Language and Psychoanalysis (E-Journal)
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Reading Italian Psychoanalysis
Get PDFThe book springs out from the will, expressed by some American psychoanalysts in 2010, to have a collection of some of the most representative Italian contributions to psychoanalysis, in that Italian psychoanalysis had undertaken an original and interesting theoretical and technical configuration yet not fully known abroad. So, history and epistemology of psychoanalysis needed of such a source
An Introduction to the Transference Unconscious
Get PDFThis paper explores the evolving definition of the term ‘unconscious’ in late twentieth century French psychoanalysis: structuralist, real, and enunciative. Each hypothetic definition of the unconscious employs a rather different reading of Freud’s discovery of the divided nature of subjective reality, adopting different approaches to the question of trace permanence and strangeness. The paper argues that an assessment of the sequence of Lacanian theories of the unconscious should be understood against the backdrop of discontinuous progress as conceptualised by French historical epistemology.
Cross-Cultural Treatment Issues in Psychoanalysis
Get PDFAs psychoanalysts in a global society we encounter patients whose cultures and languages are very different from that of the analyst\u27s, and often unknown, possibly alien to the clinician on deeper levels. In this paper I highlight the reverberations of cultural and linguistic cross-cultural phenomena, how they impact the therapeutic alliance, the transference and counter transference, and the exquisite significance of the mother tongue from the very beginning of treatment. A case presentation underscores the issues involved and my clinical approach to the multi dimensional challenges that arose in the treatment. It is my premise that the immigrant experience, being universal, requires careful attention to the specific emotional and socio-cultural conflicts that arise for the immigrant. I conclude with some recommendations, both technical and theoretical
Nikola Tesla and the Science of ‘a Successful Paranoia’
Get PDFThis essay offers a psychoanalytic reading of Nikola Tesla’s remarkable text My Inventions, a series of articles published in 1919 for the Electrical Experimenter magazine, edited by Hugo Gernsback (Tesla, 2011). The paper argues that the famous ‘elementary phenomena’ described in these articles operate as proto-linguistic elements or enigmatic ‘signifiers’ that form the basis of his subsequent scientific inquiry. These articles demonstrate that unusually for a scientist, Tesla did not give up on the object cause of his knowledge nor on his own position as the subject of his inventions – indeed I argue that his inventions were the means by which Tesla created and realized himself as a subject. I discuss in particular two of Tesla’s inventions: the Rotating Magnetic Field, that is the basis for the AC induction motor, and the Magnifying Transmitter in the context of Tesla’s own accounts of their ‘psychological’ genesis. I will suggest that it was through these electrical inventions in particular that Tesla managed to design a form of subjectivation that enabled him to stabilize his schizophrenic symptoms and disclose the coherence and efficacy of knowledge and delusion. In so doing Tesla’s inventions perhaps point the way towards the delivery of science as ‘a successful paranoia’, in the terms of Jacques Lacan
Visualization of Jacques Lacan’s Registers of the Psychoanalytic Field, and Discovery of Metaphor and of Metonymy. Analytical Case Study of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter”
Get PDFWe start with a description of Lacan’s work that we then take into our analytics methodology. In a first investigation, a Lacan-motivated template of the Poe story is fitted to the data. A segmentation of the storyline is used in order to map out the diachrony. Based on this, it will be shown how synchronous aspects, potentially related to Lacanian registers, can be sought. This demonstrates the effectiveness of an approach based on a model template of the storyline narrative. In a second and more comprehensive investigation, we develop an approach for revealing, that is, uncovering, Lacanian register relationships. Objectives of this work include the wide and general application of our methodology. This methodology is strongly based on the “letting the data speak” Correspondence Analysis analytics platform of Jean-Paul Benzécri, that is also the geometric data analysis, both qualitative and quantitative analytics, developed by Pierre Bourdieu
Regulating Affective Involvement in In-Session Verbal Interaction by Shifting Perspective: A Longitudinal Study of One Client-Therapist Dyad in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Get PDFOur study examined in-session affect regulation as a self-regulatory process as well as a process of interpersonal regulation during the psychoanalytical therapeutic session. We used a novel approach for studying affective involvement by analyzing narrative perspective (NP) taken by client and analyst. In a longitudinal study of 18 months we observed the interaction of one client—therapist dyad during the psychoanalytic session in the early and working phases of psychotherapy. Transcribed sessions were segmented into intonation units, and participants’ use of NP was then coded for each intonation unit line based on six linguistic variables shown to signal affective involvement in earlier studies: verb tense, subject number and person, diegesis, focalization, and discourse level. We found that affective involvement on the part of both speakers was higher at the working phase. The client’s involvement was higher than the therapist’s. We describe an affect-regulation cycle characteristic of the interaction. Our approach proves to be useful in analyzing regulation of affective involvement and its long term change. Differences were detectable in the self and interactive regulatory strategies of affective involvement
Some Afterthoughts – or Looking Back
Get PDFThe relationship of “psychoanalysis and language” was in the center of many theoretical and clinical discussions ever since Freud (1916/17) had declared:Nothing takes place in a psycho-analytic treatment but an interchange of words between the patient and the analyst. The patient talks, tells of his past experiences and presents impressions, complains, confesses his wishes and his emotional impulses. The doctor listens, tries to direct the patient’s processes of thought, exhorts, forces his attention in certain directions, gives him explanations and observes the reaction of understanding or rejection which he in this way provokes in him (p. 17)
A Psychoanalytic Look into The Effects of Childhood and Adolescent Migration in Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation
Get PDFThis article takes a psychoanalytic, philosophical and socio-linguistic approach to the understanding of the short and long term socio-emotional effects of child and adolescent migrations. Through a close analysis of Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation, the author examines the subjective meaning of a primary tongue in relation to migrants’ acquisition and internalization of his/her second language. It begins with a look into the developmental meaning of language and then studies the ways in which early migrations influence subjects’ short and long-term perceptions of their internalized languages, as well as the relations new comers hold with their first and later love objects. In this article migrants’ stages of culture shock and integration are discussed and contrasted with the methodical textual division presented in Eva Hoffman’s memoir. This work examines the significance of retrospective constructions and highlights the way in which Hoffman’s recollections exemplify the inevitable wish to restore ruptures and synthesize life-long conflicting introjections. This article draws attention to the way in which migrants’ initial unsettlement, which derives from preliminary and subsequent stages of linguistic, social and cultural immersions, gives way to a sensed trauma and resulting defenses. This paper suggests how with a good enough environment, emigrants’ experiences often lead to integrations, as well as psychic and social growth. It asks: What occurs to the ego when its’ primary language becomes lacerated following an early migration? How do individuals respond to the loss of its socio-instrumental and affective function? How do migrants’ cultural experiences influence the reconstructed memory of their mother tongue? How do such memories or truths affect newcomers’ initial and later conception of the host language? And, in which ways do such conceptions play a role in the fluid construction of migrants’ language-related identities
A Multilingual Outlook: Can Awareness-Raising about Multilingualism Affect Therapists’ Practice? A Mixed-Method Evaluation
Get PDFTherapists are often unprepared to deal with their clients’ use of other languages. This study focuses on therapists’ experiences of having undertaken awareness-raising training about multilingualism. Did the training impact their practice? If so, in what areas? Adopting a mixed-method approach, quantitative data were initially collected via an online questionnaire with 88 therapy trainees and qualified therapists who underwent training in multilingualism, combined with interview data from 7 volunteers. Having identified the issues on which the training had had most and least impact in survey responses, the interviews were guided by our emergent interest into the impact of the training with potential relational complexities and unique, personal experiences in mind. A narrative-thematic analysis uncovered interrelated themes: changes, or impact of the training, with regard to Identity and Therapeutic Theory. Therapists referred to considerable transformative learning on both a personal and professional level, for instance in terms of how multilingual clients might bring different and sometimes conflicting ways of organizing events and experiences into meaningful wholes through their narratives during the session. Language switching seemed less significant in the survey, but emerged as a central theme in the interviews, especially with regard to the possibility of addressing, challenging and sometimes combining different emotional memories, cultural and existential concerns. Working across these areas triggered some therapists to consider the need for expanding their theory.
Conversation Analytic Studies of Psychoanalytic Dialogue: An Introduction to this Special Volume
Get PDFTwo parallel strands developed since the start of the century in psychoanalysis. One was the relational turn initiated by Steven Mitchell (Mitchell, 1988, 1998) and his many inspiring and inspired co-workers (Aron, 2006; Hoffman, 1999, 2006; Knoblauch, 2007), just to mention a few of those authors whose enormous influence in demystifying some psychoanalytic myths held for irrefutable for so many years can be felt from their writings