Letter From
Ahead of the Vancouver 2021 IPA Congress (this year held virtually), Endre Koritar provides a brief history of the development of psychoanalysis in Canada and the formation of the Canadian Society.
Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique
The words uttered by the analytic couple can be thought of as the text in which the mind attempts to describe what is already occurring musically at the level of the drives and unconscious phantasy, writes Francis Grier in his examination of the musical countertransference.
Transgender is rooted in the infant’s early discovery of gender difference and how the primary identification is processed or “translated” in the après-coup, writes Susann Heenen-Wolff. She identifies the formation of the “body ego” as the result of primary identifications and the “sexual ego,” which stems from secondary identifications.
Reflecting on the ethical status of psychoanalysis, Jérôme Glas argues that the ethical specificity of psychoanalysis is determined in particular by the transference. He asks: what happens when the analyst is deprived of his ethical status as recipient of the transference and becomes an ordinary object in the field of everyday objectality?
A large and significant portion of contemporary psychoanalytic theory has given up on the drives. Although there are legitimate criticisms, the drives require careful examination, argues Jordan Conrad. Providing an account of the drives informed by German and English thought, Conrad distinguishes between “drive” and its conceptual neighbour “instinct.”
Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis
Tamara Guenon looks at adolescent subjectivation processes in relation to object cathexes and links to others. In order to aid therapeutic groups for adolescents Guenon attempts to establish a metapsychology of links. She goes on to discuss theatre-mediated therapeutic groups.
Rosely Lerner looks at the precocious origin of perverse behaviour. Situations of humiliation and exposure to adult sexuality, creating premature eroticization, are central to the development of patterns of behaviour that may become organised as a perverse structure in adult age, Lerner argues.
IPA Congress Keynote Papers
The ‘in-fans' who cannot speak needs a narrator, especially a psychoanalyst in the transference in order to be able to hear again the “silent” language that is expressed in the time of the ‘Jetztzeit', says Jorge Canestri. In Freud’s work on aphasias and his exchange of letters with Fliess, it is possible to identify important previews which constitute a sort of pre-semiotics, as well as a theory on memory.
Far from being the manifestation of childish behaviour in the adult, the infantile points to the modes of recording and inscribing what Freud called Erlebnis, ‘childhood experiences,’ says Bernardo Tanis. In psychoanalytic practice, the effectiveness of these inscriptions, their metabolization, symbolization, and living manifestation in the drives is always at stake.
Bonnie Litowitz addresses several factors that contribute to constructions of the infantile, as they inform multiple theoretical perspectives. Which particular dimensions are most germane to any construction depends ultimately upon their usefulness to clinicians in establishing intersubjectivity with their patients in clinical practice, she says.
The persistence of the infantile is nowhere more apparent than in the termination process, argues Glen Gabbard. The intensity and pervasiveness of the infantile in our work may best be glimpsed by studying the defense against the infantile, says Gabbard.
Film Essay
In his reading of the film Shame, Britt-Marie Schiller explores the dynamics of shame behind Brandon’s (Michael Fassbender) sex addiction. A psychoanalytic understanding of defences enables the viewers to glean the threats of vulnerability, weakness, neediness, helplessness, and unlovability behind the protagonist’s addiction and shame.