International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies最新文献

Burnout syndrome is currently one of the key phenomena of modern work culture. Although it is commonly examined within the frameworks of health and organizational psychology, the psychoanalytic approach—particularly the theory of Jacques Lacan—offers a deeper understanding of its structural dynamics. This article presents a Lacanian interpretation of burnout syndrome as a symptom of the subject's (le sujet) relationship to the symbolic order (l'ordre symbolique) and the Big Other (le Grand Autre). Burnout is here understood as a consequence of imaginary identification with the professional role, superegoic imperatives of endless jouissance (la jouissance), and the collapse of desire under the weight of unattainable expectations. Specific attention is paid to Czech society, where recent data from a representative study indicate a slightly declining trend in the prevalence of burnout syndrome over the past decade. This development is discussed within the Lacanian framework as a possible result of the subject's gradual cultural separation from the imperatives of the Big Other. The article connects psychoanalytic concepts with current developments in the Czech social and occupational context and emphasizes the importance of symbolic work with subjectivity as a path to understanding and preventing burnout syndrome.

The accelerating climate crisis is reshaping the psychic landscapes of children and adolescents, giving rise to new clinical presentations marked by catastrophic imagery, symbolic foreclosure, and a loss of future-oriented thinking. This theoretical paper explores the phenomenon of climate change anxiety in youth through the lens of psychodynamic psychotherapy, arguing that such anxiety constitutes a unique form of developmental, symbolic, and relational disruption. Drawing on classical and contemporary psychoanalytic theories—particularly those addressing symbolization, temporality, containment, and transference—the paper examines how climate anxiety interferes with the child's ability to metabolize emotional experience, maintain trust in adult authority, and construct a coherent narrative of self in time. The work challenges traditional clinical approaches by emphasizing the role of the therapist not only as interpreter but as co-regulator and symbolic anchor in a saturated emotional field. In this context, interpretation must yield to presence, and the therapeutic task becomes one of holding the tension between internal reality and external catastrophe. Attention is given to the dynamics of anticipatory mourning, intergenerational rupture, and the therapist's own countertransference in the face of collective dread. Ultimately, the paper argues that psychodynamic psychotherapy, when reframed to meet the demands of the climate era, offers a unique space in which meaning can be reestablished, temporality reconstructed, and psychic life preserved. In doing so, it asserts the enduring relevance—and moral responsibility—of psychodynamic thought in a world confronting existential collapse.

During critical socio-political conditions of profound uncertainty, social disquietude, frustration, and an inability to creatively imagine future scenarios, regressive and defensive processes of collective nature are acted out to provide an illusory sense of omnipotence, protection, and stability by evacuating psychic pain, anguish, fears, and disorientation. The spread of fascism in the last century and the contemporary forms of populism in Western countries dramatically demonstrate a series of psycho-socio-political dynamics. This includes a denial of alterity forms, the organization of social space architecture through paranoid feelings, the dilution of a group's subjective responsibility accompanied by the need for identification with charismatic leaders, sensemaking processes ideologically shaped on a unique homologated form without the possibility of divergence or diversity, and the emergence of new hyper-simplified languages based on the immediacy of thought-action. From the perspective of psychoanalysis, all of these circumstances show the difficulties of dealing with the social transitional space of democracy. Indeed, by their very nature, democratic institutions are potentially unsaturated areas of thirdness and otherness where subjective and collective levels can meet, where it is possible to work on limits, recognize borders, and undertake regulatory, intermediary, and symbolic processes in service of growth, learning, and development.

Most of what goes on in political discourse tends to accommodate to conscious psychology and rational thinking; nonetheless, there remains a perplexing, powerful and much less visible, primarily unconscious piece that can help address the chaos that threatens democracy's rather fragile nature. The limits of rational thinking become apparent when we consider the forceful powers of phantasies underlying human destructiveness. Consequently, including a psychoanalytic lens is essential to appreciate how and why a rational approach, while necessary, remains insufficient to grapple with the non-rational, unconscious and highly emotionally charged forces in American politics as well as in democratic-leaning movements worldwide. This paper seeks to deepen understanding through addressing such components as the long-standing nature of American populism and its relationship to both democracy and authoritarianism; the conditions leading to large-group regression as well as the unique fit between malignant leadership and perverted containment within regressed groups; the psychic mechanisms, including delusional and other psychotic processes, that turn a regressed large group into a personality cult; and finally, the unique contributions psychoanalysis can make in managing such regressive, malevolent dynamics to help chart a realistically hopeful path forward.

What does it mean to be an effective citizen in a democracy? Answering this question requires unpacking “democracy” and an analysis of institutions that systematically disempower and alienate citizens. This paper briefly examines the contributions of psychoanalysis to understanding democracy and authoritarianism. It scrutinizes U.S. governance institutions and points to democratic deficits and backsliding present even before Trump 1.0 and 2.0. These range from the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Supreme Court to the Federal Communications Commission. All contributed to institutionalizing minority rule and elite capture. Governance institutions failed to deliver what the American people tell opinion pollsters they want, including affordable health care, a higher minimum wage, regulation of industry and finance, reduced educational, medical and housing debt, a serious climate change policy, an economy that provides meaningful work, abolition of the Electoral College, the popular vote for president, and labor, reproductive and consumer rights. Elite capture limits effective citizenship in multiple ways. Social exclusion involves the systemic, structural exclusion of people from institutions to which they are supposed to have access and from rights to which they are entitled. Elite capture and social exclusion have very real material effects on the population. They also deeply structure subjectivity and fuel beliefs in conspiracy theories and authoritarian demagogues. A full discussion of Trump 1.0 and 2.0 is beyond the scope of this paper. The rise of a deeply authoritarian and reactionary movement and administration, however, cannot be separated from earlier processes of systemic exclusion and disinformation that left significant portions of the electorate feeling enraged and abandoned.

What makes some photographs electrify and move us? According to the author, the camera remains in the service of a mental apparatus which looks for the possibility of expressing its contents, both conscious and unconscious—which are all kinds of human needs, desires, dreams and thoughts. The author directs her thoughts in the area of unconscious intersubjectivity, referring most of all to the Freudian theory of unconscious receptivity and unconscious communication, as well as Winnicott's concept of the mirror role of mother and play. Attention is drawn to the uniqueness of the photographic transition of space, in which a special place is occupied by light, which is not only a type of paint, but also a unique partner of fun, thanks to which the form, shape and depth of photography is created. The essay itself is a transitional space between various psychoanalytic narrations and various narrations of photographs in which the paintings of the Polish photographer Edward Hartwig have a special place.

This paper explores the intersection of envy and culture in the perpetuation of corrupt workplace practices in Ghana. Drawing on Kleinian and Bionian psychoanalytic theories, particularly Bion's basic assumptions, we examine how unconscious group dynamics manifest as corruption across public, private, and religious organizations. Through detailed case studies of organizations in each sector, we illustrate how employees unconsciously attack the very institutions they depend on, driven by envy masked as entitlement or normalized by cultural practices and religious rationalizations. We argue that corruption is not merely a rational choice but a symptom of deeper psychological and cultural currents. To address this, we advocate for a psychoanalytic framework that brings unconscious processes into awareness, enabling targeted psychoeducation and systemic intervention. This study offers new insights into the psychosocial underpinnings of corruption and emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary strategies to address the colossal problem of corruption in organizations operating within similar cultures.