“AFTER THE EVENT”: FREUD'S UNCANNY AND THE ANXIETY OF ORIGINS

This essay aims to revise Freud's theory of the uncanny by rereading his own essay of that name along with the key material Freud drew on in formulating his theory: E. T. A. Hoffmann's short story “The Sandman” (1816a) and Ernst Jentsch's essay “On the Psychology of the Uncanny” (1906a). While arguing, initially, both that Jentsch's work is fundamentally misconstrued by Freud and that it offers a better account of what happens in Hoffmann's story, the essay moves beyond Jentsch's account to offer a more philosophically oriented theory of the uncanny, one more in line with Freud's ideas in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920a).     

The brunhilde fantasy freud's countertransference in the analysis of elma

Abstract

The authors start from the hypothesis that there existed a “blind-spot” in Freud's countertransference in his analysis of Elma, an ex-patient of Sandor Ferenczi. In their search for support for this idea, they review the correspondence between Freud and Ferenczi contemporary to Elma's treatment in addition to works by Freud on theory and technique. They believe to have found therein several facts which support the above idea: for instance, the diagnosis of “dementia praecox” that Freud formulated in his first interview with the patient; and some of the vicissitudes of the treatment, in particular, the circumstances which determined its termination. The Brunhilde fantasy, which Freud attributes to Elma in a letter to Ferenczi, enables them to penetrate further the possible relationship between this “blind-spot” and details of Freud's life and childhood as revealed in his self-analysis.     

Freud,the Serpent and the Sexual Enlightenment of Children

Abstract

This paper examines Freud's interpretation of the myth of the Fall, which he sent to Jung in December of 1911. After a textual-historical exegesis of the Genesis narrative, I argue that many features of the myth, which Freud construed in Oedipal terms, are more intelligible in light of his theories of infantile sexual researches, which he abandoned in 1910. The etiological shift away from infantile sexual researches (and the consequent Oedipalization of analytic theory) were 1) not prompted solely by clinical considerations, and 2) heralded dramatic changes in attitudes toward children and the rejection of paternal authority in Freud and his circle, and 3) corresponding changes in the structure and organization of the psychoanalytic movement itself, creating an orthodoxy or “party line”.

The term “orthodoxy” means “uniformity of belief”, and is usually applied to religious groups, whose dogmatic emphasis on a specific body of doctrine serves to define the group's membership and boundaries, and to exclude “unbelievers” from its midst. In this sense, Freud's style of leadership was distinctly “religious”. Due to deep seated resistances in the analytic world, it is possible that disparities between Freud's earlier and later attitudes toward children will never be thematized and explored with the attention and seriousness they deserve. But the attempt must be made, and by exploring the Genesis narrative, we can grasp the personal and political motives that molded Freud's theory of religion, and glimpse the outlines of paths not taken in the clinical theory.     

Freud's philosophy of the uncanny

This paper is an attempt to uncover and bring to a coherent interpretation Freud's thoughts on the phenomenon of uncanniness. Starting out with the essay “The uncanny” the author wants to show that uncanniness plays an important rôle in the turn that Freud's thinking goes through at this time, and that the concept can serve as a springboard for a critical, phenomeno- logical reading of Freud's thoughts on the development of the ego. The analysis of the phenomenon of uncanniness itself tends to disrupt the coherence of Freud's earlier views and pushes him towards his later thinking. “Unheimlich” in German has the double meaning of uncanny and unhome-like, and what is not at home in itself in an uncanny sense, according to Freud, is precisely the human ego. Freud in “The uncanny” links the interpretation of uncanniness to compulsive repetition and thus makes the connection to trauma and birth anxiety discussed in later works such as “Beyond the pleasure principle” and “Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety”. The origin of our general sensitivity to the uncanny is thus, according to Freud, the loss of the mother suffered by the child as a kind of a priori traumatic experience, which is also the very event that makes the child into an ego. The understanding of traumatic neurosis and other forms of mental illness is consequently linked to an analysis of this primal uncanniness of life.     

Structural Determinist Aspects of Depression in Freud's “Mourning and Melancholia”

This article examines Freud's theory of depression based on his paper “Mourning and Melancholia” from the structural determinist paradigm. The reality of depression lies in the underlying structure of the mind in which Freud's libidinal drives and topographical structure of mind bring forth conflicts in relation to an object. Freud delves into the fundamental causes of depression and points out that loss of object, regression of libido into the ego, and ambivalence cause hidden conflicts, which manifest themselves as depressive symptoms and feelings. William Styron's Darkness Visible is used to illustrate its relevance to the structural determinist aspects of Freud's psychoanalytic theory of depression.     

Freud's Illusion: New Approaches to Intractable Issues

In his later theological work The Future of an Illusion, Freud (1927/1961) makes provocative suggestions about the psychological significance of religious ideas. Freud begins by analyzing their meaning in the lives of particular individuals. He then extrapolates to a critique of their effect on human civilization. Religion originally evolved in order to explain difficult concepts such as death and fate. It quickly outgrew its purely theological dimensions and became a social regulator by coercing compliance with a set of cultural norms.

The purpose of this article is not to evaluate whether Freud was right, that is, if religion in fact is an illusion. Rather, using concepts derived from current work in analytical theology, it examines the internal logic of Freud's analysis and some of the assumptions he made to reach this conclusion. Despite his theoretical insights, much of Freud's reasoning is invalid and many of his premises are questionable. Freud adopts assertions without explaining them and does not offer much in the way of deductive or inferential support for his argument. This article advocates an epistemological approach to understanding Freud's use of terms such as “wishes” and “illusions.” Adopting this perspective uncovers tacit presuppositions underlying his theory about the origins of religious belief and its relationship to culture and society, and clarifies the conceptual links holding it together.     

Christer Sjödin interviews Jan Stensson

Abstract

The author examines different definitions and applications of the terms “psychic energy” and “libido.” With regard to the “psychic energy” terminology, he shows that its application and usage relate in particular to the perspective of Brenner and not to Freud's definition. He argues that Freud uses the term “psychic energy” as a synonym for “libido,” and not “libido” as a synonym for “psychic energy.” It is demonstrated that in Freud's view, up until 1914, “libido” relates to manifestations of bodily sexual tensions, and subsequently this term applies to the manifestations of sexual energy in the psychic field. The author rejects this change in terminology and also challenges Freud's attempt to use dynamic-economic considerations as an explanatory device for epistemological reasons. Freud's concept of energy is inconsistent with the meaning of energy as defined in the physical sciences, and whereas the metapsychological topographical, dynamic, and structural viewpoints have a solid foundation in the representational world to which the psychoanalytic process affords unique access, this is not true of the economic viewpoint. It is claimed that bodily tensions only exist in the representational world in the form of affects, so that, in the author's opinion, the economic viewpoint should be abandoned in favour of an affective one. In the context of the endeavour to obtain pleasure and avoid unpleasure adduced by Freud, this viewpoint focuses on the relationships between affects and the different elements of the representational world, thereby serving as the subject of metapsychological investigation.     

Engaging with the unknown: How Judaism enabled Freud's psychological discoveries

A large literature has formed around the question of how Freud's Jewishness and/or Judaism influenced his psychological discoveries and development of psychoanalytic theory and methods. The article organizes the literature into several core theses but brings new clarity and insight by applying two essential criteria to demonstrate an impact of Judaism on Freud's thinking: direct content and historical timing. First, there should be evidence that Freud incorporated actual content from Jewish sources, and second, this incorporation must have occurred during the most crucial period of Freud's early discovery, conceptualization, and development of psychoanalysis, roughly 1893–1910. Thus, for example, Bakan's well-known theory that Freud studied Kabbala is completely negated by the absence of any evidence in the required time period. Part I reviews the literature on the influence of Freud's ethnic/cultural Jewish identity. Part II introduces the Judaic sacred literature, explores Freud's education in Judaism and Hebrew, and presents evidence that Freud had the motive, means, and resources to discover and draw from the “Dream Segment” of the Talmud—along with the traditional Judaic methods and techniques of textual exegesis. Freud then applied these same Judaic word-centered interpretive methods—used for revealing an invisible God—to revealing an invisible Unconscious in four successive books in 1900, 1901, and 1905.     

The uses of humor in life,neurosis and in psychotherapy: Part 1

Abstract

Joy and sadness, the comic and the tragic, making jokes and telling jokes, have been known in life, literature, the theater, and art since the dawn of civilization. Following in the footsteps of classical antiquity, Freud added to the philosophical analysis of humor the insights offered by the psychoanalytic method. The bridge was the cathartic method of treating neuroses, where discharge of affect was one of the foundations of technique, and the cathartic, or discharge, function of humor. Freud's analysis of humor, that “A joke … is the most social of all mental functions that aim at a yield of pleasure” introduces Freud's first explicit formulation of an interpersonal approach to the human situation in health and disorder.     

The Vanishing Mother: Reply to Commentaries

In this response to discussions by Aron and Boyarin I draw attention to the instability of the figure of the mother within Freud's presentation of his life, as well as within psychoanalysis. I link this instability to the figure of a “spectral” mother and perhaps subversive aspects of femininity. Whereas Aron links castration anxiety with prevailing anti-Semitic ideas, I look to the Jewish ritual of the Brit Milah and the laws of Niddah, which further reveal attempts to control and contain femininity. Boyarin raises a concern between historicizing and psychoanalyzing Freud that I consider a misreading. I believe my hybrid method of moving between historical, cultural, religious, and psychoanalytic planes, as lived by Freud within his family, is not so different from Boyarin's own approach.     

Exit Dora: Freud's Patient Takes Leave

Why did “Dora” leave Sigmund Freud—why did she end her psychoanalytic treatment with him prematurely? This question haunts Freud's Dora study, his first extensive and perhaps most famous narrative of a psychoanalytic treatment. I pursue this question through a close reading of Freud's text. I focus not only on the interaction between Freud and Dora but also on the literary qualities of “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria” (1905)—qualities that place this work firmly in the tradition of Viennese fin de siècle drama and prose.     

“The primary process”: The vicissitude of a concept

Abstract

During the first twenty years that Freud spent creating his theory, he assumed that most of the functions responsible for creating mental-thought structures were organized according to two different forms or principles of thought. He called these forms “primary process” and “secondary process”. The “secondary process” is identified with rational thinking and the ego, and it is easy to follow the changes that this concept underwent in the works of Freud that followed. The concept of “primary process”, on the other hand, disappeared from his later works with no explanation. This article traces the changes that the “primary process” underwent in Freud's thinking and examines the connection between his analytical technique and his research method. A close study of the changes that the “primary process” underwent reveals that Freud's developmental thought process included concepts whose directional changes may be termed “regressive”.     

The problem of real trauma and the future of psychoanalysis

Abstract

Contemporary psychoanalysis emphasizes the role of “real” trauma, as it is well shown by recent sociological and theoretical developments (such as Kohut's Self psychology, object relation theory, renewed interest in Ferenczi's and Sullivan's contributions, etc.). To understand more clearly these developments, the author traces again the steps laid down by Freud in building the psychoanalytic edifice. The renewed interest in the environment, in real traumas, and in the vicissitudes of object relations could be a “paradigm change” in psychoanalysis: a return to Freud's original seduction theory. This development is seen as related to the difficulties of Freud's drive theory.     

“sexuality and death” in freud's discovery of sexual aetiology

Abstract

The present study focuses on Freud's discovery of sexual aetiology in the period from his studies in Paris and Berlin (1885–86) to self-analysis (1897). The study gives a reassessment of both the link and the break between Freud's early works and the contemporary medical views and splits concerning sexual aetiology, which is relevant for the understanding of Freud's later developments. Freud's initial aversion toward sexual aetiology is investigated, and a significant connection between sexuality and death is found in the medical practice of female circumcision and castration in the treatment of hysteria. Finally, the relevance of the tabooed surgical operations is discussed in relation to a series of important moments for the birth of psychoanalysis (the collaboration with Fliess and the operation on Emma Eckstein, the Irma dream, the seduction theory and its abandonment, and the emergence in Freud of the memory of the death of little Julius as the “germ of guilt”).     

The Dawning of a Thought and the Role of Play and Trauma

A critical scrutiny of Freud's case the Rat Man elucidates the implications of the built-in contradictions that Freud made while evolving the psychoanalytic method. By comparing the published case of the Rat Man with Freud's private notes we get access to two different perspectives. Wishing to mould a clinical situation that would confirm his theories and uphold the image of the psychoanalyst as an authority figure, Freud was partly blind to some irrational distortions in how he perceived the interaction between the patient and himself. Contradictory explicit and unconscious “theories” and the emergence of a more modern understanding of transference, which includes inter-subjective dimensions, are expounded.     

The Freud–Ferenczi controversy in light of Emma Eckstein's circumcisio

Abstract

Emma Eckstein's circumcision trauma has been powerfully suppressed, denied, and dissociated from the history of the origins of psychoanalysis. Even though Freud did not categorize it as a trauma, he was deeply impacted by it in the period when he provided psychoanalysis with his foundation. Despite Freud's intellectual erasure of the trauma that Emma experienced, her “cut” never ceased to unconsciously break through Freud's fantasies and discourse, haunting the psychoanalytic building as a veritable ghost. Sándor Ferenczi became the recipient of what Freud could not consider in his own mind, and his revision of the “Bausteine” (building blocks) of psychoanalysis featured an attempt to heal the split embedded in the foundation of psychoanalysis.     

Freud and narcissism: Developing links for inclusion of the ‘object’

Abstract

The problematic of narcissism in the way Freud visualized forces us to acknowledge the dualism of drives inside the subject; the object relations theory then builds up on the inherent need and the structuring potential of the object. The paper traces the growth of this concept in Freud's thinking in a bid to show how the object's otherness is not fully metabolized within the Freudian corpus. On the other hand, recent criticisms of object relations theory point to the perfunctory role ascribed to Freud's most radical discovery of the dualism of drives. Winnicott, Laplanche and Green have all developed theories that have provided pertinent rejoinders to the problematic of narcissism and object relations. The paper discusses how deconstructing and “going back over Freud” helps us to redefine object relations and give the drive functioning due importance. Hence the main thesis of the paper – that of narcissism – reveals the decentered subject's tussle with itself and with the alienness emanating from the object's otherness. If used creatively, ideas such as “otherness”, “objectalizing function” and Green's conceptualization of the clinical significance of negative and positive narcissism then seek to enrich the theorization on narcissism.     

The ego in Lucy R: notes on conflict in one of Freud's first cases

This paper focuses on Freud's discussion of the case of 'Lucy R' presented in Studies on Hysteria (Breuer and Freud, 1895). It is possible to see here a notion of the 'ego' being employed by Freud many years before the 1920 'turning point' in his work, and an account of the ego as a 'dominant mass of ideas' is used to explain how psychical conflicts for his patient are transformed into physical symptoms. The image of the ego defending itself against an 'incompatible' idea structures Freud's own account, and it also structures recent critical commentaries on Freud's work from within feminist writing and studies of rhetoric. Some consequences for present-day psychodynamic practice are reviewed in the course of the discussion.     

Ferenczi and Groddeck: Simpatico

Sigmund Freud introduced Sandor Ferenczi to Georg Groddeck in 1917. The warm personal friendship that these two men shared for the rest of their lives was a breeding ground for many of their respective theoretical and clinical contributions. 1923 was a schismatic year in the history of psychoanalysis. Freud's appropriation of Groddeck's Das Es and its adaptation to Heinroth's tri-partite model (Freud, 1923; Poster, 1997) marked the beginning of Ego psychology. Almost simultaneously there appeared Groddeck's Book of the It (Groddeck, 1923), together with Rank and Ferenczi's The Development of Psychoanalysis (Rank and Ferenczi, 1924), and Ferenczi's Thalassa (Ferenczi, 1924). These three seminal publications set the stage for a paradigm shift (Hoffer, 2008; Rudnytsky, 2002). They were the forerunner of later developments in object relations, self-psychology, interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis. Taken together, the contributions of Groddeck and Ferenczi and Rank reinvigorated psychoanalysis, Freud's baby, with “the constructive aspect” that Groddeck told Freud had been lost in Freud's re-definition of Das Es (Groddeck, 1977, p. 13). Each of these pioneers stimulated the thinking of the others. Always an independent thinker, Groddeck was welcomed into the psychoanalytic circle by both Freud and Ferenczi. Suffering under the “crushing paternal(ism)” of Freud, Ferenczi was supported by Groddeck to carry out his own clinical experiments. Preoccupied with his own legacy and intolerant of dissent, Freud was able to maintain cordial contact with these two creative spirits and allow them to modify his own ideas.