Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle constitutes a major landmark and a real turning point in the evolution of psychoanalytic theory. Pushing aside the primacy of the tension-discharge-gratification ...model of mental dynamics, this work introduced the notion of a "daemonic force" within all human beings that slowly but insistently seeks psychic inactivity, inertia, and death. Politely dismissed by some as a pseudo-biological speculation and rapturously espoused by others as a bold conceptual advance, "death instinct" became a stepping stone to the latter conceptualizations of mind's attacks on itself, negative narcissism, addiction to near-death, and the utter destruction of meaning in some clinical situations. The concept also served as a bridge between the quintessentially Western psychoanalysis and the Eastern perspectives on life and death. These diverse and rich connotations of the proposal are elucidated in On Freud's "Beyond the Pleasure Principle". Other consequences of Freud's 1920 paper - namely, the marginalization of ego instincts and the "upgrading" of aggression in the scheme of things - are also addressed.
The authors, from different regions of the international Psychoanalytical association, address the intriguing questions that this fundamental paper implies such as: interpret? construct? deconstruct? ...re-construct? on that very general basis, how are we to differentiate between interpretation and construction? From a technical point of view, should the one be contrasted with the other? Does construction not also imply de-construction, with the subsequent need to reconstruct? What role does the countertransference play in the work of construction? This volume shows the importance and complexity of this concept for psychoanalytic thought.
RésuméEn octobre 1884, Sigmund Freud est interne dans le département de médecine générale du docteur Scholz à l’hôpital général de Vienne. Du 3 octobre, date de l’entrée dans le service de H. Rudolf, ...jeune aide-boulanger de 18 ans, au 17 décembre 1884, date de son décès, il note minutieusement, au jour le jour, dans un style parfois télégraphique, l’évolution d’une polynévrite aiguë infectieuse mortelle. L’observation paraît ainsi, deux ans plus tard, dans le Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift , participant à la reconnaissance des compétences en neuropathologie du tout nouvellement nommé Dozent für Nervenkrankheiten .
After first having been denied, the Jewish element in the works of Freud has been variously studied from many different points of view. In this wide-ranging collection, there can be found studies ...that are representative of the tendencies in research during the last few years: from the biographical and psychological approach explaining this connection through the existence of a 'particular Jewish tendency' or 'outlook' deriving from the special social and existential condition of the Jew in modern society, to the approach establishing a parallel between the history of thought and of the psychoanalytic institution on the one hand and the history of contemporary Judaism in the face of the phenomenon of assimilation on the other; from the reconstruction of the historical context in which Freud found himself working, to the identification of anti-Jewish drives within clinical practice itself. In the two essays on Moses links are sought between Freud's scientific production and his personal meditation on Judaism, and between his own personal myths and the connection of those with the plan to evolve a positive theory of Judaism in reply to the outbreak of antisemitic racism.
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