Further reflections on Freud and his writing

As we broaden our frames of reference, Freud's genius looms larger. An adequate appreciation of Freud accordingly necessitates an examination of how he read and wrote and how Strachey translated him. Despite the enormous amount of psychoanalytic commentary, the subject of his writing qua writing still remains untapped to a considerable extent. By deepening our awareness of the nuances and implications of the manner in which Freud wrote, we correspondingly increase our knowledge of his original mind and the way he understood psychoanalysis.     

When Freud headed for the East: Aspects of a Chinese translation of his works

Working on the basis of a resumé of the Chinese translations to date of individual works by Sigmund Freud and critiques of these as secondary translations from the English, the particular difficulties of translating into a non‐Indo‐European language with an isolating and analytical writing system are presented. By way of introduction, reference is made to English and French‐language contributions to the issues of translation.     

The Perennial Freud: Method versus Myth and the Mischief of Freud Bashers

Nowadays Freud bashing is not only à la mode, in certain circles it has become de rigueur. Once a name of respect, Freud has become a name of ridicule. But like any scientific method, body of knowledge, and therapeutic procedure, psychoanalysis should be subjected to critical scrutiny. The recent crop of hostile Freud critics may have filled a vacuum left for decades by a psychoanalytic establishment which, like the Church of yesteryear, shunned all forms of criticism intramural and extramural. A central guiding idea of this essay is the distinction between the psychoanalytic method and psychoanalytic doctrines, hypotheses, and theories. This distinction has been invariably confused by both Freud's adherents and Freud's attackers. Moreover, arguments ad rem have been conflated with arguments ad hominem. A socially responsible criticism must seek to be constructive and not merely destructive. It is the latter course that was taken by the various hostile critics that came to be labeled as Freud bashers. The time has come to take a stand against the more egregious attacks on Freud and the psychoanalytic method.     

The Analytical Theatre: Freud and Ibsen

The author describes how an illusion of timelessness was manifested in the psychoanalytic process with a four and a half year old boy. This illusion turned out to serve as a protection against overwhelming death-anxiety and an intolerable experience of separateness. Development in the direction of a perception of time as linear appeared to be connected to the relinquishment of a two-dimensional, adhesive mode of identification, simultaneously with the development of a conception of three-dimensionality. This change seemed to be brought about by the introjection of the holding and boundary-shaping skin-function of the analyst, which implied the conception of a closed space, a container, and the realization of an essential third instance. The psychoanalytical process made explicit the paramount importance which the symbolic presence of the paternal function in the mother has for her capacity for holding and containment and as the premise for the infant's perception of reality, including the development of the dimensions of time and space.     

Freud and Piaget: The phoney war

This paper explores the relation between the Freudian and Piagetian systems, arguing that the view that they are irreconcilable “schools of thought” stems from arbitrary professional divisions rather than theoretical necessity. The laws of infantile thought according to Piaget, and of the unconscious according to Freud, overlap save in one crucial respect: Piaget's rejection of the fundamental psychoanalytic notion of “thought in the service of desire”.Though a synthesis of these two systems is practicable, and has occasionally been attempted, the paper argues that they are both trapped within a paradigm which ignores the essentially social construction of mind. The way out is suggested by recent developments in both child psychology and psychoanalysis.     

Freud and the figure of Moses: the Moses of Freud.

Moses was a lifelong preoccupation of Freud, representing a double and idealized self and object. Freud identified with different aspects of Moses during different periods of development, from concrete hero to abstract ideal. He turned to Moses in the concluding phase of his relationship with Fliess and his self-analysis, and then at other times of crisis. The Moses recreated by Freud is important to the evolution of the concepts of the superego, and his Moses studies simultaneously illuminate the developmental significance of internalization, identification, and abstract symbolic thought. Latently autobiographical, the Moses motif is related to the analysis of unconscious conflict and trauma and to issues of Jewish identity and analytic ideals.