Psychotherapy and Politics International (E-Journal)
Not a member yet
654 research outputs found
Sort by
African diaspora, interlanguages, and the unconscious
Full text linkThis article examines Ana Maria Gonçalves’ novel Um Defeito de Cor (A Colour Defect), published in 2006; a fiction intertwined with history, memory, languages, and cultures of black Africans brought to Brazil, and describing mainly Salvador in the mid-19th century, developed within the gaps of the limited historical records of enslaved people. It analyses the subjective experiences of the protagonist, Kehinde, as she navigates multiple languages and cultures. It explores the unconscious impacts of exposure to a plurality of languages, informed by Lélia Gonzalez’s concept of ‘Pretoguês’, which highlights the influence of African languages on Portuguese
Outrageous Reason: Madness & Race in Britain & Empire, 1780–2020 (Book review): By Peter Barham (PCCS Books, 2023)
No full textParrhesia as therapy in ‘fragile times’
Full text linkThis article approaches the question of the relation between parrhesia (truth-telling or truth-speaking) and (self-)empowerment from the perspective of Michel Foucault’s resurrection of the ancient Greek concept and practice by that name. This is done to be able to negotiate the present global terrain where there appears to be a dearth of such truth-telling, and an abundance of obfuscation, judging by the available evidence. A distinction is made between ‘truth’ and ‘truth-speaking’, to highlight the fact that parrhesia is not a theory of truth, before a negotiation of Foucault’s text—interspersed with references to other texts and practices—is embarked upon. Foucault took pains to distinguish parrhesia as truth-speaking from instances where one is indeed speaking the truth to an audience or a friend, such as where a lecturer in linguistics is telling her students the truth about linguistic theories. By contrast, parrhesia does not merely instantiate speaking the truth in such a safe, innocuous manner; it involves speaking truth under circumstances where courage in the face of danger is involved—either because one is telling a valued friend the barefaced truth about what is required from them to rescue your mutual friendship (which does not concern me here), or because you are speaking the truth in public and to powerful others, under dangerous circumstances where you take a significant risk by doing so. This, as well as the manifestation of evil, today, is elaborated on before the question is posed: what, if any, therapeutic consequences does such risky truth-telling have for the speaker, and by implication also for the listener(s)? This is pursued in light of Foucault’s observation, that the truth-teller or parrhesiastes takes up a specific relationship to herself—one which is a manifestation of her refusal to be false to herself. This, it is argued, has demonstrable ethical and therapeutic value for the truth-speaker as well as, potentially, for at least some of those who witness the act of truth-telling. In the final analysis it is a practice that cultivates a sense of autonomy and community during ‘fragile times’, such as the present
Decolonisation of psychoanalysis and Mesoamerican conceptions of subjectivity
Full text linkIn this article, situating myself in the context of Mexico and Central America, I critically reflect on psychoanalysis in relation to coloniality, cultural intercourse, native peoples, their ancestral knowledge, and their conceptions of subjectivity. I highlight the cohabitation of psychoanalysts and traditional healers in the Mesoamerican context. I interpret this cohabitation as an expression of the coexistence of European and Mesoamerican cultures. The coexistence of cultures leads me to the question of mestizaje, which, conceived as a cultural-symbolic and divisive-conflictive process, can be reconsidered in the light of a psychoanalytical specialisation in the division of the subject with its edge structure. I acknowledge the problematic aspect of the Freudian legacy as part of the colonial inheritance, but I also highlight some of Freud’s theoretical and methodological contributions that may be useful for exploring and countering coloniality, including the eternal present of the past, unconscious knowing, the difference between knowledge and truth, and the principles of abstinence and listening. Claiming an essentialism that is not only strategic, I detect resonances between psychoanalysis and Mesoamerican ancestral knowledge in the consideration of desire, the singular, the corporeal, the affective, the symbolic, and the external psyche, but also dissonances associated with Freudian drifts such as verticalism, individualism, and speciesism-anthropocentrism. I conclude by cautioning against a colonial use of psychoanalysis and proposing its horizontal dialogue with Mesoamerican ancestral knowledge
Decolonial approaches to multidisciplinary supervision: A case extract
Full text linkThis text offers a summary of experiences in multidisciplinary supervision with workers of public health and social care networks in Brazil. Based on the contributions of diagnostic reasoning offered by clinical knowledge and listening as a central element in a psychoanalytically oriented work, a space for supervision was proposed for workers in multiple areas of health and social care, seeking to think of ways of handling cases that go beyond institutional protocols and bureaucracies, and that from a decolonial perspective can propose transformative solutions to the reality of people assisted by public policies. The case of the child Theo is presented, based on the story of the educators of a service of care and strengthening of bonds for children from 3- to 14-years-old, in a peripheral and vulnerable territory of a big city in Brazil
Knotting the psyche: White fantasy and racial violence
Full text linkThis article engages core Lacanian concepts to read racial whiteness in relation to the three registers of the psyche. It deploys Lacan’s concept of suture to argue that whiteness stitches together the registers of the psyche, joining the Imaginary and Symbolic as a mask over the Real. This masking of the Real privileges the function of fantasy, such that the Real of the white subject’s lack is veiled by racial discourses of the Symbolic that articulate Imaginary fantasies of wholeness. Through analysis of the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, a reading of creativity in African American culture, and an interpretation of Toni Morrison’s novel Paradise, the article argues that white fantasies of wholeness threaten an unsuturing of the psyches of black subjects. It turns to Lacan’s work on the sinthome to suggest how black subjects knot the registers of the psyche in ways that protect against the traumas that assail them in acts of racism and racial violence
Crypt: About the colonised unconscious
Full text linkBased on the psychoanalytic clinical experience in a quilombo in Brazil, we propose the thesis, shared by countercolonial intellectuals, that the unconscious heir to colonisation processes has a specific form of defence: the crypt. As a drive intensity not printed in the mother language of jouissance, the crypt remains untranslated in the linguistic sign. We explain the impossible translations and their fueros based on the theory of S. Freud, J. Lacan, and S. Peirce. Given the forced linguistic migration, the interpretamen loses its ability to link the object to the representamen, requiring clinical work on the unconscious writing and the memory
Possibilities and limitations of anti-racist training within a counselling programme
Full text linkThis research presents a thematic analysis from the participants of a specific anti-racism session within counselling education in a university setting. The research team were a self-chosen subset of the participants, and the themes came from reflections of the participants at the start and end of the session. The three main themes are: defensiveness, openness, and engagement, and each also had sub-themes. These themes are discussed and recommendations for future anti-racism education are elucidated
Can Lacan’s conception of the subject cast light on addiction?
Full text linkThe present article attempts to demonstrate that Jacques Lacan’s notion of the human subject provides the conceptual resources to come to a better understanding of addiction—a particularly intractable phenomenon, judging by the number of theoretical approaches to it. The structure of the subject in terms of the three ‘orders’ of the ‘real’, the ‘imaginary’, and the ‘symbolic’, according to Lacan, is briefly discussed as a necessary backdrop to the discussion that follows. It is argued that, because the ego is for Lacan an imaginary construct, one would look in vain to it for ‘ego stability’ to overcome addiction, and that it is to the ‘je’ (‘I’) of the symbolic that one should turn instead. The function of desire, and its relation to excess, are noted, before exploring the latter concept in relation to jouissance in two contexts. The first relates to jouissance, trauma, the ‘real’, prohibition, and transgression, and the second to jouissance, repetition, masochism, and the death instinct. These articulations of jouissance are subsequently employed to arrive at formulating possible therapeutic interventions, which are then, in turn, related to the role of the ‘talking cure’ in the symbolic register. To conclude, the question of power relations in political terms, and the implications of living in a capitalist society are briefly indicated