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Copyright of Gli Argonauti is the property of Padova University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper focuses on one of the most discussed issues in Elias' work, namely the representation of the medieval affective world in The Civilisation Process. Drawing on its ties with Freudian theory, the paper attempts to highlight the ambiguity existing between the accounts of the dynamics of the psyche in Elias and their treatment in the case of the medieval warrior. Then an attempt is made to elucidate some implicit consequences for those who intend, following Elias' path, to question the relations between sociogenesis and psychogenesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Enthymema is the property of Enthymema, International Journal of Literary Criticism, Literary Theory & Philosophy of Literature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Quaderni della Rivista di Psicologia Clinica is the property of Quaderni di Psicologia Clinica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Quaderni della Rivista di Psicologia Clinica is the property of Quaderni di Psicologia Clinica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, I reply to the objections and solicitations of the critics who intervened in the symposium on my book L'oggetto buono dell'Io. In this way, I return to discuss some fundamental concepts of the Philosophy of Object Relations, and some theses of its Ethics of Reparation. In doing so, I try to defend and develop some of the most relevant arguments of that complex theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Enthymema is the property of Enthymema, International Journal of Literary Criticism, Literary Theory & Philosophy of Literature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of this paper is to examine and analyze the main characters in Ian McEwan's novel The Comfort of Strangers (1981) in the light of the overarching theme of the novel, that is, how unconscious or conscious desires lead to violence and destruction. Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory comprises the main theoretical framework of the paper. More specifically, his concepts of the symbolic order and clinical structure of perversion serve as an analytical tool for the analysis of characters. Therefore, the main hypothesis of the paper is that McEwan's characters, the problems of sexual violence and unrecognized desires can be analyzed and explained through Lacan's theory of perversion and symbolic order. What Lacan's theory illuminates in the context of the novel is that characters' unconscious motivations and drives formed during their earliest experiences, if left unrecognized and unaddressed, lead to violence and destruction.

Copyright of PsicoArt is the property of Universita di Bologna, Dipartimento delle Arti Visive, Alma Mater Studiorum and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The editors pointed out that all interactions require some degree of mediation. In other words, a common ground needs to be established on which communication can be based, and when difficulties emerge mediation will be required. In this paper, we will argue that there are contexts where the assumption of common ground is stronger or weaker depending on the training, experience and disciplinary background of those involved in the interaction. The need for mediation may thus be greater in contexts where the assumption of common ground is over-optimistic, and where the consequences of not spotting the potential misunderstanding, and hence skipping mediation, may be serious. Language professionals are very much aware of variation in language proficiency and are less likely to assume complete common ground with fluent Foreign Language (LX) users than professionals from other backgrounds for whom language is merely a technical tool that does not merit special attention. Thus, considering an interlocutor who can talk easily about the weather in an LX, a Foreign Language teacher is less likely to assume complete linguistic common ground than a psychotherapist whose main concern is to locate the source of a client’s issues. The language teacher has been taught that students may have linguistic and cultural gaps that are not immediately apparent and that meaning may need to be negotiated in the classroom. The psychotherapist has been trained to try to understand the client’s worldview, but frequently that training ignores their clients’ linguistic profiles and experiences. Negotiation about meanings and across differences and power differentials, which goes to the heart of psychotherapeutic communication, often ignores the linguistic gap. In particular, psychotherapists (especially monolingual ones) may be less aware that multilinguals can have different levels of proficiency in different discourse domains (Grosjean, 2016). In other words, the ability to converse fluently in the LX about certain everyday topics does not necessarily imply an ability to convey subtle, complex emotions in that language. Clients themselves may be unaware of this. The aim of the present paper is therefore to highlight the need for extra awareness among psychotherapists about both visible and invisible linguistic and cultural obstacles to emotion communication that will require mediation with their LX clients, using appropriate strategies.

In this paper we address the under-representation of Italian-Americans in psychoanalysis in the United States, both as psychoanalysts and analysands. We suggest that this under-representation has arisen from a confluence of cultural biases in traditional criteria for analyzability and pejorative stereotypes about Italian-Americans that have discouraged their participation to the detriment of the field. The paper suggests that contemporary developments across various schools of psychoanalysis open up new opportunities for rethinking the cultural location of psychoanalysis.

The focus of this paper is the topic of musical success and, more generally, of aesthetic success. Within the analytic aesthetics, the need to shift the musical experience on two floors, on two levels, it is increasingly evident. Sometimes, as in the case of those theories that defend a form of ontological realism, this dislocation ends up sacrificing the notion of experience. Can you speak of success within a theory of experience? In order to answer the question this paper attempts to create a dialogue between aesthetics and psychoanalysis.

The present paper offers a reflection on the interconnections between pedagogy and psychoanalysis as interpreted in the phenomenological pedagogy of Piero Bertolini. Interest in the topic is justified by the fact that throughout his work (especially in Bertolini, 1988; 2005) this author himself repeatedly argued for the existence of such links. In the current paper, I outline and analyse some key points of intersection between phenomenological pedagogy and the psychoanalytical perspective. Specifically, I examine the theoretical bases justifying a comparison of these two sciences, the core thematic affinities between them, and finally the implications for the practice of phenomenological pedagogy that arise from this interdisciplinary encounter.

The reflections brought about in the present paper are developed along a renewed dialogue between psychoanalysis and the human sciences, in particular with semiotics understood as the science of signification, a science, according to the definition that Saussure gave in the early twentieth century, "that studies the life of signs within the framework of social life." The specific object of our reflection is understanding whether and how the mentalization abilities of modern humans have changed along with modern digital media. If what MacIver observed about "anomie" is true, namely, that anomic man "lives on the fragile thread of immediate sensations that have no past as well as no future," the specific structure of social media seems to determine psychosocial processes characterized by the flattening of an existential perspective dimension. Social media, in fact, is marked by a linear dimension, referred to by linguists as syntagmatic, and an extreme redundancy of the other fundamental dimension of language, namely the paradigmatic one. This linguistic and, in our opinion, also deeply psychological imbalance toward a horizontal superficiality "without past and without future" actually configures, in clinical experience, a contiguous-autistic dimension. Psychotherapeutic work then aims more than ever at recovering the capacity for a processual journey, session after session, in order to rebuild a vital "psycho-semio-narrative" capacity. Remembering in order to invent, then, and a "memory of the future" such that the relationship between narrative and Origins is not so much and not only the "narrative of origins," but storytelling as a deeply mental and dreamlike tool to originate a future never before imagined.

This paper discusses through the prism of psychoanalysis some specific peculiarities of the poetics of the American artist Félix González-Torres. In particular, the text seeks to highlight how the concept of “burial work”, taken here from the work of the French psychoanalyst Pierre Fédida, is central to understanding the ways in which González-Torres has been able to hold together public and private, autobiographical experience and the involvement of the spectator in order to construct a shared memory that develops along the lines of dynamism and imprecision, renouncing common expectations of the representation of a memory.

The concept of “subject”, although is present in the reflection of human sciences since the time of classical philosophy, continues to present itself as complex and highly ambiguous. In psychoanalytic theory the paradox is concretized by the high frequence of the reference to the subject (in the Freudian Works the word subject appears more than a thousand times) but Freud never specified what is meant by this term. Moreover, in contemporary psychoanalysis in particular, expressions such as subjectivation and subjectivity are frequently used, even if there is no univocal conception of what a subject is. This paper aims to highlight how the subject is a polyphonic concept and how its escape from a definition is characteristic of its dynamism and its perpetual oscillation between the extremes of its semantic field, from subjection to substance.

The purpose of this paper is to show that as unfortunate and miserable as life might have been for the young Franz Kafka, it granted him a place of his own among the writers of masterpieces in universal literature. And even though we avoid indulging in establishing connections between the biography of the Czech writer and Huxley’s or Dostoievski’s biography or literary works, we shall examine a series of images fulfilling a compensating function, pertaining to a psychological register Franz Kafka could not escape from. By way of consequence, whilst writing he succeeded, as a first therapeutic stage, in overcoming his frustrations and unhappiness experienced within his own family, who made him suffer from low self-esteem all throughout his life.

In questo contributo offro una mappa degli studi sul personaggio della critica anglo-americana. L’obiettivo di questo saggio è di aprire un nuovo dibattito critico, ma soprattutto dialettico, sul personaggio in Europa e negli Stati Uniti: attraverso una rassegna dei lavori più importanti su questo aspetto pubblicati dal 2003 al 2016, mostrerò la distanza tra una visione analitica e una continentale sul personaggio ed evidenzierò i limiti e i vantaggi delle teorie prese in esame.In this paper I will offer a map of the Anglo-American scholarship on literary character. My aim is to open a new critical, but foremost dialectic, debate on character both in Europe and in the United States: through a reading of the most works published on this topic between 2003 and 2016, I will show the distance between the analytical and continental approaches on character, and I will outline the limits and the advantages of these theoretical models.

This article explores the relation between life, illness and work in Max Weber. It highlights the conflicts in Weber's family, the causes of his nervous illness, the intimate relations with his cousin Emmy Baumgarten, his mother Helene Fallenstein, his wife Marianne Schnitger, his lovers Mina Tobler and Else von Richthofen. The Weberian critique say that the causes of the family conflict are in the oedipal relation between Max Weber and his father. The thesis proposed in this article is that more relevant for the Weber's crisis is the relation with his mother, the very Super-Ego for Weber. His choice to not marry his cousin Emmy but Marianne Schnitger is the most important rebellion of Weber in his life. And the motherly prohibitions have probably damaged his capacity to sexual capacity. On the contrary, the relations with Mina Tobler and Else von Richthofen open Weber's life to love, art, and eroticism. This article highlights the great relevance of these personal experiences for the Weber's works, from the sociology of music, the rationalisation process, the construction of a multidimensional paradigm of society. Aesthetics, art, eroticism, and love becoming society's spheres just as economics, ethic, politics, religion and are all in a relative tension or conflict each one with other. And Weber use this complex model in his comparative analysis of religions, societies and civilisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pun, which draws on the title of Walter Benjamin's famous essay, is useful to describe the effects of a highly disputed technological revolution, one the human community feels to be imminent. The cultural and anthropological consequences of the possibility of reproducing an artistic artefact through technology were no less relevant than those that occur when the object of reproduction is the human itself. The present essay proposes a reflection on a series of science fiction stories that describe anthropomorphic robots able to act and think in ways that require the emergence of consciousness and the unconscious, both of which are human and mysterious at the same time. We address this vast, complex topic through the analysis of humanmachine dialogue, between evidential paradigm and psychoanalytical treatment. The study analyses examples from literature, cinema and television that have approached the theme in different nuanced ways: interrogations aimed at determining machine malfunction or deception in Liar! (1971) and Mirror Image (1972) by Isaac Asimov; encounters that seek to establish the human or machine nature of the investigated subject in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) by Philip K. Dick and the film Blade Runner (1982) by Ridley Scott; and the conversations between programmers and androids of the TV series Westworld (2016-) by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. Westworld is particularly relevant for the purposes of this study, which tackles the presence of the unconscious in artificial intelligence. Like an oxymoron that unites the unconscious with its opposite, the artifice, this account of the artificial unconscious is a true representation of the impossible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of PsicoArt is the property of Universita di Bologna, Dipartimento delle Arti Visive, Alma Mater Studiorum and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper discusses the problem of the possible relation between psychoanalytic concepts and social critique in the perspective of Adorno's social thought. The title refers to Adorno's idea that psyche as individual spontaneity has now lost the weight it used to have in the liberal era. As a brief introductory remark, I clarify the status of theory for Adorno, i.e., the circularity between interpretation and description as grounded by the nature of the social object itself. Then I analyse his core idea of “social objectivity” as an impersonal mechanism which is at the same time produced by men and reified, heteronomous for them, and I argue that, for Adorno, the discontinuity existing between individual and society prevents an immediate shift of psychoanalytic concepts to the social world: the example of fascism clearly proves that the determining social forces today, while instrumentally exploiting deep psychical materials, are not themselves psychological. In the final part, I show how, for Adorno, psychology and sociology nevertheless need to be mediated with each other, while avoiding the superficial synthesis the so-called “revised psychoanalysis” aims to, and I point out some similarities between psychoanalytic practice and social critique as conceived by him.

In this paper I analyze two distinct contemporary perspectives on the Foucauldian concept of power and resistance, namely the perspectives enlightened by Judith Butler’s La vie psychique du pouvoir and by Stéphane Legrand’s Le marxisme oublié de Foucault. Although these two approaches are interesting ways of discussing the Foucauldian concept of resistance and power, they fail to take into account the role that intellectuals play in practices of social emancipation. Instead I develop the concept of “specific intellectual” in order to explore in more depth the Foucauldian concept of resistance and social innovation.

This paper offers an explanation as to why it is important for process sociology to re-read Freud’s psychoanalysis and theory of culture in the light of Norbert Elias’s theory of civilisation. We need Freud’s insights into the raising of children for a process sociology that is a part of the confrontation with Freud’s individualistic theory of culture and social understanding. For process sociology, it is important to be attentive to psychoanalytical experiences that can demonstrate that human beings are (in) a process in which they grow from childhood into the Society of Individuals.

The Mirror of Ambivalence: Wittgenstein and Psychoanalysis - The relationship between Witt-genstein and Freud has intrigued many critics and has been interpreted in various ways. However, few people have noted how Wittgenstein’s view of psychoanalysis is marked by deep ambivalence – a fact that cannot be overlooked in interpreting both his appreciation and criticism of Freud. This paper discusses how Wittgenstein’s arguments contra Freud, even where justifiable and not merely idiosyncratic, have been surpassed by the post-Freudian developments in psychoanalytic theory. Moreover, it is suggested that psychoanalysis itself, by postulating the existence of the unconscious, is incompatible with one of the most deep-rooted ideas in the “second Wittgenstein” – that is, the impossibility of a “private language”.

This paper applies psychoanalytic frameworks to the survival horror franchise Silent Hill, a series which is itself informed by psychoanalytic themes. Concerns include the construction of game space as maternal womb, cinematic sequences as primal fantasies, and the representation of memory across the games within a psychoanalytic context. The horror genres’ preoccupation with monstrous mother figures is evident in boss battle adversaries, the depiction of gamespaces as bloody «maternal caves», and in narratives concerning characters’ searching for their parental origins Distinguishing between videogames’ playable sequences and cinematics as conscious and sub-conscious aspects, cut-scenes are analysed as reproducing primal fantasies, serving to explain protagonists’ backstory and situating play within narrative contexts. Such moments intrude into the game, marking transformations between the ordinary world and the abject Otherworld, or heralding the emergence of psychoanalytically-resonant monstrous creatures which the protagonist must destroy. Finally, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is examined as a game which, even more than others, foregrounds the series’ explicit reference to psychoanalytic preoccupations, engaging with contemporary understandings concerning the relationship between memory, media and fantasy.

Copyright of International Journal of Psychoanalysis & Education is the property of International Journal of Psychoanalysis & Education and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Ipsaque morte peior est mortis locus: The underworld in Seneca’s Hercules furens The present paper analyses the episode of Hercules’ journey to the underworld in Seneca’s Hercules furens. The starting point is the contemporary psychoanalysis school of object relations; the research method combines psychoanalytic interpretive methods with a philological text analysis. The underworld passage, showing Hercules’ weakness and superbia, can be treated as the key to understanding the entire play.

The paper attempts to give a psychoanalytic and feminist reading of one of the most intriguing, but less known Milan Begović’s plays – Myrrha. The motif of dream, incest and the position of woman in Begović’s first dramatic text are observed through the lens of the famous Freud’s writings on femininity and dreams, but also thoughts, current at the time, about the distinctions between men and women and sex-gender conditions (identity) presented in a study by the Viennese philosopher Otto Weininger. The reading of Myrrha will start from the context of Begović’s extensive dramatic work, and special emphasis will be given to the central female figure which anticipates later Begović’s creative obsession with women and their status in the (contemporary) patriarchal surrounding.