by Paul Verhaeghe | Vol 30 (4) 2012
This contribution originates with a number of problems in the current psychodiagnostic and therapeutic field which give rise to important ethical, clinical and scientific questions: questions that, from a broader social perspective, are interrelated. The criteria for psychopathology depend on socially decided norms and values (ethics), which coincide with the societal context. Current neoliberal discourse dictates a medical model that determines the manner in which scientific research is conducted, resulting in so-called evidence-based DSM-based diagnostics. In the clinic, this psychiatric handbook is used to identify individuals that deviate from the proposed criteria, with the goal of treatment to ‘normalise’ them. This is little more than a form of social standardization and patients are becoming increasingly aware of this. However, what little protest has occurred has had correspondingly little impact. Psychotherapy is hence at a tipping point. To protect our discipline, it is necessary to explicitly see the sea in which we all swim and to question our own role in determining the general perspective.
by Veroniek Knockaert | Vol 22 (3/4) 2004
In this article das Ding is characterized as the structural a priori condition for memory and, more broadly, for the subject in its desire. First, the fundamentally conflicting nature of the psychical apparatus as outlined by Freud in his Project for a scientific psychology (1950a[1895]) is examined. The elaboration of the opposition between the primary processes or the pleasure principle on the one hand and the secondary processes or the reality principle on the other is of crucial importance. The ambiguity that characterizes this opposition is related to the Freudian notion of das Ding as the residue of the process of judgement through which a subject tries to grasp the outside world and the Nebenmensch. Das Ding, as the primordial outside of the subject, is then characterized, with Lacan, as the centre around which the subjective world of the unconscious is organised but from which it is nevertheless excluded. Finally, the implications of this theory for the desiring subject on the one hand and for an articulation of the ethics of psychoanalysis on the other are addressed.
by Julien Quackelbeen | Vol 22 (3/4) 2004
This paper deals with the question of the meaning of technique in analytical treatment. With Freud, it is acknowledged that the term “technique” is all too often interpreted in terms of rules or instructions for the analyst in relation to good direction for the cure. In contrast, Freud underscored another dimension of technique: that of creativity, a dimension that contributes to the emergence of the subject as well as to the creation of additional degrees of freedom for its speaking; the one in which the analyst, having analysed his own freedom (or lack of it), creates the conditions wherein the subject comes to his own, truthful, speech. The tension between technique in the narrow sense, and technique in the sense of the creative manipulation of transference, is illustrated on the basis of a few clinical fragments.
by Julien Quackelbeen | Vol 20 (3) 2002
Starting from the effects of the power of speech, the relation between free association and “full speech” is questioned. It is argued that, whereas “empty speech” (i) confirms the very necessity of speech and (ii), establishes or re-establishes the social bond, “full speech” is constitutive on the level of the subject. In addition, some psychoanalytical techniques are highlighted which enable the psychoanalyst to support speech in its different functions.
by Claire Van Damme | Vol 21 (2) 2003
From a background in art history, more specifically, from a background of research in contemporary art and the state of art during and after WWII, the author starts with the observation that a sharp delineation between the creative expression of psychiatric patients and art is difficult to determine in some cases. A description of the status of outsider art needs to take into account that, on the one hand, to collect the plastic expression of psychiatric patients, naive art, folk art, popular culture and ethnic or tribal art under one umbrella is untenable and that, on the other, every form of expression could occupy its specific place in the field of tension between art and psychiatry. It is argued that the plastic expression of psychiatric patients, beyond its private status and provided one takes into account the ethical rules, has a dynamic status depending on the angle from which it is approached. From this perspective the plastic expression of psychiatric patients can be considered as: (i) self expression with a psycho-medical and private status which in the context of possible relevant research belongs partially to the public domain; (ii) the result of the intersubjective or social dynamic with mixed (private and public) status or possible socio-cultural status; (iii) object of aesthetic experience with a public and social status; (iv) stimulus for artists in their exploration of the language of expression, and; (v) commercial and collectible object.
