"Psychology has stepped down from the university chair into the marketplace" was how the New York Times put it in 1926. Another commentator in 1929 was more biting. Psychoanalysis, he said, had over ...a generation, "converted the human scene into a neurotic." Freud first used the word around 1895, and by the 1920s psychoanalysis was a phenomenon to be reckoned with in the United States. How it gained such purchase, taking hold in virtually every aspect of American culture, is the story Lawrence R. Samuel tells in Shrink, the first comprehensive popular history of psychoanalysis in America. Arriving on the scene at around the same time as the modern idea of the self, psychoanalysis has both shaped and reflected the ascent of individualism in American society. Samuel traces its path from the theories of Freud and Jung to the innermost reaches of our current me-based, narcissistic culture. Along the way he shows how the arbiters of culture, high and low, from public intellectuals, novelists, and filmmakers to Good Housekeeping and the Cosmo girl, mediated or embraced psychoanalysis (or some version of it), until it could be legitimately viewed as an integral feature of American consciousness.
I view Stephanie Pass's paper (this issue) as an instructive illustration of what therapists who do not work with children stand to learn from child therapists. Despite the reality that much ...psychoanalytic meta-theory was generated by theorists treating children, in addition to the contributions made by infant researchers and developmentalists, psychoanalysis has yet to fully attend to these domains of clinical work and research especially as regards their implication for the psychoanalytic process (commonly referred to as "technique"). The privileging of the capacity for representation and communication through language/verbalization in psychoanalysis has limited our theories and our conversations. However, the tide is shifting in favor of exploring what I would call the "ground" level of our work. By that I mean the non-verbal, non-conscious, unpredictable and intuitive contact-making dimension that establishes the foundation upon which the house of meaning-making is built.
Letter from Florence Degl’Innocenti, Benedetta Guerrini; Matteini, Chiara
International journal of psychoanalysis,
01/2024, Letnik:
105, Številka:
1
Journal Article
The Lacanian idea is taken as a basis that an ethic of desire forces the subject to enter that place called by the author "between two deaths" that turns symbolic death a prior data to real death. ...The contributions of Socrates and Heidegger on the ethical position towards one's own death are reviewed, in order to show the convergences and divergences between these authors and Lacan. ...aiming at showing there are clinical facts that indicate that the analysis produces a change of position in this regard, the dreams of several psychoanalysts who have published their experience of analysis are examined. Sin embargo, desde que Freud (1915/2000) sostuvo que no existe representación de la propia muerte, el tema parece haberse convertido en un tabú, a tal punto que se habla poco de este tópico en las publicaciones psicoanalíticas, casi tan poco como se hace en la vida cotidiana.
Does critical theory still need psychoanalysis? In Critique on
the Couch , Amy Allen offers a cogent and convincing defense of
its ongoing relevance. Countering the overly rationalist and
...progressivist interpretations of psychoanalysis put forward by
contemporary critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas and Axel
Honneth, Allen argues that the work of Melanie Klein offers an
underutilized resource. She draws on Freud, Klein, and Lacan to
develop a more realistic strand of psychoanalytic thinking that
centers on notions of loss, negativity, ambivalence, and mourning.
Far from leading to despair, such an understanding of human
subjectivity functions as a foundation of creativity, productive
self-transformation, and progressive social change. At a time when
critical theorists are increasingly returning to psychoanalytic
thought to diagnose the dysfunctions of our politics, this book
opens up new ways of understanding the political implications of
psychoanalysis while preserving the progressive, emancipatory aims
of critique.
