Psychotherapy and Politics International (E-Journal)
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Introduction to the special issue: The 100th anniversary of Sigmund Freud's Group Psychology
Get PDFIntroduction to the special issue: The 100th anniversary of Sigmund Freud's Group Psycholog
The Hoffman report: The lesson we learned (?)
Get PDFIn 2015, psychologists internationally were shaken by the discoveries made by D. Hoffman and his team of attorneys that demonstrated the collusion of the American Psychological Association (APA) officials with the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency, and their involvement into an ‘extensive interrogation’ programme, simply meant—torture. Resolute steps were expected from the APA as well as from the psychological community in general, and some steps were taken. This paper poses the question: have we, as a community of helping professionals around the world, really learned the lesson given by the report? Rather than give a direct answer or offer a ‘pill’ to increase ‘ethics’, this paper offers a perspective as to how it became possible and why it is still possible to become involved in the Hoffman-like affair. It is suggested that improvement of the situation may be achieved in two ways. First, to personalise ethical codes, making them more flexible in terms of personal choice of values and action. Second, by raising awareness to the suprasituational nature of ethical deeds that encompass situational needs, goals, and motives; as well as a broader perspective for which a person bears responsibility
Sicily in the therapy room
Get PDFCultural factors characterising the places of belonging, together with the family and personal development, constitute the history of people we meet in the therapy room (and that of the therapist as well). Drawing on this long-established idea, the author—a native Sicilian working and teaching in Sicily—identifies and describes two aspects characterising the Sicilian culture that he has encountered in his clinical practice. The first aspect relates to the phylogenetic imago of Sicilians in connection with their relationship to authority—particularly authorities representing the community, or favouring a social advantage. As written by Bufalino (2008), Sicily is in fact a ‘plural island’. There are many Sicilies, many cultural groups that do not identify themselves in a single social body. This pluralism is held together by personal interests and duties between individuals, in a dimension that excludes any social and public interest. Such a plurality has been maintained through the use of a code that would, in other social contexts, have to do with confidentiality; yet, it becomes omertà (a sort of act of silence) in Sicily. The author identifies the way this code expresses itself in the therapy room and how it interposes itself in the therapeutic relationship. The second aspect concerns the relationship of Sicilians with the Sicilian landscape and with the Etna volcano in particular. Sicilians—especially the ones living in Eastern Sicily—are connected to Mount Etna by sensory participation. The relationship between them and Etna is so full of affection, symbols and myth that it becomes part of their identity, manifesting itself in the therapy room through dreams
Psychoanalysis, a psychology of the masses for these digital times
Get PDFAs today, it is more and more the digital that groups and amasses us, this paper turns to Sigmund Freud's Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the ‘I’ to address a range of questions: what is the social (the group); what is its relation to the herd (or the mass); what is an individual; what is the latter's relation to the social and/or to the mass; and what, if anything, changes on all these levels in digital times? To answer these questions, the following claims are made: psychoanalysis is not an individual psychology, psychoanalysis is not a social psychology—psychoanalysis is a mass psychology. The paper first scrutinises how Freud's subversion of the traditional question ‘how does a mass become a group?’ eventually positions the figure of the Leader at the junction of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. From here we move to Jacques Lacan and two of his early writings in which he tries to conceive of leaderless groups and of subjectivation beyond the reference of the Father (‘Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty: A New Sophism’ and ‘British Psychiatry and the War’). On the one hand, this allows to assess the current digital massification processes. On the other hand, the fact that we conclude that psychoanalysis itself cannot offer an algorithmisable model of the becoming on (inter)subjectivity, should be our prompt to take a political stance
The image of the tree: Indigenous thinking about psychotic functioning
Get PDFThree decades of listening to people suffering from psychosis is crystallised in the image of the tree. This narrative about mental health, in general, and psychotic symptomology, in particular, was created for daily therapeutic work in residential psychiatry. It is a person-centred and strength-oriented way of looking at the existential impact of psychologically alienating experiences. Although indigenously unique, the author believes the image is universal and can serve many
Freud on group psychology and leaders: The case of Donald Trump
Get PDFWhat can Freud teach us regarding the grounds of the ‘leadership’ attributed to the current American president, Donald Trump, if one considers that such ‘leadership’ presupposes the existence of an identifiable ‘group’ of which Trump is the putative leader? It is argued that Freud's Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego of 1921 furnishes the conceptual means for clarifying the sense in which Trump can indeed be described as a leader. To be able to show this to be so, the relevant parts of Freud's essay are reconstructed, with particular attention to his claim that what constitutes a group is indissolubly connected with the ‘libidinal ties’ between a leader and his followers—something he elaborates on with reference to two ‘organised’ groups, namely the Roman Catholic Church and the army. Freud's claim about the unifying role of a leader in relation to a group, as well as his reminder, that common hatred of something external to the group could also promote unity is considered as far as the relation between Trump and his supporters is concerned, with specific reference to Republican members of the United States Congress and to his ‘base’ among members of the public. Eventually it is Freud's observations on ‘identification’ that appears to provide the key to understanding the sense in which Trump may be called a ‘leader’, specifically that type of identification that pertains to the desire ‘to be something’. Drawing on the work of Naomi Klein on Trump, Freud's insights are brought to bear on the question, what it is about Trump that his followers identify with. It is particularly Klein's insights into the sadistic character of Trump's The Apprentice that supplies the clue for articulating the unconscious grounds of Trump's followers identifying with him: insofar as Trump ‘disavows’ castration (powerlessness) or lack, he embodies an imaginary ‘fullness of being’ with which they identify
Free and open-source therapy: Towards a revolution in the politics of psychotherapy
Get PDFMany critics, including therapists themselves, are calling for a radical change and paradigmatic shift in psychotherapy due to the social and political problems it reflects, maintains and creates. The first section of this paper discusses the social and political problems facing psychotherapy: on the macro level of the institutions; the meso level of therapeutic relations and the micro level of the subject. The second section presents a short description of free and open-source frameworks, a contemporary movement that started as an innovative software development method and has grown in relation to systems as diverse as science, education and arts. The third section explores the potential of free and open-source therapy to solve many of the presented problems. Lastly, the article discusses new social and political challenges free and open-source therapy might face in the future
Narcissistic isomorphisms: The ego, the masses, the Urvater, and the alterity
Get PDFThis work proposes an exercise of critical and deconstructive intertextuality regarding Freud's text on mass formation and the implications of the ego's different dimensions. The ego is comprised of a representational system that transforms the representations derived from the reality of a traumatic sexual event into an opposite and compact mass. The ego is social, even in its majesty and heroism; but it is asocial in its subordination to symptoms. Both narcissism—through its idealisations, and the ego—through its identifications, engender a path for a mass psychology that exalts the position of the Urvater of the horde (the primal father) as a self-sufficiency model for an anti-solidarity individualism. The narcissistic ego modulates and models a fascinating connection between the masses and the Führer (leader) in the possibility of occurrences of the law, doubt, and responsibility. In addition, it can be erected as an imposture and as a self-deception ideal
A neglected legacy: Massenpsychologie und ich-analyse in the era of nations and nationalism
Get PDFThis paper discusses the influence of Sigmund Freud, in particular that of his book Massenpsychologie und ich-analyse, on the academic representation of nationalism. Written after World War I, just before the rise of the fascist regimes that would lead to World War II and the Nazi Holocaust, Massenpsychologie very quickly became a work of reference for understanding the politics of the “masses” and the “irrational” behaviour of the multitudes. Although Freud did not write the book with the express desire to analyse any particular contemporary political doctrine or ideology, his psychodynamic interpretation of collective conduct would, in the following decades, constitute the foundation for explaining and denouncing the behaviour of mass nationalism, both within academia and beyond