ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a model of 'perverted containing' to explain escalating destructive social processes rooted in phantasies of omnipotence and nourished by unconscious fears of annihilation, using the example of Donald Trump-a prime example of a destructive narcissistic populist who offers omnipotence as salvation. It combines Rosenfeld's theory of destructive narcissism and Bion's theory of the container/contained to describe the powerful dynamic existing between Trump and his voters in which the omnipotent appeal of the demagogue held his followers in thrall. Trump offers his supporters omnipotence as perverted containing. He embodies omnipotence as a person;therefore, he appears convincing, so people can easily believe in him-especially those who, on an early level of intensive anxieties, feelings of persecution, and longing for symbiosis, prefer to attach themselves to one person. Thus, he accommodates their desires to identify and bond symbiotically with one person in total consensus-without triangulation, without doubting and space to develop individual perception and judgment. In the 2020 COVID-19 crisis, Trump first used his usual means: distortion and denial of reality, self-praise and directing accusations towards the usual 'enemies'. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
This article explores how boredom emerged as a central threat to Americans' sense of well-being in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing upon media coverage from a range of sources, I ask: What do responses to the COVID-19 pandemic reveal more generally about the way boredom has emerged as one of the central dis-eases of modern life? Why has free time become something that increasingly generates intolerable anxiety? In what ways can studying responses to the COVID-19 lockdown help us trace larger transformations in the social construction and subjective experience of time? The article argues that while many Americans experienced boredom as a form of social death engendered by the deroutinising aspects of lockdown life, responses to the COVID-19 pandemic also reveal the way boredom has emerged as a form of psychic alienation permeating the very core of American society. Drawing upon insights from psychoanalytic theory, I will ultimately propose that our dis-ease with free time may be linked to a growing incapacity to fantasise as more and more of our mental lives are colonised by the digital infrastructures and extractive imperatives of our 24/7 society (Crary, 2014).
ABSTRACT
Ricardo Rubinstein explores the contemporary culture and its discontents - including subjectivity, fanaticism, panic attacks, technology, and pandemics - through a psychoanalytic lens. Each chapter considers an aspect of modern society and attempts to unpick these complex facets of the world we live in. Psychoanalytic understandings of the triggers and socio-environmental factors of panic attacks, the inner worlds of people attracted to fanatical beliefs and risky behaviors, and our dependence on technology for our most vital activities are explored in an accessible way. Rubinstein also considers the restrictions put in place on the lives of millions of people as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and examines human adaptation to restrictive conditions. Psychoanalysis, Culture and Contemporary Discontents is illustrated throughout with clinical vignettes from the author's practice. This psychoanalytic exploration of a diverse range of topical issues will be of interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in practice and in training. It will also be relevant for academics and students of sociology and cultural studies and to readers interested in understanding cultural concerns in more depth. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
The psychoanalytic exploration of social phenomena goes back as far as Freud's writings on cultural theory. In this article we aim at delineating how critical scholars following Freud sought to make psychoanalysis fruitful for social analyses and, based on this, develop contours of psychoanalytically oriented social research. This school of thought does not simply "apply" psychoanalytic knowledge but traces the social production of psychological conflicts. Moreover, we introduce Alfred Lorenzer's methodology and method of in-depth hermeneutic cultural analysis and from this theoretical perspective provide insights into recent research on the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) protests. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (German) Die psychoanalytische Erkundung gesellschaftlicher Phanomene beginnt bereits mit Freuds kulturtheoretischen Schriften. In diesem Artikel zeichnen wir nach, wie an Freud anschliesende kritische Denker:innen die Psychoanalyse fur Gesellschaftsanalysen produktiv zu machen suchten, und entwickeln davon ausgehend Konturen einer psychoanalytisch orientierten Sozialforschung, die nicht nur psychoanalytische Erkenntnisse anwendet", sondern der gesellschaftlichen Hervorbringung innerpsychischer Konflikte nachspurt. Wir gehen dann auf Alfred Lorenzers Methodologie und Methode der Tiefenhermeneutischen Kulturanalyse ein und geben aus dieser theoretischen Perspektive einen Einblick in aktuelle Forschungen zu den Coronaprotesten. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of psychoanalytical conceptions on freedom is provided along with certain political objections. Urukagina's code has been widely hailed as the first recorded specimen of government reform, seeking to achieve a higher level of freedom and equality. The chapter encounters conical shape associated with freedom in Ancient Rome: pileus. Liberty embodies the privileges of independence, freedom, on the other hand, the rights of belonging. To top it all off, in countries with authoritarian regimes, quarantine-like regulations that are dictated by the COVID-19 pandemic created an opportunity for restricting freedom of speech and freedom of peaceful assembly. Ego is neither able to control passion nor the external world in the name of reason or freedom. Through a newly won freedom from the constraints of fantasy, the course of a psychoanalysis should enable the person to approach reality from a different perspective, to pass from the restrictions of an unconscious internal reality to the possibilities offered by whatever may happen. Consistent with his aim, Freud saw freedom as an illusion and redefined it as the recognition of necessity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the symbolic meaning of breath in a variety of expressions from religious to social and from clinical to physical. In most religions, breathing is directly connected to the divinity. Therapists know from clinical practices that breathing patterns are linked to specific mental states and generally to emotions. The Dutch therapist Cornelis Veening-after his encounter with Jung-has observed and studied how breathing and imagination are linked to each other. Today we have difficulties to breathe. Covid-19 is a respiratory illness: symbolically an illness between the inner word and the outside. The chapter describes a specific breathing practice in Tibetan Buddhism, the Tonglen meditation, in its relation to imagination, to dreams and to the way we relate to shadow aspects of our existence, individually and on a collective level. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
This book brings together leading international psychoanalysts to discuss what psychoanalysis can offer to people who have experienced trauma, flight, and migration. The four parts of the book cover several elements of this work, including psychoanalytic projects beyond the couch, and collaboration with the UN. Each chapter presents an example of the applications of psychoanalysis with a specific group or in a particular context, from working with refugees in China to understanding the experiences of women who have witnessed political violence in Peru. Trauma, flight, and migration have become signatures of our time. Towards the end of 2021 there were 82.4 million migrants and refugees seeking asylum from their countries of origin in countries far away from war, civil unrest, and economic turmoil. Migrants and refugees often suffer from mental health problems, having experienced crises caused by dislocation from their homes, with a loss of all that is familiar. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our world in a previously unimaginable way within a very short time. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased social injustice: the gap between the privileged and the underprivileged, the rich and the poor, has widened. Many of the psychoanalysts who have written chapters for this book will address the profound experience of limitation and loss in the face of pervasive structural violence in the 21st century. The book reveals the thinking and work of a small group of the many psychoanalysts who are currently working in the humanitarian field. The innovative book will be essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists looking to learn more about working with people who have experienced the impact of traumatic movement or migration. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
The idea of psychic internality/interiority has always been a problem for Psychology as a science. The specific purpose of this chapter is to develop (1) a brief questioning about the meanings of privacy interiorized in the grammars of socio-historical and cultural perspectives of Psychology;(2) an approach to Wittgenstein's linguistic pragmatism critiques of language games from internality to the psychological individual;and (3) a discussion based on a research instrument for online diaries, about another grammar of a dialogical nature, which would dispense the spatialization of the psyche to talk about subjective agentivity and its psychic processes in the face of the alterity of the life of intersubjective relationship. Thus, we hope to sensitize the readers about the effects of internality spatialized in the current ultra-individualistic ways of life and to encourage them to pay attention to how dialogical ethics, anchored in the ideal of democratic utopias, can illuminate the very way we conceive, describe, and produce knowledge about the subjective and creative dimensions of life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
What literary and philosophical resources can help us situate ourselves ethically during and after plague time? Returning to Camus' The Plague provides a thoughtful entry to the timeless time of COVID-19. Isabel Wilkerson describes and challenges white supremacy as plague and caste system, both blatant and in its less obvious (to whites) forms. Emmanuel Levinas and Knud Ejler Logstrup bring us the priority of the other and an ethic of responsibility. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a collective trauma for the world population. Psychoanalytic literature has long proposed that dreams are a key point of access for understanding the deepest functioning of the mind. Using the multiple code theory (Bucci, 1993) as a framework, this study aims to explore the emotional and cognitive responses of the general population to COVID-19 through their dreams. A total of 613 dreams were collected in an online survey. Linguistic measures of referential process and a cluster analysis were performed, then one-way analyses of variance explored the differences in content among dreams' clusters according to the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). Analysis suggested three dream clusters: Cluster A (N = 255) defines an arousal activation;Cluster B (N = 121) defines a phase of symbolization;Cluster C (N = 237) defines a phase of reflection/reorganization. The content analysis of LIWC presents significant differences among the three clusters (p < .05): Cluster A, compared to Cluster C, included less use of the term "we," more frequent reference to others, and more frequent use of words denoting certainty;Cluster B included more words of negation and more use of both the present tense and the verb "to have";Cluster C included less use of words referring to wishes and illusions. These results show differentiated functions of dreams in response to the pandemic experience, underlining the importance of dreams in the processing of this collective trauma. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) Abstract (Chinese) 2019(COVID-19)-,COVID-19613(RP),ANOVAs,(LIWC),:A(N = 255);B(N = 121);C(N = 237) /LIWC(p<.05):C,A"","";B"";C, (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a collective trauma for the world population. Psychoanalytic literature has long proposed that dreams are a key point of access for understanding the deepest functioning of the mind. Using the multiple code theory (Bucci, 1993) as a framework, this study aims to explore the emotional and cognitive responses of the general population to COVID-19 through their dreams. A total of 613 dreams were collected in an online survey. Linguistic measures of referential process and a cluster analysis were performed, then one-way analyses of variance explored the differences in content among dreams' clusters according to the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). Analysis suggested three dream clusters: Cluster A (N = 255) defines an arousal activation;Cluster B (N = 121) defines a phase of symbolization;Cluster C (N = 237) defines a phase of reflection/reorganization. The content analysis of LIWC presents significant differences among the three clusters (p < .05): Cluster A, compared to Cluster C, included less use of the term "we," more frequent reference to others, and more frequent use of words denoting certainty;Cluster B included more words of negation and more use of both the present tense and the verb "to have";Cluster C included less use of words referring to wishes and illusions. These results show differentiated functions of dreams in response to the pandemic experience, underlining the importance of dreams in the processing of this collective trauma. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) Abstract (Chinese) 2019(COVID-19)-,COVID-19613(RP),ANOVAs,(LIWC),:A(N = 255);B(N = 121);C(N = 237) /LIWC(p<.05):C,A"","";B"";C, (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
Climate change and the ecological crisis in general are increasingly recognized as perhaps the single biggest threat to have faced our species, but existing approaches largely constitute an 'ecology without psychology'. This chapters gives an overview of the development of ecopsychoanalysis, a new transdisciplinary approach to thinking about the relationship between psychoanalysis, ecology, 'the natural' and the problem of climate change, as well as viral pandemics such as COVID-19. It draws on a range of Felds including, psychoanalysis, psychology, ecology, philosophy, science, complexity theory, aesthetics and the humanities. To do this, it is important to identify the different developmental lines and research traditions out of which ecopsychoanalysis is emerging. These include psychoanalysis first and foremost, but also ecopsychology and ecological thinking more generally;cybernetics and systems theory beginning with Gregory Bateson;complexity theory and nonlinear dynamics;philosophical approaches to nature from deep ecology to post-nature and the new materialisms;postmodern and posthuman understandings of animality, human and nonhuman;the work of the Climate Psychology Alliance;and the geophilosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
Last August I traveled to California. I visited the Sequoia and the Kings Canyon National Parks. It was a majestic experience. Awe-inspiring thousand-year-old trees, spectacular vistas. Unfortunately, because of the wildfires, the air quality was so bad that I could not stop coughing. Leaving the area, I went on to San Francisco, where the situation was even worse. Eating out presented a dilemma: sit inside a restaurant, and risk COVID or sit outdoors and suffocate right away. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
The theme of transience admits a wide range of meanings involving psychoanalysis from various perspectives. This article tackles the challenges and anxieties involved in living and working during the Covid-19 pandemic. It considers the notion of time "out of joint" and living with uncertainty, both implied in a different notion of time in psychoanalysis as characterized by rupture in continuities. The paper focuses on the impact of these facts on the processes of subjectivation. Themes of migration and refugees and the issue of climate change in times of uncertainty such as the present are also discussed. Interwoven are reflections on war conflicts, highlighting the ideas of Hanna Segal, who pleaded for peace and against the use of nuclear weapons. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) Abstract (Portuguese) O tema das Transitoriedades admite um amplo leque de sentidos que implicam a psicanalise de varias perspectivas. Neste trabalho, sera apresentada uma visao sobre os desafios e as ansiedades decorrentes da experiencia de viver e trabalhar durante a pandemia da Covid-19. Sera abordada a nocao de um tempo "fora dos eixos", refletindo tambem sobre o convivio com a incerteza e relacionando esses dois aspectos a uma visao diferente do tempo na psicanalise, caracterizado pela ruptura de continuidade. O foco do presente trabalho sera o impacto desses fatos nos processos de subjetivagao. Tambem sera discutido o tema das migragoes e dos refugiados e a problematica da mudanga climatica em tempos de incerteza como os atuais. Serao tecidas consideracoes em torno dos conflitos belicos, ressaltando as ideias de Hanna Segal, que advogou pela paz e lutou contra o uso de armas nucleares. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) Abstract (Spanish) El tema de les Transitoriedades admite un amplio abanico de sentidos que implican al psicoanalisis en varias perspectivas. Se presentara una vision sobre los desafios y la ansiedad que han implicado vivir y trabajar durante la pandemia del Covid-19. Se tratara sobre la nocion de un tiempo dislocado y tambien, sobre la convivencia con la incertidumbre, ambos implicados en una nocion diferente sobre el tiempo en psicoanalisis caracterizado por la ruptura en las continuidades. El trabajo se centra en el impacto de estos hechos en los procesos de subjetivacion. Se discutira el tema de las migraciones y refugiados y la problematica del cambio climatico en tiempos de incertidumbre como los actuales. Se incluiran reflexiones sobre losconflictos belicos, resaltando las ideas de Hanna Segal quien brego por la paz y en contra del uso de armas nucleates. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
In this article the video clips uploaded under the hashtag #allesdichtmachen at the end of April 2021 are analyzed as ironically and satirically exaggerated characterizations of the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) discourse. Drawing on Lacan's discourse of the hysteric, the following starting point for the analysis is used: the citizens as divided subjects ($) protest and demand that the other (the federal government) delivers (S1) what they desire (e.g. absolute security). The other subsequently produces solutions (S2, e.g. to issue measures against the COVID-19) which, however, do not solve the fundamental lack (a) but actually lead to further demands from the citizens ($). The suppression of object petit a in the discourse of the hysteric is addressed in the video clips as the illusion of absolute security using the example of the inevitability of death. The drifting of desire, which is characteristic of the hysteric's social bond, results in demanding continuously new measures against the corona virus. The self-developed measures which are promoted in many video clips are interpreted as attempts at completion of the other and identification with the master. Anxiety is linked to the hysteric's desire for an unfulfilled desire. The article concludes with a discussion on how the discursive configuration can be challenged and evolves from the discourse of the hysteric to the discourse of the analyst and from the Kleinian paranoid-schizoid position to the depressive position. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) Abstract (German) Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden die Ende April 2021 unter dem Hashtag #allesdichtmachen veroffentlichten Video-Clips als ironisch und satirisch zugespitzte Charakterisierung des aktuellen Corona-Diskurses analysiert. Unter Bezug auf den hysterischen Diskurs nach Jacques Lacan ergibt sich folgender Ausgangspunkt fur die Analyse: Burger*innen als gespaltene Subjekte ($) richten Appelle an den grosen Anderen der Bundesregierung in der Erwartung, ihnen zu liefern (S1), was sie begehren (zum Beispiel absolute Sicherheit). Die von dem Anderen in der Folge entwickelten Corona-Masnahmen (S2) konnen den fundamentalen Mangel (a) jedoch nicht aufheben und fuhren zu weiteren Appellen der Burger*innen ($). Die Verdrangung des Objekts klein a im hysterischen Diskurs wird in den Videos als Illusion vollstandiger Sicherheit am Beispiel der Unvermeidbarkeit des Todes thematisiert. Das fur den hysterischen Diskurs charakteristische Wandern des Begehrens resultiert in kontinuierlichen Appellen nach weiteren Masnahmen. Die in den Videos vielfach selbst entwickelten Corona-Masnahmen werden als Vervollstandigung des Anderen und Identifikation mit dem Herrn gelesen. Angst wird mit dem hysterischen Begehren nach einem unerfullten Begehren in Verbindung gebracht. Der Beitrag schliest mitMoglichkeiten der Diskursverschiebung vom hysterischen Diskurs zum Diskurs des Analytikers und von der paranoid-schizoiden zur depressiven Position nach Melanie Klein. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
The idea of psychic internality/interiority has always been a problem for Psychology as a science. The specific purpose of this chapter is to develop (1) a brief questioning about the meanings of privacy interiorized in the grammars of socio-historical and cultural perspectives of Psychology;(2) an approach to Wittgenstein's linguistic pragmatism critiques of language games from internality to the psychological individual;and (3) a discussion based on a research instrument for online diaries, about another grammar of a dialogical nature, which would dispense the spatialization of the psyche to talk about subjective agentivity and its psychic processes in the face of the alterity of the life of intersubjective relationship. Thus, we hope to sensitize the readers about the effects of internality spatialized in the current ultra-individualistic ways of life and to encourage them to pay attention to how dialogical ethics, anchored in the ideal of democratic utopias, can illuminate the very way we conceive, describe, and produce knowledge about the subjective and creative dimensions of life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
(Portuguese) O tema das Transitoriedades admite um amplo leque de sentidos que implicam a psicanalise de varias perspectivas. Neste trabalho, sera apresentada uma visao sobre os desafios e as ansiedades decorrentes da experiencia de viver e trabalhar durante a pandemia da Covid-19. Sera abordada a nocao de um tempo "fora dos eixos", refletindo tambem sobre o convivio com a incerteza e relacionando esses dois aspectos a uma visao diferente do tempo na psicanalise, caracterizado pela ruptura de continuidade. O foco do presente trabalho sera o impacto desses fatos nos processos de subjetivagao. Tambem sera discutido o tema das migragoes e dos refugiados e a problematica da mudanga climatica em tempos de incerteza como os atuais. Serao tecidas consideracoes em torno dos conflitos belicos, ressaltando as ideias de Hanna Segal, que advogou pela paz e lutou contra o uso de armas nucleares. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Spanish) El tema de les Transitoriedades admite un amplio abanico de sentidos que implican al psicoanalisis en varias perspectivas. Se presentara una vision sobre los desafios y la ansiedad que han implicado vivir y trabajar durante la pandemia del Covid-19. Se tratara sobre la nocion de un tiempo dislocado y tambien, sobre la convivencia con la incertidumbre, ambos implicados en una nocion diferente sobre el tiempo en psicoanalisis caracterizado por la ruptura en las continuidades. El trabajo se centra en el impacto de estos hechos en los procesos de subjetivacion. Se discutira el tema de las migraciones y refugiados y la problematica del cambio climatico en tiempos de incertidumbre como los actuales. Se incluiran reflexiones sobre losconflictos belicos, resaltando las ideas de Hanna Segal quien brego por la paz y en contra del uso de armas nucleates. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
In this exciting new collection, leading and emerging Lacanian scholars seek to understand what psychoanalysis brings to debates about the environment and the climate crisis. They argue that we cannot understand climate change and all of its multifarious ramifications without first understanding how our terrifying proximity to the real undergirds our relation to the environment, how we mistake lack for loss and mourning for melancholy, and how we seek to destroy the same world we seek to protect. The book traces Lacan's contribution through a consideration of topics including doomsday preppers, forest suicides, Indigenous resistance, post-apocalyptic films, the mathematics of climate science, and the relevance of Kant. They ask: What can you do if your neighbour is a climate change denier? What would Bartleby do? Does the animal desire? Who is cleaning up all the garbage on the internet? Why is the sudden greening of the planet under COVID-19 no help whatsoever? (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
Trying to find a fitting way to begin this brief reflection, I felt like Leonard Cohen when he sat down to write to Marianne Ihlen in his room at the Penn Terminal Hotel in New York City on February 23, 1967. It was the day after his first major performance, in front of 3,000 people, at the Village Theatre, and he conceded that he could hardly write, not because he was in bad shape, but because there was so much or so little to tell (Cohen, 1967). What is there to tell that has not been told numerous times over, about 'unprecedented times', the 'worst peacetime emergency in living times', the 'war against an invisible enemy', 'underlying health conditions', '(the persistent lack of) personal protective equipment', 'social distancing'? What is there to tell when so many words of love, life and death have been blunted by routine usage to such an extent that they cannot possibly be used anymore to relay the singular authenticity of a lived, subjective experience? So much to tell because, quite paradoxically, being in lockdown has sparked a surfeit of new intractable experiences. So little to tell because, quite paradoxically, all distinctly unique, internal experiences have become homogenized in a global, collective experiential lifeworld. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
When I first discussed writing this section with Nada and John O'Brien, John used the word 'liminal' to describe the subject matter. I had to look it up just to be exactly sure, but I think he is right. It is a great word to describe this half time space, where a team reconvenes (or collapses) for a midway rest and a break. That would be the physical imperative anyway. This brief chapter will give you an illustration of how Jungian perspectives may usefully inform some of the psychological imperatives and possibilities at play in this half time, liminal space. The original meaning of the word liminal is 'threshold', and that is another fitting word for this time. Since the Covid pandemic I have noticed that more and more hand sanitisers are being placed at doorways. It is at the threshold point when we leave one space and enter another. It is a time to check yourself. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)