It is one thing to mourn the losses inflicted on Humanity over the centuries by the murderous incarnations of anti-Semitism from a depressive position. It is a totally different thing to adopt a melancholic stance to history and to counter anti-Semitism from the same paranoid position in which the
The Bad, The Mad and the Functional: One Anti-Semitism or Many? Psychoanalytic practice taught us to perceive archaic defense mechanisms and transference enactments not only as pathological, but also as developmentally functional and communicative. The propensity for regression, scapegoating, projective-identification, and generalization cannot be “banned” from language and from public
Although we cannot expect the historiography of psychoanalysis to tell us “how much political reality psychoanalysis can bear,” there are chapters in the history of our science which provide insights regarding that frontier where various conceptions of analytic theory meet the realm of politics, social aggression, and ideology. One such
Author’s talk- Stephen Frosh with Eran Rolnik at the Freud Museum, February 9 2013 Link to the Lecture and the Interview>>
Much has been said about the intellectual ferment that characterized late 19 century and early 20 century Vienna. Of particular interest are the intersections between the various circles that operated in Vienna at that time. Having done some work on two of the most radical currents that operated in Vienna,
Dying Together: Towards a Psychoanalytic Understanding of Political Self-Sacrifice The paper delineates a conceptual framework by which a historical- social phenomenon such as suicide terrorism could be understood in terms of its psychological meaning. It offers few psychoanalytically informed observations on the role of trauma and on the psychic dynamics
Keynote paper in the meeting of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society to mark its 80 Anniversary view lecture in Hebrew>>
Admittedly, there is something uncanny about anti-Semitism. Regardless of the most meticulous historical representation, and in spite of its deep inscription on modernity, even when it is rubbed against one’s nose – anti-Semitism keeps claiming the place of a phantom, or a metaphor, in the mind; as if shielded from
podcast of a lecture in the conference “Why Anti-semitism” organized by the Hellenic Psychoanalytic , Society and Goethe Institute, Athens, March 2014 link to the lecture in English>>
Selbstaufopferung als politische Waffen Die Analyse von individuell frei gewählten oder kollektiv geplanten Zuiziden von Liebenden (denken Sie z.B an Kleist) oder Gruppenmitgliedern (Sekten, Masada etc.) begleitet das psychoanalytische Denken seit seinen Anfängen. Trotz des Unterschiedes zwischen der Verbundenheit von Liebenden, die den gemeinsamen Freitod wählen und dem politischen Mord