Sigmund Freud

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.

De la « femme enfant » (André Breton) et la « femme nature » (Xavière Gauthier), à travers la muse et la « séductrice perfide » (Alain Jouffroy) jusqu’à un type de femme étrange et angoissante, les surréalistes font toujours montre de leur fascination pour la femme et le corps féminin. Un genre en particulier de ces différentes images féminines  est au centre de leurs préoccupations : la femme hystérique. Prise entre fascination et appréhension, André Breton & Cie. ne semblent capables à échapper ce type de femme étrange qui se présente effrayant mais également sensuel.
        L’hystérie s’inscrit dans la recherche surréaliste d’un dépassement des limites qu’imposa une société détestée. Elle est un langage expressif du corps et les postures qui se manifestent pendant une crise sont libératrices. La femme hystérique devient donc, pour les surréalistes, un médium universel, permettant de libérer l’individu de carcans et de mécanismes d’oppression issus d’une bourgeoisie autoritaire. Mais en même temps, étant donné la rage psychique qui se déchaine pendant une crise, la femme hystérique devient terrifiante. Elle se transforme en symbole d’angoisse, car elle nous présente notre « soi intérieur » (Hélène Vanel) – complètement hors de notre contrôle. 
          Aucun exemple de ce genre de représentation surréaliste n’est aussi marquant que la performance intitulée Acte manqué, la caricature théâtrale d’une crise d’hystérie mise en scène pour l’Exposition internationale du surréalisme à la galerie des Beaux-arts de Georges Wildenstein en 1938. Hélène Vanel, une danseuse française, donna l’impression d’une « sorcière hirsute, cassante, cassée, spectre en charpie » . En faisant entendre des râles hystériques, elle se fraya un chemin entre des spectateurs, sauta sur un lit et s’y roula et se contorsionna « […] comme un tourbillon dans un mouvement inouï qui entraina toute l’assistance dans un délire démentiel […] » . En oscillation perpétuelle entre souffrance et extase, entre agression et gestes sexuels, Vanel, l’hystérique, éveille simultanément le désir et l’angoisse. Comme femme fatale surréaliste (belle mais dangereuse, sensuelle mais effrayante), elle incarne le portrait, d’un corps chargé d’une rage psychique – un rage qui ne se laisse plus contenir, qui devient dangereux, une rage qui peut faire « tomber une civilisation » (Don LaCoss).
        Une confrontation à la société, une enquête de la liberté, mais également symbole d’angoisse, ce spectacle agresso-sexuel semble prédestiné pour un colloque qui cherche à étudier les origines de la « femme fatale » et ses métamorphoses diverses. Je propose donc une étude détaillée de Vanel dans l’Acte manqué – en tant qu’hystérique, en tant que femme fatale selon l’image surréaliste.

This paper addresses the emergence of the ‘death drive’ in Sigmund Freud’s later work, and the significance of this development for his psychoanalytic theory as a whole. In particular, the paper argues that the ‘death drive’ is a pivotal concept, articulating a connection between what are commonly understood as the ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ functions of the psyche. Moreover, the death drive is pivotal in a second sense, in that it articulates a turn away from the strictly empirical realm of science, to a dark and obscure field indicated (in terms of lack), but not comprehended, by observable phenomena. Finally, the paper suggests that as Freud’s departure from his scientific methodology into the wilderness of speculation, the death drive represents his most valuable contribution to psychoanalysis. With the death drive, Freud is able to engender a new perspective of human being: one that is not already encompassed by the mechanistic neurological viewpoint from which his researches first i...

In this essay, I compare the psychoanalytic approaches to dream interpretation taken by Lacan and Jung, respectively.  I begin by introducing the point that Lacan and Jung may have more to say to one another than most realize.  Section I discusses Lacan’s contention that the unconscious is structured like a language.  Specifically, I begin by providing a detailed account of the traumatic events surrounding the birth of the unconscious as Lacan appears to understand it, paying close attention throughout to Freud’s influence on his theory; after presenting the appropriate context, I proceed to explore the linguistic elements of the unconscious as they operate in dreams.  In Part II, I consider Jung’s theory of the unconscious and pay close attention to the creative and teleological aspects of archetypes as it relates to myths and dreams.  In my concluding section, I present important and, perhaps, previously unconsidered similarities between each thinker.

This paper aims at analyzing a specific aspect of Nietzsche’s self-proclaimed medical expertise, which is the very non-Freudian role he ascribes to dietetics in the treatment of “nervous” diseases. I first consider the philosophical justifications of such a psycho-dietetic approach, namely, Nietzsche’s mind-body monism and his cultural diagnosis of morbidity targeting the Judeo-Christian way of life. I then argue that Nietzsche’s dietetics is not therapeutic in an ordinary sense, both because it doesn’t prescribe universal recipes and because it doesn’t purport to suppress pain. Lastly, I show that the Nietzschean diet is beyond the reach of the typical “decadent”, insofar as the latter instinctively chooses a harmful regime.

?על פי מה ניתן לקבוע שחלום זה הינו חלום מכונן בהסטוריה של הפסיכואנליזה
מהו הפירוש שלפרויד עצמו? של אריק אריקסון, שראשון שהבחין שלחלום יש שני  חלקים, ושכלחולם אחר היה מתעורר בשיא הזוועתי של החלק הראשון שלהחלום.
ומה הפירוש של לאקאן, המסתכך קודם כל, כל דו-המשמעות של מסמן מרכזי בחלום, המילה הגרמנית ל"פתרון" (שפרויד מציע לאירמה), היא גם המילה  ל"תמיסה". אכן, המזרק אכן היה מזוהם, כפי שפרויד טוען בחלום.ן
Lily Angel co-author (participant in Reading Group I led)

With the publication of Wilfred Bion’s text 'Learning from Experience', psychoanalysis was afforded a new schema for understanding the processes and implications involved in an infant’s contact with their caregivers. As a result, our conception of some of the most fundamental phenomena of psychic life was significantly enriched. By proposing his theory of alpha-functioning, Bion mapped out how meaningful connections to the internal and external worlds become established in the mind. In contrast, and through working clinically with psychotic patients, Bion revealed how these ties can catastrophically come undone. It is with these ideas, as well as their links to a corresponding set of neuroscientific constructs relating to the Markov blanket and principally developed by Karl Friston, that this paper is concerned. Through an investigation of the psychic functioning originally dubbed ‘dream-work-alpha’, the paper’s first section focuses on how Bion conceived of the creation of a ‘contact-barrier’ that allows for the differentiation of consciousness from an unconscious mind. Casting the ramifications of this organisation in sharp relief, the psychotic disorganisation of the contact-barrier is then explored. The discussion subsequently broadens to incorporate contemporary theories from free energy neuroscience that bear significant and illuminating relations to the psychoanalytic ideas espoused by Bion over half a century ago. Finally, through posing a series of three questions with accompanying discussions, a superimposition of these theoretical schemas is attempted. These suggestions directly address 1. whether there is an intimate connection between the interoceptive contact-barrier and the exteroceptive Markov blanket, 2. whether a disobjectalising of the contact-barrier may be reflected as a tear in the functional fabric of the Markov blanket, and 3. what the clinical implications are of working at the level of the projected surface. Ultimately, the aim of the paper is to expose relevant points of contact within and between the varying conceptual frameworks; frameworks that ultimately derive from disciplines that are both concerned with examining the underlying mechanisms of the mind-brain.

In order to better cope with the pressures and stresses of the current day, modern psychology is anxiously seeking to find new therapies to address the increasing disorders within the human psyche. In the process new fields of research, such as humanistic and transpersonal psychology, curiously appear to borrow more and more from the wisdom of the ages. This volume, containing eighteen articles by noteworthy expositors of the perennial philosophy such as Huston Smith, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Frithjof Schuon, presents the spiritual psychology of the wisdom traditions as a much-needed antidote to the current impasse in modern psychology.

Some Endorsements for Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy:

“[Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy] is more than an anthology. It is a wisely crafted collection of classic and contemporary scholarship noting that what many are seeking is what has always been, a perennial philosophy, that remains foundational. As one of the authors, Tage Lindbom, properly notes, ‘Secularization is a fish in troubled waters.’ This book claims the waters and is essential reading for all those who may have forgotten or are simply ignorant of the rich foundation provided by the perennial philosophy.”
—Ralph W. Hood, Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, past president of the Psychology of Religion division of the American Psychological Association, co-founder of The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion and co-author of The Psychology of Religion

“A necessary and bracing critique of the assumptions and limitations of contemporary Western psychology, this generous volume is also a passionate call and learned guide towards a truer perspective that embraces man's spiritual nature.”
—Gabor Maté, M.D., and author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

“Knowing the nature of the mind is perhaps the most difficult undertaking, especially in today’s world. To comprehend the nature of mind one needs to turn to the domain of religion and spirituality. Yet the truth of the mind and its complexity cannot explicitly be defined in words. Inner or transcendent wisdom sees the mind’s own nature without the duality of the seer. Suchness (tathatā) of mind is only experiential and not expressible. The words used to describe thought are themselves a product of thought, which is conditioned and limited. Thus, differences and contradictions are unavoidable. Therefore, a comparative study of different viewpoints and commentaries is immensely important to awaken the inner intelligence to see the mind as it is. Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy: Studies in Comparative Religion edited by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is an outstanding effort in this direction.”
—Samdhong Rinpoche, former Prime Minister (Kalon Tripa) of the Tibetan Government-in-exile, author of Uncompromising Truth for a Compromised World: Tibetan Buddhism and Today’s World

“The rise of psychology has impacted the study and practice of spirituality, the experiences and attitudes relevant to ultimate human values that transcend ordinary behavior. Each chapter of this remarkable book demonstrates this interaction in a unique and provocative way. But rather than using psychology to reduce and ‘psychologize’ spiritual topics, its authors demonstrate how directives from the spiritual traditions can enhance and even illuminate the enduring importance of psychology in the 21st century.”
—Stanley Krippner, Saybrook University, co-author of Spiritual Dimensions of Healing

“The work at hand is a thinking and debating man’s delight. If you have any interest at all in attempting to include an educated and enlightened view of man’s higher functions in your purview of the world, you will learn from and enjoy this collection of essays. If you already have some knowledge in this area, brace yourself: you may see some of your favorites sharply criticized. A thought-provoking work.”
—Bruce W. Scotton, University of California, San Francisco, co-editor of Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology

“This book, superbly edited by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos, is a masterful critique of the field of psychology and its loss of the sacred ground in which it once was rooted. It offers depth psychologists an opportunity to contemplate timeless truths echoed through the centuries by perennial philosophers who have always claimed psyche is subordinate to Spirit. Although ignored in depth psychology’s early years due to prejudice and lack of understanding, this is a message today’s psychotherapists must take seriously. Human beings need a deeper and wider transpersonal vision of who and what we are, which the saints and sages of the world’s spiritual traditions have always pointed to. In psychotherapy with a therapist committed to such a vision, patients penetrate into their unconscious depths and not infrequently awaken to the Ground of all Being. Their suffering itself occurred because they had turned away from Spirit. Above all, this volume passionately calls upon depth psychology to remember its origin in the perennial wisdom at the core of the great religions. There is something of a polemic in these pages. It deserves to be considered by depth psychologists of all persuasions.”
—Bryan Wittine, Transpersonal psychologist and Jungian psychoanalyst

“This anthology from Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is a must reference for anyone who is interested in psychology and its relationship to spirituality, and in developing an inclusive dialogue between disciplines that favor an integral outlook on the person and his or her potential. Selections in this anthology will inspire us to reexamine the metaphysical underpinnings of psychology, and remind us how important it is to rise above science’s attempt to reduce the human being to an epistemic object.”
—Sangeetha Menon, National Institute of Advanced Studies (Bangalore, India), Board Member of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), author of The Beyond Experience: Consciousness in Bhagavad Gita

“This anthology has some of the most discerning essays and reviews on spirituality and psychology, which provide much-needed care and caution to all those engaged in bringing them together or who wish to do so in future. Therefore, it is a must-read for all those who teach, research, consult, or study in such frontier areas as transpersonal psychology, states of consciousness, mind-body relation, holistic health, Indian psychology, and so on. It will be an invaluable textbook for courses in these and other related areas. I congratulate the editor of the book.”
—Kiran Kumar K. Salagame, University of Mysore (India), Board Member of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), author of The Psychology of Meditation: A Contextual Approach

“One of the finest collections of essays on the Perennial Philosophy—a must-read for all psychologists who are engaged with spirituality and transpersonal psychology. The essays which critique modern psychology (including transpersonal psychology, and the framework of Carl Jung), in the light of the Perennial Philosophy are a revelation and make compelling reading. The book serves as a corrective to the excesses of modern psychology, and to this end Sotillos has done a commendable job. I for one will include the book in some of the graduate courses that I teach.”
—Suneet Varma, University of Delhi, co-editor of Foundations of Indian Psychology

“To its credit modern science by-and-large is becoming more cognizant of the essential connection between spirituality and psychological health and well-being and most of all its positive implications within the field of psychology. While there is ample data to document this in a plethora of academic journals and books, this new book Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy adds a novel contribution to the dialogue between psychology and spirituality, which captures many nuances that for the most part go unnoticed within these discussions, and last but not least, it provides a keen eye of discernment to understand this intricate relationship on a deeper level that is crucially needed. This work will be a valuable asset to students and long term mental health practitioners and professors alike who seek to better understand the relationship between psychology and spirituality.”
—Harold G. Koenig, Duke University, Director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health, co-author of The Handbook of Religion and Health

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

In “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” Louis Althusser proposed a complete rethinking of the category of the Subject. Despite the many critiques of Subjectivity that proliferated in France at the time, Althusser intended to salvage the concept of the Subject in order to address how a given ideology maintains its stranglehold on an individual in the absence of any external repressive apparatus (e.g. a police officer). This paper will assess Althusser’s achievement by way of immanent critique; rather than dispensing with Althusser’s theoretical framework, I will update it by adding two components that attempt to remedy its deficiencies. Those components reside in between the Subject and the ideological apparatuses that “capture” it. This mediating region is itself split into two concepts: 1) the Freudian death drive, or repetition automatism, which pertains to the composition of the Subject’s interior border, and 2) the phenomenological experience of that border, designated by the phrase “wounds in the sensorium”.  In order to approach the latter phenomenological dimension of ideological interpellation, I will take a seemingly roundabout, but necessary journey through the work of Walter Benjamin, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Franz Kafka.

Dans ce chapitre fondamental de ma thèse (« La pulsion de pouvoir. Traduire la psychanalyse dans le champ politique, entre Deleuze et Derrida », soutenue en juin 2019), je m'intéresse au rapport que Derrida entretient avec la psychanalyse par sa lecture du texte de Freud, Au-delà du principe de plaisir, qui lui sert à reformuler l’économie libidinale et à la prolonger dans le champ politique. D’après Derrida, Freud entrevoit la relation aporétique par laquelle le principe de plaisir qui maintient l’équilibre du Moi se trouve débordé par une pulsion de pouvoir qui l’anticipe et lui donne le pouvoir de régner en propre, comme celle-ci le renverse en déchaînant la pulsion de mort. Je montre que l’interprétation de Derrida transforme les concepts de la psychanalyse, et l’ouvre à une traduction politique qui déconstruit la souveraineté.

ABSTRACT: This article considers how the erotics of the real, of Bataille, might contribute to the ethics of the real, of Lacan, and also to the genealogy of morals disclosed by Nietzsche. Combining Bataille’s anthropological understanding of a taboo-transgression correlation with Lacan’s analytic episteme of the real, symbolic, and imaginary, I trace a recessive loss of the erotic function of being through the Platonic, Christian, and Modern Science epochs that Nietzsche’s revaluations of the Good also centre on. What emerges is the possibility that like Bataille, figuratively speaking, the brothels of Paris should become our churches again.

This paper is a speculative experimentation that aims to explore the relationship between desire and thinking. Deviating from the letter, it attempts to understand philosophy as the knowledge of desire, as much as the desire for knowledge. To do so, it starts with the figure of Erôs, as assimilated by Plato with the dialectical method and the nature of philosophical inquiry. It then turns toward French phenomenology, for which the caress is the embodiment of desire-so much so that the horizontal exploration of matter replaces the vertical ascension toward the intelligible. Finally, it focuses on the concept of the erogenous zone, which Deleuze borrows from psychoanalysis but transforms into an ontological category intimately associated with the image of thought. In these terms, philosophy can therefore be regarded as a caress.

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”.

The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice investigates the widely debated, deeply flawed yet influential concept of the uncanny through the lens of feminist theory and contemporary art practice. Not merely a subversive strategy but a cipher of the fraught but fertile dialogue between feminism and psychoanalysis, the uncanny makes an ideal vehicle for an arrangement marked by ambivalence and acts as a constant reminder that feminism and psychoanalysis are never quite at home with one another.

The Feminist Uncanny begins by charting the uncanniness of femininity in foundational psychoanalytic texts by Ernst Jentsch, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Mladen Dolar, and contextually introduces a range of feminist responses and appropriations by Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva and Sarah Kofman, among others. The book also offers thematically organised interpretations of famous artworks and practices informed by feminism, including Judy Chicago's Dinner Party, Faith Ringgold's story quilts and Susan Hiller's 'paraconceptualism', as well as less well-known practice, such as the Women's Postal Art Even (Feministo) and the photomontages of Maud Sulter. Dead (lexicalised) metaphors, unhomely domesticity, identity and (dis)identification, and the tension between family stories and art's histories are examined in and from the perspective of different artistic and critical practices, illustrating different aspects of the feminist uncanny.

Through a 'partisan' yet comprehensive critical review of the fascinating concept of the uncanny, The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice proposes a new concept, the feminist uncanny, which it upholds as one of the most enduring legacies of the Women's Liberation Movement in contemporary art theory and practice.

http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-feminist-uncanny-in-theory-and-art-practice-9781472505583/

BOOK LAUNCH -- ICA, 7pm, 16 September 2016: https://www.ica.org.uk/whats-on/book-launch-art-and-feminisms

Book review: Amy Tobin, 'Homesickness', Oxford Art J (2017) 40 (1): 199-203. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/kcx013

This short essay on the psychical operations of the Life and Death Instincts, as seen in the Object Relations theories of Melanie Klein, was my first glance at Psychoanalytic Instinct Theory, studied and written in the Spring of 2008. Three years later, in the Autumn of 2011, I was in possession of the entire 24 volumes of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, at my home and able to study them at leisure. A Psychoanalysis research associate on the Psychoanalysis, Literature and Practice Seminar Series at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, suggested I read Freud’s essay the Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Chapter 1 in Volume 18 of the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.

To my dismay the Beyond the Pleasure Principle chaper 1 of volume 18 is a very long essay indeed in 7 parts, but I was curious and had a desire to explore Freud’s writings as it felt like an adventure. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Part 5 of the Beyond the Pleasure Principle essay is where Freud lays down the fundamental components of his Instinct Theory. My essay attached here is British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein’s interpretation, development and use of some of the possible psychical mechanisms and processes that can be said to result from Freud’s Instinct Theories. In this Abstract (also attached as an Appendix to my Kleinian, Life and Death Instincts in Object Relations Theory essay), I am tempted to summarize Freud’s actual Instinct Theory itself, as described in Part 5 of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Vol. 18, p.34-43, as I have never heard it discussed or even mentioned in any Psychoanalytic context and I think it merits attention, especially considering the current Environmental zeitgeist and hegemony that we are all being subjected to.

(Instinct Is Conservative - Journal Article on Freud's Instinct Theory uploaded as a separate word doc.)

In comparison with Klein’s use of Instinct theory, it is plainly evident that she was interested in the functions of instincts as they can be seen operating in everyday life and death experiences and relations, while Freud was much more interested in the very nature of instinct itself. I hope my summary of Freud’s Instinct Theory will show how deep and wide variation in Psychoanalytic theorizing and practice is and how open and attentive Psychoanalytic inquiry and investigation is to an individual theorist’s inherent psychical constitution and conditioned psychodynamics, born of their inner personal/subjective life and death experiences, their external relations with significant others and the external collective conditions that individuals are subjected to. People, individuals/subjects, instinctively find, perceive, understand and even believe what they desire to know and this is one of the reasons why every reader/thinker is biased and projects onto and conditions a text with their own needs, ideas, prejudices, hopes, wishes and delusions. Every past thought and feeling is reawakened and modified by fresh experience through the cycles of time. I certainly can be accused of spinning Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Part 5) text to suit my own interests and purposes, just as Melanie Klein took Freud’s ideas where she and her colleagues in the British School of Psychoanalysis (that was not yet formed at that time) were heading. Individuals have their own agenda, but can’t achieve it without others, as the Psychoanalytic theories of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan have made exceptionally clear, in his own way, for his individual purposes and for the purposes of the collective (professional, social, political, etc.) ideologies that he chose to cathect. There can be no Self, whatever you want to call it - individual, person, human being, human organism, etc. - without an Other, because of the function of the I.

While popular with the gallery‐going public, the hyperrealistic sculpture
of contemporary Australian artist Ron Mueck rarely attracts the attention
of prominent visual art theorists. This art theoretical neglect seems to
hinge on the microscopic verisimilitude of Mueck’s figurative sculptures,
for while some art critics venerate the virtuosity of his technique others
diagnose his hyperreal style as populist and conceptually impoverished.

This study forges a nexus between Mueck’s oeuvre and Sigmund Freud’s
psychoanalytic theory of the uncanny in order to ascribe deeper
conceptual import to the artist’s work. Employing Freud’s renowned
concept of ‘the return of the repressed,’ as well as his ideas about how the
(con)fusion of categorical divisions between the familiar and foreign, the
real and imaginary triggers uncanny feeling, I examine how Mueck’s art
generates uncanniness on two distinct levels. Firstly, I investigate how
certain formal, aesthetic and symbolic aspects of the works cultivate
uncanny feeling in the spectator. The second stratum of uncanniness in
Mueck’s work is tied to a much broader socio‐cultural field, inhabiting the
vicissitudes of the human body in contemporary posthuman culture. I will
argue that Mueck’s oeuvre can be read as a reaction to and a reflection of
the technologised, progressively unnatural being that is the posthuman
subject, carving an uncanny space wherein the familiar and unfamiliar, the
natural and the artificial, are in constant communion.

Two key aims have motivated this project. First, I sought to investigate
possible reasons for my own fascination with Mueck’s hyperrealist
sculpture, an attraction to his work echoed by its popularity with the
gallery‐going public. I also aimed to develop new knowledge on the work
of a contemporary artist who has achieved a relatively high profile in the
international art world but whose practice has received little serious or
sustained art historical and theoretical analysis.

Qu’est-ce qu’une lettre ? Pourquoi certains enfants « réussissent » à ne pas apprendre à lire ? Comment d’autres, devenus adultes, choisissent de devenir écrivain , de passer leur vie avec les lettres ? A la fois symbole pur mais aussi élément d’un abécédaire subjectif et fantasmatique, la lettre reste mue par la pensée animiste des premiers âges. Des enfants que l’on dit « dyslexisques », incapables de voir le mot derrière les lettres, disent cet effroi : « Tous les mots parlent d’une histoire » murmure l’un d’eux avec angoisse. L’auteur, qui a observé ces enfants à l’unité de psychopathologie de l’Enfant et de l’adolescent à l’hôpital Sainte-Anne, s’embarquent ici dans une aventure : celle de relier, grâce à un éclairage analytique, les non-lecteurs et les écrivains. Avec les premiers, elle nous fait comprendre à quelle position psychique il faut accéder, quels renoncements il faut accepter pour apprendre à lire ; avec les seconds (Blanchot, Proust, Sartre, Cixous, Sarraute…), elle parvient à proposer une nouvelle approche à la fois du plaisir de lire et du passage à l’acte d’écriture. Ce livre pourrait avoir comme sous-titre : De l’illettrisme à la littérature. Il raconte comment, à leur insu, les non-lecteurs et les poètes refusent, d’une certaine façon de désintriquer le corps et les mots ; car cette séparation équivaudrait à commettre un meurtre, celui du petit croyant qu’ils sont, qu’ils étaient, à faire mourir Dieu en son paradis : la langue maternelle, le pays natal de l’être.

La tesi presenta inizialmente il pensiero di Jacques Derrida sull'animalità. Il tema affrontato è la sovranità dell'uomo sul resto dei viventi, in particolare nei riguardi della discriminazione dell'animalità. Nei capitoli a seguire si attua un'emancipazione dell'animalità e non dall'animalità come la corrente umanista voleva. Attraverso l'ontogenesi del concetto di "umanità" viene decostruito il costrutto che sorregge la soglia che divide l'uomo dagli animali, laddove essi partecipano all'animalità in maniere differenti. L'emergenza di questa composizione dei temi trattati si erge ad azione esemplare con cui Derrida, prima di morire, ha lasciato delle tracce da seguire durante il ricevimento del premio Adorno.

Deriving from the myth of Narcissus, in which a beautiful youth falls in love with his own reflection, the concept of narcissism was given its first systematic treatment in Sigmund Freud's 1914 essay “On Narcissism.” Since Freud's account of narcissism remains the starting point for most subsequent discussions of the topic, this entry begins with a brief summary of Freud's views before moving on to consider some of the major questions that have consistently arisen in philosophical treatments of narcissism and self‐love. How ought we to draw the line between healthy self‐esteem and pathological narcissism? Given the apparently ubiquitous presence of “the dear self” (to use Kant's term) in human consciousness, what would it mean to cultivate a truly nonnarcissistic concern for others, and is such a thing possible – or even desirable?

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, remains also one of its most controversial. Far from being an outmoded icon of modern psychology’s early historical development, Freud’s doctrines (the “talking cure” in particular) have irrevocably shaped the way human behavior is understood today. Psychoanalysis has waged an assault on traditional conceptions of human nature by eclipsing everything of a transcendent order—even branding religion itself a kind of psychopathology. The corrosion of religion and spirituality in our human collectivity has left an epistemological and ontological vacuum that has been largely been filled by psychoanalysis and its off-shoots, as also the welter of psycho-babel we encounter at every turn. Psychoanalysis, like behavioristic psychology, has not died or disappeared, as is too often assumed—on the contrary, it forms the very substratum upon which all contemporary therapies are formulated. The consequences for Western civilization have been destructive and far-reaching, as this masterful study—nay, dissection and diagnosis—of the disease makes blisteringly clear.

This article takes us into the heart of the complexities of the concept of narcissism, which has been deployed by psychoanalysts, film theorists and cultural critics to various and often contradictory ends. I begin by considering the use of narcissism as a diagnostic category used to examine the ills of modern society, especially in the work of writers like Christopher Lasch. This discussions leads me to the theorisation of narcissism in the work of Sigmund Freud, and I suggest that the concept is much more contradictory and complex in Freud's work, which makes its usage an act of interpretation—an interpretation, I will suggest, with crucial consequences for how we conceptualise the modern subject's relationship to new media technologies, as well as the politics of representation. The Lacanian concept of the 'mirror phase' is an important intervention in the theorisation of narcissism and is discussed in this chapter in order to understand the smartphone screen as a field of representation and identification. By extending the problematic of the mirror to the screen, and by taking into account Joan Copjec's critique of psychoanalytic readings of the cinematic screen, we will examine the specificities of the mobile screen in relation to ego formation. This account makes a break with Foucauldian theories of the subject, and I offer a psychoanalytic critique of panopticist theories of subjectivity, which I suggest, lead to an impasse in how we think about the screen—whether in the cinema or as the surface of a modern day mobile phone.

The loss of the beloved, the fear or experience of it, either because of death or other reasons has been a repeatedly occurring theme in the work of Julian Barnes. In Before She Met Me, the fear of loss forms the subconscious of a humorous and meticulous examination of obsessive jealousy, in Talking It Over and Love etc., it is analysed through deception, revenge and resentment. Even behind the apparent postmodernist strategies and playful tone of Flaubert's Parrot, there resides the story of a retired, bereaving narrator who is trying to overcome the recent death of his once infidel wife. Irony and humour have always been the main traits of Barnes, no matter how serious the issues he represented. However, since the publication of The Sense of an Ending in 2011, Barnes's novels have grown to be more melancholic and lyrical in tone and less humorous and playful in style. Barnes's latest novels-The Sense of an Ending (2011), Levels of Life (2013), The Noise of Time (2016) and The Only Story (2018)-all develop around an aged protagonist or narrator whose story unfolds in an ironically self-aware lyrical tone, which detaches Barnes from postmodernism. The writing style of Julian Barnes, as a mature novelist, gets plainer as his mood becomes more sentimental and melancholic. This paper examines Barnes's representation of mourning and melancholy in Levels of Life where he dedicates the last section to his bereavement process after the loss of his wife, Pat Kavanagh, and The Only Story where he offers the piercing and grim love story of Susan (48) and Paul (19). The concepts of mourning and melancholy will be analysed by reference to Freud's and Derrida's views to illustrate how Barnes subtly probes them in the two novels as an artist.

Freud, Cinsellik, Psikanaliz, Histeri, Rüyaların Yorumu, Sembolizm, Kadın, Erkek, Latent Rüyalar, Manifest Rüyalar, Serbest Çağrışım Metodu, Tedai-yi Efkâr, Te'vil, Rüya Çalışması, Kaydırma, Benzetme, Gerileme Rüyaları, İlerleme Rüyaları, İd, Ego, Süperego, Geçmiş, Gelecek, Dışa Dönük, İçe Dönük, İntrovert, Extrovert, Jung.