Trauma and Contemporary Forms of Subjectivity: Contributions of Argentine Psychoanalysis<Superscript>*</Superscript>

This paper offers arguments to justify the relevance of psychoanalysis—psychoanalyses—in present-day Argentina and reflects on the stance taken by psychoanalysts with different theoretical perspectives in the face of the havoc wreaked by state terror (1976–1983). To this end, the author focuses on the pioneers’ traits, the significance of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association in the 1950s and 1960s, and the impact of the departure of the Plataforma Group in 1971. The establishment of the latter opened the way for the development of a psychoanalysis tied to popular movements, sensitive to social conflict, and close to human rights organizations. The author explores both on psychoanalysts’ intervention to address the social trauma resulting from the theft of babies during the dictatorship, and on their relationship with Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.     

The Search for Integration or How to Work as a Pluralist Psychoanalyst

In my professional path, I strove for the integration of my identity as a psychiatrist and as a psychoanalyst, in the frame of pluralism, which exists in modern psychoanalysis. Having been trained in a Kleinian approach, I will explore the painful breach experienced during my parallel trainings as a psychoanalyst and as a dynamic psychiatrist. I worked for five years as a psychoanalyst and a researcher in Germany and was involved to a large extent with the psychoanalytic world, which increased my self-definition as a pluralist. On my return to Chile, I discovered the need for political changes in the psychoanalytic society and curricular modifications in my training institute to recover psychoanalysis from its academic isolation. Finally, I will analyze the extant connections between the ideology of pluralism in psychoanalysis and its application in clinics. I will show that the exploration of the inference processes of the psychoanalyst inside a session—the psychoanalyst's mind at work—demonstrates that the analyst in fact functions as an artisan thinker. This means that pluralism—that is, the use of more than one theoretical frame and of different levels of abstraction and explicitness—is the way the majority of psychoanalysts “naturally” work. What probably differs is the self-consciousness, scope, and rank of pluralism.     

Grasping psychoanalysts’ practice in its own merits1

The central objective of this presentation is to reflect on the obstacles involved in the task proposed by the Chicago Congress, which is to explore convergences and divergences in psychoanalytic practice. The author discusses two major obstacles. First, the epistemological and methodological problems in relation to the construction of theory in psychoanalysis and especially the inaccessibility, in any reliable way, of what psychoanalysts really do in the intimacy of their practice. He proposes to separate, at least in part, theory from practice in psychoanalysis, in an attempt to grasp psychoanalysts' practice in its own merits. He then outlines a phenomenology of the practice of psychoanalysis, which reveals that, in their work with patients, analysts are guided more by practical reasons than theoretical reasons; that is, their interventions are predictions rather than explanations. Since these practical reasons need to be validated constantly in the analytic relationship based on their effects, he discusses the subject of validation in the clinical context of the core theory of therapeutic change in psychoanalysis, that is, the conditions required for clinical practice to satisfy the thesis of an inseparable union between gaining knowledge and cure. He ends by challenging the core of the psychoanalytic theory of change, arguing that it neither does justice to the practice of psychoanalysts nor to contemporary knowledge of processes and mechanisms of therapeutic change. Finally, he proposes that we detach practice from theory, in order to study the former in its own merits, utilising a plurality of methods ranging from systematic investigation to the recent methodology of the Working Party.     

The invasion of reality (or of negotiation): The psychoanalytic ethic and extinction anxiety

Extinction anxiety is the expression used to describe a pervasive and ever more realistic sense of futurelessness. A group emotion characterized by terror of the extinction of the human race, the family, or professional or shared cultural group, it grips the individual with a sense of desperation and impotence through the internal groups present in the mind of every individual. The contribution presented here aims to demonstrate how extinction anxiety has also infected psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic institutions, thereby seriously weakening the ethics of psychoanalysis. The term ethics here should not be confused with morals, but is intended as the happiness that is derived from the capacity to be responsible for one's self and one's own professional identity. The contagion of extinction anxiety has, in fact, accentuated the crisis of psychoanalysts and their faith in psychoanalysis. The author relates a particularly tormented clinical experience in order to show how only the relationship with psychoanalysis and its capacity to interpret the manifestations of the unconscious, enables the recognition of the effects of what he defines as a true invasion of reality, thus restoring to thought the power to establish a deep, transformative, and fecund relationship between internal and external reality.     

Integration or Sealing-Over. A Pilot Study of Coping Strategies of Severely Traumatised Patients

This article is an attempt to begin to weave together Freud's work - on dreams here envisioned as the original model for virtual reality - and from Fromm's work - on the impact of the market on personality. The contributions of these two psychoanalysts provide a necessary dual foundation for an understanding of emerging aspects of human psychology that are evolving, at the beginning of the 21st Century, alongside the profound influence of the electronically driven global market. It is time for psychoanalysis to engage more fully in the study of cultural forces. While it is easy to disregard dreams, both in the general culture and of late in psychoanalysis itself, dreams and their interpretation have always been central in human living, in the development of religion and in the birth of psychoanalysis as our own secular religion. Dreams, in their disembodiment and in their fluidity of information transformations have served as one model for developments within cyber culture and virtual living. The destruction of nature is seen as an underlying theme in the development of compatible relativist-subjectivist philosophies and in the growth of cyberculture. Thus, Freud's insights into dreams and Fromm's into the marketing personality are both crucial to an understanding of major contemporary forces.     

Further evidence for the case against neuropsychoanalysis: How Yovell,Solms, and Fotopoulou's response to our critique confirms the irrelevance and harmfulness to psychoanalysis of the contemporary neuroscientific trend

In their paper “The case for neuropsychoanalysis” Yovell, Solms, and Fotopoulou (2015) respond to our critique of neuropsychoanalysis (Blass & Carmeli, 2007), setting forth evidence and arguments which, they claim, demonstrate why neuroscience is relevant and important for psychoanalysis and hence why dialogue between the fields is necessary. In the present paper we carefully examine their evidence and arguments and demonstrate how and why their claim is completely mistaken. In fact, Yovell, Solms, and Fotopoulou's paper only confirms our position on the irrelevance and harmfulness to psychoanalysis of the contemporary neuroscientific trend. We show how this trend perverts the essential nature of psychoanalysis and of how it is practiced. The clinical impact and its detrimental nature is highlighted by discussion of clinical material presented by Yovell et al (2015). In the light of this we argue that the debate over neuropsychoanalysis should be of interest to all psychoanalysts, not only those concerned with biology or interdisciplinary dialogue.     

Comments on the Ikonen and Rechardt papers on the death drive and the origin of shame

In this paper, psychoanalysis is viewed as a method in opposition to the reigning spirit of our age with its demands for fast and measurable results. The concept ?the psychoanalytic room” is introduced in order to grasp the uniqueness of psychoanalysis and how it distinguishes itself from what is ordinarily held to be included under the category of work. The psychoanalytic room is explored in both a concrete and metaphoric sense and is discussed in relation to the concept of time, reality, Ogden's concept of the analytic third, and, inspired by Winnicott, children's play. The playroom of the child and its similarity with the analytic room is illustrated by the book ?Benny's Bathtub” by the Danish author Flemming Kvist Møller.     

„Es waren ja fast alle weggegangen“

The complex and partly disputed history of German psychoanalysis during the Third Reich has been thoroughly investigated to date. There are various stages of historical analysis which are distinguished by differing discourses that are presented as part of this work. The first stage of historical analysis was characterized by conflicts within the German psychoanalytical societies and marked by two antagonistic narratives about the transformation of German psychoanalysis during the Third Reich. This study investigated which discourses on the history of German psychoanalysis were integrated into the professional biographies of the first generation of post-war psychoanalysts. In this study 23 narrative interviews were conducted with psychoanalysts who where born before 1st January 1937 focusing on the professional biography and the results were analyzed. The interviewees stressed the ‘damage’ to German psychoanalysis in general and on their training in particular. The ‘damage’ was described as an uncontrollable result of National Socialism and the structural and theoretical changes that were connected to it whereby its effects continued to impact on post-war psychoanalysis. Especially the discourses of the first stage of historical analysis appear to have been integrated into professional biographies and are still having an impact on the interpretation of history for the post-war generation to this day. The history of psychoanalysis is presented as a narrative of ‘rescue’ or ‘liquidation’ of psychoanalysis during the Third Reich depending on the professional identity of the psychoanalysts.     

New interpretative styles: Progress or contamination? Psychoanalysis and phenomenological psychopathology1

Psychoanalysis has started to recoup, often quite implicitly, a more phenomenological stance, ever since psychoanalysts have started working with borderline and psychotic patients. As many of these patients have commonly been through traumatic experiences, psychoanalysts have been using an approach that questions the role of traditional psychoanalytical interpretation and pays more attention to the patient's inner conscious experiences; this approach is characteristic of a specifi c form of contemporary psychiatry: phenomenological psychopathology, founded by Karl Jaspers in 1913 and developed into a form of psychotherapy by Ludwig Binswanger, with his Daseinsanalyse. If what we could call a phenomenological ‘temptation’ has been spreading over psychoanalysis, so too has a psychoanalytical ‘temptation’ always been present in phenomenological psychopathology. In fact, even though this branch of psychiatry has led us towards a deeper understanding of the characteristics of psychotic being‐in‐the‐world, its therapeutic applications have never been adequately formalised, much less have they evolved into a specifi c technique or a structured psychotherapeutic approach. Likewise, phenomenological psychotherapy has always held an anaclitic attitude towards psychoanalysis, accepting its procedures but refusing its theoretical basis because it is too close to that of the objectifying natural sciences. Psychoanalytic ‘temptation’ and phenomenological ‘temptation’ can thus be considered as two sides of the same coin and outline a trend in psychoanalytic and phenomenological literature which points out the fundamental role of the patient's inner conscious experiences in the treatment of borderline and psychotic patients.     

Psychoanalysis as science: the inductivist's resistance revisited

The scientific status of psychoanalysis has been the focus of heated debates among philosophers of science and among psychoanalysts. The most recent challenge to psychoanalysis as a science comes from the quarters of the inductivist philosophy of science. Since inductivism is a self-defeating philosophy, it is not surprising that inductivists demand that psychoanalysts pay an unlimited price for their claim of scientific status for psychoanalysis. Most psychoanalysts, in their response to this impossible challenge, unwittingly claim to have paid the price. What is worse, the claim is made in a confused and emotionally charged manner. Hence, psychoanalysts are usually defensive and, thus, in error when repelling (in this way) the attack of the inductivist philosopher. It is not psychoanalysis inductivists attack, but their own commitment to their own logic which leads inexorably to the dissolution of their argument, of all science, and, indeed, of psychoanalysis as well. It seems much more reasonable to postpone any response to the challenges that confront psychoanalysis today and to invest effort in a reformulation of the problem of the scientific status of psychoanalysis. Different rational solutions to the problem may evolve if we take care to become well informed first about the limits of our theoretical frameworks and show readiness to change them, if and when needed. That is to say, we can start with a somewhat tentative, not to say skeptical, frame of mind concerning the very concept of scientific status. We may try to keep and to contain our skepticism to the degree required by the discourse at hand, carry on exploring in our practice, report our results, and discuss them respectfully. We should start by admitting that, quite possibly, our discourse will end inconclusively.     

Analytical space and work in Russia: Some remarks on past and present1

In this paper, the author outlines the historical‐cultural picture in the former USSR and post‐Soviet Russia. He looks at some facets of psychoanalysis in Russia in the years immediately before and after the October Revolution as well as in its recent history, exploring the implicit question of how the wider social context, and specifi cally totalitarian and post‐totalitarian reality, has infl uenced psychoanalytic work and analytic space in this country. With the help of Sebek's concept of the totalitarian object and Britton's formulations about the triangular space, the author attempts to understand the interaction of external and internal space and to give an introduction to the problem of establishing the analytic setting as well as fi nding some new possibilities of enlarging the space for new psychoanalysts in Russia.     

Psychoanalytic Training: The Absence of Thirdness: A Review of Impossible Training: A Relational View of Psychoanalytic Education by Emanuel Berman

This paper suggests that the concept of “thirdness” has been essential in the evolution of our thinking about the complexity of the clinical process in psychoanalysis. However, the way psychoanalysis has been, and in most places continues to be, taught and organized remains mired in older, binary, and concrete dichotomies—as Emanuel Berman''s recent volume on the subject demonstrates—an “absence of thirdness” that seems to reinforce and enshrine the marginalization of psychoanalysis from the broad quest for the advancement of human knowledge in the western tradition. In the course of developing these ideas, the paper discusses other aspects of Berman's stimulating and, in some respects, controversial, work.     

The Task of the Translator

This discussion reflects closely on Dominique Scarfone’s call to consider psychoanalysis as a practice founded on ethics, and to rely on this premise in charting a fundamental common ground such that has eluded psychoanalysis for most of its history. Out of the three points Scarfone centers on, I dedicate most attention to the third—psychoanalysis as modeled on the notion of translation—because I find his suggestion inspiring, and promising toward the goals he sets for his paper. Building on the basis Scarfone offers in this context with the help of ideas developed by Walter Benjamin and Emmanuel Levinas, I suggest that the vision that can pull us together as psychoanalysts indeed relies on an ethics of attending to the other’s speech, its meaning as well as its fundamental yet complicated striving for comunicability. More specifically, we need to recognize that words can hide our need to say them. That what we say obscures our vulnerability and shame. That when we try to recall, the language we speak is distorted by the personal and historical forces collaborating to make us forget ourselves. I argue that the task of the psychoanalytic translator is therefore to uncover and resignify the scattered, coded fragments; to help us restore our ability to tell our stories; and to recognize that more than everything, we want to tell them.     

Difficult Days: On the Use of Theory in Group Psychotherapy Reply to Grossmark and Weinberg

My response to Grossmark’s and Weinberg’s commentaries consists of four parts: The first relates to the use of theory in the analytic endeavor, emphasizing its relational quality, suggesting that our ability to reflect on how we unconsciously use theory is part of the therapeutic process. In the second part I discuss the relations between theory and metatheory, suggesting a possible parallelism between aggression in group therapy, and the existing debate about theorizing aggression. The third part briefly presents the affinity between relational psychoanalysis and the concept of The Social Unconscious. Finally, the fourth part notes the different languages of theory and poetry.     

Guilt—Freud and Buber

Using the concept of guilt as a starting point, it is the purpose of this paper to determine what relation Freud and psychoanalysis had to ethics. Buber's criticism of the view of guilt found in psychoanalysis is presented together with existential guilt. This is followed by a survey of Freud's theories of moral development, beginning with an 1897 letter to Fliess. Freud finds guilt for oedipal desires in Hamlet and real guilt is touched upon for the first time in 1906. In “Totem and Taboo”, Freud tracks down the earliest form of conscience via parricide. His last note about the sense of guilt was made in 1938. In the concluding discussion, this paper confronts and examines Freud's and Buber's approaches with emphasis on the relation to religion, neurotic and real guilt, and the ethical content of psychoanalysis.     

Commentary: Psychodynamics and Social Cognition—Notes on the Fusion of Psychoanalysis and Psychology

ABSTRACT Interest in linking psychoanalysis with scientific psychology waxes and wanes. In part, the difficulties have been caused by the preference of psychoanalysts for Freud's clinical theory (and its emphasis on narrative truth) as opposed to his metapsychology (with its requirement for historical truth). Even though contemporary scientific psychology evolved largely independently of psychoanalysis, the articles on object relations, transference, and defense published in this special issue show that the theory remains a source of inspiration, observations, and hypotheses.     

The soul of psychoanalysis in the modern world reflections on the work of Christopher Bollas

The paper begins with the claim that psychoanalysis faces a dilemma in locating itself in a contemporary world that devalues experiences of interiority, depth, and embeddedness in personal history. Psychoanalysis's coming to terms with this modern world—reflected in contemporary relational paradigms and emphases on interaction, authority, and epistemology—is essential yet tends to replace an outdated conformity with an updated one, in which what is offered to analysands may become limited and the soul of psychoanalysis lost.

Bollas's work attempts to reinspire psychoanalysis. This paper explores his contributions and the tensions within them and develops several points about how psychoanalysis can maintain a worthwhile self—for itself and for its analysands—in the modern world. Among the issues discussed are the sense in which an endogenous motivational core associated with an emphasis on interiority may be compatible with a relational paradigm and how the notion of personal idiom is a rich and fruitful one, but that the cultural field deserves a more fundamental place than it is given by Bollas. The problem of authority and exploitation, within and outside the consulting room, is also taken up, and it is argued that psychoanalysis should be conceived as a moral discourse in which the analyst's self‐subverting (but not diminished) authority is essential.     

Chapter 1: Healing the Healer’s Art: A Letter to My Professors

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to articulate a problem I’ve noticed in the field of psychoanalysis—namely, the problem of closed-mindedness and reluctance to tolerate the coexistence of contradictory truths. I believe this problem is inhibiting the field from reaching its full potential to heal and continue to discover effective methods of healing. I call upon psychoanalysts and students of psychoanalysis to confront their own biases and attempt to open their minds to the possibility that all schools of psychoanalysis (i.e., Freudian, Kleinian, Kohutian, Jungian, etc.), as contradictory as their teachings and methods may seem, teach valid truths and valuable insights, the knowledge of which can only help us to become better healers. Essentially, the more we open our minds and welcome ideas from all subgenres of psychoanalysis, the more tools we have in our toolbox, and the better we will be able to treat our patients. If we insist that one school of psychoanalysis is superior, and reject the validity of differing viewpoints—if we are caught up in pride and the politics of our field, we are ultimately doing ourselves, our colleagues, and our patients a disservice.     

The analyst's knowledge and authority: a critique of the "new view" in psychoanalysis

A critical assessment is presented of positions recently taken by Mitchell and Renik, who are taken as representatives of a "new view" in psychoanalysis. One article by Mitchell and two by Renik are examined as paradigmatic of certain ways of construing the nature of mind, the analyst's knowledge and authority, and the analytic process that are unduly influenced by the postmodern turn in psychoanalysis. Although "new view" theorists have made valid criticisms of traditional psychoanalytic theory and practice, they wind up taking untenable positions. Specifically called into question are their views on the relation between language and interpretation, on the one hand, and the mental contents of the patient on the other. A disjunction is noted between their discussion of clinical material and their conceptual stance, and their idiosyncratic redefinitions of truth and objectivity are criticized. Finally, a "humble realism" is suggested as the most appropriate philosophical position for psychoanalysts to adopt.