Abstracts in English - Percurso 30

Borderline desire
Christopher Bollas

The borderline personality unconsciously seeks emotional turbulence because this complex of affects is the shape of the objetct of its desire. It is its maternal object, which in this case does not have a figure (as it usually happens with neurotics); besides being felt as disruptive, it is itself disruption, and is experienced as such both by the borderline individual and by his entourage. It presents a sort of escalatory potential, so that the person can turn ordinary distressing facts of life into self-stimulating objects and behave unto them accordingly. By persistently interpreting his unconscious desire for such an object, the analyst can effectively disconstruct the patient’s pathological attachment to it.

Stanley Kubrick killed himself: what one can see with eyes wide shut
Paulo de Carvalho Ribeiro

The analysis of Stanley Kubrick’s film “Eyes wide shut” leads to considerations about the status of femininity in the unconscious, its link with paranoia, and the existence of a kind of realism that should be situated beyond scientific objectivity. Kubrick’s death, which took place soon after the conclusion of his film, encourages some wondering on the pressure made by repressed femininity and its relation to the part played by the labor of death in artistic creation.

Narcissism and links in contemporary times
Lucía Barbero Fuks

In present time interpersonal relationships, the possibility of true dialogue is replaced by the action of images; speech loses its relevance as a support for thinking and for subjectivity, and ceases to be a suitable support both for inter-subjectivity and for the establishment of links between people. In this paper, Dr. Fuks explores from both a symbolic and a material perspective the relation between narcissism, aggressiveness and the conflicts of power that permeate gender relationships. The picture of “confusion of languages” (as described by Sándor Ferenczi) and the propensity to violence found in such couples result from a blockage of inter-subjective recognition processes, which in turn can be derived from pathological changes in the identification patterns of both members of the couple.

Melancholy: an approach to the tragic character of existence
Isabel Castello Branco

This paper begins with Freud’s reference to the tragic dimension of human existence, in order to build an hypothesis about the tragedy of self-knowledge as one of the most significant aspects in the construction of psychoanalysis. It proceeds to discuss the links between this specific mode of production of knowledge and its clinical expressions. Melancholy is then presented as a privileged way to investigate the nature of such a relationship.

Jabor and Psychoanalysis: ten years of Brazil
Miriam Chnaiderman

If we read carefully some newspaper articles that Arnaldo Jabor, a well-known Brazilian columnist, wrote between 1992 and 2003, important transformations in Brazilian subjectivity can be noticed and traced to their sources. Ms. Chnaiderman chose texts which comment on children who ask for money at street crossings, on the phenomenon of arrastão (gangs of poor teenagers who robbed beachgoers in Rio de Janeiro), on the invasion of São Paulo Carandiru penitentiary which resulted in 111 prisoners being murdered by the police, on the “boys with a death look” from the film “Cidade de Deus” (City of God, a slum quarter in Rio), etc. In order to understand the violence underlying such facts, Mr. Jabor uses among other ideas some psychoanalytic concepts. His texts raise questions to us psychoanalysts: we should reflect more about the limits, but also about the possibilities, of our discipline to clarify and understand the world around us.

The hidden face of love: tragedy in the light of Psychoanalysis
Denise Maurano

Psychoanalysis and tragic art deal with the same fundamental issues of the human condition and action. This paper intends to build, from Freud’s and Lacan’s references to tragedy, a psychoanalytical concept of it. Their contributions are then evaluated as to their relevance for psychoanalytic theory and clinic, and also as building blocks for a psychoanalytic perspective on cultural and social issues.

The “originary”: a concept that becomes more visible
Ana Maria Sigal

Taking as its point of departure the work of French analyst and theoretician Jean Laplanche, this paper focuses on the concept of the originary. Its study is a way to describe and situate from a metapsychological perspective the first mental inscriptions. Laplanche’s work is put in relation with the ideas of Piera Aulagnier, since both analysts have concentrated extensively on the first stages of the formation on subjectivity. As a result, the archaic layer of the psyche becomes more clear in several contemporary pathologies, including common neuroses.

Four essays on infantile dialectics
Tales A.M. Ab’Sáber

The articulation between individual psyche and social forms is here studied from a classical Freudian perspective, aiming not so much at their form in the “bad consciousness” of modernity, but more at their archaic origins. Three clinical vignettes are brought in order to discuss the collective nature of today’s psychopathology, which is found to lay beetwen culture and the individual subject. Psychoanalytic office practice with single patients and dialetical thinking are then articulated, for which purpose the author looks into the work of Freud, of Walter Benjamin and of Theodor Adorno.

Antropology of the self and Psychoanalysis: a dialogue
Lazslo Antonio Ávila

The notions self, body and mind are central to Psychoanalysis. However, a critique must be performed upon them in order to divest them from their appearance of naturality, and to replace them in the historical and socio-cultural contexts from which they can gain their meaning. In this task, the analyst may be wise to borrow some concepts from the antropology of the self; this dialogue, in turn, will contribute to increase this latter discipline’s density and heuristic power.

The possibility of creation through dreaming
Mirian Iolanda Rejani

In the work with depressed patients, we notice a diminution of their capacity to dream. A useful resource in these cases can be found in the fostering of the artistic potential of the patient, as well as of his ability to dream and to recollect his dreams. Some suggestions are made as to how this can be stimulated without departing form the analytic rule of abstinence and non-guidance of the patient’s thought and behavior.

Psychoanalysis with autistic and ill-treated children
Anne Alvarez

The well-known Canadian analyst speaks here of her training and of her work with autistic children at the London Tavistock Clinic. She clarifies several important concepts that she developed in this connection, such as reclamation, and explains how she appropriates the Kleinian and Bionian heritage, which she developed according to her own theoretical and clinic perspective. Subjects as the importance of contact with the parents of autistic children, the risks of re-traumatizing already traumatized children by careless wording or acting during treatment, the teachings of the analysis of autistic patients for common analytic practice, and several others, are discussed in this substantial interview, for which Percurso is grateful to Ms. Alvarez.

Psychoanalytic work in institutions
Maria Elisa Pessoa Labaki, Eva Wongtschowski, Aline Gurfinkel, Issa Fernando Sarraf Mercadante

There is a persistent social image of the analyst as being able to work only with one patient at a time, in the privacy of his consulting room. But there are many other places where he can practice his craft, and our Department has always set great value on this sort of work, particularly in public institutions. The four participants in this Debate write about their experiences in different institutions, trying to determine what made of them a true analytical work, although in particular settings to which they had do adapt. Their reflections show once more how, in order to be ana analyst, one needs – in plus of a good capacity for attention and interpretation – to be flexible, to have a good sense of humour and to be able to face unforeseen complications with inventiveness.

New keys in Psychoanalysis
By Camilla Salles Gonçalves – review of Isaias Mehlson, Psicanálise em nova chave

This collection of lessons and clinical seminars by the well-known São Paulo analyst, Isaias Melsohn, presents his contributions to the theory and practice of Psychoanalysis. He has gone a long way in the critique of a central tenet of classic theory, namely the idea of an unconscious representation. His basis for this critique can be found in Ernest Cassirer’s and Suzanne Langer’s theory of the symbolic forms. A paper of his on these issues having been refused by the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, he wrote a forceful reply, which found its place in the last part of the book.

Possibililities of psychoanalytic practice
By Maria Lúcia de Araújo Andrade – Review of Ana Maria Sigal and Isabel M. Vilutis (eds.), Colóquio freudiano: teoria e prática da psicanálise contemporânea

Written by several former students of the Course on Psychoanalysis at the Instituto Sedes Sapientiae, which publishes Percurso, this book shows the possibilities of Psychoanlysis in the treatment of many disturbances, such as psychosis, autism, narcissism, and deep neurosis. The authors employ a wide gamut of theoretical approaches – Freud, Lacan, Winnicott and Klein – offering to the reader a sort of panoramic vision of the current trends in our discipline.

Psychoanalysis and culture, now as ever
By Ines Loureiro – Review of Renato Mezan, Interfaces da psicanálise

Renato Mezan’s new book contains seventeen essays on the different relationships between psychoanalysis and culture. The author demonstrates that the history of psychoanalytic theory and the epistemology thereof are closely intertwinned. He covers a large ground from Freud to the contemporary scene of our discipline, both at the local and international levels. Some essays deal with the place Psychoanalysis has come to occupy in the post-graduate courses of Psychology in Brazil, a local phenomenon that may bear important consequences. Other social and cultural subjects are also addressed, in the clear and elegant style his many readers have grown accustomed to expect.

Back to fundamentals
By Tales A. M. Ab’Sáber – Review of Renata Cromberg, Cena incestuosa

This book is a fascinating journey to some radical theoretical places in psychoanalysis. Although her main focus is the concept of sexual incestuous violence, the author discusses many issues of contemporary Psychoanalysis and shows its relevance to understand and treat some of the most disturbing problems of modern society, as well as its wide range of application in the many forms of sexual trauma inflicted by incestuous fathers, stepfathers and brothers on young female children and teenagers.

New ways in clinical and theoretical thought
By Luís Cláudio Figueiredo – Resenha de Ivanise Fontes, Memória corporal e transferência: fundamentos para uma psicanálise do sensível

New directions are opened in the psychoanalytic field when the thought of Pierre Fédida and other contemporary thinkers gives new life the Ferenczian idea of a sensorial memory which exists outside our representative world. Nevertheless, this approach brings theoretical and clinical problems which need further examination.

“Desistential” Analysis
By Sérgio Telles – Review of René Major, Lacan com Derrida

René Major tries to show why Derrida considered Lacan a very important reference in his theoretic production. However, his high esteem for the French psychoanalyst did not prevent the philosopher from criticizing central aspects of Lacan’s theory. So it is not inappropriate to speak of a “desistential’, Derridian psychoanalysis.

“Madmen’s talk”: reasoning and sensibilty in the practice of Psychoanalysis
By Renato Mezan – Review of Sergio Telles, Fragmentos clínicos de psicanálise

Although a patient of Dr. Telles once referred to what was going on between them as a “madmen’s talk – I say whatever comes to my mind, and you don’t give it a damn” – this collection of twenty clinical vignettes shows that an analytic treatment can be successful when a combination of theoretical knowledge, technical dexterity, shrewd reasoning and trained sensibility come together in the analyst’s mind. A vide variety of clinical conditions is illustrated and discussed; the author also addresses the thorny issue of confidentiality and protection of patients’ anonimity in published material.

An invitation to an impossible dialogue?
By Pedro Mascarenhas – Review of Maria Lúcia V. Violante, O (im)possível diálogo psicanálise e psiquiatria

Several psychoanalysts have been invited to discuss issues of clinical and theoretic interest at the interface of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry. This can be considered the beginning of a fruitful dialogue between both professions. However, a consistent critique is made of CID-10 and DSM-IV’s classificatory criteria, which, because of their narrow and objectifying nature, make it impossible to recognize the subjective character of the human mind.

The pleasure of thinking - an act of creation
By Maria Laurinda Ribeiro de Souza – Review of Heitor O’Dwyer de Macedo, Do amor ao pensamento: a psicanálise, a criação da criança e D.W.Winnicott

To read a psychoanalytical text is to recreate it: it opens up our minds to new thoughts and new possibilities of listening to our patients. In this book, Heitor de Macedo tells us how he was led to an ever growing implication of himself in the effects of transference, especially in difficult cases, and how his reading of Winnicott, Freud, Melanie Klein and Lacan became useful tools in this internal journey. Possibilities and dead ends in the creation of the self are thus revealed, in an act of love for thought that will certainly inspire many a reader.

From the surface of the skin to the powder of the bones
By Maria Elisa Labaki – Review of Rubens Marcelo Volich, Hipocondria. Impasses da alma, desafios do corpo

This book is about hypochondria. Drawing from the contributions of several analytic writers from Freud on, the author highlights many historical, psychopathological and clinical aspects of this disease. His central thesis is that a specifically hypochondriac “solution” is found when libido that has left the lost object is invested in the body and blocks the normal elaboration of mourning, thus making it interminable.

The art of “speaking well”and the place of affect in Psychoanalysis
By Elizabeth Saporiti – Review of Marcus André Vieira, A ética da paixão: uma teoria psicanalítica do afeto

This book was originally a Ph.D. thesis presented to the University of Paris VIII. Its subject is the theory of affect in Freud’s and Lacan’s thought; its aim, to show that the usual idea of Lacan as an analyst for whom affect was not important is wrong. His ideas about the importance of the signifier in no way exclude affects from clinical work, much less so from theoretical consideration. In fact, Vieira argues, Lacan took over from where Freud had left this part of his metapsychology in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety. The book is well written and quite convincing, and the author succeeds in gaining over the reader for his concept of an “ethics of passion”.

Waterfalls that disturb sleep
By Lúcia Serrano Pereira – Review of Edson Luiz André de Souza, Elida Tessler and Abrão Slavutsky (eds.), A Invenção da Vida: Arte e Psicanálise

This collection of essays by artists and psychoanalysts tries to stimulate a more mature dialogue between both groups. They do not intend to analyze the work of art, but want to follow up the different ways in which art and Psychoanalyis are implied in the production of their respective acts. A place is thus opened for letting the fictions that we produce (and that produce us) work out their multifarious effects.