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The problems posed by Leonardo’s pathographies written by Freud are examined. The historical path of the problem of the relationship between genius and psychopathology is reconstructed, showing that psychoanalysis fits into a very active vein at the end of the 19th century, expressing different theoretical approaches with which Freud relates. The interest for the problem then continued, with alternate answers, until the current days. The distortions made by Freud in Leonardo’s pathographical description are examined; these distortions are extensively examined by several authors, which, however, is not distant from what Freud implements in his other works, nor from what other pathographists of the time did. It is a common behavior in the history of science and well known in modern epistemology that identifies in the development of theories also the importance of rhetorical tools with which scientists support them. It is emphasized that one cannot read particular psychological aspects in these Freudian behaviors, making in fact a pathography of the author of pathographies, but only lead his work to the coherence of the historical contexts in which he operates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper elaborates key factors in Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida's long polemical argument over the question of madness. The paper focuses on Foucault's consideration of a constitutive exclusion underlying the discourse of reason and unreason, as well as his insistence on that exclusion's singular relationship with madness. This exclusion is then developed in psychoanalytic terms augmenting the constitutive gesture that Sigmund Freud attributed to the plurality of subjective structures elaborated in his metapsychology. The psychoanalytic determination of constitutive exclusion is posed as being situated at a privileged position that enables it to consolidate the polemic debate between Foucault and Derrida about madness. By doing so, the intersection of Foucault's theory of madness with Freud's psychoanalysis is shown to be fruitful territory, epitomizing a hospitality to madness—thus, doing justice to Foucault in light of Derrida's critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freud’s lecture given on December 1, 1909, at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society on Leonardo da Vinci is examined. This lecture is a forerunner of his later article Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood (Freud, 1910b). An attempt is made to emphasize the inconsistency between Freud’s hypotheses and the historical data by then at his disposal. Avoiding entering Freud’s vulture slip that many scholars have pointed out and Freud never acknowledged, concerns are expressed about Freud’s required documentation in the field of art history and about the method he employed for the portrayal of Leonardo da Vinci’s personality. It seems that Freud willingly avoided historical data choosing almost entirely to rely on applied psychoanalysis widely employing his own phantasies in attempting to overcome the paucity of knowledge on Leonardo da Vinci’s childhood. Freud himself later acknowledged that his 1910 paper was partly a fictional story along the lines of Mereskovskij’s 1895 book on Leonardo. A crucial inconsistency of this lecture, that will not be amended in his paper of 1910, relates to the fact that Freud changed into a phantasy what Leonardo had reported as a childhood memory. Many scholars have taken for granted this shift so that they talked about Leonardo’s “phantasy” or “dream”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Fromm's 1935 paper, "The Social Determinants of Psychoanalytic Therapy," situating it in the context of Fromm's life and setting forth its contrast between Freud's "authoritarian, patricentric attitude" and the "humane, philanthropic attitude" of Ferenczi, who was deeply influenced by Groddeck. Despite critiquing Fromm's tendency to give insufficient attention to the "the individual fate of the person," such as would be necessary to explain the differences between Freud and Ferenczi, in expounding his concept of the "social character," the present paper argues that Fromm's "calling card," published while Freud was still alive, is "one of the greatest papers in the psychoanalytic literature." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freud’s very brief 1922 paper on the beheading of Medusa by Perseus wisely concludes with a call for a further examination of the sources of the legend. A now widespread interpretation of this legend is based (often without acknowledgement) on an addition to traditions concerning Medusa made in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It is argued here that this Ovidian innovation has often been misinterpreted, and that a more careful reading of Metamorphoses supports neither a widely alleged exclusively vengeful portrayal of Medusa, nor Freud’s portrayal of Medusa’s decapitation as solely a pitiable and terrible symbol of castration. Instead, Ovid’s complex treatments of myths involving Medusa, Minerva and Perseus present parallels with Kleinian insights into phantasy attacks on fecundity, and into imagined revivals of dead or damaged inside babies. Thus the “displacement upwards” of the fearful castrated maternal genital envisioned in Freud’s “Medusa’s Head” must stand beside a quite different “displacement upwards” of the life-giving maternal genital. Indeed, tradition holds that Medusa’s beheading gives rise to the birth of vigorous twins. Together with allied details, this aligns Ovid’s masterwork with theories that modify or displace the so called “sexual phallic monism” that some believe taints Freud’s theories of gender development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw a resurgence of interest in the occult and the paranormal. Ideas from the occult, the paranormal and the study of altered states of consciousness influenced Freud's theories. In turn, the work of Freud has influenced parapsychology and transpersonal psychology. This paper explores these lines of influence from occultism, through Freudianism, into parapsychology and transpersonal psychology. It begins by examining late 19th-century occultism and Freud's ambiguous position on it. It then considers his work The Uncanny (1919/1955), before looking at his interest in telepathy, clairvoyance, fortune tellers, dream interpretation and the magic of words. Freud's influence on Jung and Assagioli will be discussed before considering of his overall legacy for parapsychology and transpersonal psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the distinction between the dynamic and the descriptive unconscious is in danger of being lost and indicates some of the practical, clinical consequences of this loss. It does so against the background of Freud’s own struggles with his radical conception of the dynamic unconscious as ultimately unknown, as they appear in the revisions of The Interpretation of Dreams, invoking Laplanche’s recognition of Freud’s Copernican Revolution and the temptation he felt to make a Ptolemaic Return. It also comments on confusion about whether feelings can be said to be unconscious and the implications of this confusion for clinical practice, especially for our understanding of the concepts of transference and countertransference. An extended analysis of a dream is presented to show the dynamic unconscious in action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]