From Survival to Creative Destiny: The Psychoanalytic Journey of Nina Farhi

Abstract

Initially, this paper briefly introduces the work of my colleague, Nina Farhi, who was a highly respected psychoanalytic psychotherapist in London and who sadly died last year. After her death, I was invited to discuss both her paper, “The Hands of the Living God,” and the three commentaries by North American analysts, all published in this issue. As part of my commentary, I provide an appreciative yet critical discussion of the way Farhi uses the term “intersubjectivity.” I argue that there is a need for paternal function or a third position to be found in the mind of the analyst in the later phases of work with deeply disturbed patients. I also contribute to the hypothetical debate about whether or not experiences in the womb can be subject to analytic work, using the Lacanian concept of the “Real” and Piontelli's work on fetal and child observation. After this, I explore some of the ways Lacan revised drive theory and discuss these in relation to psychic devolution in later life, essential aloneness and creative human destiny. Finally, I look at how Farhi's paper's posthumous publication may have affected the commentary.

Notes

¹Susan's diagnosis as psychotic is problematic. Milner (1969) herself found “the most comprehensive statement that I had so far met of Susan's … character structure” in the “schizoid character” described by the bioenergeticist, Alexander Lowen (p. 266). Farhi preferred not to use psychodiagnostics. However Susan's level of disturbance is described, it remains unquestionably at the earliest and most primitive levels of disturbances of the self.

²For a fuller discussion of objet petit a, see White (2006).