André Haynal (Swiss Soc)

La psychanalyse : quelle science (si c’en est une) ?

Pour tenter de répondre à la question soulevée par le titre, la partie initiale du présent travail rappelle les premiers temps de la psychanalyse et les modèles des sciences déjà existantes à la racine de la construction de sa propre scientificité. Freud a finalement élaboré sa métapsychologie composée de présuppositions, (axiomes, postulats) et de descriptions originales, en langage métaphorique, de la vie intérieure. L’ensemble de l’œuvre a été construit et reconstruit par lui et ses successeurs et a subit par la suite des interprétations multiples.

Dans la deuxième partie, nous soulevons la question des éléments de théorie réellement utilisés aussi bien par nos aïeux que par chacun de nous dans notre pratique contemporaine. Stimulés par les pensées de Bion en premier lieu et puis de J. Sandler et d’autres - dans une approche down-top -, nous traçons le chemin partant de la séance concrète et menant à la théorie scientifique en identifiant l’emploi des parties théoriques.

As discussant: Antonino Ferro (Italian Soc)

As discussant: Joachim Kuechenhoff (Swiss Soc)

Chair: Serge Frisch (Belgian Soc)

With simultaneous translation

 

Teresa Olmos de Paz (Madrid Assoc)

Male sexuality and its vicissitudes

Child sexuality is the most significant Freudian discovery. It is the polymorphous sexuality, and is based on the unconscious, on repression and fantasy. Pre- genital sexuality, “sexualité élargie” (extended) –J. Laplanche- is related to fantasy and the auto-erotic object.

Developed during infancy, child sexuality organises and structures the way in which the psyche functions. It is also important to establish the difference between the ‘desiring movements’ which traverse sexuality in the course of a lifetime (genital or pre-genital) and what belongs to the realm of sexual identity.

Psychoanalytic clinical experience demonstrates that “becoming a man” is not a linear and predetermined process, but rather something that must be built, the result of a psychic process. In this sense, the Freudian approach based on the threat of castration implies that there is, to begin with, something one is afraid of losing.

The father also inscribes traces in the child’s unconscious, and these early marks constitute the erogenous basis on which the erotic desire for the father is inscribed. These traces will be later re-signified in the male fantasies related to the introjection of the father’s penis.

From the perspective of psychic production, this central aspect of the constitution of masculinity takes place after the movement from a passive to an active situation that culminates in the separation from the mother, and the maloe identification with the father.

Therefore, a fundamental element of the process of maleness is the partial withdrawal from the bond with the mother, in conjunction with the strengthening of narcissistic structuring identifications with her, which allows the loss of the object.

In the pathology related to the constitution ofmaleness, for example premature ejaculation or impotence, we find individuals that have developed an alienating identification by the mother and with the mother which prevents this separation and consequent undertaking of the road towards the identification with the father.

The alienating identifications encountered during subsequent analytical processes require demanding psychic work on the transference - countertransference bond, which, in the best of cases, will allow a dis-identification from the mother.

A clinical case of a young man will serve to illustrate the problem outlined.

As discussant: Dana Birksted-Breen (British Soc)

Chair: Heribert Blass (German Assoc)

 

Anna Nicolo (Italian Soc)

The paradoxical relationship of the two sides of passion: between creativity and destruction

Through an accurate description of the analysis of an adult woman, which was observed throughout its unfolding, the author discusses two aspects of passion. On the one hand constructive and evolutive, and, on the other, destructive and characterised by the fascination of a state of well-being that was quite distant from reality and which caused no conflict thanks to the paradoxical relationship with a narcissistic double.

Despite all these dynamics, however, in certain situations loving passion is able to swell creativity and evolution in the person who experiences it, and, thus, allowing further maturity of the person's personality that was previously thought to be impossible.

A comparison is also made among other situations such as; adolescent passion, its influence on normal growth or, on the contrary, the particular quality of feelings of passion in adolescents with serious breakdowns.

As discussant: Erwin Kaiser (German Assoc)

Chair: Herbert Kley (German Assoc)

Susann Heenen-Wolff (Belgian Soc)

Infantile Bisexuality and the “complete oedipal complex”.

In the psychoanalytical discussion of what is “mature” sexuality we speak of the “genital” stage and the “resolution” of the oedipal complex in the form of identification with the parent of the same sex and a heterosexually-directed object choice.

A close reading of Freud's texts about sexuality shows that such a normative view cannot be corroborated. As we know, infantile sexuality is bisexually orientated; the final object choice is due to repression of either homosexual or heterosexual desires and is the result of identifications.

Moreover, Freud explained the structural dissatisfaction in human sexuality by its evolution at two separate times: genital sexuality intervenes late in the development of humans (puberty), when sexual body-sensations have already largely developed; pregenital ways of experiencing excitement and pleasure are therefore kept active as much in sexual fantasies as in adult sexuality; they enrich and disturb it at the same time. Therefore the (psychoanalytical) idea of heterosexual genital sexuality as the ideal might more be linked to the infantile fantasies of the primal scene than to sexuality as most human beings experience it in reality. As Freud put it, genital heterosexuality occurs out of necessity for procreation. The present-day division between sexuality and procreation may have brought important changes in sexual life without having been theorized sufficiently in psychoanalysis.

The problematic discussion within psychoanalysis about homosexuality and bisexuality could be considerably enriched by taking fully into account Freud's conception of the structural elements of human sexuality and its vicissitudes.

Discussant: NN

Chair: Anders Zachrisson (Norwegian Soc)

The Times of our Lives: Ageing

Danielle Quinodoz (Swiss Soc)

Growing old: a journey of self-discovery

David Bell (British Soc)

Knowledge of time and death, felt as the realisation of persecuting objects

Eduard Klain (Croatian Study Group)

Problems of elderly psychoanalyst

Lilo Plaschkes (Israel Soc)

Looking back memoirs

Chair: Gabriele Junkers (German Assoc)

Marie Christine Laznik (Assoc. Lacannienne Internationale)

A two month baby that aloud to separate love and sexuality. A baby in danger to become autistic and the lack of all infantile sexuality with his mother. Presentation and treatment

Chair: Angela Joyce (British Soc)

Christophe Déjours (French Assoc)

Corps et sexualité

L’amour est peut-être une chimère, mais le fait est qu’il est bel et bien une préoccupation des patients venant en analyse.

A la différence du sexuel qui est orienté vers la recherche de l’excitation, l’amour indique la quête d’une certaine stabilité. Selon Freud l’amour repose sur la conjugaison du courant sensuel avec le courant tendre. Pour Laplanche, l’amour implique un troisième terme : le narcissisme. Dans cette perspective l’élément stabilisateur de l’amour serait à rechercher du côté du narcissisme. Mais à quelles conditions la composante narcissique apporte-t-elle une contribution à la stabilité ou, au contraire, déclenche-t-elle des crises dans la relation amoureuse entre adultes ?

La rencontre érotique qui est au rendez-vous de l’amour met le corps à l’épreuve de l’autre, avec des risques pour le moi et pour le narcissisme. De quelle nature sont les liens entre le corps et le narcissisme ? Qu’est-ce que le narcissisme doit au corps ? Pour répondre à ces questions on envisagera d’abord la formation du corps érotique, en prenant appui sur la théorie de la séduction (dans la perspective proposée par J. Laplanche). On insistera ensuite sur les obstacles rencontrés au cours de la formation du corps érotique. On examinera enfin les conséquences des défaillances du corps érotique sur le narcissisme et leurs incidences sur la stabilité et la déstabilisation de l’économie amoureuse.

Discussant: Brian O'Neill (British Soc)

Chair: Reinhold Plassmann (German Assoc)

Simultaneous translation

 

Maria Teresa Hooke (Australian Soc)

The Tyranny of Distance

incl. a slide presentation by Joan Thompson (British Assoc)

Australia was founded as a colony of Britain, a land of unwanted convicts and free settlers. We are a nation of past and recent migrants. As David Malouf suggests, although the brutalities committed against the indigenous population remained for a long time a black mark on our history, Australia is a successful ‘experiment’ in which the rejects of one society created another society which has become a solid and flourishing democracy,. The tyranny of distance and the opportunity that this ‘experiment ‘offered have shaped Australia and have also shaped the history of psychoanalysis in this country. In this paper the author attempts to show the difficulties and conflicts encountered by a small group of passionate and tenacious pioneers trying to establish psychoanalysis in this far away land and in an alien and conservative cultural environment.

Psychoanalytic societies are shaped by their history and by their heritage: the traumas which have marked troubled beginnings are part of this heritage. When unprocessed by the group, the unfinished psychological tasks of our predecessors become deposited in the next generations. The nature of our work and of our groups dynamics, make psychoanalytic societies particularly prone and permeable to receive such deposits. The author describes the vicissitudes of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society in its struggle to integrate its double British and Hungarian psychoanalytic heritage and successive migration of analysts trained overseas, while trying to establish training in geographical isolation and with reduced opportunities for dialogue with the wider psychoanalytic community. The author shows how the turmoil and dissent of this period impacted on generations to come and on the Australian Society’s own identity, growth and creativity.

Frances Thomson Salo (British Soc, Australian Soc)

New thoughts for a New Land

I shall try to show how clinical work in infant mental health which was rooted in the analytic culture of Europe, specifically object relations theory and infant observation, has been shaped in response to Australian conditions. Working at the Royal Children's Hospital, the culture was one where the clinicians were strongly influenced by Winnicott to engage jointly with the parents and the ‘baby as subject’ entitled to an intervention as a person in their own right. I’ll consider how the clinician aims for mindfulness and secure attachment in work with infants and parents from the triple perspective of psychological holding, communicating with the baby and playfulness in the infant-professional interaction.

In infant observation, the increasing awareness that very young infants often seek a relational encounter with the observer led to a greater awareness of the infant's relatedness and curiosity about the observer's mind.

20 years ago I co-facilitated an open-ended weekly mother-baby therapy group that ran continuously for 8 years. Some current short-term applications of this are described: groups for parents who have contact with child protective services, and for parents and infants who have experienced family violence. It may be developed further with indigenous populations. Other possible new directions for therapeutic interventions are outlined eg with adolescent mothers.

John Boots (Australian Soc)

History and the development of a psychoanalytic culture

"What to do about Australia". Freud to Jung 1911. Australia has been described as a " phantom of psychoanalysis" playing a " crucial and defining moment in psychoanalytic history. But of our own history how does a psychoanalytic culture and it's origins in diaspora, develop in a culture of conflict. To what extent has it reflected and been influenced by our two histories. Some reflections on the development of a psychoanalytic environment in the land of The Dreaming.

Discussant: David Tuckett (British Soc)

Chair: John McClean (Australian Soc)

 

Jan Abram (British Soc)

On desire, female sexuality and the capacity to love

Freud discovered that resistance was the most powerful force acting against the psychoanalytic cure in his treatment of the hysteric. Varying levels of resistance permeate the transference and interpretation aims at freeing the subject from the transference-resistance. Following Freud, Winnicott extended psychoanalysis by emphasising the interpsychic dynamic between the subject’s primary psychic creativity and the object’s psychic survival. The author has proposed the dual conception of a surviving and non-surviving object. These specific intrapsychic objects emanate from the earliest and subsequent interpsychic exchanges in which the m/other alternates between psychic survival and psychic non-survival.

This essay examines a particularly powerful resistance in a female analysand in which the fear of analysis revealed a fear of her own desire. The clinical picture illustrates unconscious phantasies related to female sexual development. It is suggested that desire dominated by a non-surviving object, inhibits growth and constitutes the root of transference-resistance. In contrast, desire in the context of a surviving object unfolds a capacity to love. The author concludes that the development of an intrapsychic surviving object in analysis relies on the analyst’s psychic survival. This facilitates the working through in the transference and includes the work of mourning. While fulfilling desire liberates the self, enabling the subject to become an adult, the reality principle demands that it be accompanied by disappointment because the m/other is ultimately unattainable. The point at which the subject is able to realise her desire and simultaneously recognise her disillusionment, heralds the capacity for discernment of the other, leading to the capacity for concern and mature love.

Vincenzo Bonaminio (Italian Soc)

Chair: Alexandra Billinghurs (Swedish Assoc)

 

Donald Campbell (British Soc)

Crime and Passion: The analysis of a domestic assault

The crime I will be addressing is a man’s violence towards his female lover, which erupted in the midst of a passionate kiss. My theoretical background is built upon my understanding that the ego’s primary task is the preservation of the self, that is, the maintenance of a homeostasis where all psychological and physiological systems are functioning at an optimal level. Aggression is viewed as an ego instinct, represented in our most primitive defences of fight/flight, which are utilised by the ego in its response to anything that constitutes a threat to physical or psychological homeostasis. I distinguish between two types of violence: ruthless violence, which is primary and aims to negate any threat to homeostasis, and sadistic violence, which is derived from ruthless aggression and aims to control a threat. Passion may not only trigger a crime, but it may be embedded in the crime. When ruthless aggression results in the restoration of pleasure, libidinal satisfaction is experienced. Libido is also the primary ingredient in the conversion of ruthless violence into sadistic violence. Clinical material from a man’s attack on his lover will be presented to identify and illustrate these two types of violence. Glasser’s Core Complex will be used to understand the primitive anxieties of abandonment and engulfment that threatened the psychological survival of the subject and motivated a domestic assault.

Discussant: Camilla Bargum (Finnish Soc)

Chair: Aleksandar Vuco (Belgrad Soc)

 

 

Evelyne Sechaud (French Assoc)

Absence d’amour et de passion

En effeuillant la marguerite… / Plucking the daisy / Das Gänselblümchen wird entblättert

L’absence d’amour est à distinguer de l’inexistence de l’amour. Le premier prend place dans le cadre normal névrotique du développement. Le deuxième est la manifestation d’une organisation psychique relevant d’un narcissisme de mort luttant contre un débordement pulsionnel. Dans le désert affectif peuvent subsister les traces d’une relation primitive qui portait en elle l’espoir d’une réalisation restée en suspend et non advenue. La résurgence dans le transfert des traces sensorielles de cette relation primaire peut permettre de réanimer un passé émotionnel sans représentation et à peine figurable.

Discussant: Kenneth Robinson (British Soc)

Chair: Tamara Stajner Popovic (Belgrade Soc)

Simultaneous translation

Gerd Schmithuesen (German Assoc)

On the anxiety to talk about love

In our literature, a patient’s expression of love in the analytic hour is often discussed as a resistance against analytic understanding and working through. For good reasons, Freud himself warned his colleagues in his paper “Observations on transference-love”, not to respond to the love of a patient by acting. Nevertheless, quite a great number of colleagues had severe difficulties in dealing with the expressed or not overtly expressed love of their patients. Some abused the patients’ love by acting, but a considerable number of colleagues also try to cope with their difficulty concerning the love of their patients by denying it in different ways - a potentially destructive solution as well.

In his paper the author illustrates some difficulties and a significant change in his own attitude towards the topic of love in the analytic hour. He gives some examples of his attempts to deal with direct or – more often – indirect expressions of love and discusses different reasons, why it seems to be so difficult to deal with the love of our patients – and likewise our love as analysts. A central topic is the anxiety to talk about love – the anxiety of our patients as well as our anxiety as analysts. If it is possible – for the analyst – to understand his anxiety concerning the love of his patient and his own feeling of love, first of all regarding the necessity of abstinence, he can succeed in talking frankly about the topic. This can open the space for the patient to come into contact with his own love and to express wishes and fantasies that had been resisted until then. As a result, the analytic understanding will deepen on both sides.

Discussant: Denny Panitz (Hellenic Soc)

Chair: Marta Badoni (Italian Soc)

 

 

Anna Potamianou (Hellenic Soc)

At the crossroads of passion and omnipotence

The paper explores the psychic economy and dynamics of passions, considered as a powerful operator that affects both body and psyche.

Referring to the characteristics of the object / subject relationship in passionate exchanges during life, and more specifically in the analytic situation, the author formulates the hypothesis that omnipotent fantasies constitute their background. Clinical material, as well as myths, legends and literature are used as examples that bear the marks of this problematic issue.

Some propositions are presented concerning channels to follow in the work leading towards transformations.

Discussant: Teresa Flores (Portuguese Soc)

Narcissism: At the crossroads of passion and omnipotence

First of all, I would like to thank Anna Potamiano for her stimulating paper. My comments will focus mainly on aspects of the narcissism “at the crossroad of passion and omnipotence”, which was raised by A.Potamiano in her paper and clinical vignettes. I will stress the way the analyst deals with the patient’s expression of love, passion, sexuality and omnipotence in the analytic session and how the analyst deals with his own feelings and fantasies about the patient..

Should we consider as Freud did that “There is no such state (of being in love) which does not reproduce infantile prototypes. It is precisely from this infantile determination that it receives its compulsive character...”? Passion gives rise to a feeling of omnipotence, of being the special and powerful one. However, if the object fails to satisfy the expectations and the narcissism of the subject it suddenly will turn into a violent destructiveness, as was referred by Anna Potamiano, and the subject will experience a violent need for control and envy, in a desperate refusal to recognise the individuality and separateness between the self and the object. In passion it isn’t only that the subject dominates the object; the power of the object, which is the result of the idealisation and of the projection of the ego or of the ego ideal onto the object, will also cause the subject to surrender to the object. This projection contributes to the confused state of mind, in which subject and object become one. Although this feeling of wholeness is experienced as an omnipotent triumph, this may also lead to feelings of hate and destructiveness and the need to recover individuality which O.Gabbard stated as, “the need to find and to exaggerate differences between ourselves and those we love in order to maintain ourselves as autonomous individuals” and to which Freud referred as “narcissism of the minor differences”; he held that “self-love works for the preservation of the individual, and behaves as though the occurrence of any divergence from his own particular lines of development involved a criticism of them and a demand for their alteration”. The subject, imprisoned and impoverished due to his submission to the object, may take advantage of “these minor differences” and come to experience them as intolerable and consequently, try to break free. In the analysis of narcissistic patients, the violence expressed against the analyst at the end of the session may be a way of becoming separated, of recovering his own individuality and also to deny the need and the love for the object. The analytic couple may be experienced by these patients as an idealised, omnipotent and powerful relationship, however, as Rosenfeld pointed out, these patients will manifest resistance in the analysis, by trying to control any expression of the analyst’s separateness and individuality and of their need and dependence on him. The great and unbearable humiliation for the patient will be to recognise the analyst as a “feeding mother” from whom he needs nurturing.

Like in those patients referred by A. Potamiano, the treatment of more severe pathologies by psychoanalysis requires that more attention be given to the pre genital period. Issues of sexuality and passion appear frequently in the analytic sessions, in patient’s narratives and in the transference/counter transference relationship as an actualisation of the past and archaic object relationships. Sexuality, passion..., as was pointed out by A.Ferro , may be approached in different ways in the analytic session: as a narrative of the patient past sexuality (infantile sexuality) or of his external reality; as an expression of his inner world and his object relationship; or as a character present in the session and an expression of the emotional climate lived in the analytic field by both elements of the analytic couple. We speak frequently about the patient feelings of passion and falling in love with the analyst but we don’t usually speak so much about the analyst’s feelings towards the patient. Usually these feelings may act as a resistance to the analytic process and often challenge the analyst’s “neutral position” by a transference actualisation of the patient’s object relationships. If the analyst doesn’t become aware of his counter transference reaction he may try, by withdrawal or by a compulsive interpretative attitude, to neutralise the erotisation and the expression of love feelings not allowing the safe and free expression of the patient’s fantasies and desires. As Freud referred “It is therefore, just as disastrous for the analysis if the patient’s craving for love is gratified as if it is suppressed...”.It will be often by the confrontation with his own “enactments” that the analyst will become aware of his counter transference, his feelings of love, hate, fear... and also the idealised and omnipotent role projected by the patient onto him. Through the interpretation the analyst will be then able to recover his “neutral position” and to afford the patient a better differentiation between the analyst as a transference object and the analyst as a “new object”

Chair: Voytec Hanbowski (Polish Soc)

 

Viviane Chetrit-Vatine (Israel Soc)

The frame , the analyst’s passion, and the ethical seduction of the analytic situation

My central proposition is that the analytic situation, including the frame and the analyst’s passion, is seductive and ethical from the start. I submit that at the origin of the moving on of the analytic process and its transformative capacity , that is , at the basis of the appropriation of subjectivity, lies this double asymmetry that I coined: the ethical seduction of the analytic situation. After having situated my thinking in the context of changes we may meet in contemporary psychoanalytic practice, I will remind some of Laplanche’s theory relevant to the issue of the primal seduction asymmetry and I will speak of the asymmetry of the analyst responsibility for his/her patient ( building on Levinas views on Ethics).Then, on the basis of Bion’s, Green’s and Kristeva’s views, I will propose that the analyst’s passion is the affective part of the ethical seduction. I will address the frame related question, with the help of a clinical illustration.

Discussant: Susann Heenen-Wolff (Belgian Soc)

Chair: Haydée Faimberg (Paris Soc)

Patrick Miller (Psychoanalytic Soc)

« An enveloppe in the mail-box » : some considerations on the early shapings of sexuality

The early dialectics between intrapsychic and intersubjective aspects of mental life seem to be at the core of sexual dysfunctions in adults. Their unfolding in the course of analysis, in the subtle unconscious interplay of transference and counter-transference, enables their slow working through. Most of the time we are dealing with issues of penetrability, permeability and receptivity. These very early forms of interplay contribute to the construction of the psychic apparatus but they are also experienced at a stage where the bodily aspects of the ego are prevalent. Their shapes have to do with all kinds of different forms of interpenetrations of the infant’s and the primary object’s psychic spaces, experienced as pleasurable or un-pleasurable sensations shaped by all aspects of sensoriality.

Freud’s drive theory and Bion’s container/contained relation will provide a conceptual frame of reference to explore some clinical vignettes. Bion’s pictograms ♂ and ♀ will be explored as non-verbal signifiers of some early forms of psychic bisexuality taking part in the early shapings of mental life and sexuality. How sexual difference plays its role from the start in a non-sexual yet sexual way. From the beginning sexuality seems to be rooted in the development of a capacity to elaborate meaning in the human mind.

Discussant: Annalisa Ferretti (Italian Assoc)

Chair: Leena Klockars (Finnish Soc)

 

Viviane Chetrit-Vatine (Israel Soc)

The frame , the analyst’s passion, and the ethical seduction of the analytic situation

My central proposition is that the analytic situation, including the frame and the analyst’s passion, is seductive and ethical from the start. I submit that at the origin of the moving on of the analytic process and its transformative capacity , that is , at the basis of the appropriation of subjectivity, lies this double asymmetry that I coined: the ethical seduction of the analytic situation. After having situated my thinking in the context of changes we may meet in contemporary psychoanalytic practice, I will remind some of Laplanche’s theory relevant to the issue of the primal seduction asymmetry and I will speak of the asymmetry of the analyst responsibility for his/her patient ( building on Levinas views on Ethics).Then, on the basis of Bion’s, Green’s and Kristeva’s views, I will propose that the analyst’s passion is the affective part of the ethical seduction. I will address the frame related question, with the help of a clinical illustration.

Discussant: Susann Heenen-Wolff (Belgian Soc)

Chair: Haydée Faimberg (Paris Soc)

Patrick Miller (Psychoanalytic Soc)

« An enveloppe in the mail-box » : some considerations on the early shapings of sexuality

The early dialectics between intrapsychic and intersubjective aspects of mental life seem to be at the core of sexual dysfunctions in adults. Their unfolding in the course of analysis, in the subtle unconscious interplay of transference and counter-transference, enables their slow working through. Most of the time we are dealing with issues of penetrability, permeability and receptivity. These very early forms of interplay contribute to the construction of the psychic apparatus but they are also experienced at a stage where the bodily aspects of the ego are prevalent. Their shapes have to do with all kinds of different forms of interpenetrations of the infant’s and the primary object’s psychic spaces, experienced as pleasurable or un-pleasurable sensations shaped by all aspects of sensoriality.

Freud’s drive theory and Bion’s container/contained relation will provide a conceptual frame of reference to explore some clinical vignettes. Bion’s pictograms ♂ and ♀ will be explored as non-verbal signifiers of some early forms of psychic bisexuality taking part in the early shapings of mental life and sexuality. How sexual difference plays its role from the start in a non-sexual yet sexual way. From the beginning sexuality seems to be rooted in the development of a capacity to elaborate meaning in the human mind.

Discussant: Annalisa Ferretti (Italian Assoc)

Chair: Leena Klockars (Finnish Soc)

 

Monica Horovitz (Paris Soc)

Le corps de la femme dans la relation amoureuse: la flamme et la braise

J’ai choisi de centrer mon étude non pas sur la sexualité féminine ou le désir féminin en général mais sur la notion de leurre comme offre de rencontre érotique entre l’homme et la femme.

La psycho-sexualité féminine se vit en effet dans la relation à l’autre, homme ou femme, pour le rencontrer ou l’éviter et ce dans un lien intersubjectif au sein duquel l’angoisse de castration et celle d’abandon ou d’anéantissement engendrent la création d’un leurre comme appât du désir vacillant.

Tel que je souhaite le conceptualiser, ce leurre n’est pas une mascarade de la femme qui la dédommagerait du manque du phallus. Dans la mascarade, le corps de la femme est le phallus, faute de l’avoir ; par l’éclat de sa beauté, son corps entier équivaut au phallus.

Je conçois pour ma part le leurre comme la participation de la femme à l’embrasement du désir. C’est la « braise » à laquelle je me réfère dans le titre de mon exposé.

Nous verrons comment en dégager des considérations importantes qui nous permettront d’avancer dans la dialectique entre désir, position féminine et d’autres questions propres à la vie amoureuse des deux sexes.

La femme est l’archétype, elle incarne de la manière la plus énigmatique possible la séduction du sein maternel aimé comme premier objet qui lui a octroyé son pouvoir d’attraction sur l’homme.

Le jeu des sexes, comme tout jeu, se joue dans une « dimension autre » (Winnicott) grâce au déploiement de la rêverie. L’efficacité de ce jeu réussit à activer une fonction féminine que je définirai comme une fonction leurre érotique et anti-thanatos.

Discussant: Laura Ambrosiano (Italian Soc)

La rencontre érotique a toujours une double origine, l?objet est complètement le même, et tout à fait un autre, étranger et neuf. La femme crée avec son corps un leurre qui anime le désir et l?érotisme. Avec cette activité de la femme le désir se déplace, sur les traces de l?objet originel, vers de nouveaux objets. Mais la création du leurre est concevable seulement après avoir traversé la perte de l?objet originel, c'est qui fait la difference avec le fétiche.

Cette hypothèse nous conduit dans le territoire intermédiaire entre « Gradiva » et le fétiche.

Mais je pense aussi aux processus de séparation: l'intégration du schéma corporel et de la sexualité dans l?expérience du soi est entrelacé avec le deuil de séparation et individuation.

Pour la petite fille sa potentialité créative passe à travers l?identification avec la mère, mais aussi a travers la disidentification, la séparation, le desir de devenir différente de sa propre mère.

Les processus de séparation requièrent vivement l?entrée en jeux de la fonction du père.

Le père a une présence plus stimulante et moins syntonique, plus excitante que contenante, c?est une présence disjonctive, de séparation.

Chair: Luis Martin Cabre (Madrid Assoc)

 

 

Sylvia Zwettler-Otte (Vienna Soc)

Can we solve the riddle of sexual love without killing the sphinx?

In a touching letter of Freud's to his fiancèe Martha he identifies himself - not with Oedipus - but with the Sphinx asking riddles. To give the right answer to the Sphinx was a question of life and death and had the meaning of the Delphic oracle’s injunction 'Know yourself!'

Many years later, after Freud had discovered that we all might recognize our own desires in this myth, he identified himself with Oedipus. This shift of identification from the Sphinx to Oedipus raises further questions like: Has sexual love always to do with transgression? Why has the Sphinx to die, when the riddle is solved?

These questions might be essential for our psychoanalytic work, since the process of cure is bound to a relapse of the patient's secret love-story. Moreover, our candidates have to shift their role from being patients who first are proposing problems (like the Sphinx) to becoming student-analysts who are trying to solve them (like Oedipus).

Stefano Bolognini (Italian Soc)

The 'countertransferenceless' sphinx: The narcissistic myth of impenetrability

I would like to depict how Freud (when writing that letter to Martha) showed his hope to master his internal and also possibly his external situation; and how in nuce such attitude “announced” his further worry about countertransference.

From his letter emerges his complex admiration both towards Oedipus and toward the Sphinx: a deep ideal connected him to Oedipus, but to the Sphinx too.

I will focuse on a still unsolved problem of implicit fantasies of an "ideal impenetrability" that resist today among many psychoanalysts, in spite of the evidence of the countertransference as a potential richness in the analytic work.

Isn't there today, sometimes, some excess in focusing only on metapsychology, in a sort of ultimate, exhausting duel (based on theoretical riddles) between Oedipus and the Sphinx?

Rainer Gross (Vienna Soc)

The Sphinx as 'Oedipus' other mother'

In many variants of the oedipal myth the Sphinx is presented as a powerful female force – an image of the early, overwhelming maternal figure, Iocasta’s dark sister!

Oedipus kills her from the distance, by force of his words (his interpretation of the riddle). This killing can be seen as a “pre-oedipal” layer of the oedipal story. A shift of power occurs from matriarchal / chtonic / mythical forces to the reign of patriarchal apollinic reason.

Consequences for psychoanalysis as an enlightened science – but always dealing with mythical forces – are discussed.

Chair: Alain Gibeault (Paris Soc)

Sylvia Zwettler-Otte (Vienna Soc)

Can we solve the riddle of sexual love without killing the sphinx?

In a touching letter of Freud's to his fiancèe Martha he identifies himself - not with Oedipus - but with the Sphinx asking riddles. To give the right answer to the Sphinx was a question of life and death and had the meaning of the Delphic oracle’s injunction 'Know yourself!'

Many years later, after Freud had discovered that we all might recognize our own desires in this myth, he identified himself with Oedipus. This shift of identification from the Sphinx to Oedipus raises further questions like: Has sexual love always to do with transgression? Why has the Sphinx to die, when the riddle is solved?

These questions might be essential for our psychoanalytic work, since the process of cure is bound to a relapse of the patient's secret love-story. Moreover, our candidates have to shift their role from being patients who first are proposing problems (like the Sphinx) to becoming student-analysts who are trying to solve them (like Oedipus).

Stefano Bolognini (Italian Soc)

The 'countertransferenceless' sphinx: The narcissistic myth of impenetrability

I would like to depict how Freud (when writing that letter to Martha) showed his hope to master his internal and also possibly his external situation; and how in nuce such attitude “announced” his further worry about countertransference.

From his letter emerges his complex admiration both towards Oedipus and toward the Sphinx: a deep ideal connected him to Oedipus, but to the Sphinx too.

I will focuse on a still unsolved problem of implicit fantasies of an "ideal impenetrability" that resist today among many psychoanalysts, in spite of the evidence of the countertransference as a potential richness in the analytic work.

Isn't there today, sometimes, some excess in focusing only on metapsychology, in a sort of ultimate, exhausting duel (based on theoretical riddles) between Oedipus and the Sphinx?

Rainer Gross (Vienna Soc)

The Sphinx as 'Oedipus' other mother'

In many variants of the oedipal myth the Sphinx is presented as a powerful female force – an image of the early, overwhelming maternal figure, Iocasta’s dark sister!

Oedipus kills her from the distance, by force of his words (his interpretation of the riddle). This killing can be seen as a “pre-oedipal” layer of the oedipal story. A shift of power occurs from matriarchal / chtonic / mythical forces to the reign of patriarchal apollinic reason.

Consequences for psychoanalysis as an enlightened science – but always dealing with mythical forces – are discussed.

Chair: Alain Gibeault (Paris Soc)