Psycoanalysis

Dreams about 9/11 -- Paper presented at the 19th Annual International Conference for The International Association for the Study of Dreams, Tufts University, Medford, Boston, Massachusetts; 05/2002
An analysis of trauma dreams collected after 9/11

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Once thought pure entertainment akin to magic acts, hypnosis is now a growing field being practiced by psychologists, psychiatrists, and medical doctors. Across all ages—from children to adults and the elderly—patients are finding professional, therapeutic hypnosis can help them recover from mental maladies ranging from addiction to depression and psychosis, and from physical illnesses from chronic pain to obesity and skin disorders. Studies show hypnosis can even speed healing from broken bones, burns, and surgery. These unprecedented volumes, including some of the best-known experts in the field hailing from Harvard, Stanford and other top universities, cover the newest research and practice in this intriguing arena. Edited by a psychologist at Harvard Medical School, this set explains developments in hypnosis, from its colorful if misguided inception with Anton Mesmer, across clinical techniques developed for health care in the 20th century, to emerging research showing new potential applications to aide mental and physical health. Chapters also highlight what psychologists, neurologists, physicians, and scientists have discovered about how personality, cognition, and brain functions affect, and are affected by, hypnosis. An appendix explains how to tell the difference between an entertainer or charlatan and a practitioner who is trained, credentialed, and practicing research-backed hypnosis. Universities with hypnotherapy programs and courses are also included.

[AMAZON LINK BELOW TO BOOK ITSELF -- TOC and book intro in downloadable .pdf] 

"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it." --John Steinbeck Scientific research confirms what people have always known: answers, ideas, and inspiration do come to us in dreams. Harvard psychologist and world-renowned dream specialist Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., offers this rich collection of examples of how the world's most creative practitioners in art, music, film, science, literature and other fields have used the revelations of their dream life to inform their work. Dr. Barrett offers insights showing us how to encourage lucid, meaningful dreaming, and how to apply the meanings of our dreams to solving problems--from the everyday to the extraordinary. This is the stuff dreams are made of. In the visual arts, Jasper Johns couldn't find his unique artistic vision until he dreamed it in the form of a large American flag. Salvador Dali and his colleagues built the startling new genre of surrealism out of dreams. Kubla Kahn dreamed the design for his stately pleasure dome; thousands of years later, Lucy Davis, chief architect at a major firm, continues the tradition of dreaming designs into life in her extraordinary buildings. Film is a fertile avenue for dreams: "Twice I have transferred dreams to film exactly as I had dreamed them," confides director Ingmar Bergman, as have Federico Fellini, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman, and John Sayles. From Mary Shelley's terrible nightmare, which became Frankenstein, to Stephen King's haunting dream as a little boy, which led to his first bestseller, countless writers have consulted the Committee. Musicians from Beethoven to Billy Joel and Paul McCartney have whistled the Committee's tunes. In science, physiologist Otto Loewi dreamed the medical experiment that earned him the Nobel Prize. In sports, Marion Jones dreamed she'd broken a world record, then brought the dream to life. Gandhi translated his dream of resistance into a movement that changed the world. Since Freud, we take it for granted that our dreams reflect our past. In The Committee of Sleep, Barrett reveals how dreams can also tell us about our future potential--and how to reach it.

Dream interpretation during early psychoanalysis elicited associations from the patient but also involved authoritarian interpretations focused on whatever the analyst believed to be the key human drives—sex, power, transcendence, etc. Modern dream interpretation relies on non-leading questions to help the dreamer through an associative process to discover their own meaning for the dream. Research finds that patients rate therapy sessions utilizing dreams more highly in terms of session quality, mastery, and insight gained.

Resumen

En el presente artículo nos dedicaremos, en un primer apartado, a exponer un basamento de la teoría freudiana del recuerdo en La interpretación de los sueños; en el segundo apartado, nos detendremos en el alcance clínico de la concepción del recuerdo en psicoanálisis para, en el tercer apartado, ocuparnos específicamente del recuerdo encubridor y su carácter fenoménico. El cuarto apartado, entonces, estará dedicado a presentar una estructura formal que permita extraer del fenómeno en cuestión un modo de relación con el objeto mirada. En última instancia, el objetivo final de este trabajo es demostrar que si bien el recuerdo encubridor no se fundamenta en una teoría abstracta del recuerdo, sino en ciertas coordenadas clínicas, su estatuto es igualmente riguroso y puede ser tratado en función de su modo de aparición en la experiencia analítica.

Palabras claves: psicoanálisis, Freud, recuerdo encubridor, mirada.



Abstract

In the first part, this paper presents a basis of the Freudian theory of memory in The Interpretation of Dreams. In the second part, it studies the clinic scope of the idea of memory in psychoanalysis. In the third part, it specifically tackles the concealing memory and its phenomenic nature. In the fourth part, therefore, it presents a formal structure that allows to extract from such phenomenon a kind of relationship with the object gaze. Finally, the objective of this work is to demonstrate that, even if the concealing memory is not founded on an abstract theory of memory, but in certain clinic coordinates, its status is rigorous too and can be treated in function of the way it emerges in the analytic experience.

Keywords: psychoanalysis, Freud, concealing memory, gaze.



Résumé

Cet article expose, dans un premier moment, des bases de la théorie freudienne à propos du souvenir dans L'interprétation du rêve. Il présente ensuite la portée clinique de la conception du souvenir dans la psychanalyse pour ainsi aborder spécifiquement, dans une troisième partie, l'écran-souvenir et son caractère phénoménique. La quatrième partie présentera donc une structure formelle permettant d'extraire du phénomène abordé un mode de relation avec l'objet regard. Le but  final de cet article est de démontrer que, bien que le souvenir-écran ne se fonde pas sur une théorie abstraite du souvenir mais sur certaines coordonnées cliniques, son statut est pourtant  rigoureux et qu'il peut être traité en fonction de son mode d'avènement  dans la pratique analytique.

Mots-clés : psychanalyse, Freud, souvenir-écran, regard.

El presente artículo es una revisión crítica de las relaciones entre la Historia del Arte y el campo de la Psicología, acotándose el territorio que se ha denominado «Psicología del Arte», dedicado al estudio del arte como producto de la mente humana desde la visión del creador, el receptor y el objeto artístico. El estudio de las ideas que están detrás de las producciones artísticas, o de la sociedad que las descifra y conserva, ha pasado por distintas etapas de desarrollo desde finales del siglo XIX implicando a teóricos del arte, críticos e historiadores, así como a psicoanalistas y psicólogos que han escrito sobre las relaciones entre el arte, la mente y la cultura.  Las aportaciones iniciales vinculadas al psicoanálisis de Freud, Jung y Lacan disputaron las primeras posturas filiales y críticas a un campo que se abría. Posteriormente, los escritos de Kris y las teorías de la Psicología del Estilo y de la escuela de la Gestalt serán claves en el devenir de la disciplina. La gran aportación de Vygotsky a la definición de la Psicología del Arte y sus límites, o los estudios de Gombrich dedicados a la psicología de la representación visual fueron la continuación natural de los planteamientos anteriores, así como los trabajos de Gardner o Vigouroux en las últimas décadas. Este recorrido histórico muestra que la Psicología del Arte es una disciplina que ha estado presente transversalmente en muchas corrientes psicológicas, en permanente actualidad, y que necesita una continuidad al hilo de las últimas corrientes de la Psicología.

This article is a critical review of the intellec-tual relationsbetween History of Art and a field of psychology called «Psychology of Art». Psy-chology of Art studies the art as a product of human mind from the creator, the receiver and the artistic object’s perspective. The analysis of the ideas behind both artistic productions and society that describes and retains them have undergone various stages of development since the late nineteenth century. This field of study involves art theorists, critics and historians, as well as psychoanalysts and psychologists who have written about the relations among art, mind and culture. The initial contributions of psychoanalysts such as Freud, Jung and Lacan disputed the first critical positions to an ope-ning field. Year later, Kris’ writings, and theories of Psychology of Style and the School of Gestalt were crucialfor the future of the dis-cipline. Vygotsky’s great contribution to the de-finition of the Psychology of Art and its boun-daries and Gombrich’s studies devoted to the psychology of visual representation, were the natural continuation of previous approaches, as well as Gardner’sand Vigouroux’s works in the past decades. This historical overview shows how the Psychology of Art has been pre-sent in many psychological schools of though at the same time, how it is constantly present nowadays and needs a continuity in line with the latest psychological and theoretical trends

For over thirty years I have been researching the origins of language by means of an original and innovative metod. If it consists of considering oral articulation, which produce phonetic sounds as informative gestures and expressions of a visible-expressive code, that precedes the use of phonetic codes. The meaning expressed through each of these articulate-oral gestures was identified through research-responses by two select sample groups of psychotic subjects, chosen because of their greater permeable accessibility to the collective unconscious. In this sense the application of phonetic sounds, that is " words " , is no more than representative or substitutes of the use of pre-articulate oral-facial gestures, used by pre-sapiens to express their informative intentions. Using this method I have published three books, which analyzed precisely and systematically the interrelationships between consonants in words of Info-european origin—that is the roots of these words—discovering that words sharing common root-consonants do indeed express part or all of their meaning in correspondence with the original meanings of their gestural archetype. The projection into objects of these pre-articulate gestural meanings denotes them by means of mediators' metaphors and analogies, this is appearing to be the fundamental reason for the variety of languages, since diverse peoples will use different psychic Freudian puns and methaphors, for the projection to similar object. I have examined over twenty languages, in relation to this generalized cultural code model, founded on biological reactivity to conditions in reality to advantage given its extensive informative use.

We present a comparison between distinct readings (Freud, Lacan and Deleuze & Guattari) of the wolf man case in order to explain the deleuzo-guattarian's critiques of psychoanalysis and, consequently, the technical and theoretical limits of it. The following questions will be addressed: the centrality of the Oedipus complex in psychoanalysis, the castration in Freud and its meanings and limitations, and finally the qualitative character of the libido. The purpose of this paper is to present some of the main theses of schizoanalysis and to expose the relevance of a renewed concept of the unconscious to the understanding the relation between desire, politics and social life.
Key-words: unconscious; libido; forclusion; desire; schizo-analysis

Summary. DREAM AS DAILY TRAUMA, AND THE INTERPRETER’S RESPONSIBILITY.
A REREADING OF FREUD’S THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS. Freud’s The Interpretation
of Dreams (1900) has been considered the book that has reawaken the interest for
dreams as manifestations of psychic reality and as the royal road to its knowledge. One hundred
years later, a Japanese writer (Haruki Murakami) points out the risk that dreams disappear together
with the disappearance of psychic reality and of human world as well. The Author of this
paper reflects on the actuality of this risk. To this purpose, he rereads Freud’s 1900 book –
which seems to warrant against this risk – historicizing it, i.e., trying to understand its place in
the history of the interest toward dreams and in Freud’s personal history. The Author concludes
that, against the appearance, Freud’s 1900 book draws nearer the risk pointed out by the Japanese
writer. He also concludes that, in order to avoid that risk, the interpreter’s responsibility
must assume today the form of a separation from that book, of a recognition of Freud’s historical
reality, and of a correct relation with this reality. [KEY WORDS: dream, novelty, psychic
reality, Freud’s historical reality, interpreter’s responsibility]

Erich Fromm è stato un intellettuale molto conosciuto dal pubblico tramite i suoi libri, ma praticamente ignorato dal mondo accademico. I suoi interessi e lo sviluppo del suo pensiero, dopo averlo allontanato dall’Istituto per le ricerche sociali di Francoforte, lo hanno costretto ad una posizione marginale nell’ambito del movimento psicoanalitico. Eclettico, incline a travalicare gli ambiti di competenza delle differenti scienze umane, egli ha coniugato diverse ispirazioni, a partire da quella facente capo alla spiritualità ebraica che, anche se rinnegata quale pratica di fede, rimase centrale nella sua visione dell’uomo. Si è confrontato approfonditamente con la psicoanalisi di Freud e con il pensiero di Marx. È stato soprattutto quest’ultimo, con la sua concezione dell’uomo che va formandosi nel concreto del suo farsi storico, a fornirgli la cornice entro la quale sviluppare la propria antropologia psicoanalitica, che mette al centro la persona e il significato che ella è in grado di conferire responsabilmente alla propria vita. L’insistenza con cui Fromm ribadisce che l’uomo è artefice del proprio destino e che “non vi è significato nella vita, all’infuori del significato che l’uomo conferisce alla sua vita”, non può che destare l’interesse delle scienze della formazione per questo autore, che fa dell’umanesimo il suo assunto irrinunciabile.
Il “dover essere” dell’uomo è, soprattutto, un dover essere se stesso. In particolare, secondo Fromm, l’uomo deve assumersi la responsabilità del modello di uomo che promuove, sia a livello personale – dove centrale appare il ruolo della scelta – sia a livello collettivo, con riferimento al quale egli si è impegnato moltissimo a delineare e a promuovere i tratti di una società umanistica.

Debería darte vergüenza, de Daniela Danelinck, fue la ganadora del Segundo Premio Heterónimos de Ensayo. Resultó seleccionada entre 381 textos de 19 países. Un jurado compuesto por Tununa Mercado, Omar Acha y Darío Sztajnszrajber dictaminó lo siguiente:
“El texto es un ensayo en la acepción acostumbrada: un escrito que otorga a su factura artificial una importancia sustantiva e implica a quien escribe, para referir sin embargo a una realidad insumisa a sus ideas. Ese carácter concuerda con su tema, pues justamente a propósito de la vergüenza involucra al sujeto en el sentimiento de padecerla (o más bien en lo que parece ser su ausencia contemporánea en un tiempo de cinismo de mercado). El tono admonitorio en el ‘debería’ traslada la reflexión a un ámbito diferente al de una meditación individual. Tampoco pertenece al género de ‘psicoanálisis en extensión’. El ensayo oscila entre una experiencia personal y la pregunta por la constitución de un lazo social, en torno de lo cual se apela a tramos de literatura ‘psi’. La discusión de Lacan a propósito de su ética más que de su política –a la que no se atribuye virtudes excesivas– elude una tentación tan habitual en cierta lacanología, a saber, la de descansar en la jerga peculiarísima del psicoanalista francés. El carácter irónico de la escritura desacraliza entonces a Lacan y a su ‘álgebra’ para introducirlos en un debate sobre la época en que vivimos. Por eso se trata de un texto que, atento a la revisión crítica del ‘discurso universitario’, excede el tono de una investigación académica....

This paper offers an alternative reading of the Abbé Sieyès and the modern ‘nation-state’ problématique. I argue that the subject/object that is constituted in the early days of modernity is the incomplete society: an impossible-possibility ideal of congruency of population, authority and space. I suggest reading this ideal of congruency as a fantasy in that it offers a certain ‘fullness to come’, the promise of jouissance that can never be attained and is thus constantly re-envisioned and re-invoked. Drawing on discourse-analytical and psychoanalytical tools I explain the logic of fantasy before analysing Sieyès’ What is the Third Estate?, as I show how he critiques and fragments the old model of the state and how his reading of the nation is fantasmatic, a continuous project towards impossible congruency.

Desde los años noventa venimos asistiendo a un creciente interés por lo que Ann Ferguson ha definido como el neonato campo de los Love Studies (2017). El análisis acerca de las prácticas y los discursos amorosos se ha ido articulando, progresivamente, alrededor de reflexiones que pretenden dar respuesta a qué es el amor y/o cómo opera en tanto que ideología, epistemología y fuerza psicosocial. Estas tres maneras de entender el fenómeno del amor, más allá de sus representaciones en la cultura contempo-ránea, revelan la compleja genealogía de las formas en que la noción de amor se ha introducido en el análisis de las relaciones que vinculan a hombres y mujeres, en concreto, en relaciones heterosexuales, así como en la posible construcción de una ética/erótica hetero, fundada en el reconocimiento mutuo. En este acercamiento a la situación anteriormente descrita me propongo indagar sobre el rol que ocupa el amor en (el feminismo de) la diferencia o, como sostiene Irigaray, acerca del rol que el amor a la diferencia desempeña en la creación de un orden social y simbólico que no excluya lo femenino. En particular, analizaré un conjunto de obras (Amo a ti: bosquejo de una felicidad en la historia, Ser dos y Ética de la diferencia sexual) en las que la autora francesa explicita cómo el paso de una cultura de lo Mismo a una cultura del Dos, es decir, a una cultura que privilegia el amor al otro y a lo otro, se vuelve posible gracias a relaciones intersubjetivas, fundadas en la práctica del silencio. Además, con esta breve intervención, pretendo abordar un aspecto muy relevante de la obra de Luce Irigaray que no ha sido suficientemente estudiado y que podría contribuir a reinterpretar el feminismo de la diferencia, aten-diendo a lo relacional como elemento fundacional para la construcción de la subjetividad femenina. Palabras clave: Love Studies, Irigaray, feminismo de la diferencia, el espacio del silencio, relacio-nalidad.

Der Beitrag diskutiert de Sade in Hinblick auf die Vernunftethik bei Kant und arbeitet Gegensätze wie Konvergenzen beider Imperative heraus. Dabei wird der psychoanalytisch untersuchte Diskurs de Sades als Phantasma eines gewalttätigen, fundamentalen Begehrens begriffen. Aus dieser Diskussion der Grenzüberschreitung und Missachtung des Anderen lassen sich Aspekte einer Ethik des Begehrens und sozialen Handelns entwickeln. Anhand des durch de Sade mit Kant erarbeiteten Vernunftparadigmas der Gewalt werden kriminologische wie psychologische Wissenschaften auf ihr Verhältnis zur Vernunft und Gewalt sowie auf ihren sozialtechnologischen Reduktionismus befragt.

The essay discusses the work of de Sade regarding the rational ethic ofKant. Both, converses as convergences of these two imperatives are worked out. Referring to psychoanalytic theory, de Sade 's discourse can be understood as representing the phantasm of a violent and fundamental desire. A discussion ofborder violations and disregards of the other leads to the drawing up ofethical aspects of desire and social (inter-)action. Developing a rational paradigm of violence by relating de Sade to Kant, criminological and psychological Sciences are interrogated con- cerning their relationship to reason and to violence as well as concerning their inherent dialectic switch into a socio-technological reductionism.