A. de Mijolla – International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (2005)

Автор: A. de Mijolla
Название книги: International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Психология
Страницы: 2355
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

More than a field of science of medicine, psychoanalysis – the interpretation and treatment of disorders and behaviors of the mind – is field that has touched nearly all other arts and humanities: literature, painting, film, music and more. To understand the underpinnings of this field is to shed light on how much of the Western world has understood itself during the 20th century. The International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis – published in France in 2002 and now available in English – is the most extensive reference work published on this topic. The International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis not only represents all branches of the field, but it also defines the evolution of the different theoretical and clinical psychoanalytical concepts as well as the major individuals, works, events and institutions which have made an impact on the history of the psychoanalytical movement worldwide. It also reveals the history of psychoanalysis in 50 countries and shows the relationship between psychoanalysis and other disciplines, with entries discussing writers, philosophers, literary movements, and historical events. the major psychoanalysts worldwide and 170 articles on their major works. This set distinguishes itself because it brings, in the controversial field of psychoanalysis, an authoritative and non-partisan analysis and history of the discipline, with writers reflecting a cosmopolitan range of ideological positions – Freudians, Jungians, Lacanians, and Kleinians – as well as clinical practitioners and academic historians. The international team of authors representing most parts of the world provides a truly global perspective on this field. Its interdisciplinary approach covering medical, historical, and intellectual aspects, makes it of interest to readers beyond the fields of psychoanalysis, psychology, and medicine.

I am thrilled and honored to be a part of the initiative Thomson Gale (represented by
FrankMenchaca as well as the highly-effective and ever-smiling Nathalie Duval) has undertaken
to share this Dictionary, whose production I directed in France, with an American
audience. This enormous and very difficult work has been successfully completed by a
highly-motivated team, including (amongst the many others whom I shall not name):
Rachel J. Kain, Rita Runchock, and Patricia Kamoun-Bergwerk; the remarkable American
advisors Edward Nersessian and Paul Roazen who reviewed all the texts; Nellie Thompson,
whose aid was invaluable at various stages in the project; Matthew von Unwerth, who compiled
the ‘‘Further Readings’’ sections, and above all, the translators and revisers who fulfilled
the difficult task of rendering texts into English that had for the most part been written
by authors from France, Spain, Germany, and Portugal.
These translators encountered difficulties raised by more than just the languages in
which the authors wrote about these psychoanalytic concepts or biographies they were
charged with. Despite a common foundation stemming directly from Freud
s ideas, divergent
conceptions leading them to be grasped from slightly more theoretical versus clinical
viewpoints, depending on where one is standing, were necessarily in evidence—a fact that
had to be both respected and, at the same time, made more accessible to American readers.
However the sheer number of authors and the scope of their starting-points, as much
national as related to different schools of psychoanalysis, nonetheless help us to avoid any
sort of monolithic thinking, and beckon the reader to go beyond his or her reading of these
dictionary entries with research that deepens their insight. For example, we have avoided
repeating the precise definitions of terms cited by specific entries that the dictionary
defines elsewhere. We have instead trusted that this dictionary would avail itself from page
to page, concept to concept, psychoanalyst to psychoanalyst, to the likings of the systematic
research or slightly poetic wanderings that constitute the most effective, or the most enlivened,
approaches to getting to know a work such as this.
In the Preface to the French edition I offer detailed ‘‘directions for use’’ to readers of this
work, so there is no need to revisit that subject. Let me rather use the few lines afforded me
here to reiterate the particular importance of this American edition—in my eyes at any
rate. It speaks English, like most of the countries in the world today, and English is, of
course, an indispensable vector for any thought with claims to universality. Since its humble
beginnings in Vienna, psychoanalysis has obviously had a global impact not only in the
clinical and therapeutic realms, but also in the arenas of culture and thought. The twentieth
and early twenty-first centuries have been marked by ideas whose development has deeply
affected the existence of each and every one of us. Our sexual and political lives, our
morality, our ways of understanding our relationships with others-all bear the unmistakable
stamp of Freud’s legacy. By virtue of his family background and his many-sided education
and training, Freud ended up at the point of intersection of cultural inflluences out of
(and against) which psychoanalysis was gradually forged. This dual process, by no means
painless, ensured the new discipline a position and multiple functions, which, as we may
now plainly see as we look back over the years, have themselves been subject to continual
evolution.
A procedure for psychopathological investigation, a method with therapeutic aims, or a
conceptual apparatus to account for the workings of the psyche (l
esprit) in its external productions
as well as its corporeal bonds—out of this ideological and scientific past which Freud
conveyed, psychoanalysis has, in turn, modified the conditions of research into the most varied
domains of knowledge and none, today, may pretend to be totally beyond its influence.
No matter what position pharmacology assumes, (and we must believe in its progress),
the encounter with the mentally ill, the listening to their discourse and the decryption of
their delusional sayings in order to glean their secret message, like the patient reestablishing
vanished relational capacities, will forever remain an affair that takes place between two
human beings, from one psychical apparatus to another. The hope that inspired Jung and
Bleuler when they first took responsibility for the schizophrenics in the Burgho¨ltzi Asylum
was as great as their disappointment. This phenomena repeated itself always and everywhere:
Psychoanalysis began by appearing as ‘‘The Solution’’ to the unsolvable problems of
mental illness. The example of America, beacon of enthusiasms and of disappointments, is
illustrative in this respect—even more spectacularly so in that the all-powerful American
Psychoanalytic Association permitted only doctors, psychiatrists for the most part, to join
its ranks for the better part of 60 years.
Such is not the case today. Yet even though this puncturing of belief-systems might
make us think of a destructive tidal wave, this investigatory drive remains—a drive that
mobilizes psychoanalysts for their research into new clinical terrain, as they attempt to
shed light on and treat ever more diverse and grave pathological conditions. One day, no
doubt, new psychopathological conceptions will effect another exploratory synthesis of the
psyche and its dysfunctions, thereby authorizing new avenues of approach that will once
again appear to us as nothing short of miraculous. But in the meantime, the patient and
modest relational exchange, which underpins the psychoanalytic approach to patients in
the psychical domain, remains today
s most developed adjuvant therapy, whose evergreater
efficacy and more precise pinpointing may be looked for in the progress of the neurosciences,
neurobiology, genetics or immunology.
Although it continues to furnish, as Freud suggested, a ‘‘yield of knowledge’’ for other
scientific domains, psychoanalysis gains its creative power and persistent originality from
its position on the margins, due to the fact of its being the ‘‘other’’ that cannot be integrated
into these disciplines, including literature, history, philosophy, etc. It is the ‘‘other’’
which disrupts through its theoretical a priori of a subversive discourse subjacent to all
manifest discourse and which, (as the example of Freud himself proves), can never forget
that its own words, as well as its thoughts, are condemned to expressing double-meanings,
to contradiction, to interrogation; and which could therefore never be thought of as a finished
product, a self-enclosed theory, still less a dogma.
The turbulent political events of recent years have refueled the diffusion of psychoanalysis
into territories that had previously been closed to it. Therefore both theory and practice
will have to rub shoulders with new cultures, languages and other philosophical, religious,
medical and scientific traditions. No doubt they will thereby come to brave new storms,
know new successes and, fleeting declines. But we must always hope they will be capable of
enriching themselves with these various contributions. For only thus is the never-ending
research into the human psyche and its creations embarked upon anew—a quest that constitutes
the psychoanalyst
s true place in the world of yesterday, today and, for an unforeseeable
time still, tomorrow.
Once again, I am particularly pleased and proud that the American edition of this dictionary
is contributing, more so than all those that came before it, to extending and diffusing
this perpetual renewal of Freudian thought throughout the world.
ALAIN DE MIJOLLA