Luria, Schelling, and Freud: From Zimzum to the Oedipus Complex

In contrast to previous attempts to establish a direct relation between Freud and Kabbalah, this article argues for an indirect relationship mediated by way of Schelling’s philosophy. My claim is that Freud’s Oedipus complex partly originated in Schelling’s idea of God’s contraction, which he arguably derived from the Lurianic doctrine of zimzum. Furthermore, in thinking of the oedipal complex, and of repression more generally, as a late development of the Lurianic and Schellingian imagination of what I call “productive negativity,” I suggest that an important conceptual horizon is opened for the Freudian concept, one that transcends the widespread but narrow formulation of repression as a retroactive and regressive mental mechanism.

Homosexualité, Islam et désacralisation du pouvoir royal dans Le jour du Roi d'Abdellah Taïa

In his novel Le jour du Roi Abdellah Taïa explores the theme of alterity in its relation to two political and symbolic forces: expressing one’s self in the language of the Other and narrating homo-erotic and homosexual relationships in Morocco under the dictatorship of Hassan II. It is the translation of these two aspects that leads to the creation of a new narrative about homosexual Franco-Moroccan identity. This narrative, in turn, reveals the instability of a model of identification subjected to a normalizing sexual apparatus controlling bodies and minds in a place where homosexuality is still punishable by law. This renders the identification process for the two main characters of the novel particularly problematic as they can no longer sustain it without going back to the sources of foundational myths and more particularly to the original murder in Islam. This article argues that the killing of one character by the other goes back to the original murder of Abel by Cain, a model which becomes emancipated from the Western Oedipal complex, translating a new conception of a love relation between two male characters. By so doing, it calls for a reevaluation of the normativity imposed by the king who is using his power based on a patriarchal interpretation of religious legitimacy in view of political gain.

How and why a patient begins to call his wife “mom”: cases of changing the terms of kinship

This is a paper showing how and why a patient starts calling his wife mom. An example of some cases is discussed. Such speech formulas, well known in everyday life, are described in linguistics as a pragmatic shift. It was demonstrated that such a temporary transposition of the name occurs in patients suffering from depression and associated sexual dysfunction. Methods of linguistics, anthropology and psychoanalysis have been used to analyze the described clinical cases. It is suggested that such transposition reflects an unconscious taboo and a mirror inversion of the oedipal complex. The standard and permissible marital sexual behaviour become incestuous through renaming the sexual partner in the described cases. The aforementioned transposition in the focus of therapy can be considered as a special case of (psychological) speech defense, which we have designated as rhetorical illocutionary defense.

The Couple Object

The author argues for a conception of the oedipal complex that excludes the idea of a pre-oedipal phase which, according to him, comes from a confusion with the pre-genital. The author seeks to identify the existence of a “couple object” present early on in the young child whose pre-history he returns to in the first lineaments of a form of “being with”, as in the first form of recording relational models concerning the meeting with the first objects. This matrix will then be made more complex over time and brought into crisis in the “oedipal crisis”, and the way in which the child will be able to meet and go through this crisis, to organize himself and to organize the solutions to the crisis, will configure its model of “oedipal organization”.

Freudian theories of homosexual development

Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Jean-Martin Charot, and Havelock Ellis were a few antecedents to Sigmund Freud in identifying, defining, and theorizing the development of homosexuality. However, the majority subscribed to the thought that homosexuality was congenital, albeit unnatural. Havelock Ellis offered some psychological considerations to the condition of homosexuality and was said to have paved the way for more significant developmental explanations that began with Freud. According to Caprio (1954) the congenital theories prior to Freud became “obsolete” (p. 3). Because of the contributions of Freud, psychoanalysts that followed him such as Sandor Rado, Edmund Bergler, Irving Bieber, Lionel Ovesey, and Charles Socarides, to name a few, took on views that homosexuality was developmental in nature. During the phallic phase of development Freud made a pivotal discovery about the oedipal complex. This and other theories of psychosexual development are overviewed. It is important to get an understanding of the basic construct of theory given the rise of deconstruction and reconstruction undertakings.

Developing Homosexuality: Fritz Morgenthaler, Junction Points and Psychoanalytic Theory

The Swiss psychoanalyst Fritz Morgenthaler (1919–84) is well known in German-speaking psychoanalysis as an early exponent of Heinz Kohut's self psychology, as an ethnopsychoanalytic researcher and as an original thinker on the topics of dreams, psychoanalytic technique and especially on sexuality (perversions, heterosexuality, homosexuality). In 1980, he presented the first psychoanalytic conception of homosexuality in the German-speaking world that did not view homosexuality in terms of deviance or pathology. His theory of ‘junction points’ ( Weichenstellungen) postulates three decisive moments in the development of homosexuality: a prioritized cathexis of autoeroticism in narcissistic development, a Janus-facedness of homosexual desire as an outcome of the Oedipal complex and the coming out in puberty. According to Morgenthaler, this development can result in non-neurotic or neurotic homosexuality. Less known than the theory of junction points and to some degree even concealed by himself (his earlier texts appeared later on in corrected versions) are Morgenthaler's pre-1980 accounts of homosexuality which deserve to be called homophobic. Starting with a discussion of this early work, the article outlines Morgenthaler's theoretical development with special focus on his theory of junction points and how this theory was taken up in psychoanalytic theory.

Archaisms and their discovery in archetypal symbolism

The article presents the problem of archaisms, their energy influence on the human behavior in the integration unity with the ontological aspects of human development. The paper integrates the latest ideas of «non-classical psychology» (L. Vygotsky, A. Asmolov, D. El’konin, etc.), which determines the dynamics of the psychology development from statics to the psychodynamic approach to the study of the human psyche. The archaic heritage, as argued here, can not be studied independently from the personalized-individual human psyche. The article emphasizes the energу «doubling» (amplification and direction) of the psyche’s motivational potential due to its phylogenetic nature. The greatest achievement of the archaic heritage of mankind is the archetype as an instinct, which provides the ability to transcode the ideal psychic reality into the materialized and objectified one with the preservation of information equivalents. Therefore, it is impossible to perceive archaisms beyond the archetypal symbolism. The above mentioned explains the archaic origins of the successful use of the artistic works reproductions in the deep perception of the psyche. The article focuses on the archaism of guilt, which derives from the Oedipal complex and is also of an archaic origin. The category of guilt and the feeling of guilt respectively correlate with the conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche. The effectiveness of «Super-Ego» is revealed in the guilt emergence. The article is completed within the psychodynamic paradigm and is based on the empirical material of the deep knowledge of the subject's psyche.