Time is the most important feature or fundamental describer of normal human experience and is also the most eminent forgotten element of psychoanalysis. Freud believes that the unconscious is timel...

This paper focuses on how sometimes it is possible to encounter nodal concepts that seem to lead to a perceptible consistency of the intertwining of some “fil rouge” in the theories and sensibiliti...

Analytic writers have studied existential anxiety or annihilation anxiety, emanating from traumatic disruptions to people’s sense of going-on-being, reminders of their finitude, and facing a chaoti...

Abstract When viewed from the vantage point of embodiment, the psychoanalytic understanding of traumatic experience is transformed. In this article, a new language is proposed that describes traumatic experience as disturbances in the flow of an individual’s effortless, unconscious focusing on oneself (“I”), the other or others (“you”), on oneself as connected to others (“we”), and on all that involves

Abstract In this paper, I wish to talk about the process of becoming a mother, with particular attention to the role of the mother's bodily experience, during pregnancy and childbirth, in developing maternal competencies. Studies on neurophysiological mother–infant interaction allow us to focus on a series of specific bodily based processes that support their relationship in order to guarantee the

Abstract How do we maintain our psychoanalytic footing during a frightening crisis that affects us all? How do we work effectively within a medium that most of us have not been trained for, might have little prior experience with, and that some worry is not effective? Even more daunting, how do we manage these two monumental challenges simultaneously? This paper will consider these predicaments and

Abstract The psychic Black Hole is a primitive psychosomatic representation of undifferentiation and loss of the vanished mother of infancy. It is evoked during a psychic collapse, originated when awareness of the reality of separation from the mother comes in too soon. Its repetition creates an implosion into the self instead of an explosion into the receiving other. The catastrophe that it marks

In psychoanalysis, the psyche is conceived as an entity extended in space (Freud, 1940 [1938]). Apart from extending psychic activity beyond what is conscious, this spatial conception could of course mean the emerging of the psyche from the space of the body: Freud, in a well-known passage from the “Ego and the id,” writes: “The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface entity

Abstract The body is the essential go-between between selfhood and otherness, and the site of the implicit traces of intersubjectivity that have marked the brain as well as the body. The body is also the depository of epigenetically implicit traces, sorts of implicit working models. The body is finally the site of the un/conscious, in the sense of implicit memory, something that is not conscious but

Abstract Gabriella Giustino interviews Jill Savege Scharff, editor of the book Psychoanalysis online, after the rapid shift to teleanalysis, recommended by the American Psychoanalytic Association in response to COVID-19 restrictions on personal movement.

Abstract Working therapeutically with and through embodiment is a topical issue in the psychoanalytic literature. Vice versa, body psychotherapy is deeply rooted in psychoanalytic theory and practice. This paper will explore corresponding themes, historic developments, and recent literature with reference to their actual and potential mutual influences, aiming to demonstrate: (1) that contemporary

While respecting the ontological assumption of the unconscious, the author systematically critiques the concept of the death drive. It clashes with the dictates of contemporary biology, disrupting ...

Abstract This paper argues that autonomy is a crucial concept for psychoanalysis that deserves greater attention and closer elaboration. Although there is abundant literature on the complexities of Freud’s psychic determinism and its compatibility (or not) with different notions of freedom, less attention has been paid to psychoanalytic definitions of autonomy, especially in relation to the end(s)

“To hear with eyes” is a Shakespearean expression used by Masud Khan as the title of his article written in 1971. In this text, Khan recounts the clinical case of a young model who told him certain...

Abstract This paper deals with the translation of Freud’s works into Persian in the framework of reception theory. It covers the 1930s and the 1970s, which correspond to the pre-revolutionary period in Iran. The method is historical and draws upon documents, that is, paratexts, written by the translators. The first period, from the 1930s to 1945, was marked by a lack of full translations of Freud’s

Abstract Lucian Freud’s value as a painter goes much beyond his condition of being Sigmund Freud’s grandson. Experts see him as one of the key contemporary artists. His work penetrates the viewer and leaves a lasting impression, seldom related to pure aesthetic beauty. Characters in his paintings provide us with a bridge to explore human frailty and despair, and often convey us a sort of naked truth

Abstract The knowledge culture of psychoanalysis relies heavily on the practical wisdom of competent psychoanalytic clinicians. In order to become competent analysts, analysts in training should not content themselves with trusting in their supervisors’ intuition and expertise. There is a need for supervisors and supervisees to explicate implicit theories of interpretive and supervisory techniques

Abstract Freud's 1911 and Niederland's 1959 problematic interpretations of Schreber's Memoirs set off a flood of secondary literature. In both selected facts were paired with a plethora of fictions. The narratives of Schreber father and son were misdescribed, misdiagnosed, and misinterpreted, errors have been uncritically copied by commentators ever since. Freud's theory of homosexuality as a cause

Abstract Theoretical conceptualizations of mentalizing postulate a close relationship between the ability to mentalize and the regulation of emotional states. The former is viewed as a key process to modulate the latter, with the origins of the link between the two established in early attachment relationships. However, there is a lack of research testing this association empirically. In the present

On June 28, 2020, at 1:20 p.m., our friend and colleague Prof. Dr. Horst Kächele died in Ulm in the presence of his wife Beate, who had fallen ill herself, and his family. After long suffering, one must add. With much courage he spent much of the time of his deadly illness revising the new edition of the “Ulmer Lehrbuch,” lying in bed with the computer on his lap – a masterwork of dedication to a lifelong

Abstract A short survey is given of the digitization of the Freud Archives, focusing on Eissler’s interviews. On the basis of several paradigmatic items the author highlights some characteristics of Freud’s technique as well as his attitude to supervision and his general idea of psychoanalysis that differs from our views.

I am happy to propose to our readers a fourth monographic issue of the International Forum of Psychoanalysis on the topic “German themes in psychoanalysis,” a topic whose treatment I inaugurated in 2013. That was Issue 4/2013, which contained the following authors and articles: W. Bohleber on the history and profile of the journal Psyche. Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse; H. Stroeken on the dramatic fate

Abstract This paper investigates the emergence of dream material in the graphic novel Arsène Schrauwen, authored by Belgian comics artist, Olivier Schrauwen. Although the author purports to tell the story of his grandfather’s misadventures as a young man, from the novel’s outset the focus on Arsène’s life is blurry and unreliable, much like the creative distortions and displacements of dreaming. Drawing

I used the occasion of his 70th birthday later this year as an excuse to talk to Michael B. Buchholz about how he developed into the psychoanalyst, psychologist, social scientist, and professor that he is today. We met in his office at the International Psychoanalytic University (IPU), and talked for almost four hours. Still, I am left with an impression that we have only sketched the contours of a

Abstract The authors present their design for a clinical teaching exercise to study transformation in psychoanalysis. They chose a completed analysis from which to select the sessions retrospectively so that the clinical review exercise would not influence ongoing analytic process. The co-authors selected three tranches of clinical material, a few years apart, to be presented by the analyst. They studied

Abstract This paper investigates hopes and fears connected with work as an analytic psychotherapist, in a sample of trainees attending the Italian Training School for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (SPP). Candidates were asked to complete a questionnaire with open-ended questions. In the first analysis, we found trainees to be interested in learning an effective therapeutic method to treat patients.

Abstract In the present time of increasing global stress and threats from outside reality, there arise “new fears” of destruction, of annihilation, and of loss of existence. As a consequence, psychoanalysis is faced with new challenges. It is expanding its range to face the fears that arise from these global threats. This requires special attention to analysts’ personal transference and their resistance

The papers we have put together in this issue represent the selection that our Editorial Board chose out of the many papers presented at the XXth IFPS Forum held in Florence on October 17–20, 2018....

Abstract Psychotherapists currently find themselves considering the extent to which sociopolitical and economic issues in a globalized world can affect the evolutionary nature of the psychic organizations sustaining the individual. It seems we are mostly witnessing a weakening of the psychic structures that contain and maintain a sufficient and constant level of integration and unity of sense within