On the Logic of the Unconscious Conception of Causation Part I: The Oedipal Meta-Wish and the Sexualization of Asymmetric Time.

The direction of time is often defined by describing asymmetries between past and future events, referred to as "time-arrows." Two important time-arrows are the mutability time-arrow, which specifies that the past is unalterable, while the future is not; and the causal time-arrow, which stipulates that past events may cause future events, but not vice versa. The author argues that the unconscious conception of causation expressed in both the oedipal myth and certain oedipal wishes negates the mutability and causal time-arrows. The author suggests, therefore, distinguishing between oedipal phantasies that undermine the ordinary conceptions of causation and time (such as the wish of being one's own parent), and classical content that is in line with our time perception (such as sexual and aggressive wishes toward parents). Analyzing clinical examples suggests that some patients' oedipal phantasies are combined with unconscious sexual satisfaction from the asymmetric conception of time. When this sexual satisfaction is analyzed, they might expose the oedipal phantasies founded on the symmetric conception of time.

Was It Just a Dream? Aging and Dreaming the Psychoanalytic Process.

By revisiting the last years of a long psychoanalytic treatment of a female patient, a psychoanalyst reflects on her own development as a clinician and on the changes in her experience of psychoanalytic generativity. An increasing ability to understand patient's shifts between creativity and destructiveness brings about a different understanding of the process of mourning, while the shared aging of the analytic dyad highlights the difficulty of ending an analysis that has become a way of life.

Remembering, repeating and working-through as a step in Freud's ongoing struggle with the "what", "why" and "how" of analytic knowing in the curative process.

In this paper the author offers a new reading of Freud's "Remembering, Repeating and Working-through", examining the complex nature of central concepts that Freud presents within it. She demonstrates the text's special role in an ongoing effort of Freud's to articulate and ground the heart of his analytic insight that knowledge cures. While the insight itself is very well-known, the fact that Freud struggled throughout his life with its articulation and grounding is not. The struggle centered on questions pertaining to how analytic knowing could, not only enlighten the patient, but actually change his unconscious dynamics, and why the patient, having already "opted" for pathology in place of knowing would come to accept it; and ultimately, what was the nature of the knowledge offered in analysis and the individual's relationship to it that allowed for such dramatic changes to occur. The author briefly presents some of her earlier work on Freud's struggle with these issues and how Melanie Klein resolved them. It is in this context that she demonstrates how in Remembering, Repeating and Working-through" Freud may be seen to be taking important steps towards developing his ideas on analytic knowing and in ways that anticipate Klein's resolutions. This points to the close tie between Klein's and Freud's thinking on the nature of the analytic process and the person's desire for self-knowledge on which it relies, brings out the richness of this thinking and grounds its value to contemporary psychoanalysis.

Uma leitura metapsicológica sobre a compulsão à repetição e suas potencialidades terapêuticas / Las potencialidades terapéuticas inscritas en la compulsion a la repetición y algunas justificaciones metapsicologicas / A metapsychological analisis about the compulsion towards repetition and its therapeutic potentialities

RESUMO Fenômenos associados à compulsão à repetição apresentam-se na clínica psicanalítica como reveladores de uma dor da qual o paciente nada sabe dizer, mas que se impõe como um destino implacável. Partilhando da opinião de alguns psicanalistas sobre as potencialidades terapêuticas inscritas na compulsão à repetição e cientes das dificuldades que envolvem a sua justificação teórica, este artigo busca aclarar a trama conceitual da metapsicologia que pode vir a embasar tal compreensão. Desse modo, partindo de uma pesquisa conceitual, objetivamos explicitar os fenômenos metapsicológicos que estão inscritos na repetição, propiciando uma releitura de aspectos importantes da obra freudiana. Assim, o artigo desenvolve a ideia de que as energias disruptivas presentes na compulsão à repetição, ao serem submetidas ao trabalho de ligação realizado pelo 'Eu', um processo secundário por excelência, articulado às noções de fusão e desfusão pulsionais, presentes em textos da etapa madura das reflexões de Freud, permite lançar alguma luz sobre processos obscuros subjacentes aos fenômenos em tela.

RESUMEN Fenómenos asociados a la compulsión a la repetición se presentan en la clínica psicoanalítica como reveladores de un dolor del cual el paciente nada sabe decir, pero que se impone como un destino implacable. Compartiendo la opinión de algunos psicoanalistas en las potencialidades terapéuticas inscritas en la repetición y conscientes de las dificultades que envuelven su justificación teórica, este artículo busca explicitar la trama conceptual metapsicológica que puede venir a embasar su comprensión. Así, empiezando desde una búsqueda conceptual, tenemos como objetivo demuenstrar a los fenómenos metapsicológicos que se encuentran inscritos en la repetición, proporcionando una reinterpretación de importantes aspectos de la obra de Freud. Por lo tanto, este articulo desarrolla la idea de energías disruptivas encuentradas en la compulsión hacia la repetición cuando se las envían al trabajo de ligación realizado por el 'Yo', un procedimiento secundario por excelencia, enlazados a la comprensión de fusión y desfusion pulsionales, que están presentes en textos de la etapa madura de las relfexiones de Freud, permitiendo tirar alguna luz sobre procesos oscuros subyacentes a los fenómenos en discusión.

ABSTRACT Phenomena associated with repetition compulsion appear in the psychoanalytic clinic revealing a pain the patient knows nothing about, but which imposes as a relentless fate. Sharing the opinion of some psychoanalysts about therapeutic potentialities inscribed in the compulsion repetition and aware of the difficulties involved in their theoretical justification, this article sought to explain the conceptual framework necessary to understand the process underlying such phenomena. Thus, starting from a conceptual research, we aimed to explain the metapsychological phenomena inscribed in repetition, providing a new understanding of important aspects of the Freudian work. Therefore, the article develops the idea that disruptive energies present in repetition compulsion when subjected to connection carried out by the 'Self', a secondary process par excellence, articulated to the notions of drive fusion and defusion, available in texts from the mature stage of Freud's reflections, allows to shed light on obscure processes underlying the phenomena in question.

Trauma, process and representation.

The concept of Trauma in psychoanalysis has suffered from overuse and inconsistent use. A review of Freud's writings beginning with the Project indicates that from the perspective of the impact upon psychic processes, Freud held a more consistent view of the concept that, if recognized, can help avoid the often fruitless etiological debates of internal vs. external cause, intrinsic (drive) vs. extrinsic (reality) factors, etc. What is more helpful from a clinical perspective, is to view the various challenges that a given set of potentially trauma-inducing circumstances might pose for an individual, consider each individual's highly subjective mode of experiencing and responding to those challenges and take into account the supports offered in any instance by the specific familial, social or cultural surround. Each set of experiences that will be qualified as 'trauma' that any of us undergoes will to some extent be understood and integrated into our particular subjectivities according to our unique, subjective organizations of self, understandings of and position in the world.

The conceptualization of trauma in psychoanalysis: an introduction.

This paper highlights some aspects of the conceptualization of trauma in psychoanalysis and introduces the three subsequent papers by Bernard Chervet, Jan Abrams and Howard Levine. It focuses on the interchange between external and internal reality, the construction of traumatic defensive organizations and the role of reparation and guilt in overcoming the repetition compulsion.

FURTHER THOUGHTS ON TRAUMA, PROCESS AND REPRESENTATION.

Beginning with Freud, throughout his work and in most if not all psychoanalytic formulations, the concept of trauma has been associated with the disruptive effects of excess excitation on psychic regulatory processes and psychic development. Foremost among these are the capacities for emotional containment and representation. The restoration, strengthening or acquisition for the first time of these capacities can take place intersubjectively in a successful analytic therapy and lies at the heart of the therapeutic action.

The empty couch: Love and mourning in times of confinement.

This paper describes the psychoanalytic treatment of a woman patient during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the setting was profoundly disrupted and was transferred from in-person psychoanalysis to telephone sessions. Drawing on Bleger's formulations on the construction of the analytic frame and on André Green's on the function of the framing structure in the construction and elaboration of phantasy life, the case study shows how, in the absence of the physicality of the setting, the most primitive anxieties about the symbiotic relationship with the mother were expressed and contained in the transference and countertransference in the analysis. The author offers some considerations about the notion of "background of the uncanny", derived from Yolanda Gampel, which draws attention to the challenges when both patient and analyst are inserted into the same traumatic wider context. It is suggested that the production of an art object by the patient during this period represents a step in the elaboration of the work of mourning and towards symbolization.

Revision of Drive Theory.

Several deep revisions of Freud's theory of the drives are proposed: (1) Drives are conscious and are in fact the source of all consciousness. (2) Drive energy is equated with variational free energy and is therefore quantifiable in principle. (3) There are not two drives but many, seven of which may be described as "emotional" as opposed to "bodily" drives. (4) All drives are self-preservative or preservative of the species; there is no death drive at work in the mind. This means, at the mechanistic level, that all drives are homeostatic and anti-entropic. (5) The great task of mental development is to supplement instinctual predictions about how our multiple drive demands may be met and reconciled with each other. This work is done by learning from experience, mainly through voluntary behavior, which is governed by conscious feelings.

Opening the closed heart: affect-focused clinical work with the victims of early trauma.

This paper begins with the understanding that early trauma leads to powerful dissociative defenses which injure the capacity to feel. It further explores ways to restore this capacity through body-centred attention to affect-in-the-moment in the psychoanalytic situation. Using the author's personal experience while in analysis as well as a case of severe early trauma, he demonstrates the consciousness-killing effect of primitive defenses and shows how body-sensitive techniques hold the promise of restoring the patient's sense of aliveness and hence, opening the unconscious to those affect-images that are the building blocks of the human imagination. A final section focuses on the neglect of feeling in Jungian psychology and suggests that the "creation of consciousness" which Jung described as his personal myth, is quintessentially a process of emotional transformation - of bringing unconscious suffering into consciousness - as feelings.

Cet article commence avec l'acceptation que le traumatisme précoce produit de puissantes défenses dissociatives qui portent atteinte à la capacité à ressentir. L'article explore ensuite des manières de restaurer cette capacité par l'utilisation d'une attention centrée sur le corps et sur l'affect-dans-le-moment-présent dans la situation psychanalytique. En s'appuyant sur son expérience personnelle durant l'analyse ainsi que sur un cas de traumatisme précoce sévère, l'auteur montre que les défenses primitives ont pour effet de tuer la conscience. Il montre aussi comment des techniques sensibles au corps contiennent la promesse de la restauration du sens de la vitalité du patient, et ainsi d'ouvrir l'inconscient aux images chargées d'affect qui sont les éléments constitutifs de l'imagination humaine. La dernière partie de l'article montre la négligence en ce qui concerne le sentiment dans la psychologie Jungienne et suggère que la « création de la conscience ¼ que Jung décrit comme étant son mythe personnel, est en quintessence un processus de transformation émotionnelle: d'amener la souffrance inconsciente à la conscience, en tant que sentiments.

El presente trabajo comienza con la comprensión de que el trauma temprano conduce a poderosas defensas disociativas las cuales dañan la capacidad de sentir. Explora formas de restaurar esta capacidad a través de una atención-centrada-en-el-cuerpo al afecto-en-el-momento, en la situación psicoanalítica. A partir, de la experiencia personal del autor durante análisis y también con un caso de trauma temprano severo, demuestra el efecto asesino de la conciencia de las defensas primitivas y muestra cómo técnicas corporales-sensitivas sostienen la promesa de restaurar en el/la paciente su sentido de vitalidad, y por lo tanto, posibilitan la apertura inconsciente a aquellas imágenes-afectivas que son las piedras fundacionales de la imaginación humana. Una sección final se focaliza en la desconsideración del sentimiento en la psicología Junguiana y sugiere que la 'creación de la consciencia', la cual Jung describe como su mito personal es quinta-esencialmente un proceso de transformación emocional, de traer el sufrimiento inconsciente a la consciencia, como sentimientos.

The role of repetition in narcissism and self-sacrifice: A Freudian Kleinian reflection on the person's foundational love of the other.

Through reexamination of Freud's thinking on the "compulsion to repeat", including detailed study of his Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), this paper brings to the fore a central tension in Freud's thinking on the roles narcissism and love in his foundational view of the person. While Freud conceptualizes the person as self-serving, aiming primarily to maximize personal satisfaction in accordance with the "pleasure principle," he develops an alternative view of the person as primarily loving, desiring to truly encounter the other and reality, even if painful, and guilty when he fails to do so (largely because of conflicting narcissistic/destructive aims). This basic loving desire is associated with Eros and the life instincts, which, counter to what is commonly thought, is what Freud ultimately posits as lying beyond the pleasure principle. From this perspective, narcissistic pleasures become associated with death. The paper goes on to show how while Freud struggled to conceptually ground the view of the person as contending with his desire to love and inevitable inner obstacles to it, Kleinian psychoanalysis takes this view as basic and develops it further. One significant development finds expression in ideas on how the desire to love is not only non-narcissistic, but, rather, is self-sacrificing. Clinical implications are noted.

A river with several different tributary streams: Reflections on the repetition compulsion.

This paper examines the repetition compulsion as a composite structure and explores the elements that are involved in it. After examining the difference between playful repetition, which promotes psychic development, and the repetition compulsion, which obstructs psychic change, the author discusses Freud's models of the repetition compulsion (as the return of the repressed vs an expression of the death drive). Further elements that contribute to the repetition compulsion include the role of a primitive, punitive superego, the persistence of raw, unsymbolized elements, obsessional doubt, the retreat into timeless states of mind as well as a re-entry mechanism in certain psychotic patients. Finally, the failure of reparative processes seems to be a central mechanism in sustaining the repetition compulsion. Brief clinical vignettes illustrate the author's arguments.

Reflexões sobre a compulsão à repetição a partir de correlações com o mito de Sísifo / Reflections about the repetition compulsion from correlations with the Sisyphus myth / Reflexiones sobre la compulsión a la repetición a partir de correlaciones con el mito de Sísifo

Este artigo objetiva investigar o conceito de compulsão à repetição na obra freudiana, com o intuito de trazer clarificações para a complexidade que o envolve. O método empregado foi a pesquisa teórica sobre psicanálise, sendo que foi utilizado o mito de Sísifo para fazer correlações com o conceito estudado, porque nele foram encontrados modelos de comportamentos repetitivos e a mitologia sempre se mostra como uma fonte rica de reflexões sobre o humano. Foram correlacionados três momentos presentes na dinâmica da compulsão à repetição com outros três encontrados no mito de Sísifo por possuírem elementos comuns que descrevem, num primeiro momento, transgressões e excessos; num segundo, repetições compulsivas e inexoráveis; e, por fim, num terceiro, possibilidades de restauração da ordem e redenção. Assim, chegou-se a considerações acerca da compulsão à repetição que a descrevem como um mecanismo associado ao encontro do psiquismo com o excessivo, desligado e traumático.

This article aims to investigate the concept of repetition compulsion in the Freudian work, with the purpose of bringing clarifications to the complexity that surrounds it. The method used was the theoretical research on psychoanalysis, and the Sisyphus myth was used to make correlations with the studied concept, because in it were found models of repetitive behaviors and Greek mythology always shows itself as a rich source of reflections about the human. Three moments present in the dynamics of the compulsion to repetition were correlated with three others found in the Sisyphus myth, because they have common elements that describe, in the first instance, transgressions and excesses; in a second, compulsive and inexorable repetitions; and finally, in a third, possibilities of restoration of order and redemption. Thus, we came to considerations about the repetition compulsion that describe it as a mechanism associated with the encounter of the psychism with the excessive, disconnected and traumatic.

Este artículo objetiva investigar el concepto de compulsión a la repetición en la obra freudiana, con el propósito de traer aclaraciones a la complejidad que lo envuelve. El método utilizado fue la investigación teórica sobre psicoanálisis, siendo que fue utilizado el mito de Sísifo para hacer correlaciones con el concepto estudiado, porque en él se encontraron modelos de comportamientos repetitivos y la mitología griega siempre se muestra como una fuente rica de reflexiones sobre lo humano. Se correlacionaron tres momentos presentes en la dinámica de la compulsión a la repetición con otros tres encontrados en el mito de Sísifo, por poseer elementos comunes que describen, en un primer momento, transgresiones y excesos; en un segundo, repeticiones compulsivas e inexorables; y, finalmente, en un tercero, posibilidades de restauración del orden y redención. Así, se llegó a consideraciones acerca de la compulsión a la repetición que la describen como un mecanismo asociado al encuentro del psiquismo con lo excesivo, desligado y traumático.

Reflections on Supervision.

This paper explores basic tasks involved in the supervisory process, and frequent problems in carrying out these tasks. Basic tasks include clarification of mutual expectations of supervisor and supervisee; the establishment of mutual trust as fundamental for countertransference analysis; "parallel process" exploration and clarification of explicit and implicit theoretical assumptions by both supervisor and supervisee. Frequent problems include the extent of initial evaluation of patients; problems of intervening "without memory or desire"; transference and countertransference diagnoses and interpretive consequences; clarification of affective dominance; interventive shifts with severe psychopathology, and realistic goals of patient, supervisee and supervisor. Limitations to supervision include specific psychopathologies, cognitive limitations, and a generally restricted capacity for empathy by the supervisee.

Abusive Relations and Traumatic Development: Marginal Notes on a Clinical Case.

This work offers a re-reading of the concept of repetition compulsion in relation to clinical work with patients who were severely traumatized at an early age. Going beyond the limit of the classical concept, which connects repetition compulsion to the death instinct, the function of traumatophilia is enlivened through the hypothesis that the automatisms of repetition may be the expression of the vital core of the Self, in search of the "transformational object."By presenting the detailed clinical case of Greta (a severely dissociated patient), the article seeks to show how the vicissitudes of the transformational object are played out in the transference-countertransference relationship, and how they come to life in the field through the creation of characters who are continually generated and transformed in the patient's and analyst's rêveries.

Rendering the Repetition: Discussion of "Abusive Relations and Traumatic Development: Marginal Notes on a Clinical Case" by Maria Grazia Oldoini.

Dr. Oldoini's compelling case of Greta, organized conceptually as it is around the themes of traumatic development and the repetition compulsion, calls to mind the neglected writings of Paul Russell. I invoke, and commend to the attention of the readership, Russell's coherent and clinically useful theory of the repetition compulsion based on his concept of affective competence and the rendering of the repetition, over time, in the treatment process.

The Mark, the Thing, and the Object: On What Commands Repetition in Freud and Lacan.

In Logique du Fantasme, Lacan argues that the compulsion to repeat does not obey the same discharge logic as homeostatic processes. Repetition installs a realm that is categorically different from the one related to homeostatic pleasure seeking, a properly subjective one, one in which the mark "stands for," "takes the place of," what we have ventured to call "an event," and what only in the movement of return, in what Lacan calls a "thinking of repetition," confirms and ever reconfirms this point of no return, which is also a qualitative cut and a structural loss. The kind of "standing for" Lacan intends here with the concept of repetition is certainly not something like an image or a faithful description. No, what Lacan wishes to stress is that this mark is situated at another level, at another place, it is "entstellt," and as such, it is punctually impinging upon the bodily dynamics without rendering the event, without having an external meta-point of view, but cutting across registers according to a logics that is not the homeostatic memory logics. This paper elaborates on this distinction on the basis of a confrontation with what Freud says about the pleasure principle and its beyond in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and also takes inspiration from Freud's Project for a Scientific Psychology. We argue that Lacan's theory of enjoyment takes up and generalizes what Freud was after in Beyond the Pleasure Principle with the Wiederholungszwang, and pushes Freud's thoughts to a more articulated point: to the point where a subject is considered to speak only when it has allowed the other, through discourse, to have impacted and cut into his bodily pleasure dynamics.

Lady with Erotic Preference for Diapers.

A patient in her 20s was referred to us for psychological assessment due to her depression and suicide attempts. She mentioned being anorgasmic except when diapered and emphasized her erotic preference for diapers. Her childhood included maternal deprivation in an impecunious family headed by an irritable physically disabled father on social assistance. Given the maternal deprivation in childhood, her erotic fixation on diapers parallels the emotional attachment to diapers observed by Harlow in mother deprived infant monkeys. Etiological hypotheses should also include the paradigm of avoidance learning from theories of behavior therapy. Our patient does not wish to change her sexual preference: in such cases, fetishism is not considered as an illness by DSM5. However, she needs to be treated for pathological levels of depression with suicidal ideation and low self-esteem.

Do traumático ao trauma: a lógica do presente permanente / From traumatic to trauma: the permanent present logic / De lo traumático al trauma: la lógica del presente permanente

A partir do atendimento psicanalítico de pacientes portadores de lesões cerebrais, foi possível formular a hipótese de que, em muitos casos, o quadro psicopatológico que se instala após a percepção e a experiência das sequelas de adoecimentos neurológicos pode ser localizado em algum ponto entre a neurose traumática e as patologias narcísico-identitárias. Para fundamentar e ilustrar o desenvolvimento teórico dessa hipótese, apresentaremos um caso clínico no qual a compulsão à repetição é convocada como mecanismo de defesa: a experiência subjetiva de adoecimento neurológico é vivida como um golpe traumático que divide a vida entre um antes e um depois. A consequência disso é que os recursos para a elaboração psíquica são roubados, criando ou intensificando zonas psíquicas não integradas. Desse modo, é instalada uma temporalidade baseada em um presente permanente, isto é, num tempo que não fica para trás e tampouco fornece uma abertura para o que está por vir

Based on the psychoanalytic treatment of patients with brain injury, it was possible to formulate the hypothesis that, in many cases, the psychopathological condition that sets in after the perception and experience of Sequelae from neurological illnesses can be centralized in a place between traumatic neurosis and the narcissistic-identity disorders. To support and illustrate the theoretical development of this hypothesis, we present a case in which the repetition compulsion is conveyed as a defense mechanism: the subjective experience of neurological illness is experienced as a traumatic blow that divides life between before and and after. The consequence of this is that resources for mental development are diverted, creating or intensifying non-integrated psychic areas. Therefore it is installed a temporality based on a permanent present, that is, in a time that does not fall behind nor provides a foot hold for what is to come

El tratamiento psicoanalítico de pacientes con lesiones cerebrales ha permitido formular la hipótesis de que, en muchos casos, la condición psicopatológica que se instala después de la percepción y la experiencia de las secuelas de daños neurológicos puede ser localizado en algún punto entre la neurosis traumática y las patologías de identidad narcisista. Para fundamentar e ilustrar el desarrollo teórico de esta hipótesis, se presenta un caso clínico en el cual la compulsión a la repetición fue convocada como un mecanismo de defensa: la experiencia subjetiva de la enfermedad neurológica se experimenta como un golpe traumático que divide la vida entre un antes y un después. La consecuencia de esto es que los recursos para la elaboración psíquica son robados, creando o intensificando zonas psíquicas no integradas. Por lo tanto, se instala una temporalidad en base a un presente permanente, es decir, un tiempo que no vuelve atrás ni ofrece una apertura para lo que está por venir