Response in Freud

WHAT IS PSYCHOANALYSIS?

Psychoanalysis and History, 2021

Freud deliberately set the cat among the pigeons when he confessed that his case histories 'read like short stories' and appear to 'lack the serious stamp of science' (Breuer & Freud, 1893-5, p. 160). But the German does not say 'science' (Wissenschaft) as translated in the Standard Edition; it says 'scientificity' or 'characteristics of science' (Wissenschaftlichkeit). Freud was not only speaking of science as such, he was speaking of its style. This was his challenge to readers: you must learn new ways of reading. Anat Tzur Mahalel has taken up the challenge, at one degree removed, of applying such new readings to the writings of six of Freud's patients about their analysis-Joseph Wortis, Smiley Blanton, Abram Kardiner, John M. Dorsey, The Wolf Man (Sergei Pankejeff) and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle). Biographically, this is a medley of styles and voices, and Tzur Mahalel sets out to discover if they have anything else apart from Freud in common. A previous study of some of these patients, Unorthodox Freud by Lohser and Newton (1996), uses their accounts to document Freud's deviations from a dubious notion of orthodox analysis. By contrast, Tzur Mahalel wants us to read them, not as witnesses for the prosecution, but democratically, in their own right and from their respective viewpoints. Her readings are concerned with authority: she reminds us that in writing their accounts the patients are reclaiming ownership of their experience and thus redressing an age-old imbalance of power between therapist and patient. Freud himself recorded only one of these cases, the Wolf Man. But though his version is not there to distract us, a conflict of interests persists: how to restore these satellite figures to autonomy, and prevent them being sucked into the black hole of Freud biography. That looks like an exorbitant demand. In writing their memoirs, the patients have, by their own volition, written their short stories into Freud's long story. On their behalf, Tzur Mahalel invokes Deleuze and Guattari's concept of minor literature that 'gives voice to the voices that had been left muted' (p. xvi). A voice is political (German 'Stimme' denotes both 'voice' and 'vote'): it is a claim to autonomy, perhaps even authority. If the voice is to be individual, staking that claim means choosing a style. Tzur Mahalel goes a step further: as she states, 'psychoanalysis is by its nature dialogical' (p. xiv) and in effect creates a new and unique language.

Freud and his Discontents; an aetiology of psychoanalysis, 2021

The book, ‘Freud and his Discontents; an aetiology of psychoanalysis’ (ISBN 978-87-4303-717-0) is published, available in Denmark and Germany, and will be promoted in Britain, America, and Canada. A synopsis of the book is contained in the pdf along with text samples from the book. The book runs from the records of the Freud family in Pribor, the Jewish Enlightenment from a center not too far of in Tysmenitz which, influenced Freud’s parents and his early years. His first three years were actually spent with a Catholic nanny which left him relatively positive to the Catholic faith but his family's beliefs in Judaism were strongly rejected. This, plus his reports of some sexualization in Freud records, leaves him with early sexual attachments to his mother and anger against his father - his response to his family was therefore rooted in Oedipal dynamics. Sexual theories of the time, including Havelock Ellis, von Krafft-Ebbing, and Albert Moll also play a part in his theory of libido. He also seems to hold to such templates where two mothers are present and with birth confusion, he records two possible fathers. Freud’s Oedipal theory established at age three, occur simultaneously when Freud significantly lost his nanny and returned to his mother. These factors become evident in his works up to and including his last work, Moses and Monotheism. A significant amount of Freud’s works are discussed including, the psychosexual stages, Leonardo da Vinci, Totem and taboo, and the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. In this last section, there are brief entries describing the main ideas of those who met with Freud in Vienna on Wednesdays. These are the ‘discontents’ where despite stormy meetings, some remained as Freudians, and some, like CG Jung and Alfred Adler, go their own way. We then have a ‘diaspora’ of psychologists which, gives rise to the modern world of psychology and its disciplines as we find it.

Družboslovne razprave/, 2018

In the article, the author presents an interpretation of melancholy and its discourse through the perspective of Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction and “violence of writing”. In part one of the article, the ambivalent and contradictory conceptions of melancholy in the West are outlined in order to show the working of the logic of difference that makes any unified and universal definition impossible. Sigmund Freud first introduced a universal theory of melancholy in his essay “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917), while part two of the article analyses the inherent enigmas and contradictions in Freud’s psychoanalytical distinction between mourning and melancholy in the specific socio-historical context. The binary oppositions in support of Freud’s dichotomy are also exposed. In the conclusion, the author shows how Freud’s paradoxes are deconstructed in contemporary theories in the humanities and social sciences that address various social and political discourses. KEY WORDS: deconstruction, violence of writing, Mourning and Melancholia, loss, psychoanalysis

Comparative Literature, vol. 70, Issue 4, 2018

The article reads Sigmund Freud and Claudio Monteverdi’s understanding of musicality, its affinity with rhetoric, and the way this relation informs their individual oeuvres. Both Monteverdi and Freud, each in his own way, were condemned to live with an aversion to musicality that strengthened their hermeneutics of psychic and discursive disturbance. Through the specific rhetorical figure of the musical lament found in psychoanalytical discourse, the article demonstrates the way dissonances implicate opera, the madrigal, and the talking-cure, making aporetic claims, especially in the face of Freud’s self-attestation—his resolute conviction that he was “ganz unmusikalisch”—which astonishingly matches Monteverdi’s own resistance to music.

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2011

Freud made creative use of late Victorian theories of ritual as empty modes of behavior, using the idea of "seemingly meaningless" ritual to offer a compelling comparison with obsessive behavior. However, analytic hours, with their repetitive frame and repetition of unconscious conflicts, have stronger links with rituals than Freud admitted. Recent theories highlight the extensive power of rituals to organize and instantiate models of effective action, especially in terms of the multifunctionality of language. These new theories of ritual offer in turn new tools for understanding the therapeutic action of analytic hours.