Psychoanalysis And Literature

This volume offers a rich tapestry of psychoanalytic thought. The authors demonstrate bold creativity in their use of psychoanalytic concepts to think about a wide range of problems in philosophy, art and the clinic. The collection grew out of ‘Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society,’ a conference for postgraduate students and research fellows organised by the Centre for Psychoanalysis, Middlesex University, London, in June 2014. The range of themes addressed at the conference demonstrates the interdisciplinary character of psychoanalytic studies.

הן הקבלה והן הפסיכואנליזה תופסות את הנפש האנושית כמרובדת ובנויה שכבות על שכבות. פרויד השווה לא אחת את מלאכת האנליטיקאי לארכיאולוג שמשחזר שרידים הקבורים תחת ההריסות, ואף המקובלים מפתחים תורת בריאה וגאולה המושתת על זיכרון של עולמות שחרבו, והמיסטיקון נתפס כמי שמחלץ משמעות המסתתרת בתוך עיי החורבות האלוהיות והפרטיות. כפיתוח לספרי "חבלי אנוש- הלידה בפסיכואנליזה ובקבלה" מאמר זה עוסק במפגש שבין התיאוריה הפסיכואנליטית לבין החשיבה הקבלית והמיסטית סביב סוגיות של הולדה, מיניות והורות. הדיון מתמקד בתפיסה כי הנפש זקוקה להורים כדי לצמוח, ודן בדגם "ההורים העליונים" אותו הוסיפו המקובלים לדמויות הזכר והנקבה באילן האלוהי. בתוך כך נבחנות תפיסות פסיכואנליטיות וקבליות של הורות, כגון דמות הורית משולבת combined parental figure תפיסות אודות קונספציה ופרה-קונספציה, בזיקה לתפיסה הזוהרית של "תרין רעין דלא מתפרשין", מיתוס הנסירה, ועוד.

This study analyzes the language used in the construction of the personal identity of Dr. Heidegger through the labels attached to him, both given by self and by others, and his stance-taking. The researcher applies Discourse Analysis to analyze the main character's utterances. The researcher also uses Indexicality Principle by Bucholtz and Hall (2005) as a mechanism to analyze identity. The qualitative content analysis is used to analyze thoroughly and interpret text data to draw inference towards the utterances on the short story. The result of the study shows that Dr. Heidegger is labeled mostly with negative words by others, however, he responded to combat these labels by using re-appropriation or by revaluing the existing labels. Moreover, the stances taken by Dr. Heidegger are found to position himself among others. Together with the labels given by self and others, and his interlocutor(s) in his talk-in-interactions the findings reveal that he is a strange old man, who is very curious and knowledgeable. Lastly, the conclusion can also be drawn that language and discourse are central to the construction of identities that are not always determined by a person himself, but also bound up with how others perceive him.

This paper aims to concretize this notion of literary theories being in dialogue by exploring the intertwining of the Marxist theory, mainly depending on Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin’s theories, and Freudian psychoanalytic theory, based on Sigmund Freud’s writings, in Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible” with focus on Reverand Parris as a representative of the Bourgoise and John Proctor, Abigail Williams and the people of Salem as representatives of the Proletariats. “The Crucible” portrays the Marxist ideology of class division, yet more importantly, it traces religion, a concept long debated among the Marxists, as the trigger to the class struggle. The characters in the play have taken to 2 extreme measures for power attainment; Hysteria, triggered by the Id, and revolution, triggered by the Superego. This is what this paper aims to explore further with taking

Original scanned copy. April 2005

Explores Maureen Folan, in Martin McDonagh's "The Beauty Queen of Leenane," as a psychological borderline, someone who is afraid to achieve a man she can have a relationship with, and so defaults to using him as simply another object she can use in warfare against a mother she is only yet capable of playing at being able to leave behind her.

Lacan’s concept jouissance marks the both painful and joyful disturbance of a mind’s libidinal equilibrium which also gives coherence to the basic structure of reality from the point of view of the individual. Because someone can live a fulfilling life and be happy at all levels of what modern society has to offer, and yet may not resist a very specific form of jouissance – to risk all in favor of a small and obscene deviation from the ordinary: through a WhatsApp message to a minor showing oneself half naked, through cocaine use or a photo of a preteen Thai girl which is hidden in a drawer. The life of the individual becomes condensed as symbolic in confrontation with this minor and sinful deviation from the conventional (the nude photo from Thailand, the drugs, etc.) which, paradoxically, is effective only by being potentially capable of destroying the symbolic universe of the individual. The seemingly ‘slight deviation’ (Epicurus) may influence as traumatic and overly intense encounter with an other the subject’s ability to accept the full ontological weight of her or his world experience. Lacan’s notion of jouissance helps us understand this kind of transgression, which an individual mind might have to risk as a reenactment of what Lacan calls the “forced choice” of subjectivity.

La première pièce de Joanna Laurens, The Three Birds, (2000) propose une révision dramatique du mythe grec de Philomèle qui s’inscrit en contrepoint de la fable telle qu’elle est relatée dans les Métamorphoses d’Ovide. Le rapport à la langue et à la figure du barbare, paradigme de l’Autre, engage une réflexion sur la question des minorités, la voix de l’étranger et l’idée d’une réversibilité des postures. Barbarismes, irrégularités syntaxiques, « babélisation » font ici violence au langage ainsi qu’aux différentes langues parlées dans la pièce qui s’altèrent et se barbarisent à l’image des personnages, incarnant ainsi dans la chair du verbe la mutilation de la langue qui fait la matière cruelle du mythe. Au cœur de la pièce, elle-même réécriture d’une autre pièce – celle, perdue, du Térée de Sophocle – on retrouve en effet l’écriture d’une autre scène – celle, tabou, du viol et de l’amputation de la langue de Philomèle – qui, à défaut de pouvoir se dire, vient s’écrire sur la tapisserie que brode la jeune fille à l’attention de sa sœur pour révéler le crime étouffé par les mensonges en cascades de Térée en même temps qu’elle se reflète dans la trituration du langage. Cet article s’intéressera donc aux enjeux de la réécriture en tant que mise en place d’une alternative fondamentale à partir d’une perspective neuve – celle du barbare amoureux, ou plutôt de la barbarie de l’amour impossible – qui se reflète dans le motif intradiégétique de l’activité de tissage en tant qu’écriture de « l’Autre » (réécriture par l’Autre, la femme, de l’autre scène ou de l’autre pièce, qui ne peut être dite). Avec la duplicité intrinsèque du langage et l’exploration de son potentiel de transformation, nous verrons dès lors comment l’altérité se donne plutôt à voir comme altération, voire aliénation, jusqu’au creux de la langue où elle prend naissance pour la faire délirer (Deleuze). Le langage de la pièce reflète ainsi la façon dont l’humain vient faire trace dans la langue du barbare et montre comment, par-delà l’humanisation du Thrace, la barbarie vient à son tour réinvestir l’humain et marquer de son empreinte l’acte et le langage d’amour devenus viols. En déroulant à l’extrême le fil ténu qui sépare humanité et barbarie, les expérimentations poétiques de Laurens, où le langage et « l’autre » du langage se rencontrent dans leurs contradictions-mêmes, permettent ainsi de renouveler le sens du mythe grec autant que le langage dramatique sur la scène théâtrale à l’aube du vingt-et-unième siècle.

--

Joanna Laurens’ first play The Three Birds (2000) is a retelling of the Greek myth of Philomela in which language undergoes a poetic treatment unprecedented on the contemporary British stage. Mirroring and enacting the characters’ evolution from innocence to barbarism, language is distorted and altered to an extreme through a creative process involving word coinage (i.e. barbarisms), syntactic irregularities, and ‘babelisation,’ thus bringing out and performing the violence of the myth. Departing from Ovid’s poem which is itself a reworking of the original fable, as well as from the feminist takes on the story during the second half of the twentieth century, Laurens’ dramatic writing offers a new approach to the language and figure of the Barbarian, a traditional paradigm of the Other. She addresses such issues as the oppression of minorities, the voice of the stranger, and the reversibility of ethical positions by providing a reflection on the intrinsic duplicity of language itself and by exploring its potential for ‘metamorphosis’ and manipulation, thus presenting otherness as alienation. At the core of the play, which is a rewriting of another (lost) tragedy – that of Sophocles’ Tereus –, are Tereus’ lies, which are a rewriting of another (taboo) story – that of Philomela’s rape and amputated tongue. Although it can’t be verbally expressed by the young woman, this traumatic episode is nonetheless revealed through a tapestry she weaves for her sister Procné to denounce the crime of the lying husband, the needlework compensating her lost voice. This article thus looks at the issues at stake in Laurens’ rewriting, which can be read as the Other of the Greek myth and its famous feminist interpretations. Not only does her play propose an alternative which stems from an unusual, profoundly humane perspective – the suffering of a man whose love is thwarted – but this reversal is also mirrored in the intradiegetic motif of the tapestry as a writing of the Other (the scene behind the scenes, unheard of) by the Other (the abused, silenced woman). I propose to study how the Other comes to be inscribed at the core of language where it takes shape, rendering it delirious (Deleuze), as humanity can be traced in the Barbarian and barbarism can in turn affect humanity beyond the figure of the Thracian. As the act and language of love are turned into linguistic abuse and physical rape, Laurens’ formal experimentations, where language and the Other of language meet at the crossroad of their own contradictions, allow for a renewal in the meaning of the Greek myth as well as in the dramatic language on the British stage at the start of the twenty-first century.

From the ancient times onwards, the definition and the concept of dreams have always been open to discussions and various interpretations. They have been defined as the messages we receive from the macrocosms(heavens or the forces warning us from up above) until Freud disbanded their stereotypical perception by which they were considered as the reflection of individual's hidden self and all undisclosed desires. Before that time of the crucial breakdown about dreams, the approach towards it was a way more primitive and metaphysical one, leading the individual to observe them as a message, a lesson to be learned, and a more meaningful term rather than a flash memory card which is to reveal our obscurity, as some of us still utilize them with that manner. Until this shift of perception, dreams have also been the indispensible element for literature, guiding the characters to recognitions or simply affecting them in all terms, especially in Shakespeare's plays. So this paper is going to extend the title and analize the "dream" as a vital element by means of Shakespearean drama, with regards to Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar and Macbeth. Biography: Sena Hilal Zaganor is a third-grade student at the department of Western Languages and Literatures at Kocaeli University. She participated in the 5 th Student Conference at Karadeniz Technical University in May 18, 2016 with a paper titled "Romanticism and Christianity in Rime of the Ancient Mariner". She is one of the board members of the English Language and Literature Club at Kocaeli University. Her literary concerns are poetry, drama, English Romantic Poetry, English Gothic Literature, Renaissance art and subconscious through poetry and she also studies works of Shakespeare as an undergraduate student this year, which has a significant impact on her to attend the conference which will be held this year.

Ce travail s’intéresse à la poétique de la dissociation mise en œuvre par Helen Cooper dans sa pièce Three Women and a Piano Tuner (2004). Réunies pour mettre en commun leurs talents respectifs de compositrice, pianiste et productrice autour d’un projet de concert, les trois femmes de la pièce font émerger à la surface un trauma enfoui : en constant désaccord, Ella (figure de la mère), Liz (figure de l’amazone), et Beth (figure de la prostituée) matérialisent en réalité trois versions possibles du personnage unique mais intimement divisé d’Elisabeth, dont le fils possible est accordeur de piano. Dans cette pièce marquée par la prolifération du même – non pas idem, mais ipse – comme figure du clivage, où la métaphore musicale sert à évoquer le phénomène de dissonance cognitive, chacune incarne un mécanisme de défense spécifique en réaction à l’inceste subi à l’adolescence par la protagoniste. A la minimisation (Ella), au refoulement (Beth) et à l’exagération (Liz), s’articulent ainsi trois chemins de vie éventuels ou fantasmés mis en dialogue. Cette concurrence permet de dramatiser un conflit intérieur en quête de résolution, en mettant en scène les forces psychiques contradictoires, conscientes et inconscientes, qui animent ce personnage féminin, dont le choix ultime entre plusieurs options – garder l’enfant de l’inceste, le donner à adopter ou bien avorter – semble simultanément avoir déjà été fait et se reporter à l’infini. C’est autour de cette décision laissée hors du temps, qui se cristallise en creux sur la figure du fils reléguée en arrière-plan, dans l’espace du hors-scène, alors qu’il travaille sur l’instrument désaccordé, que s’élaborent les versions multiples du drame originel et d’un personnage féminin dissocié qui vise sa propre réconciliation. Redonnant symboliquement voix à un drame passé sous silence, le seul personnage masculin de la pièce illustre, par son travail, le patient processus de réparation du trauma, alors même que son existence à lui se révèle incertaine, terriblement « optionnelle ». Figure de hantise, l’accordeur de piano apparaît donc comme le maillon central qui à la fois œuvre à cette intime harmonie et l’empêche, invitant par ailleurs à réfléchir sur le processus d’écriture dramatique et le statut du personnage de théâtre, toujours en attente d’incarnation, jamais pleinement actualisé, suspendu entre la page et la scène. La métaphore musicale qui parcourt la pièce, depuis la présence en filigrane de l’accordeur jusqu’à la scène finale du concert, permet ainsi de travailler la figure du rhapsode conceptualisée par Jean-Pierre Sarrazac, qui traduit ici le travail de réintégration psychologique du Réel dans l’ordre Symbolique (Lacan). À la fin de la pièce, l’apparition de Harold, qui répète les gestes d’un père incestueux qu’il n’a pas connu, offre la vision d’un mimétisme impossible : cette coïncidence signifiante, ou « synchronicité » (Jung), évoque la dimension transgénérationnelle du trauma et laisse présager le retour du même. Elle renouvelle ainsi le sens du tragique sur la scène contemporaine en ouvrant l’espace du doute, des probabilités et du malaise. Dès lors, l’incertitude se donne comme la modalité ultime d’un réalisme traumatique de la scène qui, en interrogeant la vérité impossible du sujet, relocalise le drame de l’humain dans l’indéterminé, ce dont l’accordeur de piano, œuvrant dans l’ombre des dissonances, se fait l’image.

This thesis explores Maurice Blanchot’s notion of the “limit-experience” through a close reading of Thomas the Obscure. I examine Blanchot’s notion of the limit-experience through Thomas’ symptoms of psychosis and melancholia. These symptoms are important for understanding the “limit-experience” because they show the corrosive force of language on identity. Blanchot emphasizes the limits to thought and knowledge that is outside of the lived experience. I argue that Thomas’ “limit-experience” depicts a missed experience that includes both self and the other relations. Further, I suggest that Blanchot provides a unique account of what it is to put being into question but that he does so in literature. His récit will be examined here accordingly in terms of the way it enacts a questioning of the “limit-experience”.

The notion of the “limit-experience” hinges upon the idea that language is a counter-world to the real. Language is portrayed as an absence and presence that conceals and reveals being. I trace this thought through the narration of Thomas’ presence that is pushed to the extreme limits of experience and knowledge. I approach Thomas’ series of “limit-experiences” through a twofold perspective as I investigate his relationship with “the image” and “the symbol”. I argue that these two relationships with the anterior link Thomas’ being-in and for-itself (consciousness) to culture/ presence/ “I”.

This study analyzes the language used in the construction of the personal identity of Dr. Heidegger through the labels attached to him, both given by self and by others, and his stancetaking. The researcher applies Discourse Analysis to analyze the main character’s utterances. In addition, the researcher also uses Indexicality Principle by Bucholtz and Hall (2005) as a mechanism to analyze identity. Qualitative content analysis is used to analyze thoroughly and interpret text data to draw inference towards the utterances on the short story.  The result of the study show that Dr. Heidegger is labeled mostly with negative words by others, however, he responded to combat these labels by using re-appropriation or by revaluing the existing labels. Moreover, the stances taken by Dr. Heidegger are found to position himself among others. Together with the labels given by self and others, and his interlocutor(s) in his talk-in-interactions the findings reveal that the he is a strange old man...

A la recherche du temps perdu, the last great pre-Freudian novel of the mind, has attracted much attention from psychoanalytic critics since its publication. This article explores the analysis of Proust’s novel by critics, with a particular focus on the representation of the conscious and unconscious mind. It follows the history of such criticism through the rise of psychoanalysis in the humanities to the waning of its influence in the early years of the present century. The article argues that our postpsychoanalytic present is the ideal moment to reexamine the parallels and divergences between Proust’s and Freud’s understandings of consciousness and to measure them against the rival philosophical and psychological theories developed during the twentieth century. The current pluralism in the humanities’ approach to analyzing representations of the mind allows the literary author’s implicit understanding of mental life to assert itself more clearly.

This paper has been published in a somewhat different form in Meg Harris Williams' "Aesthetic Conflict  and its Clinical Relevance." - Karnac, 2018.

It outlines the various "knife-edge" defenses the infant mind must struggle with in the face of the emotional impact of the mother's beauty, particularly when there is no absolute guarantee of this being reciprocated.
An attempt is made to disambiguate this vulnerability from those which call into play defenses against (Kleinian) unconscious envy.
Both serve to protect the internal good/beautiful mother from destruction, in the infant mind.
One aspect of Narcissism, not usually emphasized, is the lack of conscious awareness of one's rejection of love and beauty when offered by another.
Instead, the narcissist remains almost totally merely conscious of his or her own feelings of being rejected, especially aesthetically.

Trata-se de artigo sobre:
Transtorno de personalidade histriônica (TPH) é definido pela Associação Americana de Psiquiatria como
um transtorno de personalidade caracterizado por um padrão
de emocionalidade excessiva e necessidade de chamar
atenção para si mesmo, incluindo a procura de aprovação
e comportamento inapropriadamente sedutor, normalmente
a partir do início da idade adulta. Tais indivíduos
são vívidos, dramáticos, animados, flertadores e
alternam seus estados entre entusiásticos e pessimistas.

Tageldin’s book engages with postcolonial thought, foregrounding the distinctiveness of the French in Egypt. Rather than emphasize the difference between Briton and Indian in South Asia, this colonial encounter begins with Napoleon proclaiming equivalence. These assertions of affinity (between French and Arabic) are “disarming words” meant to preempt a Hegelian fight to the death; in this colonial romance, the colonized is “seduced” into loving a better version of himself which he sees in the colonizer. The ruse of equivalence (the French in the guise of the Egyptian) is however checked with an interdiction (“I am you… but I am also your ruler”) which generates desire in the colonized: “I want to be you, so that I can be myself again.” This is the “lure” to the colonized, the seduction, examined repeatedly in this work.

Nellie Wong is a Chinese American who was born in Oakland, California. Her family was affected by the World War II and her family borrowed money to start a restaurant. She later joined San Francisco State University where she started writing activism poems. She later became one of the feminist activist who fought against racial discrimination, oppression, and sexism. In her activism, she successfully addressed the issues that undermined freedom of expression and the rights of association by Asian American women.

Depression is inactivity. So stay active, no matter whether you feel you are sliding into a depression, are already in it or are recovering from it.

Go see a friend. Do some volunteer work. Exercise. Go see a football match with your brother.

It is not so important what you do. As long as you just don´t sit at home alone all day long watching YouTube-videos and checking what other people are doing on Facebook.

The book is the first monograph which examines the correspondences between the oeuvre of Jack Kerouac and the thought of Jacques Lacan, the two apparently incompatible worlds which prove to be complementary when taking a closer look. The study demonstrates a number of points. Firstly, with Jacques Lacan as a silent partner, it helps to better understand why psychoanalysis won Kerouac’s enmity in the mid-1950s. It also delves into Lacan’s reflections on spontaneous free-association to prove their convergence with Beats’ literary tactics. In its final part, by employing Lacanian theory, the book offers an extensive insight into Kerouac’s oeuvre to excavate the problematic status of the father figure, a crucial matter not yet given a rigorous critical attention.

Postmodern culture, with its fetishization of the mash-up, the pastiche, and the recombinant, mirrors a contemporary vision of subjectivity as performative and protean, and the current emphasis on being oneself—in an environment where to be oneself is often to be an imitation of others—produces a bewildering double-think that achieves exactly the opposite of the expressivist ideal associated with authenticity. Given the uncoupling of self-understanding from the validating structures of religious discipline and social collectivism, how one goes about locating an authentic hub and testing that against any model other than a subjective pathos, is philosophically problematic. And yet, a generation after the Linguistic Turn, the lure of the authentic as an absolute mode of being has not only not diminished, but has reasserted itself as an insistent trope of contemporary lived and aesthetic practice. Taking British fiction since 2000 as its focus, this essay will explore the prevalence an...

This paper contains quotations that some readers may find offensive. It is a critique of the novel Fear Of Flying (1974) and its representation of sexuality, in the context of sexological writing by Freud, Kinsey, Laing, and Masters and Johnson.

The empirical experience of surviving the virus inside the body is inseparable from its effects on the mind. I feel an urgency to write how these effects are working inside of me; at the same time this is my umpteenth attempt at writing it out, and I feel each time that I re-read these lines, that they appear too rhapsodic and fragmentary, so this represents my final attempt. I apologize to the reader for my inability to be exhaustive and clear about my thoughts and feelings. I suppose it derives from the intensity of the experience. Thoughts and affects are overlapping and this essay is a mixture of the two, and the text has the appearance of variations of writing: the first part being more conceptual and the second more literary, partly with the style of stream of consciousness. The first part deals with the philosophy and psychology of the virus. Does the virus have something to do with philosophy and psychology? I will try to answer this question. Eventually, the second part of this text is the interior and intimate analysis of what happened during the days when my body and mind were affected by the virus. In synthesis: first of all, I need to unfold some philosophical and psychological premises, then a stream of consciousness enters the text, a mixture of thoughts and feelings,

A psychoanalyst and a detective share a common goal and methods: they interpret covert clues to reveal the truth(s). Some neo-Victorian detective novels show an awareness of this commonality when they combine psychiatry and detection. Yet, what is also apparent in these novels is a certain degree of anachronism: what we know about forensic psychiatry today is applied to fin de siècle contexts. The chapter provides a discussion of three texts—Caleb Carr’s The Alienist (1995), Frank Tallis’s Mortal Mischief (2005), and Jed Rubenfeld’s The Interpretation of Murder (2006)—focusing on the figures of psychiatrist detectives who represent an anachronistic antipatriarchal and egalitarian perspective on the marginalised and impoverished classes in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century society.

This article discusses the options that narrative and language have in their attempts to capture or describe traumatic experience and death. It concentrates on two prose
texts by Karel Čapek, Obyčejný život and Povětroň, and the first phase of Freudian psychoanalysis, pointing at generally distinguishable limits and distortions that arise when narrative and language come in contact with trauma and death. Contrary to the current trend within „trauma studies“, the article does not deal with autobiographical records of traumatic experience. It rather tries to point out that thinking consistently about the connection between memory, language and trauma tends to blur and question the  traditional distinction between fiction (understood as a work of imagination) and autobiography (taken as a description of real events). It also tries to show that psychoanalysis arrives, explicitly and implicitly, at a similar conclusion. The last part of the article poses the question what the resulting  relationship between the outside (narrated, written story) and the „inner“ experience is like, and to what
extent the structure of this dyad can also be questioned.

Résumé. ― Ce qui s’y passe est un deuil décompensé qui déclenche un délire, lequel mène à brève échéance à un carnage. L’arrière-plan du « cas » est un Œdipe resté en suspend depuis l’enfance, n’ayant trouvé à l’âge d’homme, dans l’amour pour Ophélie, qu’un exutoire fragile et momentané. La mort du père intervient à un moment critique. Le complexe assoupi se réveille avec virulence. La spécificité du « cas » est constituée par un rêve d’incubation où une conviction morbide s’insinue dans l’esprit de Hamlet. Le déroulement de la pièce met en scène les luttes de Hamlet contre cette conviction délirante. Hamlet mobilise toutes ses ressources intellectuelles, mais ses défenses s’effritent les unes après les autres. L’attitude fluctuante et équivoque d’Ophélie contribue à sa déstabilisation. Le dernier rempart s’effondre avec la mort d’Ophélie par noyade, ce qui précipite la cascade des passages à l’acte meurtriers.

Mots-Clés. ― Œdipe en suspend → Moment critique → Rêve d’incubation → Deuil décompensé → Effondrement des défenses → Passages à l’acte meurtriers.

'Paul Lawley takes up another of the neglected works in the Beckett canon, and his analysis of EMBERS is a concentrated, Freudian explication of Beckett's transitional radio play, written between ALL THAT FALL and WORDS AND MUSIC' (S. E. Gontarski).
    'The long and important essay on EMBERS, which aims to re-assess a play that has been largely neglected, is essentially an exercise in close reading' (John Pilling).

This non fiction novel is an attempt to understand the cicumstances of the suicide of Marilyn Monroe through an imaginary reconstitution of her relationship with Ralph Greenson, her psychoanalist.

Ce "roman" est une fiction documentaire où sont décrits les derniers mois de la vie de Marilyn Monroe avant son suicide, à travers la reconstitution de ses relations avec son psychanalyste, Ralph Greenson.

NIETZSCHE AND THE PROBLEM OF SUBJECTIVITY
Edited by João Constâncio, Maria João Mayer Branco and Bartholomew Ryan
Published by de Gruyter, Berlin/Boston: 2015

Nietzsche's critique of the modern subject is often presented as a radical break with modern philosophy and associated with the so-called ‘death of the subject’ in 20th century philosophy. But Nietzsche claimed to be a ‘psychologist’ who was trying to open up the path for ‘new versions and sophistications of the soul hypothesis.’ Although there is no doubt that Nietzsche gave expression to a fundamental crisis of the modern conception of subjectivity (both from a theoretical and from a practical-existential perspective), it is open to debate whether he wanted to abandon the very idea of subjectivity or only to pose the problem of subjectivity in new terms.

The volume includes 26 articles by top Nietzsche scholars. The chapters in Part I, “Tradition and Context”, deal with the relationship between Nietzsche's views on subjectivity and modern philosophy, as well as with the late 19th century context in which his thought emerged; Part II, “The Crisis of the Subject”, examines the impact of Nietzsche's critique of the subject on 20th century philosophy, from Freud to Heidegger to Dennett, but also in such authors as Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, or Luhmann; Part III, “Current Debates - From Embodiment and Consciousness to Agency”, shows that the way in which Nietzsche engaged with such themes as the self, agency, consciousness, embodiment and self-knowledge makes his thought highly relevant for philosophy today, especially for philosophy of mind and ethics.

Dumbo tells a coming of age story about a young elephant who must gain psychological independence from his mother; Fantasia consists of eight episodes on various subjects, but they are strung together with the image of the conductor, Leopold Stokowski, and his (famous) hands. Two of the episodes (Nutcracker Suite and Night on Bald Mountain) dramatize the use of hands in controlling the actions of others. I elaborate on these issues using the psychoanalytic work of Erik Erikson, Ernst Kris, John Bowlby, and Norman Holland and introduce material on the neuropsychology of motor control.

Ciel noir, corps noir, trou noir, matière noire et énergie noire, les cinq sujets abordés dans ce livre relèvent du même questionnement : pourquoi les physiciens éprouvent-ils le besoin de noircir certaines de leurs idées ? Loin d'être anecdotique, cette interrogation permet de traverser l'histoire de la physique et d'en soulever une bonne part des enjeux actuels. L'énigme du ciel noir a préoccupé les astronomes pendant des siècles ; l'étude du rayonnement du corps noir est à l'origine de la révolution quantique ; le trou noir est une singularité cosmique fascinante ; la matière noire et l'énergie noire sont des hypothèses mystérieuses de la cosmologie contemporaine. À partir de leurs disciplines respectives, l'astrophysicien Roland Lehoucq et le philosophe des sciences Vincent Bontems éclairent tour à tour la signification du qualificatif « noir » pour chacune de ces idées. Il ne s'agit donc pas d'un livre de vulgarisation classique, mais d'un dialogue où se répondent l'analyse de la signification scientifique de la couleur noire et la rêverie sur les métaphores ténébreuses. Dans le sillage de Gaston Bachelard, qui fut le premier à pratiquer ainsi en parallèle l'épistémologie et la psychanalyse de l'imaginaire, ces deux chercheurs proposent de manière complice une excursion dans les méandres de la recherche en alternant les éclairages critiques et émerveillés pour en dissiper l'obscurité. Les idées noires de la physique s'y révèlent instructives et inspirantes.

Interrogating the relationship between reading, writing and ‘conversion disorder’, this creative-critical essay explores the eversion of the glove in the work of Woolf, Genet, Freud and Derrida. Gathering together reflections on gloves and glove anaesthesia, doubles and pairs, and flowers and the death knell (glas), it offers a series of literary, philosophical and psychoanalytic conversions in order to return to and rethink the question of ‘disorder’.

One of the paradoxes of Robespierre’s Republic of Virtue is that the author from whom he so largely borrowed did not really consider himself virtuous. Virtue may mean purity of heart and motive in one’s daily actions, but as Jean-Jacques Rousseau very well knew, it also implied a constant rational struggle against intrinsic passions and appetites. It is for this reason that in several parts of the Dialogues, Rousseau portrays himself paradoxically as a virtuous man who lacks virtue: “But is there some virtue in that sweetness? None. There is only the inclination of a loving and tender nature […] This very reasonable choice isn’t made by either reason or will. It is the work of the pure instinct. It lacks the merit of virtue, doubtless, but neither does it have its instability. One who has surrendered only to the impulses of nature for sixty years is certainly never going to resist them” (RJJ 150). It is not difficult to see why Rousseau would characterize himself as such. If, as Saint-Preux warns Julie, “virtue is a state of war” (J 560), belief in this struggle would mean recognizing our inherent disposition to sin and refuting, as a result, one of Jean-Jacques’s principal tenets: man’s natural inclination for the good. As Rousseau notes in the first pages of the Dialogues, “virtue among us often requires fighting and conquering nature” (RJJ 10–11).

Over the last few decades psychoanalysis has piecemeal lost ground as an appreciated source of inspiration and fresh conceptual models for researchers in the humanities. Particularly, within the field of literary criticism, psychoanalysis had been blamed with methodological unreliability, one-sidedness, and a bent on stereotyped formulations which miss the complexity of the writer-reader interaction.These views are not groundless: psychoanalysis can fruitfully contribute to the understanding of literary creations only inasmuch as it is able to unveil specific connections between unconscious partial and total object relations, interpersonal conflicts, and the full span of emotions contained in the manifest text. In Freud and The Da Vinci Code, a critical approach consistent with such principles is offered to the readers and proves able to reveal under the manifest plot of Dan Brown’s blockbuster a highly articulated unconscious narrative where sexual maneuvers, parental imagoes, and fears of loss closely interact with each other.Freud and The Da Vinci Code effectively questions the novel text and is able to solve its basic manifest issues - such as Anticlericalism or the Sacred Feminine - into their very opposite. A new and highly original understanding of the novel and its enigmas is so offered to the readers.

Jung called it The Coming Guest. A new possible future or a world with fresh appearances is seeking self-realization, with our conscious participation, now—one which is no longer concerned with any gap between consciousness and world! This essay, following on from my essay “Through the Eye of the Needle” (see section, Modern Cultural Phenomena) offers further hints of this strangely configured reality, with help from the almost unintelligible world of Contemporary Art.  See also my recent post, Longing for the Unattainable (www.johnwoodcock.com.au/longing) for another angle on the image of "Dali's Pomegranate" in this essay.