by Matthew Sharpe | Vol 26 (3/4) 2008
This essay challenges the widespread notion that Lacanian psychoanalysis represents a ‘Christianising’ of psychoanalysis. It argues that Lacanian psychoanalysis brings to psychoanalysis a broadly “Averroist” attitude towards religion which develops out of and transcends Freud’s position in Totem and Taboo. For Lacan, religious texts are an invaluable source of pre-psychoanalytic insight or another regal road into the champ Freudien: the dynamic of human beings’ desire, in its co-conformity with language and Law. The text focuses on trying to decipher the missing content of the Names of the Father seminar: the seminar that “does not exist” (Miller, 2006) beyond its opening, esoteric and dramatic session. The force of doing this will be to show how much, and how fundamental, the things are that Lacan thinks the bible, and the first Abrahamic monotheism in particular, can teach us about human subjectivity and the instance of the Law that shapes it – insights which go to explain Freud’s unmistakable attachment, despite himself, to the civilizational importance of his fathers.
by Liesbet De Kock | Vol 30 (3) 2012
As suggested by Ricoeur (1965) the exact sciences have often provided the language by means of which Freud articulated the psychic apparatus, although the articulation itself is irreducible to the physico-physiological level. It is well known that in Jenseits des Lustprinzips (1920g), Freud stressed the need to “borrow words from biological science” and to use them as a “metaphorical language” in the description of psychological phenomena. This paper investigates the way in which the specific physicalist semantics of one such borrowed word, namely the concept of “(psychic) energy” conditioned Freud’s metapsychological formalization of the psyche. The general framework for this study is constituted by the historical conflict of interpretations (and more specifically by the antinomy between mechanical-causal and teleological interpretation) in the understanding of man and world. Through a sketch of the Vis Viva debate between Leibniz and Descartes at the beginning of modernity, two conceptual schemes pertaining to the concept of energy (as Bewegungskraft on the one hand, and dynamic essence on the other) will be made explicit, and interpreted along the lines of the historical tension between quantitative-physical and quantitative-metaphysical explanations. Consequently, it is demonstrated how the final affirmation of energy as kinesis in the 20th century influenced Freud in his theorizing, and impeded the explicit articulation of the subject as an intentional structure.
by Lode Lauwaert | Vol 30 (3) 2012
Many psychoanalysts argue that clinicians have a lot to learn from literature. They share the deep-rooted conviction that artists are sensitive to clinical phenomena and that they make visible what is often overlooked by clinicians. Freud, for example, relies on Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Half a century later, the assumption of Freud’s literary clinic has been taken up by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze in his study Présentation de Sacher-Masoch. Deleuze reads Sade’s and Sacher-Masoch’s literary novels from the same perspective as Freud. Sade and Sacher-Masoch, Deleuze argues, are first of all great symptomatologists. Their novels explore the sadistic and masochistic universe thoroughly. In his essay, the author discusses Deleuze’s reading of Sade and Sacher-Masoch. Deleuze argues that his study, whilst sharing Freud’s basic assumptions, is a critique of his conception of sadism and masochism.
by Willy Szafran | Vol 20 (3) 2002
What are the characteristics of the Jewish identity when it is not inscribed in religious tradition? Reviewing the history of the international B’nai B’rith and Freud’s activities in the lodge “Wien”, his Jewishness and his Jewish identity are discussed in reference to (i) the goals of the B’nai B’rith “Wien” and its place in the traditions of the Enlightenment and of Jewish humanism as formulated by S. Ehrmann; (ii) the way in which Freud’s Jewish identity was perceived by his fellow brothers, E. Hitschmann and E. Braun. It is argued that Freud’s own perception of his Jewish ness matches with Braun’s, as well as with Ehrmann’s, view.
by Filip Geerardyn - Piet Vanclooster | Vol 20 (1) 2002
Starting from a critical reading of Freud’s essay A Childhood Memory of Leonardo da Vinci, the author tries to assess whether it is still valuable. The historical debate between Schapiro and Eissler as well as to the more recent work of Maïdani Gerard and Collins is discussed. It appears that the central element of Freud’s psychobiographical contribution, i.e., the interpretation of Leonardo’s affective indifference and his inhibition in his artistic creation by his latent homosexuality, has found more support in recent biographical and iconographical research. More specifically, it is argued that Freud’s intuitions, both with respect to the circumstances of Leonardo’s early childhood, and to the uniqueness of his St. Anne with Two Others, have finally been accepted.
