The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis in Poland Before the First World War

So far, the origins of Polish psychoanalysis have remained in historical obscurity. Today few people remember that at the start of the twentieth century psychoanalysis sparked a debate and divided physicians, psychologists and pedagogues into its followers and opponents in partitioned Poland. The debate about psychoanalysis played out with the most dynamism in the scientific community of Polish neurologists and psychiatrists, where most of the first Polish psychoanalysts were based: Ludwig Jekels, Stefan Borowiecki, Jan Nelken, Herman Nunberg and Karol de Beaurain. Their efforts to popularize psychoanalytic therapy resulted in the entire scientific session being devoted to psychoanalysis at the Second Congress of Neurologists, Psychiatrists and Psychologists in Krakow in 1912. This paper illustrates the profiles of individuals who were involved in the popularization of Polish psychoanalytic thought and demonstrates a variety of reactions provoked by psychoanalytic ideas in scientific circles. It also sets out to piece together the development of Polish psychoanalysis as a whole before the First World War, suggesting that this first wave of interest might in some ways amount to a historically overlooked pre-war Polish school.

A "space" created in psychoanalysis and Eastern thought: a discussion of holding environment, container, and wu-wei

In this article Winnicott, Bion, and Zhuangzi's three metaphorical concepts of psychological space are compared to understand the meaning of their respective use of space and unity, as well as the importance of the unity of space itself. This is carried out against the background of psychoanalysis and Eastern thought. This is not only a state that analysts need to be able to achieve in psychoanalytic therapy, but is also related to the quality of the mental state of each of us in our daily lives. An open and perceptive experience is responsible for the spontaneous presentation and for mental growth, and in Eastern thought, at its core is the wu-wei thought, defined as unconflicted personal harmony, inaction, or free-flowing spontaneity. Although psychoanalysis is a therapeutic method, it is not limited to this function. It is also a preparation for patients to approach their true self or "truth". Freud (1912e) described a way of approaching "an open mind, free from any presupposition" that could be achieved through analysis, and he promoted the development of mature interpersonal relations. Buddhist or Taoist practice, on the other hand, relies on correct breathing to calm oneself. Beyond all doubt, Winnicott, Bion, and the wise men of the East all knew that connecting with emotion or acquiring knowledge must be done in a calm state of mind.

Thoughts on Transference Analysis in Transference-Focused Psychotherapy

Transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP) represents a specific extension of psychoanalytic therapy for treatment of individuals with personality disorders, who may be helped without the more significant time investment required of a standard psychoanalysis. The treatment represents a contemporary formulation of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, updated in light of both empirical research and scientific developments in boundary fields close to the psychodynamic endeavor, particularly affective neuroscience and the psychology of couples and small groups. In TFP, the transference signifies the enactment in the here and now of a specific affective relationship between patient and therapist that reflects one aspect, defensive or impulsive, of a pathogenic dynamic unconscious conflict. This conflict needs to be analyzed, interpreted, and resolved. Various elements of transference analysis in TFP are discussed in this article.

The Tempering Frame

Ernie Gehr has worked in both film and digital media. This chapter examines several key works representative of both media. In contrast to critical approaches that see Gehr’s work as purely cognitive or structural exercises, the author argues that it has a deeply personal dimension, the sources of which can be traced to his childhood, and even earlier, to his parents’ experiences during the Second World War. Gehr’s incorrigible sense of play and fascination with magic are explored as essential to his love affair with motion picture media. His use of the frame in both media is particularly stressed as having a strong psychic function, not unlike that of the holding environment provided in psychoanalytic therapy.

The Archive

This chapter examines Derrida’s writings on the archive and, more particularly, his reflections on the archive of psychoanalysis. Although texts such as Mal d’archive (Archive Fever) have often been held as heralding a ‘theoretical’ turn in archival studies, Derrida’s writings on the archive continually question the limitations of any theory, concept, or science of the archive. Part of the archive’s resistance to conceptualization lies in its relationship to what calls Derrida ‘originary technicity’, a structure which concerns not only the material space of paper but also the psyche as a mnemic archive and the virtual or digital archive. If a firm distinction between these three types of archive can never be guaranteed, this indistinction has important consequences for psychoanalytic therapy and for the ‘positive’ science of history. The latter is explored here through Derrida’s reading of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s Freud’s Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable. For Derrida, the archive’s structural resistance to interpretation—what he elsewhere calls its ‘absolute secrecy’—means that it is always the site of passionate investments. Freud’s account of the psyche as a space of archival preservation already suggests this imbrication of affect and technicity, as Derrida shows in his reading of Freud’s Delusion and Dream in Jensen’s Gradiva.

‘Here all is strange’: Beckett beyond the Normal

This chapter introduces Beckett beyond the Normal. It argues that Beckett’s writing before World War Two was influenced by his experience of mental illness and psychoanalytic therapy. He was invalidated by illness, alienated from Ireland’s normalising society, and turned to writing to express his struggles in artistic form. After the war, he saw how Hitler’s Nazis and the Stalinist purges had changed everything, and began to search for a new form of art that could accommodate the mess.