O “lamarckismo” de Freud e a polarização das interpretações

Frequentemente se aponta o “lamarckismo” de Freud. Nas poucas vezes em que foi empreendida com algum rigor historiográfico, a investigação desse traço se prestou ora a denunciar o caráter pseudocientífico da psicanálise, ora a defender o lugar periférico, tardio e, por conseguinte, dispensável de tal “lamarckismo” na obra freudiana. Essas posições devem ser matizadas. Este artigo pretende realizar essa tarefa procurando desfazer os anacronismos que o termo “lamarckismo” abriga e remontar às influentes visões de Ernest Jones, Frank Sulloway e Lucille Ritvo sobre a questão.

Criticizing Phallocentrism in Interwar Britain: Psychoanalyst Sylvia M. Payne's Kleinian Challenge to Freud

Sylvia M. Payne was one of the first women to practice psychoanalysis in Britain. Though she became president of the British Psychoanalytical Society, not a single scholarly work is dedicated to Payne's intellectual ideas—a substantial historical lacuna, especially when compared with the research on Ernest Jones, one of Sigmund Freud's early disciples and the president who preceded her. This essay presents the first exploration of her early work. It focuses on her belonging to a group of British analysts who challenged Sigmund Freud's thinking on sexual difference. The full scope of this challenge, I argue, as it emerged in interwar Britain, has remained unexamined until today. Adding to the scholarship on the prominent and lesser-known roles of women in psychoanalysis, the article shows that Payne made significant contributions to the field; she also developed the work of Melanie Klein, on whom we also need more research. The study describes the life and work of a woman who has been neglected in the historiography of twentieth-century intellectual history. It engages with broader methodological questions of how to define the political, historical role of female psychoanalysts of her generation.

Sándor Ferenczi: tre inediti in italiano

A partire dalla metà degli anni 1980, le teorie di Sándor Ferenczi (1873-1933) hanno suscitato anche in Italia parecchio interesse e stimolato la pubblicazione tanto dei suoi lavori scientifici - psicoanalitici e non - quanto dei suoi epistolari. Ciononostante, resta da tradurre ancora molto materiale, di interesse non soltanto storico. Accanto alle maggiori falle, rappresentate dal terzo volume del prezioso epistolario tra Freud e Ferenczi e dal carteggio tra Ferenczi ed Ernest Jones, ancora non tradotti in italiano, si trovano molti lavori minori ma non per questo privi di valore. Tra di essi i tre pezzi qui proposti: due brevi brani e una curiosa lettera.

From Flibbertigibbet to Ernest Jones and Ernst Simmel: Nightmares under Analysis

Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams denies itself any reference to the immemorial folklore and demonology of nightmares. This telling omission can be linked to the marginal role assigned to the affective dimension of dreams in Freud's book. It can also be linked to Freud's life-long struggle to determine the place of anxiety dreams in the framework of his dream theory. This conceptual problem became even more urgent when, in the wake of World War I, the anxiety dreams of traumatized soldiers appeared on the psychoanalytic agenda. Among Freud's closest collaborators, Ernest Jones was the first to turn his attention to the mythology of nightmares. Interestingly enough, Jones's study treats the nightmare complex exclusively as a problem of cultural theory instead of dream theory. In this essay I explore the theoretical implications of this half-forgotten chapter of psychoanalytic dream theory focusing on Freud, Jones and Ernst Simmel.