Psychoanalysis

Nous souhaitons que les travaux des enseignants de l'EPHEP soient accessibles au plus grand nombre de lecteurs de ce site, qui ne sont pas toujours familiarisés autant qu'ils le voudraient avec la langue française. Dans ce cadre, nous mettons à leur disposition un certain nombre de textes, portant sur la psychopathologie ou la psychanalyse, ou encore sur de grands problèmes soulevés par la psychiatrie classique. Nous ne pouvons, en effet, dénoncer les classifications internationales sans présenter à nos lecteurs les moyens de les critiquer.

Revue « Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society » : quatre textes en hommage à Charles Melman

Couverture

Dimitriadis,Y. Introduction to Charles Melman’s tribute. Psychoanal Cult Soc (2024).

Sheehan, H. An Introduction to Dr Melman’s Studies on Hysteria Revisited. Psychoanal Cult Soc (2024).

Dimitriadis, Y. The “new psychic economy” according to Charles Melman. Psychoanal Cult Soc (2024).

Dimitriadis, Y., Thibierge, S. Psychopathological ramifications of Charles Melman’s “party wall phenomenon”. Psychoanal Cult Soc (2024).

Revue « Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society » : quatre textes en hommage à Charles Melman

Malachi McCoy, en hommage à Charles Melman : « Somatic Prevenance : An Offering of the Body to Symptomatology » (Milltown Lacanian Association’s study day in Dublin on 10th September 2022)

Malachi McCoy

 

Title: Somatic Prevenance: An Offering of the Body to Symptomatology[1]

 

Abstract: My paper will ask what it means that something of the hysteric's body goes in front and offers itself up to embody symptoms to include those of protest?

 

What can we learn from Dr Charles Melman when he says that in hysteria there is a somatic prevenance, not compliance, where something of the body goes before, goes in front offering itself up to symptoms which include those of protest? In addressing and advancing these questions Melman returns to Freud’s writings, upon which we continue to found ourselves.      

Malachi McCoy, en hommage à Charles Melman : « Somatic Prevenance : An Offering of the Body to Symptomatology » (Milltown Lacanian Association’s study day in Dublin on 10th September 2022)

An Intolerable Rejection - Malachi Mc Coy

In Studies on Hysteria Revisited[2] Charles Melman identifies four concepts : traumatism, incompatibility, repression and unconscious. Beyond the image is to be found a repressed and rejected cast-off ; the constitution of whom, Melman asserts, is freshly preserved. Unremittingly, this original signifier’s infiltration presents the hysteric's psychosomatic manifestations. Sounding out that foreign body, Freud’s discovery assures us that psychoanalysis alone, in deciphering the language of symptomatology, gives recognition to and discharges that real place of suffering.  

 

Keywords : Freud; Melman; repression; hysteria; incompatible; rejection; signifier.

An Intolerable Rejection - Malachi Mc Coy

Omar Guerrero : Obsessional Neurosis

I love these times to share. When I was reading your titles, I don’t surf over them. I have taken your readings seriously because, for me, your question is the result of a real question, your personal question. For me it’s a mark of respect, taking seriously your question. It’s a real question, a sign that shows what point we are at in the work. We are not all at the same point and it’s always interesting to share.

Omar Guerrero : Obsessional Neurosis

Malachi McCoy : Anal Erotism, the Consequences for Character*

The Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality are fundamental to those of us who want to know the conditions of sexual life. In the development of the libido the phase of genital primacy must be preceded by a pregenital organization in which sadism and anal erotism play the leading parts.       

Malachi McCoy : Anal Erotism, the Consequences for Character*

Dermot Hickey : Becoming stuck on the long path of human development. *

My experience of working on Freud’s Three Essays was like being Alice down the Rabbit Hole: things seem to make sense, then make too much sense before sense melting away. The text itself is circular; beginning and ending on the same topic, namely a discussion of inversion, the sexual aberration which for Freud isn’t an aberration. It doesn’t follow a temporal structure: the Essay on Infantile Sexuality begins with amnesia, not being able to remember sexual matters, and the period of latency when infantile sexuality is suppressed. Freud’s method is to present a slice of sexual theory, work over it using his concepts and let it fall where it will, resulting in a fragmentary and multi-layered text. The book we have is the result of new sections and footnotes being added over the nineteen...

Dermot Hickey : Becoming stuck on the long path of human development. *

Stephanie Metcalfe : Man is Wolf to Man; Understanding the Subject of Sadism

In the Three Essays on Sexuality of 1905 Freud posits a primary sadism, representing a component instinct (drive) in all subjects. This drive is subject to vicissitudes that will depend on constitutional and environmental factors with different outcomes for each individual[1]. It does not surprise us then to see Freud cite the following quote ‘homo homini lupus’[2] or ‘man is wolf to man’ in Civilisation and its Discontents of 1930. Within this text it seems we can find the explanation for an important happening in society today. The ever-increasing demand for rights and recognition within certain social sectors which displays a combative attitude finds a psychological explanation in the following statement:
“..it may…spring from the remains of their original personality, which...

Stephanie Metcalfe : Man is Wolf to Man; Understanding the Subject of Sadism

Helen Sheehan : The imagos of Freud and Lacan: Towards understanding structure.

Brendan Behan a Dublin playwright once said “The first item on the agenda of any newly formed group in Ireland, is the split”.
At this stage over 40 years since Cormac Gallagher brought the “plague of psychoanalysis” (as Freud called it) to our shores, there have been so many splits and repleating and restitching that very soon none of us will have anything to wear.
And, perhaps that may not be so bad after all, because the prêt a porter of the psychoanalyst is much easier to don than the especially fabricated – the “be-spoke” tailor made, as they say in all the best circles. This prêt a’porter of the phantasy seems to be spreading its wings. As Lacan remarks “Is it not true that in our era psychoanalysis is everywhere and psychoanalysts...

Helen Sheehan : The imagos of Freud and Lacan: Towards understanding structure.

Ros McCarthy : “We see therefore in the mechanism of Hysteria, something which is a defence against dissatisfaction”.[1]

Situated in Draft G, in his letter to Fliess in 1895, Freud outlines a schematic diagram of sexuality, divided along the lines of a somatic-psyche boundary and an ego boundary. It depicts a quadrant with a psyche-soma frontier and an ego frontier.[2] It is interesting to note that the schema is embedded in Freud’s paper on ‘Melancholia’, in which he states “The affect corresponding to melancholia is that of mourning- that is, longing for something lost. Thus in Melancholia it must be a question of a loss- a loss in instinctual life”.[3] We see melancholia in other discourses in the clinic, where “the shadow of the object, has fallen on the ego”,[4] where object loss retreats to ego loss. In these presentations, there is a persistent encounter with the Real of loss, whereas in the work...

Ros McCarthy : “We see therefore in the mechanism of Hysteria, something which is a defence against dissatisfaction”.[1]

Stephanie Metcalfe : What Freud allowed the Hysteric to teach him*

“Freud, the first to consent not to look away nor to investigate elsewhere, the first not to attempt to hide it in psychiatric theory that more or less harmonised with the rest of medical knowledge; the first to follow its consequences with absolute rigour.” So says Michel Foucault in “Madness and Civilisation”.[1] The aim of this paper is to examine and remind ourselves of the way in which the hysteric was essential to Freud’s founding of the technique of psychoanalysis. And to outline Freud’s contention, so succinctly put in ‘A Question of Lay Analysis’ that ‘one cannot run away from oneself’[2].

Stephanie Metcalfe : What Freud allowed the Hysteric to teach him*

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