Grant Me the Knowledge of What I Want Because All I Know Is That I Want: A Lacanian View of Hysteria

ABSTRACT

Freud’s work with hysterics led him to the discovery of the unconscious and the founding of psychoanalysis. The dream of the beautiful butcher’s wife, one of Freud’s patients, is examined following Lacan’s added insights that give full credit to his well known statement: “The unconscious is structured like a language.” Three basic identifications are presented by Lacanian analysis and I add a clinical vignette that exemplifies my work in the treatment of a couple.     

Why Didn’t Freud Reject Pfister? A Response to Isabelle Noth and Christoph Morgenthaler

The Freud-Pfister correspondence is in some sense an Urtext for the most friendly debate imaginable between the self-identified “godless Jew” who founded psychoanalysis, and the liberal Swiss pastor who was drawn to psychoanalysis while retaining his belief in God. Why didn’t Freud reject Pfister? This article will probe this question using the tools of psychoanalysis itself. After reviewing Freud’s associations to childhood religion, the Bible, and his father (citing Rizzuto), I am proposing that Pfister functioned unconsciously for Freud not only as an admiring son and disciple, but also a father substitute—much like Freud’s beloved antiquities—who represented both a God and a father who would admire and love him, and carry Freud’s name forward in the Book of Life.     

Das Traumgenerierungsmodell von Ulrich Moser und die Codierung von Traumprozessen

Under the conditions of sleeping, mental activity creates a psychic microworld “dream” experienced as the present, running predominantly in a pictorial and sensual way in a sequence of situations and sometimes containing verbal relations and cognitive processes. Together with Ilka von Zeppelin, Ulrich Moser has developed a model of the emergence of sleep dreams with the aim to reconstruct the dreaming process, which is normally concealed under the verbal structure of the dream report and to explain this sequence as the result of a cognitive affective regulatory process. In accordance with the theory of French, dreaming is seen as an attempt to cope in a simulative mode with unresolved neurotic conflicts and traumatic experiences. To make this process visible, the authors developed a very differentiated model-guided coding system, a form of operationalization of the “dream work” that records and describes all cognitive elements and all interactive behavior in the dream. This analysis provides the formal and structural characteristics of the dream that precede every interpretation of content or biographical meaning. In this way, dream series in a single person, as well as dreams in different groups, can be objectively studied and compared. A presentation of the dream model is followed by an introduction into the basic principles of the coding system. This dream process coding and the interpretation based on it are demonstrated on a specimen dream. This dream is Freud’s “Dream of Irma’s injection”, which he selected himself to demonstrate his method of dream interpretation in Die Traumdeutung and which was also used by Erikson to illustrate his “configurational analysis”.     

Inside the Revolution: Power,Sex, and Technique in Freud’s “‘Wild’ Analysis”

This essay situates Freud’s “‘Wild’ Analysis” in its local and global histories, even while reading it for what it can tell us about psychoanalysis now. Even as it is taken on its own terms, this essay serves also as a means to consider psychoanalysis as host to crucial tensions, its ideas and their relation to technique, its traffic in power, and sexuality and the primal crime. Using a clinical vignette, the essay argues the heterogeneity and multiplicity inherent to psychoanalysis are a gift to later generations, even if they made trouble for Freud. In celebration and critique, it examines, in effect, where Freud was and where psychoanalysis is now.     

Sándor Ferenczi und der Institutionskonflikt der Psychoanalyse

By the foundation of the International Psychoanalytical Association by Freud, Jung and Ferenczi the “psychoanalytic movement” joined into regulated tracks. Thus, the project “Psychoanalysis”, a project in the spirit of the “Aufklärung”, which had prescribed itself to individualistic autonomy, got into breach. In this contribution the reasons are reflected in regard to the establishment as non-university science and the threat of marginalization. They objected Freud’s pretension of influence and belonging. It is unclear why it was explicitly Sándor Ferenczi who was designated to be the precursor of that foundation. He was initially a critical opponent of Freud’s thoughts. His biography illustrates that the institutionalization of psychoanalysis happened too early and that this brought scientific isolation and personal distress over his life when, at the end of his life, he strived for emanzipation in his relationship to Freud.     

Phenomenal consciousness in dreams and in mind wandering

Dreaming can be explained as the product of an interaction among memory processes, elaborative processes, and phenomenal awareness. A feedback circuit is activated by this interaction according to the associative links and the requirements of the dream scene. Recently, it has been hypothesized that a partial similarity exists between dreaming and mind wandering and that these two processes may involve the same neural default network. This commentary discusses the differences and similarities between phenomenal consciousness during dreaming and phenomenal consciousness during mind wandering from the perspective of the “continuity” of engagement of cognitive systems. The greatest difference consists in the lack of reality testing during dreaming. Dream imagery is hallucinatory by nature. Consequently, the simulated world in dreams makes dream imagery more akin to perception. In contrast, the imagery of mind wandering is more similar to imagination. The level of meta-awareness is preserved more frequently and to a greater degree in mind wandering.     

The Ego and the Yid,Revisited: Commentary on Daniel Gaztambide’s “A Preferential Option for the Repressed: Psychoanalysis Through the Eyes of Liberation Theology”

In this commentary on Daniel Gaztambide’s “A Preferential Option for the Repressed: Psychoanalysis Through the Eyes of Liberation Theology” we discuss the Ego and the Y(id) to emphasize the otherness of the unconscious. In the idiom of racial anti-Semitism, the Y(id) was the personification of the feminine, the infantile, the irrational, the perverse, the primitive, and of “Blackness.” Gaztambide rightly refers to psychoanalysis’s marginal and progressive origins and to the role of Freud’s own racial identity as a Jew in producing that marginality. However, we caution against Gaztambide’s metaphorical equation of psychoanalysis and prophecy, and contend that psychoanalysis is at its best when it occupies a position of thirdness, critiquing both from within and without.     

“淑女之争”与“君子协议”:回眸英国精神分析学会的“论战”

20世纪40年代,英国精神分析学会内部爆发一场影响全世界精神分析学发展的"战争"。以Anna Freud和Melanie Klein各自为首的精神分析师团体围绕潜意识幻想、本能与力比多以及精神分析培训与教学等一系列主题展开激烈争论,即历史上著名的"Freud-Klein论战"。这场"论战"就精神分析培训问题达成协议,并直接导致克莱因学派、维也纳学派和独立学派三"组"鼎立的英国精神分析时局。"论战"促使了客体关系精神分析与自我心理学的分离,推动了精神分析研究从驱力模式向关系模式的范式转变,奠定了后续精神分析运动发展的格局。     

WITHSTANDING TRAUMA: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF EMMA ECKSTEIN'S CIRCUMCISION TO FREUD'S IRMA DREAM

The author considers the medical rationale for Wilhelm Fliess's operation on Emma Eckstein's nose in February 1895 and interprets the possible role that this played in Freud's dream of Irma's injection five months later. The author's main argument is that Emma likely endured female castration as a child and that she therefore experienced the surgery to her nose in 1895 as a retraumatization of her childhood trauma. The author further argues that Freud's unconscious identification with Emma, which broke through in his dream of Irma's injection with resistances and apotropaic defenses, served to accentuate his own “masculine protest”. The understanding brought to light by the present interpretation of Freud's Irma dream, when coupled with our previous knowledge of Freud, allows us to better grasp the unconscious logic and origins of psychoanalysis itself. 1     

The empiricist as rebel: Jung,Freud, and the burdens of discipleship

However little they share in common, both Freudian and Jungian commentators have long agreed that Jung's theoretical development in the years following his psychoanalytic affiliation prompted an open “split” with Freud and the psychoanalytic movement. Careful examination of Jung's principal “rebel” works does not sustain this thesis, however, but rather indicates Jung's honest belief that his limited appropriation of certain psychoanalytic mechanisms and attendant theoretical modifications constituted full-fledged loyalty to psychoanalysis as he understood it. This perception receives significant support from the Freud-Jung correspondence which reveals Jung openly articulating the ground rules defining his loyalty to psychoanalysis as early as 1906, and Freud accepting, and even approving, his protégé's empirical reservations over the course of the next five years.     

Freud's Irma dream and the origins of psychoanalysis

This paper investigates Freud's Irma dream as a response, in part, to the publication of Studies on Hysteria (Breuer & Freud, 1893-1895). As such, Freud's dream and associations reveal a great deal regarding the origins of psychoanalysis. The preamble to the dream reflects Freud's concern with the ground rules and boundaries of the psychotherapeutic technique that he was in the process of developing. This paper cites evidence for Freud's concerns regarding the consequences of alterations in these basic tenets. The Irma dream and Freud's associations also convey a deep and apparently unconscious concern within Freud in respect to the concept of transference, which he may have realized on some level had been used to defensively deny disturbing inputs by the therapist into the treatment situation and patient. The dream may be understood also as reflecting a deep sense of concern regarding unrecognized harmful effects of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and Freud's concern that the treatment process might be more destructive than helpful. The curative aspects of psychotherapy are viewed in terms of action-discharge rather than insight. In all, this reanalysis of the Irma dream focuses on Freud's unconscious conflicts, fantasies, and anxieties at a time when he, along with Breuer, presented a burgeoning psychoanalytic treatment modality to the professional world.     

Ferenczi's “Confusion of Tongues” Theory and the Analysis of the Incest Trauma

Abstract

The tender-mother transference of Ferenczi's humanistic analytic orientation was as important an advance in pioneering times as was Kohut's selfobject transference in contemporary psychoanalysis. Ferenczi's clinical theory and method began a focus on pre-oedipal experiences, which eventually became an alternate to the oedipal theory. Freud was critical of Ferenczi's formulation, leading a successful attempt to suppress his work and remove it from mainstream psychoanalysis because he believed it was “regressive.” In actuality, Ferenczi's “Confusion of Tongues” theory and “Relaxation Therapy” were prophetic and pioneering attempts to understand and treat the incest trauma (ironically the clinical data upon which Freud founded psychoanalysis 100 years ago). In the case of Miss T., Ferenczi's ideas are applied to the contemporary analysis of the incest trauma.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Commitment and compassion in psychoanalysis: Selected papers of Edward M. Weinshel Edited by Robert Wallerstein Transference: Shibboleth or Albatross? By Joseph Schachter Dreams and drama: Psychoanalytic criticism, creativity and the artist by Alan Roland “Forschen und Heilen” in der Psychoanalyse. Ergebnisse und Berichte aus Forschung und Praxis [‘Research and healing’ in psychoanalysis. Results and reports from research and practice] By Marianne Leuzinger‐Bohleber, Bernhard Rüger, Ulrich Stuhr and Manfred Beutel Mirror to nature: Drama, psychoanalysis and society By Margaret Rustin and Michael Rustin The importance of sibling relationships in psychoanalysis By Prophecy Coles Freud—Fragments d'une histoire [Freud—Fragments of a history] by Alain de Mijolla Funzione analitica e mente primitiva [Analytic function and primitive mind] By Giovanni Hautmann     

Elasticity and Healing: A Moment of Renewal

The simultaneous celebration of the donation by Dr. Judith Dupont of the Ferenczi Archive to the London Freud Museum and of the launch of two new books on Ferenczi in the Karnac History of Psychoanalysis Series provides an occasion for reflection on the trauma inflicted on the psychoanalytic world by the Freud–Ferenczi rift and on the hope for renewal symbolized by Dr. Dupont’s gift. Tribute is paid to Judith Dupont and to André Haynal for their contributions to preserving Ferenczi’s legacy. It is argued that Freud bears responsibility for pathologizing those with whom he had intellectual disagreements, but that Ferenczi’s concept of elasticity points the way to a reconciliation of Freud and Ferenczi that renders it no longer necessary to “rescue psychoanalysis from Freud.”     

The archive and psychoanalysis: Memories and histories toward futures

Abstract

The archive and psychoanalysis are reconnected in a new framework. The archaeological metaphor of psychoanalysis, the traditional view of archives as storehouses of historical items, and the notion of memory as storage are revised according to the conceptions of fluid and dynamic archival and memory systems. A combination of psychoanalytic models and cognitive memory research is proposed to form developmental archival theory that will take into account the changing contexts of memory, meaning-making, negotiation of interpretation, and knowledge regulation. The three phases of registration (archivalization, archivization, and archiving) are seen in the dynamics of unconsciousness–consciousness, and in relation to the archivists’ and researchers’ transferences to their records as self-objects, transitional objects or evocative objects. Becoming conscious of archives is a continuous journeying through the multiple registrations and narrativizations of archives in the interaction between non-declarative and declarative memory. The archive and psychoanalysis touch upon processes that are suggested to concern metamemory and metareflection (the interplay between meta-emotion and metacognition). The futures of archives and psychoanalysis call for context-sensitive remembering and being attentive to the co-constructive translations of personal and social memory. Opening archives and psychoanalysis toward the unprecedented, without closing histories and memories, is the interminable task of encountering the “missing moment.”     

On simulating one-trial learning using morphological neural networks

“Learning once, remembering forever”, this wonderful cognitive phenomenon sometimes occurs in the learning process of human beings. Psychologists call this psychological phenomenon “one-trial learning”. The traditional artificial neural networks can simulate the psychological phenomenon of “implicit learning”, but can’t simulate the cognitive phenomenon of “one-trial learning”. Therefore, cognitive psychology gives a challenge to the traditional artificial neural networks. From two aspects of theory and practice in this paper, the possibility of simulating this kind of psychological phenomenon was explored by using morphological neural networks. This paper takes advantage of morphological associative memory networks to realize the simulation of “one-trial learning” for the first time, and gives 5 simulating practical examples. Theoretical analysis and simulation experiments show that the morphological associative memory networks are a higher effective machine learning method, and can better simulate the cognitive phenomenon of “one-trial learning”, therefore provide a theoretical basis and technological support for the study of intelligent science and cognitive science.     

Nach Möglichkeit leistungs- und genussfähig machen

“To make him [the patient] as efficient and as capable of enjoyment as is possible” (1923a, S.E. 18, p. 251) was, for Freud, a satisfactory definition of the treatment aims of psychoanalysis. The present paper connects this definition with the mythologically formulated antagonism between the drives in which Eros appears as the adversary of Thanatos, and elaborates this by drawing upon Plato’s notions about love as proposed in his “Symposion”. In doing this, the theory of Sublimation becomes the focus of attention quite naturally. It is the author’s thesis that this concept is more useful than that of a neutralized or even a primarily neutral ego-energy. This is more than a question of different opinions. It is the question of the usefulness of the genetic point of view and of the idea of the unity of the libido. Within the range of these concepts it is possible to elaborate in an adequate manner how we are capable to find satisfaction and fulfillment in achievements and enjoyment.     

“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”).