Freud in Bulgaria: Psychoanalysis, Literature, Translation: An Experience with the Singular.

This contribution considers a monthly seminar, Literature and Psychoanalysis, that has been taking place at Sofia University (Sofia, Bulgaria) since 2017. Three of the seminar's founders reflect on the transferences between literature and psychoanalysis, and on the ways in which literature and psychoanalysis can meaningfully converse. The exchange also touches on the fate of Freud's textual legacy in communist and post-communist Bulgaria.

Wondering and Wandering: In Defense of Free Association and the Fundamental Rule.

"Free association" and the "fundamental rule" are bedrock for psychoanalytic therapy and apply to what both patient and analyst should experience in the process. The article traces Sigmund Freud's revolutionary recognition of the importance of free association that began with his tribute to the works of Ludwig Börne and Friedrich Schiller. The author invokes other proposals akin to free association made by artists and scientists, including John Keats, Charles Dickens, Robert Frost, Thomas S. Kuhn, Arthur Koestler, and Albert Einstein. While emphasizing the importance and the liberatory potential of free association as it relates to effective treatment and discovery, the author contends that there is a "moral press" for both the patient and the analyst to permit free associative thoughts, particularly to question assumptions about how things are supposed to be.

Engaging with the unknown: How Judaism enabled Freud's psychological discoveries.

A large literature has formed around the question of how Freud's Jewishness and/or Judaism influenced his psychological discoveries and development of psychoanalytic theory and methods. The article organizes the literature into several core theses but brings new clarity and insight by applying two essential criteria to demonstrate an impact of Judaism on Freud's thinking: direct content and historical timing. First, there should be evidence that Freud incorporated actual content from Jewish sources, and second, this incorporation must have occurred during the most crucial period of Freud's early discovery, conceptualization, and development of psychoanalysis, roughly 1893-1910. Thus, for example, Bakan's well-known theory that Freud studied Kabbala is completely negated by the absence of any evidence in the required time period. Part I reviews the literature on the influence of Freud's ethnic/cultural Jewish identity. Part II introduces the Judaic sacred literature, explores Freud's education in Judaism and Hebrew, and presents evidence that Freud had the motive, means, and resources to discover and draw from the "Dream Segment" of the Talmud-along with the traditional Judaic methods and techniques of textual exegesis. Freud then applied these same Judaic word-centered interpretive methods-used for revealing an invisible God-to revealing an invisible Unconscious in four successive books in 1900, 1901, and 1905.

Psychoanalytic Contributions to Psychodynamic Psychiatry: Freud's Anxiety Theory.

In many academic centers a generation of psychiatrists has undergone training with little or no exposure to Freud's contributions to our profession. Our profession is diminished if we ignore Freud's remarkable insights into the human psyche. Not only does Freud give us a comprehensive theory of human nature-of our mental life and its psychopathology-his concepts are foundational to dynamic psychiatry and its psychotherapeutic application. This article describes one of his core concepts: Freud's theory of anxiety.

The Ego and the Id: Concepts and developments.

In this note I have limited myself to describing some convergent and divergent developments arising from the innovative concepts present in The Ego and the Id. It could be argued that a part of the psychoanalytic movement wished to emphasize the function of the Ego (Anna Freud, Hartmann, Rapaport), while another part (Melanie Klein and her followers) delved into the dynamics of the Superego and the Id in primitive and pathological states of mind. I will examine three themes presents in The Ego and the Id: the assertion that a part of the Ego is unconscious; the idea that the death drive becomes part of the dynamics of melancholia and its Superego; the concept of fusion and defusion of the life and death instinct. Freud's writing represents a forge of new ideas that have made psychoanalysis ever more creative and capable of understanding the complexity and mysteriousness of the human mind.

The visual image and the Denkbild: Sigmund Freud and Walter Benjamin on history and remembrance.

The present paper offers a comparative reading of Sigmund Freud's and Walter Benjamin's thoughts on remembrance and history. Freud's dream thought, constructed from visual images, and Benjamin's dialectical image, and the Denkbild as its literary form, are presented as intriguingly intertwined concepts. They both refer to residues of regressive thought expressed through the medium of the German Bild, which can be translated as image, picture or figure. The visual image (visuelles Bild) and the Denkbild are presented as crucial to the construction of history because they present a dialectic between a condensed experience of the past (beyond the scope of words and representation) and the inevitable transformation of experience into language. Freud's and Benjamin's late writings are read in the historical context of European Jewish intellectuals facing the rise of the Nazi regime. The images discussed comparatively here are Freud's last Moorish king and Benjamin's angel of history. These condensed images are presented as lamenting figures, images of despair and struggle. They serve as examples of the visual image's ability to represent the unrepresentable and capture hidden mnemic traces at traumatic times.

Freud's Red Thread: Explorations of the Unconscious Sense of Guilt.

The concept of an "unconscious sense of guilt" bedevils Freud throughout his life, rearing its head in at least twenty-four of his major works and working behind the scenes in many others. In a sense, we can see Freud's oeuvre, and psychoanalysis more generally, as a discourse of unconscious guilt. While Freud frames the oedipus complex as the central defining dynamic of human experience, the unconscious sense of guilt is arguably the underbelly that both precedes and exceeds that complex. By unraveling a range of complexities within Freud's conceptualization of unconscious guilt, we will come to see that guilt is an unavoidable by-product of the human condition, intrinsically interwoven with libidinal desire.

Radical Freud (Part Two): Freud's Bisexuality Thesis and the Negation of the Oedipus Complex.

The author focuses on bisexuality in a continued analysis of Freud's radical sexual theory. A close reading of texts from Freud's work, in particular "The Ego and the Id," demonstrates how Freud puts forward a bisexuality thesis in parallel and as an alternative to his thesis of the Oedipus complex. This bisexuality thesis is premised on the mechanism of object cathexis and identification by which the ego and superego are formed. The textual excavation is extended back to earlier material by Freud and other authors (Trigant Burrow, Isidor Sadger) to reveal the foundational bedrock of the bisexuality thesis in primary identification. This line of investigation boldly confirms not only Freud's view of the fundamental centrality of bisexuality to human sexuality but also its main consequence, which Freud himself implicitly recognizes, namely, the negation of the Oedipus complex. This argument has ramifications for the theory and clinical practice of psychoanalysis.

Talcott Parsons on building personality system theory via psychoanalysis.

This article examines Talcott Parsons's efforts at building the theory of personality system as a special case of his general theory of action and places those efforts in historical context. I demonstrate how, during the middle decades of the twentieth century, Parsons employed elements of classic Freudian thought to advance a new appreciation of the personality system and its relations to other action systems. I begin with an overview of the reception of psychoanalysis at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Harvard Department of Social Relations, showing how Parsons's thinking on the personality system cannot be understood apart from his association with these three institutions. I then turn to how Parsons endeavored to integrate his particular brand of sociology with his own interpretation of Freud's writings to explain how the personality system functions and develops. I conclude by showing that while Parsons's involvements with psychoanalysis became more intermittent after the mid-1950s, to the end of his life he remained steadfast in his enthusiasm for Freud's theory of personality. In short, Parsons always believed that for sociological theory to progress, it needed to engage with psychoanalysis.

The refused interpretation in Freud, Jung and beyond: what if the patient says "no".

The paper attempts to illustrate how refusing an interpretation can lead to very different consequences within Freudian, Jungian, and other psychotherapeutic models. In some cases, a "no" may refute the model of reference, while in others it may have less radical meanings. Refusing an interpretation (if it is consistent with the model and the patient's history) within a Freudian environment can also challenge the validity of the model. From a Jungian perspective, a refusal may simply lead the therapist to change the model of reference, since no single model is considered universally valid. Other examples are also provided from the psychoanalytic, cognitive-behavior, and family therapy research traditions.

[Freudian trauma]. / Traumatisme freudien.

An exploration of all Freud's writings on trauma from 1885 is proposed. Trauma, a central concept in his first works, always kept a place in his theory. He conceived it as a consequence of an external perception leading to a sudden affect which cannot be mastered by the psyche. For him, the excitation is so strong that it threatens the ego and provokes a breach of the protective shield. The idea that he would have renounced to this topic at the end of the nineteenth century is irrational.

"Call Me by Your Name": The Wrong Action: From Ferenczi to Enactment as a Process.

It is always hard for psychoanalysis to connect free associations and action. With Freud, action could be interpreted only when it referred to the transference; otherwise, action was a resistance to the possibility of free association. Unlike Freud, Ferenczi recognized the importance of the analyst's acting-out as the patient's unconscious request for experiences of trauma to be mobilized. By presenting a clinical case, the author offers the analyst's error as the mobilization of a traumatic block. The error activates a "Process of enactment," whereas if the error is not considered positively, it is simply a mistake, or the loss of a creative opportunity.

Analytic Work: The Essential and the Accidental in Psychoanalysis.

This article explores what is essential to analytic work by drawing not only on Freud, but also on two additional sources: Friedman's (2019) notion of the psychoanalytic phenomenon as described in Freud's book on technique; and Weber's (1991, 2000) understanding of Freud's metapsychology as a creation of terms that are necessary in order to work with a non-observable object, the unconscious. Using Freud's emphasis on the importance of dreams as a form of thinking, the author links the work of Friedman and Weber and extends it in doing a close reading of a specific passage by Freud, showing that the precarious nature of metapsychology is understandable as a form of paradigmatic logic. A dream of the author's gives a certain counterpoint to the paper.

Mirror, Mirror: Freud and the Reversible Self-Object Dyad.

Freud is often negatively contrasted with object relations and relational theorists for holding to a metapsychology in which drives are understood as innate and predetermined in their development, are thought to follow the pleasure principle in a "hydraulic" manner, and are not seen as influenced by real objects. While that theory is certainly one dimension of Freud's thinking, it is paralleled by another, quite different model positing a "mirror" relation in which affectively charged reversible self-object dyads, as opposed to purely internal dynamics, are the constituent elements of mental life. This view, more compatible with theories placing greater emphasis on the constitutive role of self-object relations, may further the reconciliation of Freudian and object-relational theories.

What Use is Freud?

More than a hundred years into our field's development, examining Freud's place in psychoanalytic education is timely. What authority does he hold for psychoanalysts in 2021? Is he still the architect, or overseer, of psychoanalysis? Freud has been a metonym for psychoanalysis, yet the history of Freud's identification with the totality of psychoanalysis has had important unfortunate consequences. Negative aspects of this identification subtly linger, interfering in our collective appreciation of post-Freudian theoretical innovations. Too much of psychoanalysis has been "bought at the company store" of Freud's ideas. Though part of this problem is created by idealizations of Freud, much of it stems from Freud's precocious emphasis on psychoanalytic findings within his tripartite definition of psychoanalysis. As a result, many of his theoretical accounts were taken prematurely as definitive building blocks for a comprehensive psychoanalytic theory, when in fact they were only provisional formulations. Presently, portions of Freud's theories are silently withering on the psychoanalytic vine. Data from the PEP-Web archive reveal the declining use of a set of once important, closely linked conceptions-Freud's psychosexual theory and his characterology-and illustrate the kinds of Freudian ideas that have lost their usefulness. The indispensable and enduring elements in his work are identified.

The Problem of Value and Other Outstanding Issues in Freud's Sexual Theory.

The author takes up Freud's sexual theory and examines several key issues-narcissism, infantile sexuality, heterosexuality, and gender-in order to reassert the radical aspects of Freud's epistemology. These areas are explored in two broad and interrelated themes, which are characterized loosely as a genealogy of morals and a philosophy of the will to power. Although this moves substantially beyond the formulations used by Freud, the underlying issue in all this material is the problem of value, and the author demonstrates the truly radical arc of Freud's thinking in the way he addresses value in his sexual theory.

Reconsidering Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood.

Previous considerations of Freud's 1910 pathography of Leonardo da Vinci have grappled mainly with errors of fact (among them a mistranslation in the study's signature childhood memory, widely known since the 1950s). Here a more consequential flaw is examined: Freud's fatefully pathogenic framing of Leonardo's homosexuality. While few present-day analysts share that perspective in its entirety, Freud's complex and plausible reconstruction drew wide support in the literature for more than a century and has to date never been subjected to rigorous critique. A close reading of the study, exploring Freud's perspective and that of later psychoanalysts and historians, seeks to account for the biography's tenacious grip on the psychoanalytic imagination. In the end, it is argued, the pathography is a failed effort to grapple with an unsettling transformation unfolding around and within Freud: the emergence of the category that eventually would be called the "healthy homosexual."

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen: America's public critic of psychoanalysis, 1947-1957.

This paper examines the role of Bishop Fulton Sheen in the popularization of Freudian psychoanalysis in the United States during the 1940s and 50s. Social historians argue that Freudian ideas were pervasive in American culture during this period. While their claim speaks mainly to the impact of psychoanalysis on the cultural elite and college educated, they also suggest that Freudian ideas affected ordinary men and women. In the former case, the group impacted is small and not representative of the population as a whole; in the latter, the evidence is sparse and impressionistic. Neglected in their consideration is the influence of Fulton Sheen whose opinions on Freud reached an audience of 30,000,000 during the height of the popularity of his TV show, Life is Worth Living. Sheen's audience was more inclusive and representative of mainstream America. The negative and highly cautionary view of psychoanalysis he presented to many Americans was contrary to that which was promoted to and embraced by many of the college educated and likely shaped both their views of Freud and psychoanalytic therapy.

The return of the repressed. On Robert N. Bellah, Norman O. Brown, and religion in human evolution.

As much as Robert Bellah's final work, Religion in Human Evolution, has been studied and dissected, no critic underlined the importance of psychoanalysis for its main argument and its theoretical framework. The paper shows the influence exerted by a controversial interpreter of Freud, Norman O. Brown, on Bellah's ideas, intellectual profile, and writing style in the late-1960s and early 1970s. While in search for a new intellectual voice, Bellah was struck by Brown's work and began to make intensive use of his book, Love's Body, both in his teaching and in his research of the early 1970s, during his so-called "symbolic realism" period. While Bellah abandoned Brown's ideas and style in the mid-1970s, some of the basic intuitions he had during that period still survived as one of the major theoretical intuitions of Religion and Human Evolution.

The reception of Dr Ludwik Jekels' "apostolic activity" to promote psychoanalysis in Poland before the outbreak of World War I. Part 1. / Reakcje na "apostolska dzialalnosc" dr. Ludwika Jekelsana rzecz psychoanalizy w Polsce do wybuchu I wojny swiatowej. Czesc 1.

The paper sets out to present Dr Ludwk Jekels' activity for the development of psychoanalysis in Poland between 1909 and 1914. Ludwik Jekels was the first Polish psychoanalyst and the first translator of Sigmund Freud's works into Polish. Throughout numerous years he gained his psychoanalytic skills in the classical Viennese school of psychoanalysis while attending lectures conducted by Freud himself. The article analyses a number of previously unknown and unpublished historical sources (e.g., Ludwik Jekels' memories and correspondence as well as daily newspapers and scientific journals). The research allowed the current knowledge of Dr Jekels' activity and achievements in his early career as a psychoanalyst to be significantly complemented. The first part of the paper presents briefly Dr Jekels' professional development and the causes why he gained interest in psychoanalysis. A little-known period of psychoanalytic activity prior to his first public presentations in Krakow and Warsaw in 1909 was reconstructed. The article includes a detailed review of Jekels' first lectures on psychoanalysis, including one which has been completely unknown to the historians of medicine. The varied reactions of the Polish neurologists and psychiatrists' to Jekels' promoting activity and psychoanalysis itself were critically assessed.