היסטוריה ותיאוריה

I am very much interested, from both a historical and clinical

perspective, in identifying those theoretical preferences and modes of

thought within psychoanalysis that reflect political and cultural

identifications. The historiography of psychoanalysis is replete with

examples of the relationship between ethnic, socio-political, and cultural

sentiments and the emergence of particular analytic subcultures. This

includes the interest in Freud's Jewish identity and its bearing on his theory,

the influence of communism on interpretations of the Oedipus Complex in

Soviet Russia, the influence of pragmatism on Ego-Psychology in post-World

War II America, or the part played by anti-Americanism in the development

of French, and in particular Lacanian, psychoanalysis. Quite often, such

extra-analytic identifications constitute the "hidden passengers" in the

analysts' ”identification cargo” (that which facilitates or limits the analyst’s

clinical sensibilities6). However, we often fail to take notice of the impact of

these identifications on our personal analytic thinking or on the functioning

of psychoanalytic institutes at the group level. Only under extreme

circumstances, such as war or life under brutal totalitarian regimes, does

one realize that the practice of the so-called “impossible profession" may

turn into an impossible obsession, or even acquire the characteristics of

indulgence in perversion.

להרצאה בכנס הפדרציה הפסיכואנליטית האירופית בבריסל>>