MA Psychoanalysis by Ayla Michelle Demir
Conference Presentations by Ayla Michelle Demir
Transference and Countertransference in Qualitative Research
Psychoanalytic Political Libidinal Economy of Neoliberal Bankers and Anti-Capitalist Protesters
For many Native Hawaiians, the banning of our language as the primary medium in schools and the c... more For many Native Hawaiians, the banning of our language as the primary medium in schools and the consequent dethronement of our native worldview attacked our psychological wellbeing. The issue of colonization is a site of identity conflict, opening painful wounds inextricably personal, political, and cultural.
An Introduction to the Lacanian Phonetic Analysis of the Voice
What is the importance of the sonic quality of the voice in psychoanalytic treatment?
Abstracts by Ayla Michelle Demir
This essay will discuss psychoanalytic feminist theories that help elucidate a psychoanalytic und... more This essay will discuss psychoanalytic feminist theories that help elucidate a psychoanalytic understanding of the soul. My background is in mental health care and my disciplinary perspective is psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic studies, although with this essay I venture into the field of female psychology. The essay takes a look at expressions of the soul in women's lives and conceptions of the soul in psychoanalytic theory, e.g. Freud found dreams
Abstract
At a time when public belief and participation in British Politics is steadily decl... more Abstract
At a time when public belief and participation in British Politics is steadily declining, this emergent psycho-political qualitative research explores the personal dimension of political ideology and political identity. Focusing specifically on the conservative party, it asks, has the conservative party lost its soul? And is the populist politics of neo-nationalist UKIP what happens when essence and identity become more important than ideology or policy? The research seeks to explore the psycho-social and psycho-cultural dynamics at the ideology ↔ authenticity border. I examine individual conservative and UKIP politicians’ political narratives and some of the shared narratives and fantasies of the conservative party and charismatic politicians that circulate through the British news media. I pay attention to politicians’ behaviours and concerns about emotional governance and regulation, and turn my psychoanalysis lens on the mind ↔ soul schism in the conservative party’s identity crisis, with its split off faction that became UKIP. I also investigate the phenomenon of political party ideological occupation asking, if conservative politicians avoid the issue of intra-party ideological (liberal) occupation, does their denial derive from anxieties of political conflict that have led to weak ideological boundaries and denial of its true self? Are pragmatic deal making, modernising/reforming narratives of ideology sharing, power dependent? And why is UKIP’s romantic narrative of sovereignty associated with marginalisation and charismatic authenticity?
Such an analysis of the impact of ideological and symbolic processes upon the perception and transformation of political parties, is of importance for contemporary British social and cultural questions. The research will engage with contemporary political discourses on the politics of identity, otherness, diversity, authenticity and xenophobia, drawing on a range of literature sources including psychoanalytic psychology (individual, social, political and organisational); political psychology, forensic psychology and personality psychology; psycho-social, psycho-cultural and psycho-political studies; and critical psychology and discursive psychology at the margins of social psychology. The objective is to produce an analysis of political party ideology and identity change that requires an in-depth understanding of how political anxieties, fantasies and social representations, shape individual and group ideology and identity, cultures and societies.
This interdisciplinary psycho-political paper explores psychoanalytic theories on ideological and... more This interdisciplinary psycho-political paper explores psychoanalytic theories on ideological and emotional boundaries, such as projective identification, ideal for analysing how parts of one group's mind can inhabit, control or deposit themselves in another's. Psychoanalysis itself deliberately occupies an ambiguous and contentious position within the academy, being both elitist and marginal, existing in some form or other at the centre of the national health service and in the
According to the University of York, Department of Politics interdisciplinary conference 'Enactin... more According to the University of York, Department of Politics interdisciplinary conference 'Enacting the People: Political Representation and Democratic Legitimacy' (2015) sponsored by
This paper explores the links between the modern diagnostic categorises of Antisocial Personality... more This paper explores the links between the modern diagnostic categorises of Antisocial Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder and traditional conceptions of the Psychopath, and how these disorders and personality traits are represented in the personalities of high profile politicians in the British news media. Focussing particularly on the 'antisocial' dimensions of narcissism, I attempt to recognise these personality disorders/traits within contemporary British politics by looking at political representatives of the impulsive outsider politician, such as the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) Nigel Farage. I examine some of the images and fantasies of his charismatic personality that circulate through the British news media and I pay attention to his behaviours and concerns about his emotional governance and regulation. I show how the traditional term psychopath, commonly applied to politicians by journalists and doctors in the British news media (Freeman, 2012; Chivers, 2014), combines the aggressive/destructive urges of the antisocial personality with the boundless egoism of the pathological narcissist, their common central features being deceit, manipulation, disinhibited behaviour and diminished empathy and remorse. (DSM-5, 2013) I argue that the impulsivity and aggression characteristic of the antisocial charismatic politician, has the same selfish power seeking motives that the much more successful narcissistic politician acts out in his colder, more callous forms of passive aggression, that often go undetected. The theoretical framework in which I make my analysis is inflected by the British Object
Qualitative Research Methods: Researching Beneath the Surface
5th & 6th March 2015
Centre for ... more Qualitative Research Methods: Researching Beneath the Surface
5th & 6th March 2015
Centre for Professional Practice Research, Brunel University.
Transference and Countertransference in Qualitative Research
Abstract
There is a growing interest in psychoanalytically informed research methods for the social sciences and the humanities, as psychoanalysis can address serious social, political and cultural issues and can bring new perspectives to academic and public discourses. So how do psychoanalysis researchers actually use and experience psychoanalysis in practical empirical psycho-social, psycho-political and psycho-cultural qualitative research? More specifically, focussing in on one particular psychical and relational phenomenon, how do they experience transference and counter-transference dynamics in the research process?
The process of psychoanalysis creates an incredibly complex relationship between an analysand and a psychoanalyst and can involve many different types of difficult intense emotions on both sides, due to unconscious feelings and urges that are stirred in both parties involved. This means that psychoanalysis is much more than just another research methodology. Hoggett & Clarke 2009 describe psychoanalytic research as an attitude or position towards the subject(s) of study, rather than just another research methodology. Psychoanalytic methodologies, they argue, research beneath the surface and beyond the discursive, to consider the unconscious communications, dynamics and defences that exist in ordinary life and in the research process.
In this paper, anticipating the psychodynamics in my forthcoming psychoanalysis and politics research, I explore possible issues and complexes that transference and counter-transference may give rise to in my research. At this early stage, I take a hypothetical example of a psychoanalytic research methodology, intended to facilitate the sharing of MPs experiences of and attitudes towards contemporary British coalition and populist politics. I explore how past memory traces of significant objects and people may arise. How relational patterns of both the researcher and research subject(s) may be repeated and re-enacted in the research relationship. I give examples of how both negative and positive anxieties and emotions may be transferred from the politician to the psychoanalytic researcher and counter-transferred from the researcher to the politician.
Presenter Name: Ayla Michelle Demir MA BSc
Email: [email protected]
Affiliation: Researcher Development Programme, Brunel Graduate School, Brunel University.
Abstract: Psychoanalytic Political Libidinal Economy, May 2014
Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society Conference
14th June 2014
Centre for Psychoanalysis, Middle... more Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society Conference
14th June 2014
Centre for Psychoanalysis, Middlesex University.
Psychoanalytic Political Libidinal Economy
Abstract
This presentation is a based on a psychoanalytic investigation of individual and group relations and lack of relations to money and capitalism, in the context of the economic crisis and its socio-political discontent. The question asked was, what is the libidinal economy of bankers and anti-capitalist protesters, as two specific groups in society and how do the libidinal characteristics of these two groups affect each group’s identity and ideology?
From a psychoanalytic perspective, the capitalist - anti-capitalist conflict is seen as one between the id’s irresponsible entrepreneurial (oral) life force of striving, risk taking, over taking and greed, versus the superego’s responsible conservative (anal) death force advocating possession, self-preservation, saving and capital accumulation, with the imaginary ego in the middle functioning through the desired wealth and prestige of bankers, and the desired ideologically utopian society of protesters, to achieve some balance. Complexities were found in that the functions of demand and supply, taking and giving, spending and saving, are intimately connected in the human organism, so that for example, self-preservation can mean both capitalism and ethical behaviour, and freedom of the instincts can mean narcissism, psychosis and the absence of any real autonomy.
The ego ideals of bankers and anti-capitalists were analysed and a crucial point made is that even alternative anti-capitalist culture and discourse, functions to structure and contain identity and desire. My argument echoes the view of Salecl (2010) that even biological appetite and individual libidinal economy, is determined, organised and structured by ideology, because conformance to a culturally sanctioned and socially recognised ideal contains surplus unpredictable free energy and hence anxiety and meaninglessness. From this perspective, both groups remain occupied in the imaginary fantasy realm of markets, ideal goods and utopian ideology, while the symbolic realm of the father’s law remains lacking. Either because bankers cannot or will not regulate their psychosexual energy, or because anti-capitalists cannot or will not conform to the status quo.
Presenter Name: Ayla Michelle Demir MA BSc
E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Brunel University, London.
Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society Conference
15th June 2013
Centre for Psychoanalysis, Middle... more Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society Conference
15th June 2013
Centre for Psychoanalysis, Middlesex University.
Psychoanalysis and the Phonetic Quality of the Voice
Abstract
Much is written in psychoanalytic research about language, speaking and listening, but little on the sonic ‘affects’ of the voice. Perhaps this is because the ‘experience’ of sound is the opposite of intellect and language. The sound of the voice is affect (emotion) discharged orally, as opposed to concepts expressed in thinking and writing.
This presentation started off as a theoretical investigation of the sonic affects of the voice in the psychoanalytic encounter. However, after exploring various Freudian and Post-Freudian concepts about speech, language, listening and music, the presentation became a vehicle through which to gain a foothold in Lancanian psychoanalytic theory. In retrospect, my unknowing approach to Lacanian analysis via the sonic seems an obvious starting point.
In the Lacanian paradigm, the voice occupies the centre position of the ego, alongside images in the Imaginary realm. Yet I would like to argue that the visual image is closer to the symbolic realm than sound, which is closer to the real. It is this close connection between the sound
of the voice and reality, that makes sound the ideal resonating instrument for psychoanalytic diagnosis and treatment.
The sound of voice ties language to the body, but the tie is paradoxical as voice does not entirely belong to either the real body, or to symbolic language. It is a part of the body (real), but also a part of the linguistic (symbolic) and this ‘in betweeness’ is why it is considered an imaginary phenomenon, yet a phenomenon that bridges and connects body and mind.
Presenter Name: Ayla Michelle Demir BSc
E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Brunel University, London.
Articles by Ayla Michelle Demir
This journal article looks briefly at Freud’s Psychoanalytic concepts of auto-erotism, regression... more This journal article looks briefly at Freud’s Psychoanalytic concepts of auto-erotism, regression, fixation, denial and primary, secondary and pathological narcissism, to understand addiction and compulsive behaviours/practices. Central to understanding any psychical or human behavioural phenomena psychoanalytically, is Freud’s large scale Meta-Psychological schema of the oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital stages of psychosexual development and his concept of Libido, the instinctual sexual energy or life force that drives his work and this article. I also draw on his theories of need deprivation, separation anxiety and dependence on narcissistic supply and conclude by drawing attention to the issue of whether or not a sufficiently conscious adult is makinga choice to repeat, or is driven by a compulsion to repeat, a crucial distinction to be made in understanding addiction.....
I am writing in response to Ryan Bourne’s, Head of Economic Research, Centre for Policy Studies a... more I am writing in response to Ryan Bourne’s, Head of Economic Research, Centre for Policy Studies article, Minimum Alcohol Pricing: Illogical, Illiberal, Unfair, posted on the CPS website four months ago on 23rd March 2012. (1) I write from the perspective of a trainee psychoanalysis researcher, a former mental health NHS researcher and a former mental health worker in voluntary and statutory mental health frontline services. I write as a woman who has lived with drug using relatives and friends and as a human being that has witnessed the horrific effects of drug and alcohol misuse and abuse. I write as someone who has witnessed a drugs market, moved from King’s Cross, back into the West End and into Camden Town, when two decades planned redevelopments were completed in King’s Cross St. Pancras about seven years ago. Academics, local Social Services and Hospital departments, Church representatives, Community groups, Artists and the Metropolitan Police co-operated as parts of a social engineering support team, to ensure all sections of society, including minority groups such as drug using homeless sex workers, were not forgotten in the process of gentrification......
References
Bourne, Ryan. (2012) Minimum Alcohol Pricing: Illogical, Illiberal, Unfair, Centre for Policy Studies article.
Demir, Ayla Michelle. (2006) Addiction Is Narcissism. Psychoanalytic Psychology essay published on Academia Education website.
This Centre for Policy Studies article review and accompanying Foster the People track by Houdini, were supported by the Arts and Media sections of the Institute of Psychoanalysis and the Freud Museum, London, UK.
Houdini - Foster the People (mp3 music link)
http://hypem.com/#!/item/1b315?utm_content=tweet_button-horizontal&awesm=awe.sm_k1DPh&utm_campaign=&utm_medium=awe.sm-twitter&utm_source=t.co
Find the Time - Chase and Status
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we9jeU76Y9E
Supported by Refuge, for Women and Children Against Domestic Violence, Addiction and Alcohol Abuse.
www.refuge.org.uk
Papers by Ayla Michelle Demir
A cross-sectional correlational study that examined three possible predictors of naturally occur... more A cross-sectional correlational study that examined three possible predictors of naturally occurring mindfulness: trait anxiety, conscientiousness and openness. The sample comprised 115 participants of mixed age males and females, some with mediation experience and some without. Participants completed a four part self-report questionnaire containing measures for each of the four variables: mindfulness, openness, conscientiousness and trait anxiety. The overall model was supported as together trait anxiety, openness and conscientiousness explained 24% of mindfulness variance. Trait anxiety was significantly negatively predictive of mindfulness and although both openness and conscientiousness were hypothesised to be positively predictive, only openness was found to be significantly predicted of mindfulness.
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MA Psychoanalysis by Ayla Michelle Demir
1 + 1 = 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBcsDnF8Wa8 Beyoncé
"Do you recognize me?" Jacques Lacan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWvtER7NNtY
Conference Presentations by Ayla Michelle Demir
Abstracts by Ayla Michelle Demir
At a time when public belief and participation in British Politics is steadily declining, this emergent psycho-political qualitative research explores the personal dimension of political ideology and political identity. Focusing specifically on the conservative party, it asks, has the conservative party lost its soul? And is the populist politics of neo-nationalist UKIP what happens when essence and identity become more important than ideology or policy? The research seeks to explore the psycho-social and psycho-cultural dynamics at the ideology ↔ authenticity border. I examine individual conservative and UKIP politicians’ political narratives and some of the shared narratives and fantasies of the conservative party and charismatic politicians that circulate through the British news media. I pay attention to politicians’ behaviours and concerns about emotional governance and regulation, and turn my psychoanalysis lens on the mind ↔ soul schism in the conservative party’s identity crisis, with its split off faction that became UKIP. I also investigate the phenomenon of political party ideological occupation asking, if conservative politicians avoid the issue of intra-party ideological (liberal) occupation, does their denial derive from anxieties of political conflict that have led to weak ideological boundaries and denial of its true self? Are pragmatic deal making, modernising/reforming narratives of ideology sharing, power dependent? And why is UKIP’s romantic narrative of sovereignty associated with marginalisation and charismatic authenticity?
Such an analysis of the impact of ideological and symbolic processes upon the perception and transformation of political parties, is of importance for contemporary British social and cultural questions. The research will engage with contemporary political discourses on the politics of identity, otherness, diversity, authenticity and xenophobia, drawing on a range of literature sources including psychoanalytic psychology (individual, social, political and organisational); political psychology, forensic psychology and personality psychology; psycho-social, psycho-cultural and psycho-political studies; and critical psychology and discursive psychology at the margins of social psychology. The objective is to produce an analysis of political party ideology and identity change that requires an in-depth understanding of how political anxieties, fantasies and social representations, shape individual and group ideology and identity, cultures and societies.
5th & 6th March 2015
Centre for Professional Practice Research, Brunel University.
Transference and Countertransference in Qualitative Research
Abstract
There is a growing interest in psychoanalytically informed research methods for the social sciences and the humanities, as psychoanalysis can address serious social, political and cultural issues and can bring new perspectives to academic and public discourses. So how do psychoanalysis researchers actually use and experience psychoanalysis in practical empirical psycho-social, psycho-political and psycho-cultural qualitative research? More specifically, focussing in on one particular psychical and relational phenomenon, how do they experience transference and counter-transference dynamics in the research process?
The process of psychoanalysis creates an incredibly complex relationship between an analysand and a psychoanalyst and can involve many different types of difficult intense emotions on both sides, due to unconscious feelings and urges that are stirred in both parties involved. This means that psychoanalysis is much more than just another research methodology. Hoggett & Clarke 2009 describe psychoanalytic research as an attitude or position towards the subject(s) of study, rather than just another research methodology. Psychoanalytic methodologies, they argue, research beneath the surface and beyond the discursive, to consider the unconscious communications, dynamics and defences that exist in ordinary life and in the research process.
In this paper, anticipating the psychodynamics in my forthcoming psychoanalysis and politics research, I explore possible issues and complexes that transference and counter-transference may give rise to in my research. At this early stage, I take a hypothetical example of a psychoanalytic research methodology, intended to facilitate the sharing of MPs experiences of and attitudes towards contemporary British coalition and populist politics. I explore how past memory traces of significant objects and people may arise. How relational patterns of both the researcher and research subject(s) may be repeated and re-enacted in the research relationship. I give examples of how both negative and positive anxieties and emotions may be transferred from the politician to the psychoanalytic researcher and counter-transferred from the researcher to the politician.
Presenter Name: Ayla Michelle Demir MA BSc
Email: [email protected]
Affiliation: Researcher Development Programme, Brunel Graduate School, Brunel University.
14th June 2014
Centre for Psychoanalysis, Middlesex University.
Psychoanalytic Political Libidinal Economy
Abstract
This presentation is a based on a psychoanalytic investigation of individual and group relations and lack of relations to money and capitalism, in the context of the economic crisis and its socio-political discontent. The question asked was, what is the libidinal economy of bankers and anti-capitalist protesters, as two specific groups in society and how do the libidinal characteristics of these two groups affect each group’s identity and ideology?
From a psychoanalytic perspective, the capitalist - anti-capitalist conflict is seen as one between the id’s irresponsible entrepreneurial (oral) life force of striving, risk taking, over taking and greed, versus the superego’s responsible conservative (anal) death force advocating possession, self-preservation, saving and capital accumulation, with the imaginary ego in the middle functioning through the desired wealth and prestige of bankers, and the desired ideologically utopian society of protesters, to achieve some balance. Complexities were found in that the functions of demand and supply, taking and giving, spending and saving, are intimately connected in the human organism, so that for example, self-preservation can mean both capitalism and ethical behaviour, and freedom of the instincts can mean narcissism, psychosis and the absence of any real autonomy.
The ego ideals of bankers and anti-capitalists were analysed and a crucial point made is that even alternative anti-capitalist culture and discourse, functions to structure and contain identity and desire. My argument echoes the view of Salecl (2010) that even biological appetite and individual libidinal economy, is determined, organised and structured by ideology, because conformance to a culturally sanctioned and socially recognised ideal contains surplus unpredictable free energy and hence anxiety and meaninglessness. From this perspective, both groups remain occupied in the imaginary fantasy realm of markets, ideal goods and utopian ideology, while the symbolic realm of the father’s law remains lacking. Either because bankers cannot or will not regulate their psychosexual energy, or because anti-capitalists cannot or will not conform to the status quo.
Presenter Name: Ayla Michelle Demir MA BSc
E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Brunel University, London.
15th June 2013
Centre for Psychoanalysis, Middlesex University.
Psychoanalysis and the Phonetic Quality of the Voice
Abstract
Much is written in psychoanalytic research about language, speaking and listening, but little on the sonic ‘affects’ of the voice. Perhaps this is because the ‘experience’ of sound is the opposite of intellect and language. The sound of the voice is affect (emotion) discharged orally, as opposed to concepts expressed in thinking and writing.
This presentation started off as a theoretical investigation of the sonic affects of the voice in the psychoanalytic encounter. However, after exploring various Freudian and Post-Freudian concepts about speech, language, listening and music, the presentation became a vehicle through which to gain a foothold in Lancanian psychoanalytic theory. In retrospect, my unknowing approach to Lacanian analysis via the sonic seems an obvious starting point.
In the Lacanian paradigm, the voice occupies the centre position of the ego, alongside images in the Imaginary realm. Yet I would like to argue that the visual image is closer to the symbolic realm than sound, which is closer to the real. It is this close connection between the sound
of the voice and reality, that makes sound the ideal resonating instrument for psychoanalytic diagnosis and treatment.
The sound of voice ties language to the body, but the tie is paradoxical as voice does not entirely belong to either the real body, or to symbolic language. It is a part of the body (real), but also a part of the linguistic (symbolic) and this ‘in betweeness’ is why it is considered an imaginary phenomenon, yet a phenomenon that bridges and connects body and mind.
Presenter Name: Ayla Michelle Demir BSc
E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Brunel University, London.
Articles by Ayla Michelle Demir
References
Bourne, Ryan. (2012) Minimum Alcohol Pricing: Illogical, Illiberal, Unfair, Centre for Policy Studies article.
Demir, Ayla Michelle. (2006) Addiction Is Narcissism. Psychoanalytic Psychology essay published on Academia Education website.
This Centre for Policy Studies article review and accompanying Foster the People track by Houdini, were supported by the Arts and Media sections of the Institute of Psychoanalysis and the Freud Museum, London, UK.
Houdini - Foster the People (mp3 music link)
http://hypem.com/#!/item/1b315?utm_content=tweet_button-horizontal&awesm=awe.sm_k1DPh&utm_campaign=&utm_medium=awe.sm-twitter&utm_source=t.co
Find the Time - Chase and Status
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we9jeU76Y9E
Supported by Refuge, for Women and Children Against Domestic Violence, Addiction and Alcohol Abuse.
www.refuge.org.uk
Papers by Ayla Michelle Demir
1 + 1 = 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBcsDnF8Wa8 Beyoncé
"Do you recognize me?" Jacques Lacan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWvtER7NNtY
At a time when public belief and participation in British Politics is steadily declining, this emergent psycho-political qualitative research explores the personal dimension of political ideology and political identity. Focusing specifically on the conservative party, it asks, has the conservative party lost its soul? And is the populist politics of neo-nationalist UKIP what happens when essence and identity become more important than ideology or policy? The research seeks to explore the psycho-social and psycho-cultural dynamics at the ideology ↔ authenticity border. I examine individual conservative and UKIP politicians’ political narratives and some of the shared narratives and fantasies of the conservative party and charismatic politicians that circulate through the British news media. I pay attention to politicians’ behaviours and concerns about emotional governance and regulation, and turn my psychoanalysis lens on the mind ↔ soul schism in the conservative party’s identity crisis, with its split off faction that became UKIP. I also investigate the phenomenon of political party ideological occupation asking, if conservative politicians avoid the issue of intra-party ideological (liberal) occupation, does their denial derive from anxieties of political conflict that have led to weak ideological boundaries and denial of its true self? Are pragmatic deal making, modernising/reforming narratives of ideology sharing, power dependent? And why is UKIP’s romantic narrative of sovereignty associated with marginalisation and charismatic authenticity?
Such an analysis of the impact of ideological and symbolic processes upon the perception and transformation of political parties, is of importance for contemporary British social and cultural questions. The research will engage with contemporary political discourses on the politics of identity, otherness, diversity, authenticity and xenophobia, drawing on a range of literature sources including psychoanalytic psychology (individual, social, political and organisational); political psychology, forensic psychology and personality psychology; psycho-social, psycho-cultural and psycho-political studies; and critical psychology and discursive psychology at the margins of social psychology. The objective is to produce an analysis of political party ideology and identity change that requires an in-depth understanding of how political anxieties, fantasies and social representations, shape individual and group ideology and identity, cultures and societies.
5th & 6th March 2015
Centre for Professional Practice Research, Brunel University.
Transference and Countertransference in Qualitative Research
Abstract
There is a growing interest in psychoanalytically informed research methods for the social sciences and the humanities, as psychoanalysis can address serious social, political and cultural issues and can bring new perspectives to academic and public discourses. So how do psychoanalysis researchers actually use and experience psychoanalysis in practical empirical psycho-social, psycho-political and psycho-cultural qualitative research? More specifically, focussing in on one particular psychical and relational phenomenon, how do they experience transference and counter-transference dynamics in the research process?
The process of psychoanalysis creates an incredibly complex relationship between an analysand and a psychoanalyst and can involve many different types of difficult intense emotions on both sides, due to unconscious feelings and urges that are stirred in both parties involved. This means that psychoanalysis is much more than just another research methodology. Hoggett & Clarke 2009 describe psychoanalytic research as an attitude or position towards the subject(s) of study, rather than just another research methodology. Psychoanalytic methodologies, they argue, research beneath the surface and beyond the discursive, to consider the unconscious communications, dynamics and defences that exist in ordinary life and in the research process.
In this paper, anticipating the psychodynamics in my forthcoming psychoanalysis and politics research, I explore possible issues and complexes that transference and counter-transference may give rise to in my research. At this early stage, I take a hypothetical example of a psychoanalytic research methodology, intended to facilitate the sharing of MPs experiences of and attitudes towards contemporary British coalition and populist politics. I explore how past memory traces of significant objects and people may arise. How relational patterns of both the researcher and research subject(s) may be repeated and re-enacted in the research relationship. I give examples of how both negative and positive anxieties and emotions may be transferred from the politician to the psychoanalytic researcher and counter-transferred from the researcher to the politician.
Presenter Name: Ayla Michelle Demir MA BSc
Email: [email protected]
Affiliation: Researcher Development Programme, Brunel Graduate School, Brunel University.
14th June 2014
Centre for Psychoanalysis, Middlesex University.
Psychoanalytic Political Libidinal Economy
Abstract
This presentation is a based on a psychoanalytic investigation of individual and group relations and lack of relations to money and capitalism, in the context of the economic crisis and its socio-political discontent. The question asked was, what is the libidinal economy of bankers and anti-capitalist protesters, as two specific groups in society and how do the libidinal characteristics of these two groups affect each group’s identity and ideology?
From a psychoanalytic perspective, the capitalist - anti-capitalist conflict is seen as one between the id’s irresponsible entrepreneurial (oral) life force of striving, risk taking, over taking and greed, versus the superego’s responsible conservative (anal) death force advocating possession, self-preservation, saving and capital accumulation, with the imaginary ego in the middle functioning through the desired wealth and prestige of bankers, and the desired ideologically utopian society of protesters, to achieve some balance. Complexities were found in that the functions of demand and supply, taking and giving, spending and saving, are intimately connected in the human organism, so that for example, self-preservation can mean both capitalism and ethical behaviour, and freedom of the instincts can mean narcissism, psychosis and the absence of any real autonomy.
The ego ideals of bankers and anti-capitalists were analysed and a crucial point made is that even alternative anti-capitalist culture and discourse, functions to structure and contain identity and desire. My argument echoes the view of Salecl (2010) that even biological appetite and individual libidinal economy, is determined, organised and structured by ideology, because conformance to a culturally sanctioned and socially recognised ideal contains surplus unpredictable free energy and hence anxiety and meaninglessness. From this perspective, both groups remain occupied in the imaginary fantasy realm of markets, ideal goods and utopian ideology, while the symbolic realm of the father’s law remains lacking. Either because bankers cannot or will not regulate their psychosexual energy, or because anti-capitalists cannot or will not conform to the status quo.
Presenter Name: Ayla Michelle Demir MA BSc
E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Brunel University, London.
15th June 2013
Centre for Psychoanalysis, Middlesex University.
Psychoanalysis and the Phonetic Quality of the Voice
Abstract
Much is written in psychoanalytic research about language, speaking and listening, but little on the sonic ‘affects’ of the voice. Perhaps this is because the ‘experience’ of sound is the opposite of intellect and language. The sound of the voice is affect (emotion) discharged orally, as opposed to concepts expressed in thinking and writing.
This presentation started off as a theoretical investigation of the sonic affects of the voice in the psychoanalytic encounter. However, after exploring various Freudian and Post-Freudian concepts about speech, language, listening and music, the presentation became a vehicle through which to gain a foothold in Lancanian psychoanalytic theory. In retrospect, my unknowing approach to Lacanian analysis via the sonic seems an obvious starting point.
In the Lacanian paradigm, the voice occupies the centre position of the ego, alongside images in the Imaginary realm. Yet I would like to argue that the visual image is closer to the symbolic realm than sound, which is closer to the real. It is this close connection between the sound
of the voice and reality, that makes sound the ideal resonating instrument for psychoanalytic diagnosis and treatment.
The sound of voice ties language to the body, but the tie is paradoxical as voice does not entirely belong to either the real body, or to symbolic language. It is a part of the body (real), but also a part of the linguistic (symbolic) and this ‘in betweeness’ is why it is considered an imaginary phenomenon, yet a phenomenon that bridges and connects body and mind.
Presenter Name: Ayla Michelle Demir BSc
E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Brunel University, London.
References
Bourne, Ryan. (2012) Minimum Alcohol Pricing: Illogical, Illiberal, Unfair, Centre for Policy Studies article.
Demir, Ayla Michelle. (2006) Addiction Is Narcissism. Psychoanalytic Psychology essay published on Academia Education website.
This Centre for Policy Studies article review and accompanying Foster the People track by Houdini, were supported by the Arts and Media sections of the Institute of Psychoanalysis and the Freud Museum, London, UK.
Houdini - Foster the People (mp3 music link)
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Find the Time - Chase and Status
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Supported by Refuge, for Women and Children Against Domestic Violence, Addiction and Alcohol Abuse.
www.refuge.org.uk
Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), the French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is considered the most controversial psychoanalyst since Freud. Lacan deliberately wrote in a Prose style, that would resist any neat summary of his concepts and avoid being over systematised. His style of writing and analysis is full of play, puns, jokes, metaphors, irony and contradictions that resemble the psychoanalytic ‘free association’ of images words ideas and meanings that change with context and reveal unconscious desires.
For this essay, I am using ordinary psychoanalytic terminology and theory. In a Freudian understanding, this self-restriction to representing standard psychoanalytic theory, is achieved through the repressive function of my superego. In a Lacanian understanding, this writing function is achieved in the name of the Symbolic Father of Freud’s Totem and Taboo. If like Lacan however, the playful son, I allowed myself creativity and unconscious fluidity in writing about Freud and Lacan, this would be a very different kind of essay. My experience of studying, reading and interpreting Lacan however, was a fluid and erotic experience, so perhaps his theory of the intimacy of language and desire is correct.
“Will our action go so far, then, as to repress the very truth that it bears in its exercise?” (1)
In Psychoanalytic theory, the term ‘Primal Scene’ refers to a child’s initial ‘sight’ of the sexual act between its parents that is observed, constructed, phantasized and interpreted by the child as a scene of violence. The Oedipus complex was Freud’s central theory to denote the most primary sensations, emotions and phantasies that involve a boy’s desire to sexually possess his mother and kill his father. To Freud’s requirement of uncovering the Primal Scene and the Oedipus complex, for an analysis to be effective, Klein added that analysis can only have its full effect in conjunction with,
“the task of discovering the infantile danger situations, working at their resolution and elucidating the relations between anxiety situations and neurosis on the one hand, and anxiety situations and ego development on the other.” (1)
To my dismay the Beyond the Pleasure Principle chaper 1 of volume 18 is a very long essay indeed in 7 parts, but I was curious and had a desire to explore Freud’s writings as it felt like an adventure. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Part 5 of the Beyond the Pleasure Principle essay is where Freud lays down the fundamental components of his Instinct Theory. My essay attached here is British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein’s interpretation, development and use of some of the possible psychical mechanisms and processes that can be said to result from Freud’s Instinct Theories. In this Abstract (also attached as an Appendix to my Kleinian, Life and Death Instincts in Object Relations Theory essay), I am tempted to summarize Freud’s actual Instinct Theory itself, as described in Part 5 of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Vol. 18, p.34-43, as I have never heard it discussed or even mentioned in any Psychoanalytic context and I think it merits attention, especially considering the current Environmental zeitgeist and hegemony that we are all being subjected to.
(Instinct Is Conservative - Journal Article on Freud's Instinct Theory uploaded as a separate word doc.)
In comparison with Klein’s use of Instinct theory, it is plainly evident that she was interested in the functions of instincts as they can be seen operating in everyday life and death experiences and relations, while Freud was much more interested in the very nature of instinct itself. I hope my summary of Freud’s Instinct Theory will show how deep and wide variation in Psychoanalytic theorizing and practice is and how open and attentive Psychoanalytic inquiry and investigation is to an individual theorist’s inherent psychical constitution and conditioned psychodynamics, born of their inner personal/subjective life and death experiences, their external relations with significant others and the external collective conditions that individuals are subjected to. People, individuals/subjects, instinctively find, perceive, understand and even believe what they desire to know and this is one of the reasons why every reader/thinker is biased and projects onto and conditions a text with their own needs, ideas, prejudices, hopes, wishes and delusions. Every past thought and feeling is reawakened and modified by fresh experience through the cycles of time. I certainly can be accused of spinning Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Part 5) text to suit my own interests and purposes, just as Melanie Klein took Freud’s ideas where she and her colleagues in the British School of Psychoanalysis (that was not yet formed at that time) were heading. Individuals have their own agenda, but can’t achieve it without others, as the Psychoanalytic theories of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan have made exceptionally clear, in his own way, for his individual purposes and for the purposes of the collective (professional, social, political, etc.) ideologies that he chose to cathect. There can be no Self, whatever you want to call it - individual, person, human being, human organism, etc. - without an Other, because of the function of the I.
Ayla Michelle Demir MA BSc [email protected]
Qualitative Research Methods: Researching Beneath the Surface
5th & 6th March 2015
Centre for Professional Practice Research
Researcher Development Programme, Brunel Graduate School, Brunel University, London.
Abstract
There is a growing interest in psychoanalytically informed research methods for the social sciences and the humanities, as psychoanalysis can address serious social, political and cultural issues and can bring new perspectives to academic and public discourses. So how do psychoanalysis researchers actually use and experience psychoanalysis in practical empirical psycho-social, psycho-political and psycho-cultural qualitative research? More specifically, focussing in on one particular psychical and relational phenomenon, how do they experience transference and counter-transference dynamics in the research process?
The process of psychoanalysis creates an incredibly complex relationship between an analysand and a psychoanalyst and can involve many different types of difficult intense emotions on both sides, due to unconscious feelings and urges that are stirred in both parties involved. This means that psychoanalysis is much more than just another research methodology. Hoggett & Clarke 2009 describe psychoanalytic research as an attitude or position towards the subject(s) of study, rather than just another research methodology. Psychoanalytic methodologies, they argue, research beneath the surface and beyond the discursive, to consider the unconscious communications, dynamics and defences that exist in ordinary life and in the research process.
In this paper, anticipating the psychodynamics in my forthcoming psychoanalysis and politics research, I explore possible issues and complexes that transference and counter-transference may give rise to in my research. At this early stage, I take a hypothetical example of a psychoanalytic research methodology, intended to facilitate the sharing of MPs experiences of and attitudes towards contemporary British coalition and populist politics. I explore how past memory traces of significant objects and people may arise. How relational patterns of both the researcher and research subject(s) may be repeated and re-enacted in the research relationship. I give examples of how both negative and positive anxieties and emotions may be transferred from the politician to the psychoanalytic researcher and counter-transferred from the researcher to the politician.
Ayla Michelle Demir
13th March 2013
Research Methods in Psychoanalysis
MA Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Society
Department of Psychology, School of Social Science, Brunel University.
Wolf Man - Sergei Pankejeff
From the History of an Infantile Neurosis (1918[1914]),
in An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works, Vol.17, S.E. pg. 1-104.
“The perfect stillness and immobility of wolves… The factors of attentive looking and motionlessness”.
(Freud, 1918, p.33 & 34)
Ayla Michelle Demir
14/02/2013
Clinical Interventions in Psychoanalysis
MA Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Society
Department of Psychology, School of Social Science, Brunel University.
The Role of the Unconscious in Political and Social Life
12 May - 13 July 2015
A series of 10 seminars on the Political Mind in the Summer term at the British Psychoanalytical Society (BPAS), Institute of Psychoanalysis, Byron House, 112a Shirland Road, London W9.
Seminar Leader and Organiser: Dr David Morgan, Psychoanalyst. Institute of Psychoanalysis, Centre for the Advancement of Psychoanalytic Studies.
Programme
1) May 12: David Morgan "Whistleblowers and Dissent: Moral Good or Self Interest? What are the psychological dimensions of defying a perverse or corrupt authority?"
2) May 19: John Alderdice "Devoted Actors the psychology of Fundamentalism & Terrorism"
3) May 26: Sally Weintrobe "Climate change and the culture of uncare"
4) June 2: Phil Stokoe “The Impact of Power on the Mind of the Politician"
5) June 9: Josh Cohen "Psychoanalysis and the Politics of Idleness."
6) June 16: Bob Hinshelwood "Reflection or action: Never the twain shall meet"
7) June 23: David Bell "All thats solid melts into air: Psychoanalytic reflections on the socio-economic crisis"
8) June 30: Ruth McCall "The Psychoanalysis of Exclusion."
9) July 6: Edgard Sanchez "Power and the manipulation of the masses. Third world perspectives."
10) July 13: Michael Rustin "The Psychology of Neoliberalism"
For more information contact Dr. David Morgan at [email protected] and Marjory Goodall, Conference & Events Officer, Tel: 020 7563 5016 Email: [email protected]
Bookings via Beyond the Couch http://www.beyondthecouch.org.uk/?unique_name=events&item=196
(Sandelowski & Barroso, 2002, p. 222)
How lovely to discover Arts Researchers using psychological theories and methods in their qualitative research. Here are a few essays I wrote on art and creativity years ago when I was studying at Birkbeck College, University of London. It is a joy to encounter the arts world again now as I prepare for my forthcoming Psycho-Political creative qualitative research, formally starting in September 2015.
> The Affect of Creative Art
> Addiction Is Narcissism
> Lacan's Formation of the Subject and Freud's Development of the Ego
> The Life and Death Instincts in Kleinian Object Relations Theory
> The Paranoid-Schizoid and Depressive Positions in the Object Relations theory of Melanie Klein
> Kleinian Psychoanalytic Object Relations Theories on the Nature of Creativity
> Freud's Psychoanalytic theories on the Nature and Functions of Creativity
> Psychoanalysis & Art: Unconscious Automatic Watercolour Painting and Analysis
A big thank you to psychoanalytic psychotherapist Dr. John Rignell of Birkbeck College, School of Arts and a member of The Birkbeck Institute of the Moving Image (BIMI), The Birkbeck Research in Aesthetics of Kinship and Community (BRAKC), and The Birkbeck Institute for Social Research for organising the Inner Resources: The Roles of Reflexivity, Self-Awareness and Emotional Responses in the Work of the Academic Researcher one day conference on 17th April 2015 at The Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square, Birkbeck College, University of London, WC1. You can download the Conference Programme here.
A Conversation between Philip Hill and David Henderson. Chaired by Corinna Arndt.
Time: 2 - 5 p.m. Date: Saturday 28 March 2015
Venue: Rm. CG41, College Building, Middlesex University.
Organisation: Association for Group and Individual Psychotherapy (AGIP) www.agip.org.uk
Cost: Free when registering b4 10 March [email protected] Voluntary contributions welcome. All proceeds after costs go to AGIP's low-fee psychotherapy clinic.
Contact: Corinna Arndt, University of Oxford, [email protected]
This is the first in a series of Jung - Lacan Dialogues aimed at fostering an engagement between two of the most important and creative schools of psychoanalysis. What is the common ground between them? What are the intractable differences? Is it possible to find a common language or achieve mutual understanding? And what are the consequences for clinical practice?
Philip Hill argues that, in order to understand the fundamental differences between the two schools, we need to go back to the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. He claims that whatever criticism can be levelled against Plato and his theory of Ideas can also be brought against Jung and his concept of Archetypes – resulting in a fundamental misunderstanding of what psychoanalysis is about. David Henderson responds. There will be ample time for attendees to discuss the issues raised.
Speakers
Chair: Corinna Arndt, University of Oxford.
Philip Hill is a Lacanian analyst in private practice and a member of both CFAR and The SITE for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He studied Psychology and Philosophy, has worked in the NHS and teaches at the Westminster Pastoral Foundation and the SITE. Philip has authored two books on Lacan, Lacan for Beginners and Using Lacanian Clinical Technique: An Introduction.
David Henderson is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice and senior lecturer in psychoanalysis at Middlesex University. He has an MA in Jungian and Post-Jungian Studies and a PhD from Goldsmiths. David is a member of the Association of Independent Psychotherapists (AIP) and has recently published a book entitled Apophatic Elements in the Theory and Practice of Psychoanalysis: Pseudo-Dionysius and C.G. Jung.
Brunel Postgraduate Conference
Thurs 5th & Friday 6th March 2015
Conference Presenters
Professor Susan Buckingham, Centre for Human Geography, Director in the Department of Clinical Sciences, Brunel University, London.
Dr Anne Chappell
Lecturer in Education at Brunel University, London.
Professor Wendy Hollway
Emeritus Professor in Psychology, Open University.
Dr Lindsey Nicholls
School for Health Sciences and Social Care, Brunel University, London.
Professor Carlos Sapochnik
Principal Lecturer, School of Arts, Middlesex University.
Postgraduate Presenters:
1) 9:00 - 9:30 Veronica Mitchell
2) 9:30 - 10:00 Lucia Franco
3) 10:00 - 10:30 Sophie Bhima
4) 11:30 - 12:00 Ayla Michelle Demir
Researcher Development Programme, Brunel Graduate School.
Mary Seacole Building, Centre for Professional Practice (CPPR), Department of Clinical Sciences, College of Health and Life Sciences, Brunel University, Uxbridge.