New frontiers in psychoanalysis – in our international community

The paper discusses what the author calls “The seduction by the father”. It would occur when, in the Oedipus complex, the father reverses his role: instead of being the one who castrates, he seduces. Seduction here is understood in the sense that he does not act as the one who imposes limits to the child. Consequently the child can not project his hostile impulses onto the father.

Based on clinical data, the Author says that, in the male child, the seduction by the father hampers the transformation of the two Oedipal attitudes towards the father into identifications. The consequences of this fact upon the construction of the “nostalgia of the father's protection” are discussed, so as the transformation of this father into the symbolic father.     

Freedom – the abyssal ground of Freudian psychoanalysis

Freedom is an a priori condition for the way in which Freudian psychoanalysis thematizes the development, the structure and the dynamics of our psychic life; the human psyche is essentially constituted by freedom. What this really means is that psychoanalysis lacks a foundation or ground – both as a psychological science and as a kind of clinical treatment. Freedom is the abyssal ground of psychoanalysis.     

What happens in a psychoanalysis?

A group of experienced analysts has developed scales and a coding manual illustrated with clinical examples to evaluate recorded analyses and psychodynamic therapies. The analytic process scales (APS) assesses three dimensions: (1) the contribution of the analyst: helping to develop a relationship in which the analyst can provide clarification and interpretation of transference and resistance; (2) the contribution of the patient: the communication of experience and the expression of feeling in ways which provide information about needs, wishes and conflicts, accompanied by self-reflection; and (3) interactional characteristics of the emerging relationship, explored by studying sessions divided into psychoanalytically coherent segments. A preliminary study of nine sessions has established that the variables assessed by the APS can be rated reliably. Study of the analysts' contributions illuminated their varied and complexstructure. Important differences emerged among the three patient-analyst pairs studied, and changes in scores over time tracked developments in the analytic work which would imply different treatment outcomes. The APS appears to be a reliable tool facilitating the systematic study of psychoanalyses.     

Discussion of “time and timekeeping in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy”

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

What is the function of faith and trust in psychoanalysis?1

Unlike other concepts such as ‘illusion’, ‘capacity to tolerate frustration’ and ‘libidinal investment’, the concept of faith has not yet found a well‐defined position in psychoanalytic theory. Bion focused on faith and placed it in an unusual context: scientific work. Through the Act of Faith a researcher can give some consistency to certain ideas, hunches or intuitions that may appear during observation, though he cannot represent them by existing theory. Through the Act of Faith an analyst can ‘see’, ‘hear’ and ‘feel’ those mental phenomena, the reality of which leaves no practising psychoanalysts in doubt, even if they cannot represent them by current formulations. In this paper, the author aims to expand Bion's proposals into the clinical and therapeutic fields. In the first part, the author examines how faith and trust overlap, and how they depart from each other, and he gives an example. Faith possesses an igniting and driving force which trust doesn't possess to the same extent. In the second part, the author looks at F as a psychic function of the analyst, which aids him in supporting a depressed and hopeless patient while waiting for the return of the patient's desire to live. In the final part, he focuses on F from the patient's point of view and studies the transformations of F that may occur during an analysis.     

Is psychoanalysis a matter of subjectivation?

We are not born subject but become one, in a two‐and‐fro process between what is played out on the intrapsychic stage and the field of intersubjectivation. The author proposes to examine two of the main movements of psychic life brought into play in this process. In the domain of the ‘subjectivating link’, becoming a subject depends on the relationship with another, authentically taken into account as a desiring subject and not simply as an object for oneself. In the course of history, this intersubjectivation is only internalized as a lasting preconscious predisposition if sufficient trust is established in the possibility of mutual recognition. When this perspective recedes, the subject tends to fall back on narcissistic positions, in search of an end to lack. Such a narcissistic tendency drives the subject to constitute himself by subjugating his objects, striving to rob them of their otherness. A plurality of subject positions will be recognized in every analytic encounter. Psychoanalytic work can allow for a lasting change insofar as it modifies the equilibrium between diverse psychic trends. The multiplicity of the issues at stake in subjectivation allows us to integrate theoretical pluralism while encouraging us to reflect on the diversification of our practices.     

After Babel: Teaching psychoanalysis on a former battlefield – experiences in an international research network

Abstract

This article describes a psychoanalyst's personal experience in an international and interdisciplinary social trauma research network. Crises and conflicts are understood as an integral feature of such a collaboration. Using the self-reflective capacity of the psychoanalyst may help to turn them into a new perspective. Crossing disciplinary borders, reconnecting to the field of academic research, might prove to be a rather rewarding step.     

What kind of discipline is psychoanalysis?

Current controversies involving clinical, conceptual and empirical research shed light on how psychoanalysis confronts its nature and its future. Some relevant debates in which Wallerstein, Green, Hoffman, Eagle and Wolitzky, Safran, Stern, Blass and Carmeli, and Panksepp have participated are examined regarding the characteristics of their argumentation. Agreements and disagreements are explored to find ways that could have allowed the discussion to progress. Two foci are highlighted in these debates: (a) whether a clinical common ground exists in psychoanalysis and what kind of procedure could contribute to further clarification; (b) complementation of in‐clinical and extra‐clinical evidence. Both aspects are scrutinized: the possibility of complementing diverse methodologies, and the nature of the shared clinical evidence examined in clinical discussion groups such as those promoted by the IPA Clinical Observation Committee. The importance of triangulation and consilience is brought to bear regarding their contribution to the robustness of psychoanalysis. So as to strengthen a critical perspective that enhances the discipline's argumentative field, psychoanalysis should take into account arguments from different sources according to their specific merits. By doing this, psychoanalysis increases its relevance within the current interdisciplinary dialogue.     

What is conceptual research in psychoanalysis?1

The development of psychoanalysis as a science and clinical practice has always relied heavily on various forms of conceptual research. Thus, conceptual research has clarifi ed, formulated and reformulated psychoanalytic concepts permitting to better shape the fi ndings emerging in the clinical setting. By enhancing clarity and explicitness in concept usage it has facilitated the integration of existing psychoanalytic thinking as well as the development of new ways of looking at clinical and extraclinical data. Moreover, it has offered conceptual bridges to neighbouring disciplines particularly interested in psychoanalysis, e.g. philosophy, sociology, aesthetics, history of art and literature, and more recently cognitive science/neuroscience. In the present phase of psychoanalytic pluralism, of worldwide scientifi c communication among psychoanalysts irrespective of language differences and furthermore of an intensifying dialogue with other disciplines, the relevance of conceptual research is steadily increasing. Yet, it still often seems insuffi ciently clear how conceptual research can be differentiated from clinical and empirical research in psychoanalysis. Therefore, the Subcommittee for Conceptual Research of the IPA presents some of its considerations on the similarities and the differences between various forms of clinical and extraclinical research, their specifi c aims, quality criteria and thus their specifi c chances as well as their specifi c limitations in this paper. Examples taken from six issues of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis in 2002‐3 serve as illustrations for seven different subtypes of conceptual research.     

Is psychoanalysis a cheerless (Freud-less) profession? Toward a psychoanalysis of joy.

Joy can be understood as a basic form of resonance. Psychodynamically, joy is complementary to the feeling of anxiety. Whereas anxiety reflects psychic distress in connection with problems of structuring, joy is the expression of successful (re)structuring. It is the feeling of self-discovery, of a new beginning, and of self-renewal. In stark contrast, there are numerous empirically supported indications that there is little evidence of feelings of joy in the psychoanalytic literature. Why is this the case? Pursuing his analysis of this apparent but unspoken taboo against joy in professional analytic writing, the author outlines a psychoanalysis of joy in the hope that it will encourage analysts to be more aware and expressly affirmative of joy as it occurs in their work.     

Social representations of educability in Finland: 20?years of continuity and change

This study set out to replicate a survey conducted 20?years ago on Finnish parents?? social representations of educability. A nationwide sample of parents (N = 642) were asked to indicate their opinions on a set of statements pertaining to topical educational issues. The results indicated that educational discussion is still structured by two major competing representations of intelligence, the ??natural?? and the ??social??, and the corresponding educational policies, the ??selective?? and the ??comprehensive??. Further, some novel and still relatively independent representations, such as the diversity of human abilities and entrepreneurship education, were identified. The comprehensive representation found support particularly among the vocationally educated parents, who were worried about social equality, while the selective representation, i.e., the ideology of natural giftedness, found support among the academically educated fathers. The representational field of educability seemed quite established, indicating relative continuity of educational discourse.     

The form of the soul ― on the body in Freud’s psychoanalysis

To formulate the problem of the relation between body and soul in terms of how one should understand the relation between consciousness and the brain, or in terms of explaining how mind can arise out of matter, is a modern and far from innocent tendency that has instigated the whole spectrum of theories and answers suggested by the philosophy of mind of the so-called Analytic tradition during the 20th century. During the last 5 decades, we have seen a number of attempts at incorporating Freud into this discussion about the relation between body and soul. In this article, the author develops an argument according to which the philosophy of mind of the Analytic tradition is not really an appropriate intellectual environment for Freud´s theory of the body and its constitutive rôle. Rather, we should turn to phenomenology and transcendental philosophy where the body is thematized, not in terms of matter taken to give rise to consciousness in an empirical sense, but rather in terms of the “lived body” that is taken, in a transcendental sense, to constitute the organization of meaning in our conscious and our unconscious psychological life. On the basis of an outline of this phenomenological theory, the author argues that Freud, most of all in his theory of psychosexual development, thematizes the body as the form of the soul.