Showing papers in "International Forum of Psychoanalysis in 2005"

The subjectivity of the mother in the mother–son relationship. Attachment, separation, and autonomy

Abstract: Margaret Mahler and John Bowlby's positions are crucial in understanding the tensions that can arise in mother–son relationships. A more recent development of a systems view illuminates the co-construction of this relationship that occurs mainly out of awareness. A systems model of development that describes the co-construction and bi-directional influence between mothers and sons will be used in this paper. The often-neglected subjectivity of the mother is the focus, and the relationship between the mother and her adult son is viewed as a process whereby all participants strive to achieve a balance among attachment, separation, and autonomy. In addition, the contributions of the mother and the impact on her of the son's difficulties in attachment, separation, and autonomy are highlighted. In a case illustration, the subjectivity of the mother in relation to her son is explicated, showing how the son distances himself from his mother and why themother is at a loss to understand how and why this h...

The mental pain of the psychoanalyst: A personal view

Abstract: Mental pain is a common concern of psychoanalysts in their professional life. Combining her clinical experience with previous contributions by others, the author presents a personal overview of the patient-triggered mental pain of the analyst. Countertransference is considered to be the major source of the analyst's work-derived mental pain. This type of mental pain is not to be avoided or discarded by the analyst. Rather, the analyst will benefit from tolerating and even welcoming professional mental pain: in most cases, mental pain will bring with it rich clinical material that, upon interpretation, will help him or her to offer previously intolerable contents back to the patient in a transformed version that now becomes acceptable. The analyst's mental pain may emerge in his dreams; clinical examples of this phenomenon are presented. It is suggested that there is an increased chance of the analyst undergoing mental pain when treating patients suffering from severe psychopathology, and a clinic...

On perverse thinking: A case vignette

Abstract: Perverse thinking is found not only in perversion, but also in other psychic structures. It is bound neither to aggressive nor to sexual experience. It is a state of mental functioning outside reality and fantasy, and occurs whenever an individual gets into an existential irritation, which demands a fundamental change. It creates denial as a protection against destruction that does not really change reality, but creates another reality besides the objective one. It is thinking in terms of two incompatible realities and the replacement of the knowledge of its incompatibility by the idea of its being normal: the acceptance of the coexistence of two states of thinking that are excluding one another is the perversion of normality. By the use of some case material, this paper demonstrates how this mode of functioning can intrude into transference-countertransference dynamics, and how one can try to handle it. Ermann M. Uber perverses Denken. Eine Fallvignette. Perverses Denken tritt nicht nur in der k...

The role of childhood sexual seduction in the development of an erotic transference: Perversion in the psychoanalytic situation

Abstract: Based on Ferenczi's Confusion of Tongues theory of trauma we proposed the following hypothesis: “An erotic transference is an enactment in the here-and-now of the psychoanalytic situation of a childhood seduction of sexual trauma”. We delineate the relational approach to the analysis of the incest trauma, both theoretically and clinically. The concept of enactment helps us understand the emergence of the incest trauma in the psychoanalytic situation as an indication of an earlier childhood experience. Three clinical examples are discussed which illustrate ways of using the hypothesis within the analytic process. The clinical examples demonstrate the value of enactments that are contained in the unconscious communication that the erotic transference represents. Rachman AWM et al. Die Rolle sexueller Verfuhrung in der Kindheit bei der Entwicklung einer erotischen Ubertragungsperversion in der psychoanalytischen Situation Basierend auf Ferenczi′s Konfusion der Zungen Trauma Theorie schlugen wir die ...

Projective identification, containment and sojourn in the psyche: Clinical notes on a specific type of transference-countertransference interaction

Abstract: This paper suggests that the interplay between transference and countertransference is considered to be a valuable channel of communication. The author puts an emphasis on the containing function of the analyst. The patient strives for an experience of an object (analyst) that tolerates and copes with the patient's projections. There are some moments when analysts feel themselves to be invaded, controlled or abused by their patient's products. As Bion has postulated, this situation takes the form of a sojourn in the analyst's psyche. Clinical vignettes are given to provide support for the ways in which the analyst contains and elaborates the projections of the patients in his or her own mind and the therapeutic role that these processes have.

Community analysis: A case study examining transference and countertransference in community intervention

Abstract: This paper addresses the integration of community psychology and psychoanalytic theory through an exploration of transference-countertransference interactions and enactments that occurred in the context of a community intervention. The author, a team member during a four-year community revitalization intervention in South Central Los Angeles, calls this approach community analysis and offers a way to conceptualize the transference-countertransference themes that developed there in the interactive patterns between community residents and the intervention staff. Examples are given to illustrate how the interactive patterns represented deeply entrenched transference dilemmas that residents enacted with external power sources, including the intervention team, and how this understanding provided necessary leverage for growth and change in the community.

The postmodern re-codification of perversion: On the production of consumer behavior and its libidinal grammar

Abstract: Assuming Erich Fromm′s and Theodore Adorno's criticism about the cultural industry, which turns it into a means of production of consumer behavior, we try to demonstrate here how the grammar of perversion tends to monopolize the forms of pleasure in postmodernity. According to our hypothesis, consumer production re-codifies the primal repression conceived by Freud: that grammar suppresses libidinal satisfaction in the same manner as primal repression does. However, instead of utilizing the unsatisfied libidinal energy in work, such grammar directs the erotic surfeit towards the pleasure of consuming. In this way, it follows the perverse model of satisfaction. Da Silva N Jr, Lirio DR Die postmoderne Ruck.- Verschlusselung von Perversion. Uber die Produktion von Konsum-Verhalten und seine libidinose Grammatik Von Erich Fromms und Theodor Adornos Kritik der kulturellen Industrie ausgehend, welche diese in Mittel von Produktion von Konsum Verhalten wendet, versuchen wir zu zeigen, wie die Grammatik d...

Transference and relationship: Technical Implications in the psychoanalytic process with a borderline patient

Abstract: This paper reviews how the bond between the therapeutic relationship and transference is created, illustrates its technical management, and provides a basic methodology for the exploration of both transference and the therapeutic relationship. For this purpose, the current therapeutic relationship, the concept of affective dominance, the object relation triggered by transference, the past and present unconscious, and the relationship pattern (CCRT) applied to dreams will all be considered. The approach in this paper is based on an object relation conceptualization. Highlights of the theory underlying the technique will be illustrated in a succinct discussion of the clinical treatment of a borderline patient in psychoanalysis.

“The primary process”: The vicissitude of a concept

Abstract: During the first twenty years that Freud spent creating his theory, he assumed that most of the functions responsible for creating mental-thought structures were organized according to two different forms or principles of thought. He called these forms “primary process” and “secondary process”. The “secondary process” is identified with rational thinking and the ego, and it is easy to follow the changes that this concept underwent in the works of Freud that followed. The concept of “primary process”, on the other hand, disappeared from his later works with no explanation. This article traces the changes that the “primary process” underwent in Freud's thinking and examines the connection between his analytical technique and his research method. A close study of the changes that the “primary process” underwent reveals that Freud's developmental thought process included concepts whose directional changes may be termed “regressive”.

The idea of man in psychoanalysis: Creator of his own life or subject to the dark instinctual side of human nature?

Abstract: The existence of man is distinguished by its split state: man stands in the middle of life yet still has an awareness of his own death. He has to compensate whatever is missing in him naturally at the societal level, created as culture, and at the individual level through creativity. Rank investigated the human ‘creative drive’, the anthropological aspiration to express oneself in creative works, and to overcome the fear of death with its help. Freud admired poets and artists, whose achievements he could not psychoanalytically access, but he considered science superior to the harmless and naive arts. There are two anthropological radicals: premature birth and the consciousness of death. Freud's massive fear of death made it difficult for him to acknowledge the problem of death appropriately. In Rank's concept, the development of human creativity contributes towards the fear of death being alleviated so that the knowledge of death can be integrated into life; creativity belongs to the fundamental ...

Community practice on (and off) the couch. Response to commentary by Dr Mario Rendon

Abstract: I am grateful to Dr Rendon for reflecting with me on the ideas and experiences that I took up in my ‘‘Community Analysis’’ essay. I have found that his offering has provided me with valuable supervisory and consciousness-raising opportunities. I thank Dr Rendon for his acknowledgement of my attempt to bring psychoanalysis into the community, as well as for his challenge to reverse the lens and bring community and communities, including the political climate within which they exist, into the consulting room. I am eager to put this community work on the couch as a means of tapping into areas that I myself have overlooked (i.e. dissociated). And I believe that Dr Rendon has offered a chance for me to ponder my own discomfort (i.e. resistance) with ways in which I may collude with the ‘‘unconscious of [my own] society.’’ There are, of course, many theoretical and practical lenses with which to view community intervention processes (e.g. primary prevention, community empowerment and revitalization, action research, and so on). I have also attempted to add a psychoanalytic lens into the mix. With this lens, we can observe that there are also many potential pitfalls involved in community practice, not least of which is falling into dissociative states wherein major political and sociological implications of the work are not adequately confronted: questions of power allocation and group process missed in lieu of more pragmatic, empirical, and theory-driven outcomes. I have wondered if, at times, many of the processes involved in long-term crisis intervention result in situations whereby practitioners, especially if we have been impacted by the same or similar traumatic events, reconnect with our own disavowed experiences of trauma / although not without significant ambivalence and resistance. Might it be that traumatic events motivate practitioners to enact help-giving roles in order to escape from a full awareness of the anxiety and powerlessness that threatens our own sense of security? To have a help-giving role in the context of disaster is to have an ongoing and (at least consciously) empowering means of dealing with the acute stress created by the tragedy. Yet, this mentality creates a vision of the community wherein one group (help-givers) establishes a false dichotomy between themselves and the group of ‘‘victims.’’ History confirms that the idea of help-giving has reinforced many an ‘‘intervention’’ that has been a self-serving cover-up for imperialism and colonization (1) / with ubiquitous iatrogenic consequences to boot. Often, the help-giving position is maintained whereby (countertransferential) anxiety-reducing motivations may be submerged beneath the ‘‘good intentions’’ that also motivate the response to disaster, perhaps especially when the ‘‘disaster’’ has been induced by the structural class differences represented by those who serve as help-givers. Splits that are formed between help-giver and victim may create and sustain blind spots around the ways in which those in the help-giving community have themselves been impacted by the tragedy and result in the enactment of disavowed trauma or anxiety. If the political climate in which we are embedded is the actual tragedy (as was the case in Avalon Gardens), dissociation serves to distract from and assuage the more vague and subtle nibblings of guilt, shame, helplessness, and hopelessness that one might feel for his or her part in the perpetuation of overwhelming and opportunistic imbalances. In addition, due to the rampant internalization and reinforcement of race and class bias and hate in US society, these feelings often infect oppressor and oppressed alike. Dr Rendon’s analysis of this case, and the wider context of 1992 worldwide politics (as well as the ways in which some of these dynamics may have International Forum of Psychoanalysis. 2005; 14: 18 /20

A syndrome of errant sexuality – and the self

Abstract: Sexual activity can be viewed as a service for the self. Addictive, perverse and aversive devices mostly build an aggregate. I will present self-psychological and other views for understanding such an aggregation of errant sexuality. In the course of the development of culture, sexuality has developed a variety of functions. Self-psychology views sexual activity as a device for establishing and/or repairing coherence and vitality of the self. In the present paper, I will posit perverse action as being part of a conglomerate – consisting of addictive, perverse and aversive features as different but interdependent appearances of sexual life. Fundamental to developing and sustaining deviant sexuality, as perverse activity, is sexualisation. A vertical split is often described. The individual psychodynamic may be featured by addictive and aversive attributes. Addictive, perverse and aversive behaviours are viewed as part of narcissistic behaviour disorders. Self-psychologically informed features of t...

Creativity, perversion and the violations of expectations

Abstract: Violations of expectations provide a motive for both creativity and perversion. The term “violations of expectations,” derived from empirical studies of early development, includes surprise, shock, betrayals of trust, as well as the possession of extraordinary talents. In the creative area, violations of expectations are illustrated through aspects of the life and work of Marc Chagall and Richard Wagner, and in perversion through the lives and actions of serial killers. Lachmann FM. Kreativitat, Perversion und die Verletzungen von Erwartungen Verletzungen von Erwartungen liefern ein Motiv fur beides: Kreativitat und Perversion.Diese Benennung, aus empirischen Untersuchungen fruher Entwicklung abgeleitet, schliest sowohl Uberraschung, Schock, Verrat von Vertrauen ein wie auch die Verfugung uber ausergewohnliche Talente. Im kreativen Bereich werden Verletzungen von Erwartungen durch Aspekte von Leben und Werk von Chagall und Richard Wagner illustriert und im Bereich der Perversionen durch Leben und...

Psychosynthesis of the brain and mind: Comments on a new intellectual framework in psychiatry and psychotherapy

Abstract: Eric R. Kandel, the Nobel Prize winner of 2000 in physiology and medicine, emphasises five scientific principles of which psychiatrists must be aware and which are presented and critically analysed in this article. Kandel states that professional requirements for future psychiatrists will impose a greater knowledge of the structure and functioning of the brain, and that the rationale for the unique domain that psychiatry occupies within academic medicine is the analysis and understanding of the interaction between the social and biological determinants of behaviour. The work of a psychotherapist is based both on scientific knowledge and, to a large extent, on an empathic understanding of the patient's history as well as his or her verbal and non-verbal expressions – as a consequence, the orientation of hermeneutic philosophy and semiotics should also be included in the intellectual framework. The aim of this paper is to update the channels of communication between modern neurobiology, psychoanaly...

Freud and narcissism: Developing links for inclusion of the ‘object’

Abstract: The problematic of narcissism in the way Freud visualized forces us to acknowledge the dualism of drives inside the subject; the object relations theory then builds up on the inherent need and the structuring potential of the object. The paper traces the growth of this concept in Freud's thinking in a bid to show how the object's otherness is not fully metabolized within the Freudian corpus. On the other hand, recent criticisms of object relations theory point to the perfunctory role ascribed to Freud's most radical discovery of the dualism of drives. Winnicott, Laplanche and Green have all developed theories that have provided pertinent rejoinders to the problematic of narcissism and object relations. The paper discusses how deconstructing and “going back over Freud” helps us to redefine object relations and give the drive functioning due importance. Hence the main thesis of the paper – that of narcissism – reveals the decentered subject's tussle with itself and with the alienness emanating from...

Beyond community analysis: A response to Dr Borg

Abstract: Dr Borg utilizes the interpersonal method to analyze his experience as community healer in the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. As he enters into a community that has been traditionally victimized by social disadvantage and racism, he narrates his experience dealing not only with the understandable impact of the group’s distrust, but also with his own fears and distortions. Dr Borg’s approach is useful for community practice because it illustrates some of the junctures facing the practitioner who enters a diverse community as a symbol of external or alien power. Through his intervention, Dr Borg helps the community to restructure itself in order to correct stereotypical distortions and utilize its own power of organization and negotiation in order to access community sources and resources. Technically, at the level of psychoanalytical intervention, Dr Borg succeeds in illustrating an approach that clearly proved successful by its outcome, yet, being that the problem is also political (allocation of power) and sociological (group structures), besides ethical (rightness), there are questions that still loom large when the psychoanalytic method is applied alone. What do the riots mean, for example? And why in 1992? Let’s take as our starting point the powerful metaphor ‘‘white cancer’’ that Dr Borg sees as the unconscious object of rioting. The word white makes reference to the historical experience of that alien force that institutionalized racism in North America, from colonial slavery to present-day ‘‘profiling .’’ The word white in this case is a metonymy, a displacement from capitalism , the true force behind modern oppression. However, the latter signifier / capitalism / is not readily available to most people; it remains opaque; it is not in the preconscious readily accessible for retrieval. It is instead in the unconscious of society. It makes itself available only through displacements and condensations that need further analysis. Such signification is not available to the masses, not to mention the similarly metonymically reduced ‘‘black’’ or ‘‘minorities’’ groups. It is true that, in real life, domination has been significantly experienced as ’’white,’’ but we could find a number of other metonymic words to signify it. The mystifying metonymy is useful for those in power because it disguises reality; it is also useful for the black community in this case, because it makes its target easy. This was clearly illustrated during the riots by the assaults on white ‘‘innocent bystanders.’’ It occurs similarly with religious fundamentalism. Although it is true that fundamentalist groups are driving both sides of the present war narrative, no one really thinks that the war on terror is about religion. The attribution easily solves the problem of analysis and understanding for common people. However, upon further scrutiny, it only reveals a grain of the truth in the structuring of present-day society. The word cancer , on the other hand, is constructed as a symbol of hopelessness, of the ultimate paradox of growth toward destruction, of invasion of the personal. It is not hard to imagine the Los Angeles police framing the riots, or the Bloods and Cripps gangs, as black cancer for that matter. Coterminous groups usually operate on shared assumptions. This kind of mirroring is an essential group phenomenon. Adjacent or similar groups in tension project their fear onto each other and dehumanize each other in order to be able to shed any thread of empathy. This justifies attack. In a sort of Lacanian intersubjectivity, opposites, split groups, desperately need each other. Yet, underlying their need is the

Perversion on the other side of the couch

Abstract: Taking as his starting point the fact that, according to Freudian theory, perversion is inherent to the human being, the author focuses upon an aspect of perversion that has been little discussed: perversion on the other side of the couch, and thereby questions of how, in psychoanalytic theoretical and clinical practice, perverted drive motions may be presented. Such a phenomenon takes various forms: actually being enacted with patients; using psychoanalytic theory as a normative rule; the individual choice of profession and so forth. To exemplify his point of view, the author presents four different expressions of sexuality in Freudian theory: genital sexuality, perverted sexuality, the sexuality of the Ideals and narcissistic sexuality. After differentiating these four sexual expressions, the author shows how each of them may generate perversion in both clinical and theoretical psychoanalysis. Ceccarelli P Perversion auf der anderen Seite der Couch Indem er als Ausgangspunkt die Tatsache nimmt,...

Perversion – drive, object and jouissance

Abstract: The way the drive (Trieb) is lived by the subject in a singular manner identifies the different clinical structures: neurosis, psychosis and perversion. The perverse in his act is determined by the categorical imperative “jouissance”: he/she lives for the jouissance; he/she struggles to take its possession, to organize it and to prolong it (to extend it). Desire, in the perversion, does not emerge as a question about the desire of the Other, as it does in neurosis. It makes its presence as a hard and inflexible response under the form of will of jouissance” What about the real of jouissance in psychoanalysis? How would the analyst listen to the perverse? De Salvo Coimbra ML et al. Perversion – Trieb, Objekt und Lusterfullung. Durch die Art und Weise, wie ein Subjekt seinen Trieb auf einmalige Art und Weise lebt, lassen sich die verschiedenen klinischen Strukturen identifizieren: Neurose, Psychose und Perversion. Der Perverse ist in seinem Sexualverhalten bestimmt durch den kategorischen Imperativ...

From the perverse pact to universal conflicts

Abstract: We psychoanalysts – as split subjects – are not immune to charismatic leaders who preach violence against selected targets depicted as the cause of all evils Freud, in Group psychology and the ana

Religious and national radicalism in Middle-Eastern countries: A psychoanalytical point of view

Abstract: This article explores the Adlerian concept of inferiority complexes that serve as a possible source of unconscious motivation for religious and national radicalism. The Middle-Eastern countries of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey serve as examples. Religious extremism and national radicalism are described as a result of the overcompensation of underlying inferiority complexes caused by belonging to ethnic and religious minorities.

Perversion from the medical-legal perspective

Abstract: The medical-legal view of perversion is strictly concerned with the sexual aspect. This is the result of a controversial historical process full of moralism with respect to sexuality. Psychoanalysis questions this reductionist view, offering itself as instrument of special importance in the characterization of perversion as a complex of structures in human beings. Alves KC und Prado de Sousa S. Perversion aus der medizin-rechtlichen Perspektive Die medizin-rechtliche Sicht der Perversion ist strikt mit dem sexuellen Aspekt befast. Dies ist das Ergebnis eines kontrovers historischen Prozesses, der ganz mit Moralismus im Hinblick auf Sexualitat angefullt ist. Psychoanalyse stellt diese reduktionistische Sicht in Frage und bietet sich selbst als Instrument von besonderer Bedeutung an, die Perversion als einen Komplex von Strukturen bei Menschen zu charakterisieren. Alves KC y Prado de Sousa. Perversion desde la perspectiva medico-legal. El punto de vista medico-legal de la perversion esta estrictame...

Perversion – structure or organization?

Abstract: This paper aims to discuss perversion, its implications in the clinical setting, and some of the key concepts around it. First, the etymology of the words “perversion”, “structure”, and “organization” is analyzed. Next follows a discussion on the sexual organization of instincts – from the Unconscious to the Oedipus complex in Freud and Lacan – setting the ground for a disavowal-based theory of perversion. An instructive approach has been chosen so as better to organize the various points presented. Laender NR et al. Perversion – Struktur oder Organisation? Der Aufsatz diskutiert die Perversion, ihre Auswirkungen im klinischen Setting und einige Schlusselkonzepte. Zuerst wird die Herkunft der Worter Perversion, Struktur und Organisation analysiert. Dann folgt eine Diskussion uber die Organisation der Sexualitat bzw. der Instinkte – vom Unbewussten bis zum Odipuskomplex bei Freud und Lacan – wodurch eine Theorie der Perversion auf der Basis von Ablehnung begrundet wird. Ein instruktiver Zugang, be...

Condemnation, disavowal, division

Abstract: Despite new contributions on sexuality and perversion in Freudian theory, a considerable number of analysts are still attached to attitudes of condemnation and prejudice regarding the field of perversion. In being so, they contradict the Freudian statements that they use as their anchors. Not even the “return to Freud” proposed by Lacan could dissipate this misunderstanding. Bernardes WS Veruteilung, Verleugnung, Teilung. Dasnicht – / wissen – / wollen von Perversion Trotz der neuen Beitrage uber Sexualitat und Perversion seitens der Freudianischen Theorie, hangt noch eine betrachtliche Anzahl von Analytikern an Haltungen von Verurteilung und Vorurteil im Feld der Perversion. Dadurch widersprechen Sie den Freudianischen Aussagen, welche sie als ihre Anker verwenden. Selbst das “Zuruck zu Freud”, welches Lacan vorgeschlagen hat, konnte dieses Misverstandnis nicht zerstreuen. Bernardes WS. Condenacion, division. El no-querer-saber sobre perversion. A pesar de las nuevas contribuciones sobre sexuali...

Advertising, perversions, neurosis

Abstract: This paper discusses the influence of advertising on today's social pathologies. Everywhere, advertising images invite people to enjoy unlimited pleasures. “No limits” orders the advertising master to the consumers and admirers of Nike. “Be a tiger” says another advertisement. The author believes that contemporary society is perverted by the orders of the advertising master, whom individuals gently obey, just as a hysterical woman lets her perverse master instrumentalize her. Kehl MR. Werbung, Perversionen, HysterieDiese Arbeit diskutiert den Einflus von Werbung auf die heutigen sozialen Pathologien. Uberall laden Werbe-Bilder die Menschen zu unbegrenzten Vergnugungen ein. “Ohne Grenzen” fordern die Werbe-Meister von den Verbrauchern und Bewunderern von Nike. “Sei ein Tiger”, sagt eine andere Werbung. Der Autor ist der Auffassung, das die heutige Gesellschaft durch die Anweisungen der Werbe-Chefs pervertiert ist, dem die Menschen sachte gehorchen, wie eine hysterische Frau sich von ihrem perverse...

“Psychoanalysis and the Third Reich,” Special Issue 2–3, International Forum of Psychoanalysis 2003;12:85–178. Edited by Zvi Lothane

Abstract: It is the signal achievement of this collection of essays in a special issue of the International Forum of Psychoanalysis edited by Zvi Lothane to place the history of psychoanalysis in the era of

Was Freud afraid of flying

Abstract: Shortly before the discovery of the universality of the Oedipus complex, Freud was travelling alone through Italy in search of strong aesthetic experiences. In September 1897, he visited Orvieto, w...

Discontent in the era of consumption: “I enjoy, therefore I exist”

Abstract: Following a brief definition of the concepts of perversion and post-modernity, we discuss the effects caused by the intersection of these two categories. In doing this, we are utilizing examples taken from the media, art and architecture. Special emphasis has been given to human subjects, their bodies and the way in which they introduce themselves to be listened to in the psychoanalytical setting. Boczar A et al. Unzufriedenheit in der Konsumgesellschaft: "Ich geniesse, darum bin ich”. Nach einer kurzen Definition des Konzepts der Perversion und der Postmoderne diskutieren die Teilnehmer daruber, anhand von Beispielen aus den Medien, der Kunst, der Architektur, der Subjekte und ihrer Korper und die Art und Weise, wie sie sich auf das analytische Zuhoren einlassen. Boczar A et al. Descontento en tiempos de consumo: “Disfruto, luego soy”. Ademas de una breve definicion de los conceptos de Perversion y Post-modernidad, el grupo discute los efectos de esta interseccion. La discusion se lleva a cabo c...

Horus Vital Brazil (1926–2005)

Abstract: On the evening of October 14th 1989, hundreds of psychoanalysts and students of psychoanalysis left the Copacabana Palace Hotel Conference Room in Rio de Janeiro; Horus Vital Brazil could be proud ...

Perversion and infancy and adolescence

Abstract: Studying the works of Freud and Lacan, the authors carried out research on perversion in childhood. Their work covered the perverse polymorphism of infantile sexuality and the perception of the anatomic difference between the sexes that leads the child to create sexual theories and fantasies. The phallic mother and the fetish are viewed as imaginary solutions directly related to the Oedipus and castration complexes. In perversion, a particular position is taken in relation to the Oedipus complex: a serious flaw occurs in the symbolization of the law, and the mechanisms of denial and disavowal take form. Sexuality requires a second “logical time,” separated from infancy by the latency period, in order to confirm (in action) that a fixed position of jouissance (enjoyment) has actually been established. This can only happen in a period after adolescent enhancement. The distinction between perverse traces and a perverse structure is made, taking into account the fact that, in the case of child analys...