Dora's Gift; Or,Lacan's Homage to Dora

Lacan reopened Dora's case in 1957. In his 1951 talk (published in 1952), transference was the key; in the 1957 seminar, he focused on hysteria. Dora loved by proxy and refused to be an object of heterosexual desire. Her object was homosexual because Mrs. K embodied Dora's essential question, femininity—a question that cannot be divorced from that of the lack of the phallus and her father's gift of nothing, which is the gift of love. There is no greater gift than the gift of what one does not have. Drawing from Mauss and Lévi-Strauss, Lacan concluded with an analysis of the cultural meaning of the gift.     

The relationships between television viewing in midlife and the development of Alzheimer's disease in a case-control study

The relationship between leisure activities and development of cognitive impairment in aging has been the subject of recent research. We examined television viewing in association with risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) in a case-control study. Given recent focus on the importance of intellectually stimulating activities as preventive measures against cognitive decline, it is important to examine the effects of less stimulating but common activities. Data are from 135 Alzheimer's disease cases and 331 healthy controls. Demographic characteristics and life history questionnaire responses on the number of hours spent on 26 leisure activities during middle-adulthood (ages 40-59) were analyzed. Logistic regression was used to examine the effects of middle-adulthood leisure activities on case vs. control status. Results indicate that for each additional daily hour of middle-adulthood television viewing the associated risk of AD development, controlling for year of birth, gender, income, and education, increased 1.3 times. Participation in intellectually stimulating activities and social activities reduced the associated risk of developing AD. Findings are consistent with the view that participation in non-intellectually stimulating activities is associated with increased risk of developing AD, and suggest television viewing may be a marker of reduced participation in intellectually stimulating activities.     

Does participation in research lead to changes in attitudes among clinicians? Report on a survey of those involved in a French practice research network

Background/Objective: With increasing awareness of some of the limitations of randomised controlled trials as the ‘gold standard’ of psychotherapy evaluation, researchers at the start of the twenty‐first century have focused on a number of new priorities: developing studies in natural conditions; investigating the psychotherapeutic process to better understand the conditions, causes and mechanisms of change; and reducing the gap between clinicians and researchers. Can these three interrelated objectives be combined? Method: A French psychotherapy practice‐based research network (PRN) is used as a field of research for these issues. A survey was used to investigate the conditions that encouraged the clinicians to participate in the PRN study within the context of clinicians’ general opposition to research. Results: Several elements emerged as the key to clinicians’ positive involvement in research: the methodology implemented (intensive case studies during one year); the choice of measures; the constant attention to the practicalities and the potential contribution of studies to clinical practice; the organisation of work in peer groups; the training methods; the use of new information technologies and the sense of participation in a project that would support the profession. Implications: These elements are briefly discussed in relation to the question of how best to encourage clinicians to engage with research.     

Transient activation of the CA3 Kappa opioid system in the dorsal hippocampus modulates complex memory processing in mice

The hippocampus plays a central role in various forms of complex learning and memory. Opioid peptides and receptors are abundant in the hippocampus. These peptides are co-released with glutamate from mossy fiber- and lateral perforant path-synapses. In this study, we evaluated the functional relevance of the CA3 Kappa opioid receptors (KOR) by transient pharmacological activation or inactivation using single bilateral intrahippocampal microinjections of a selective agonist (U50,488H, 1 or 2.5 nmol), a selective antagonist (nor-binaltorphimine, norBNI 5 nmol) or a mixture of both. C57Bl/6J mice were tested in a fear conditioning paradigm (FC) or in a modified version of the water maze task thought to reveal how flexibly animals can learn and manipulate spatial information (WM). In FC, the agonist (2.5 nmol) decreased context-induced (but not tone-induced) freezing whereas norBNI had no effect. The impairment caused by the agonist U50,488H was blocked by the injection of norBNI, suggesting that overstimulation of CA3-KOR impairs the acquisition and consolidation of contextual fear-related memory. In the WM task, mice were trained repeatedly each day to find a hidden platform. After having reached this goal, the platform position was changed the next day for a new task. U50,488H injection before the last task abolished the previously acquired ability to find rapidly a new platform location, whereas adding norBNI reversed this impairment. Thus, in the mouse, even partial and topographically restricted activation of CA3-KOR entails impairments in two different hippocampus-dependent tasks, indicating functional relevance of the kappa opioid system.     

The phenomenology of negation

Negation is a fundamental component of communication (no-answers), cognition (logical negation), perception (different color), attitude (dislike), emotion (hatred), and volition (disagreement). Its many uses make it difficult to provide an integrated definition of the concept. The aim of this paper is to show that an integrated definition of the concept can be arrived at by means of a phenomenological method structuring it into three general essences labelled lack, otherness and obstruction.

The role of maternal emotion regulation in controlling parenting during toddlerhood: an observational study

Motivation and Emotion - This study investigated the protective role of maternal adaptive emotion regulation in applying controlling parenting practices while assisting their toddler in completing...     

The European annuals of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis: the benefits of linguistic diversity

This paper presents the Annuals of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, which have been published in Europe since 2003, successively in French, Italian, German, Turkish and Russian. Like the Annuals published since 1985 in Latin America, these are designed to give non-Anglophone readers access to a selection of leading psychoanalytic articles. Each European Annual makes its own selection so the content varies from one Annual to another. Psychoanalysts on the various editorial committees translate the texts from English into their native target language on a voluntary basis. Beyond the geographical and cultural criteria, the desire to translate and the enjoyment of translating are among the key criteria. The Annual editors consider it important that the English language should continue to exist as a psychoanalytic lingua franca, without actually becoming its universal language, so that the richness and diversity of the psychoanalytic languages and terminologies can be preserved. The European Annuals in French, Italian, German, Turkish and Russian, with their linguistic and cultural characteristics, are then presented in turn.     

'Little Hans': From his phobic episode to becoming an opera director

‘Little Hans’ is one of the most highly commented cases in the psychoanalytic literature. His work as an opera director from 1925 in Europe and then in the United States of America is much less well known. This may seem especially surprising given that Freud very soon detects Hans’s emerging interest in this subject. Yet Freud does not mention it either in 1909 when he reports the case, or when Hans visits him in 1922, even though Hans had already decided to become an opera director at this point. The author of this article endeavours to show how this artistic choice could be understood as a way of accommodating, in a double transference relationship with Freud and with his father, the unanalysed residue of the ‘Krawall’ (a term invented by Hans) and ‘the black thing’, both of which appeared during the phobic period.     

Mathematics and Mysticism,Name Worshipping,Then and Now

The author's purpose is to put together three different mystical approaches to mathematics which are located in different contexts and periods of recent times but can be compared and may enrich one another: (1) the name-worshipping movement in the Russia of the beginning of the twentieth century, which gave birth to the famous Moscow School of Mathematics; (2) the deep mystical approach to mathematics of the important French philosopher Simone Weil; and (3) the recent autobiographical thoughts of the very important French mathematician Alexander Grothendieck. All three instances give a central role to the act of naming, and the author suggests further theological and mathematical investigations of the naming process.