International Journal of Psychoanalysis最新文献

The author explores the notion of sexual difference, which Freud articulated in his vast work. The paper approaches different levels of theoretical and epistemological order, since the way of thinking about "difference" has crucial effects on clinical work. The point of departure was to analyse the changes that are observed in current subjectivities regarding the female condition and the changing itineraries of sexuality and gender, since the analysts' explicit and private theories, as well as their beliefs and biases, are put into play in psychoanalytic listening. The paper focuses on the relationship of psychosexuality and gender with the concept of sexual difference and with "difference" as a category in itself. The objective was to explore the meanings of the concept of "difference", in which sexual difference is certainly included as one of the expressions of "difference". The author's proposal is that there is not a single way of thinking about the notion of sexual difference in Freud's works. This exploration enlightens the coexistence of dualistic and triadic ways of thinking in his oeuvre.

The author hypothesizes that Freud had a clinical intuition about a new theory of psychic development, and a new vision of psychoanalytic technique, by introducing his concepts of Agieren and compulsion to repeat (Zwange zur Wiederholung) in his 1914g paper, "Remembering, Repeating and Working Through". It is postulated that this view remained in the Freudian model as a private, implicit theory, and was not taken up for many decades in the analytic movement. A re-reading of this text suggests Freud conceived of a psyche that contains registers of early experiences, which would never have been conscious to the patient. These experiences can be known, worked through, and transformed afterwards, by being repeated in action within the frame. The author proposes that "enactment" is the royal road for access to the intrasubjective registrations of early intersubjective interaction, which previously he has called psychic gestures. He considers that certain psychic gestures of the analysand become psychic gestures of the analytic couple, which are jointly dramatized within the transference-countertransference field. The pair's constant working through, in order to dis-identify themselves from this relational script of the patient's mind, is the starting point for co-production of something new and hitherto unknown.

How does Mark Solms's Revised Standard Edition differ from James Strachey's Standard Edition and how is it similar? The objective of this paper is to explore not only the answers to these questions, but why they are important. Going beyond such questions in an effort to uncover the primary ethical, cultural, and methodological considerations pertaining to the Revised Standard Edition as well as their interconnection, this paper delves into the very meaning of translation and how it relates to psychoanalysis itself. Notions of the 'untranslatable' and the 'unknowable' are discussed as well along with interdisciplinary implications stemming from philosophy, semiotics, and more.

The publication of RSE gives analysts an occasion to return to Freud, with opportunities for remembering, repeating and working through. This paper returns to a fascinating symptom in Notes on a Case of Obsessional Neurosis and explores connections that are in plain sight but tend to be overlooked. In particular, it returns to the figure of Balaam and his Donkey in the Hebrew Bible. Issues include the fading of common knowledge, indifference, forgetting, envy and even cancelation at the level of cultural experience.

The animal nature of human beings has all but disappeared from psychoanalytic discourse. This reflects Freud's struggle with the issue of animality, which he at once repudiates, and simultaneously conceals at the core of human mental life. Freud's use of the terms "animal" and "man" constantly shifts as he attempts to employ them in key areas of analytic theory building, while also shifting his perspective along the way to consider the opposition, similarity and identity of these terms. This impedes attempts to find structure and coherence in Freud's view, which is almost liquid in its instability. For Freud what separates man from the animal world does not rely upon the evolutionary or anthropological arguments he makes, but on a process of identification and disidentification that consigns animality to "not-me" states in support of Oedipal resolution. Ultimately, his attempts to bind and tame human animality via Oedipality cannot contain that which was never separate and could never be separated from the human.

According to Freud no light was thrown upon the meaning of his rat deliria until he mentioned that the Rat Wife in Ibsen's play Little Eyolf (1894) had made a strong impression on him. He did not elaborate any further how Ibsen's play became a leading clue to insight into his rat deliria. He supposed that the roots of the Rat Man's great obsessive fear were derived from his unconscious phantasies of introjecting his father's penis per anum. The author argues for another interpretation assuming that his great obsessive fear represented an intricate defence against a dangerously phallic mother. The author views splitting of the ego as a specific dysfunctional cognitive process. He criticises those who maintain that Freud's analysis of the Rat Man's transference behaviour was inadequate. When they do that, his case history is taken out of its historic context. Despite Freud's insufficient analysis of the Rat Man's conflicts with his parents, his mental health was restored. Psychic change is the result of multifarious interacting activities. The analyst's personal relationship to the patient is also an important variable.

The weak evidence base and profound consequences of gender-affirming interventions for youth call for a particularly sensitive and complex psychoanalytic exploration. However, prohibitions on knowing at the individual and social levels significantly constrain psychoanalytic work with trans-identified youth. Barriers to exploration and thinking that patients bring to treatment are reinforced and reified by the dominant socio-political trends that saturate the contexts in which young people dwell. These trends increasingly frame any attempt to deeply explore why a young person is seeking medical or surgical gender-affirming interventions as "off-limits" and a form of conversion therapy. Furthermore, politically driven clinicians who promote medical gender-affirming interventions misrepresent and attempt to discredit clinicians who explore the meaning and function of trans identification, or who express concern that transitioning may be a drastic solution to various forms of psychic pain. In doing so, they minimise the significance of the weak evidence base for these interventions and their serious, known risks. At the same time, they obscure or deny the psychic pain that is sometimes humming beneath the experience of gender dysphoria. The author asks: If there are significant uncertainties and risks of harm associated with medical interventions for young people, do we want to know?

Freud's paper on the three caskets is revisited. His view that the lead casket represented death is supported by extracts from The Merchant of Venice, in particular the song, "Tell Me Where is Fancy Bred". It is argued that the acceptance of death is a necessary step in the transformation of romantic love to mature love. With experience of reality a disillusion of romantic idealisation becomes possible, but this means that losses have to be accepted and mourned. It is argued that this is made more bearable if an ironic stance enables an acceptance of the pleasures of romance without believing them to be literally true.

In this paper, the author portrays the psychoanalytic therapy with a twelve-year-old refugee boy and his parents, prior to which the boy had been traumatised by the deaths of both his brothers in the civil war. In 2015 he had travelled with his father to Austria, where he was warmly received in a small community. The author examines how this child reacted to the traumatising experiences, as well as which resilience factors played a role in overcoming them. The psychoanalytic process is illuminated in a detailed analysis of the therapy sessions, which created a space for overcoming the helplessness, mourning the loss and furthering the integration process of the identity, disturbed after the traumatic experiences.