Psychoanalysis

ABSTRACT Since the signing of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement of 1998, Northern Ireland has made significant progress towards a postcolonising transformation of its political culture and its major political and social institutions, as it has shifted away from violence and the dominance of political ideologies structured by the friend–enemy distinction. These ideological formations and the practices of social and political antagonism that they prescribed have been challenged by adversary–neighbour ideological formations that construct identities and relations through more inclusive norms of recognition and that support a more complex emotional constellation. However, as this cultural transformation has been neither thoroughgoing nor universal, Northern Ireland finds itself in the somewhat counter-intuitive situation in which the shift away from the violence of the past has increased, rather than reduced, the ontological insecurity of its citizens. Moreover, as ontological security may be supported by either friend–enemy or adversary–neighbour ideological formations, two distinct ways in which ontological security may collapse or re-configure have emerged in Northern Ireland.

This volume offers a rich tapestry of psychoanalytic thought. The authors demonstrate bold creativity in their use of psychoanalytic concepts to think about a wide range of problems in philosophy, art and the clinic. The collection grew out of ‘Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society,’ a conference for postgraduate students and research fellows organised by the Centre for Psychoanalysis, Middlesex University, London, in June 2014. The range of themes addressed at the conference demonstrates the interdisciplinary character of psychoanalytic studies.

This paper engages centrally with the political impotence of much of critical theory today and suggests how a Lacanian-inflected perspective may offer a possible way out of the present intellectual and political deadlock. Lacanian thought has been central to many post-foundational theorizations of the political, yet the radical implications of a Lacanian-inflected reading of the political remain largely unexplored. Our prime objective is to demonstrate that a Lacanian theorization of ‘the political’ can help to open up a space for articulating the current deadlock that locks the Left in a state of melancholy, anxiety, depression, and/ or impotent acting out. After a brief conceptual introduction to the notion of ‘the political’, the paper mobilizes and develops the Lacanian theory of the subject. This permits opening up the terrain of psychoanalyisis to the question of the political as that what does not work in the world. The key insights of a Lacanian- inflected political theory are then explored through the work of some of the key critical political theorists: Jacques Rancière, Slavoj Žižek, and Alain Badiou.

Die Analyse der ersten zehn Minuten einer audio aufgezeichneten psychoanalytischen Sitzung fuhrt zu der Entdeckung und Beschreibung einer psychoanalytischen Prozedur, die wir als »Tanz der Einsicht« bezeichnen. Die Sitzung ist nach den Standards der Konversationsanalyse transkribiert und wird auf drei Ebenen analysiert. Zunachst kommt eine klinische Analyse zu dem Ergebnis, dass die Analytikerin bei zwei Gelegenheiten ihre Gesprachsposition verandert; sie spricht, als ware sie die Patientin. Die klinische Perspektive bringt diese Beobachtung mit dem Konzept der Modellszene und dem methodischen Prinzip der »Komplettierung der Szene« in Beziehung und einigen weiteren Befunden der Sauglingsforschung. Zum zweiten lasst sich mit den Mitteln der Konversationsanalyse erkennen, wie die Therapeutin dies Manover ausfuhrt und wie die Patientin darauf reagiert. Diese Analyse beschreibt detailliert die »slots«, an denen ein solches Manover auf naturliche und ungekunstelte Weise ausgefuhrt wird. ...

Cet article décrit de façon critique le recours aux théories de l’attachement comme fondement de la loi en matière de protection de la jeunesse. Il situe ces théories dans leur contexte historique et montre en quoi elles s’inscrivent dans un mouvement contestable de naturalisation des rapports humains.

The institution of new paradigms and the fragmentation of traditional values constitute marks of contemporaneity. The clinic reflects the transformations of the culture and is called upon to deal with subjective configurations that may occur in the form of conditions so-called borderline, circumscribed by the presence of traumatic elements and expressive gaps within the scope of the representational capacity of the subjects. Considering the importance for the psychoanalytical
praxis and the scarcity of works devoted to conjugality in narcissistic-identitary pathologies and their treatment, the objective of this work is to carry out a theoretical reflection about a metapsychology of borderline cases and the specificities of its clinical management in the context
of the care of couples.

The dissertation explores the specific forms of subjectivity that are attributed to LGBTI individuals in international human rights law. It takes into consideration 8 rulings by the Human Rights Committee, the UN body charged with monitoring the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and advances a deconstructive reading of the specific articulation of homosexual and transgender subjects contained in them. It suggests that the three representations found, the legitimate gay, the gay activist and the gay outlaw can be understood as an attempt to depoliticize deviant sexualities, subsuming them under neoliberal, heterosexist hegemonic normative arrangements. In view of this argument, it  proposes a queer psychoanalytic reading of subjective and bodily constitutions, emphasizing Jacques Lacan’s, Judith Butler’s and Jacques Derrida’s works. In highlighting the contingency and violence inherent to libidinal organization, it paves the way to a radical  understanding of the co-implication of subjectivity and community. In light of this co-implication, Jacques Rancière’s notion of politics is
presented and reworked in light of Lacan’s concept of Sinthome, in a way that appears to allow for an aesthetic political engagement based on the
quasi-substance of the Sinthome as a contingent, continuous grafting of Lacan’s three metaphysical orders, the real, the imaginary and the symbolic.

On Wilhelm Reich and Orgonomy
Reich in Denmark, Atomic Accidents, Bomb Tests & Weather, Cloudbusting in Israel & Namibia, Summerhill School ... Report on FDA Burning of Reich's Books

http://www.orgonelab.org/cart/xdemeo.htm#ONWR&ORG
C
ontains original articles by James DeMeo, R. D. Laing, Lois Wyvell, Victor Sobey, Ellen Siersted and others, on the subjects of bioelectricity, bion-biogenesis research, the jailing of Reich and burning of his books, cloudbusting in Israel, and other reports.

הן הקבלה והן הפסיכואנליזה תופסות את הנפש האנושית כמרובדת ובנויה שכבות על שכבות. פרויד השווה לא אחת את מלאכת האנליטיקאי לארכיאולוג שמשחזר שרידים הקבורים תחת ההריסות, ואף המקובלים מפתחים תורת בריאה וגאולה המושתת על זיכרון של עולמות שחרבו, והמיסטיקון נתפס כמי שמחלץ משמעות המסתתרת בתוך עיי החורבות האלוהיות והפרטיות. כפיתוח לספרי "חבלי אנוש- הלידה בפסיכואנליזה ובקבלה" מאמר זה עוסק במפגש שבין התיאוריה הפסיכואנליטית לבין החשיבה הקבלית והמיסטית סביב סוגיות של הולדה, מיניות והורות. הדיון מתמקד בתפיסה כי הנפש זקוקה להורים כדי לצמוח, ודן בדגם "ההורים העליונים" אותו הוסיפו המקובלים לדמויות הזכר והנקבה באילן האלוהי. בתוך כך נבחנות תפיסות פסיכואנליטיות וקבליות של הורות, כגון דמות הורית משולבת combined parental figure תפיסות אודות קונספציה ופרה-קונספציה, בזיקה לתפיסה הזוהרית של "תרין רעין דלא מתפרשין", מיתוס הנסירה, ועוד.

Jung and Nietzsche each made the great discovery of a reality that “overcomes” the opposites. Nietzsche, the linguistic scholar and philosopher, referred to this reality as self-presentational language while Jung, the psychologist, names it as the objective psyche. Both agree that this reality is “alive,” with its own intentionality. For the purposes of this essay I will call it living language.  The discoveries of both pioneers inaugurated a blossoming of cultural practices, founded on incomplete interpretations of the telos of this living language, which articulate the emergence of a variety of possible worlds, among them the worlds of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, biotechnology, nanotechnology, etc.  This essay attempts to describe a cultural practice that could emerge from a more complete understanding of the telos of the psyche, or living language, a practice that can articulate and manifest the possible world of the posthuman.

‘To say more than human things with human voice,
That cannot be; to say human things with more
Than human voice, that, also, cannot be;
To speak humanly from the height or from the depth
Of human things, that is acutest speech.’
                        Wallace Stevens, ‘Chocorua to its Neighbor’

Body psychotherapy can offer practical clinical tools, as well as theoretical conceptualisations, for working with transitional states of consciousness, both individual and dyadic. This paper examines sleep as a transformative space, which is mostly unchartered territory for the other, and through developing Bion's reverie (and further influenced by Meltzer's and Klein's work), offers ways of joining the other – in our body – into spaces of sleep and awakening. The work on the threshold of conscious and unconscious processes, which is also known as transliminal (Fassler, Knox and Lynn, 2006), is characterised by dreamlike dissociative states of consciousness during awakeness. In addition, the author explores the function of sleep and sleepiness in the formation of mother-baby attachment system, and therefore at the formative stages of psychotherapy, and attempts to translate these understandings into clinical practice. Alongside the theoretical review, the paper presents a clinical vignette from groupwork, to demonstrate the technique of working somatically with states of sleep. A. The clock loses its power In my clinic, I often find myself amidst processes between sleeping and awakening. I find during various therapeutic situations, such as dissociation, where splits occur from the body, the heart (emotional disconnection) the head, or different body organs, it is very difficult to work verbally or interpretatively. We may look at dissociation as an organic state of falling into sleep, in the therapist, client, or both. Sleeping in therapy denotes a sleep, which is qualitatively different to its commonplace occurrence. It is a transitional state between sleep and awakeness – a trasliminal state. While sleep states of the client and therapist have been widely discussed in this paper shall focus on two novel aspects: shared sleep of client and therapist, and techniques for shared-sleeping in treatment as part of a practice of active bodily-reverie. Although drawing from psychoanalytic literature, I focus here on clinical psychotherapeutic applications of shared dreaming. To best understand the ideas

טראומה מאופיינת בכך שהיא נותרת כעדות היולית ללא מילים, ללא מספֵּר שיספר את סיפורה וללא אוזן קשבת שתשמע
אותה. מתוך כך, היא אינה ניתנת לעיבוד ומתעתעת ביכולתו של הקורבן להיות עד למה שאירע לו, לדעת את עצמו ולספר
את סיפורו ) 1(. ברצוני להציע את מדיום המוסיקה כלוכד, הן את השבר הטראומתי והן את האפשרות לריפוי, כזה המבקש
לתקשר עם האחר הפנימי ובו־זמנית מחזיק את היעדרו. המוסיקה מהווה פשר לטראומה וגשר לעבר עדות, סימבוליזציה
ושפה, ובה בעת היא מנכיחה את ההיעדר. במאמר זה אדון בתופעת ה־ reverie המוסיקלי, מונח שהצעתי במאמר קודם,
כחלק מתהליך של הפצעת עדות, מעין ׳עדות צלילית׳, במקומות בהם אין ביכולת המילים לנסח ולהכיל את עוצמת הכאב
והאימה. במאמר אתאר את המוסיקה המלווה אותנו לעתים בעבודת האנליזה כזמזום בראש בתוך השעות, כתחושה גופנית
של מקצב פנימי, כהדהוד לאסוציאציות של המטופל או כשירה המלווה אותנו בין השעות. אכנה תופעה זו בשם reverie
מוסיקלי ואציע דרכים להבנה ולעבודה עם ה־ reverie בהקשר של עבודה עם טראומה.

Counselling psychology’s dual emphasis on the use of the self as both vehicle of therapeutic change and legitimate focus of inquiry and research is one of the features by which the profession may be distinguished from related fields such as clinical psychology
or psychotherapy. This paper discusses the relevance of the psychoanalytic concept of projective identification in understanding the extent, nature and subtlety of the ways in
which the therapist’s ‘self’ and emotions may be deployed within the therapeutic relationship. Illustrated with reference to the film ‘Ripley’s Game’ and a clinical case vignette, Searles’s (1978) advocacy of ‘a richness of emotional participation’ within
clinical work is discussed in relation to the pluralist philosophy of counselling psychology; implications for the training and personal development of counselling psychologists are also briefly explored.

Ce livre aborde le mythe de Narcisse à partir de ses sources antiques et propose d’étudier ses répercussions dans l’art du XXe siècle.
Ce mythe constitue un archétype culturel ponctuant la littérature et l’histoire de l’art occidentales et se trouve à l’origine d’une stratégie de représentation confrontant la personne à sa propre image par le biais d’un médium. La présente étude met à jour les situations d’illusion qui structurent ce récit fondateur dans chacune de ses variations et considère leur reformulation en termes visuels : dans l’oeuvre du Caravage et de Poussin notamment, puis à travers différents exemples tirés de l’activité artistique du XXe siècle jusqu’à nos jours.
A ce titre, la métamorphose de Narcisse en une notion – le narcissisme – et surtout sa réélaboration par le biais de l’image – le stade du miroir – sont mises en confrontation avec le mythe. Fort des différentes strates historique, exégétique et visuelle recouvrant l’histoire de Narcisse, ce livre propose une étude de cas choisis dans le travail de trois artistes, Francis Bacon, Bill Viola et Jeff Wall. Les trois corpus d’oeuvres sélectionnés exemplifient chacun l’exploitation d’un médium artistique différent: la peinture, la vidéo et la photographie. Ils proposent un effet de réverbération du mythe et/ou de ses instanciations visuelles, et plus encore interagissent entre eux, communiquant parfois même par la grâce d’une référence explicite d’un artiste à un autre, de telle sorte que cet ouvrage s’érige en un circuit thématique cohérent.

In this essay, I compare the psychoanalytic approaches to dream interpretation taken by Lacan and Jung, respectively.  I begin by introducing the point that Lacan and Jung may have more to say to one another than most realize.  Section I discusses Lacan’s contention that the unconscious is structured like a language.  Specifically, I begin by providing a detailed account of the traumatic events surrounding the birth of the unconscious as Lacan appears to understand it, paying close attention throughout to Freud’s influence on his theory; after presenting the appropriate context, I proceed to explore the linguistic elements of the unconscious as they operate in dreams.  In Part II, I consider Jung’s theory of the unconscious and pay close attention to the creative and teleological aspects of archetypes as it relates to myths and dreams.  In my concluding section, I present important and, perhaps, previously unconsidered similarities between each thinker.

Le traitement de l’autisme est un thème controversé depuis environ quatre
décennies. La première description formelle de l’autisme par Leo Kanner dans les années
1940 mettait l’accent notamment sur l’évolution d’un trouble neurodéveloppemental
assez homogène et n’évoquait pas la possibilité d’un traitement. À l’heure actuelle, il est
question de souscrire à un type de prise en charge qui oscille entre l’approche comportementale
et celui de type cognitive. Cependant, d’autres propositions de traitement sont
envisagées, nous analyserons deux d’entre elles.

This paper aims at analyzing a specific aspect of Nietzsche’s self-proclaimed medical expertise, which is the very non-Freudian role he ascribes to dietetics in the treatment of “nervous” diseases. I first consider the philosophical justifications of such a psycho-dietetic approach, namely, Nietzsche’s mind-body monism and his cultural diagnosis of morbidity targeting the Judeo-Christian way of life. I then argue that Nietzsche’s dietetics is not therapeutic in an ordinary sense, both because it doesn’t prescribe universal recipes and because it doesn’t purport to suppress pain. Lastly, I show that the Nietzschean diet is beyond the reach of the typical “decadent”, insofar as the latter instinctively chooses a harmful regime.

?על פי מה ניתן לקבוע שחלום זה הינו חלום מכונן בהסטוריה של הפסיכואנליזה
מהו הפירוש שלפרויד עצמו? של אריק אריקסון, שראשון שהבחין שלחלום יש שני  חלקים, ושכלחולם אחר היה מתעורר בשיא הזוועתי של החלק הראשון שלהחלום.
ומה הפירוש של לאקאן, המסתכך קודם כל, כל דו-המשמעות של מסמן מרכזי בחלום, המילה הגרמנית ל"פתרון" (שפרויד מציע לאירמה), היא גם המילה  ל"תמיסה". אכן, המזרק אכן היה מזוהם, כפי שפרויד טוען בחלום.ן
Lily Angel co-author (participant in Reading Group I led)

“Repression” names just one of the defense mechanisms that characterize queer theory’s quarter-century evasion of Lacanian psychoanalysis. The act of repressing the unconscious might seem entirely different than the decision to reject the psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious. Yet, as Freud writes in the 1925 “Negation,” “[a] negative judgement is the intellectual substitute for repression; its ‘no’ is the hall-mark of repression, a certificate of origin.” One of the key concepts of Lacanian theory that queer theory finds inadmissible is repression. Indeed, repression has been somewhat of a bugaboo since its inception. Tracing queer theory from the foundational texts of Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick to the contemporary writings of Lee Edelman, Lauren Berlant, and Paul B. Preciado, while building on Tim Dean’s Beyond Sexuality, this chapter argues that queer theory has repressed repression, thereby forestalling the thinking of radical social change that Lacan makes possible.

En France, dans le sillage du mouvement de Mai 68, émerge spontanément et joyeusement le Mouvement de Libération des Femmes (MLF), à l’initiative d’Antoinette Fouque et de Monique Wittig. Au cœur de leur débat, de leur relecture critique des textes freudiens et lacaniens se trouvent pensés à nouveau frais le discours et la théorie de la psychanalyse sur “La femme”, “le féminin”, “la sexualité féminine”, “la différence des sexes”. Les dogmes théoriques concernant “le continent noir” romantiquement évoqués ainsi par Freud sont revisités, voire renversés. Les querelles autour du terme même de “féminisme” produisent et ouvrent à d’autres discours. Freud a toujours considéré que la théorie psychanalytique était open to revision et Lacan que la psychanalyse gagnerait à être en “extension”. Que se passe-t-il lorsque la théorie et la pratique psychanalytiques rencontrent les discours féministes? L’horizon s’ouvre-t-il pour le discours psychanalytique, sa théorie, sa pratique? Une ouverture, une révision peuvent- elle s’opérer? Un renversement du dogme, une nouvelle joie de la pratique analytique?

In France, in the wake of the movement of May 68, the Women's Liberation Movement (MLF) spontaneously and joyfully emerged, initiated by Antoinette Fouque and Monique Wittig. In their debates and their critical rereadings of the Freudian and Lacanian texts, they think afresh the discourse and theory of psychoanalysis on “Women”, “the feminine”, “female sexuality”, and “sex difference”. e theoretical dogmas concerning "the black continent" romantically evoked by Freud are revisited, and even reversed. e quarrels over the very term of "feminism" produce and give way to other discourses. Freud always considered that psychoanalytical theory was open to revision and Lacan that psychoanalysis would benefit from being in ‘extension’. What happens when psychoanalytic theory and practice meet feminist discourses? Does this encounter imply that the horizon should open up for psychoanalytical discourse, its theory and practice? Can an opening, a revision then take place? A dogma, a new joy in analytical practice?

With the publication of Wilfred Bion’s text 'Learning from Experience', psychoanalysis was afforded a new schema for understanding the processes and implications involved in an infant’s contact with their caregivers. As a result, our conception of some of the most fundamental phenomena of psychic life was significantly enriched. By proposing his theory of alpha-functioning, Bion mapped out how meaningful connections to the internal and external worlds become established in the mind. In contrast, and through working clinically with psychotic patients, Bion revealed how these ties can catastrophically come undone. It is with these ideas, as well as their links to a corresponding set of neuroscientific constructs relating to the Markov blanket and principally developed by Karl Friston, that this paper is concerned. Through an investigation of the psychic functioning originally dubbed ‘dream-work-alpha’, the paper’s first section focuses on how Bion conceived of the creation of a ‘contact-barrier’ that allows for the differentiation of consciousness from an unconscious mind. Casting the ramifications of this organisation in sharp relief, the psychotic disorganisation of the contact-barrier is then explored. The discussion subsequently broadens to incorporate contemporary theories from free energy neuroscience that bear significant and illuminating relations to the psychoanalytic ideas espoused by Bion over half a century ago. Finally, through posing a series of three questions with accompanying discussions, a superimposition of these theoretical schemas is attempted. These suggestions directly address 1. whether there is an intimate connection between the interoceptive contact-barrier and the exteroceptive Markov blanket, 2. whether a disobjectalising of the contact-barrier may be reflected as a tear in the functional fabric of the Markov blanket, and 3. what the clinical implications are of working at the level of the projected surface. Ultimately, the aim of the paper is to expose relevant points of contact within and between the varying conceptual frameworks; frameworks that ultimately derive from disciplines that are both concerned with examining the underlying mechanisms of the mind-brain.

In order to better cope with the pressures and stresses of the current day, modern psychology is anxiously seeking to find new therapies to address the increasing disorders within the human psyche. In the process new fields of research, such as humanistic and transpersonal psychology, curiously appear to borrow more and more from the wisdom of the ages. This volume, containing eighteen articles by noteworthy expositors of the perennial philosophy such as Huston Smith, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Frithjof Schuon, presents the spiritual psychology of the wisdom traditions as a much-needed antidote to the current impasse in modern psychology.

Some Endorsements for Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy:

“[Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy] is more than an anthology. It is a wisely crafted collection of classic and contemporary scholarship noting that what many are seeking is what has always been, a perennial philosophy, that remains foundational. As one of the authors, Tage Lindbom, properly notes, ‘Secularization is a fish in troubled waters.’ This book claims the waters and is essential reading for all those who may have forgotten or are simply ignorant of the rich foundation provided by the perennial philosophy.”
—Ralph W. Hood, Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, past president of the Psychology of Religion division of the American Psychological Association, co-founder of The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion and co-author of The Psychology of Religion

“A necessary and bracing critique of the assumptions and limitations of contemporary Western psychology, this generous volume is also a passionate call and learned guide towards a truer perspective that embraces man's spiritual nature.”
—Gabor Maté, M.D., and author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

“Knowing the nature of the mind is perhaps the most difficult undertaking, especially in today’s world. To comprehend the nature of mind one needs to turn to the domain of religion and spirituality. Yet the truth of the mind and its complexity cannot explicitly be defined in words. Inner or transcendent wisdom sees the mind’s own nature without the duality of the seer. Suchness (tathatā) of mind is only experiential and not expressible. The words used to describe thought are themselves a product of thought, which is conditioned and limited. Thus, differences and contradictions are unavoidable. Therefore, a comparative study of different viewpoints and commentaries is immensely important to awaken the inner intelligence to see the mind as it is. Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy: Studies in Comparative Religion edited by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is an outstanding effort in this direction.”
—Samdhong Rinpoche, former Prime Minister (Kalon Tripa) of the Tibetan Government-in-exile, author of Uncompromising Truth for a Compromised World: Tibetan Buddhism and Today’s World

“The rise of psychology has impacted the study and practice of spirituality, the experiences and attitudes relevant to ultimate human values that transcend ordinary behavior. Each chapter of this remarkable book demonstrates this interaction in a unique and provocative way. But rather than using psychology to reduce and ‘psychologize’ spiritual topics, its authors demonstrate how directives from the spiritual traditions can enhance and even illuminate the enduring importance of psychology in the 21st century.”
—Stanley Krippner, Saybrook University, co-author of Spiritual Dimensions of Healing

“The work at hand is a thinking and debating man’s delight. If you have any interest at all in attempting to include an educated and enlightened view of man’s higher functions in your purview of the world, you will learn from and enjoy this collection of essays. If you already have some knowledge in this area, brace yourself: you may see some of your favorites sharply criticized. A thought-provoking work.”
—Bruce W. Scotton, University of California, San Francisco, co-editor of Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology

“This book, superbly edited by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos, is a masterful critique of the field of psychology and its loss of the sacred ground in which it once was rooted. It offers depth psychologists an opportunity to contemplate timeless truths echoed through the centuries by perennial philosophers who have always claimed psyche is subordinate to Spirit. Although ignored in depth psychology’s early years due to prejudice and lack of understanding, this is a message today’s psychotherapists must take seriously. Human beings need a deeper and wider transpersonal vision of who and what we are, which the saints and sages of the world’s spiritual traditions have always pointed to. In psychotherapy with a therapist committed to such a vision, patients penetrate into their unconscious depths and not infrequently awaken to the Ground of all Being. Their suffering itself occurred because they had turned away from Spirit. Above all, this volume passionately calls upon depth psychology to remember its origin in the perennial wisdom at the core of the great religions. There is something of a polemic in these pages. It deserves to be considered by depth psychologists of all persuasions.”
—Bryan Wittine, Transpersonal psychologist and Jungian psychoanalyst

“This anthology from Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is a must reference for anyone who is interested in psychology and its relationship to spirituality, and in developing an inclusive dialogue between disciplines that favor an integral outlook on the person and his or her potential. Selections in this anthology will inspire us to reexamine the metaphysical underpinnings of psychology, and remind us how important it is to rise above science’s attempt to reduce the human being to an epistemic object.”
—Sangeetha Menon, National Institute of Advanced Studies (Bangalore, India), Board Member of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), author of The Beyond Experience: Consciousness in Bhagavad Gita

“This anthology has some of the most discerning essays and reviews on spirituality and psychology, which provide much-needed care and caution to all those engaged in bringing them together or who wish to do so in future. Therefore, it is a must-read for all those who teach, research, consult, or study in such frontier areas as transpersonal psychology, states of consciousness, mind-body relation, holistic health, Indian psychology, and so on. It will be an invaluable textbook for courses in these and other related areas. I congratulate the editor of the book.”
—Kiran Kumar K. Salagame, University of Mysore (India), Board Member of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), author of The Psychology of Meditation: A Contextual Approach

“One of the finest collections of essays on the Perennial Philosophy—a must-read for all psychologists who are engaged with spirituality and transpersonal psychology. The essays which critique modern psychology (including transpersonal psychology, and the framework of Carl Jung), in the light of the Perennial Philosophy are a revelation and make compelling reading. The book serves as a corrective to the excesses of modern psychology, and to this end Sotillos has done a commendable job. I for one will include the book in some of the graduate courses that I teach.”
—Suneet Varma, University of Delhi, co-editor of Foundations of Indian Psychology

“To its credit modern science by-and-large is becoming more cognizant of the essential connection between spirituality and psychological health and well-being and most of all its positive implications within the field of psychology. While there is ample data to document this in a plethora of academic journals and books, this new book Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy adds a novel contribution to the dialogue between psychology and spirituality, which captures many nuances that for the most part go unnoticed within these discussions, and last but not least, it provides a keen eye of discernment to understand this intricate relationship on a deeper level that is crucially needed. This work will be a valuable asset to students and long term mental health practitioners and professors alike who seek to better understand the relationship between psychology and spirituality.”
—Harold G. Koenig, Duke University, Director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health, co-author of The Handbook of Religion and Health

This paper aims to concretize this notion of literary theories being in dialogue by exploring the intertwining of the Marxist theory, mainly depending on Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin’s theories, and Freudian psychoanalytic theory, based on Sigmund Freud’s writings, in Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible” with focus on Reverand Parris as a representative of the Bourgoise and John Proctor, Abigail Williams and the people of Salem as representatives of the Proletariats. “The Crucible” portrays the Marxist ideology of class division, yet more importantly, it traces religion, a concept long debated among the Marxists, as the trigger to the class struggle. The characters in the play have taken to 2 extreme measures for power attainment; Hysteria, triggered by the Id, and revolution, triggered by the Superego. This is what this paper aims to explore further with taking

In “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” Louis Althusser proposed a complete rethinking of the category of the Subject. Despite the many critiques of Subjectivity that proliferated in France at the time, Althusser intended to salvage the concept of the Subject in order to address how a given ideology maintains its stranglehold on an individual in the absence of any external repressive apparatus (e.g. a police officer). This paper will assess Althusser’s achievement by way of immanent critique; rather than dispensing with Althusser’s theoretical framework, I will update it by adding two components that attempt to remedy its deficiencies. Those components reside in between the Subject and the ideological apparatuses that “capture” it. This mediating region is itself split into two concepts: 1) the Freudian death drive, or repetition automatism, which pertains to the composition of the Subject’s interior border, and 2) the phenomenological experience of that border, designated by the phrase “wounds in the sensorium”.  In order to approach the latter phenomenological dimension of ideological interpellation, I will take a seemingly roundabout, but necessary journey through the work of Walter Benjamin, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Franz Kafka.

The curator of MOCA Taipei's exhibition, Rosa's Wound, used Paul Celan's poem to name the exhibition, which showcased artworks by artists from various Asian countries to discuss the relationship between art and trauma. The background of these artworks involved a wide range of issues, including the history of martial law, political prisoners, colonization, suppression, racial violence, and war. Without any knowledge of the background and context of these ideas, the general audience would have difficulties understanding the purpose of such an exhibition as well as the curatorial efforts made in the process. In this article, I have sorted out the development and trends of trauma studies in recent years, and proposed that the concept of the "post-trauma era" could help us contextualize this exhibition and gain a better understanding. Modern History and the History of Trauma Etymologically speaking, the English word "trauma" comes from Greek, originally meaning "wound," especially one that penetrates the body. The word was first used in psychology in the nineteenth century to refer to shocking experiences in modern life (such as the shock suffered by WWI soldiers in the battlefield), in which the mind's protective mechanism that was supposed to function like a shield was "penetrated" due to excessive external stimulation. 1 From the psychoanalytical perspective, trauma falls into the domain of the "Thing," which cannot be objectified. "The 'Thing' is traumatic and brings pain. We do not know where it causes pain, or even that it causes pain. It strives to be known by the mind, but fails, and can only be temporarily liberated in symptomatic repetitions." 2 The British art historian, Griselda Pollock, has dedicated her recent years to the study of the relationship between trauma and art by adopting psychoanalytical points of view (especially Israeli psychoanalyst Bracha L. Ettinger's revisions of Lacan's theory). Pollock concluded her study in 2013 and stated five characteristics of trauma: 1. Trauma seems to exist in a non-temporal, non-spatial realm: it exists permanently and is non-temporal. Like a stranger that lives in the mind, it colonizes the host. The 1 Griselda Pollock, Afetr-affects/After-images: Trauma and aesthetic transformation in the virtual feminist museum, Manchester: Manchester, UP, 2013, p. 2. 2 Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, " Traumatic Wit(h)ness – and Martrixial Co/in-habit(u)ating " , parallax, vol. 5 no. 1, 1999, p. 89.

"Modes of Therapeutic Action" was mandated textbook for doctoral students  in the Counseling Psychology Program at Argosy University, Los Angeles in 2009-2010.  Essay clarifies the differences between “relational psychoanalysis,” which Stark advocates versus the transference relationship in classical psychoanalytic theory.

This short essay explores the meaning of crossing borders in contemporary times. Borders are proliferating at a rapid rate, and paradoxically they are also being eroded at a rapid rate. This essay claims that this 'making and unmaking of borders' has a profound social impact, and is a central concern in our personal lives and in wider societal and political realms. The making and unmaking of borders produces fear, anxiety, security, liberation and emancipation depending on where you are in relation to the border. Dr Western explores borders utilising a psycho-social lens, revealing how we constantly have to cross and navigate borders, in the 'real world', digital and virtual world, and in our emotional worlds.

“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976 lectures (“Society Must Be Defended”), this work-hypothesis theorises “basic warfare” [la guerre fondamentale] as the teleological horizon of socio-political relations. Following Boulainvilliers, Foucault champions this polemological approach, conceived as a purely descriptive discourse on “real” politics and war, against the philosophico-juridical conceptuality attached to liberal society (Hobbes’s Leviathan being here the prime example).
However, in doing so, Foucault did not interrogate the conceptual validity of notions such as power and war, therefore interlinking them without questioning their ontological status. This problematic conflation was partly rectified in 1982, as Foucault proposed a more dynamic definition of power relations: “actions over potential actions”.
I argue, somewhat polemically, that Foucault’s hermeneutics of power still involves a teleological violence, dependent on a polemological representation of human relations as essentially instrumental: this resembles what Derrida names, in “Heidegger’s Ear”, an “anthropolemology”. However, I show that all conceptualisation of power implies its self-deconstruction. This self-deconstructive (or autoimmune) structure supposes an archi-originary unpower prior to power: power presupposes an excess within power, an excessive force, another violence making it both possible and impossible. There is something within power located “beyond the power principle” (Derrida). This (self-)excess signifies a limitless resistantiality co-extensive with power-relationality. It also allows the reversal of pólemos into its opposite, as unpower opens politics and warfare to the messianic call of a pre-political, pre-ontological disruption: the archi-originary force of différance. This force, unconditional, challenges Foucault’s conceptualisations of power, suggesting an originary performativity located before or beyond hermeneutics of power-knowledge, disrupting theoreticity as well as empiricity by pointing to their ontological complicity.
The bulk of this essay is dedicated to sketching the theoretical implications of this deconstructive reading of Foucault with respect to the methodology and conceptuality of political science and social theory.

Lacan’s concept jouissance marks the both painful and joyful disturbance of a mind’s libidinal equilibrium which also gives coherence to the basic structure of reality from the point of view of the individual. Because someone can live a fulfilling life and be happy at all levels of what modern society has to offer, and yet may not resist a very specific form of jouissance – to risk all in favor of a small and obscene deviation from the ordinary: through a WhatsApp message to a minor showing oneself half naked, through cocaine use or a photo of a preteen Thai girl which is hidden in a drawer. The life of the individual becomes condensed as symbolic in confrontation with this minor and sinful deviation from the conventional (the nude photo from Thailand, the drugs, etc.) which, paradoxically, is effective only by being potentially capable of destroying the symbolic universe of the individual. The seemingly ‘slight deviation’ (Epicurus) may influence as traumatic and overly intense encounter with an other the subject’s ability to accept the full ontological weight of her or his world experience. Lacan’s notion of jouissance helps us understand this kind of transgression, which an individual mind might have to risk as a reenactment of what Lacan calls the “forced choice” of subjectivity.

This milestone text provides a comprehensive and state-of-the art overview of perfectionism theory, research, and treatment from the past 25 years, with contributions from the leading researchers in the field. The book examines new theories and perspectives including the social disconnection model of perfectionism and the 2 × 2 model of perfectionism. It also reviews empirical findings, with a special focus on stress, vulnerability, and resilience, and examines perfectionism in specific populations. Finally, it considers how perfectionism relates to physical health and psychophysiological processes and introduces new approaches to effective prevention and treatment. By increasing our understanding of perfectionism as a complex personality disposition and providing a framework for future explorations, this landmark publication aims to promote further research in this field. It will be invaluable reading for academics, students, and professionals in personality psychology, clinical and counselling psychology, applied psychology and related disciplines.