The body and the complaint in consultation: some preliminary remarks
This article addresses the problematic status of the body and how the entangled somatic and psychological causalities can be conceptualized on the basis of daily practice.
Autism taken literally: What kind of Changes are offered to autistic Subjects Today?
There are currently three main research trends on the disorder of autism. The first (theory of mind) supports the idea that autism is a deficit in the capacity to generate a theory of mind, which allows the child to develop social relationships (a reinterpretation of Kanner’s loneliness). This capacity is understood to be modular (J. Fodor). According to the second theory (theory of control), the autistic symptom of sameness as described by Kanner, is crucial, although these authors do not reject the theory of mind. The third theory based on lacanian thinking, proposes that autistic disturbances are caused by the subjects’ difficulty in knotting the imaginary, the symbolic and the real. We argue that this theory leads to more differentiated and precise therapeutic strategies.
Who’s the Author of Freud’s Works? A Confutation of “A Critique of Freud’s Pre-analytic and Psychoanalytic Dream-theory” by Adolf Grünbaum
This work shows how Grunbaum’s critique, “Manifest Dream-Content a Compromise-Formation with Repressed Wishes. A critique of Freud’s pre-analytic and psychanalytic dream-theory” is wholly inconsistent.
First, it shows that Freud’s theory of dreams as wishfulfillment was not based on the neurophysiological model of the “Project for a Scientific Psychology”, as Grunbaum suggested.. Further, his reading of this text rests on four very serious conceptual confusions: 1) confusion between sleep and dream; 2) confusion between structure and function; 3) confusion between real and rational; 4) confusion between primary process and irrationality. Finally, it is demonstrated that, even in relation to psychoanalytic dream-theory, Grünbaum confuses the Ego’s different notions in the development of Freud’s theory and radically misunderstands what Freud says about the “wish to sleep”. For all these reasons it is believed that Grünbaum’s work has absolutely no epistemological value for a critical analysis of Freud’s true theories.
From the Mirages of Knowing to the Docta Ignorantia, a reading of “Variantes de la cure-type”
This article offers a close reading of Lacan’s text “Variantes de la cure-type”. Starting from the notion of deviation implicit in the title of this work, it is situated in the context of the institutional crises that marked the history of psychoanalysis in France in the period between 1953 and 1964. A second step dismantles the question of variations on the standard-cure as a pleonasm. In an attempt to avoid the aporia this implies, Lacan recenters the question around the position of the analyst in the field that founds itself in the relation of the subject to speech. The notion of narcissism as a function of the death drive and as the basis of knowledge is then introduced. Where common knowledge functions as a shield, a symptomatic manifestation of our own passion for ignorance, it has to be concluded that in the formation of the analyst a changed relation to knowledge holds a central place, a relation that permits the analyst to find his standard in a docta ignorantia.
Vygotsky and Winnicott: a Theoretical Underpinning for the Importance of Play in Child-Analysis
This paper is based on the experience of watching a piece of theatre in which children dub the dialogues of adults. In order to account for the observation that this dubbing as a form of repetition produces a gain without actually adding anything, we formulate the hypothesis that repetition in a child’s play can have the value of an interpretation. We combine this with the clinical observation of Winnicott that playing in itself is therapeutic, illustrated by some short clinical vignettes. A first support for our hypothesis lies in the analysis of the Fort-Da game described by Freud. Furthermore we describe two essential aspects of the child’s play: a supportive function for entering language and the creation of Desire while playing. These two aspects are clarified by making use of the theory of the Russian developmental psychologist Lev Semyonovitch Vygotsky.