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Marie Bonaparte: Freud’s Princess and Ambassador

In this contribution, Hanna Stouten, author of the first Dutch Bonaparte biography, sketches the problematic life of Marie Bonaparte (1882-1962). Freud played a key role in Bonaparte’s life, first as his patient and later as a psychoanalyst herself. He was a father-figure for her, bestowing self-confidence and also a profession, his profession. The activities which Marie developed in psychoanalysis start with her own analysis. The first 43 years display an overarching need for someone like Freud. The time with him was a rich period of expansion for her and was followed by post-Freudian years. In French and international psychoanalysis the princess acquired a reputation as one of the great Freud translators, as a networker and benefactor, and as rescuer of the Fliess letters. Her conflict with Jacques Lacan left a scar.

The Addicted Subject caught between the Ego and the Drive: The post-Freudian Reduction and Simplification of a Complex Clinical Problem

Texts by Abraham, Rado, Glover and Gross are explored in order to investigate post-Freudian literature on the question of addiction. The reduction of the Freudian field is analysed in order to produce new foundation stones for a theory on addiction by confronting the (post-Freudian) reduced elements with each other. A reading of the post-Freudian literature shows that it is possible to distinguish between different periods in psychoanalytic thinking about addiction. These periods represent, in their own style, a reduction of Freud’s work. A confrontation between the earlier drive-theory and the later ego(self)psychology period, interestingly enough, does not lead to a synthesis of the two into a higher order of thinking on addiction. Surprisingly, it results in the production of new theoretical elements and a shift in thinking about addiction. Thus, despite the lack of fecundity in most post-Freudian thinking on addiction, the possibility nevertheless exists to produce some material on addiction, providing one analyses or interprets, not just the relevant texts, but precisely what is lacking in these texts.

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Peirces Concept of a Sign and the Lacanian Signifier

According to Peirce the essence of the sign lies in its triadic interrelated structure, namely: a representamen, an object and an interpretant, in which the object is brought in relation to an interpretant by the representamen, such that the interpretant is, in turn, a sign of the same object. Lacans conceptualisation of the signifier shows a surprising resemblance with the ideas of Peirce about the sign. Thus their definitions reflect a same structure: the signifier as well as the sign have to be situated in a chain, for both an ultimate meaning is impossible and a meaning is always determined afterwards.

On Mania or the Metonymical Derailment: a Reading of Binswangers Über Ideenflucht

This article reexamines Binswanger’s construction of the manic form of Being-in-the-world as formulated in his Über Ideenflucht (1933). On the one hand, we confront Binswanger’s phenomenological approach of the flight of ideas inspired by Heidegger’s thinking with the classic natural scientific approach of that time. We discuss the way in which both approaches differ radically from one another and we probe deeper into Binswanger’s criticism of Kraepelin, one of the most important representatives of the natural scientifically oriented psychiatry. On the other hand, we connect Binswanger’s analysis of the manic form of Being-in-the-world as a particular way in which the manic subject relates to language, other and time with some propositions from Lacan’s teaching on psychosis.

About Lacanian Practice: Ethics, Technique, and the Clinic versus Today’s Discontent of Desire

Rejecting the formalism of the IPA, lacanian practice is subject to the technique of Speaking Well. The cure is a dialectical experience aimed at desire which moreover affects jouissance. The analyst engages his or her subjectivity, judgement and desire in the cure. The present day analyst must reinvent his or her practice in order to respond to the effects of jouissance which arise out of capitalist discourse. He or she must guard against reverting to a master discourse and persist in carrying the question of desire .