Recurring Thoughts on Unconscious Ego Resistances

1992 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 1089-1115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Busch
Keyword(s):  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Past ◽  
Resistance Analysis ◽  
Psychoanalytic Understanding

Analysis of the unconscious ego resistances is one of those clinical concepts more honored in the breach than in the observance. This same point has been made periodically over the past fifty years. It has not been sufficiently realized that a true psychoanalytic understanding of resistance analysis could only begin with Freud's second theory of anxiety. Freud himself never fully embraced this theory, and clinical contributions since then have varied in their ability to use the techniques inherent in the second theory of anxiety. Recent contributions to the literature have not eliminated the espousal of theories of resistance based on earlier views of anxiety. Reasons cited for this include: the ambiguities in Freud's writing, the direction of the early ego theorists, and proclivities toward deeper interpretations.

Acta Fluens – Generatives Handeln und Improvisation im Jazz

2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-60
Author(s):  
Davide Sparti
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

Obwohl jede menschliche Handlung mit einem gewissen Grad an Improvisation erfolgt, gibt es kulturelle Praktiken, bei denen Improvisation eine überwiegende Rolle spielt. Um das Risiko zu vermeiden, einen zu breiten Begriff von Improvisation zu übernehmen, konzentriere ich mich im vorliegenden Beitrag auf den Jazz. Meine zentrale Frage lautet, wie Improvisation verstanden werden muss. Mein Vorgehen ist folgendes: Ich beginne mit einem Vergleich von Improvisation und Komposition, damit die Spezifizität der Improvisation erklärt werden kann. Danach wende ich mich dem Thema der Originalität als Merkmal der Improvisation zu. Zum Schluss führe ich den Begriff affordance ein, um die kollektive und zirkuläre Logik eines Solos zu analysieren. Paradigmatisch wird der Jazzmusiker mit dem Engel der Geschichte verglichen, der nur auf das Vergangene blickt, während er der Zukunft den Rücken zugekehrt hat, und lediglich ihr zugetrieben wird. Weder kann der Improvisierende das Material der Vergangenheit vernachlässigen noch seine genuine Tätigkeit, das Improvisieren in der Gegenwart und für die Zukunft, aufgeben: Er visiert die Zukunft trotz ihrer Unvorhersehbarkeit über die Vermittlung der Vergangenheit an.<br><br>While improvised behavior is so much a part of human existence as to be one of its fundamental realities, in order to avoid the risk of defining the act of improvising too broadly, my focus here will be upon one of the activities most explicitly centered around improvisation – that is, upon jazz. My contribution, as Wittgenstein would say, has a »grammatical« design to it: it proposes to clarify the significance of the term »improvisation.« The task of clarifying the cases in which one may legitimately speak of improvisation consists first of all in reflecting upon the conditions that make the practice possible. This does not consist of calling forth mysterious, esoteric processes that take place in the unconscious, or in the minds of musicians, but rather in paying attention to the criteria that are satisfied when one ascribes to an act the concept of improvisation. In the second part of my contribution, I reflect upon the logic that governs the construction of an improvised performance. As I argue, in playing upon that which has already emerged in the music, in discovering the future as they go on (as a consequence of what they do), jazz players call to mind the angel in the famous painting by Klee that Walter Benjamin analyzed in his Theses on the History of Philosophy: while pulled towards the future, its eyes are turned back towards the past.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND TIME. IS SUBJECTIVE TIME OBJECTIVE?

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-188
Author(s):  
G.S. Prygin
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Physics ◽  
Psychological Aspect ◽  
Subjective Time ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Time Consciousness ◽  
The Past ◽  
Equilibrium Processes ◽  
Time Quantum ◽  
Temporal Modes

We study the problems of time consciousness from the standpoint of philosophy, physics and psychology; it is argued that such a sequence in the analysis of the problem allows us to reveal the actual psychological aspect of the problem of the objectivity of the consciousness of time, which is the goal of the study. Both the philosophical concepts of the time consciousness of I. Kant, E. Husserl and F. Brentano, and the physical theories of the study of time (quantum physics, cosmology, the physics of non-equilibrium processes) are analyzed. It has been established that in philosophical theories, the concepts: consciousness, memory, perception, representation, and others do not have clear definitions and can change their meaning depending on the context. It is emphasized that in physical and human sciences time is investigated, as a rule, in connection with the concept of “space”. It is shown that when analyzing the problem of the consciousness of time, one should first decide on the concept of “reality”, which allows us to remove contradictions in the understanding of time in various physical theories. It is concluded that the existence of both objective and subjective time can only be spoken when we operate with concepts; outside of this the concept of “time” has meaning only when a person is considered as part of society. It is shown that in relation to the collective and personal unconscious, the temporal modes of the "past", "present" and "future" do not make sense, since "the whole diversity of everything" is represented in the unconscious field simultaneously and extra-spatially.

The Racist Enjoyments and Fantasies of International Development

2020 ◽  
pp. 236-264
Author(s):  
Ilan Kapoor
Keyword(s):  
International Development ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Psychoanalytic Understanding ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter explores racist enjoyments and fantasies of international development. The small size of the literature on racism in international development is revealing of the relative silence on the issue in this field. There is repeated exclamation in this same literature about such silence, yet with nary a reference to the unconscious. What appears to be missing is precisely a psychoanalytic understanding of this silence. Although scholars underline a general reticence in talking about racism in development, they proceed to speak about it even so, pointing out the many ways in which it manifests. Yet it seems difficult to understand how racism can be both denied and furtively confessed without recourse to the notion of the unconscious. In fact, “a silence that nonetheless speaks” is the very psychoanalytic definition of the unconscious. Moreover, what remains unexplained is why such racism cannot be publicly or “officially” uttered. Could it be because the racism that supports development is obscene? Is it because development is sustained, willy-nilly, by alluring (unconscious) fantasies of domination and white supremacy, with the result that people actually enjoy racism? Is this why racism cannot be easily admitted (or eliminated)?

scholarly journals Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy: A Treatment Overview and Empirical Basis

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Abbass ◽  
Joel M. Town ◽  
Ellen Driessen
Keyword(s):  
Therapeutic Process ◽  
Short Term ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Dynamic Psychotherapy ◽  
Main Research ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
Character Structure ◽  
Mcgill University ◽  
Research Findings

Based on over forty years of videotaped case-based research, Habib Davanloo of McGill University, Canada, discovered some of the core ingredients that can enable direct and rapid access to the unconscious in resistant3 patients, patients with func-tional disorders, and patients with fragile character structure. We will describe here some of the main research findings that culminated in his description of a central therapeutic process involved in the intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy (ISTDP) model. We will also describe the evolution of the technique over the past thirty years and summarize the empirical base for Davanloo’s ISTDP.

Renaissance Psychologies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Lanier Reid
Keyword(s):  
Wave Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Physical Processes ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Past ◽  
Immortal Soul ◽  
Rhythmic Cycles ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Immediate Experience ◽  
Plot Design

Thirteen writershave comprehensively explained theRenaissance scheme of physiology-psychology used for nosce teipsum, to ‘know oneself’, and other scholars have analysed key features likehumours, bodily spirits, passions, reason, inner wits, soul and spirit, mystic apprehension.Only poetswith epic scope, like Spenser and Shakespeare, depict human nature holistically, yet these finest poets have radically distinct psychologies.Spenser’s Christianised Platonism prioritises the soul, his art mirroringdivine Creation as dogmatically and encyclopedically conceived. He looks to the past, collating classical and medieval authorities in memory-devices like the figurative house, nobly ordered in triadic mystic numerical hierarchyto reform the ruins of time. Shakespeare’s sophisticated Aristoteleanism prioritises the body, highlighting physical processes and dynamic feelings of immediate experience, and subjecting them to intense, skeptical consciousness. He points to the future, using the witty ironies of popular stage productions to test and deconstruct prior authority, opening the unconscious to psychoanalysis. This polarity of psychologies is radical and profound, resembling the complementary theories of physics, structuring reality either (like Spenser) in the neatly-contained form of particle theory, or (like Shakespeare) in the rhythmic cycles of wave theory. How do we explain these distinct concepts, and how are they related? These poets’ contrary artistry appears in strikingly different versions of a ‘fairy queen’, of humour-based passions (notably the primal passion of self-love), of intellection (divergent modes of temptation and of moral resolution), of immortal soul and spirit, of holistic plot design, and of readiness for final judgment.

A Present Folded Back on the Past (Bergson)

2005 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf Bernet
Keyword(s):  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Status ◽  
Metaphysics Of Presence ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain

AbstractIn Matter and Memory, Bergson examines the relationship between perception and memory, the status of consciousness in its relation to the brain, and more generally, a possible conjunction of matter and mind. Our reading focuses in particular on his understanding of the evanescent presence of the present and of its debt vis-à-vis the "unconscious" consciousness of a "virtual" past. We wish to show that the Bergsonian version of a critique of "the metaphysics of presence" is, for all that, an offshoot of a Platonic type of metaphysics. It is true that Bergson departs from traditional standpoints on the side of a self-sufficient and original present and a form of presence to which the transparency of consciousness would confer the character of immediate evidence. All the same, it can hardly be claimed that his rehabilitation of the past and the unconscious opens up new perspectives on how forgetting and death are bound up with the work of memory.

Poétique de la rupture spectrale

Revue Romane ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-130
Author(s):  
R.-L. Etienne Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sylvie Germain ◽  
Pierre Michon ◽  
Verbal Discourse ◽  
Traditional Communities ◽  
Jean Rouaud ◽  
Gérard Macé ◽  
Pierre Bergounioux

Sociologists and historians of genealogical filiations invoke modernity as the dissolution of traditional communities that formerly, albeit oft tacitly, bound descendants to ancestors. So as to invent oneself spontaneously and without restraint, the modern figure breaks with the strictures of the past, forging a path toward liberation. This newly-minted “emancipation” gives way to a sense of discomfortable culpability among contemporary “scribes.” In quest of remedy, they fashion a space, at once disturbing yet inviting to the ghosts and spectres of primogenitors, a space that both supports and distorts the words of heir(s). In such an optic, Sylvie Germain (1954) and Jean Rouaud (1952), Gérard Macé (1946), Pierre Michon (1945) and Pierre Bergounioux (1949) are powerfully haunted writers. As beneficiaries/successors, their gestures recall past lives and their words replicate their parents’ inflections and manner of verbal discourse. They are, as such, dispossessed of a familial past that represents little but ruin and grief, yet possessed by those absent beings who intrude obsessively on their consciousness and speech. They are heirs torn apart by a melancholy that extends to the grave of their “predecessors.” Contemporary literature vies with this spectral theme to analyze the ambivalence occasioned by such haunting refrains: artistic victims, orphans and parricidal vestiges of a family past, significantly impacted by the unconscious and linguistic upheavals that accompany such compelling loss.

The Ancient Unconscious

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vered Lev Kenaan
Keyword(s):  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Ancient Text ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Classical Philology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Classical Studies ◽  
Psychoanalytic Concept ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Psychic Reality

Commonly understood as a modern conceptual invention rather than the discovery of a psychic reality, the notion of the unconscious is often criticized by traditional classicists as an anachronistic lens, one that ineluctably subjects ancient experience to modern patterns of thought. The book challenges this ambivalent theoretical disposition toward the psychoanalytic concept by offering an interpretation of the unconscious, explaining why this concept is in fact inseparable from, and crucial for, the study of the ancient text and more generally for the methodology of classical philology. The book thus examines the complicated, often conflicted, relationship between classical studies and psychoanalytic theory. The Ancient Unconscious considers the debate over whether the ancients had an unconscious as an invitation to rethink the relationship between antiquity and modernity. While antiquity does not provide organic provenance for modernity, it is nevertheless the case that despite the cultural and historical distance, the two epochs are firmly connected. The book investigates the meaning of the textual ties created by arbitrary, spontaneous, and unintentional contacts between the past and its future. Understanding the meaning of textuality through contact between times, historical moments that have no priority under the law of chronology, goes hand in hand with the book’s interpretation of the unconscious. Associations and connections between the past and its future—including the present—belong to the sphere of the unconscious. This latter is primarily employed here in order to study the inherent, often hidden links that bind modernity to classical antiquity, modern to ancient experiences.

To be or not to be three: a clinical narrative, an unanswered question

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Jill Savege Scharff
Keyword(s):  
Family Of Origin ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Couple Relationship ◽  
Unanswered Question ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Potential Child ◽  
Psychoanalytic Literature ◽  
Clinical Narrative ◽  
Psychoanalytic Understanding ◽  
Psychoanalytic Writing

The psychoanalytic literature deals with parenthood as a developmental stage but barely addresses the couple's preconception of fertility intentions. The author reviews the available literature from social research and psychoanalytic writing. Working with a couple over family of origin conflicts, she uncovers the hidden conflict over the wish to have or not have a child, reveals unconscious fantasies about the potential child, and deals with conflict in the otherwise compatible couple relationship itself. The author offers this clinical vignette to extend psychoanalytic understanding of the unconscious fantasies involved. She concludes with a discussion of transference towards the couple therapist as an infection to be avoided, an annoying parent to speed away from, and a disturbing child about whom the couple was ambivalent.

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