Fluctuat nec mergitur or what happened to Reikian psychoanalysis?

The official published version can be obtained from the link below - Copyright @ 2006 American Psychological AssociationAlthough Theodor Reik was a celebrated psychoanalyst during the 1950s and 1960s, his work has not resulted in the development of a specific psychoanalytic tradition, and his name has gradually disappeared from Western cultural memory. Following the mode of argumentation of the reductio ad absurdum, the author critically examines six possible explanations for this remarkable observation, thereby drawing on published materials and archival sources relating to the life and works of Reik. Once these explanations have been discarded, the author argues that the main reason for the absence of a Reikian tradition within psychoanalysis stems from Reik's belief in the analytic virtue of intellectual independence. This belief may have contributed to his own departure from the psychoanalytic training institution that he helped to create, yet it also implies that Reikian psychoanalysis somehow lives on in all those practitioners who do not seek to affiliate with a doctrinal school of thought

The politics of gift-giving and the provocation of Lars Von Trier's Dogville

In what follows, I wish to use the circumstances and dynamics of the nocturnal scene of destruction at the Old Mill and the subsequent scene of carnage at the house of Chuck and Vera in Dogville as a springboard for developing some reflections on the ‘politics of gift-giving’, and the relationship between friendship and hostility in the exchange of social goods. The term ‘springboard’ is no doubt too vague, here, because I intend to approach the two scenes, and the film as a whole, as a radical provocation, thus distinguishing my approach from the traditional methodology of ‘application’, in which a work of art is used in order to exemplify a certain theoretical construction. As it happens, ‘provocation vs. illustration’ in itself constitutes one of the key ‘moral’ antagonisms of von Trier’s film and, as I shall argue, it is the dogged determination of Tom Edison Jr. (Paul Bettany), the town’s amateur-philosopher, moral lecturer and self-crowned “miner of the human soul”, to illustrate the human problem and his failure to be provoked which brings unrest to the township of Dogville and which finally makes it go to the dogs

Polymetis freud: Some reflections on the psychoanalytic significance of Homer's odyssey

The official published version can be accessed from the link below

The iconography of Asphyxiophilia: From fantasmatic fetish to forensic fact

This is a post print version of the article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below

On waiting for something to happen

This paper seeks to examine two particular and peculiar practices in which the mediation of apparently direct encounters is made explicit and is systematically theorized: that of the psychoanalytic dialogue with its inward focus and private secluded setting, and that of theatre and live performance, with its public focus. Both these practices are concerned with ways in which “live encounters” impact on their participants, and hence with the conditions under which, and the processes whereby, the coming-together of human subjects results in recognizable personal or social change. Through the rudimentary analysis of two anecdotes, we aim to think these encounters together in a way that explores what each borrows from the other, the psychoanalytic in the theatrical, the theatrical in the psychoanalytic, figuring each practice as differently committed to what we call the “publication of liveness”. We argue that these “redundant” forms of human contact continue to provide respite from group acceptance of narcissistic failure in the post-democratic era through their offer of a practice of waiting