Talks On Psychoanalysis

Leopoldo Bleger left Argentina in 1976, where he trained as medical doctor and psychiatrist, and since then he lives in Paris. He is a «supervisor analyst» of the French Association (Association Psychanalytique de France). He has published several papers on the work of Melanie Klein, psychoanalysis in Río de la Plata (Argentina and Uruguay) and on problems of methodology in psychoanalysis. He is member of the EPF (European Psychoanalytic Federation) Working Party on Specificity of the psychoanalytic treatment today. He was General Secretary of the European Federation (2012-2016) and President of his society (2017-2019).  A first version of this paper was read in the Extraordinary Symposium of EPF (European Federation) in November 2017. This Symposium was organized to discuss the vote of the change of the number of sessions for training analysis, a decision voted by IPA in July 2017, a decision strongly resisted by many European societies. It was published afterwards in a book edited by Alberto Cabral and Abel Fainstein, On Training Analyses. Debates, in 2019. This episode is available also in French and Spanish

In this episode we’ll listen to Andrea Marzi on Some basic points on Psychoanalysis and the Internet. Actually, it’s not only psychoanalysis which reads the multifaceted nature of virtual reality, but also the reverse, where cyberspace also affects and influences seminal reflections about psychoanalysis itself and the virtual space of the mind. Psychoanalysis needs to develop an enquiry into the nature of virtual reality and the world of informatics and the new media. Together with a profound reflection from cyberspace about psychoanalysis itself and the “virtual spaces” in the mind, their (possible) existence and meaning, their role within the setting, and the consequences in the analytic field. Andrea Marzi MD, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst with a PhD in Medical Ethics. He is a full member of the International Psychoanalytical Association, Italian Psychoanalytical Society and an active member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, holding in these fields several national and international functions in groups and committees. He is an IPA Member of the Task Force on Remote Analysis in Training and visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge (UK). He worked in the Department of Forensic Psychopathology and has been a former Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Siena. He is also Supervisor in institutions and the NHS, and has published several dozens of scientific articles in national and international journals, as well as many books. Psychoanalysis, Identity, and the Internet, Published September 19, 2016 by Routledge.   This episode is available also in Italian

In today’s episode, we’ll listen to Gregorio Kohon’s work on “Monuments and Denials: Creating and Re-creating History”, that follows on from his book on Reflections on the Aesthetic Experience - Psychoanalysis and the Uncanny. It is argued that denials are daily events at all levels of human existence. Denials can also work in a negative way: memories, for example, can create events that might have never occurred; even if not true, mnemic inventions may still make sense and become meaningful. Historical and religious monuments are a case in point. They are political statements which work through denials, not always representing historical “truth”. Gregorio Kohon is a Training Analyst from the British Psychoanalytical Society. He lived in Australia, where he co-founded (together with Valli Shaio Kohon) The Brisbane Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies. He published No Lost Certainties to be Recovered; Reflections on the Aesthetic Experience - Psychoanalysis and the Uncanny, and Considering the Nature of Psychoanalysis. He edited The British School of Psychoanalysis - The Independent Tradition; The Dead Mother - The Work of André Green; and British Psychoanalysis - New Perspectives in the Independent Tradition. He edited, together with Rosine Perelberg, The Greening of Psychoanalysis, and co-authored with André Green, Love and its Vicissitudes. His works have been translated into many languages. He is also a poet and a novelist.    Reflections on the Aesthetic Experience - Psychoanalysis and the Uncanny, Routledge (2015).   This episode is available also in Spanish

This episode, Who's Afraid of the Impasse? Reflections about a Crossroads, stems from a clinical concern that the author has seen become more and more important during her practice as a psychoanalyst, appearing often in the clinical material of her colleagues and those she supervises, as well as in her own clinical experience. Many times, the Impasse tends to go unnoticed. It gets confused with other clinical phenomena, which makes it necessary to illuminate it in a special way. Its approach and complex technical implementation depends on it. In this episode she tries to look at the topics mentioned, emphasizing the necessary diagnosis and the vicissitudes of its approach. Maria Paz de la Puente is a Peruvian psychoanalyst living in Lima, Peru. She is a Didactic member of the Peruvian Society of Psychoanalysis (SPP), FEPAL and the IPA. She was an IPA board member, as well as an SPP Vice President on two occasions. She also teaches and supervises at her institution, the SPP, and is currently working full time doing clinical work as well community activity and work.   Link to the paper https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q07NTx1S2bOpRUDY0O_u2jSWjoc-DSI-/view?usp=sharing This episode is available also in Spanish

In this episode Udo Hock will present his paper on the notion of “distortion” in psychoanalysis. He has been working for many years on this notion that has been neglected by post-Freudian authors: the “Distortion” or “Disfigurement”, “Entstellung” in German. In his podcast he will show that the term has the status of a fundamental concept in Freud's work. It characterizes the method, the metapsychological concepts as well as the technique of psychoanalysis which is in the tradition of Freud. It is a guideline not only for our clinical work, but also for our thinking on the Unconscious. After studies in Berlin and Paris, Udo Hock worked as a psychoanalyst in private practice in Berlin. He is member of the Publications Committee of the IPA; member of the Scientific Committee of the Foundation "Jean Laplanche“ in Paris; translator and editor of the work of Jean Laplanche into German; coeditor of the German psychoanalytical journal “Psyche” and lecturer at the International Psychoanalytical University of Berlin. He has written many articles about the classical themes of psychoanalysis, as the concepts of “Drive”, “Time”, “Infantile Sexuality”, “Transference”, “Repetition”, “Cover Memory”- and on the work of Jean Laplanche. He is the author of the book “Thinking the Unconscious: Repetition and Death Drive“ published in German in 2012. Link to the paper https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RONNz2lFwWuKvzyVS0AIL5ntF4bxEfTW/view?usp=sharing This episode is available also in German and French

In this episode Luis Martin Cabré will show the influence that Ferenczi's thinking about the feminine and the child mind (especially in some of his clinical experiences and theoretical intuitions) had on the development of many of the concepts that Winnicott established in psychoanalytic thought, and which have endured to the present day. Since, as in Winnicott's case, Ferenczi was practically excluded from readings and discussions among analysts for many years, the hypothesis is that psychoanalytic transmission is not only carried out from reflection and theoretical study but also on an unconscious level and transgenerational manner. Luis Martin Cabré is past President and full member (with didactic functions) at the Asociación Psicoanalítica de Madrid (APM). He is full member of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society (SPI) and an accredited member as a child and adolescent psychoanalyst. He is also a full member of the Spanish Society of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of Children and Adolescents, Founding member of the International Foundation "Sándor Ferenczi" and member of the European Editorial Board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and the American Journal of Psychonalysis. Further to this he is the European Representative on the IPA Board (between 2015-2019) and collaborating member of the Instituto Universitario de Salud Mental - IUSAM. Link to the paper https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lhGgJz7fwoX_yd6b39a7BFw09g0D0l3g/view?usp=sharing   This episode is available also in Spanish and Italian.  

© photo J Foley/Opale In today’s episode Julia Kristeva will comment on Ilse and Robért Barande’s report, presented at the 42nd Congress of French Speaking Psychoanalysis in 1982 with the title “Antinomies in the concept of perversion and paradoxes in its application to psychoanalytic theory and practice”.  A new short version will be published in one of the next issues of the Revue Française de psychanalyse for which she has written the introduction. Indeed, she found this report to be “provocative, heavy-handed and of obvious interest in our contemporary times of pandemic and lock down”.   Madame Julia Kristeva is a prolific author, training psychoanalyst at the Psychoanalytic Society of Paris and emeritus professor at the University of Paris 7. Among many books we will only mention a few: Black Sun, A Trilogy; Female Genius: Hanna Arendt; Melanie Klein and Colette; Powers of Horror; Tales of Love; New Maladies of the Soul; Hatred and Forgiveness. Her last book, Dostoyevsky, came out in 2019. This episode is available also in French

In this episode, Claudio Neri presents his article on "Vitality, Vitalism and Shame". Through a rich narrative, ranging from the memory of his encounter with Bion, to ethnopsychological studies on expressions of anger or joy, to the Myth of Anteo that shows the importance of contact with a safe and revitalizing object, Claudio Neri raises two questions: how can we distinguish natural vitality from exasperated vitalism? And what role does shame play in this presenting itself to others without the armor of one's own defenses? If enthusiasm is contagious, it is possible, however, to observe how sometimes some individuals may not tolerate being close to a vital subject.  The contagion effect, which emanates from the enthusiastic person, in fact puts them at risk of losing their balance. People who are depressed or very controlling, for example, may feel that the enthusiasm activates an aspect of themselves that they must strictly keep at bay. What should the psychoanalyst finally do when the shame and the parade of embarrassment and fear are so intense as to prevent one of his patients from approaching vitalizing experiences?   Claudio Neri, MD, is Training and Supervising Analyst at the Italian Psychoanalytic Society, a founder member of the International Field Theory Association. He is also a member of the the editorial board of the “European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling”;  “Revue de Psychothérapie Psychanalytique de Groupe”;  “Clínica y Análisis Grupal” and of the “Revista de Psicoànalisis de las Configuraciones Vinculares”. He has published articles and books, primarily on the tecnique and theory of treatment. His work has been translated into six languages. link to the paper https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LI_Qi9es_zCAPUc_uoFetrzy9-0XOf-i/view?usp=sharing     This episode is read by Brook Barbieri. https://www.claudioneri.it   This episode is available also in Italian, Spanish, French.

In this episode Dr. Kenichiro Okano displays how shame and social phobia could manifest differently between the Eastern and the Western countries, and investigates them from a psychoanalytical point of view. With his personal history of becoming a bicultural psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in the United States and in Japan, he considers that while passivity and non-action induced by shame can be misunderstood in Western culture, it can potentially exert some paradoxical power and influence, at least in the Japanese society. In its conceptualizations, the dissociation construct plays a central role, consistent with its research and clinical experience.  Dr Kenichiro Okano is a Japanese psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and professor of Clinical Psychology at Kyoto University Department of Education. He is a training and supervising analyst in the Japan Psychoanalytic Society. He is the author of 26 books on psychoanalysis, dissociative disorder, and neurobiology. In 2016 he won The Japanese Psychoanalytical Association’s Distinguished Publications Award. This episode is available also in Japanese

In this episode we’ll present the work of a psychoanalytical peer group. A “peer group” is made up of colleagues who choose to work together to explore a certain topic or to achieve a specific goal. Sophia Group consists of five members from different republics that emerged after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The goal of this group is to try to dream in the group and work all material out to be able to hold the group and use it as a container for various experiences that the members of the group have. In this podcast, one of the members of the group introduces it with general remarks on goals and processes in the group. Next Dr. Giovanni Foresti talks about his experiences with the group as its organizational consultant. Last one to talk is Dr. Paolo Fonda who emphasizes his experiences with the dissolution of the Yugoslavia and war traumas that emerged from it. He also talks about how such groups can serve broader social purpose. We hope in this way to show how group work can be used to help people overcome their differences and prevent bloody conflicts such as Yugoslavian one, and also trauma healing processes after such events.