Human Mind and its Psychological Disposition:

The current paper aims to provide the venue to the spiritual insights of Ghazalian thought to be integrated into the study of Freudian psychoanalysis. The study has adopted descriptive and analytical approach to make a comparative analysis of Ghazalian concept of nafs e lawwamma and Freudian superego. Zepetnek’s (1998) theory of comparative literature has provided the guidelines for an in depth analysis of both the models. This analytical approach may lead to an alternative critical agenda for the better understanding of human psyche. Moreover, the present study emanates from the assumption that though Freudian psychoanalytic theory has provided insightful psychological considerations, equally appropriate readings will possibly result from analyzing Ghazalian theory of soul. Simultaneously, it is also hoped that the insights yielded by this research study may open new panoramas for the study of human nature.

Psychoanalysing Technoscience

While the previous chapter discussed the shift from Hegelian dialectics to dialectical materialism, this chapter addresses the shift from dialectics to psychoanalysis, notably in France, paying due attention to the productive tensions between both approaches. After a concise exposition of Freudian psychoanalysis, focussing on Beyond the Pleasure Principle, the text in which Freud explicitly “plunged into the thickets” of modern biology (Gay, 1988, p. 401), I will extensively discuss the views of Gaston Bachelard and Jacques Lacan on technoscience. Building on a previous publication (Zwart, 2019a), where I already presented a psychoanalytic understanding of technoscience, which I don’t want to duplicate here (focussing on the oeuvres of Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Gaston Bachelard and Jacques Lacan), I will now emphasise the continuity between dialectic and psychoanalysis, indicating how dialectics remains an important moment in Bachelard’s and Lacan’s efforts to develop a psychoanalysis of technoscience, both as a discourse and as a practice. In addition, I will elucidate the added value of this convergence by extrapolating it to three concrete case studies, one borrowed from particle physics and two from life sciences research: the Majorana particle, the malaria mosquito and the nude mouse.

Resentment: neurosciences applied to psychoanalysis, a transdisciplinary theoretical essay

With this article we aim to present a transdisciplinary conception of the relationship between neuroscience and psychoanalysis, especially Kleinian, in the field of epiphenomenos linked to resentment, its meaning and fundamental mechanisms of a psychoanalytic and biological nature. The article is the result of a theoretical-qualitative study based on the experience of the authors, some with more than 30 years of clinical experience in the area of mental health, psychoanalysis and neuroscience, added to a bibliographic review that consists mainly of books in the field of psychoanalysis, analysis and Freudian psychoanalysis, Kleinian and Jungian, a total of 21 books researched, as well as articles in the field of neuroscience. Researched in the PubMed, Medline and Scielo databases in the period between 2000 and 2020. Epistemological trimming involves elements such as objectual relationship, neurotransmitters, structures and neural circuits involved in the phenomenon of resentment. Texts that were outside the qualitative and transdisciplinary scope of the study of the text were excluded. We use the intuitive-interpretative method whose conclusion reinforces the viability of the understanding of psychoanalytic phenomena such as psychic determinism and object relations via intersection with neurobiological mechanisms that are developed through mental operations (mentalization), and psychopharmacological intervention and neuromodulation by transcranian magnetic stimulation, thus expanding knowledge on the subject for the areas in question.

Agency and Self Expression: Fan Writing as Life Writing

Fans, fandoms and fan activities have been part of every culture from time immemorial. Homer’s epics, Plato’s work all could be considered in a broad sense as belonging to the larger domain of fan activity or fan ‘art’ as they are termed in modern-day parlance. This paper examines India Forums a digital fan community based in India for audiences and fans of Indian television soaps/serials and attempts to understand how fanfiction and fan activities within this forum act as means of self-expression and enable its fans to develop a sense of agency that is indigenous to the space in itself. This community is predominantly populated by women or ‘gender anonymous’ and function as a space that allows fans to construct their own voices, identities and thereby agency, which is most often restricted to that space alone. The fans though not subaltern, in the technical sense of the term, as they belong to the urban space, have access to a computer and can read, write and speak English although not fluently, are still urban middle-class women who have been spoken for and never spoken themselves; and India Forums enable these unheard voices to be heard. This reading analyses the dynamics of this agential space, the politics of this agency and argues that all fan writing within this space functions as life writing within a hypertextual metaconversational paradigm which is not necessarily reflective of traditional forms of life writing using notions of revisionist Freudian psychoanalysis and paradigms of life writing.

What is Yoga Psychology and Where Does It Stand in Contemporary Psychology?

While Yoga has spread across the world, its image as a system of calisthenics has played up the physical aspect of Patañjali’s eightfold strategy, while pushing its core as a system of psychology out of sight. The purpose of this article is to briefly explain what makes Patañjali’s Yoga a system of theory and application of psychological principles, and to suggest where this system stands in relation to the major trends of contemporary psychology. After presenting a brief overview of the concepts and techniques of Yoga psychology, comments are made to indicate where Yoga psychology stands in relation to Skinner’s radical behaviourism, the mainstream of contemporary psychology, cognitive psychology, Freudian psychoanalysis and transpersonal psychology.

Diaries as “Soul Portraits”? Interpretation and Theorization of Adolescents’ Self-Descriptions in the German-Speaking Youth Psychology of the 1920s and 1930s

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the figure of the adolescent (Jugendlicher) was introduced into public discourse in the German-speaking world. The adolescent soon became an epistemic object for the still loosely defined field of psychology. Actors in the slowly differentiating scientific field of youth psychology were primarily interested in the normal development of adolescent subjects and sought out new materials and methods to research the inner life of young people. In order to access this inner life, they turned to the interpretation of diaries and other self-descriptions. This article takes up the questions of how diaries were used in the scientific context of psychology, and how diary writing was psychologically interpreted and theorized. The theoretical and methodological contexts of psychological knowledge production grouped around the subject of the diary will be examined in keeping with Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s concept of historical epistemology. This analysis is carried out by using the example of three central actors who were in conversation with each other during the 1920s and 1930s: the developmental psychologist Charlotte Bühler (1893–1974), the psychologist and founder of personalistic psychology William Stern (1871–1938), and the youth activist Siegfried Bernfeld (1892–1953), who was influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis.

Repression in the Existential Lives of Dostoevsky’s Poor People

This paper explores Sigmund Freud's concept of repression in the existential strife exhibited by two main characters, Makar Alexyevitch and Varvara Alexyevna, in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Poor People. To demonstrate this, I psychoanalyze of how they handle their repressed desires, emphasizing the necessity of Freud's main rule for this method: Openness. Dostoevsky's Poor People presents an existential crisis handled through openness and mishandled when an individual represses one's desires. In delving into Dostoevsky's first novel, I demonstrate a link between the existential and psychological, wherein individuals strive to overcome themselves. Surprisingly, this link has a come a common influence between Dostoevsky and Freud: Immanuel Kant. I briefly discuss this shared similarity to show the basic idea of an "existential middle" derived from a Freudian psychoanalysis of Dostoevsky's Poor People.

Frank Plumpton Ramsey and the Politics of Motherhood

This paper is an attempt to historicize Frank Plumpton Ramsey’s Apostle talks delivered from 1923 to 1925 within the social and political context of the time. In his talks, Ramsey discusses socialism, psychoanalysis, and feminism. Ramsey’s views on these three intellectual movements were inter-connected, and they all contributed to his take on the then policy debates on the role of women in economy. Drawing on some archival materials, biographical facts, and the historiographical literature on the early inter-war politics of motherhood, I show that Ramsey held a positive view of the feminist campaign for family endowment. He demanded government financial support for motherhood in recognition of the economic significance of women’s domestic works and as what could bring economic independence to them. In addition, he found such economic scheme compatible with the kind of maternalism endorsed by Freudian psychoanalysis – his favorite theory of psychology.

Amy Schumer or the Incongruities

The chapter examines the comedy of Amy Schumer on video and film from the perspectives of Freudian psychoanalysis and the incongruity theory of comic amusement and concludes that one feature of the latter theory that is superior to the former theory is that it accommodates what is feminist in Schumer’s oeuvre to a greater extent than does psychoanalysis.

ENGLISH: Illuminating Human Psyche: A Comparative Analysis of Similarities in Ghazalian Theory of Soul and Freudian Psychoanalysis

There have been several theories in the Western world, highlighting various features of human mind, but none of them seems to present the whole truth. The richness and diverse outlook of human experience makes it imperative to look for a model, which contributes in better and all-encompassing understanding of human nature. The present study intends to provide the venue to the spiritual insights of Ghazalian thought to be incorporated into the study of Freudian psychoanalysis, with its central focus on the similarities between them. Besides the current study proceeds from the assumption that though Freudian psychonalytic theory has provided insightful psychological interpretations, equally appropriate readings result from analyzing Ghazalian theory of soul. This study follows the descriptive and analytic methodology to investigate the similarities in both the models and has been developed according to the guidelines provided by Zepetnek’s (1998) theory of comparative literature. This analytical approach may lead to an alternative critical agenda for the better understanding of human psyche. In addition, it is also hoped that the insights yielded by this research study may develop into new forms of understanding in the realm of psychology.