Freud’s Unconscious – The Psychoanalysis of a Dream, and its Dreamer

A story about the origins of psychoanalysis, and of its creator Sigmund Freud. Taking Freud as our example to show how psychoanalysis works – presenting the dream as a microcosm of Freud’s unconscious, and showing what Lacan meant when he said the unconscious is structured like a language. Links to the works referenced: Freud’s ‘Interpretation […]

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Reading ‘On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love

On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love (Contributions to the Psychology of Love II) 1912 Standard Edition Volume XI Despite the huge volume of psychoanalytic work that deals with questions of sex, sexuality, and more recently sexuation, an interesting remark by Lacan in the late sixties suggests that in dealing with […]

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Reading ‘Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence’

Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence 1896 Standard Edition Volume III The central thesis of the 1894 paper The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence restated: that it is possible to distinguish mechanisms in hysteria, obsession and hallucinatory psychosis which are not conscious but which serve to defend against an idea that is incompatible with the ego. The […]

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Reading ‘The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence’

The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence 1894 Standard Edition Volume III Freud’s point of departure in this paper is the contemporary agreement between he, Breuer and Janet, on the idea that in hysteria there is a ‘splitting of consciousness’. Janet’s view is that the split is the result of constitutional weakness, degeneracy, which Janet believes is innate; […]

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