Unintentional Reenactments

What is the relationship between reenactment and repetition compulsion? By shedding light upon the different levels of reenactment at stake in Yella by Christian Petzold, I analyse the ‘transitional spaces’ where the German filmmaker places his wandering characters who have ‘slipped out of history’. In Yella Petzold mixes up past, present, future, and oneiric re-elaboration to question the memory of the past of GDR, which in his view has never really been constituted as history. The characters that populate this movie move in a setting constructed at the crossroad between a protected environment where the reenacted events are sheltered by the time and the space of the plot and a place weathered by the unpredictable atmospheric agents of the present. How and to which extent can the clash between different temporalities produce a minimal variation?

Fragmenting, Repeating, Rebuilding: The Chaotic Cyclones of Gisèle Pineau’s L’Espérance-macadam

This article explores the creative potential of the repeating cyclones at the heart of Gisèle Pineau’s 1995 novel L’Espérance-macadam. Examining the novel in relation to Édouard Glissant’s chaos-monde, it understands the cyclone not simply as catastrophe but also as an ambiguous agent of chaos in line with Glissant’s key metaphor of the slave ship, capable of both destroying and building anew a community through violent cycles of unearthing, fragmenting and interweaving. Engaging with previous critical readings of Pineau’s cyclonic figures that have relied on Freud’s “repetition compulsion”, this article argues that Pineau’s representation of external and internal repetitive events—natural disasters and personal traumas—are not to be read as regression or stasis, but as the possibility of incremental progress through constant movement and towards what Pineau names an “espérance-macadam”. Repetition thus becomes a catalyst for systemic change, allowing her protagonist to process trauma, join a community of survivors of sexual abuse and environmental injustice and find agency within and through the cyclonic events that affect her community.

Repression and Realism in Postwar American Literature 1945-1955

<p>This thesis focuses on the uncanny in literature produced in America during the first decade following World War II. The period between 1945 and 1955 was marked by repressive socio-political forces such as McCarthyism and cultural conformity which complicated the representation of what Philip Roth refers to as "demonic reality." I explore the ways in which the avoidance and minimisation of the unpleasant created a highly circumscribed version of postwar American life while also generating a sense of objectless anxiety. According to the theories of Sigmund Freud, repression inevitably stages a return registered as the "uncanny." Animism, magic, the omnipotence of thoughts, the castration complex, death, the double, madness, involuntary repetition compulsion, live burial and haunting are all deemed capable of provoking a particular anxiety connected to what lies beneath the surface of accepted reality. Although it is common to argue that fantasy genres such as science fiction and gothic represent the return of what is repressed, this thesis explores several realist novels displaying uncanny characteristics. The realist novels included here are uncanny not only because they depict weird automaton-like characters, haunting, and castration anxieties, thus exhibiting a conscious use of Freudian theory, but because the texts themselves act as the return of the repressed. Norman Mailer referred to this unsettling phenomenon when he described writing as the "spooky" art; spooky because although a writer might sit down to consciously write a particular story, another unwilled story might very well appear.</p>

Repression and Realism in Postwar American Literature 1945-1955

<p>This thesis focuses on the uncanny in literature produced in America during the first decade following World War II. The period between 1945 and 1955 was marked by repressive socio-political forces such as McCarthyism and cultural conformity which complicated the representation of what Philip Roth refers to as "demonic reality." I explore the ways in which the avoidance and minimisation of the unpleasant created a highly circumscribed version of postwar American life while also generating a sense of objectless anxiety. According to the theories of Sigmund Freud, repression inevitably stages a return registered as the "uncanny." Animism, magic, the omnipotence of thoughts, the castration complex, death, the double, madness, involuntary repetition compulsion, live burial and haunting are all deemed capable of provoking a particular anxiety connected to what lies beneath the surface of accepted reality. Although it is common to argue that fantasy genres such as science fiction and gothic represent the return of what is repressed, this thesis explores several realist novels displaying uncanny characteristics. The realist novels included here are uncanny not only because they depict weird automaton-like characters, haunting, and castration anxieties, thus exhibiting a conscious use of Freudian theory, but because the texts themselves act as the return of the repressed. Norman Mailer referred to this unsettling phenomenon when he described writing as the "spooky" art; spooky because although a writer might sit down to consciously write a particular story, another unwilled story might very well appear.</p>

Is the Death Instinct Silent or Clinically Relevant? From Freud’s Concept of a Silent Death Instinct to Understanding Its Clinical Manifestations

When Freud introduced his concept of the death instinct in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) he solved three theoretical problems which could not be explained by the one drive theory: masochism, repetition compulsion and the negative therapeutic reaction. The concept of two inherently opposed instincts remained one of the most controversial parts of Freud’s theory. For Melanie Klein, Freud’s idea of the death instinct was a powerful instrument in solving her greatest problems of integrating her clinical evidence of an earlier, very harsh superego. In Freud’s account, the superego was the manifestation at birth of the death instinct operating in destructiveness towards the person, as he had argued. In this way, Klein put – as Hinshelwood claims – clinical “flesh on the bones of Freud’s theory of the death instinct.” I will describe the development of Freud’s theory and how this was elaborated by Klein and her followers Bion, Esther Bick, Segal and Rosenfeld. With three clinical vignettes--from an Infant Observation, a child analysis and an adult analysis--the clinical use of the concept will be illustrated.

Kill or be killed: living in fear

This article explores fear and aggression in relation to trauma. These themes are explored using the case study of a man who needs conflict, particularly around race and gender, in order to bypass feelings of fear. Faced with actually experiencing trauma, he finds himself running and keeps on running in order to not commit murder, first in reality and then later in his mind. Exploring the mechanisms involved when, after a difficult early life, he escapes from home as a young teenager and then finds himself unable to settle or maintain relationships. Instead, we see how moving from continent to continent, finding himself in violent conflict again and again, he is unable to resolve the conflict within himself. Using Freud's concepts of repetition compulsion, denial, and disavowal to think about this patient, I examine what is driving this internal destructiveness and the need to keep fear consistently at arm's length.

Hoarding and Animal Hoarding: Psychodynamic and Transitional Aspects

Hoarding is a disorder that has only recently begun to be understood by researchers and clinicians. This disorder has been examined from a biopsychosocial perspective and has features that overlap with obsessive-compulsive disorder as well as some unique characteristics. Hoarding disorder is widespread and maybe related to the evolution of collecting and storing resources among humans and other animals. While there have been a number of non-analytic theories related to hoarding and its treatment, psychoanalytic thinkers have rarely described the disorder or explored its underlying psychodynamics. Beginning with Freud, it is possible to understand hoarding in relationship to the vicissitudes of the anal stage of development. However, loss of a loved object, especially loss of the mother, can play an important role in the development of hoarding behavior in adults. The hoarding of inanimate items, examined from a developmental object-relations perspective, appears to involve transitional phenomena. Animal hoarding also involves transitional phenomena, but animals, which can serve as animated transitional objects, also have a repetition compulsion function. These psychodynamic characteristics are relevant for establishing a working transference with the analyst or therapist, in order to promote positive therapeutic outcomes.