AMERICAN IMAGO最新文献

Abstract:

Prejudice could be defined as an irrational sense of superiority, an ironic expression of an unconscious feeling of inferiority that claims paradoxically that one human identity is worthier than another. Implicit prejudice would suggest the unconscious nature of a bias within an individual, whereas complicit prejudice would suggest a shared bias within a family, or group, or even a whole society. The two (implicit and complicit) are intimately connected, of course, and how they influence each other can be explored. The cultural disease called prejudice has been with us forever and there is no cure in sight. Psychoanalysis itself is not immune to it, and “physician heal thyself” must be considered, even as the psychoanalyst puts pen to paper. Prejudice is an expression of hatred that the science of psychoanalysis tries to study on the most granular level, so that each individual human ego can understand, possess, and embrace its barbaric animal nature without disowning, and attacking in the other, what it dares not see in itself and call its own.

Abstract:

In recent decades, Western societies have been exposed to increasing dynamics of change and crisis as a result of ongoing globalization, and of flight and displacement in many regions of the world. The insecurity and humiliation of being more exposed to global developments than being able to influence them leads many people to seek social security. As a result, populist and far-right ideologies have become increasingly attractive to some. There has also been a revival of authoritarian thinking. Based on Erich Fromm’s concept introduced in the 1930s, its current forms are described in terms of the narcissistic self- and other-dynamics. Social science data show that, in addition to authoritarian thinking, a narcissistic longing for a homogeneous society makes populist and far-right ideologies increasingly attractive. If we analyze this phantasm of a homogeneous nation, we find at its root unconscious fantasies of care and sibling rivalry, of purity and the idea of the Other, the fantasy of a protective whole. Such ideal-narcissistic states of purity and homogeneity do not tolerate divergences and are therefore associated with paranoia and violence. Ultimately, the irreversibility of difference and ambivalence in human life is denied.

Abstract:

This article analyzes how the philosopher Alain Badiou describes a process invented by Lacan, la passe, the pass—a procedure for deciding whether or not to admit to his student analysands about to complete their analysis. By deconstructing Badiou’s text, the author shows how the philosopher ascribes a sacramental presupposition to the pass, understood as a Catholic sacrament or mystical mystery. The author criticises a kind of dogmatic worship of psychoanalysis into which many philosophers fall, and shows how this uncritical belief in the sacramental effectiveness of psychoanalysis—and the cult of Freud’s work as a Revelation—fails to help psychoanalysis to improve in any way, but rather shuts it down in a narcissistic self-satisfaction. Instead, psychoanalysis lives of its own deconstruction.

Abstract:

The uncanny experience refers to unsettling feelings that emerge when confronted with events that seem remotely familiar but still strange and opaque. It relies on magical thinking, as the experience seems to take place emphatically in the sensorial realm, partly lacking symbolic quality. In this article, I approach the uncanny as representing an inability to represent, revealing discontinuities and gaps in experience. I suggest that the uncanny representation can be approached creatively and turned into an aesthetic experience. The uncanny as an aesthetic experience enables a creative elaboration of being unable to overcome a gap. Thus, it can contribute to self-growth and deepening of a subjective sense of self. To illustrate the creative potential of the uncanny I look at two examples, one from literature and the other a personal account. I further elaborate on the position of the uncanny in the field of aesthetics by comparing it with the sublime experience and suggest that the uncanny is a negative of the sublime. In the sublime, a representation of the infinite and unspeakable is formed, while the uncanny, in contrast, represents the impossibility of doing so.

Abstract:

While this article begins by noting the positive role that constructivism has played in the development of psychoanalytic theory over the past 50 years, it also points to the limitations of the approach and argues they must be corrected. For at the same time as constructivism’s criticisms of biologism and essentialism have provided powerful weapons for combating psychoanalytic conservatism, an exclusively constructivist approach has also made it difficult, if not impossible, to address an essential issue for psychoanalysts: namely, the normative basis of the enterprise and the goal(s) of development and treatment. The author claims that Winnicott’s theory provides a way out of this difficulty. For although Winnicott is often construed as a strict constructivist owing to his introduction of the notion of the environment, it is argued that his concept of “inherited potential” retains biological foundation for psychoanalysis while avoiding the dangers of essentialism.

Abstract:

This article underscores the inherent technological drive that exists in human beings, whose wellspring is mortal vulnerability coupled with human intelligence and mobile dexterity. It also stresses the progressive and refined interaction between humans and their machines, drawing connections between the technological enterprise and human sexuality, especially with regard to perversion. It examines the new sexual landscape emerging as a result of advanced technology, offering a brief summary of four clinical cases.

Abstract:

Once upon a time, in the 1970s and 1980s, perversion was still an untamed area ripe for psychoanalytic exploration. In exploring perversion, we were free to go beyond the constraints of classical theory about oedipal conflict and ponder where and how sexuality arose, developed, and was used by patients. Perversion, then and now, has been tainted by the sense of something bad, wrong, transgressive. Once we stopped defining perversion as behavior requisite for sexual functioning, we could begin to move toward what could be pleasurable in perversion, especially excitement. And then Laplancheans and Queer theorists would help us reclaim the perverse as valuable, and help us try to accept our patients' intense sexuality. Perverse excitement, rather than perversion, becomes our contemporary fascination. It becomes a way to engage another when ordinary calm caring is unimaginable. Infantile sexuality can be hijacked so as to stir up another when one feels uncared for, disregarded. Perverse excitement can be passed from generation to generation and experienced as something foreign, monstrous, unmanageable—a lust that has to be hidden behind barriers.

Abstract:

It is impossible to read much about American poet Anne Sexton before encountering references to her "perverse" imagination. Critics routinely argue that she paints a perverse vision of childhood sexuality, female identity, and adult sexuality in her work, and they often object to her frank discussions of the body, its pleasures, and its dangerous powers. Her depictions of mental illness, initiated in To Bedlam and Part Way Back, also earned the derision of many critics who urged her "not to enquire further." Helen Vendler (1988) argued that "a poem was never better for having a uterus in it," and James Dickey objected to being exposed to so much "naked suffering"; that quote was in Anne's wallet when she killed herself in her garage in 1974. In her interviews and her poetry, Sexton answered these critics as a confessional poet and a cultural critic. But even after her death, accusations of her perversion abound. First, her biographer, Diane Middlebrook, exposed her sexual abuse of her daughter Linda. And then Sexton's sister Blanche referred to the poet's "perverse imagination" in a 1991 letter to the Boston Globe, where she and her daughters objected to how Middlebrook's biography represented Sexton's family as riddled with alcoholism, child neglect and/or abuse, and suicide.