Judy Gammelgaard

Metaphors of listening

In this article, we explore the process of psychoanalytical listening in the context of language. We demonstrate through a clinical example how listening may act as a facilitator of a persons linguistic style, but also how the defence of negation blocks the same process. Guided by the modern speculations on the function of metaphor, we show how listening has been expressed in various metaphors and other “tropes” of language by psychoanalysts, and also how useful metaphors can be in our listening to patients.

Love, drive and desire in the works of Freud, Lacan and Proust

Both Freud and Lacan have made love the object of scientific enquiry, which is in itself remarkable, since we usually turn this subject over to literary and philosophical treatment. This article discusses Freud and Lacan’s contributions to the psychology of love through dialogue with Marcel Proust’s seminal novel, Remembrance of Things Past, with special emphasis on the middle sections. The point of departure is love’s manifestation in the analytical situation. Freud has described transference love as both resistance and as an extreme variant of normal falling in love, to which Lacan adds the deceptive character of transference. From transference love the investigation continues to the contradictions Freud has described in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality as love’s affectionate and sensual currents. Lacan contributes the concept of desire, which must be distinguished from drive and love. The differentiation between desire, drive and love introduces the perspective necessary for a psychoanalytic reading of Proust’s opus. The main objective is a reading of the protagonists, Albertine and the Baron de Charlus, as representatives of the vicissitudes of love and drive, respectively.

Primary process in metapsychology and cognitive psychology

The metapsychology of classical psychoanalysis has aroused critical comments from many sides. The present paper challenges the project of Wilma Bucci, a cognitive psychologist, who has made a systematic attempt of reformulating Freuds theory in harmony with cognitive science and contemporary empirical research. The discussion focusses on the concept of primary process and the cognitive alternative: subsymbolic process using as standard of comparison the dream and the creative work of the artist. The main consideration of this paper is, that whereas Freud built his theory of the dream and of creativity on the idea of wishful hallucination, cognitive psychology takes as a starting point the world of perception. This means in short, that the process of dreaming and of creation according to cognitive thinking moves in a forward progression using the information of the senses as building blocks for symbolisations, while the classical theory takes as point of departure a gap between perception and representation. The dream and the act of creation are processes creating out of this gap the world of lost happiness or satisfaction.

Ego, self and otherness

The concept of self has been introduced as a core concept in several contemporary psychoanalytical theories. This study undertakes a critical examination of the historical and theoretical presuppositions of the concept of self and its corollary, the object. The proposed thesis is that the concept of self on a theoretical level has grown out of ego-psychology and the ambition is to bring consistency into the ambiguous concept of the ego left by Freud. On a clinical level, the concept of self is seen as an attempt to adjust psychoanalytical theory and technique to what, broadly speaking, we call non-neurotic patients. While the concept of self on a theoretical level dates back to Hartmann, it was left to those following the tradition of ego-psychology to work out the implications for our understanding of the pathology of the self and its proper treatment. The work of Heinz Kohut is seen as an exponent for those analysts who have been wrestling with the task of adjusting psychoanalytical theory and technique to our understanding and treatment of non-neurotic patients. A re-reading of the Freudian concept of the ego allows the author to present an alternative to ego-psychology and self psychology. While the concept of the self implies a re-centred theory of subjectivity, the author points to the de-centeredness of classical psychoanalytical thinking. Freud did not find an independent concept of the self necessary. On the contrary, psychoanalytical theory rejected the idea of the psyche as a complete and unified entity. Defining the ego as a representative of the divided psyche encompassing the other, the author suggests that incorporating contributions from French psychoanalytical thinking and the ideas of Winnicott places the self as a concept in accordance with classical psychoanalytical thinking.

The unconscious: A re-reading of the Freudian concept

A discussion of the unconscious leads naturally to Freud and to a theory on subjectivity we may designate as de-centred. The unconscious reminds us that not only do we not know ourselves. In the core of our subjectivity, we have to acknowledge the notion of otherness. Re-reading Freuds text, The Unconscious, from 1915, the current author emphasises the character and function of the unconscious as radically different from what we know about conscious processes. This allows for the concept of the preconscious, which the author links to Winnicotts intermediary area and Greens tertiary processes. Taking as point of departure Freuds differentiation of word presentation and thing presentation, the author points to Freuds introduction of the term thing-cathexies of the object as designating the primal psychic representation. The Freudian perspective is broadened, encompassing the notion of otherness as discussed by Laplanche and Aulagnier. Concluding the paper, the author draws some implications for psychoanalytic technique, focusing especially on transference.

Like a pebble in your shoe: A psychoanalytical reading of Lars von Trier's Breaking the waves and Antichrist

Lars von Trier has never made a secret of the fact that his films are intended to provoke and has succeeded to the degree that he has become the enfant terrible of contemporary cinema. Indeed, his films have evoked strong ambivalent feelings in most spectators, not least Antichrist, the most reviewed and discussed film in the year it appeared. Critics and commentators alike have wondered how to evaluate the purpose, ethics and aesthetic quality of this movie; one critic called it “a masterpiece disguised as junk” (Skotte, 2009). Masterpiece or junk? The extremity of these designations ought to make us wonder why von Trier’s films tend to receive such contradictory responses. Precisely what is it that inspires the conflicting reception and judgements? The title of this paper is taken from von Trier (Drouzy, 1991) whose films provoke the incessant and uncomfortable feeling of having a pebble in one’s shoe. His films provoke us to ask us whether we like or dislike them, or whether we like some of them while at the same time are left confused, bewildered, or even offended. The irritation caused by a pebble, however, is a somewhat inadequate image to describe the audiences’ immediate reactions to the cruelty, corporal mutilation and depression featured in von Trier’s films. Commentators and critics have pointed to trauma as the central theme in von Trier films, played out at the narrative as well as at the formal and effective level (Bainbridge, 2004a,b, 2007; Badley, 2010). While this term – so familiar to psychoanalysts – does indeed capture the essence of von Trier’s cinematic universe, what we meet with cannot be understood within the framework of the trauma models we know from classical psychoanalytic theory, that is, the model of traumatic neuroses or Nachtr€ aglichkeit. The traumatic effect seems rather to stem from images devoid of meaning and which reach the spectator as an excess of unbound perception. The aim of this paper is to explore how we may understand – from a psychoanalytic perspective – the traumatic moment as the distinctive mark of von Trier’s filmmaking. I have chosen Breaking the Waves (1996) and Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94:1215–1230 doi: 10.1111/1745-8315.12069

Infantile sexuality—the concept, its history and place in contemporary psychoanalysis

When first presented, Freuds theory of infantile sexuality was a scandal. Not only was the claim that the small child sucking at the mothers breast experiences a kind of pleasure that Freud without hesitation named sexual, the theory also turned the common understanding of human sexuality upside-down by lifting its definition out of a limited biological frame of understanding and placing it on the boundary between the somatic and the psychical. However, the concept of attachment and the empirical research tradition have created a new focus for the studies of the infant that seems to block our vision of the sexual. Following a historical outline, we examine the theories that, inspiring and inspired by Laplanche, once more discuss infantile sexuality, and argue that infantile sexuality is clarified by combining the concept of the drive with what in effect is an inter-subjective point of view.

Attachment and the driving force of development: A critical discussion of empirical infant research

Abstract Empirical infant research has led to an enormous expansion of our knowledge of the psychological functions of the infant. From a psychoanalytic perspective, however, it must be questioned whether this research has increased our knowledge of internal psychic life and helped answer the questions of what initiates and drives development. In the first part of this article, we argue that psychoanalysis must necessarily adopt a critical stance towards a scholarly ideal that rests on the positivist empirical tradition. Psychoanalysis has as its object unconscious processes that cannot be directly observed. In the following section, we take as our point of departure the project of attachment theory that Peter Fonagy and his colleagues have developed in an attempt to reconcile psychoanalysis with the empirical and experimental study of small children, and we demonstrate concretely the limitations of such a project vis-à-vis the exploration of the psychic reality of the child. Our line of reasoning continues to demonstrate how drive theory can be shaped so as to contain an object relations theoretical perspective – as has taken place in Jean Laplanches reinterpretation of the theory of seduction – without abandoning the psychoanalytic theory of the drive and the unconscious.

The emergence and unfolding of the psyche

This paper is a short exposition of Freuds concept of the sexual drive. My motivation for going back once more to the first introduction of sexuality understood as drive is the seeming lack of interest in the classical concept in much contemporary psychoanalytical thinking. To my mind, this prevents us from finding satisfactory solutions to such concepts as narcissism, sublimation and even the emergence and unfolding of the ego. Reading for example Winnicotts enchanting account of play, one gets the impression that Winnicott saw playing as something separate from instinctual satisfaction, from sexual fantasying and from physical sensation. Looking at this important activity in the life of young children from the point of view of drive theory, one might argue, that here we see one of the first expressions of sublimation. However, in order to fully understand this, I found it necessary to undertake a re-reading of Freuds theory of the sexual drive.

The non-symbolic level of psychical reality

ABSTRACT Freud introduced the concept of psychical reality as a consequence of abandoning the theory of seduction, and although this meant a turning point in his theoretical thinking he never defined the concept concisely and systematically. Thus it is possible to delineate at least two meanings of psychical reality that run through Freud´s writings as well as the writings of contemporary analysts. On the one hand psychical reality encompasses the whole field of subjective experiences. On the other, it is understood more narrowly as a transformation of experiences in the unconscious. Substituting the idea of different meanings ascribed to Freud´s concept this article proposes to differentiate between levels in the psyche with the main focus on the unconscious level of the dream and of phantasy and the real unconscious. Starting from the most superficial level of subjective reality the text moves to that of fantasy formation illustrated by primarily Freud´s text on `A child is being beaten´. Adding Laplanche´s translational model the article ends up at the deepest level represented by the late Lacan and his concept of the real Unconscious. The paper concludes that the term real points to something exceeding symbolization and the imaginary—thus escaping comprehension—and yet is absolutely indispensable to the organization of unconscious processes.