On Racism from a Psychoanalytic Point of View

This paper focuses on Freud’s interpretation of racism and xenophobia as described in his essay “A Comment on Anti-Semitism” and in his “Letter to the Editor of Time and Tide“. The psychobiographical method Jean-Louis Maisonneuve uses in his work L’extrême droite sur le divan is also critiqued. An alternative starting point for a psychoanalytic interpretation of racism and xenophobia is found in the works of Tahar Ben Jelloun and Gerard Miller, in which racist language and sexual fantasies projected onto immigrants are analysed.

Psychosomatics: an Ordering Schema. An Attempt to Integrate a Systemstheoretical and a Psychoanalytic point of view
The constructivistic theory of Maturana and Varela allows us to construct a schema that orders the diversity of psychosomatic phenomena. In doing so, Cartesian dualism is transcended. Fundamental commonalities between systemstheory and psychoanalysis are explored. The integration of both approaches is presented as potentially fruitful for understanding and treating psychosomatic diseases. The ethical dimension will also be explored.
Reflections on the structure and finality of psychoanalytic interpretations
This article differentiates between two forms of interpretation: symbolic and imaginary. It is argued that an analytic interpretation always revisits a symbolic interpretation made by the subject, resulting in the subject also making an imaginary interpretation.. Furthermore, a psychoanalytic interpretation can only be of service to the analytic cure if the analyst makes a cut between the (revisiting of the symbolic) interpretation made by the analyst and the imaginary interpretation made by the analysand.
Three Psychoanalytic Readings of the Buddhist Emptiness
Both Buddhism and psychoanalysis show us alternative ways to bear human suffering. Buddhism teaches us the path of emptiness (śūnyatā), psychoanalysis that of sublimation. In this comparative literature study we explore how we can conceptualize the realization (jñāna) of emptiness based on the psychoanalytic conceptual framework. For this comparison we respectively use Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and Lacan's seventh seminar, supplemented with secondary literature. In the process of sublimation an object is elevated to the dignity of the Thing. In order to…

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