Ontological Psychoanalysis in Clinical Practice.

The author describes and then clinically illustrates what he terms the ontological dimension of psychoanalysis (having to do with coming into being) and the epistemological dimension of psychoanalysis (having to do with coming to know and understand). Neither of these dimensions of psychoanalysis exists in pure form; they are inextricably intertwined. Epistemological psychoanalysis, for which Freud and Klein are the principal architects, involves the work of arriving at understandings of play, dreams, and associations; while ontological psychoanalysis, for which Winnicott and Bion are the principal architects, involves creating conditions in which the patient might become more fully alive and real to him- or herself. The author provides clinical illustrations of the ontological dimension of psychoanalysis in which the process of the patient's coming more fully into being is facilitated by the experiences in which the patient feels recognized for the individual he is and is becoming. This occurs in an analysis in which the analyst and patient invent a form of psychoanalysis that is uniquely their own.

The psychoanalytic setting: José Bleger's encuadre.

José Bleger's paper on the setting (encuadre) is integral to his 1967 book Symbiosis and Ambiguity. Relevant concepts from the book are summarised before examining his view of the setting as a "non-process" consisting of "constants", complementing the "variables" of the analytic process. Process and setting are related as figure and ground in Gestalt psychology. The ideally maintained setting is studied as a thought experiment, uniting the categories of institution, personality, body schema, and body. Deposited in the setting, the psychotic part of the personality, or "agglutinated nucleus", is a remnant of early symbiosis with the mother. Bleger distinguishes two settings: the analyst's and the patient's. The latter can only be analysed by strictly maintaining the former. Ritualisation of the setting denies temporal reality. De-symbiotisation is not always possible. A concept of "internal" setting is suggested, but Bleger nowhere mentions this and the concept is problematic, leaving open the question of how to listen to the silence of the setting. Bleger's concept of encuadre can be applied to constants (invariants) in the wider world, the psychotic part of the personality being deposited in everything that is familiar and felt to be constant, including technology, which creates a "platform" for human activity.

On the question of the internal frame.

This paper attempts to expand José Bleger's classic, metapsychological descriptions of the psychoanalytic frame to formulate and emphasize the role of the analyst's internal frame in establishing a psychoanalytic observational perspective in the analytic situation. The rationale for doing so follows from clinical necessity, especially when working with patients and psychic organizations that are 'beyond neurosis' and in non-traditional settings such as distance and telemetric analyses. Clinically speaking, in its most effective state, the analyst's internal frame can inform the possibility of an observational vertex aimed at the intuitive grasp of psychic reality rather than a sense-based, empirical observation of parameters denoted by the elements of a consensually validatable social reality.

Freud's interpretation in "Medusa's Head" and some alternative psychoanalytic implications of Ovid's Medusa.

Freud's very brief 1922 paper on the beheading of Medusa by Perseus wisely concludes with a call for a further examination of the sources of the legend. A now widespread interpretation of this legend is based (often without acknowledgement) on an addition to traditions concerning Medusa made in Ovid's Metamorphoses. It is argued here that this Ovidian innovation has often been misinterpreted, and that a more careful reading of Metamorphoses supports neither a widely alleged exclusively vengeful portrayal of Medusa, nor Freud's portrayal of Medusa's decapitation as solely a pitiable and terrible symbol of castration. Instead, Ovid's complex treatments of myths involving Medusa, Minerva and Perseus present parallels with Kleinian insights into phantasy attacks on fecundity, and into imagined revivals of dead or damaged inside babies. Thus the "displacement upwards" of the fearful castrated maternal genital envisioned in Freud's "Medusa's Head" must stand beside a quite different "displacement upwards" of the life-giving maternal genital. Indeed, tradition holds that Medusa's beheading gives rise to the birth of vigorous twins. Together with allied details, this aligns Ovid's masterwork with theories that modify or displace the so-called "sexual phallic monism" that some believe taints Freud's theories of gender development.

A misinterpreted psychoanalyst: Herbert Silberer and his theory of symbol-formation.

The primary aim of this article is to give a more detailed exposition of the cultural, personal, and theoretical contexts in which the Viennese psychoanalyst, Herbert Silberer's theories were born. When assessing the broader picture that this approach offers, it can be concluded that Silberer was an innovative thinker who inspired several of his contemporaries. Recognized in many respects by the society and scholars of this time, he represented quite a different viewpoint that was significantly influenced by several forms of Western esoteric thinking. Yet his main aim was to contribute to the field of psychoanalysis and develop a theory in which rationalistic psychoanalytic interpretations were combined with nonreductive approaches to mystical experiences. Silberer's name is frequently mentioned in a specific context in which his tragic suicide is emphasized rather than his innovations. Upon evaluating the materials recording Silberer's private life, it seems very likely that his suicide was not triggered by the criticism of Freud alone. Silberer's family affairs, his relationship with his father, and his financial and professional struggles could have all contributed to his tragic decision. This paper contends that Silberer's oeuvre deserves greater attention and must be evaluated based upon its own merit.

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.

It's About Time: Loewald, Lacan, and AprÈs-Coup in America.

Martin Heidegger's thought deeply influenced both Hans Loewald and Jacques Lacan, the catalyst they seemed to have been waiting for. For Loewald, Heidegger's ontological centrality of time to Being-in-the-World would bridge to Freud's centrality of transference to the analytic process, thereby operationalizing transference as a prism of time. In revealing the interwoven correlatives of present-past-future, how they bootstrap one another phenomenologically, Loewald also revealed a spiral of recursive meaning (in essence, après-coup) that draws us into the future, "the something more" of existence. In parallel, through his recognition of the power of après-coup, Lacan rescued from obscurity Freud's profound conception of Nachträglichkeit, or the spiral and causal force of unfolding meaning. Lacan was now situated to bring après-coupin conjunction with Heidegger's Being-in-the-World, with time interwoven into all aspects of existence, thereby underpinning, too, language and the Symbolic Order. By reading Freud through Heidegger and then creating their brilliant syntheses, Loewald and Lacan, through their striking sameness and differences, illuminate the nature of the unconscious, of memory and meaning, of the spiral of time, and of existence itself.

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 significance of the ego in "The Ego and the Id" and its unfulfilled promise.

It is not well known that The Ego and the Id, where Freud presented his second model of the mind, and introduced a new role for the Ego, was ignored by many of the major theorists that followed. I will attempt to demonstrate the importance of this new view of the ego for clinical psychoanalysis, and what has been lost by its being ignored.

Entre Freud e Abraham: um estudo das pulsões e das relações de objeto nas fundações da psicanálise / Between Freud and Abraham: a study of drives and object relations in the foundations of psychoanalysis / Entre Freud y Abraham: un estudio de las pulsiones y relaciones de objeto en las fundaciones del psicoanálisis

Buscamos neste ensaio apresentar algumas das principais transformações pelas quais passou a psicanálise no seu desenvolvimento histórico. Nesse movi-mento, os chamados paradigmas pulsional e objetal foram se estabelecendo como principais referências ao campo psicanalítico. Nossa intenção principal foi conhecer como a relação de objeto está presente na teoria pulsional de Freud, sobretudo na primeira tópica. Ademais, saber como a dinâmica pulsional e o objeto se apresentam no pensamento de um dos principais psicanalistas da primeira geração, Karl Abraham. Como desdobramento deste estudo, apre-sentamos alguns dos efeitos de como a noção de objeto, presente nas teorias desses paradigmas, pode fundamentar diferentes noções de desenvolvimento, de psicopatologia e de manejo clínico em nossa contemporaneidade. (AU)

In this essay, we aim to present some of the key transformations that psycho-analysis has undergone in its historical development. In this movement, the concepts of drive and object paradigms were established as main references to the psychoanalytic field. Our primary objective was to explore the presence of object relations in Freud's drive theory, especially in the first topography. Moreover, we seek to know how the dynamic of drives and the object are present in the thinking of one of the leading psychoanalysts of the first genera-tion, Karl Abraham. As an extension to this study, we point out some of the effects of how the notion of object, included in the theories of these paradigms, can underpin various concepts of development, psychopathology, and clinical practice in contemporary psychoanalysis. (AU)

En este ensayo buscamos presentar algunas de las principales transfor-maciones que ha sufrido el psicoanálisis en su desarrollo histórico. En este movimiento, los denominados paradigmas pulsionales y objetal se estable-cieron como referencias principales al campo psicoanalítico. Nuestra inten-ción principal era saber cómo está presente la relación de objeto en la teoría pulsional de Freud, especialmente en la primera tópica. Además, saber cómo la dinámica pulsional y el objeto se presentan en el pensamiento de uno de los principales psicoanalistas de la primera generación, Karl Abraham. Como consecuencia de este estudio, presentamos algunos de los efectos de cómo la noción de objeto, presente en las teorías de estos paradigmas, puede soportar diferentes nociones de desarrollo, psicopatología y manejo clínico en nuestros tiempos contemporáneos.

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.

Congresso de Psicanálise da Banana: Evidências Inaugurais da Discriminação na Política Institucional Lacaniana / Banana Psychoanalysis Congress: Inaugural Evidence of Discrimination in Lacanian Institutional Policy / Congreso de Psicoanálisis de Plátano: Evidencias Inaugurales de la Discriminación en la Política Institucional Lacaniana

Abordou-se a chegada do pensamento lacaniano ao Brasil e a sua divulgação no Congresso Psicanalítico da Banana, marco inaugural no qual se encontra uma expressão nacional da reprodução dos impasses político-institucionais nas escolas lacanianas. Procedeu-se a uma busca no sítio da hemeroteca digital da Fundação Biblioteca Nacional utilizando como descritores o nome do evento e/ou o nome de seus organizadores no período de fevereiro de 1980 a dezembro de 1989. Utilizou-se como referência do trabalho a perspectiva da Escola dos Annales,que considera que a escrita histórica deve se orientar por problemas específicos; a consideração da transferência como marca indelével da pesquisa realizada por psicanalistas pesquisadores; as reflexões de Ricouer sobre as etapas da construção do conhecimento historiográfico. As matérias publicadas apresentam de forma recorrente: as celeumas entre os psicanalistas lacanianos e os filiados à IPA; a busca de reconhecimento dos analistas lacanianos brasileiros pelos franceses; a proposta de discussão da conjuntura nacional por meio da psicanálise; a divergência entre analistas lacanianos brasileiros acerca da tutoria francesa nas instituições surgidas no Brasil. Propôs-se a consideração da dimensão transferencial como possibilidade de construção de uma política emancipatória nas instituições psicanalíticas.

This discussion is about the arrival of Lacanian thinking in Brazil and its dissemination at the Banana Psychoanalytic Congress, an inaugural milestone in which a national expression of the reproduction of political-institutional impasses in Lacanian schools can be found. A search was carried out on the website of the digital newspaper library of the National Library Foundation using as descriptors the name of the event and/or the name of its organizers, from February 1980 to December 1989. What was used as a reference for the work was the perspective of the Annales School which considers that historical writing must be guided by specific problems; the consideration of the transference as an indelible mark of research carried out by researchers of the psychoanalytic field; Ricouer's reflections upon the stages of the construction of the historiographical knowledge. The published articles present recurrently: the controversy between Lacanian psychoanalysts and those affiliated with the IPA; the search for recognition of Brazilian Lacanian analysts by the French; the proposal to discuss the national situation through psychoanalysis; the divergence between Brazilian Lacanian analysts about French tutoring in institutions that emerged in Brazil. It was proposed to consider the transferential dimension as a possibility of building an emancipatory policy in psychoanalytic institutions.

Se ha discutido la llegada del pensamiento lacaniano en Brasil y su difusión en el Congreso Psicoanalítico de Plátano, hito inaugural en el que se encuentra una expresión nacional de los impases político-institucionales en las escuelas lacanianas. Se realizó una búsqueda en la hemeroteca digital de la Fundación Biblioteca Nacional utilizando como descriptores el nombre del evento y/o el nombre de sus organizadores, en el período de febrero de 1980 hasta diciembre de 1989. Se utilizó como referente para el trabajo la perspectiva de la Escuela de los Annales, que considera que la escritura histórica debe guiarse por problemas específicos; la consideración de la transferencia como una marca de la investigación realizada por los psicoanalistas; las reflexiones de Ricouer sobre las etapas de la construcción del conocimiento historiográfico. Los artículos publicados presentan de manera recurrente: la controversia entre los lacanianos y los afiliados a la IPA; la búsqueda del reconocimiento de los lacanianos brasileños por parte de los franceses; la propuesta de discutir la situación nacional a través del psicoanálisis; la divergencia entre lacanianos brasileños sobre la tutoría de francés en instituciones surgidas en Brasil. Se propuso considerar la dimensión transferencial como posibilidad de construcción de una política emancipatoria en estas instituciones.

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.

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.

Remembering, repeating and working-through as a step in Freud's ongoing struggle with the "what", "why" and "how" of analytic knowing in the curative process.

In this paper the author offers a new reading of Freud's "Remembering, Repeating and Working-through", examining the complex nature of central concepts that Freud presents within it. She demonstrates the text's special role in an ongoing effort of Freud's to articulate and ground the heart of his analytic insight that knowledge cures. While the insight itself is very well-known, the fact that Freud struggled throughout his life with its articulation and grounding is not. The struggle centered on questions pertaining to how analytic knowing could, not only enlighten the patient, but actually change his unconscious dynamics, and why the patient, having already "opted" for pathology in place of knowing would come to accept it; and ultimately, what was the nature of the knowledge offered in analysis and the individual's relationship to it that allowed for such dramatic changes to occur. The author briefly presents some of her earlier work on Freud's struggle with these issues and how Melanie Klein resolved them. It is in this context that she demonstrates how in Remembering, Repeating and Working-through" Freud may be seen to be taking important steps towards developing his ideas on analytic knowing and in ways that anticipate Klein's resolutions. This points to the close tie between Klein's and Freud's thinking on the nature of the analytic process and the person's desire for self-knowledge on which it relies, brings out the richness of this thinking and grounds its value to contemporary psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalytic proof: Revisiting Freud's Tally Argument.

This paper explores the notion of proof in clinical psychoanalysis by reconsidering an argument Freud made concerning the relation between successful psychoanalytic treatment and truth, dubbed the "Tally Argument" by the philosopher Adolf Grünbaum. I first reiterate criticisms of Grünbaum's reconstruction of this argument, which bring out the degree to which he has misunderstood Freud. I then offer my own interpretation of the argument and the reasoning that underlies its key premise. Drawing from this discussion, I explore three forms of proof, each inspired also by analogies with other disciplines. Laurence Perrine's "The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry" stimulates my discussion of inferential proof, the relevant form of which involves proving an interpretation through a strong enough Inference to the Best Explanation. Mathematical proof stimulates my discussion of apodictic proof, of which psychoanalytic insight is a fitting example. Finally, holism in legal reasoning stimulates my discussion of holistic proof, which provides a reliable means by which therapeutic success can verify epistemic conclusions. These three forms of proof can play a crucial role in ascertaining psychoanalytic truth.

Invisible-visual hallucinations in Bion's "Attacks on Linking".

Writing Attacks on Linking, it is as if Bion had listened to his former analyst. In a lecture on technique given the year before, Klein expressed the wish that someone would write "a book about linking [...] one of the essential points in analysis". Later taken up and commented on in Second Thoughts, Attacks on Linking, has become perhaps Bion's most famous paper and, Freud aside, the fourth most cited article in the whole of psychoanalytic literature. In the short and scintillating essay Bion presents the enigmatic and fascinating concept of invisible-visual hallucinations, which subsequently seems never to have been taken up and discussed as such by other scholars. The author's proposal is therefore to reread Bion's text starting from this concept. To try to give a definition that is as clear and distinct as possible, a comparison is made with those of negative hallucination (Freud), dream screen (Lewin), and primitive agony (Winnicott). Finally, the hypothesis is formulated that IVH could give us the model of what stays at the origin of any representation; i.e. a micro-traumatic inscription of the trace of stimuli (but which may come to be actually traumatic) in the psychic fabric.

THINKING THE DREAM: DREAM AND DREAM THINKING IN SIGMUND FREUD, HANNA SEGAL, AND WILFRED BION.

In the dream and its interpretation, psychoanalysis, in its founding period around 1900, identified the "royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious in the psychic life." But already in the development of Freud's work itself, the dream lost its central position: As early as in the 1920s, psychoanalysis ceased to be a theory and practice defined by dream interpretation-a caesura in a process which completed itself in 1950. Two further developments proved, up to the present day, particularly momentous for the conception of the dream: Melanie Klein's development of the concept of "unconscious phantasy" and the extension of psychoanalytic treatment to psychosis, originally declared inaccessible to psychoanalytic therapy by Freud. This article draws an itinerary of this path and the subsequent fundamental changes in the psychoanalytic reflection on the dream affecting the whole of psychoanalysis until today, by casting spotlights on essential stations: conceptions of the dream developed by Hanna Segal and Wilfred Bion, the latter's theory perpetuating Freud's dream theory as well as it conceptualizes dreams, dreaming, and thinking in a fundamentally new way.

Friendship, Creativity and Dispute in the Freud-Fliess and Ferenczi-Groddeck Letters.

In this paper we examine the different transferential relationships that occurred between two sets of friends: Freud-Fliess and Ferenczi-Groddeck; consider the impact of these variables on their productivity, creativity, and friendship; and review historical literature to analyze how the nature of their bonds shaped very different personal destinies. Freud and Fliess greatly admired each other, and expressed reciprocal support, trust, and idealization but their underlying dispute over the paternity of certain ideas ultimately led to a bitter end. Essentially, their transference can be characterized as paternal-filial. The Ferenczi-Groddeck relationship, on the other hand, shared many of the same traits as the Freud-Fliess pair: a strong friendship, mutual admiration, even idealization, but their bond evolved into a more fraternal transference, which enabled their love, admiration, and respect to develop into a mutually-enriching relationship that endured for their entire lives.