Thierry Bokanowski

Bio: Thierry Bokanowski is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Projective identification. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 4 citations.

Splitting, fragmenting, and mental agony: the clinical thinking of Sándor Ferenczi

Abstract: Following a thorough study of the Clinical Diary (1932), the author aims to put forward Sandor Ferenczi's theoretical discoveries, which allow him to settle a very advanced clinical consideration. The main parameters of this consideration foreshadow those that, in the following decades, were to be at the centre of some of the most significant developments in psychoanalysis, in particular those of M. Klein, W. R. Bion and D. W. Winnicott.

Towards a psychoanalytic theory of financial corruption

Abstract: Freud maintained that psychoanalysis was not only to be a clinical discourse of the interpersonal and the subjective, however dynamic and necessary therapeutically, but that its principles could be taken from those contexts and applied to wider global, societal, and cultural issues. Since the 1960s, financial corruption has grown into what has become a serious and entrenched problem, albeit this is seldom addressed in psychoanalytic terms. The ultimate aim of this research study is to enquire into the psychoanalytic roots of financial corruption and to ask whether it is possible to attempt a psychoanalytic investigation and explanation of acts of financial corruption committed in particular given circumstances, such as those existing in a developing, emerging, or transitional society, more precisely in the historical period of 1960s Africa. To address this, particular attention will be paid to writings pertaining to Nigeria in its period of decolonisation, when the issue of financial corruption began gain international attention. However, a series of initial steps are necessary in order to approach these issues. In the line of argumentation that this thesis will follow, two main aspects of financial corruption will be examined in depth: firstly, ‘money’, in its multi-layered significance and secondly, the internal desires of the individual with respect to ‘money’ and the external social environment within which this individual is located. Thus, first of all this dissertation will begin by asking two interrelated questions. What has been a psychoanalytic theory on ‘money’? And how did psychoanalysis determine the role that ‘money’ played in the unconscious? The first three chapters of the thesis are devoted to answering these and following a survey of the field, return to pre-World War Two classical psychoanalytic theoretical writings, the correspondence of pioneering psychoanalysts and Ferenczi’s Clinical Diary, in order to arrive at a starting point for a further examination of psychoanalysis and financial corruption. Centrally, the status of the ‘anal theory of money’, derived from Freud’s indicative papers on anal erotism and elaborated by Ferenczi and others, will be put to the test. Close readings of classical psychoanalytic writings led to the central argument of this thesis: that there arises the possibility of contesting the enshrined status of the relation of faeces to ‘money’ on the grounds of this not being a truly unconscious symbolic relation, as ‘money’ is a construct that has to be taught. It is argued that the theorists of the classical period did not do justice to the possible connections between orality and ‘money’ – despite strong pointers within their writings to the oral developmental stage. The final chapters attempt to close a gap by setting out an alternative hypothesis to anality based on the unconscious and orality. Karl Abraham’s work provides a key theoretical scaffolding in this respect. An oral hypothesis, taking seriously the actual and fantasmatic aspects of hunger and greed, is argued to be important for the psychoanalytic understanding of the unconscious motivations and impulses that could underlie financial corruption. With recourse to both the anal theory and the alternative oral hypothesis, which taken together enable a deeper analysis, a reading is undertaken of selected texts on 1960s’ corruption in order to explore the question of what could have been taking place psychoanalytically and to lay the building blocks towards a psychoanalytic theory of financial corruption.

Trauma, memory, and corporeal acts: A dialogue between Freud and Ferenczi

Abstract: This article probes psychoanalytic theory regarding the repercussions of traumatic experiences in memory function. Both memory and trauma are fundamental to psychoanalysis and lead to the psyche's constitution as well as to its limits. The relationship between trauma and memory, based mainly on an aspect beyond the pleasure principle, points toward a function at the limits of the psychic, something between the body and the psyche, between perception and representation – all of which is responsible for psychic differentiation. Trauma has been associated with death drive dynamics and automatic anxiety, which constantly require a prior link to the establishment of the pleasure principle. When there is no possibility of linking and transcribing an event, its effects are negative, that is, it causes narcissistic damage. Ferenczi considers the object's role to be the determinant as far as an event's traumatic fate is concerned. When the object cannot accommodate the subject's needs or assign some meani...