International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies最新文献

This paper explores the relationship between diminished linguistic abilities and delinquent behavior in adolescents. It posits that a failure in the psychic process of figuration—a key component in the formation of mental representations—can significantly contribute to criminal acts in youth. When adolescents lack the capacity to symbolize and process internal and external stimuli, a breach in psychic continuity occurs, often leading them to act out impulsively. This paper presents clinical and literary examples to support the argument and concludes that enhancing symbolic and linguistic skills is essential in both the prevention and rehabilitation of juvenile delinquency.

Sylvia Plath wrote with great precision about her deep depression and her vital need to write, before committing suicide shortly after the publication of her only novel, The Bell Jar. Our contribution, distinct from previous studies of her life and work, highlights an aspect that has been little explored until now, but which is crucial to re-examining her suicide and identifying a central risk of psychotherapy. Drawing on her journals, we explain how, in seeking to encourage her creativity, Plath's psychotherapy paradoxically destabilized her. We situate this experience in the post-war American context, marked by the importation of psychoanalysis into psychotherapy and psychiatry, where the sublimation of drives was conceived as an individual and collective requirement for producing a normalized individual. Based on a re-examination of Freud's and then Lacan's conceptions of sublimation, we show how this “push towards sublimation” led Plath to produce, with The Bell Jar, a final work, mortally accomplishing the unconscious aim of her sublimatory process. Finally, we draw attention to the risk of psychotherapies centered on the idea that the patient could find their highest good in sublimation: taken to the extreme, such a dynamic can pave the way for the expression of the self-destructive tendencies of the subject and of civilization.

This article focus on Didier Anzieu's “Skin Ego” concept, examining the important role of early parental touch on formation of self. Additionally, this article claims that the mental representations and early bodily experiences are linked with self development. The Skin Ego is defined as a psychological envelope that protects the individual's psychic integrity and functions as a permeable membrane between the external and internal worlds. Based on Anzieu, the physical contact established with the caregiver is internalized over time, shaping psychic limitations. The article includes the Skin Ego concept with contributions from other psychoanalytic theorists such as Winnicott's “holding,” Donald Meltzer's “adhesive identification,” and Esther Bick's “second skin.” These concepts complement Anzieu's theory by demonstrating how a containing and filtering function is provided against external threats, holding psychic experiences together in the early stages of psychic structuring. The lack of touch or traumatic touch can lead to a “wounded skin ego,” resulting in various psychopathologies, including borderline personality disorders, psychosomatic symptoms, and dissociative disorders. The important contribution of this article is its integration of the Skin Ego concept into applied psychoanalysis, moving beyond clinical limitations. This framework examines how the self and the sense of belonging are affected in cultural, social, and political contexts. For example, Yasser Ad-Dab'bagh's work defines prejudice and discrimination as a wound to the ego's skin, suggesting that this hinders an individual's sense of belonging and leads to a loss of psychic integrity. This shows that the Skin Ego is not just an individual metaphor but also a sociopolitical phenomenon that explains the psychic effects of social inequalities and collective traumas. In conclusion, the article positions the Skin Ego as a bridge concept that connects clinical practice with cultural, historical, and political formations.

Meena Alexander and Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge are two poets who experienced dislocation and immigration. The loss of their first language seems reflected in their work. Intersecting with their maternal ties, the lost object and a lost language may later have become foci of mourning and also generative forces within their writing. The author considers their creativity in the shadow of absence and trauma of dislocation. In different ways for each, their writing becomes a nest, a container for loss and rupture, and the site of transformation of absence into growth.

This article applies psychoanalytic metapsychology to Lévi-Strauss's paradigm of elementary kinship, clarifying how unconscious identifications and affective investments are organized by alliance rules and naming practices. We first synthesize key concepts in Freud and Lacan with structural anthropology to specify the psychic mechanisms, namely, repression, substitution, sublimation, that mediate incest prohibition in elementary systems. We then advance an applied analytic model showing how cross-cousin marriage cycles encode deferred desire and how onomastic conventions can trace transgenerational affect. The discussion reframes “female passivity” not as a theoretical given but as the outcome of intergenerational identifications operating within exchange logics, while distinguishing patrilateral “social incest” from matrilateral integration. Conceptually, the paper offers a bridge between psychoanalytic theory and anthropological description; methodologically, it sets out a hermeneutic–comparative framework suitable for applied psychoanalytic studies. Implications include a refined account of the social transmission of desire and guidance for interpreting family dynamics in culturally embedded settings.

This article proposes a psychoanalytic reading of the Bardo Thödol (The Tibetan Book of the Dead) as a symbolic cartography of consciousness transformation. Drawing from Freud, Klein, Bion, and Lacan in dialog with Buddhist phenomenology, it explores how the transitional states described in the Tibetan text (bardos) may illuminate psychic processes of disintegration and reorganization. Rather than reducing Buddhist metaphysics to psychoanalytic categories, the essay examines how both frameworks interrogate and transform one another when confronted with the ineffable limits of experience. The Bardo Thödol is approached here not as a metaphysical doctrine but as a performative narrative of psychic thresholds, moments when symbolization fails and must be reborn. By reading the bardo passages through Bion's alpha-function and Lacan's logical time, the paper suggests a model of psychic rebirth grounded in the transformation of unthinkable emotional states into symbolic form. At the same time, Buddhist notions of impermanence and emptiness invite a reconsideration of psychoanalytic assumptions about the self, desire, and the continuity of egoic identity. The study thus proposes a bidirectional translation: psychoanalysis offers a language for the structure of transformation, while Buddhism exposes the fragility of all structures. Through this mutual interrogation, the Bardo Thödol emerges as both a clinical and contemplative metaphor for the mind's capacity to die, dissolve, and begin again.

Humans cling to their exceptionalism, a mindset of omnipotence. This defensive conceit has sent us into ecological overshoot. I assess Freud's effort to de-center humanity, and describe subsequent psychoanalytic efforts to understand the environmental crisis. Psychoanalytic literature has indeed confronted the ecological crisis, but it usually targets climate change denial, over-consumption, and our perverse relationship to technology. Psychoanalysis, like the broader culture, seems at pains to avoid overpopulation. Moving to ecology, I summarize overshoot science. Growth in human population and consumption drive the triple-crises of climate change, resource depletion and biodiversity loss. Politics have undermined this scientific consensus. I then identify the anxieties overpopulation evokes and our defenses against them: disavowal, regression to part-object solutions, and omnipotence. We have good reason to deploy them. Overshoot brutally confronts us with limits and loss and the unwelcome imperative for reproductive restraint. Alert to these hard truths, psychoanalysis can objectively reflect on analysands' wish for a child, analyzing both constructive and destructive aspects of the wish. Ecology, like the psychoanalytic frame, contains and limits us. And limits promote the maturational work of mourning.

Based on the assumption in recent research that Adolf Hitler only developed an eliminatory anti-Semitism with the announcement of the Versailles peace terms in 1919, the article examines the question of which psychological mechanisms were at work. It is a commonplace that the Treaty of Versailles was a “traumatic” experience for Hitler and many Germans. Was it also “traumatic” in the clinical sense of the term? If so, why and in what specific form did the historical event have a traumatizing effect? The phenomenon of Nachträglichkeit (deferred action) offers one possible explanation: Fears and feelings of guilt associated with the peace conditions and, above all, the “Schmachparagraphen” of the Treaty of Versailles reactivated traumas from early childhood, which only now experienced their full pathological effect. The approach pursued here offers a way out of the dilemma of determinism, as it emphasizes the fundamental openness of historical developments and analyses the interplay between individual psychopathology and key historical events.

The international literature on workplace experiences of lesbian and gay (LG) people evidences how these workers are affected by heteronormative pressures and segregation policies. It also establishes that many experience discrimination and microaggressions in the workplace as having an impact on psychological health and job and life satisfaction. To investigate the workplace experiences of LG individuals, a total of 24 in-depth interviews were conducted with 6 Italian cisgender lesbian women and 6 Italian cisgender gay men, based on the principles of the Free Association Narrative Interview Method. Through the analysis of the interview accounts, four major themes were identified: (a) double discrimination, particularly the prejudice related to the intersection of homophobia and sexism for lesbian women; (b) outness and sexual orientation disclosure having a beneficial effect on job satisfaction and satisfaction in personal relationships, alongside an awareness and/or expectation of experiences of discrimination; (c) the negative role of heterosexism, stigma, together with the presence of microaggressions; and (d) horizontal relationships as protective factors from the effects of stigma on well-being and job and life satisfaction. The study findings further evidence aspects of the international research literature in further supporting a need to implement interventions aimed at addressing the effects of stigma, discrimination, and heterosexism on LG workers and promoting well-being at work. The study findings also highlight the role of government and companies in implementing and perfectioning workplace antidiscrimination, diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, practices, and legislation.