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Drawing attention to the parallels between the artist’s and the psychoanalyst’s creative act, I will argue that the art of psychoanalysis, similar to the artistic, creative process, is constructing an environment that invites and sustains a certain disorienting chaos before sorting through and working out how to make use of one’s experiences. The psycho-analytic and artistic discourse both investigate the position from which something is generated: the contradictions and multitudes of this ‘self’ in the place of the designated ‘I.’ Psychoanalysis creates a holding environment that makes the undoing of our constructed selves possible, what Kristeva calls the making and unmaking of the speaking subject, and opens up ways to formulate our desires’ complexities and reconstruct an orienting sense of self, in Winnicott’s words: to postulate the existence of the self. The analytic experience teaches us to say yes to a certain hunger and embrace the appetite we thought of as too large, too gluttonous and uncomfortable. It helps us become more familiar with the apparitions of this hunger and makes them part of ourselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The direction of time is often defined by describing asymmetries between past and future events, referred to as "time-arrows." Two important time-arrows are the mutability time-arrow, which specifies that the past is unalterable, while the future is not; and the causal time-arrow, which stipulates that past events may cause future events, but not vice versa. The author argues that the unconscious conception of causation expressed in both the oedipal myth and certain oedipal wishes negates the mutability and causal time-arrows. The author suggests, therefore, distinguishing between oedipal phantasies that undermine the ordinary conceptions of causation and time (such as the wish of being one's own parent), and classical content that is in line with our time perception (such as sexual and aggressive wishes toward parents). Analyzing clinical examples suggests that some patients' oedipal phantasies are combined with unconscious sexual satisfaction from the asymmetric conception of time. When this sexual satisfaction is analyzed, they might expose the oedipal phantasies founded on the symmetric conception of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been said about death drive in Critical Theory. This concept was mainly read as an aggressive and/or destructive drive. As a consequence, there are two ways of finding death drive in critical theories: the classic mode represented by Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and, more recently, Whitebook, in which death drive is seen as a factor that gives psychoanalysis its negativity face; or a way that leads to the despise of the nuclear function of death drive in psychoanalytic theory in name of normativity, as it happens in Fromm and Honneth. What I propose here is, from a comparison of both Freud's texts, 'Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through' (1914) and 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle' (1920), to present a new way of appropriating the concept of death drive to produce a current critical theory. This means not considering the Wiederholungszwang as simply an imperative for coercion, but also a repetition compulsion. By proposing this reading of death drive (as suggested by Freud in 1920), I believe it is possible to amplify the range of possible connections between psychoanalysis and Critical Theory, keeping the negativity side, but without losing its normativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing a connection between the "repetition compulsion" and reparations movements' demand for a "guarantee of non‐repeat," this essay examines some of the psychological workings of implication in systemic racism by highlighting individual, familial, and collective histories, and by looking at some of what is currently taking place in psychoanalytic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Randomized controlled trials have reported psychoanalytic psychotherapy to improve longer-term post-treatment outcomes in patients with treatment-resistant depression. In this case study, we examine the therapy process of a female trial participant diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression. Structured clinical assessments indicated that the patient's level of depression remained unchanged during and after treatment. Over the course of the therapy, she repeatedly broke away from important others and finally also from the therapy itself, which we linked to the impact of earlier experiences of abandonment on her internal world. In the discussion, we present a variety of reflections that were put forward by the authors during a series of case discussion meetings. Some of these reflections relate to how the inner world of this patient might have triggered a negative therapeutic reaction and a destructive pattern of repetition. The interpretative stance, in which the therapist interpreted this reaction as indicative of a psychic conflict and linked this conflict to the therapeutic relationship, seemed to be experienced by the patient as unhelpful and persecutory. Other elements that were brought up include basic distrust, lack of symbolization and trauma in the patient, as well as the constraints of the research context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zdravotnicke listy is the property of Alexander Dubcek University in Trencin, Faculty of Nursing 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.)

Much has been said about death drive in Critical Theory. This concept was mainly read as an aggressive and/or destructive drive. As a consequence, there are two ways of finding death drive in critical theories: the classic mode represented by Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and, more recently, Whitebook, in which death drive is seen as a factor that gives psychoanalysis its negativity face; or a way that leads to the despise of the nuclear function of death drive in psychoanalytic theory in name of normativity, as it happens in Fromm and Honneth. What I propose here is, from a comparison of both Freud’s texts, “Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through” (1914) and “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920), to present a new way of appropriating the concept of death drive to produce a current critical theory. This means not considering the Wiederholungszwang as simply an imperative for coercion, but also a repetition compulsion. By proposing this reading of death drive (as suggested by Freud in 1920), I believe it is possible to amplify the range of possible connections between psychoanalysis and Critical Theory, keeping the negativity side, but without losing its normativity.

By revisiting the last years of a long psychoanalytic treatment of a female patient, a psychoanalyst reflects on her own development as a clinician and on the changes in her experience of psychoanalytic generativity. An increasing ability to understand patient's shifts between creativity and destructiveness brings about a different understanding of the process of mourning, while the shared aging of the analytic dyad highlights the difficulty of ending an analysis that has become a way of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Freudian notion of repetition compulsion is marked, in its inaugural conception, by a negative connotation, that of a return of the same, which does not give the measure of the multiple facets of this register. Raising repetition to the rank of one of the four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, Lacan uses Kierkegaard's text entitled "La reprise" to point out the renewal, of fecundity that the movement towards repetition can induce. This article aims at underlining how much the creative dimension of repetition finds a particularly vivid illustration in the field of music, a domain that makes regular and varied use of the term "reprise". This article takes up themes deployed in a series of conferences during the academic year 2021/2022 at the École Pratique des Hautes Études en Psychopathologie, associating musicians – Vincent Ségal – psychoanalysts -Marc Morali, Corinne Tyszler, Olivier Douville- and music lovers, Mario Choueiry, and leaving a large place to musical listening. This study, beyond a reading of the repetition as an expression of the death pulsion, studies the way in which we can hear and put to work this Freudian notion through its manifestation in the musical register. It is a question here of exploring the question of repetition in the sphere of popular music but also in jazz and classical music in order to apprehend its articulation with the very movement of creation. In so-called popular music, and mainly in rock music, the cover consists, not in imitating but in proposing a version, more or less faithful or distant, of an original piece. Listening to this cover causes a particular satisfaction in the listener who can identify it. Usually considered as a tribute to the pioneers or the mark of a debt towards the elders, the cover version is however above all an attempt, impregnated with hostility, to erase the origin. This is how covers come to not only supplant the original pieces but also to repress them, to make them totally forgotten. Jazz is also attached to covering standards, not only as a necessary learning exercise, but as a way for those who try to impose their own style and thus gain recognition. The cover of standards can be the occasion to make hear the blind spot of a piece of origin or to make resurface a trait of identity unknown to itself. Within the context of classical music, the progression of a work is also regularly done through the repetition of a theme that always knows how to renew itself through slight displacements. Finally, the contemporary repetitive music pushes, perhaps to its height, this creativity inherent to the effects of the repetition. Pleasure, repression, origin, hostility, imitation and identification: these terms are closely linked to psychoanalysis, which only uses the concept of "repetition". It is however usual to hear oneself on the divan taking up the story of a dream that of a memory, or even to take up a new slice of analysis. This opens up the opportunity to question the creative function of repetition within analytic practice. Introducing the musical dimension of repetition into the analytic treatment leads us to question the specific talent it implies in the practitioner. Repetition only becomes creative through a shift in interpretation that can be found in the poetry of language, where the practitioner gains by approaching musical interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La notion freudienne de compulsion de répétition est marquée, dans sa conception inaugurale, d'une connotation négative, celle d'un retour du même, qui ne donne pas la mesure des facettes multiples de ce registre. Élevant la répétition au rang d'un des quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse, Lacan se soutient du texte de Kierkegaard intitulé « La reprise » pour pointer la dimension de renouvellement, de fécondité que peut induire le mouvement vers la répétition. Cet article s'attache à souligner combien la dimension de créativité de la répétition trouve une illustration particulièrement vive dans le champ musical, domaine qui fait un usage régulier et varié du terme de reprise. Cet écrit reprend des thèmes déployés dans une série de conférences tenues au cours de l'année universitaire 2021/2022 à l'École Pratique des Hautes Études en Psychopathologie, associant musiciens – Vincent Ségal – psychanalystes – Marc Morali, Corinne Tyszler, Olivier Douville – et mélomanes – Mario Choueiry – et laissant une grande place à l'écoute musicale. Cette étude, au-delà d'une lecture de la répétition comme expression de la pulsion de mort, appréhende la façon dont on peut entendre et mettre au travail cette notion freudienne par le biais de son expression dans le registre musical. Il s'agit ici d'explorer la question de la reprise dans la sphère des musiques populaires contemporaines mais également dans le jazz et la musique classique pour en appréhender l'articulation avec le mouvement même de la création. Dans les musiques dites populaires contemporaines et principalement le rock, la reprise – ou « cover » dans sa version anglaise – consiste, non pas à imiter mais à proposer une version, plus ou moins fidèle ou éloignée, d'un morceau original. L'écoute de cette reprise provoque une satisfaction particulière chez l'auditeur qui sait l'identifier. Considérée habituellement comme un hommage rendu aux pionniers ou la marque d'une dette envers les aînés, la reprise est pourtant avant tout tentative, imprégnée d'hostilité, d'effacement de l'origine. C'est ainsi que des reprises en viennent non seulement à supplanter les morceaux originaux mais également à les refouler, à les faire totalement oublier. Le Jazz s'attache également à la reprise de standards, non seulement comme exercice d'apprentissage nécessaire mais comme marque, pour celui qui s'y essaye à imposer son propre style et ainsi se faire reconnaître. La reprise de standards peut ainsi être l'occasion de faire entendre le point aveugle d'un morceau d'origine ou d'en faire resurgir un trait d'identité inconnu de lui-même. Dans le cadre de la musique classique, par des procédés multiples, la progression d'une œuvre se fait aussi régulièrement par le biais de la reprise d'un thème qui toujours sait se renouveler à la faveur de légers déplacements. Enfin, la musique contemporaine répétitive pousse, peut-être à son comble, cette dimension d'une créativité inhérente aux effets de la répétition. Plaisir, refoulement, origine, hostilité, imitation et identification : ces termes attachés à la reprise sont étroitement liés à la psychanalyse qui ne dispose que du concept de « répétition ». Il est pourtant habituel de s'entendre sur le divan reprendre le récit d'un rêve, celui d'un souvenir, ou bien même de reprendre une nouvelle tranche d'analyse. S'ouvre ainsi l'occasion d'interroger la fonction créatrice de la répétition au sein même de la pratique analytique. L'introduction de ce registre de la reprise dans sa dimension musicale au sein de la cure analytique conduit à interroger le talent spécifique qu'elle implique chez le praticien. La répétition ne devient créatrice qu'à la faveur d'un décalage que l'interprétation peut retrouver dans la poésie de la langue où le praticien gagne à se rapprocher de l'interprétation musicale. The Freudian notion of repetition compulsion is marked, in its inaugural conception, by a negative connotation, that of a return of the same, which does not fully reflect the multiple facets of this register. Raising repetition to the rank of one of the four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, Lacan uses Kierkegaard's text entitled "Repetition" to point out the renewal of fecundity that the tendency towards repetition can induce. This article demonstrates how the creative dimension of repetition finds a particularly vivid illustration in the field of music, a domain that makes regular and varied use of the term "repetition." This article takes up themes deployed in a series of conferences during the academic year 2021/2022 at the École Pratique des Hautes Études en Psychopathologie, associating musicians – Vincent Ségal – psychoanalysts – Marc Morali, Corinne Tyszler, Olivier Douville – and music lovers, Mario Choueiry, and leaving a large place to musical listening. This study, beyond a reading of the repetition as an expression of the death drive, studies the way in which we can hear and put to work this Freudian notion through its manifestation in the musical register. In this paper, we explore the question of repetition in the sphere of popular music but also in jazz and classical music in order to apprehend its articulation with the very movement of creation. In so-called popular music, and mainly in rock music, the covering a song consists in proposing a version, more or less faithful or distant, of an original piece – and not in imitating it. Listening to this cover causes a particular satisfaction in the listener who can identify it. Usually considered as a tribute to the pioneers or the mark of a debt towards elders, the cover version is however above all an attempt, impregnated with hostility, to erase the origin. This is how covers come to not only supplant the original pieces but also to repress them, to make them totally forgotten. Jazz is also attached to covering standards, not only as a necessary learning exercise, but as a way for artists impose their own style and thus gain recognition. The cover of a standard can be the occasion to make audible a blind spot in the original work, or to bring to the surface a trait of identity unknown to itself. Within the context of classical music, the progression of a work is also regularly done through the repetition of a theme that renews itself through slight displacements. Finally, contemporary repetitive music pushes, perhaps to its height, the creativity inherent to the effects of repetition. Pleasure, repression, origin, hostility, imitation, and identification: these terms that are related to repetition are closely linked to psychoanalysis, which only has at its disposal the concept of "repetition." It is, however, typical to hear oneself on the divan taking up the story of a dream or that of a memory; one can even "repeat" by continuing one's analysis after a break or termination. This opens up the opportunity to question the creative function of repetition within analytic practice. Introducing the musical dimension of repetition into the analytic treatment leads us to question the specific talent it implies in the practitioner. Repetition only becomes creative through a shift in interpretation that can be found in the poetry of language, where the practitioner is enriched by approaching musical interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Euripides’ Hecuba, an Athenian tragedy of the fifth century BCE, begins as the eponymous queen of the recently fallen Troy awakens from a nightmare, that a doe was torn from beneath her knees, by a mangled wolf, and that Achilles’ ghost rose from above his tomb demanding a fresh prize. Awaking, she fears for the lives of her two children, Polydorus and Polyxena, and realizing these images need to be interpreted she says: ‘O Helenus, I need you now, interpreter of dreams! Help me, Cassandra, help me read my dreams!’ This same insistent need, to interpret returns of a wound, is the work of trauma theorists, such as Caruth and LaCapra. In this chapter, I’ll show how Hecuba, especially as it recalls Homer’s graphic depiction of the death of Hector, explores the representation of trauma, especially by thematizing looking at suffering. The play is read and considered along with notions such as the return of the repressed, working through, and catharsis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the treatment of women in the Gothic superhero comics of the 1970s through the lens of Michelle Massé's In the Name of Love: Women, Masochism and the Gothic (1992). While superhero texts generally neglected women even at the height of second-wave feminism, the Gothic superhero sub-genre goes even further, drawing on the regressive trope of the suffering woman to 'side-kick' female characters and deny their agency and autonomy. Exploring four female characters who share this fate, we examine their different responses to the Freudian beating fantasy enacted in their narrative arcs, delineating the high costs and limited gains of traumatised women who dream of triumph. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept of the symbol in psychoanalysis, exploring its origins, functions, and role in resolving conflicts within the human psyche. Topics include the distinction between the symbol-thing and the operating symbol, the role of conflict in symbolization, and the transphenomenal nature of symbolic functioning in various aspects of human experience.

In this paper the author offers a new reading of Freud's "Remembering, Repeating and Working-through", examining the complex nature of central concepts that Freud presents within it. She demonstrates the text's special role in an ongoing effort of Freud's to articulate and ground the heart of his analytic insight that knowledge cures. While the insight itself is very well-known, the fact that Freud struggled throughout his life with its articulation and grounding is not. The struggle centered on questions pertaining to how analytic knowing could, not only enlighten the patient, but actually change his unconscious dynamics, and why the patient, having already "opted" for pathology in place of knowing would come to accept it; and ultimately, what was the nature of the knowledge offered in analysis and the individual's relationship to it that allowed for such dramatic changes to occur. The author briefly presents some of her earlier work on Freud's struggle with these issues and how Melanie Klein resolved them. It is in this context that she demonstrates how in Remembering, Repeating and Working-through" Freud may be seen to be taking important steps towards developing his ideas on analytic knowing and in ways that anticipate Klein's resolutions. This points to the close tie between Klein's and Freud's thinking on the nature of the analytic process and the person's desire for self-knowledge on which it relies, brings out the richness of this thinking and grounds its value to contemporary psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of the repetition compulsion has spawned reams of professional literature about its role in intimate relationships. In this article, the author briefly outlines some of this literature before presenting her own view of the health-producing potential of the compulsion to repeat. In her work with adult partners in treatment, she views them as continually accessing historically dissociated affects through their repetitive conflicts, making these affects more available for metabolizing. The author sees this repetition as an inevitable and useful path to healing previously unmetabolized wounds, traumas and losses. The article illustrates this perspective of repetition compulsion through the description of the treatment of shame in couple therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The essay exposes, recognizes the astonishing originality, and showcases the shortcomings of Christoph Türcke's Philosophy of Dreams, which offers a theory of the origin of religion inspired by both psychoanalysis and critical theory. Among the objections raised are the speculative nature of the enterprise, which is not sufficiently based on empirical data, the lack of knowledge concerning the transition from apes to humans, the impossibility for hallucinations to be the basic doxastic act, the exaggerated focus on dread, which is only one form of the numinous experience, and on the repetition compulsion, which could hardly prove as creative as the author assumes particularly concerning the origin of sacrifice, and the confusion of genesis and validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this paper I explore the idea that Freud's death drive, despite having its explanatory status and truth claims questioned, is an anthropologically astute concept that embraces the paradox of symbolic consciousness. Any theory of the human must accommodate the paradoxicality of human thinking, motivations, and cultural forms to generate useful theoretical insights. Even though some critical arguments against it are justified, as I show in my paper, the death drive captures something fundamental about human behavior, which I demonstrate by close-reading a short story, "My First Cousin," by Sergey Dovlatov. In addition, I also argue that the recent attempts to incorporate the death drive into cognitive theories based on predictive processing are not convincing because these theories are not paradoxical and thus miss something that is essential to Freud's metapsychological system. Finally, I argue that the death drive, coupled together with the life drive as a dual-drive model of the psyche, can be derived from the originary concepts of Generative Anthropology, that of deferral. The logic of deferral has the prolongation element that suspends the imminent threat of violence, and thus can be seen as life-preservative. But it must necessarily include the movement of the return to the point of deferral because deferral defers temporarily. Having deferred, we feel pressure on us to release the tension produced by the deferring gesture. I suggest that this direction of movement, which I call consolidation, corresponds to Freud's intuition of the death drive. The movement of consolidation is logically reversed and unconscious, but we can detect it in the paradoxical relationship between the narrator and narratee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several deep revisions of Freud's theory of the drives are proposed: (1) Drives are conscious and are in fact the source of all consciousness. (2) Drive energy is equated with variational free energy and is therefore quantifiable in principle. (3) There are not two drives but many, seven of which may be described as "emotional" as opposed to "bodily" drives. (4) All drives are self-preservative or preservative of the species; there is no death drive at work in the mind. This means, at the mechanistic level, that all drives are homeostatic and anti-entropic. (5) The great task of mental development is to supplement instinctual predictions about how our multiple drive demands may be met and reconciled with each other. This work is done by learning from experience, mainly through voluntary behavior, which is governed by conscious feelings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of trauma in psychoanalysis has suffered from overuse and inconsistent use. A review of Freud's writings beginning with the Project of 1895 indicates that from the perspective of the impact upon psychic processes, Freud held a more consistent view of the concept that, if recognized, can help avoid the often fruitless etiological debates of internal versus external cause, intrinsic (drive) versus extrinsic (reality) factors, etc. What is more helpful from a clinical perspective is to view the challenges that trauma-inducing circumstances might pose for an individual, consider each individual's subjective mode of experiencing and responding to those challenges and take into account the supports offered by the specific familial, social or cultural surround. Each set of experiences that will be qualified as "trauma" that any of us undergoes will to some extent be understood and integrated into our particular subjectivities according to our unique, subjective organizations of self, understandings of and position in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights some aspects of the conceptualization of trauma in psychoanalysis and introduces the three subsequent papers by Bernard Chervet, Jan Abrams and Howard Levine. It focuses on the interchange between external and internal reality, the construction of traumatic defensive organizations and the role of reparation and guilt in overcoming the repetition compulsion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of Trauma in psychoanalysis has suffered from overuse and inconsistent use. A review of Freud's writings beginning with the Project indicates that from the perspective of the impact upon psychic processes, Freud held a more consistent view of the concept that, if recognized, can help avoid the often fruitless etiological debates of internal vs. external cause, intrinsic (drive) vs. extrinsic (reality) factors, etc. What is more helpful from a clinical perspective, is to view the various challenges that a given set of potentially trauma-inducing circumstances might pose for an individual, consider each individual's highly subjective mode of experiencing and responding to those challenges and take into account the supports offered in any instance by the specific familial, social or cultural surround. Each set of experiences that will be qualified as 'trauma' that any of us undergoes will to some extent be understood and integrated into our particular subjectivities according to our unique, subjective organizations of self, understandings of and position in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals with unhealthy narcissism due to social changes are causing various social problems. Kohut noted that primary narcissism is essential for growth and development and persists in life, covering all facets of a personality. This thesis analyzes how narcissism affects an individual’s personality from the perspective of the movie “Le Grand Bleu.” Enzo had a strong rivalry for Jacques, which killed him. Narcissistic wounds play a key role in this competitive spirit, and there was an attempt to restore narcissism as a child by projecting Enzo’s ideals on Jacques. Jacques appeared to be in a secondary narcissistic state, living in isolation from the loss of his parents as a child. While meeting Enzo and Joanna, the relationship with the world begins again, but due to Enzo’s death, the original state of libido distribution was re-enacted and reality verification was lost. Meanwhile, Jacques showed his death instinct throughout the film and made a break from the people around him. Joanna’s love for Jacques is analyzed in terms of object-choice. Joanna followed a narcissistic pattern, seeing Jacques as a proxy for ego ideal. Recently, a series of social problems caused by individuals immersing unconsciously in excessive narcissism that is not integrated into the ego or superego like the main characters in the movie. It will be an important task for society and psychotherapists to provide empathy and optimal activities to frustrations in these individuals, leading to the growth of healthy narcissism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Repetition compulsion is a psychodynamic concept that explains an attempt to master trauma. This case study attempts to understand the possible meanings of symbol repetition that occurred in the art therapy process of a twelve-year-old boy with acute methylmalonic acidemia. Over 29 sessions of art therapy, the client demonstrated repetition through themes of struggles, calls for help, entombment, and a woman superhero. This recurrence seemed to relate to resolving trauma, gaining power, regulating anxiety, and seeking a savior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning with Freud, throughout his work and in most if not all psychoanalytic formulations, the concept of trauma has been associated with the disruptive effects of excess excitation on psychic regulatory processes and psychic development. Foremost among these are the capacities for emotional containment and representation. The restoration, strengthening or acquisition for the first time of these capacities can take place intersubjectively in a successful analytic therapy and lies at the heart of the therapeutic action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I introduce and develop my concept of Body Words and show how they emerge in clinical process in inverse proportion to the Repetition Compulsion. So it is that I see the clinician's task in every psychoanalytic treatment as involving a particular focus on the reclamation and growth of the availability of Body Words in both participants, which I illustrate in my work with Doreen. This treatment also demonstrates that the forward movement in therapy can be inhibited, as Russell counsels, by the therapist's resistance to what the patient is feeling. Furthermore, I outline how my writing—whether daily session notes, associative diary entries, or more formally constructed journal articles—serves a self-supervisory function while also providing a sturdy container for evanescent process moments of Body Words. Once written, Body Words take their place as narrative, reflection, and memory, preserving experience for future reverie or conceptualization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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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]

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]

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]

In this paper, I discuss the idea of psychoanalysis as a successful healing process from the standpoint of a broader understanding of the politics of care for the other. On this basis, and following María Acosta's concept of "grammars of listening," I propose psychoanalysis as a political project for overcoming trauma in both individual and collective history in such a way that it can also be considered in political terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long way towards acknowledgement of the unavailable. On separation and farewell in two analytical psychotherapies at old age In this second part of the entire report, the first part of which appeared in an earlier issue (4/2019: 381–394), the author once again focusses on conflicts connected with fear of annihilation when facing separation, thereby concentrating on repeated approaches to calm and to overcome the respective inner turmoil. She tries to release herself from her inclination to focus on the analyst's person and the therapeutical relationship. Instead she attempts to decisively bundle her attention on the contents of the joint work. By doing so she becomes aware of a strong striving for autonomy which thus far had been obscured by early traumatic experiences of separation and an exuberant need for love and closeness. By her own effort she is now able to release the analyst from a longing commitment which, if it were to remain, would set the spiral of repetition in motion again and again. The therapeutically effective support consists in helping her to direct the desire for love – in the sense of a reversal – to where it can be lived meaningfully. For instance, by actively turning it to the community and its social needs, thus filling it with contents aligned with reality. The author finally is able to accept the unavailability of a significant other and the insight that we will not be relieved of the work on the impositions of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In South Africa, the iconic Hector Pieterson photo is the starting point for many artists to deal with their own personal trauma and the communal trauma of their nation. The iconicity of this photo has sparked many different adaptations in various fields of art. Considering that we are talking about a traumatized country, Freud’s concept of “repetition compulsion” seems to be one explanation for this phenomenon. However, art is only seldom a mere product of traumatization. Quayson’s concept of “symbolization compulsions” comes closer to explaining the phenomenon of repetition in the arts, because it leaves the artists more freedom of expression and does not suggest that art is the result of illness, while still implying ‘compulsion’ and ‘obsession’ in the act of creation. I want to suggest that ‘repetition’ in the arts in the South African context is not so much a sign of confinement and restriction, but that the many adaptations of the unique historical incident should rather be understood as attempts of ‘working through’ collective trauma, making sense of history, and contributing to the country’s healing.

This paper begins with the understanding that early trauma leads to powerful dissociative defenses which injure the capacity to feel. It further explores ways to restore this capacity through body-centred attention to affect-in-the-moment in the psychoanalytic situation. Using the author's personal experience while in analysis as well as a case of severe early trauma, he demonstrates the consciousness-killing effect of primitive defenses and shows how body-sensitive techniques hold the promise of restoring the patient's sense of aliveness and hence, opening the unconscious to those affect-images that are the building blocks of the human imagination. A final section focuses on the neglect of feeling in Jungian psychology and suggests that the "creation of consciousness" which Jung described as his personal myth, is quintessentially a process of emotional transformation - of bringing unconscious suffering into consciousness - as feelings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The repetition compulsion -Wiederholungszwang- and the game participate in the working-through of the painful experiences. The clinic illustrated the role of pain in sleep, play, fateful destiny, neurotic transfer and the workingthrough of traumatic experience. Freud thought the repetition compulsion was explained by a drive. The current debate discusses whether it is explained by a drive or is it a psychic response to nonsense? Freud distinguished the terror -Schreckcharacteristic of the trauma from anxiety -Angst- which works within the pleasure principle. Terror does not have a psychic quality or associative links; It is a meaningless experience -Sinnlos- that fell from significance. The distinction between Angst and Schreck depends on the defensive approach that chains the experience to an associative series and offers a meaning, without which it would lack the necessary meaning to be able to be elaborated, thought, memorized and / or forgotten. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper three aspects are examined which despite of their passing reference in the psychoanalytic literature seem to be of great relevance for the occurrence of negative phenomena such as the so-called negative therapeutic reaction and the repetition compulsion. The first aspect, the avoidance of psychic pain, plays the most significant role. The fact, that the difference in the perception leads to a reactivation of repressed or rejected memories, explains why better experiences are avoided and bad ones are repeated compulsively. Other aspects entering in the dynamics of repetition compulsion are the aesthetic conflict described by D. Meltzer, and the sacrificing of one's own potentialities as a kind of expiation or reparation of transgenerationally transmitted guilt, but also the fear of annihilating oblivion, which is observable in the clinical and societal context. Finally, technical issues are discussed that result from the theoretical considerations, with particular emphasis on the analyst's witnessing the attacks inflicted by the pathological organization on the patient's perceptual apparatus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores basic tasks involved in the supervisory process, and frequent problems in carrying out these tasks. Basic tasks include clarification of mutual expectations of supervisor and supervisee; the establishment of mutual trust as fundamental for countertransference analysis; "parallel process" exploration and clarification of explicit and implicit theoretical assumptions by both supervisor and supervisee. Frequent problems include the extent of initial evaluation of patients; problems of intervening "without memory or desire"; transference and countertransference diagnoses and interpretive consequences; clarification of affective dominance; interventive shifts with severe psychopathology, and realistic goals of patient, supervisee and supervisor. Limitations to supervision include specific psychopathologies, cognitive limitations, and a generally restricted capacity for empathy by the supervisee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philip Roth's The Human Stain (2000) intricately weaves together collective past alongside individual present, developing a cohesive understanding of trauma in the American identity. This paper draws on an interdisciplinary methodology informed by trauma theory in order to argue that The Human Stain is as invested in the individual history of Coleman Silk as it is in the collective trauma of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to investigate the concept of repetition compulsion in the Freudian work, with the purpose of bringing clarifications to the complexity that surrounds it. The method used was the theoretical research on psychoanalysis, and the Sisyphus myth was used to make correlations with the studied concept, because in it were found models of repetitive behaviors and Greek mythology always shows itself as a rich source of reflections about the human. Three moments present in the dynamics of the compulsion to repetition were correlated with three others found in the Sisyphus myth, because they have common elements that describe, in the first instance, transgressions and excesses; in a second, compulsive and inexorable repetitions; and finally, in a third, possibilities of restoration of order and redemption. Thus, we came to considerations about the repetition compulsion that describe it as a mechanism associated with the encounter of the psychism with the excessive, disconnected and traumatic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]