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Psalm 131 employs the metaphorical imagery of an infant and mother to portray the relationship between the psalmist and YHWH. Since this imagery is critical in understanding the psalmist and the overall message of the psalm, I utilize psychoanalytical Object-Relations theory in reading the psalm. This interpretive framework offers insights into the language, structure, and movement of the psalm that might otherwise be overlooked. This essay reveals the foundational role of YHWH, particularly in relation to his absence and presence as primary caregiver in the development of the false self and the restoration of the true self-identity of the psalmist. The restoration of the psalmist's true self-identity is further supported by the larger canonical context in which the Torah of Psalm 119 functions as an object-relations transitional object for the psalmist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ritual of marriage serves as a nexus for various dimensions of social and personal life, including sexuality, gender, religiosity, family, and parenthood. This pivotal event is laden with a multitude of expectations, hopes, and fears for all involved parties. The psychological energies converge not only within the spouses or participants but extend to encompass the entire cultural community. Simultaneously, it represents a ritualistic identification, where individuals, through the ritual, become what they are, establishing an identity. This article aims to provide a Lacanian interpretation of the marriage ritual, informed by the interpretation popularized by the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis. Lacan's framework allows for the conceptualization of identification as a socially mediated process, revealing the psyche as extending beyond the individual into intersubjective structures. This approach might help to clarify the inner logic of the ritual, allowing for a better understanding of the role of medialization. It will be shown, that under these lenses wedding photography and other forms of medialization do not only preserve memories of the event afterward but are already playing an active and even constitutive role during the event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay returns to Evelynn Hammonds's field-changing essay "Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Black Female Sexuality," with a focus on the labor of knowledge production under fraught institutional conditions, characterized in this essay as languaging. The simultaneous desire for and impossibility of accurate language to describe racialized, gendered, and sexual subjectivity drive Hammonds's essay as well as a number of other key texts in Black feminist sexuality studies. This essay (re)introduces the diagnostic category of dysphoria to speak to this paradox: here, dysphoria describes the affective and psychic condition of institutional illegibility and fungibility for racialized and gendered people. Using the analytic of dysphoria to characterize and connect the political economy of Black feminist knowledge production and the life narrative of A. Dionne Stallworth, a Black trans woman activist, this essay directs urgent attention to the simultaneously material, spiritual, psychic, and affective dimensions of self-, knowledge-, and world-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This autoethnographic article unpacks a highly publicized, Zionist, and right-wing smear campaign. Rather than individualize this process, the article discusses this smear campaign to outline the mechanics of what are referred to as "settler colonial outposts" that extend the sovereignty of the Israeli settler state. The article maps out how settler colonial outposts are ideological formations and thus also spaces of convergence for fascists and liberal Zionists. Finally, it attends to the psychic and affective features of settler colonial outposts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There's something strange about Freud's Civilization and its Discontents (1930). Biologically, Freud was a Neo-Lamarckian, who believed in both the modification of organisms through need and the inheritance of acquired characteristics. However, in Civilization, Freud argued that because human nature is immutable, society has dim odds of improving substantially. Lamarckians, of course, rejected that any species-nature is immutable, as species can always be transformed via the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In fact, many of Freud's Viennese contemporaries—such as Wilhelm Reich, Julius Tandler, and Paul Kammerer—took their Lamarckism to license precisely the sorts of radical social projects Freud deemed impossible. Thus the Freud of Civilization helped himself to a rigid view of human nature which, given his associated biological views, he seemingly ought to have rejected. In this paper, I explain this apparent inconsistency, and suggest Freud resolved it in the following way: Freud was not merely a Lamarckian, but also a strong and peculiar kind of recapitulationist, who believed stages of psychological development both recapitulate phylogeny, and "remain with us" throughout both individual lives and future species-history. I suggest Freud's recapitulationism supposed a certain inertia: what occurred in phylogenetic history cannot un-occur, and therefore there are aspects of our nature which we cannot un-acquire. In this way, Freud reached a rigid conception of human nature despite his Lamarckism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The workshop "Subjects of Ecological Devastation: Sociological, Psychoanalytic, and Social-Philosophical Contributions to the Updating of Critical Theory" took place in Frankfurt am Main and was organized by various scientists. The workshop dealt with the question of which subjects are responsible for both the causation and the impact of ecological devastation. Various approaches from critical theory, sociology, psychoanalysis, and social philosophy were discussed to examine the relevance and potential updating of critical theory. Topics such as the concept of nature, the relationship to non-human nature, and the psychological aspects of the climate crisis were addressed. The workshop encouraged questions about education and subjectification in the context of the Anthropocene, climate change, and ecological devastation. [Extracted from the article]

In this essay, I reflect on the origins of relational psychoanalysis during my training years at the NYU Postdoctoral Program between 1983 and 1989, and the subsequent evolution of my own psychoanalytic credo in which I place the essential mutuality of the psychoanalytic process at the heart of the therapeutic action that it generates. I explore the idea that all analysis is at heart a form of mutual analysis in which personal transformation and healing is inevitably bi-directional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary engages with Lisa Koshkarian and Chris Larrald's proposal for a "kinship object" to theorize the human- nonhuman connectedness in psychoanalysis. The authors suggest that early experiences with the maternal environment augments the need for companionship, reciprocity, and the capacity for concern paving way for an inclination toward responsibility, reparation, and recognition of the alterity of the other. It is suggested that tolerating subjective otherness not only connects us with members of one's own species but a consolidating kinship with all others. It is argued that the authors ecological standpoint heralds an ecopoetics of extinction-survival toward possibilities of non-hierarchical entanglements of the human and the non-human elements in the natural world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a reflection and an open, experiential reading of one of Winnicott's most fascinating case studies. I try to show how the question of time in the psychoanalytical context emerges not only in relation to a deviation from the traditional setting but also concerns an axis inherent to some key therapeutic issues, such as the meaning of time and the temporal as a quality of holding in regression to dependency; or as a component in the transference experience or in the therapist's holding in mind of the patient's potential, through holding the future. The high frequency of meetings in psychoanalysis facilitates qualitative change, allowing patients and therapists to be in touch with deep, primitive strata of the psyche. Extending time in psychoanalytic treatment, therefore, whether as an ad hoc response to the patient's needs or as an extension of the setting, is tantamount to enabling a multi-layered experience of time across the spectrum of its manifestations. Attention to the temporal component in therapy and the experience of time in the transference is a valuable resource in our work. This paper contributes to the attempt to elaborate this dimension of psychoanalytic listening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution examines the position of expert knowledge in the institutional context of an American preschool and a consulting psychoanalyst's refusal to join in its unquestioned dynamic. It interrogates the shift, both theoretical and clinical, occurring if and when the authority of knowledge is supplanted by attention to transference. By arguing that a classroom is the space for the psychoanalytic act and by making a distinction between what it means to be useful rather than right, the author opens a perspective for psychoanalysis in extension that the cared-for children may welcome more than the caring adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This reflection problematizes the notion and practice of the psychoanalytic conference, a genre that, while useful, also embodies deadness. By first reminding what is at stake in conferences as usually staged—readings of texts—the reflection is focused on what is at stake in the prospect of psychoanalytic conferences that function psychoanalytically. Using an event he helped imagine and execute as both a matrix of thinking and a source of examples, the author examines the challenges and potentials of new forms of participation, co-existence, and exchange in the psychoanalytic field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Practitioners interested in the process of helping people change are confronted today with such a burgeoning array of perspectives, theories, and treatment modalities that even the most diligent can feel overwhelmed by the number of choices. This plethora of approaches calls into question whether there is anything that can tie them together. Asking if the psychoanalytic field is destined to be splintered into fragments that defy cohesion or if it is possible to generate a way of thinking and working that is more inclusive, this paper takes a historical and integrationist approach, grounded in a clinical focus on mental organization and Leo Rangell's total composite theory. It discusses trends in the development of psychoanalysis and argues for the importance of integration of the findings from neuropsychology and neuropsychoanalysis into psychoanalytic clinical work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author questions Wallerstein's conviction that psychoanalytic concepts are "scientific metaphors." If one were to adopt his view, psychoanalysis would fall into line with Lakoff and Johnson′s thesis that the conceptual system of our thoughts and actions is basically metaphorically structured. The author rejects both their views by demonstrating how the system inherent in our conceptual structure works, and disproving Lakoff and Johnson's thesis as an assertion. In his view, if psychoanalytic concepts are understood as metaphors without defining their target domains, they lose their cognitive function and allow general metaphors to be understood in a whole variety of ways. The author suspects that this metaphorization of psychoanalytic concepts serves to suggest that psychoanalysis has a unified theory which would guarantee the community's scientific unity, despite the theoretical and therapeutic pluralism that currently prevails. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the theme of subjectivity. One of the most pressing questions today is what theoretical and practical efforts should be made to avoid being a powerless tool in the hands of others and under what conditions one's own "subjective opinion" becomes the real, reliable fulcrum as far as purposeful activity, free and reasonable goal-setting are concerned. The desire to derive subjectivity from individual, singular existence today forces a thinker as prominent as Slavoj Žižek to search for its form as "purified from" ideological layers and the contingencies of life. In his search for such a form, he turns to the psychoanalytic tradition, to the work of Jacques Lacan and his attempts to formalize the structures of subjectivity in isolation from the universality that generates them as necessity. This abstract consideration of subjectivity leads him to recognize subjectivity as a "distorting factor" in view of the insurmountable rupture between being and thinking. Evald Ilyenkov takes a different approach to the question of active self-determination. He conceives of personality as universal—the traits of a person are formed in the course of interaction between individuals in the process of producing the means of life. The individual becomes a personality or an acting subject, appropriating the generic powers of humanity, while being included in a system that implies a human relationship to the thing and, through it, to another individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The protagonist of Alper Canıgüz's novel Oğullar ve Rencide Ruhlar is distinguished by his unique characteristics among children in adult literature. Alper Kamu asserts his own will and seeks to establish a place for himself in the adult world rather than in the child's world. This article examines the ways in which Alper Kamu, the protagonist of Oğullar ve Rencide Ruhlar, differs from child characters in significant works of Turkish literature and explores the factors that contribute to Kamu's unique personality traits. The research is based on Freud's psychoanalytic theory, particularly the Oedipus complex and castration complex. These concepts are used to investigate the subconscious reasons behind Alper Kamu's desire to enter the adult world, which influence his actions and thoughts and distinguish him from other child characters. The study concludes that the Oedipal complex and familial conflicts experienced by Alper Kamu, such as witnessing his parents' sexual relationship and other family quarrels, as well as the trauma he undergoes and the process of overcoming it, significantly impact his behavior towards his family and his environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A theoretical paper which considers the previous multiple attempts by nursing to engage with and usefully apply the theories of psychoanalysis to varying aspects of the nursing role. References to psychoanalysis within the nursing literature of the last century are reviewed and the legitimacy of the use of psychoanalytic theory 'outside the clinic' explored with reference to general hospital nursing in the UK's National Health Service. Themes explored include unconscious motivation behind nursing as a career choice, with associated risks of stress and burnout when the unconscious drive to heal is thwarted. Psychoanalytic consideration of nurse-patient relationships provides insight into the patient experience on hospital wards, whilst exploration of other aspects of the nursing role was found to be limited. From a wider perspective, psychoanalysis offers nursing an insight into societal changes impacting the profession. The systems and processes of the healthcare institution have also been explored, particularly in relation to containment of anxiety, though limited practical impact has resulted from the psychoanalytic insight encountered in the literature. The limited engagement between psychoanalysis and general nursing is considered from both a psychoanalytic and nursing perspective; ongoing potentiality for enriching dialogue between the disciplines is established and potential barriers explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a primer to reading the primary texts of Jacques Lacan. I argue that there is an experiential dimension to the act of reading Lacanian texts that approximates the transmission of psychoanalysis in a clinical setting. A primary insistence is that Lacanian psychoanalysis has a fundamentally different relationship to knowledge than other therapeutic and theoretical traditions, and that therefore any emphasis on understanding is incongruous with the larger aims of the project. I discuss Lacanian conceptions of frustration and love in order to explore these ideas, before turning to a specific moment in the Lacanian corpus. I conclude by exploring implications for work in the public sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Barbara H. Wayne's examination of David Shapiro's insights into defense mechanisms and their impact on personal agency and responsibility. Topics include the dynamics of self-deception in therapy and the limitations on agency experienced by patients, the distinction between internal and external sources of danger influencing defensive behaviors, and the role of power dynamics in therapeutic relationships and societal structures that affect perceptions of danger.

The article focuses on Richard M. Waugaman's critique of David Shapiro's views on psychodynamic defense and the clinical process, highlighting the interplay between theory and practice in psychoanalysis. Topics include the historical influence of Shapiro's work on personality assessment, the evolution of psychological testing since Shapiro's early contributions, and the importance of integrating traumatic experiences into clinical practice rather than dismissing them.

The article focuses on the nuances of defensive mental processes in psychotherapy, emphasizing the distinction between conscious and unconscious experiences. Topics include the concepts of unformulated experience and implicit relational knowing, the observable aspects of defenses that can aid therapeutic work, and the significant challenges posed by early trauma in understanding and addressing these defenses.

The concept of defense mechanisms has problems and deficiencies, the most serious its neglect of unwitting, but conscious mental activity in the defense process. Clinical observation shows that individuals, not conscious of their purpose, reflexively think and act in ways that forestall or dispel anxiety. Contrary to Anna Freud's claim, the process of defense is in some measure observable. Self-deception by subjects of coercion can be seen also as a defense against external threat similar to that of internal threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2006, Canadian director Guy Maddin premiered a semi-autobiographical film at TIFF called Brand Upon the Brain!, which featured live Foley sound and orchestral accompaniment. Adopting the aesthetics of silent film, Maddin presents a warped version of his childhood traumas, filtered through the funhouse mirror of Sigmund Freud, Fritz Lang and the Brothers Grimm. Further emphasizing the discordances of recollection and actual event, Maddin's theatrical presentation divorces sound from screen, reimagining the film's soundscape (and by extension, that of his childhood) as an exaggerated live reproduction, mirroring the very process of replaying a memory. Two years after this film premiered, Maddin made a faux-documentary about the original Foley process called Footsteps (2008), which centres upon the sound artists themselves. Employing the same aesthetic conventions, this short film depicts the craft of Foley as a surreal science of the subconscious, an act of symbolic projection carried out by strange figures in lab coats. If watching and listening to these films is to be momentarily trapped inside 'the fevered brain of Guy Maddin', as one critic puts it, then this article sets out to interrogate the role of the sound artist in enabling and enacting such fantasies within the director's singular psychodramas. Maddin's foregrounding of the Foley artist is, I argue, analogous to the exhumation and display of unconscious material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article begins with an overview of the historical treatment of maternal subjectivity within psychology, psychoanalysis, and feminism, discussing the inroads that have been made to support the subject status of mothers themselves, as well as where these improvements are incomplete. Also considered are the invited papers appearing in this special issue of Psychoanalytic Perspectives and the ways in which they unfold new iterations of theorizing maternal subjectivity. Particularly, this paper introduces the concept of matrescence—the developmental process of becoming a mother—into the psychoanalytic lexicon. Doing so allows further discussion of how the mother's subject status can elaborate the lineage of the feminine and co-created, relational, and social aspects of identity. Recognizing the mother is not an individualistic pursuit, a competition between mother and baby for whose experience gets to matter; rather, recognizing maternal subjectivity is inherently a recognition of linking. It is essential to the development of relational psychoanalysis and, this paper argues, an essential link in considering the oft-neglected socio-cultural aspects of the psyche. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this conversational interview with Jessica Benjamin, who herself is a grandmother of feminist and relational psychoanalysis, we explore the scopic field of grandmaternal subjectivity. Starting with Benjamin's recognition theory and thirdness, we consider how interrelated these positions are with maternal subjectivity, and then expand out to other layers of recognition by and of grandmothers, emphasizing where the grandmaternal can foster a sense of innate goodness in the mother through recognition. Benjamin is clear to not exclude fathers or grandfathers in her recognition of multiple subjectivities. She also considers the ways in which generational distance and age play a role in emotional regulation around young children, and broader social issues pertaining to recognition. We conclude with a consideration of lineage and relating through differentiation on both a personal and professional register. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper places maternal subjectivity in an embodied, intersubjective context through the use of personal narrative. In response to the work of Helena Vissing (this issue), who lodges a critique of how psychoanalysis has negated aspects of maternal experience, it both extends and challenges her ideas, reacting to the disembodied nature of her critique and relocating it into the realm of an autobiographical story. It also problematizes cis-heteronormative biases in scholarship around maternal subjectivity through the inclusion of queer experience and queer family configurations in the narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the international discussion on psychoanalytic technique, there is a controversial discourse on the use of the countertransference. In this paper, I discuss positions that recognize the shared experiences of regression of analyst and analysand in the analytic process, focussing on undifferentiated affective states in the analyst and their effect on the process. Starting from the metaphor of the maternal analyst, I think about these positions through the prism of the current discourse on maternal subjectivity. The naturalization of motherhood and the consecutive denigration of secondary dependency of actual mothers on a facilitating environment is described and compared to the position of the analyst in the regressive process. Referring to feminist and psychoanalytic literature on motherhood and reproductive labor, I discuss reasons for resistance against the recognition of secondary dependency. I argue that the patriarchal structuring of society and psychoanalytic culture seems to be a defense against vulnerability and the recognition of emotional needs. I outline the implications of the full recognition of emotional needs of the analyst for our understanding of the psychoanalytic process. In conclusion, the possibility of expanding the concept of the psychoanalytic frame to political circumstances as facilitating environment of the mutual regressive process is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the links between subjectivity formation and the societal negation of the maternal body in the modern era. Using relational matricentric psychoanalysis and feminist philosophy, the author examines the maternal body as a site of intersubjective discovery and a paradoxical space in society. This space holds the subjectivity of the modern individual, creating a philosophical dilemma between the desire for embodied autonomy and dependence on the maternal body. A key symptom of this dilemma is seen in psychoanalysis' historical resistance to engage fully (theoretically and clinically) with both the maternal body and the experiential body more broadly. The author argues that this negation of the maternal body in Western culture, including psychoanalysis, has led to an increasingly disembodied understanding of subjectivity that is susceptible to neo-Cartesian thinking, exacerbated by the public-private dichotomization of modernity and the technological advances of the Capitalocene. The article includes reflections on a vision of a non-matricidal conception of subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychiatry in China is influenced by political, economic, cultural, and social ideology. The process of psychoanalysis entering China is also a reflection of Chinese history, mirroring China's transition from conservatism to openness, from focusing on tradition to embracing modernity, and from focusing on community and family to individualism. These changes align with the Chinese continuous exploration and pursuit of integration, adaptation, and individuation in the process of globalization, urbanization, and modernization. This article describes the continuous expansion and development of psychoanalysis and psychodynamics in China parallel to societal changes and how an increasing number of people have begun to engage in psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic practices and research. The author describes challenges to how psychoanalysis can better serve the Chinese people through clinical practice and in-depth research under the country's unique social, cultural, historical, and political background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Process notes contain unique information concerning core elements of a psychodynamic treatment. These elements may be both conscious and unconscious for the author. One element for study is the tendency to which a therapist writes about providing either supportive or expressive interventions. This study sought to establish a method of systematically and reliably identifying the records of therapists' interventions as supportive or expressive. Methods: Three early-career clinicians were trained in the use of a process note intervention rating scale constructed specifically for this study. Quantitative statistical analyses assessed the scale's reliability and internal consistency. Results: Interrater reliability analysis determined at a p of 0.005 a Fleiss's kappa of 0.24 and an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.264, suggesting a low but statistically significant reliability between the raters. A Cronbach's alpha of 0.67 and a McDonald's omega of 0.53 suggested questionable internal consistency. Discussion: Early-career clinicians can reliably code the manifestations of interventions in psychodynamic process notes as supportive or expressive. Future studies may improve the reliability and internal consistency of the scale, add measures of interpretation content, and evaluate these data in relation to other core elements of process notes, such as the author's emotional engagement as manifested in language measures and clinical outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since he first proposed it, Carl Jung's "archetype" theory has faced resistance from a pervasive but seldom examined set of underlying Cartesian assumptions embedded in mainstream psychology. This paradigm assumed a physical universe (and hence body) free of psyche that coincided with an essentially disembodied mind largely concerned with abstract symbol manipulation. This situation led archetype theory to remain largely within insulated psychoanalytic circles for decades. Since the 1980s, however, cognitive psychology has increasingly become embodied from a variety of standpoints. This article shows how the results of embodied cognition and spontaneous thought "demystify" many of the attributes Jung described in his archetype theory, making archetype theory not only more comprehensible but clinically applicable. Combining approaches suggests new avenues of inquiry for experimental research and enriches the psychoanalytic perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychoanalysis involves studying how people maintain not knowing what they "know." As a result, how psychoanalytic psychotherapists orient toward what their patients may be experiencing but cannot say is at the core of psychoanalytic praxis. Jeremy Safran's unique psychoanalytic sensibilities were a model for how to yield to feeling states and relational dynamics that are at the heart of therapeutic action, but which all too frequently get bypassed. This brief recollection highlights how Safran's commitment to open inquiry and mutuality—not just with his patients but also with his students—continues to impact the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction provides an overview to this special issue honoring the work and legacy of Jeremy D. Safran. Born of the Jeremy Safran Memorial Conference, held on April 2nd, 2023, this issue features a wide range of contributions from leaders in the field, former students, and early career professionals whose work engages and develops central ideas from Safran's work and reflects on his impact on their own clinical work and scholarship. Themes center around the three domains of Safran's major contributions: pedagogy; psychotherapy integration; and Buddhism, spirituality, and psychoanalysis. We observe among the contributions an experiential reconnecting with the deeply relational commitments of our friend and colleague. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of a poet and first-year psychoanalytic training candidate, this paper develops Jeremy Safran's ideas about the dialectic between psychoanalysis and Buddhism by drawing an analogy between their processes and those of a poetry practice to define an alternative to pathological dissociation under capitalist systems of value. The paper details the writer's experience of working a day job in an office and the pathological dissociation which she subsequently attempts to overcome and critique through writing poetry. Various poems written at work are shared and analyzed as evidence. Drawing from Safran's edited volume, Psychoanalysis and Buddhism, the author then identifies aspects of Zen Buddhist meditation practice and the psychoanalytic process that focus on connecting with reality, however conflicted, as opposed to escaping it. This paper was written under the mentorship of the psychoanalyst and Zen teacher Barry Magid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores experiences of surrender to an aspect of mind that is unconfined, empty of dualistic concepts, and lucidly aware. Ghent's concept of surrender, Farber's unconscious will, and Buddhist philosophers' essence of mind all link to creative processes described by Poincaré and Mozart. This impressionistic collage points to the spaciousness to know beyond our usual stories. From this essential mind more wholesome actions proceed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this duet of two voices honoring Jeremy Safran's legacy, the authors celebrate some points of resonance between Sándor Ferenczi's groundbreaking relational interventions and Safran's approach to the therapeutic relationship as the heart of healing. Karen Starr first highlights Ferenczi's now well-known creative experimentation with technique and his emphasis on and care for the relational dimension of psychoanalytic treatment. Jill Bresler then links Safran's career-long dedication to the therapeutic alliance to Starr's introductory remarks, honoring Safran and Ferenczi's shared dedication to expanding options in clinical practice through focus on the relationship. Recalling Safran's naming Ferenczi as a key figure in psychotherapy integration's origin story, Bresler reflects on her own learning from Safran's groundbreaking transtheoretical research into the mutative aspects of psychotherapy and his translating a psychoanalytic focus on the therapeutic relationship to CBT researchers and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper honors Jeremy Safran's legacy of scholarship and pedagogy through the lens of his emphasis on rupture and repair. Challenging a Freudian rendering of mourning as ultimately giving up a lost object, the author draws on Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok's application of Sandor Ferenczi's concept of introjection to offer a relational rendering of the grieving process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following is a meditative reflection on an anecdote from Jeremy Safran's Psychoanalysis and Buddhism. Moving through Safran's description of an important moment in his development as a student of Buddhism, the author weaves images, practices, and ways of being and feeling into an homage to Safran's legacy integrating psychoanalytic and Buddhist praxis and epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dr. Jeremy Safran had a unique talent to seamlessly weave together clinical work with his broad knowledge of philosophy, history, and theology. Alongside his commitment to researching the minutest clinical interactions, he was conscious of the broad values of the nature of the good life that underpinned his analytic approach. This paper will explore the concepts of the enchanted unconscious, clinical impasses, negotiation, and surrender, suggesting that these concepts together provide insight into Safran's larger philosophy of life. It will then provide the approach to these concepts of the Rebbes of Ishbitz/Radzin, a school of Polish Hasidic thought. It will conclude with an exploration of how both Safran's psychoanalytic approach and the Ishbitz/Radzin Rebbes' Hasidic approach to the Torah provide distinct insights and applications of these concepts, which can be mutually enriching for both disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sense of agency, our felt sense of authorship for our actions, is a difficult concept to define, yet its faltering stands at the heart of psychopathology. Historically undertheorized by psychoanalysis and typically positioned opposite relatedness by clinical psychology, Jeremy Safran conceived of agency and relatedness as paradoxically related. This paper pays tribute to Safran's ideas by taking his writings on agency as a starting point to elaborate how agency forms, and goes awry, in the relational crucible of early life. In doing so, the paper draws on the developmental theory of Winnicott, empirical research on embodied agency from adjacent fields of study, and Safran's clinical phenomenology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Schelling's anticipation of Freudian psychoanalysis is well established, it has thus far gone unnoticed that Schelling's ideas also proved fruitful in the context of a distinctively philosophical theory of the psyche developed by a younger contemporary of Freud. During the 1920s Helmuth Plessner, a key figure of philosophical anthropology, outlined a complex conception of the psyche as an individualized, inner region of reality. Although Plessner did not present his philosophical psychology in a systematic form, its building blocks can be found in The Unity of the Senses, The Limits of Community, and Levels of Organic Life and the Human, among other writings. Moreover, Plessner left a clue as to how these building blocks fit together, which suggests that Plessner viewed his philosophical psychology as structurally analogous to the model of personality outlined in Schelling's 1809 treatise on human freedom. I propose that Plessner sought to formulate an alternative to both idealism and realism about the psyche that might reconcile the insights motivating these rival positions. Schelling provided Plessner with a workable model for such a reconciliation. After reviewing textual evidence for my hypothesis, I sketch Schelling's predecessor theory. Based on the Schellingian template, I then reconstruct Plessner's non-reductively naturalistic theory of the psyche, which aligns the real bodily ground of the psyche with its ideal existence. Highlighting the strengths of Plessner's philosophical psychology against the foil of Paul Ricoeur's and John McDowell's relevant arguments, I argue that the theory reconstructed here deserves contemporary consideration as a plausible contender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a series of propositions concerning how our affective sensibilities are shaped and unshaped by architectural space. We will examine the connections between our pre‐reflective sense of atmospheres and other kinds of apprehension, including the psychoanalytic. The potentiality of spaces to influence feelings is what is meant by atmosphere. Our conceptual framework, then, will center on the question of how felt space can give rise to affectivity, thought and, more controversially, action. References to film noir (especially Fritz Lang's psychoanalytic thriller Secret beyond the Door [1948]), the paradigmatic genre of atmosphere, will frame the contention that our disposition to the world comes first, before any cognitive assessment, and, as such, possesses the force to inspire affective states. It will be suggested that the ways we test and evaluate atmospheres through the imagination are potentially the inspiration for violence, an idea echoed by architects such Bernard Tschumi and psychoanalytic thinkers such as Marcuse. The goal here is to present multiple entry points for a rich discussion concerning if, or the extent to which, notions of atmosphere admit psychoanalytic interrogation, and how or whether analytic assumptions shift as a result of such an investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article retraces the advent of psychoanalysis in Egypt and the way in which it has failed to differentiate itself from medical and academic models, remaining dominated by the figure of the persecuting Master outside its ranks and the paternal Master within them. It then goes on to discuss the arguments typically set forward to explain resistance to psychoanalysis in Egypt and the Arab world in general, and this with an aim to both relativizing and exploring such positions. Such resistance can indeed be identified not only within the sphere of the demand for analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the concept of psychoanalytic pedagogy in the context of current societal challenges and systems of domination. The author emphasizes the need for representation and diversity in psychoanalytic education, highlighting the importance of including marginalized voices and interrogating systems of power and oppression. The article also discusses the role of interdisciplinary thinking and the potential for psychoanalysis to offer a liberatory praxis. Overall, the author calls for a more open and adaptable approach to psychoanalytic pedagogy in order to navigate the complexities of the present moment. The text discusses the process of developing a syllabus for psychoanalytic courses, emphasizing the importance of creating inclusive and transformative learning environments that allow for critical engagement with the material and diverse ways of knowing. The author also highlights the need for psychoanalysis to center lived experiences and engage with systemic dynamics and normative unconscious processes, challenging dominant ideologies and structures within the field. The article concludes by urging institutions to examine their curriculum and dismantle any harmful hierarchies or systems of oppression. [Extracted from the article]

This paper is a multifaceted exploration of white subjectivity and the social phenomena of whiteness, about which there is a considerable body of psychoanalytic literature spanning decades. Hazel White's "unwound sonnet late on the tide" explores themes of traumatic legacies, family, shame, and mourning. Critical poetic inquiry is used to consider these themes and make links between the poetics of psychoanalytic processes and the psychoanalysis of poetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the results of a qualitative study of Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC)'s experiences of discrimination in psychoanalytic professional organizations (PPOs) in the USA. The authors used thematic analysis to analyze the transcripts of semi‐structured interviews with n = 10 self‐identified BIPOC with prior experience in PPOs, including psychoanalytically‐oriented graduate programs, psychoanalytic institutes and other training programs, and professional membership organizations across the United States. A key finding is that a significant majority of interviewees (n = 9) reported experiencing discrimination in these organizations, per their own definitions of the term "discrimination," and described these experiences in considerable detail. The authors attempt to triangulate the findings of the present study in relation to the findings of the Holmes Commission and other existing literature on BIPOC experiences in psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cet article se propose de soulever les impasses épistémologiques produites par le développement contemporain du concept de handicap – concept formé dans un rapport étroit avec le contexte sociétal et avec les questions de droits de la personne, plus qu'avec la problématique nosographique et clinique. Dans ce cadre nous investiguons plus particulièrement la notion de handicap mental, entité clinique dont l'histoire classificatoire, au cœur de l'édification de la psychiatrie dès le XIXe siècle, fut particulièrement malaisée. Il s'agit à partir de l'étude de cette trajectoire de contribuer à soutenir l'intérêt de son approche théorico-clinique psychanalytique. Nous réalisons une analyse de l'évolution des conceptions psychiatrique et psychanalytique sur le handicap mental. Nous les discutons en dégageant des pistes de réflexion pour le travail clinique et thérapeutique orienté par la psychanalyse, que nous menons avec de jeunes patients handicapés et leurs parents. Le handicap mental est replacé dans la dynamique historique des tentatives de classification dont il a fait l'objet : idiotisme, idiotie, débilité mentale, handicap mental ou intellectuel... Son étiologie organique avérée ou fortement supposée a originellement maintenu, et continue de maintenir à la marge certains modes de penser cliniques et de traitements psychiques dont l'approche psychanalytique fait partie. Nous discutons et différencions les concepts de « mental » et « psychique » et l'ambiguïté de leurs acceptions. Le « mental handicapé », quand il est réduit à son étiologie neuronale, est envisagé dans une perspective déficitaire, qui relègue au second plan voire rend superflue l'investigation de la vie psychique. Nous rappelons, notamment à la suite de D. Widlöcher, combien la pensée Kraepelinienne faisant dépendre l'indication thérapeutique de l'étiologie supposée est de nos jours dépassée. Ainsi mettons-nous l'accent sur les différences individuelles dans la relation qui se construit entre le jeune handicapé et ses proches et dans l'interaction entre leurs psychés. Les effets de la naissance d'un enfant handicapé sur la construction du sentiment de parentalité, le lien de filiation et le narcissisme parental sont ainsi compris au sein de la dynamique des interactions, réelles et fantasmatiques , qui nécessairement diffèrent en fonction des sujets, parents et enfants. Plus particulièrement, nous envisageons la « situation anthropologique fondamentale » de J. Laplanche comme modèle heuristique pour penser la vie psychique pulsionnelle de l'enfant porteur de handicap et le sexuel infantile qui la constitue, dans l'interaction adulte-enfant, comme chez tout un chacun. Nous faisons l'hypothèse que la rencontre parentale avec un enfant présentant une pathologie handicapante est susceptible de renvoyer d'une manière trop brutale, certains parents, à leur propre « étrangeté », c'est-à-dire à l'inquiétant du retour d'un refoulé ou de modes de pensée primitifs abandonnés depuis longtemps. Cette irruption interne est susceptible de conduire chez le parent à une ré-élaboration fantasmatique relançant la dynamique pulsionnelle chez l'enfant. Dans d'autres configurations cliniques, elle peut susciter chez le parent l'usage de défenses drastiques visant à geler sa propre vie pulsionnelle et celle de l'enfant, ayant pour effet chez ce dernier d'entraver l'effort de traduction des messages énigmatiques, le désir de comprendre et d'inhiber la créativité d'une vie psychique fondée sur la dynamique auto-érotique. La compréhension, l'écoute et la prise en charge cliniques psychanalytiques du patient porteur d'un handicap mental repose sur la reconnaissance fondamentale de son infantile, c'est-à-dire d'un inconscient, d'un sexuel infantile inconscient et permet, dans certaines configurations qui ont pu geler, inhiber ou réprimer la vie psychique de l'enfant, de redynamiser les mouvements pulsionnels. This article aims to bypass the epistemological impasses produced by the contemporary development of the concept of disability – a concept formed in close relation with the societal context and with questions of human rights, more than with a nosographic and clinical problematic - and more precisely with regard to mental disability, a clinical entity whose classification history is particularly difficult, and yet at the heart of the edification of psychiatry since the 19th century. In studying this trajectory, we aim to demonstrate the interest of psychoanalysis's theoretical-clinical approach. We analyze the evolution of psychiatric and psychoanalytical conceptions of mental disability. We discuss them and identify avenues of reflection for the psychoanalytically oriented clinical and therapeutic work we do with young disabled patients and their parents. Mental disability is placed in the historical dynamic of the attempts to classify it: idiotism, idiocy, mental debility, mental or intellectual disability, etc. Its proven or strongly assumed organic etiology originally marginalized, and continues to marginalize, certain modes of clinical thinking and psychic treatments, of which the psychoanalytical approach is one. We discuss and differentiate between the concepts of "mental" and "psychic" and the ambiguity of their meanings. The "mentally handicapped" subject, when reduced to their neuronal aetiology, is considered from a deficit perspective, which relegates the investigation of psychic life to the background or even renders it superfluous. Following in the footsteps of D. Widlöcher, we point out that Kraepelin's thinking, which made the therapeutic indication dependent on the supposed aetiology, is now outdated. We therefore emphasize the individual differences in the relationship that develops between the young disabled person and his or her family, and in the interaction between their psyches. The effects of the birth of a disabled child on the construction of the feeling of parenthood, the bond of filiation, and parental narcissism are thus understood within the dynamics of interactions, both real and fantasized , which necessarily differ according to the subjects, parents and children. More specifically, we consider J. Laplanche's "fundamental anthropological situation" as a heuristic model for thinking about the psychic life of the child with a disability and the infantile sexuality that constitutes it, in adult-child interaction, as in everyone else. We hypothesize that the parental encounter with a child presenting a handicapping pathology is likely to send some parents back to their own "uncanniness," that is to say, to the disturbing return of a repressed or primitive way of thinking abandoned a long time ago, coming from their own "internal foreign land." This internal irruption is likely to lead to a re-elaboration of the parent's fantasies, re-launching the child's drive dynamics. In other clinical configurations, it may prompt the parent to use drastic defenses aimed at freezing his or her own and the child's drives, with the effect of hindering the child's efforts to translate enigmatic messages and their desire to understand, and inhibiting the creativity of a psychic life based on auto-erotic dynamics. Psychoanalytic understanding, listening, and clinical treatment of the mentally handicapped patient is based on the fundamental recognition of the infantile, i.e. of an unconscious, an unconscious infantile sexuality; the psychoanalytic approach allows for, in certain configurations that may have frozen, inhibited, or repressed the child's psychic life, a revitalization of the drives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L'objectif de l'article est de questionner aux niveaux théorique et clinique les thérapies d'affirmation de genre. Elles sont en effet présentées dans le DSM-5-TR comme les seules thérapies possibles de la dysphorie de genre, et nous démontrons que cela est discutable du point de vue de l'interaction entre l'activité médicale et la clinique du sujet, ainsi que du point de vue de l'évolution des modèles psychopathologiques de traitement des problématiques liées au genre, cela notamment au regard des données psychanalytiques (diagnostics, processus et thérapeutiques associés). Notre méthode articule une analyse de la littérature et deux cas cliniques. D'abord, nous étudions les évolutions diagnostiques du transsexualisme à la dysphorie de genre dans le champ de la psychopathologie et de la psychanalyse. Ensuite, nous présentons deux cas cliniques de patients ayant envisagé ou engagé une transition. Puis, nous étudions l'activité médicale impliquée dans les thérapies d'affirmation de genre, à partir des thèses de Canguilhem. Le DSM-5-TR a une conception réductrice et contradictoire de la dysphorie : il en situe implicitement la cause et la solution dans le milieu social, sans prendre en compte l'interaction avec le patient. Les théories psychanalytiques ont au contraire maximisé les potentialités de cette interaction, permettant ainsi d'argumenter l'intérêt psychothérapeutique de la réassignation (ou affirmation) de genre, mais aussi d'en démontrer les limites, en tenant compte notamment de la position subjective du sujet dans sa structure psychique. La réassignation se présente comme une normativation de la dysphorie par les traitements médicaux. Or, la normativation doit plutôt être comprise comme le processus par lequel le sujet établit une norme de genre qui lui est spécifique et qui lui permet de traiter sa dysphorie, en faisant un usage singulier des protocoles médicaux de réassignation. Du fait de l'interaction entre le sujet et son milieu, la normativation n'est pas une adaptation à la réalité extérieure ou sociale, mais implique que le second soit aussi modifié par le premier. On ne peut donc souscrire à la thèse du DSM-5-TR selon laquelle la dysphorie n'aurait qu'une seule thérapeutique possible prédéfinie, systématique et généraliste. La dimension clinique interne à l'activité médicale suppose en effet que la souffrance des patients précède la formalisation qui peut en être faite, et que les dispositifs médicaux sont conçus et appliqués secondairement à une diversité de configurations psychopathologiques. C'est d'ailleurs ce que démontrent les cas et l'histoire des idées et des pratiques présentés. La normativation des patients s'applique à leur environnement incluant les thérapeutiques, lesquelles sont donc appelées à être modifiées et diversifiées. The objective of this article is to question gender-affirming therapies at the theoretical and clinical levels. They are, in fact, presented in the DSM-5-TR as the only possible therapies for gender dysphoria; we demonstrate that this is questionable from the point of view of the interaction between medical activity and clinical practice with the subject, as well as from the point of view of the evolution of psychopathological models of treatment of gender-related issues, particularly with regard to psychoanalytic data (diagnoses, associated processes and therapies). Our method combines an analysis of the literature and two clinical cases. First, we study diagnostic developments from transsexualism to gender dysphoria in the field of psychopathology and psychoanalysis. Next, we present two clinical cases of patients who have considered or initiated a transition. Then, we study the medical activity involved in gender-affirming care, based on Canguilhem's theses. The DSM-5-TR has a reductive and contradictory conception of dysphoria: it implicitly locates the cause and the solution in the social environment, without taking into account the interaction with the patient. Psychoanalytic theories have, on the contrary, maximized the potential of this interaction, thus making it possible to argue the psychotherapeutic interest of gender reassignment (or affirmation), but also to demonstrate its limits, in particular by taking into account the subjective position of the subject in its psychic structure. Reassignment presents itself as a normativation of dysphoria by medical treatments. However, normativation must rather be understood as the process by which subjects establish gender norms that are specific to them and which allow them to treat their dysphoria, by making specific use of medical reassignment protocols. Due to the interaction between subject and environment, normativation is not an adaptation to external or social reality, but implies that the latter is also modified by the former. We cannot therefore subscribe to the thesis of the DSM-5-TR according to which dysphoria has only one possible predefined, systematic, and general treatment. The internal clinical dimension of medical activity assumes that the suffering of patients precedes the formalization that can be made of it, and that medical tools are designed and applied secondarily to a diversity of psychopathological configurations. This is also what the cases and the history of the ideas and practices presented demonstrate. The standardization of patients applies to their environment including therapies, which therefore should be modified and diversified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Talking about sexuality in a health care total institution is not an easy task insofar as it contributes to the disclosing of the subjective and cultural postures of professionals, in contexts still marked by the absence or lack of professional training on this subject. Talking about sexuality can also endanger or challenge the institution. This paper presents a secondary analysis of what is presented as a form of "clinical ethnography". The materials used in this study were collected in 1996–1997, in the context of a crisis situation caused by the revelation of illicit sexual relations between a head special educator and a young woman labelled as mentally handicapped, in a care institution. In the course of a psychosociological intervention carried out in response to a request from the management of the institution, professionals from different categories were able to express themselves on these "events" and to address, more generally, issues related to sexuality in the institution. The sessions, moderated by the author of the study and a psychoanalytic research assistant, were recorded and transcribed for subsequent feedback to participants. The thematic content analysis of the transcripts of the sessions allowed for a better understanding of the psychosocial obstacles to communication about sexuality, the subjective difficulties related to speaking out, the phenomena of denial of sexuality, as well as the representations of sexuality in institutional situations. The documents discussed here invite reflection on the complexity of collecting information and stories about sexuality in institutional settings. They explore communication processes and, in particular, the difficulties of communicating about sexuality and sexual abuse in institutions in the health and social sector. This study suggests ways in which clinical support can be provided to teams affected by and confronted with traumatic events and the personal and professional difficulties that may arise from such situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parler de sexualité dans une institution de soins n'est pas chose aisée dans la mesure où cela contribue au dévoilement des postures subjectives et culturelles des professionnels, dans des contextes encore marqués par l'absence ou les lacunes de formation professionnelle à ce sujet. Parler de sexualité peut aussi mettre en danger ou en cause l'institution. Cet article propose une analyse secondaire de ce qui se présente comme une forme d'« ethnographie clinique ». Les matériaux mobilisés dans ce travail ont été recueillis en 1996–1997, dans le contexte d'une situation de crise suscitée par la révélation de relations sexuelles illicites entre un éducateur-chef et une jeune femme désignée comme handicapée mentale, dans une institution de soins. C'est au cours d'une intervention psychosociologique menée en réponse à une demande de la direction de l'établissement que des professionnels de différentes catégories ont pu s'exprimer sur ces « événements » et aborder de façon plus générale les questions liées à la sexualité dans l'établissement. Les séances de travail animées par l'auteur de l'étude et une assistante de recherche psychanalyste ont fait l'objet d'une prise de notes et ont été retranscrites pour être ensuite restituées aux participants. L'analyse de contenu thématique des retranscriptions des séances a permis de mieux comprendre les obstacles psycho-sociaux à la communication sur la sexualité, les difficultés subjectives liées à la prise de parole, les phénomènes de négation de la sexualité ainsi que les représentations de la sexualité en situation institutionnelle. Les documents discutés ici invitent à la réflexion sur la complexité du recueil d'informations et de récits sur la sexualité, explorent les processus de communication et notamment les difficultés à communiquer autour des questions de sexualité et d'abus sexuels dans des institutions du secteur sanitaire et social. Ce travail propose des pistes de travail clinique d'accompagnement des équipes concernées et confrontées à des événements traumatiques et aux difficultés personnelles et professionnelles qui surgissent de ces situations. Talking about sexuality in a health care institution is not an easy task insofar as it contributes to the disclosing of the subjective and cultural postures of professionals, in contexts still marked by the absence or lack of professional training on this subject. Talking about sexuality can also endanger or challenge the institution. This paper presents a secondary analysis of what is presented as a form of "clinical ethnography." The materials used in this study were collected in 1996-1997, in the context of a crisis situation caused by the revelation of illicit sexual relations between a head special educator and a young woman labelled as mentally handicapped, in a care institution. In the course of a psychosociological intervention carried out in response to a request from the management of the institution, professionals from different categories were able to express themselves on these "events" and to address, more generally, issues related to sexuality in the institution. The sessions, moderated by the author of the study and a psychoanalytic research assistant, were recorded and transcribed for subsequent feedback to participants. The thematic content analysis of the transcripts of the sessions allowed for a better understanding of the psychosocial obstacles to communication about sexuality, the subjective difficulties related to speaking out, the phenomena of denial of sexuality, as well as the representations of sexuality in institutional situations. The documents discussed here invite reflection on the complexity of collecting information and stories about sexuality in institutional settings. They explore communication processes and, in particular, the difficulties of communicating about sexuality and sexual abuse in institutions in the health and social sector. This study suggests ways in which clinical support can be provided to teams affected by and confronted with traumatic events and the personal and professional difficulties that may arise from such situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cet article concerne les défis actuels pour la psychanalyse que constituent le genre et les incongruences de genre. En effet, bien que le terme genre soit de plus en plus utilisé, il reste un concept plus difficile à définir et à circonscrire qu'il n'y paraît au premier abord. Afin d'apporter un éclairage sur ces sujets, il sera exposé le changement au combien important, qu'est le passage du paradigme du syndrome transsexuel à celui de la santé transgenre. Cet exposé sera alors étayé par deux vignettes cliniques : celle de Claudia dont la transition s'inscrit dans un parcours transsexuel et celle de Rose dont la transition paraît plus s'apparenter à un parcours transgenre. Les vignettes cliniques de Claudia et de Rose permettent d'illustrer ce qui se rapporte à une manière différente d'appréhender la différence des sexes : entre une abstraction qui épouse les contours d'une différence des sexes conçue comme binaire pour Claudia, et un genre fluide pour Rose. Suite à ces remarques, il est proposé de revenir sur le concept de genre afin de mieux le cerner et de le concevoir, notamment dans sa rencontre clinique et théorique avec la psychanalyse. Le genre est alors conçu comme un concept frontière, renvoyant à un troisième corps social au croisement du sentiment personnel et subjectif et du sociopolitique. En référence à la narratologie, le genre est défini comme une construction personnelle et/ou collective visant à donner une cohérence à la différence des sexes, et étayé par une réalisation par la perception, aide possible à la liaison de l'excitation sexuelle associée aux questions relatives à la différence anatomique des sexes d'un point de vue psychanalytique, qui concerne autant l'analysant que le psychanalyste. This article is concerned with the current challenges to psychoanalysis that gender and gender discordance represent. Indeed, although the term gender is increasingly used, it remains a concept that is more difficult to define and circumscribe than it first appears. In order to shed light on these issues, the important shift from the transsexual syndrome paradigm to the transgender health paradigm will be discussed. This presentation will then be supported by two clinical vignettes: that of Claudia, whose transition is part of a transsexual journey, and that of Rose, whose transition seems to be more akin to a transgender journey. Claudia's and Rose's stories allow us to illustrate a different way of apprehending the difference of the sexes: for Claudia, an abstraction that follows the contours of a difference of the sexes considered as binary, and, for Rose, a conception of gender as fluid. Following these reflections, it is suggested that we return to the concept of gender in order to better define and conceptualize it, particularly in its clinical and theoretical encounter with psychoanalysis. Gender is thus considered as a frontier concept, referring to a third social body at the crossroads of personal and subjective feeling and the socio-political. In reference to narratology, gender is defined as a personal and/or collective construction aiming to give coherence to the difference of the sexes and supported by a realization through perception. Gender can be thought of as an aide to the binding of sexual excitation associated with questions relating to the anatomical difference of the sexes from a psychoanalytical point of view, which concerns both the analysand and the psychoanalyst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]