BEFORE BABEL: REFLECTIONS ON READING AND TRANSLATING FREUD

The author offers some thoughts on reading and teaching Freud, on translating Freud, on translation in general, and on a possible kinship between translation and the psychoanalytic process. His reading of Freud's works, and the years he spent translating them into Hebrew and editing Hebrew editions of his writings, have made a deep and salient impression on his personal psychoanalytic palimpsest. The author began this labor prior to his psychoanalytic training and has no doubt that, to this day, the experience greatly shapes not only his attitude toward Freud himself, but also the nature of how he listens to patients and the way he thinks and writes about psychoanalysis.     

“I HEAR MY VOICE,BUT WHO IS TALKING?”: UNDERSTANDING DEPERSONALIZATION

Depersonalization is the frightening experience of being a shut‐inside, ghostlike, “true” self that observes another part of the self interacting in the outside world. The “true” self hides safely within, while the “participating” self holds all affects and impulses. This split in the ego is created via internal projective identification in the face of overwhelming affect, unavailability of adequate identifications, and insufficient support for psychic cohesion. As the transference develops, the powerful entrapping cocoon of depersonalization can be projected onto the now‐entrapping analyst, where it can be addressed. A clinical vignette illustrates these points.     

HANSEL AND GRETEL: A TALE OF TERROR

In the analysis of a woman with multiple childhood traumas, the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel” figured prominently. The author discusses the use of the fairy tale in this case at various levels. He suggests an interplay between a national myth, the fairy tale, and a personal myth—the patient's psychodynamics. The fairy tale can be used to illuminate personal meanings derived from it. In the experience of childhood trauma, the repeated reading of a fairy tale can help organize and defend against terrifying anxiety.     

Sabina Spielrein: out from the shadow of Jung and Freud

Abstract: Since the 1982 publication of Aldo Carotenuto's book, A Secret Symmetry: Sabina Spielrein Between Jung and Freud, there has been renewed interest in the life and work of Sabina Spielrein. She was Jung's first psychoanalytic case at the Burghölzli Hospital in 1904, and was referred to several times in The Freud/Jung Letters. Spielrein recovered, enrolled in medical school, and went on to become a Freudian analyst. Her most famous paper, published in 1912, ‘Destruction as a cause of coming into being’, was referred to by Freud in 1920 in relation to his Death Instinct theory. In the few Freudian publications on this controversial theory since 1920, Spielrein's contribution is consistently omitted. Jung also neglected to refer to her ‘Destruction’ paper in his early 1912 version of ‘Symbols of transformation’, even though he had edited her paper and had promised to acknowledge her contribution. He did refer extensively to Spielrein's first paper, her medical thesis, ‘On the psychological content of a case of schizophrenia’, published in 1911, as yet unpublished in English. In her paper Spielrein sought to understand the psychotic delusions of Frau M, a patient at the Burghölzli, much in the style of Jung's ‘Psychology of dementia praecox’ (1907). The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent Spielrein's Frau M paper, and its companion ‘Destruction’ paper, make an original contribution to both Jung and Freud's emerging theories on the possible creative versus destructive outcomes of neurotic or psychotic introversion, culminating in Jung's concept of the ‘collective unconscious’ (1916) and Freud's concept of a ‘Death instinct’ (1920).     

The body, adolescence, and psychosis

This article explores aspects of the clinical development of a male 17 year-old patient who had four weekly sessions of psychoanalysis during an acute psychotic crisis. In the context of arrested adolescent development, a psychotic crisis can present an opportunity to set the process of maturation in motion again. Adolescent psychosis is examined in the light of Bion's theories of catastrophic change - in which the container/contained relationship becomes explosive and overwhelming - as well as of Ferrari's and Matte Blanco's hypotheses on the mind-body relationship. The authors emphasize the role of denial of the body and its changes in the genesis of adolescent psychotic conflict, and show how the analytic relationship can offer crucial reverie conditions for promoting recognition of the body, bodily sensations and affects, as a prerequisite for the activation of an autonomous mental system. This clinical approach entails recognizing the urgent need to make room for the elaboration of intrasubjective relationships and for mind-body dialogue, transference interpretations being postponed. Clinical material and fragments of analytic dialogue illustrate the authors' hypotheses and demonstrate the patient's development towards recognition of his body and an incipient capacity to think associated with the perception of the limits set by time and reality.     

A brief introduction to the work of Jean Laplanche

The author proposes an introduction to the work of Jean Laplanche, a well‐known figure of psychoanalysis who recently passed away. He foregrounds what he views as the three main axes of Laplanche's work: firstly, a critical reading method applied to Freud's texts; secondly, a model of psychic functioning based on translation; and, thirdly, a theory of general seduction. Far from being an abstract superstructure, the theory of general seduction is firmly rooted in the analytic situation, as the provocation of transference by the analyst best illustrates. The analytic situation indeed consists in a revival and a reopening of the ‘fundamental anthropological situation’ which, according to Laplanche, is the lot of every human baby born in a world where he or she is necessarily exposed to the enigmatic and ‘compromised’ messages of the adult other. Thanks to the process of analytic de‐translation, the analysand is therefore granted an opportunity to carry out new translations of the other's enigma – translations or symbolizations that might be more inclusive and less rigid than the pre‐existing ones. Incidentally, such a model brings together the purely psychoanalytic and the psychotherapeutic aspects of the treatment.     

Development of Postural Adjustment During Gait Initiation: Kinematic and EMG Analysis

The authors studied the development of postural adjustments associated with the initiation of gait in children by using kinematic and electromyographic (EMG) analysis. Participants (N = 28) included infants with 1-4 and 9-17 months of walking experience, children 4-5 years of age, and adults. Anticipatory postural adjustments (APA) were present in the youngest age groups, including a clear anticipatory lateral tilt of the pelvis and the stance leg, which enabled the child to unload the opposite leg shortly before its swing phase. An anticipatory activation of the hip abductor of the leg in stance phase prior to heel-off was found, suggesting pelvis stabilization. APA did not appear consistently until 4-5 years of age. A decrease in segmental oscillations occurred across the ages, indicating better control of intersegmental coordination in the frontal and sagittal planes during the postural phase of gait initiation. Young walkers presented APA involving movements of both the upper and the lower parts of the body, whereas, like adults, 4- to 5-year-olds were able to laterally shift only the pelvis and the stance leg. The oldest children and the adults also showed lower activation levels of hip and knee muscles but higher activation at the ankle level. Those kinematic and EMG results taken together suggest a clear developmental sequence from an en bloc operation of the body through an articulated operation with maturation, walking experience, or both.     

On the nature and standing of psychoanalytic psychotherapy

In this paper, I offer some reflections on the standing of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the National Health Service (NHS), with special reference to contemporary forms of evidence-based thinking. I consider what may follow when a narrow view of science or psychotherapeutic practice becomes conventional wisdom and assumes dominance. I place stress on the potential loss to NHS psychology and psychiatry if psychoanalytic psychotherapy becomes increasingly marginalized on the one hand, or overly standardized on the other.     

The clinical revolution of the ‘wise baby’

In an historical context focused on a close examination of the complex relationship between Freud and Ferenczi, the author shows Ferenczi's contribution to the evolution of psychoanalysis. He describes how his ideas and his therapeutic sensitivity anticipated modern clinical thought (for example, Winnicott and Bion), especially the understanding of borderline and narcissistic pathology. The paper considers the following topics: transference and countertransference; early affectivity; the different psychic trauma; phenomena connected with dissociation; the healing factor of the analysis.