The History of the Libido's Development: Evidence From Freud's Case Studies

2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Cotti

Entre 1905 et 1911, une nouvelle perspective se fait lentement jour dans les écrits de Sigmund Freud. Une perspective qu'il considère comme ‘historique’ et nommera finalement ‘histoire du développement de la libido’ (Entwicklungsgeschichte der Libido) en 1911. En relisant L'Homme aux rats, Schreber et L'Homme aux loups nous pouvons comprendre la manière dont Freud, grâce à l'analyse de ces histoires de malades, repère les particularités de son ‘histoire du développement de la libido’ au coeur de la préhistoire infantile. Nous étudierons aussi la manière dont cette ‘histoire du développement de libido’, en fournissant une interprétation stéréotypée du matériel psychique, peut conduire à une réduction du mouvement même de l'analyse. Between 1905 and 1911 a perspective slowly appeared in Freud's works - a perspective which he considered ‘historical’ and which he eventually named ‘history of the libido's development’ (Entwicklungsgeschichte der Libido) in 1911. By reading again ‘The Rat Man’, ‘Schreber’ and ‘The Wolf Man’ we can understand how Freud, thanks to the analysis of his case histories, outlined the particularities of this ‘history of the libido's development’, which lies at the core of infantile prehistory. We will also study how this ‘history of the libido's development’, in providing a stereotyped interpretation of psychic material, could lead to a reduction of the very movement of the analysis.

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydia Marinelli ◽  
Andreas Mayer

ArgumentAnimals played an important role in the formation of psychoanalysis as a theoretical and therapeutic enterprise. They are at the core of texts such as Freud's famous case histories of Little Hans, the Rat Man, or the Wolf Man. The infantile anxiety triggered by animals provided the essential link between the psychology of individual neuroses and the ambivalent status of the “totem” animal in so-called primitive societies in Freud's attempt to construct an anthropological basis for the Oedipus complex in Totem and Taboo. In the following, we attempt to track the status of animals as objects of indirect observation as they appear in Freud's classical texts, and in later revisionist accounts such as Otto Rank's Trauma of Birth and Imre Hermann's work on the clinging instinct. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Freudian conception of patients' animal phobias is substantially revised within Hermann's original psychoanalytic theory of instincts which draws heavily upon ethological observations of primates. Although such a reformulation remains grounded in the idea of “archaic” animal models for human development, it allows to a certain extent to empiricize the speculative elements of Freud's later instinct theory (notably the death instinct) and to come to a more embodied account of psychoanalytic practice.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng He Schöneweiß

The study of Chinese art has long been a specialised field bridging the disciplines of art history and Chinese studies. This essay challenges, as always in a real-life crisis, the usefulness of art history of China in the current Covid-19 pandemic. The agency of art historians is put under the historiographical grill. Through two brief case studies, the essay argues that art historians, though as mortal and fragile, are actually professionally equipped to strike the core consequences of the pandemic in its social, political, and cultural aspects.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Jennifer Mitchell

The introduction situates this book’s contribution to the field of literary, theoretical, and cultural studies of masochism. The introduction contextualizes previous critical and historical methodologies by examining case studies by sexologists including Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis, Albert Eulenburg, and Magnus Hirschfeld; psychoanalytical approaches to masochism from Sigmund Freud, Marie Bonaparte, Jessica Benjamin, and Juliet Mitchell; more modern theoretical texts including works by Gilles Deleuze, Anita Phillips, Slavoj Žižek; and specifically intersectional approaches that consider queerness and gender by Leo Bersani, Paula Caplan, Jack Halberstam, and Amber Jamilla Musser. This chapter sets up the core conflict at the center of Ordinary Masochisms: a pseudo-scientific, roundly negative consideration of masochism countered by a collection of unexpected, active, and empowering literary representations of masochism.


Author(s):  
Ndwakhulu Stephen Tshishonga

This chapter examines the relationship between the rural development and cooperative movement and the implications of such a relationship in terms of addressing socio-economic challenges in Africa and still upholding the cooperative ideals, principles, and values. The chapter starts off by conceptualising cooperatives followed by the evolution of cooperatives in Africa with specific focus on opportunities and challenges faced by cooperative enterprises in addressing socio-economic challenges in rural Africa. A brief history of selected case studies such as Ghanaian and Kenyan cooperative movements are highlighted. The historical account is followed by an overview of cooperative movement in the context of South Africa. In addition, lessons are drawn from selected cases for South African cooperative movement and finally the concluding remarks. This chapter makes use of case studies as the core research method.


Author(s):  
Melanie C. Hawthorne

Until well into the twentieth century, the claims to citizenship of women in the US and in Europe have come through men (father, husband); women had no citizenship of their own. The case studies of three expatriate women (Renée Vivien, Romaine Brooks, and Natalie Barney) illustrate some of the consequences for women who lived independent lives. To begin with, the books traces the way that ideas about national belonging shaped gay male identity in the nineteenth century, before showing that such a discourse was not available to women and lesbians, including the three women who form the core of the book. In addition to questions of sexually non-conforming identity, women's mediated claim to citizenship limited their autonomy in practical ways (for example, they could be unilaterally expatriated). Consequently, the situation of the denizen may have been preferable to that of the citizen for women who lived between the lines. Drawing on the discourse of jurisprudence, the history of the passport, and original archival research on all three women, the books tells the story of women's evolving claims to citizenship in their own right.


Author(s):  
Nathan Richards

Ship abandonment relates to the transfer of vessel possession and is at the core of marine insurance classification. This article explores the theme of ship abandonment in two sections—classification of abandonment activities and behaviors, and the history of ship abandonment studies by maritime historians and archaeologists. The history of ship abandonment is presented in the form of case studies in this article. Ship graveyards contain a high concentration of wrecked vessels and are also called ship traps. There are two types of ship graveyards, the first, where vessels are deliberately abandoned in situations like war, and the second, where unwanted vessels are dumped. Ship abandonment is a cycle of abandonment of one function for the adoption of another. These changes involve structural and functional transformations. This article emphasizes the fact that ships are objects abounding with the qualities of particular cultures, as well as the maritimity of culture.


Author(s):  
James McElvenny

This chapter sets the scene for the case studies that follow in the rest of the book by characterising the ‘age of modernism’ and identifying problems relating to language and meaning that arose in this context. Emphasis is laid on the social and political issues that dominated the era, in particular the rapid developments in technology, which inspired both hope and fear, and the international political tensions that led to the two World Wars. The chapter also sketches the approach to historiography taken in the book, interdisciplinary history of ideas.


Author(s):  
J. F. Bernard

What’s so funny about melancholy? Iconic as Hamlet is, Shakespearean comedy showcases an extraordinary reliance on melancholy that ultimately reminds us of the porous demarcation between laughter and sorrow. This richly contextualized study of Shakespeare’s comic engagement with sadness contends that the playwright rethinks melancholy through comic theatre and, conversely, re-theorizes comedy through melancholy. In fashioning his own comic interpretation of the humour, Shakespeare distils an impressive array of philosophical discourses on the matter, from Aristotle to Robert Burton, and as a result, transforms the theoretical afterlife of both notions. The book suggests that the deceptively potent sorrow at the core of plays such as The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, or The Winter’s Tale influences modern accounts of melancholia elaborated by Sigmund Freud, Judith Butler, and others. What’s so funny about melancholy in Shakespearean comedy? It might just be its reminder that, behind roaring laughter, one inevitably finds the subtle pangs of melancholy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-126
Author(s):  
Birgit Schneider

The article discusses how current mediated conditions change nature perception from a media study perspective. The article is based on different case studies such as the current sensation of atmospheric change through sensible media attached to trees which get published via Twitter, the meteorologist Amazonian Tall Tower Observatory and the use of gutta percha derived from tropical trees for the production of cables in the history of telegraphy. For analysing the examples, the perspective of »media as environments« is flipped to »environments as media«, because this focus doesn’t approach media from a networked and technological perspective primarily but makes productive the elemental character of basic »media« like air, earth and water


Author(s):  
Elena N. NARKHOVA ◽  
Dmitry Yu. NARKHOV

This article analyzes the degree of demand for works of art (films and television films and series, literary and musical works, works of monumental art) associated with the history of the Great Patriotic War among contemporary students. This research is based on the combination of two theories, which study the dynamics and statics of culture in the society — the theory of the nucleus and periphery by Yu. M. Lotman and the theory of actual culture by L. N. Kogan. The four waves of research (2005, 2010, 2015, 2020) by the Russian Society of Socio¬logists (ROS) have revealed a series of works in various genres on this topic in the core structure and on the periphery of the current student culture; this has also allowed tracing the dynamics of demand and the “movement” of these works in the sociocultural space. The authors introduce the concept of the archetype of the echo of war. The high student recognition of works of all historical periods (from wartime to the present day) is shown. A significant complex of works has been identified, forming two contours of the periphery. Attention is drawn to the artistic work of contemporary students as a way to preserve the historical memory of the Great Patriotic War. This article explains the necessity of preserving the layer of national culture in order to reproduce the national identity in the conditions of informational and ideological pluralism of the post-Soviet period. The authors note the differentiation of youth due to the conditions and specifics of socialization in the polysemantic sociocultural space.


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