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Psychoanalytic Politics: Freud's French Revolution
... This phenomenon is what the American writer Sherry Turkle has called "psychoanalytical culture" and which is defined by three main conditions: a transnational nature, which takes it beyond the cultural and national limits of its place of origin, even changing the original language in which the message was formulated and transmitted; the capacity to offer objects through which we may consider social reality and the elements of day-to-day life and psychoanalysis's flexible, multifaceted character, making it an easily appropriable system of ideas, as can be seen in the many adaptations it has undergone which coexist alongside apparently contrary and incompatible theories (Turkle, 1992). To these conditions we should add a body of institutions and relayers responsible for spreading the theory through various channels (Damousi and Plotkin, 2009). ...
... In order to situate psychoanalysis historically, it is not enough to know the details of Freud's life, the history of psychiatry or that of Vienna, however important these ty could therefore be thought of in Freudian terms, with psychoanalysis going beyond exclusively medical circles, working as a system of ideas and beliefs in which a wide range of everyday aspects could be named and discussed as well as affecting the way people thought about themselves (Turkle, 1992). ...
The aim of this work is to analyze the process by which psychoanalysis categories joined scientific and popular culture in Francoism. To do so, we will start with the criticism and reinterpretations that different experts did on Freud’s theory to adapt it to the new political-social context. This analysis will allow us to show how reappropriation and signification of a progressive and modern theory was achieved based on the doctrinal principles of national-Catholicism. From here on, we will analyze the incorporation of psychoanalytic language and ideas into several mass media, confirming the consolidation of psychoanalysis as a cultural framework in Spain.
... In the country of Jacques Lacan, the "psy" circles have been strongly marked by psychoanalysis (Turkle, 1992). This was particularly the case among psychologists who saw it as a means of emancipation from medical control for the practice of psychotherapy (Soulez-Larivière, 1990). ...
This article traces the history of the behavior therapy movement in French‐speaking Europe between the 1960s and the 1990s, focusing on its geographically located development, whether on a national, sub‐ or supra‐national scale. By examining the trajectories of the three main behavioral therapy associations in France, Switzerland, and Belgium, we show that it is not possible to subsume them under a common intellectual history. Despite the importance of theoretical debates in the emergence of this brand of psychotherapy in English‐speaking countries, adherence to this type of explanation falls short of accounting for the differential reception of behavioral therapies in these countries. We argue that the later development of behavioral therapy in France, Belgium, and Switzerland was shaped more by professional agendas, local definitions, and regulations of psychotherapy than by “pure” theoretical commitments and conflicts between schools of thought. From a historiographical perspective, exploring the regionalization of psychotherapeutic styles thus involves contesting the idea that different therapies are mainly characterized by adherence to psychological theories and embedded ontologies of the self that are radically opposed (i.e., humanism vs. naturalism, psychoanalysis vs. behavior therapy). Localizing psychotherapies and paying attention to the varying circumstances and traditions in which they have evolved allows us to go beyond this dichotomous vision and to access a multiplicity of nondogmatic and intermediate positions that would otherwise be invisible.
... My appreciation to André Bitton for sending me an exemplar of Emmanuel Hoch's research. On the context of the creation of GIA in the history of French psychiatry, also see: Coffin (2005), Turkle (1978). 32 Throughout this article I have kept the French term psychiatrisés, which might be translated by "psychiatrized" and may be seen as the French equivalent of psychiatric survivors. ...
... 4. See Lacan (1973Lacan ( /1981; Lemaire (1977); Turkle (1978). ...
... 2 AMOUROUX (Ohayon, 2006a(Ohayon, , 2006b. But then, as Turkle (1992) shows, "in the course of the 1960s, the French attitude toward psychoanalysis swung from denigration and resistance to infatuation in one of the most dramatic social reversals of an intellectual position in modern history" (p. 4). ...
In 1960s France, behavior therapy attracted the attention of a group of isolated pioneers largely composed of psychiatrists and some experimental psychologists. At the beginning of the 1970s, after a discreet introduction, the development of this movement provoked an adverse reaction related to the French intellectual context, which was characterized by a taste for psychoanalysis. At the height of the Cold War, this new form of therapy was, moreover, seen as a typical product of American culture, and viewed as a technique for mind control that would be incompatible with French humanist values. In this respect, the French rejection of behavioral therapies can also be placed in a broader context, one of anti-Americanism and assertion of the French “cultural exception.” Thus, until the late 1980s, the development of the French behavior therapy movement was weak compared with what happened in the United Kingdom or the United States. Conversely, psychoanalysis reigned unchallenged in the French market for psychotherapy. In the early 1990s, the arrival of cognitive–behavioral therapy made a crucial difference. Hybridized with cognitive techniques, cognitive–behavioral therapy was seen as a “synthetic product” better suited to the French culture in psychotherapy than the initial model of “pure” behavior therapy.
... Así, la realidad comenzaba a ser interpretada freudianamente, mostrando cómo muchas personas que nunca han asistido ni asistirán a la consulta de un psicoanalista utilizan los conceptos de Freud como marco referencial. Este fenómeno ha sido denominado "Cultura Psicoanalítica" por la investigadora Sherry Turkle (1979). ...
Editorial de sección especial "Psicoanálisis y Cultura".
... Paradoxically, the mechanism to transform scientific knowledge into something larger involves reducing it to some core concepts and relationships that can be appealing for different audiences. Sherry Turkle (1992) has called this "appropriable theory" and by that she means "objects to think with" or, in Plotkin's terms, "concepts and ideas that are easily manipulable" (2001: 5). This is strikingly clear in the reception of Dewey in Chile and Spain, as Bruno-Jofré and Jover have pointed out: ...
Chapter 1 introduces a theoretical framework based on Baert’s (2012) idea of intellectual interventions, Science and Technology Studies’ (STS) approaches to boundary work (in particular Gieryn 1999; Lamont and Molnar 2002; Star and Griesemer 1989), and the geopolitics of knowledge circulation (Alatas 2003; Connell 2007; Mignolo 2000; Rodriguez Medina 2014). Instead of a typical reception study, mine is a case study of knowledge circulation, which means that I have not focused exclusively on those academics whose goal was to introduce Luhmann’s theory in the region but also the work of scholars who have used Luhmann’s theory in different ways, both on an intellectual and a practical level. This is supplemented by methodological considerations around life history and specifically about working life narrative.
... As palavras não podem ter um significado correto e fixo, a linguagem sempre está aberta ambiguidades: seu poder metafórico é algo que lhe é inerente e não acidental. Turkle (1992) diz que se tentarmos colocar Lacan em um lado ou outro da linha que separa ciência e poesia o que acontece é que a linha mesma passa a ser questionada. ...
O estilo de Lacan não é um simples envoltório do pensamento, mas sim algo essencial para a sua proposta de transmissão da psicanálise. Procuramos analisar uma de suas principais características: a polissemia conceitual. Para isso utilizamos principalmente o trabalho de comentadores como Milán-Ramos e Beividas, com o objetivo de realizar uma discussão entre dois tipos ideais antagônicos: a transmissão subjetiva e a transmissão científica. Levantamos os problemas e vantagens de cada ponto de vista, reconhecendo os seus limites na tentativa de melhor compreender a psicanálise, que acaba transcendendo a categorização em Arte ou Ciência.
... Since second half of 20th century, many studies of sociology have pointed out the relevance of certain unconscious aspects underlying institutions and laws. We are of the opinion that such possible unconscious aspects should not be fully negligible at a sociological level simply because social-political organizations, institutions and structures are however made by individuals who act and think according to their wills, desires and drives, even commonly and socially shared by a community (Bastide 1972;Turkle 1978;Collins 1980;Obholzer & Roberts 1994;Goodrich 1995;Goodrich & Carlson 1998;Armstrong & Obholzer 2005;Meloni 2005;Lanteigne 2012). ...
Author of this article uses symbolic interactionism, social psychology and psychoanalysis to analyze modernization and demodernization phenomena. Due to application of Mead's symbolic interactionism, Author manifests how the dominance of the Generalized Other is present in the both phenomena. Author argues that in the process of modernization Super-Ego is being invested into modern institutions as the Otherness. This Otherness functions in the forms of automatisms and "recursions in the past" that postcolonial societies often demonstrate at the margins of modernity.
... Ocupou parte do território das instituições psiquiátricas como, por exemplo, as comunidades terapêuticas; provocou mudanças nosográficas, diagnosticas e de tratamento na psiquiatria sob a rubrica de psicodinâmica; instrumentou práticas psicoterapêuticas diversas, difundiu-se para outros campos do saber e, ainda, tomou de assalto, através da mídia, a vida sexual-amorosa, familiar e social das classes médias urbanas sob a forma de uma 'cultura psicanalítica'. Esse fenômeno se deu de modo desigual e em diferentes períodos, principalmente nos EUA (Nunes, 1984), na França (Turkle, 1970) e no Brasil (Martins, 1979;Santos, 1982;Figueiredo, 1984e 1988Figueira, 1985;Russo, 1987). A psicanálise teria se tornado ubíqua e sempre haveria um ponto de vista psicanalítico para tudo. ...
... The contemporary ensemble of critiques, which drew from a synthesis between Lacan and French Marxist theorists (following the events of May 1968 [Turkle, 1978]) have been widely influential. Clearly, much of post-Freudian culture criticism has characterized the 'de-centered subject' and explored opportunities for a psychoanalytic-inspired reconfiguration of social repression from this perspective. ...
Acknowledging the power of the id-drives, Freud held on to the authority of reason as the ego’s best tool to control instinctual desire. He thereby placed analytic reason at the foundation of his own ambivalent social theory, which, on the one hand, held utopian promise based upon psychoanalytic insight, and, on the other hand, despaired of reason’s capacity to control the self-destructive elements of the psyche. Moving beyond the recourse of sublimation, post-Freudians attacked reason’s hegemony in quelling disruptive psycho-dynamics and, focusing upon the social domain, they sought strategies to counter the oppressive (repressive) social restrictions and conformist impositions impeding individual freedom that result from thwarted desire. Postmodern celebration of desire at the expense of reason and sublimation leaves the Enlightenment prospects altogether and moves psychoanalysis into a new terrain, where the very notion of rationality and an autonomous ego upon which much of Freudianism rests has been deconstructed. Thus the debate that begins with Freud’s social theories reflects the deeper divisions, which arose with postmodern ethics and discarded Cartesian–Kantian notions of personal identity. Here we consider the moral framework in which Freudian social theory sits and a contrasting understanding of agency that confronts his modernist conception. In that debate, we discern the larger humanist confrontation with postmodernity. Yet, all who engaged Freud shared some version of his utopian ethos, albeit radically restructuring the theory upon which social reform might occur.
... Las consideraciones anteriores lo caracterizan como un objeto extendido cuyas dimensiones no se restringen a ningún país particular, a una práctica clínica, ni a una teoría sobre la mente, con el aditivo de que en ciertos lugares ha llegado a convertirse en una herramienta que ayuda a muchos sujetos -dentro y fuera del movimiento psi -a interpretar el mundo, toda una Weltanschauung. Para ejemplificar esta afirmación se hace necesario referenciar el trabajo de Sherry Turkle (1979) quien analizó el papel del psicoanálisis en Francia post la revolución de mayo de 1968. Ella afirmó que el psicoanálisis logró rebasar su veta clínica-institucional y saltó a la vida cotidiana ofreciéndose como un marco de intelección. ...
Aborda la recepción del psicoanálisis en el circuito médico chileno a partir de la
década de 1910. Los hallazgos permitieron reconstruir cómo el freudismo fue
primeramente rechazado por la incipiente escena psiquiátrica local, acusándolo de
pansexualista. En la década de 1930 este panorama cambiará, ya se apreciará una
revaloración del psicoanálisis a nivel local, calificándolo precisamente como un
saber especializado en la sexualidad. El realce del mecanismo de la "sublimación",
estimado por su capacidad de hacer transmutar la peligrosidad del "ello" en productos
culturalmente aceptados, será el hito que marcará este "retorno de lo reprimido" del
factor sexual del psicoanálisis en Chile. Se discutirán las posibles variables
sociales, políticas y económicas que influyeron en este fenómeno.
... A articulação entre a Psicanálise e os movimentos políticos de esquerda foi um dos resultados, a princípio surpreendente, dos acontecimentos que marcaram o movimento contracultural dos anos 60. Tomando a situação exemplar de Maio de 68 na França, podemos avaliar como a indisposição inicial da esquerda frente ao freudismo foi se alterando até alcançar tanto uma reconciliação, ou um novo freudo-marxismo, de base estruturalista, quanto o aparecimento de outros híbridos que atravessavam os domínios da clínica e da política (Turkle, 1981). Em 1963, L. Althusser convida J. Lacan a levar seu seminário para a Escola Normal, onde a filosofia marxista se agencia com a Psicanálise graças ao denominador comum do estruturalismo. ...
... 985)). -Also Melanie Klein's famous remark "My dear, don't make any mistake. I'm a Freudian, but not an Anna Freudian" (Grosskurth (1986), 456) can be understood as an enforced confession towards a church-like belief system. Lacan is another prominent proof that self-authorization in the psychoanalytic movement is inclined with excommunication (cf. Turkle (1978)). What this early preoccupation with inheritance and legacy in addition to its Israelitic and ecclesiastical connotations mirrors is the type of the classical entrepreneur of the years of rapid expansion at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. It was part of the image of the entrepreneur of these times "that he tri ...
In a final large group session of a working conference in the Tavistock group relations tradition, members were concerned about who would get the consultants' 'blessing' as confirmation of their learning during the course of the conference. Some members referred to Jacob's fight at the river Jabbok and other parts of the Jacob legend from the Old Testament book of Genesis as a metaphoric frame to disentangle and explore their experiences. This concern mirrored a more general theme, which is as old as mankind - the theme of inheritance and succession. In this paper this theme will function as a frame for a broader exploration of the Jacob legend, the early development of psychoanalysis, the Tavistock tradition of group relations and the experience of organizational role holders in family businesses and other organizations. Instead of merely regarding inheritance and succession as a handing over, it will be postulated that assuming an inherited legacy requires a certain self-authorization on the part of the heir in order to own and further develop it. The capacity for containment of frustration and the ability to feel the pain of longing are requisites for ultimately taking up one's inheritance in the ongoing tradition of one's world.
... Less central, but still related, are the notions of science and engineering styles, as well as research on national systems of innovation. Many scholars have explored different national practices of science and engineering, including those in chemistry (Kranakis, 1989;Nye, 1993), psychology (Turkle, 1981), physics (Traweek, 1992), zoology and primatology (Haraway, 1989), genetics (Harwood, 1987), diesel engines (Hard and Knie, 1999), Soviet science (Josephson, 1995) and scientific thought in general (Reingold, 1978). Others have explored national systems of innovation, or the conditions that foster research excellence and new inventions in different countries (Freeman, 1995;Lundvall, 1992Lundvall, , 1998. ...
This paper explores six national styles of research associated with three energy technologies. The article identifies the research styles connected to wind turbines in Denmark and the United States, ethanol in Brazil and France, and hydrogen fuel cells in China and Norway. The article relies on a concept known as technological "style" to emphasize that political ideals, social values, economic interests, and deeper historical and cultural influences affect macro and micro levels of the research process and get built into technology. The article uses this concept to identify the unique socio-technical factors responsible for successful research styles, and the equally unique factors responsible for failed research programs. The article concludes by focusing on implications for public policy. It suggests that those styles that encouraged risk taking, spurred interactions and feedback among multiple researchers, and enabled trial and experimentation among several alternatives succeeded in their goals. By contrast, those styles that favored competition rather than collaboration, excluded stakeholders from the research process, and dictated technological end goals from the top-down did not.
... Less central, but still related, are the notions of science and engineering styles, as well as research on national systems of innovation. Many scholars have explored different national practices of science and engineering, including those in chemistry (Kranakis, 1989;Nye, 1993), psychology (Turkle, 1981), physics (Traweek, 1992), zoology and primatology (Haraway, 1989), genetics (Harwood, 1987), diesel engines (Hard and Knie, 1999), Soviet science (Josephson, 1995) and scientific thought in general (Reingold, 1978). Others have explored national systems of innovation, or the conditions that foster research excellence and new inventions in different countries (Freeman, 1995;Lundvall, 1992Lundvall, , 1998. ...
This paper explores the styles of research associated with wind turbines, ethanol and fuel cells in six countries. The concept of a 'research style' emphasizes that values and interests, along with deeper historical and cultural influences, shape research and get built into technology. Open research styles are epitomized by a broad inclusion of actors in the research process, participatory ownership of its results, cooperation among stakeholders and users, and experimentation and flexibility. Closed research styles are distinguished by limited access and ownership, competition among researchers, centralization of the research process and rigidity in dictating programme goals and preferences. The paper uses the concept of open and closed research styles to compare the experiences of Denmark, Brazil and China (open) with those in the USA, France and Norway (closed).
... In this romantic cyberspace narrative, the language of rupture is converted into the language of essences, wholeness, recombination, and an affirmation of unity and integration, ideas promoted through the popularity of " ego psychology " (Fromm, 1956). Heidegger's formulation of Dasein was influential in the radical psychoanalytic theories of Lacan (Zizek, 1993) (which Turkle has expounded elsewhere (Turkle, 1979) but apparently not applied), which plays on the radicality of non-determinacy. But the pragmatic application of Heidegger's concept of Dasein is also revealing. ...
This article focuses on some of the implications of Heidegger’s pragmatism for information technology analysis and critique. I survey Heidegger’s transformation of Enlightenment notions such as identity, proximity, community, disembodiment, pattern, representation and utopia to the phenomenological concepts of Dasein, care, being-with, corporality, praxis, disclosure and the not-yet. Each of these concepts return us to the issue of practice.
The metaverse is equivocal. It is a science-fictional concept from the past; it is the present’s rough implementations; and it is the Promised Cyberland, expected to manifest some time in the future. The metaverse first emerged as a techno-capitalist network in a 1992 science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson. Our article thus marks the metaverse’s thirtieth anniversary. We revisit Stephenson’s original concept plus three sophisticated antecedents from 1972 to 1984: Jean Baudrillard’s simulation, Sherry Turkle’s networked identities, and Jacques Lacan’s schema of suggestible consumers hooked up to a Matrix-like capitalist network. We gauge the relevance of these three antecedents following Meta’s recent promise to deliver a metaverse for the mainstream and the emergence of blockchain-oriented metaverse projects. We examine empirical data from 2021 and 2022, sourced from journalistic and social media (BuzzSumo, Google Trends, Reddit, and Twitter) as well as the United States Patent and Trademark Office. This latest chapter of the metaverse’s convoluted history reveals a focus not on virtual reality goggles but rather on techno-capitalist notions like digital wallets, crypto-assets, and targeted advertisements. The metaverse’s wallet-holders collect status symbols like limited-edition profile pictures, fashion items for avatars, tradable pets and companions, and real estate. Motivated by the metaverse’s sophisticated antecedents and our empirical findings, we propose a subtle conceptual re-orientation that respects the metaverse’s equivocal nature and rejects sanitised solutionism. Do not let the phantasmagorical goggles distract you too much: Big Meta is watching you, and it expects you to become a wallet-holder. Blockchain proponents want this as well.
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/107788/1/antuck.pdf
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with physicians and nurses working in two state‐funded southern French hospitals, this article explores why and how medical care providers connected their everyday deliberations about patient care to what they considered to be distinctively French forms of medical responsibility. Many healthcare professionals saw French medical morality in opposition to ‘Anglo‐Saxon’ discourses of individual autonomy and transactional choice. In contrast to such ‘transactionalism’, they insisted that ‘French’ ethics required limits that transcended particular circumstances. And yet it was difficult for doctors and nurses working in secular and increasingly neoliberal hospitals to argue against individual transactionalism in an overtly moral register, one that might appear religious and paternalist. Through a close look at two different cases – one in assisted reproduction and one in palliative care – I show how the language of folk psychoanalysis provided some health professionals with a way out of this impasse. Care providers used pseudo‐psychoanalytic accounts of patient subjectivities to depict individuals as incapable of knowing, let alone ‘owning’ or rationally mastering, themselves. This, in turn, suggests that some aspects of French secularity may be far less Protestant and liberal than contemporary anthropological work tends to assume.
Deinstitutionalizing Art of the Nomadic Museum explores the possibility of the “nomadic museum” to facilitate social and political resistance through engagement with critical art practices and imagery. Grounded in a decade-long art therapy project in a contemporary art museum setting, this book offers a theoretically rich conceptualization of this experience.
The text establishes an institutional critique of both the dominant psycho-pathology discourse and the instrumentalizations of art practices. Innovative in its approach, the results are analyzed in the framework of subjects such as hegemony-subalternity, subjectivity, resistance, the nomadic, critical art practices, narratives and minor language, deinstitutionalization, anti- psychiatries as well as institutional therapy. With a special focus on Latin America, international artists’ writings and works are intersected with the thoughts of curators and museum decision makers. The inevitable connection of the arts with social and political fields is highlighted, enabling the exploration of the intersections of art, critical analysis, social science, psychoanalysis, and political philosophy.
https://www.routledge.com/Deinstitutionalizing-Art-of-the-Nomadic-Museum-Practicing-And-Theorizing/Marxen/p/book/9780815361268
This case study reports on the creation of a consulting intervention for a psychoanalytic institute that had reached a developmental crossroads. There was difficulty in filling leadership positions within the organization, and the operation of cliques and factions had produced a general atmosphere of fear and hostility leading to institutional apathy. An internal organization consultation was established and negotiated an intervention by way of a “self study.” The intervention was mediated by way of an extensive confidential survey designed to explore overt and covert issues and dynamics. Data analysis generated a report that formed the basis for a series of face-to-face institute-wide meetings to “digest” the data, formulate collective interpretations and evolve action plans for implementation of changes. This case study includes a seven-year follow-up since the initial intervention. The social dynamics of psychoanalytic institutes will be explored with focus on the dynamic influence of the pair culture and social systems as defences against collective anxieties. Finally, implications for future interventions into institutes, including the concept of analysis of the “group self” of members and training candidates, will be discussed.
This essay examines the contradictions of Robert Duncan’s 1960s political poetry by way of his reading of the legacy of modernism, notably as expounded in The H.D. Book. Drawing on the work of Daniel Tiffany, the essay first argues that here Duncan constructs a kitsch Ezra Pound to restore the true progressive political potential of Pound’s poetry. Using a largely Freudian methodology, Duncan finds in “kitsch” Pound a vector that opposes his authoritarian fascism. The essay then examines how Poundian poetics operates in Duncan’s poetry written in opposition to the Vietnam War and in support of the Berkeley free speech movement. This work is brought into dialogue with some of the conversations in France following May 1968 and with the slogan “Structures don’t take to the streets.” In both these sites, the question of the problematic relationship between individual political volition and activism, on the one hand, and a bourgeois conception of subjectivity, consciousness, and will, on the other, emerges as crucial.
Two films, Ghost World and Art School Confidential, serve as backdrops for an examination of art education, revealing identity conflicts among artist, student, and teacher. This article addresses ideas of uniqueness, uniformity, professionalism, and nakedness through the concept of personal dress. This critical discussion explores the influence of society on the Lacanian identity in terms of the Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real registers. Clothing expresses personal identity while providing a mask for the lack of a unified self. In exposing dynamics between conflicting identities, the phantom reality of self and the possibility of self-questioning to artists/educators, this article suggests a repressive ghost in the academic host and a suppressive ghost in the host-self.
In a final large group session of a working conference in the Tavistock group relations tradition, members were concerned about who would get the consultants' 'blessing' as confirmation of their learning during the course of the conference. Some members referred to Jacob's fight at the river Jabbok and other parts of the Jacob legend from the Old Testament book of Genesis as a metaphoric frame to disentangle and explore their experiences. This concern mirrored a more general theme, which is as old as mankind - the theme of inheritance and succession. In this paper this theme will function as a frame for a broader exploration of the Jacob legend, the early development of psychoanalysis, the Tavistock tradition of group relations and the experience of organizational role holders in family businesses and other organizations. Instead of merely regarding inheritance and succession as a handing over, it will be postulated that assuming an inherited legacy requires a certain self-authorization on the part of the heir in order to own and further develop it. The capacity for containment of frustration and the ability to feel the pain of longing are requisites for ultimately taking up one's inheritance in the ongoing tradition of one's world.
In recent years, critics working with psychoanalysis have increasingly turned their attention to the relationship between therapy and culture. Following Lacan and Foucault, many critics are wary of the way in which the idea of therapy has become a tool of surveillance and control, whilst those influenced by the object relations tradition concern themselves with the therapeutic effect that might be gleaned from cultural experience. Through a close reading of the HBO series In Treatment, this article explores the contours of this debate in order to theorise what psychoanalysis might offer to contemporary cultural studies. The article argues, ultimately, for a perspective informed by both Lacanian and object relations psychoanalysis that can account for the therapeutic value of cultural experience whilst concurrently offering a critical analysis of the ways in which representation is implicated in relations of power.
Psychoanalysis is known above all else for its insistence that we have motivations that are unknown to ourselves, that are unconscious. We are all subject to sickness and accident, to bad luck and unfair breaks, and above all to death as a final end to all our endeavours. In order to compensate for these disappointments and for our ultimate inability to overcome these very real and material constraints we phantasise, we dream, we create, and/or we nurse our bruised and fragile selves by hoping that our phantasies might come true, if not for ourselves then for our offspring. The singularity, as it is most commonly expressed, concerns the possibility of overcoming death by achieving a sort of immortality. In specific terms Kurtweil’s own discussion of the singularity is concerned with the possibility of ‘resurrecting’ his dead father in virtual space at least. There is consistently throughout the writings on the singularity a dismissal of the emotional aspect of human living in favour of the rational overcoming of our existential condition. I am arguing that we cannot ignore the emotional consciousness that is the bedrock of human existence and that we ignore our unconscious feelings at our peril. I think that the singularity as it is being developed is actually a direct threat to the flourishing of human beings and human society because the emotional shortcomings of the theory have not been recognised.
Attending to 3 themes—the favored levers of revolution, the relation of inscription to the corporeal, and the function of the phallus within heteronormativity—this essay responds to Van Haute’s (this issue) important critique of some pathways through Lacanian territory. Careful consideration of the parameters marking clinical work and social theory bear attention as well as formulating the terms of radical clinical work. The reification of perversion as it is cast in Lacanian circles does merit careful scrutiny, but the meaning of this nomination, perversion, as well as both its cultural and clinical dimensions requires close examination. Although rightly showing a certain diagnostic reification in Lacanian use of the term perversion, Van Haute at times is himself a bit incautious in thinking through the stakes of the domain of psychoanalysis, the unconscious, and perhaps conflating some political perspectives with approaches that may take their mooring elsewhere.
The object of this paper is the domain of semiotic theories, from “traditional” semiotics to poststructuralism and postmodernism, excluding “semiotizing” approaches such as phenomenology or cultural studies. Thus, it is metatheoretical. It is based on two matrices. The first maps semiotic theories on the basis of the continuity or discontinuity between them. The second displays the logical categories of the relationship between semiotics and Marxism, which has historically been an important influence on the field. The paper presents the views of the main authors of the domain in terms of these two matrices. Some of the conclusions are: (a) the irreconcilability between Saussurean and Peircean semiotics; (b) the greater historical development of the former in comparison to the latter; (c) the different orientation between Central and Eastern European semiotics on the one hand and French semiotics on the other; (d) the strong influence of Saussure and Levi-Straussian structuralism on poststructuralism; (e) the increase of the influence of Marxism from structuralism to poststructuralism; and (f) the transformation from poststructuralism to North American postmodernism.
The paper closes with some thoughts about the present status of the main semiotic currents and a proposal for a fertile future orientation for semiotics.
A psicanálise de inspiração lacaniana ganhou um espaço considerável na universidade
brasileira: uma busca por “Lacan” no campo de assunto do Banco de Teses da CAPES nos revela
1.032 resultados! No entanto, a diferença no estilo de produção do conhecimento e utilização da
linguagem é considerável entre a psicologia acadêmica e a teoria de Lacan. A dificuldade de se ler
e compreender Lacan é algo apontado tanto por aqueles que o defendem como por aqueles que o
atacam. Além disso, seus discípulos muitas vezes escolhem imitar seu estilo barroco, complexo e
cheio de neologismos, causando perplexidade e estranhamento em platéias desavisadas. Qual a
origem de tal estilo enigmático e polêmico de expressão? Como veio a se difundir sob a marca da
repetição? E quais as conseqüências desse estilo para a comunicação, transmissão e ensino da
psicanálise lacaniana? Através destas perguntas objetivamos contribuir para o diálogo entre a
academia e a psicanálise lacaniana, fornecer um maior conhecimento a respeito das causas de
seu estilo e analisar as conseqüências deste na transmissão da psicanálise. Escolhemos realizar
um estudo teórico, levando em conta tanto os autores que abordaram o tema do estilo de Lacan ou
a história da psicanálise de uma perspectiva crítica, como Beividas (2000), Roustang (1987, 1988)
e Gellner (1988), como aqueles que o justificam e defendem sua legitimidade, a exemplo de
Glynos e Stavrakakis (2001), Fink (1997) e Souza (1985), utilizando também algumas obras de
Freud e Lacan. O estudo desses textos nos levou a três temas principais: 1) a dificuldade do texto
lacaniano; 2) Lacan, herdeiro de Freud; 3) conseqüências do estilo lacaniano. No primeiro
enumeramos um conjunto de diferentes explicações e interpretações dadas pelos comentadores a
respeito da dificuldade e particularidade do discurso lacaniano; no segundo mostramos como
Lacan veio a ocupar o lugar de grande idealização antes destinado a Freud, fazendo com que seu
estilo fosse tomado como modelo a ser imitado pelos discípulos; no terceiro abordamos o modo
como os conceitos são tratados dentro da psicanálise lacaniana, argumentando que seus múltiplos
significados evidenciam que o objetivo não é montar uma teoria clara e coerente, mas sim se dirigir
diretamente ao sujeito, para fisgá-lo.
Lacanian psychoanalysis has won a considerable space in brazilian university: a search for
“Lacan” in the field of subject of the CAPES Thesis Bank shows 1.032 results! However the
difference in the style of knowledge production and language usage is considerable between
academic psychology and lacanian theory. The difficulty in reading and understanding Lacan is
something pointed out by supporters and critics alike. In addition to that, his disciples choose many
times to imitate his baroque, complex style, full of neologisms, causing perplexity in many
unprepared audiences. What is the origin of such an enigmatic and polemic style of expression?
How it became so widespread under the sign of repetition? And which are the consequences of this
style to the communication, transmission and teaching of lacanian psychoanalysis? Through these
questions it is our goal to contribute to the dialogue between lacanian psychoanalysis and the
academy, to provide a better understanding of the causes of this style, analyzing the consequences
it has to the transmission of psychoanalysis. We chose to perform a theoretical study, using
authors that have treated Lacan’s style and the history of psychoanalysis from a critical point of
view, like Beividas (2000), Roustang (1987, 1988) and Gellner (1988), and also those that have
defended and justified its legitimacy, like Glynos e Stavrakakis (2001), Fink (1997) and Souza
(1985), using as well some works by Freud and Lacan. The study of these texts has led us to three
main themes: 1) the difficulty of the lacanian text; 2) Lacan, heir of Freud; 3) consequences of the
lacanian style. In the first one, we enumerate many different explanations and interpretations given
by commentators about the difficulty and particularity of the lacanian discourse; in the second, we
show how Lacan came to occupy the place of great idealization that was before destined to Freud,
what made his style something to be taken as a model, to be imitated by disciples; in the third, we
explore the way in which the concepts are treated in lacanian psychoanalysis, arguing that their
multiple meanings point out that the final goal is not to build a clear and coherent theory, but to try
to aim directly at the subject, to catch him.
This paper extends work presented earlier (Gaines 1979b) on the relation of psychiatric actors’ definitions of mental illness, seen as folk theories, to professional behavior. A summary of earlier work sees American psychiatry as ethno-psychiatry and examines the role of cultural assumptions in psychiatric theory and emergency room practice. The paper then shows how actors’ definitions affect not only cognitive behaviors such as diagnosis, but also the temporal dimension of interaction with patients themselves. It is shown that differences in etiological definitions affect the length of time a resident spends with a patient before making a disposition. The next section of this paper does two things: First, it suggests that it is useful and possible to distinguish two major “Great” cultural traditions in the West. For each tradition, aspects of world view are sketched. Second, two conceptions of person which correspond to the cultural traditions distinguished, the indexical and referential, are delineated. Lastly, some implications of these differing conceptualizations for psychiatric practice are presented with reference to case material considered in the second section of the paper.
In 1935 Constance Pascal (1877-1937), France's first woman psychiatrist, published Chagrins d'amour et psychoses (The Sorrows of Love and Psychosis). My analysis of her monograph will consider: her major article leading up to Chagrins; Pascal's debts to her predecessors, particularly Morel and Kretschmer; her relationship to the French psychoanalytic movement; her co-option of psychoanalysis as a tool in her own therapeutic work with patients in the state psychiatric system; and her social/cultural interpretations of her woman patients. The literary and philosophic aspects of her work are emphasized as well as her contribution to French psychiatry.
© The Author(s) 2014.
This article uses narrative analysis to understand how mental health professionals working in a pilot experiment in community psychiatry in France between 1960 and 1980 made sense of their work experiences. Based on a collection of essays written by these professionals as part of their training as well as on other archival materials, the article explores writing practices in post-war French psychiatry as ways of constructing and negotiating moral commitments to work. The first three sections of the article give some background on mental health nursing in France in the immediate post-war period. The subsequent three sections examine how the professionals elaborated on their experiences in their writings, focusing on three different levels: first, the narrative voice used in the essays; second, the learning processes described by trainees; and finally, the ways in which they negotiated discursively the requirement to do emotionally well at work.
This paper attempts to examine some of the broader system constraints to family therapy's ‘Coming of Age’ and to relate these constraints to more personal issues that arise for the presenter as a recently qualified family therapist. These issues and constraints are clustered around the question of hierarchy, and it is the presenter's belief that, although family therapy has much to offer as a direct service method, it has less to offer as a tool for analysing phenomena of a structural nature.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to draw from: Freud's Interpretation of Dreams , citing the Dream of Irma's Injection , to illustrate psychic organization and the relation of psychic to social organization; The Dream of the Failed Dinner Party , to illustrate the inter‐individual context of dreaming; and finally The Dream of the Burning Child , to briefly discuss analogous processes to dreams in relation to the ethics of organization.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper consists of a critical conceptual review of literature in the fields of psychoanalysis and organization.
Findings
A psychoanalytic focus on dreams acknowledges the importance of the organization of the psyche, highlighting the continuing importance of childhood experience and of repressed desire for adult neurotics. The social organization of the psyche illustrates the importance of understanding that different character types produce different phantasies of organization. It is argued that the inter‐individual context is important to understanding the contagious nature of hysterical desire. Finally, given that traumatic dreams unsettle and destabilize our conscious understanding as good, rational, individual subjects, the paper discusses the analogous roles for dreaming, which might be related to organization ethics.
Practical implications
By highlighting unconscious processes, the psychoanalytic understanding of dreams asks organizational theorists to enquire into material that is withheld from consciousness.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the understanding of dreams in relation to the organization of the psyche; the relation of psychic organization to social organization; and the inter‐individual context.
This article discusses –through a comparative analysis of the reception and circulation of psychoanalytic thought in Argentina and Brazil–, the conditions for the transformation of a system of ideas into a system of beliefs. Particular emphasis is placed in the manner in which what Norbert Elias has characterized as "national hábitus" generates conditions for the reception and circulation of systems of thought. The analysis focuses on the reception and circulation of psychoanalytic ideas as they took place outside of, and independently from, the establishment of "psychoanalytic orthodoxies". Therefore, the article does not discuss the development of psychoanalytic institutions. Although the reception of psychoanalysis (or of any other system of ideas) is a multidimensional phenomenon, the article concentrates on three spaces of reception: medical circles, cultural avant garde and the social sciences. The article shows that interpretive grids of the social reality established in the 19th century, as well as intellectual and academic traditions, generated the conditions for specific lines of reception and forms appropriation of the Freudian system, thus questioning normative interpretations of the diffusion of systems of thought.
Agonistic theories of democratic practice lack an explicit model for ethical cultivation. Even as these theorists advocate sensibilities of “ethical open-ness and receptivity,” so as to engage in the political work of “maintenance, repair, and amendment,” they lack an account of how individuals ought be motivated to this task or how it should unfold. Toward theorizing such a model, I turn to Freud and clinical psychoanalytic practice. I argue that Freud’s “second-education” (Nacherziehung) offers an ethical cultivation framed around a “combative collaboration” between analyst and patient that teaches tolerance of discomfort; endurance of uncertainty; and narrative capacity. This second-education suggests two lessons for politics. First, that we might do well to reproduce its relational form more broadly across politics. And second, that we cultivate those “sacral spaces” capable of challenging the conditions for symbolic meaning as it stretches between personal and collective practices.
This essay focuses on Balkan discourse geography as a hidden contingency of the intellectual work of Slavoj Žižek and Julia Kristeva. It takes into account the extent to which their self-proclaimed cosmopolitanism and universalism reflect disidentification with their Balkan origins. This disidentification alerts one to the unacknowledged centrality of Kristeva's and Žižek's Balkan origins to their writing about the region, and it also points to the Balkanist character of their intellectual production. I emphasize the discourse geography of the Balkans—particularly Maria Todorova's articulation of “Balkanism”—as a dissonant infrastructure to the transcendent, ahistorical quality of Kristeva's and Žižek's work. Antonio Gramsci's incorporation of his origins in Sardinia into his intellectual and political praxis provides a contrapuntal reading of Kristeva's and Žižek's own psychoanalytically mediated decoupling of themselves from their Balkan origins and their own split subject positions. The empirical history of human solidarity formalized in the Marxist philosophy of class struggle and actualized in Gramsci's philosophy of praxis challenged not only Cartesian subjectivity as pure cogito but also the Cartesian elevation of abstraction over the senses. In contrast, Kristeva's and Žižek's local histories are expressed through disidentification and self-Orientalization as a constitutive gesture of subaltern intellectual labor. Instead of exploring geopolitical ambiguity for the sake of the intellectuality of human solidarity, they paradoxically reproduce in their discourse the very conditions they seek to escape.
This thesis explores the symbiotic relationship between Jacques Lacan's psycho-analytical concepts and the dramatic genre. Rather than apply Lacan's theories to a wide variety of plays, two dramatic texts -Miss Julie by August Strindberg and The Balcony by Jean Genet - have been chosen for this exercise. The first chapter concentrates on the struggle between master and slave in Miss Julie. Lacan's version of the dialectic, which he borrows from Hegel, generates our discussion of the Name-of-the-Father and feminine sexuality. The chapter outlines the intentional decline of the protagonist as she surpasses the fragmenting Symbolic order and attempts to find contentment in the realm of the Real. The second chapter focuses on Lacan's three orders - the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real and their manifestation in The Balcony. This discussion concentrates on power: who has it, why they have it, and how they maintain it. Finally, placing the dramatic texts where they belong - on the stage - the third section of this thesis emphasizes Lacan's concept of the Gaze, and outlines its significance in understanding the theatrical experience. By closely analyzing Lacan's theories through two dramatic texts, this thesis hopes to illustrate the practicality of Lacan's concepts for literary criticism, as well as provide readers with a new tool in approaching the dramatic genre.
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