivational forces are affect systems, activated following the general homeostatic principles that govern biological processes that assure survival and reproduction. However, psychoanalytic object relation theory points to a specifically human, supraordinate integrative motivational system that condenses component affect systems into the affiliative and counteraffiliative motivations described by Freud with the concepts of libido and aggression. They are not "drives" in the psychobiological sense, but profoundly define unconscious intrapsychic conflict and are relevant in clinical psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of Taiwanese nationalism in the late 1980s and early 1990s that rapidly, radically, but "peacefully" replaced Chinese nationalism to become the hegemonic discourse in two decades is a political "miracle." My paper argues that this compressed political transformation would not have been possible without the help of psychoanalytic discourse mediated by critical theory in the activist and critical intellectual circles. In the context of the (post-) Cold War era, there was a peculiar form of decolonization equated with de-Sinicization. At stake is a translational concept that itself becomes untranslatable: zhu-ti-xing, the Chinese word for subjectivity. By analyzing the conflicts within the Chinese-speaking activists and intellectuals in the United States and in Taiwan, I will demonstrate in this paper the ways in which the Lacanian idea of the subject as having a lack becomes a critical tool for the advocates for the independence of Taiwan to break through the existing discursive inertia and to effectively make Taiwan a nation without essence, a nation of zhu-ti-xing/subjectivity, and to facilitate the fitting of this new hegemony into the ideology of Pax Americana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new approach to theorizing and empirically investigating a phenomenon variously described by sociologists as internalized oppression or symbolic violence. Located at the intersection of internal worlds and external reality, the intrapsychic and the interpersonal and social, this object of inquiry—here termed self-negation—is crucial to many forms of societal domination. The paper explores its inner workings, analytically disaggregating it into an array of psychosocial processes drawn from the psychoanalytic theory of the defenses. Much of the work's originality consists in showing how these processes operate across multiple systems of domination and drive many and varied outward manifestations of the phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an exploration of gratitude as a fundamental concept in psychoanalysis. Melanie Klein’s classic article “Envy and Gratitude” (1957) named gratitude at one pole on an axis of human suffering and flourishing, but with a few notable exceptions, the article stimulated research into envy. This paper explores the historical and philosophical traditions that have, to some extent unconsciously, influenced our contemporary understandings of gratitude. The paper also works to explore the social and ethical meanings of gratitude as well as gratitude’s psychoanalytic significance. The aim is to uncover the overall psychic significance of gratitude and its place in human flourishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tells the story of the work of a parent-infant psychoanalytic psychotherapist with an infant girl and her mother, from the age of four to 19 months old. It became clear, very quickly, that she was a replacement child. She was born four years after the death of her profoundly disabled brother and before her mother had begun the process of mourning her dead son. The mother was struggling to see the infant as a person in her own right and felt that she wanted her daughter to be a reincarnation of her dead brother. Although the infant was always dressed as a girl, there was also something boyish about her presentation. The work centred around us playing together and helping her mother to see her as a person in her own right, as well as observing and trying to make sense of the infant's play. The therapist used her metaphoric function to hypothesise what the infant might be trying to understand in her play, especially with two identical plastic oranges that were the same and yet different. What emerged was that the mother was herself an identical twin, who never felt fully separated from her twin sister, and always felt that she was two people. An interpretation to the infant that perhaps she also thought that she needed to be two people, herself but also her dead brother, was met with a confirmatory response from the infant; it felt pivotal in elucidating for both mother and infant their respective challenges in the wake of the death of their son/sibling. The paper illustrates the importance of early intervention, of both observing and playing with infants and young children; and the importance of the therapist's use of metaphor, which could be viewed as an inductive statement, summarising a guess about inner reality expressed in a skewed or displaced way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper raises and addresses issues to do with leadership and child psychotherapy, beginning with a report on a systematic review of papers about leadership in the Journal of Child Psychotherapy (JCP). The authors establish that leadership is expressed implicitly rather than as an important issue in its own right with relevance to clinical work, service development and the ongoing viability of psychoanalytic child psychotherapy. When reviewing the limited literature available, the authors classify them into five types of article: tribute to leaders past; clinical leadership; threat to survival and call to action; organisational leadership; and exemplary papers describing professional leadership. The authors query why the leadership literature is sparse and inexplicit and respond by using the theme of 'dual citizenship' to explore the issue from a psychoanalytic and organisational perspective. The psychoanalytic perspective explores tensions and barriers that may be profession-specific in relation to leadership. The organisational perspective explores the wider literature on leadership, starting with the concept of 'wicked problems and clumsy solutions'. The authors introduce and describe a 'leadership stance' that is compatible with psychoanalytic practice in context. This requires opening up leadership activity to the same scrutiny and reflective practice as clinical work, which provides ways of containing organisational and career anxieties and perplexing clinical problems. This paper is a call to action in regard to integrating leadership into the training and the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of education, work discussion groups focus on teachers' emotional experience with their students and offer a safe environment in which professionals can freely interact and explore the dynamics and relationships in their workplace. A psychoanalytic therapist usually leads them. They are considered particularly important for preschool education, as young children provoke intense emotional reactions in adults. Although the effectiveness of work discussion groups in preschools has been positively evaluated, their application is considered financially unaffordable. This paper presents the function of a work discussion peer group in preschool education, that is with a preschool teacher as facilitator. To do so, the facilitator's point of view is presented in this paper in the form of a reflective account. A group consisting of six kindergarten teachers was formed. It met for seven sessions. After each group meeting, the facilitator kept a reflective diary. The topics of the meetings included the facilitator's struggle to be seen as a peer, the group dynamics, the development of the group and the importance of supervision, which are all discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I map a set of points that could begin to tell the story of inertia's trajectory from physics and physiology to figurations of psychic life in Freudian psychoanalytic theory. Both preceding and contemporaneous with Freud's use of the concept of inertia to describe an element of psychic life, work was taking place in other intellectual and geographical contexts to translate this law of physics and physiology to a property of mental life. As a particular illustration of this, I examine a lecture given by British scientist Michael Faraday in 1818, wherein he makes the leap from the inertia of matter to 'mental inertia' and is arguably the first recorded thinker to do so in the English language. I then explore the use of the phrase 'psychic inertia' in 1900 by Scottish physiologist D.F. Harris and argue that Harris's work is not only emerging at the same time as Freud's discoveries, but that he prefigures Freud's ideas about the relationship between inertia and the death drive in interesting ways. The final part of the paper returns to sketch out Freud's engagement with the concept in several of his papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1985, British psychoanalyst Hanna Segal delivered the paper 'Silence is the Real Crime' to the first meeting of the group International Psychoanalysts Against Nuclear Weapons in Hamburg, appealing to her fellow analysts to counteract the denial of the geopolitical realities that characterized the late Cold War by intervening in public debates regarding the threat of nuclear war. A year later she gave a paper in London discussing clinical cases of patients who brought their nuclear anxieties to the couch. This article considers Segal's political and clinical writings on the psychological consequences of the atomic age, situating them in the context in which she was living, writing and practising as an analyst: 1980s Britain in a moment of 'nuclear anxiety'. I argue that Segal's anti-nuclear writings shed light on what she called the 'very very tricky' relationship between psychoanalysis and politics. Segal confronted the tension between maintaining clinical neutrality in the consulting room while publicly expressing her political commitments, wrestling with the complex relationships between individuals and the societies in which they live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]