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PubMed1994

Salman Rushdie and the sea of stories: a not-so-simple fable about creativity.

This paper examines Salman Rushdie's tale 'Haroun and the Sea of Stories', written for his younger son while Rushdie was in hiding from the fatwa. It is a fairy tale about the boy Haroun, who travels to the moon to find a cure for his father's loss of capacity to tell stories. There he discovers that the Ocean of Stories-source of all stories--is polluted. The author sees this tale as a parable of creativity, which can be used on many levels. On one level, it describes the artist's struggle against forms of political oppression, which aims at destroying all art, speech and thought. On another level, it could be seen as an internal conflict between the creative forces derived from the life instinct and those which are destructive and self-destructive deriving from the death instinct. Rushdie describes ways of dealing with this conflict and different outcomes depending on the way the conflict is faced.

Creativity↗
PubMed1975

[Stratum-specific difficulties in the use of psychoanalysis (author's transl)].

Beginning with the observation that in spite of the opportunities available, members of the working classes are seldom treated with psychoanalytic therapy, the reason for this was investigated. For this purpose, the author relies on the observations of a group of doctors during a 5-year attempt to interest neurotic patients in this stratum in a psycho-therapeutic discussion at a medical ambulant clinic. The following factors are isolated: an extremely strict superego; and upbringing extraordinarily antagonistic instinct and phantasy in early childhood which does not allow certain instinctive impluse to develop for fear of punishment; certain interhuman interactions between mother and infant are not experienced at all or only as an emotional action without words. The results are presented.

Adult↗
PubMed1975

Clinical and CNS effects of oral and I.V. Thyrotropin-releasing hormone in depressed patients.

Both oral and intravenous TRH produce systematic alterations in brain function of depressive patients as determined by scalp-recorded computerized cerebral biopotentials (computer EEG). The computer EEG (CEEG) profiles of both formulations are not only very similar to each other, but also resemble the CEEG profiles of psychostimulant compounds (Bio-availability). As in CEEG findings, TSH plasma levels also indicate that oral TRH is indeed an active compound. Although some "antidepressive" effects were observed after both formulations, they were not present in every patient, and it was not always the case after repetitive TRH administration, nor were the effects on depressed mood too impressive. On the other hand, in almost all patients certain behavioral effects of TRH were seen which related to "life instincts" and "life performance". The increase of interest, desire and drive for work, food and sex was one of the most striking findings, particularly after intravenous TRH. This may be responsible for the "antidepressive" effects of TRH in patients in whom depression may be the result of an inhibition of "instinctive" functions.

Administration, Oral↗
PubMed1993

[A comparative biology and dynamic interpretation of necrophilia].

The authors discuss some aspects of Necrophilia based on classic Freudian instinctive theories. Parallels are seen between different levels of life development on Earth and the basic antagonistic drives (Eros and Thanatos) in an attempt to explain this rare and unusual paraphilia. The authors mention, that in unicellular organisms, e.g. Amebas and Schizomycetae, there often does not exist what could be called "the death of an individual", when by splitting two new "individual organisms" are created and no death as such occurs. Here the supposed antagonism of these basic drives-Eros and Thanatos-actually does not manitest itself in the concentional sense. Necrophilia could be interpreted as a regressive desire to return into a phylogenetically older stage of life development, where no individual dies, and life continues without interruption. (On the level of these unicellular organisms, we should speak about "Dividuum" instead of using the classic term "Individuum".) There is some analogy to this regressive desire at a higher level of the biological development in Human society--a magic conviction about the possibility to receive a dead person-common in preliterate cultures. Necrophilia represents an attempt at symbolic unification between antagonistic active and passive drive tendencies and between the Libido and the Destructive instinct.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

[Autopractice, derealization, activation, and the subject of will].

A more precise definition of control functions should serve to supplement, correct, and complete what has previously been written about the structural dynamic approach. Prehuman stages of development involve autopractical drives and their instinctive inhibition and activation. The human stage involves a differentiation in the direction of drives. A human being's own autopractice remains the moving force, the moving principle. Inhibition and activation have become incorporated in the development of interiority and its structural basis and have freed themselves from instinctual dependency. Little has changed regarding the function of activation. Inhibition has made its way into the realm of the function of derealization; it intervenes as a regulatory principle in human autopractice. The paper concludes with a look at the topic of the will in which it discusses the interplay among the functions of human autopractice, derealization, and activation.

Awareness↗
PubMed2005

A case study of borderline anxiety and the process of analytic transformation.

Borderline patients present particular treatment problems and require close, devoted understanding of their often chaotic and shifting intrapsychic conflicts. Many of these patients act out, making it difficult to maintain an analytic process. In fact, many terminate early on. When they do stay for longer periods, they exhibit particular constellations of defense, anxiety, and conflict. One extensive case report is used to examine the overlapping cycles of treatment with this population. Frequently, self-destructive acting-out is present in the transference and extra-transference. This acting-out is often followed by the self-destructive, anti-change attitude of the death instinct. These ways of relating to the self and the object are mobilized within the vehicle of projective identification and are best understood as primitive defenses against core fantasies of loss and persecution. These issues of loss and fear are the final and vital phase of treatment with borderline patients, who are often able to make major fundamental changes in their internal sphere, but only if patient and analyst can tolerate and understand these three levels of intrapsychic experience.

Acting Out↗
PubMed2006

History from the ground up: bugs, political economy, and God in Kirby and Spence's Introduction to Entomology (1815-1856).

William Kirby and William Spence's Introduction to Entomology is generally recognized as one of the founding texts of entomological science in English. This essay examines the ideological allegiances of the coauthors of the Introduction. In particular, it analyzes the ideological implications of their divergent opinions on animal instinct. Different vocational pursuits shaped each man's natural history. Spence, a political economist, pursued fact-based science that was shorn of references to religion. Kirby, a Tory High Churchman, placed revelation at the very heart of his natural history. His strong commitment to partisan sectarianism cautions against reference to a homogeneous "natural theology" that was an agent of mediation. Fissures in the "common intellectual context" reached beyond the clash between natural theologians and radical anatomists to render the intellectual edifice of natural theology structurally less sound for the future.

Agriculture↗
PubMed1980

Evolution of canine information processing under conditions of natural and artificial selection.

The paper first argues that under conditions of domestication animals are necessarily selected (incidentally or otherwise) for (1) responsitivity to a broad band of stimuli and (2) behavioral plasticity. The consequent tractability of domestic animals is contrasted with the stimulus-boundness and response stereotypy of the fixed action patterns observed in wild animal behavior. It is suggested that this difference accounts for the differential trainability of wolves and dogs. The second section of the paper presents observational evidence that although capacity for observational learning. It is then noted that since observational learning requires recognition of means-ends relationships this conclusion is inconsistent with the claim that wolf behavior is largely instinct-bound. Finally, these conclusions are reconciled by hypothesizing that the wolf possesses a "duplex" information-processing system, a primitive "instinctual" system that mediates basic survival responses and a more recently acquired "cognitive" system that evolved as the wolf became a group hunter. Neurobehavioral and developmental comparisons of wolf and dog suggest that these two systems have become integrated into a single scheme in the course of the dog's domestication.

Animals↗
PubMed1992

Psychoanalytic views of aggression: some theoretical problems.

Various problems in relation to psychoanalytic theories of aggression are considered in a review which is by no means exhaustive but includes areas which have puzzled and interested the author. First to be considered is why the concept of aggression as a major drive was a relative late-comer in psychoanalysis; next the contentious concept of a 'death instinct' and some of the factors in Freud's lifetime which may have contributed to both. Then it is suggested that we seem to have theories of aggression which might be called primary or secondary in two different senses. First is the question whether aggression is innate or secondary to frustration. In another sense, primary and secondary theories of aggression seem to survive paralleling Freud's original primary and secondary theories of anxiety. In this sense the primary theory survives as an explanation of psychosomatic disorder. Lastly, the link between suicide and murder is considered and the turning of aggression against the self in depression and self-destructive attacks.

Aggression↗
PubMed1982

Self, ego, affects, and drives.

I have explored the concepts of self, ego, affects, and drives, with special emphasis on terminological confusions and Freud's use of Selbst and Ich. I have also proposed a modification of the dual instinct theory in the light of the relation between affect and drives. Finally, I have proposed a developmental model on the basis of all the above considerations, and stressed its relevance for the classification of nonorganic psychopathology.

Affect↗
PubMed1984

The multiple meanings of masochism in psychoanalytic discourse.

The term masochism was originally used in a narrow, specifically sexual sense (referring to perversions ), but has come to encompass for many analysts an exceedingly broad and variably determined range of clinical phenomena that bear no consistent relation to sexual excitement. In addition, these expanding clinical perspectives have long been entangled with Freud's shifting metapsychological constructions designed to ground masochism in instinctual theory. As a result, the term is used with little consistency and at varied levels of abstraction: loosely descriptive, dynamic, theoretical. It is not always explicit which meaning is intended or what inferences, if any, are meant to be drawn from the term. When used in its broadest sense, masochism may falsely suggest dynamic similarity between diverse phenomena, and is often ambiguous with respect to the presence or absence of underlying erotic or perverse excitement. In the clinical situation, the categorization of material as masochistic may evoke an associated set of genetic, dynamic, or theoretical ideas which may alter the perception, ordering, and interpretation of clinical data. Particularly conducive to this subtle steering process are the enduring influence of the early concept of feminine masochism and the related concept of sadistic and masochistic paired opposite component sexual instincts--a theoretical, physicalistic , linear concept incompatible with the clinical model of overdetermination and multiple function. This paper includes a review of the terminological and conceptual history of masochism, briefly touches on the parallel history of sadism , and offers some provisional definitional solutions.

Anxiety, Castration↗
PubMed2001

The drive circuit as generator of subjectivation.

It is a fact that Freud almost systematically refrained from using the term 'subject' in his work. However, one remarkable exception is worthy of our attention: in 'Instincts and their vicissitudes' (1915), he repeatedly refers to the notion of subject (Subjekt) whenever he is dealing with one common 'vicissitude' (destiny) of basic drive pairs, the one in which there is a succession of the 'turning round upon one's own body' and the 'reversal of the aim into its opposite', i.e. the search for satisfaction in a passive mode (to get looked at, taken in hand etc.); here Freud designates the indispensable exterior agent of the active drive as a 'new subject'. The author finds in this the beginnings of a specifically psychoanalytic conception of the subject function, the latter gaining its substance from being agent of the drive interplay itself, with its unconscious dimension, and thus distinguishing itself from the functions reserved to the ego. He suggests that the originating matrix of the process of subjectivation be located between the infant's instinctual reaching out and the parental partner's response, which will take on more and more signifying value. The treatment of a bulimic patient is presented to illustrate the problems of a process of subjectivation that must develop by overcoming the trap of oral servitude.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Repetition compulsion in a trauma victim: is the "analgesia principle" beyond the pleasure principle? Clinical implications.

This paper reviews the concept of repetition compulsion (RC) from Freud's original formulation to recent contributions from psychoanalysis and the neurosciences. Literature on RC presented four major controversies: (1) Does RC describe a broad range of dysfunctional repetitive behaviors, or only the repetition of severe traumatic experiences? (2) Is RC an attempt to achieve mastery and control of a traumatic experience, or to reach a particular psychic state as analgesia or excitement, which reduces the perception of emotional pain? (3) Is the death instinct an acceptable explanation for RC? (4) Is RC a useful, meaningful, and specific concept? The author describes his personal perspective on RC which integrates psychodynamic and biological contributions. Clinical material is provided.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1994

[Sexuality. A freudian psychoanalytical concept].

Emphasis is placed in the difficulty in conceptualizing sexuality as a complex and controversial subject. This is a presentation of a concept based on freudian psychoanalysis. With this in mind, many of Freud's references are collected from the Brazilian Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. The following concept is arrived at: sexuality is an instinctive vital energy directed to pleasure, with the possibility of quantitative and qualitative variations, closely bound to homeostasis, to affection, to social relations, to phases of development of childhood-libido, to eroticism, to genitality, to sexual relations, to procreation and to sublimation.

Cathexis↗
PubMed1994

A drive to play: evolution and psychotherapeutic theory.

Freud's thinking was influenced by evolutionary ideas. He built his theory about the instincts of sexuality and aggression. A third phylogenetically given propensity for behaviour, that of attachment, has been added to traditional theory following the work of Bowlby. We propose that the origins of certain psychiatric disturbances, most notably cluster B personality disorders, are to be found not in those drives which are ancient in evolutionary terms but through a disruption of that which has been most recently evolved, and which involves symbolization. It is manifest developmentally as symbolic play. A case report illustrates the hypothesis.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

[Not Available].

The essay discusses the manifestation of clinging instinct in psychosomatic skin diseases, conceptualised by Imre Hermann. Psychosomatic skin diseases show symptoms, which prove their connection to clinging. The question is how mothers become the cause of frustration. Finally the paper points to the fact that in the analytic situation the unsatisfied needs, resulting from the frustration of clinging, appear in form of body feelings and skin sensations.

History, 20th Century↗
PubMed2005

[Tobacco smoking--anthropological context of human dependence].

In the papers concerning the subject of prevention and treatment of addiction to tobacco smoking, the philosophical data on nature of man, his reason and freedom are unfairly disregarded. The anthropological description of the features constituting the human nature refers, above all, to reason, will, freedom, and to a lesser extent, instinct and imagination. In the analyses of addiction to tobacco smoking, the rational cognition and free will are of greatest significance. Values as well as freedom and good also play a role in counteracting the enslavement of man. The investigations of the essence of man indicate that even the deepest addiction does not change and does not destroy the reason and free will which are characteristic of a human being. It means that a person addicted to a habit always requires respect, compassion and hope in overcoming the enslavement. It touches the whole human being and should be treated integrally. Addiction is inherent to a man and not the human nature, tobacco smoking will always be contrary to reason and freedom of a human being and the whole mankind.

Anthropology↗
PubMed2006

[The concept of creativity--and everyday creativity].

The author is of the opinion that creativity is not a single personal trait, but a set of of traits. Basic elements of the concept of creativity include intelligence, intensive interest, knowledge, originality (ideas), creative instinct, non-conformity, courage, and persistence. Creativity can manifest itself in various areas of life; and in its various stages, some of them are in the forefront and some of them in the background. The author makes a distinction between "exceptional creativity" and "everyday creativity". The former may give rise to important works, which are significant for the whole society and bring fame, while the latter occurs in everyday life activities involving certain degree of originality, such as writing poems or developing valuable collections. The characteristics mentioned above are essential for achieving "exceptional creativity"; however, a lesser degree of these are required for everyday creativity, as in this case the requirements are not so high. When important works are created, determination of the individual and a stimulating environment, including the family, educators and schools, play a significant role.

Art↗