Freud's Rejection of Hypnosis, Part II: The Perpetuation of a Rift.

Freud's rejection of hypnosis gave rise to a rift between clinical hypnosis and psychoanalysis that has endured for over a century. A review of Freud's rationales (Kluft, 2018a/this issue) demonstrates that while some stemmed from what he considered advances, others appear strongly influenced by his promoting the superiority of his "psycho-analysis" at the expense of hypnosis. Mainstream psychoanalysis continues to endorse the perpetuation of rationales Freud asserted nearly a century ago, and an oral lore of related supportive statements. This oral lore proves difficult to sustain upon closer scrutiny. It bypasses concerns that, if studied in depth, would demonstrate significant shortcomings. Problems encountered in this oral lore include: (1) the importance of information unavailable to Freud; (2) the ongoing impact of certain errors of Freud's thinking; (3) the distorting force of Freud's compelling drive to be a "conquistador" of the mind and create a heroic theory; (4) the implausibility, upon inspection, of certain long-accepted assertions about Freud's motivations; and (5) Freud's discomfort with his own dissociative symptomatology. It is argued that the "oral lore" promulgated in connection with Freud's rejection of hypnosis, like Freud's decision to reject hypnosis itself, is not firmly grounded and deserves careful reassessment.

Freud's Rejection of Hypnosis, Part I: The Genesis of a Rift.

Modern psychoanalysis begins with Sigmund Freud's study of hypnosis and the treatment of the grand hysterics of the fin de siècle. In the process of developing his own paradigm, Freud came to reject the use of hypnosis and turned his attention away from the severe hysterias. These decisions began what has become, notwithstanding noteworthy exceptions, over a century of estrangement and disengagement between the fields of hypnosis and psychoanalysis. The current communication reviews the 75 archived Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing resources from Freud's scientific work and correspondence in which reference is made to hypnosis. A close examination of Freud's stated rationales for abandoning hypnosis suggests that both the ideas he developed and the rift between hypnosis and psychoanalysis that they created may prove to have been problematic as well as innovative. They and their consequences merit thoughtful review and critical reconsideration.

Mysteries of nature.

This article examines a group photograph of the Psychiatry and Neurology section of the 66th Meeting of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors in Vienna, 24-30 September 1894 which Sigmund Freud attended. The society's origins in Naturphilosophie are indicated and a number of the participants are identified on the photo. They and the events at the conference are related to Sigmund Freud's work at the time and to his gradual abandonment of anatomy and of heredity and degeneration as significant aetiological factors in the neuroses. Philosophical problems, such as how phenomena should be described and how 'nature' is conceptualized, are also considered in the light of their implications for Freud's life and thought at that period.

Something black in the American Psyche: formal innovation and Freudian imagery in the comics of Winsor McCay and Robert Crumb.

Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland anticipates Robert Crumb's work. McCay's innocent dreamscapes seem antithetical to the sexually explicit work of anti-capitalist Crumb, but Nemo looks forward to Crumb in subject and form. Nemo's presentation of class, gender, and race, and its pre-Freudian sensibility are ironic counterpoints to Crumb's political, Freudian comix.

Representante-representativo, représentant-représentation, ideational representative: which one is a Freudian concept? On the translation of Vorstellungsrepräsentanz in Spanish, French and English.

The Freudian expression Vorstellungsrepräsentanz (Freud, 1915b, 1915c), which is rendered in the Standard Edition as ideational representative, is commonly translated in Spanish as representante-representativo and in French as représentant-représentation, among other renderings. An interdisciplinary conceptual inquiry, which applies linguistic semantics to the evaluation of the available Spanish and French renderings, concludes that this compound expression should be translated in these languages as representante ideativo and représentant idéatif, respectively, renderings which happen to correspond to Strachey's translation into English in the SE. In contrast to most Spanish and French translations, this proposal conforms to the semantic principle of compositionality. On the one hand, it provides a suitable translation of the two parts of the compound. Thus it renders Vorstellung as idea, with the classical meaning of image or mental representation, which can be traced back to Hume's empiricist philosophy, and it renders Repräsentanz as representative, with the meaning of delegate. On the other hand, its linguistic form preserves the attributive meaning relationship which exists between both concepts in the original German expression. Against the background of these semantic considerations, a theoretical question concerning Freudian metapsychology is discussed: the drive has a psychic representative, but is there a (mental) representation of the drive?

Sigmund Freud: pioneer in energy healing.

BACKGROUND: Energy healing is a popular contemporary term for forms of healing that facilitate a natural healing process through harmonizing, rebalancing, and releasing energy flow disturbed or blocked by disease and illness. Biographical evidence indicates that Freud used physical, suggestive, and radiant forms of energy healing, and that his personal life, metapsychology, and psychoanalysis were founded on dynamic, energetic experiences and conceptualizations. CONCLUSIONS: Analysis of Freud's life and work leads to the conclusion that in experience, theory, and practice, Freud typified the traditional role of therapist and was a pioneer in modern forms of energy healing.

[The body as source of significance. Interdisciplinary perspectives]. / Corpul ca sursa de semnificatie. Perspective interdisciplinare.

This paper concerns a general theoretical aspect, followed by different examples which discusses the thesis in relation to major connected domains of research: psychology and philosophy. The thesis which we are arguing for is that the body represents a source of significance in the definitions of he self used as theoretical background in moral problems (philosophical aspect) and the explanations of the way the image of the self is constituted (psychological aspect). The philosophical "conclusion" is that the body, in its materiality, cannot be judged by the metaphysical dualism scheme, which assigns it a secondary role in the hierarchy of categories. From a psychological point of view, this paper tends to show that the body does not represent an accident of personality or a "prison of the soul" as Plato refers to it, but rather an element through which personality is built on and develops and similarly, the mental and personality structures are those which allow the forming of corporeality and then the person's reference to it.

Deepening psychoanalytic listening: the marriage of Buddha and Freud.

Freud (1912) delineated the ideal state of mind for therapists to listen, what he called "evenly hovering" or "evenly suspended attention." No one has ever offered positive recommendations for how to cultivate this elusive yet eminently trainable state of mind. This leaves an important gap in training and technique. What Buddhism terms meditation-non-judgmental attention to what is happening moment-to-moment-cultivates exactly the extraordinary, yet accessible, state of mind Freud was depicting. But genuine analytic listening requires one other quality: the capacity to decode or translate what we hear on the latent and metaphoric level-which meditation does not do. This is a crucial weakness of meditation. In this chapter I will draw on the best of the Western psychoanalytic and Eastern meditative traditions to illuminate how therapists could use meditation to cultivate "evenly hovering attention" and how a psychoanalytic understanding of the language and logic of the unconscious complements and enriches meditative attention.

The place of psychoanalysis in the history of the Jews.

Situating psychoanalysis in the context of Jewish history, this paper takes up Freud's famous 1930 question: what is left in Judaism after one has abandoned faith in God, the Hebrew language and nationalism, and his answer: a great deal, perhaps the very essence, but an essence that we do not know. On the one hand, it argues that "not knowing" connects psychoanalysis to Judaism's ancestral preoccupation with God, a preoccupation different from that of the more philosophical Greek, Latin and Christian traditions of theology. On the other hand, "not knowing" connects psychoanalysis to a post-Enlightenment conception of the person (i.e. of personal life), as opposed to the more abstract notion of the subject associated with Kant.

Antecedentes de la obra de Freud / Background of Freud´s work

Nuestro objetivo en la presente publicación consiste en la presentación de aquellas ideas que posibilitaron a Freud crear su monumental obra. Concretamente, hablamos de cuatro “tradiciones” imperantes en el panorama científico del siglo XIX: la “evolucionista”, la “hipnótica”, la “empírico-biologicista” y la “filosófica”. Pero Freud no fue un mero receptor de estas “tradiciones”, sino que las integró y construyó un corpus teórico genial, que es su propia invención y que resultó aplicable como tratamiento a los trastornos nerviosos más prevalentes en las clases acomodadas de la época en que vivió. Terminamos asimilando a cada una de las “tradiciones” expuestas, los (cuatro) principios metapsicológicos en los que el padre del psicoanálisis sostuvo su edificio conceptual: “económico”, “genético”, “tópico” y “dinámico”

Our purpose in the present publication is to lay out the ideas which enable Freud to create his great work an which come from the four prime “traditions” at XIX century: “evolutionism”, “hypnotism”, “biological empriricism” and the “philosophical”. Freud was not a mere recipient of these traditions but he integrated them and made up a theoretical corpus, which was entirely original and turned out to be applied as a treatment of the most prevalent disorders at that time. Finally, we link the four “tradition” with the four metapsychological principle of Freud’s conceptual construction: “economic”, “genetic”, “topographical” and “dynamic”

'Actual neurosis' and psychosomatic medicine: the vicissitudes of an enigmatic concept.

Out of the concept of neurasthenia, the main non-psychotic diagnosis of nineteenth-century psychiatry besides hysteria, and on the basis of psychophysiological problems of his own, self-diagnosed as neurasthenia, Freud developed the notion of 'actual neurosis', a 'contentless psychic state' manifested by various somatic symptoms and a depressive mood, which he attributed to a chemical factor associated with aberrant sexual practices and in particular masturbation. Rejected by post-Freudian analysts as such along with the diagnosis of neurasthenia, the concept of 'actual neurosis' has survived under various theoretical schemes that seek to explain psychosomatic illness and somatisation, in general, with its concomitant poverty of affects and dearth of fantasy life. In more recent years, the concept of 'actual neurosis' has resurfaced under the label of chronic fatigue syndrome, a medical entity thought to be an immunological deficiency, while in psychoanalysis Freud's idea of a contentless mental state has been replaced by that of unconscious fantasy and symbolisation at a pre-genital or pre-verbal level.

Pioneers of affective neuroscience and early concepts of the emotional brain.

Views on the representation of emotion in the brain, as formulated about a century ago, are described, with a focus on the Vienna physiologist and psychologist Sigmund Exner, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and the French physician Israel Waynbaum. All three can be characterized as forerunners in the field of "affective neuroscience". By the turn of the century, they had developed a neural network theory of emotion which included a stage of pre-cortical processing. In spite of their otherwise very diverse theoretical backgrounds, their concepts of parallel processing routes were highly similar. It is interesting to note that their ideas were on line with present-day views on the neural substrates and physiological characteristics of emotional processing, although none of the three scientists could rely on the refined anatomical knowledge available nowadays.

El desarrollo histórico de la Consulta Psiquiátrica en el Hospital General: de la Medicina psicosomática a la psiquiatría de enlace / Historic development of psychiatric consultation: from psychosomatic medicine to liasion psychiatry

La consulta psiquiátrica interdepartamental, o interconsulta psiquiátrica, se inicia en Estados Unidos poco después de la segunda guerra mundial, coincidiendo con la creación de servicios de psiquiatría en los Hospitales Generales. De manera simultánea, favorecido por la gran influencia del psicoanálisis en la sociedad americana, surge el movimiento psicosomático en Medicina, guiado de la mano de médicos internistas psicoanalizados por Freud y sus discípulos. Conocido bajo el nombre de Medicina Psicosomática, este movimiento, más que en una especialidad en sí, consiste en una actitud hacia el enfermo y la enfermedad que puede resumirse en la atención, en todo estado patológico, a los condicionantes psíquicos y sociales, y no sólo a los biológicos.Bajo esta influencia, la interconsulta psiquiátrica evoluciona, desde la atención puntual especializada a trastornos psiquiátricos que pueden presentarse en pacientes primariamente afectos de cualquier otra patología, hacia la atención continuada cooperativa con otros especialistas en todo proceso de patología médica o quirúrgica. Nace así la Psiquiatría de Enlace o "Liaison", que implica un cambio conceptual importante en la manera de ejercer la psiquiatría, mucho más integrado en la medicina, y al mismo tiempo mucho más comprometido con las proyecciones psicosociales del trabajo clínico en todos sus estadios, desde la exploración y anamnesis hasta el tratamiento y la rehabilitación (AU)

Sigmund Freud and the countenance of Moses.

Sigmund Freud, as is well known, was overwhelmed by the person of Moses. This profound impact is revealed in his "The Moses of Michelangelo," first published in 1914, and "Moses and Monotheism," issued in 1933, the final work of his career. His biographers, in the light of these writings, have sought to discover the sources of this strong influence of Moses. A few claim that Moses arrived late on Freud's life stage. Most recognize that Freud was attracted to Moses early in his personal development. Their explanations to account for Freud's attachment to Moses, however, seem inadequate. The present article explores this issue and attributes the fascination and powerful imprint of Moses as stemming from a frequently viewed frontispiece found in each volume of the Philippson Bible, a lithograph of Moses displaying the Ten Commandments to the people of Israel. From childhood on, Sigmund gazed upon the face of Moses with his piercing eyes as his father related biblical stories to him, particularly the deeds of Moses, during their studies. The role of Jacob Freud with respect to the Freud-Moses relationship is herein discussed. The general conclusion emphasizes, as does Sigmund Freud himself, the enduring power of childhood experiences and their lifelong effect.