The Problem of Silence: Training Analyses

An unusual set of silences mark the history of psychoanalysis, and the origins of training analysis is notable among them. Organizational trade unionist politics too often substitute for genuine scholarship. The advantages and limitations of the practice of training analysis need to be explored. Both Glover and Lacan pioneered politicization. A variety of authoritarian devices have been operating for suppressing "dissidence." The future of psychoanalysis may depend on the extent to which the political, social, and strictly philosophic sides of psychoanalysis get explored. in proposing that training analysis leads to     

Precarious life and the ethics of care: Subjectivity in an Indian religious phenomenon

This article relates certain figures of the subject in an emergent Indian pilgrimage. On the basis of ethnographic research and 15 in-depth interviews, I show that these religious subjectivities, phenomenologically immersed in highly precarious material conditions, are radically relational. Observations on the pilgrimage (en)counter the cognitivist assumptions of a body of scholarly opinion on contemporary religious practice. The analyst's attention to pilgrimage rituals and narratives traverses sociological, phenomenological, and psychoanalytic theories, and is, thereby, drawn to important questions of self, ethics, and time.     

Lewis Carroll and psychoanalysis: why nothing adds up in wonderland

Each generation of psychoanalyst has found different things to value and sometimes to censure in Lewis Carroll’s remarkable fiction and flights of fancy. But what does Carroll’s almost ‘surrealist’ perspective in the Alice stories tell us about the rituals and symbols that govern life beyond Wonderland and Looking‐Glass World? Arguing that Carroll’s strong interest in meaning and nonsense in these and later works helps make the world strange to readers, the better to show it off‐kilter, this essay focuses on Jacques Lacan’s Carroll – the writer–logician who stressed, as Lacan did, the difficulty and price of adapting to the symbolic order. By reconsidering Lacan’s 1966 homage to the eccentric Victorian, I argue that Carroll’s insight into meaning and interpretation remains of key interest to psychoanalysts intent on hearing all that he had to say about psychic life.     

Tele‐analysis: the use of media technology in psychotherapy and its impact on the therapeutic relationship

A growing number of approaches in psychotherapy make use of internet‐ and other media‐based interactions. This paper discusses the impact on the therapist‐client relationship of using media technology and gives an overview of the current state of the debate. It is suggested that the technical conditions of internet‐based interactions produce new forms of social relationships that differ significantly from face‐to‐face‐interactions and that unconscious, nonverbal cues get lost. Research on the therapeutic interaction making use of ‘discourse linguistic’ methods is presented. The loss of nonverbal cues has implications for psychotherapy in general and especially for the treatment of patients who have difficulties relying on a secure therapeutic relationship. Emotional security in interactional relationships is transmitted to a much greater extent by nonverbal cues than by verbal content; psychoanalytic methods are specialized to refer to this level of interaction. Two alternative scenarios are discussed based on the psychoanalytic theories of Winnicott and Lacan: the risk of an illusionary, idealized image of the other and the possibility that cyberspace can be used for psychological development as a transitional space.     

Melanie Klein in Buenos Aires: Beginnings and developments1

In the first decades of the 20th century, Freud was known and quoted in Latin America by an elite of enlightened minds. In the 1940s a convergence took place in Buenos Aires of European exiles with local pioneers, and thus the Argentine Psychoanalytical Association was founded in 1942. Since then psychoanalysis has grown steadily and has spread into hospitals and universities, infiuencing culture at large. The socioeconomic situation of that time permitted this phenomenon to develop, to the astonishment of observers. In this paper the authors study the strong infiuence of Kleinian thought during the first 30 years of this development. The original works of local thinkers constitute the intellectual capital that sustains the idea of an Argentine psychoanalytic school. During the 1970s, both society and psychoanalysis endured deep and complex changes. Lacan's teachings gained support and Klein's infiuence began to decline. At present the Buenos Aires Kleinians keep working, while their relationship with Lacanians and other schools is calmer. Respectful discussions became thus possible, oriented to strictly scientific differences.     

SCIENTISM AND TECHNOLOGY AS RELIGIONS

Abstract. Jacques Ellul, by far the most significant author in the serious discussions on the interface between religion and technology, is apparently not known to the science‐and‐religion field. The reason is the imprecise use of the terminology. In scientific formulation the relationship can be summarized as technology /religion:: science/theology. The first pair are robust three‐dimensional templates of most human experience; the second pair are linear, abstract concerns of a minority of citizens. In the parallel community—now well developed throughout academia—of science, technology, and society, where the technology/religion matters have been discussed more than the science/religion pair, John Caiazza's point that “techno‐secularism is the real problem” has been front and center for some decades. Among the theologians most aware of this, Raimundo Panikkar, Langdon Gilkey, and Huston Smith, Smith is the one who has taken the case much further than Caiazza, recognizing the danger of the real theological challenge from the religion of scientism and actively working against it. I write from a unique background among those involved in this debate—that of being deeply embedded simultaneously both in the modern science and technology establishment and in the reform of the religious enterprise for fifty years. I make the case that matters are worse than even Smith posits. He shows that scientism as a fundamentalist modern secularism serves the exact function of the theology behind the practiced religion of America and the West, that is, technology. An unexpected ray of hope has appeared in the sudden emergence of whole‐person healing (also known as complementary and alternative medicine), which is used regularly by well over half the population. This reintroduction of the spiritual dimension into this key technology of health will certainly be a major turning point.     

Intimate Distance: Rethinking the Unthought God in Christianity

The work of the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy shares with the thinkers of the ‘theological turn in phenomenology’ the programmatic desire to place the ‘theological’, in the broad sense of rethinking the religious traditions in our secular time, back on the agenda of critical thought. Like those advocating a theological turn in phenomenology, Nancy’s deconstructive approach to philosophical analysis aims to develop a new sensibility for the other, for transcendence, conceptualized as the non-apparent in the realm of appearing phenomena. This is why Nancy launches a project looking for the ‘unthought’ and unexpected within the Christian traditions, called deconstruction of Christianity. However, the deconstructive approach to the non-apparent differs fundamentally from that of the thinkers of the turn (1) in its being non-apologetic and non-restorative with regard to religion, because it starts from a problematization of the—typically modern, that is romantic—desire to defend and protect what would be ‘lost’ and possibly to restore this, (2) in its focus on the complex difference-at-work (différance) between religion and secularism, a difference that can be termed entanglement and complicity between these two, (3) in its hypothesis that this entanglement is essentially one between (the meaning and experience of, the rituality around) presence and absence in modern culture, (4) in its conviction that the philosophy and history of culture must join, support, complete and maybe even turn around phenomenology when dealing with the difficult task of determining what exactly would be ‘left’ of the ‘theological’ in our time. In this article, both positions are compared and confronted further, leading to an account of Nancy’s re-readings of the Christian legacy (its theology, doctrine, art, rituals etc.), and ending in a more detailed, exemplary inquiry into the tension between distance and proximity, characteristic of the Christian God.

Reflections of the Aging Caesar: Drama as Cultural Perspective

This article affirms the view that literature transmits multiple reflections on human life that shape social mores. Examining stereotypes of age in literature as socially constructed artifacts reveals the prevailing attitudes toward aging during that time. This study focuses on the aging Julius Caesar in William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Julius Caesar and in George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra. Writing 300 years apart, these two great playwrights inscribe both positive and negative models of aging, reflecting views in their eras that persist today. This article identifies these models, then explores them from a Lacanian standpoint, showing that each dramatist focuses on Caesar's ego development through the opinions of other characters. Offering a primarily negative view of aging, Shakespeare emphasizes the fragmented mirror images that other characters hold up to Caesar. Shaw self-consciously counters Shakespeare by foregrounding Caesar as subject, who beholds his aging self in the mirror of others' opinions while enacting a positive model of aging. Tracing this long tradition of aging stereotypes found in the two plays can be useful as scholars continue to reconstruct society's attitudes toward aging.     

On the function of a ‘break’ within the psychoanalytic double session

This article considers theoretical and clinical implications of the practice of ‘double sessions’ as defined by two consecutive sessions of psychotherapy divided by a 10-minute break. Limited existing literature of ‘double sessions’ is critiqued and the therapeutic significance of the 10-minute break provides the focus for this article with reference to the Lacanian practice of ‘scansion’. The author draws on relevant therapeutic experience and case material to elucidate the potential benefits of the introduction of double sessions with particular client groups. It is argued that the break provides the opportunity to access often hidden archaic defences as the effects of rupture and reconnection are worked through. Equally, the separation of the break allows the patient's immediate associations following the end of the first session to be brought immediately back into the work. The practice is problematised in relation to potential contraindications with particular patient groups and this, in turn, elucidates the conceptual differences between Freudian/Lacanian and object relations traditions.     

Catalysts for psychic change: Perspectives from contemporary psychoanalysis

This paper was given as the inaugural ‘Ellen Noonan Counselling Lecture’ on 3 July 2007, at Birkbeck College, University of London, and I have retained some of the spoken style of the original lecture. Since the 1960s, psychoanalytic models of change and growth have in themselves undergone radical changes. The aims of psychoanalytic and psychodynamic work are now less tied to a model of ‘health’ or ‘normality’ and more linked into processes that enable people to keep developing throughout life. The lecture examines some of the new theories of psychic change and growth from the contemporary Independent, Lacanian and post-Kleinian schools of psychoanalysis and, using clinical illustrations, explores the implications of these new theories for psychodynamic practice.