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Les patients qui posent des demandes d'aide active à mourir sont peu accompagnés par les équipes de soins palliatifs. Ils sont souvent pensés comme des gens forts, hors-norme, au-dessus des considérations palliatives. Une analyse psychanalytique arrimée à la notion de pulsion de mort montre que le raisonnement initial peut s'inverser et que, face à la mort, le plus faible n'est peut-être pas celui qu'on croit ! Ma thèse avance qu'une désintrication pulsionnelle se produit dans la vie psychique. L'équilibre Pulsion de vie/Pulsion de mort vole en éclats au profit du passage au premier plan de la pulsion de mort : la demande d'aide active à mourir est alors la seule voix/voie qui permet à ce sujet de tenir encore dans la vie. Un patient qui demande à mourir est d'abord un sujet qui perd pied avec une dynamique désirante tournée vers le futur. Il n'est plus en mesure de gérer la complexité de l'expérience qu'il vit et se situe donc plus du côté de la faiblesse que de la force. Cette réflexion invite le soin palliatif, non pas à renverser le raisonnement habituel des prises en charge (la vie doit continuer de désirer la vie en première intention), mais à mettre du jeu , notamment au moment du déclin psychique qui annonce la fin. Est-il possible de penser l'effondrement terminal d'un sujet , le repérer, en tenir compte, s'y ajuster ? L'éthique qui accueille et accompagne le travail de la pulsion de mort est une éthique qui permet ce travail de pensée. Parce qu'ils sont paradoxalement plus fragiles, plus faibles, plus seuls face à leur point d'impossible – que ceux qui parviennent à faire face à la mort, que ceux qui parviennent à rester reliés aux autres – les patients qui demandent une aide à mourir devraient être accompagnés en priorité. Patients who request active assistance in dying receive little support from palliative care teams. They are often thought of as strong, exceptional people, above palliative considerations. A psychoanalytical analysis based on the notion of the death drive shows that the initial line of reasoning can be reversed and that, when faced with death, the weakest person may not be the one we believe! My thesis advances the theory that a disintegration of the death drive occurs in psychic life. The balance between the instinct of life and the instinct of death is upended, and the death drive takes precedence: the request for active assistance in dying is thus the only voice/pathway that allows this subject to continue to hold onto life. A patient who requests help in dying is first and foremost a subject who has lost their grip on a desire dynamic that is future-oriented. They are no longer able to manage the complexity of the experience they are going through and are, therefore, more on the side of weakness than strength. This reflection invites us to recommend palliative care, not for the purpose of countering the usual reasoning of care (life must continue to desire life as a first intention), but to allow for some leeway, especially at the time of psychic decline which heralds the end. Is it possible to think about a subject's terminal collapse, identify it, take it into account, adjust to it? The moral considerations that welcome and accompany the workings of the death drive are principles that render this manner of reasoning possible. Because they are paradoxically more fragile, weaker, and more alone in the face of their psychic impasse than those who are able to face death, and than those who manage to remain connected to others, the patients who seek help in dying should be accompanied as a priority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Based on new discoveries in the field of neurobiology and on his own research on severe psychopathological conditions mostly unaddressed by Freud, the Viennese psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg redefined the death drive concept. Despite acknowledging that the phenomena referred to by Freud refers as supporting the idea of a death drive reveal the existence of a dominant self-destructive tendency, Kernberg maintains that such tendency results from a malignant transformation of aggression due to constitutional and relational factors, rather than from an innate feature of the mind. This paper seeks to reassess some problematic points of Freud's second drive theory and argue that Kernberg's perspective allows to avoid some of its main stalemates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about music and psychoanalysis and proposes convergences between both disciplines, not to psychoanalyze the musical or musicians' activity, but to determine and describe what music can contribute to the psychoanalytic practice. To this end, it establishes relationships between some concepts proper to the aesthetic music theory and some central psychoanalytic notions to illustrate the relationships between sublimation and the death drive. The aim is to highlight that the relationship that the subject establishes with music is not only supported on the life drive or eroticism but also on the thanatic, i. e. the determinations of the drive vicissitudes traced by desire and jouissance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares presentations of disorders of the sense of body ownership and agency from psychoanalytic and neurological perspectives to demonstrate similarities in symptomatology proposing these similarities arise from adjustments in Friston's generative model of self-organization and selfhood. The implications for the analytic model of the Self, for clinical practice and for neuroscience research are considered. Patients with narcissistic disorders use projective defences resulting in a disordered sense of what belongs to whom. This applies to mind and body of self and other and is central to understanding transference and countertransference. Clinical observations of this disordered sense of ownership and agency mirror findings in neurological disorders. This paper proposes that in both neurological and psychological disorders Friston's 'internal generative model' of selfhood is adjusted. Further to this whilst this adjustment may be either neurogenic or psychogenic, the final neural mechanism and symptomatic outcome are similar. On the basis of these observations the paper compares the concept of the Self from Jungian and psychoanalytic perspectives. Finally, the implications for the concept of the death instinct and Britton's concept of Xenophobia are explored along with the implications of these observations for clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L'expression devenue usuelle de « banalité du mal » a-t-elle un intérêt en psychopathologie ? Si « banal » est pris au sens de « commun au plus grand nombre », le mal est une nécessité, une dimension de l'humanité que la pulsion de mort pourrait figurer. Mais la « banalité du mal » est aussi une expression forgée par H. Arendt (1963) à propos d'Eichmann pour désigner la médiocrité, l'absence d'originalité, la difficulté à avoir une pensée personnelle, à se manifester comme sujet à travers une parole singulière. En ce sens, la banalité apparaît comme une caractéristique contingente qui ne constitue pas le fonds de la nature humaine mais définit plutôt l'absence d'humanité. Dans un cas comme dans l'autre, la banalité mobilise les enjeux de la psychopathologie et de la psychothérapie. Pour les praticiens, il s'agira d'identifier les défaillances individuelles et familiales qui ont empêché l'endiguement des pulsions chez le sujet puis de reprendre avec lui le travail de culture inachevé. Au fil de ses nombreuses publications, François Marty nous invite à relancer les processus de subjectivation par la mise en place d'une contenance pour traiter l'excitation, par le développement de la réflexivité, par la transmission de l'autorité et par la transformation de la violence en créativité, notamment à l'adolescence. Par l'importance qu'ils donnent à la parole singulière, les praticiens du psychisme contribuent à la connaissance de ce qui fait notre humanité, ils objectent à la banalité du mal. This text proposes an examination of what constitutes our humanity based on a study of the theme of "the banality of evil". This expression is often used nowadays with a fairly broad meaning in which "banal" means "common", "widespread". In this sense, evil is considered as a dimension of humanity, it is a necessity to which we are submitted. Violence, the death drive, destructiveness and dominance are components of the human being. Psychoanalysts postulate the universality of the Oedipus complex after the observation of the presence of its constituent elements – incestuous and parricidal fantasies – both in the tradition of Greek antiquity and in the dreams of modern men or through the words of young children. Through reference to the work of François Marty, we will show how this author's reflections on the family crime of Pierre Rivière has provided knowledge about becoming human during adolescence, a period of development that seems crucial for the regulation of instinctuality. In his texts on fratricide, Marty also offers us an approach to what constitutes the founding of humanity at its origins. But the expression "banality of evil" also has its origin in the subtitle that H. Arendt (1963) gives to her report on the trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem. By "banality", she means mediocrity, the absence of originality, the difficulty of having a personal thought, of manifesting oneself as a subject through a singular speaking. Banality appears here as a contingency, a characteristic which, although capable of affecting crowds–for example the millions of members of the Nazi Party–does not, however, constitute the basis of human nature but rather defines the absence of humanity. Here, the banality of evil concerns an individual who has abdicated his subjectivity, who is not able to recognize their own humanity in the face of others or to integrate a representation of death as a limit given to each of us. Whether the banality of evil is interpreted in one way or the other, it mobilizes the issues of psychopathology and psychotherapy: for the practitioner, it is important to identify the individual and family failures which have prevented the containment of sexual and murderous impulses and then to resume the unfinished Kulturarbeit and to revive the process of subjectivation. As François Marty suggests in his numerous publications, the establishment of a capacity to deal with excitement, the development of reflexivity through the work of latency, the transformation of violence into creativity during adolescence thus support the processes of subjectivation, among which we will also insist on the transfer of authority. Psychopathologists and psychotherapists, insofar as words matter for them, contribute to a better knowledge of what constitutes our humanity and they object to the banality of evil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a literature review, this article discusses the possibility of analyzing religious fundamentalism using psychoanalytic theory. It aims to define the notion of aggressiveness using Freud's formalizations about the death drive, and based on that theoretical framework, to approach the way ideologies with a fundamentalistreligious bias function and perform. This approach is justified by the fact that today, fundamentalist trends are widespread in various political and social spheres, which are constantly looking for means and strategies to strengthen and expand those ideological currents. This study emphasizes that the aggressive, destructive and dominant urge, inherent to man, is present and active even where religious values and ideals are cultivated, since the death drive and its possible devastating effects are an inherent part of human nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structured like a deadly repetition compulsion, Lars von Trier's film Melancholia opens with a sequence of majestic scenes, where already, one can guess the imminent clash of the eponymous planet with ours, the Earth. An analogy is made between the excesses of nature and those of the drives, as everything begins with the revelation of an intolerable knowledge, the cosmic projection of an inner anguish and the anticipation of the end of the world. Death drive: we are tragically preparing to visit a world that is already doomed, deserted by desire. We will turn our attention to identifying and describing the inexorable progress of the infantile drive within the film Melancholia, and to see how Justine, among other representatives, reveals the inescapable catastrophe of the absence of desire. The futility of any attempt to silence the infantile - an unalterable ghost haunting every image, every word, every gesture - will become evident. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For several years, there has been a disinvestment of spaces of subjectivation and symbolization within the Quebec health system, in favor of a movement of overmedicalization and biologization of psychic distress. Because of the political and administrative policies that guide institutions, including the implementation of clinical restraints based on efficiency and "performance," creativity seems to be abandoned by both caregivers and patients. Thus, our aim, in this writing, is to emphasize the relevance and define certain functions of a group of therapy by artistic mediation, through the study of the therapeutic process of psychiatric patients with traumatic suffering. The process and some artistic productions of two subjects who participated in this therapeutic modality, which is rare in Quebec, are presented and analyzed by the co-authors. Then the effects of such a group, mainly reflexivity, containment, and restarting symbolization (Roussillon), are raised and detailed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the current situation, a sense of loss of humanity can be seen in the discomfort expressed by many patients. In this case history of a couple with an adolescent daughter that develops delusional thoughts, the negative and positive hallucinations, as described by Green, emerge clearly in the failed effort of the family at understanding death thoughts that cannot be elaborated by each individual but float around the members in their not-representations and somatic nonexperiences like in a shared unconscious dimension, as Kaës calls it, a psychic location created by each member separately and by the whole family at the same time. The task of the analyst is to be able to reassemble the overall picture in her mind; the vertex of the death drive can be useful to put together the many different levels of understanding of the clinical material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transgenerational transmission of secrets and bannings, linked to a failed mourning of object and narcissistic losses, leads to more or less subtle or full-blown pathologies, that involve the subject's representation functions and ability to investment. Two different perspective are adopted in order to analyse these situations: the institution of a secret and its effects on the first and second generations, through the clinical work with an adolescent's family; and the results and developments in subsequent generations, as prompted by an animated film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a re-reading of the Freudian death drive, this work examines some specific aspects that concern in particular the antilibidic life forms present in the subject, in the couple and in the social sphere. The Author proceeds starting from the premise of the pulsional mixture, coexistence and non-opposition of the two drives, libidinal and of death, to attempt a metapsychological and phenomenological description of a variegated and silent instance, to which she gives the name of "disinvestment". The traceability of the death instinct, as it "silent", is only through its derivatives, and the fact that they are subjects that escape our observation, makes the investigation not easy. We wonder ourselves how much excitability is tolerable to every human being, the problem of the "threshold", and it is therefore taken into account, finally, the important and underestimating defensive and subjectively action of the death drive, both as a pain-free maneuver, and as a necessary complement to human growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé Depuis une décennie, un mouvement en provenance des États-Unis revendiquant l’asexualité en tant que nouvelle « orientation sexuelle » s’est propagé – avec l’aide d’Internet – en France. Les sujets qui se disent ou pensent être asexuels font leur coming-out , et tentent de se constituer une identité propre, à l’instar des homosexuels et transexuels. Un asexuel est caractérisé par un désintérêt certain pour la question sexuelle, il ou elle se dit indifférent au sexe, particulièrement au coït. À cette « possibilité d’une île », immunisée contre l’acte sexuel coïtal, la psychanalyse a tenté d’y comprendre à travers le principe de Nirvâna. Le phénomène asexuel vient mettre en perspective – comme l’autre face de l’hypersexualité – un des symptômes du malaise de la culture contemporaine. About a decade ago, a trend coming from the U.S., named “Asexuality”, has been introduced to the French public space as a new “sexual orientation”. Asexual subjects attempt to claim their identities as homosexuals and transexuals once did. People of this orientation are characterized by a rejection or at least are indifferent to the coital part of sex. Psychoanalysis has a theorized the Nirvana Principle in order to comprehend this phenomenon at the beginning of the 20th century. The asexual phenomenon come to put into perspective – as the other side (of a coin) of the phenomenon of hypersexuality – one of the main symptoms of civilization and its discontent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reconsidering the usefulness of the concept "death instinct" in clinical work, this paper concludes that it is useful in consoling the mourners of a suicide and in aiding the therapist to wait when the patient does not show up, but should not be used to foreclose exploration of fantasies about death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The death drive is a concept that has been a controversial one since Freud wrote Beyond the Pleasure Principle in 1920. In this text, the opinions of several important authors are exposed in order to get a panoramic vision of the way the death drive concept is understood and used or criticized and even refused by some of them. The author will emphasize the points of view that seem to explain destructivity in a more intelligible way and suggest a comprehension of this concept not as a drive but as something that is implanted by the primal care figure. Clinical vignettes are presented in order to illustrate the manifestation of the destructive mouvement, in relation with implicit messages received from the parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The survivor of a decade of childhood sexual trauma and violence, perpetrated by a monstrous father, produced a series of dreams in the final year of a ten-year analysis. They illuminated the 'death drive' beneath a lifelong preoccupation with dying and fantasies of submission to death, perpetuated by the promise of hoped-for freedom from pain and release from a life of suffering. The initial dream involved the collapse of a team of white horses drawing him in a pillory cart to his own hanging for a crime he did not commit. It signified the collapse of a fragile psychological system based on his role as the 'sacrificial lamb,' protecting a (not so) innocent mother. The raw truth was now unconcealed: primal, violent, and terrifying dreams and affects emerged where he was now the murderous aggressor. His dreams would become primary agents for an instinctive, life-giving authenticity to emerge, offering him clemency from the shattering repetitions of persecution and dissociation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author traces the history of his encounter, engagement and understanding of the place of aggression in psychoanalytic theory and practice beginning with his formative period when ego psychology and classical conflict theory were dominant, through the introduction of self psychology and his subsequent engagement with the widening, international world of psychoanalytic thinking, including Kleinian, neo-Kleinian, Bionian, post-Bionian, and contemporary French psychoanalytic trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé Objectifs L’auteure cherche à montrer que le texte de Freud de 1920 est le développement d’une hypothèse, organisatrice d’un champ d’expériences qui semblent d’abord hétérogènes présentée comme telle par lui-même. Il ne s’agit ni d’une intégration des pulsions dans une notion biologique de la mort et de la vie, ni d’une métaphysique, qui unifierait le sexuel et le biologique, c’est une réponse à la question : peut-on mettre en évidence dans la clinique de la psychanalyse un phénomène symptomatique ou culturel dans lequel ce qui relève de la destructivité pulsionnelle soit concevable indépendamment du principe de plaisir comme visée d’une satisfaction de l’appareil de l’âme ? Ce texte a été lu de façon très partielle tant par les psychanalystes favorables ou non à la notion de pulsion de mort (par exemple, Winnicott) que par les philosophes (par exemple, Derrida ou Deleuze). Méthodes Resituer la construction d’ensemble du texte et sa logique pour évaluer la portée des trois passages généralement isolés et montés en épingle : le jeu du fort-da chez l’enfant, d’une part, l’idée évolutionniste que les pulsions comme les cellules vivantes ont une tendance interne à aller droit à la mort, enfin la référence au discours d’Alcibiade sur l’amour dans Le Banquet de Platon. La méthode freudienne est ici comparable à celle de Galilée qui multipliait les expériences concevables grâce à l’hypothèse qu’il formulait sur le temps de la chute des mobiles dans le vide : il raisonnait sur de multiples expériences qu’il réalisait en montrant qu’aucune de ces expériences ne permettait d’isoler le facteur que nous appelons, depuis, mouvement uniformément accéléré. Or, c’est cette différence dans l’inadéquation de chaque expérience à l’hypothèse qui valide cette dernière. Freud évoque tour à tour les névroses de guerre, le jeu des enfants, le plaisir des adultes au théâtre tragique, le transfert négatif pour montrer que son hypothèse d’une pulsion de mort indépendante par rapport au principe de plaisir n’est (presque) vérifiée que dans le plaisir des adultes à se représenter une catastrophe de la vie humaine. Elle ne l’est pas dans le cas du jeu des enfants. Tous les autres exemples sont conçus comme des cas de mélange entre les deux principes. C’est cette mise en jeu négative d’une multiplicité d’expériences construites, ici par la clinique, qui l’amène à ce qu’il nomme sa spéculation biologique : cette dernière, à travers toutes les lectures et les hésitations des biologistes de son temps dont il se distingue tour à tour explicitement, vise à préciser comment la destructivité pulsionnelle qui s’annonce dans la répétition transférentielle est l’envers d’une contingence indispensable pour que la destructivité à l’œuvre dans les pulsions mais transposée dans la cure ( Übertragung veut dire transposition) puisse inventer dans les formations de l’inconscient et en particulier dans les rêves, de nouveaux circuits et de nouveaux objets dont les matériaux sont comme prélevés sur ce qui risque de mener au circuit court de « la mort ». La spéculation biologique n’est jamais isolée puisque Freud revient ensuite à Eros/Thanatos en lisant Platon, puis à Schopenhauer pour le critiquer en même temps que Fliess qui, lui, croyait à la pulsion de mort biologique et dont l’épistémologie était holiste. Il ne quitte jamais la clinique puisque le texte se termine sur le sadisme et le masochisme comme phénomènes cliniques qui définissent l’érotisation de ce qui tend à une destruction radicale de l’autre et de soi. Résultats 1. L’hypothèse de la pulsion de mort anticipe les travaux contemporains sur l’apoptose, (Jean-Claude Ameisen, La Sculpture du vivant (Paris 5 e éd. collection Points/Seuil 2007) mettant en jeu un rapport analogue dans les deux champs (formation des organismes et formation des pulsions sexuelles) entre la détermination des composantes destructrices et la contingence des facteurs qui retardent la destruction tout en se liant aux facteurs destructeurs. Le résultat est qu’on l’appelle le vivant en biologie, l’inconscient sexué en psychanalyse. L’analyste est l’instrument qui crée les conditions pour que cette nouvelle articulation puisse se faire. Cela distingue le hasard en biologie et la contingence en psychanalyse. 2. En remettant en cause la distinction psychologique de l’intérieur et de l’extérieur pour l’appareil de l’âme, L’Au-delà permet aussi de discuter la thèse de Catherine Malabou dans Les Nouveaux blessés (Paris, Bayard 2007) selon laquelle les neurosciences réfuteraient la conception psychanalytique du trauma. Dans les lésions cérébrales, deux phénomènes distincts sont à l’œuvre ensemble : la destruction anatomique et physiologique du cerveau à partir d’une cause externe, d’une part, et la manière dont le sujet souffre et jouit de cette catastrophe qui n’a rien à voir au départ avec lui, d’autre part. L’extérieur a deux acceptions distinctes. Des facteurs apparemment contingents sont capables grâce au transfert, de transformer le trauma : comme dit Freud, dans l’Évolution, les rencontres de hasard « rajeunissent les cellules ». Ce rajeunissement n’est pas la procréation, et il ne se révèle efficace que parce qu’il se produit dans le voisinage du risque de destruction. Ce « voisinage » doit être pensé différemment en biologie (symbioses) et en psychanalyse (capacité inventive de la pulsion de mort empruntant des matériaux à la destruction). Discussion La pensée de Freud dans ce texte se formule dans un vocabulaire et parfois avec des concepts inadéquats : 1. Par exemple, alors que la pulsion de mort et le trauma au sens psychanalytique exigeraient de remettre explicitement en cause l’opposition de l’extérieur et de l’intérieur lorsqu’il s’agit de « l’appareil de l’âme », il continue d’employer ces notions sans les redéfinir explicitement. 2. Ou encore, la multiplicité de ses références à la théorie de l’Évolution en biologie s’accompagne de multiples revirements sur la question de l’homogénéité ou de l’hétérogénéité des deux champs dans lesquels il repère, explicitement, un mécanisme très proche dans l’intrication entre destruction et transformation qui se révèle inventive après coup. Or, chaque fois que Freud cède au mirage de la découverte d’une origine commune au vivant au pulsionnel, le spectre de Fliess apparaît dans son texte. Puis il s’en dégage avec quelque violence trop allusive. C’est particulièrement net lorsqu’il conjoint Schopenhauer et Fliess pour se dégager des deux en même temps mais sans s’expliquer. Et c’est alors qu’il joue à se faire philosophe en passant dans le registre du mythe platonicien d’Eros. L’inanalysé de son rapport à Fliess trouble sa méthode si remarquable de confrontation entre la clinique et l’hypothèse. Mais ce « trouble » dans la pensée est aussi ce dont traite la discipline qu’il a créée. Conclusions L’enjeu épistémologique et philosophique est de réfléchir sur le statut des hypothèses dans la clinique de la vie sexuelle et dans les formations de l’inconscient. C’est pourquoi sans être une science, la psychanalyse a besoin d’un constant voisinage avec les sciences. L’enjeu de la clinique est d’approcher l’originalité de la pratique psychanalytique, qui n’est nullement une discipline impérialiste mais qui se donne les moyens d’explorer et de transformer un aspect de la réalité : la liaison entre souffrance, jouissance et culture. Aims The author seeks to show that Freud's text of 1920 is the development of a hypothesis organising a field of experiences that initially appear heterogeneous, and are indeed presented as such by him. The issue is not that of integrating the concept of drive into a biological conception of life and death, nor is it a metaphysic that could unite sexual and biological conceptions. It is the answer to a question: is it possible, in psychoanalytical practice, to evidence a symptomatic or cultural phenomenon in which what relates to the destructiveness of drive can be envisaged independently from the principle of pleasure, as aimed at satisfying the psychic apparatus? This text has been read in rather fragmented manner, whether by psychoanalysts both in favour of and opposed to the notion of the death drive (Winnicott for instance), or by philosophers (Derrida or Deleuze). Methods The overall construction of the text and its logic is reappraised to measure the importance of the three passages that are generally singled out and emphasised: the fort-da game in the child, the evolutionist idea that drives, like living cells, have a tendency to head for death, and the reference to Alcibiades’ tirade about love in Plato's Symposium . The Freudian method here is comparable to that of Galileo, who conducted all possible experiments on the grounds of his hypothesis about the time taken for an object to fall: he reasoned on the basis of numerous experiments, showing that none of them enabled the factor that we now call “uniformly accelerated motion” to be demonstrated. It is the difference in misfit of each experiment with the hypothesis that validates that hypothesis. Freud calls in turn on war neuroses, children's games, adults’ pleasure in tragic drama, and negative transfer to show that his hypothesis of a death drive that is independent from the pleasure principle is verified (almost) solely in the pleasure experienced by adults when envisaging a catastrophe for human life. It is not verified in the case of children's games. All the other examples are given to illustrate cases of a mixture of the two principles. It is this negative implication of many experiments, here in the clinical field, that leads him to what he calls his biological speculation. This speculation, given all the different readings and hesitations of the biologists of his time from whom he explicitly distances himself one by one, is an attempt to explain how the drive for destruction arising from transferential repetition is the downside a contingency that is essential for the destructiveness underpinning drives but transposed during the cure ( Übertragung ), and how it can, in the formation of the unconscious and in particular of dreams, invent new circuits and new objects, the materials for which are found in what is liable to lead to the shorter circuit of death. Biological speculation is never isolated, since Freud then returns to Eros/Thanatos, reading Plato, and then Schopenhaumler to criticise him along with Fliess, who for his part believed in the biological death instinct, in a holistic epistemology. He never leaves the clinical domain, since the text ends on sadism and masochism as clinical phenomena defining the eroticisation of whatever tends towards a radical destruction of self and other. Results 1. The hypothesis of the death drive anticipates contemporary work on apoptosis in the two fields (formation of organisms and formation of sexual drive), showing an analogous relationship between the determination of destructive components and the contingency of factors that delay the destruction, while at the same time linking with the destructive factors. The result is that what we call the living in biology is the sexual unconscious in psychoanalysis. The analyst is the instrument creating the conditions for this new articulation to occur. It distinguishes chance in biology from contingency in psychoanalysis. 2. By questioning the psychological distinction between interior and exterior for the psychic apparatus, the Au-delà also enables discussion of the theory of Catherine Malabou in Les Nouveaux Blessés (Paris, Bayard, 2007) according to which the neurosciences refute the psychoanalytical conception of trauma. In cerebral lesions, two distinct phenomena co-occur: the anatomical and physiological destruction of part of the brain as a result of an external cause on the one hand, and on the other the way in which the subject experiences this catastrophe (pain or pleasure) which at the outset has nothing to do with him. The exterior has two distinct acceptations. Apparently, contingent factors can, via transference, transform the trauma. As Freud states in Evolution , chance encounters “rejuvenate cells”. This rejuvenation is not procreation, and it only works because it occurs in the neighbourhood of a risk of destruction. This “neighbourhood” should be envisaged differently in biology (symbiosis) and psychoanalysis (inventive capacity of the death drive, borrowing material from destruction). Discussion Freud's thought in this text uses a vocabulary and in some instances concepts that are inadequate: 1. For instance, while the death drive and trauma in the psychoanalytic sense would require explicit reference to the opposition between exterior and interior for the psychic apparatus, he continues to deploy these notions without explicitly redefining them. 2. Again, his numerous references to the theory of evolution in biology are accompanied by numerous changes in direction on the issue of the homogeneity or the heterogeneity of the two fields, in which he explicitly recognises a mechanism that is very close, in the intrication of destruction and transformation, which later proves inventive. Every time Freud gives in to the illusion that he can discover a common origin for the living and drive, the ghost of Fliess turns up in the text. He then shakes him off with rather allusive violence. This is particularly prominent when he joins Schopenhauer with Flies to draw away from both at once, but without any explanation. He then takes on the role of a philosopher, making a detour via Plato's myth of Eros. His relationship with Fliess upsets his method, generally quite remarkable, of confrontation between clinical practice and hypothesis. But this “upset” in his thinking is also the subject matter of the discipline he created. Conclusions The epistemological and philosophical challenge is to consider the status of hypothesis in the clinical approach to sexuality and the formations of the unconscious. This is why psychoanalysis, although not a science, needs constant proximity with the sciences. The challenge in clinical practice is to approach the originality of psychoanalytic practice, which is in no way an “imperialistic” discipline, but provides itself with the means to explore and transform an aspect of reality: the link between pain, pleasure and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé Objectif L’objectif de cet article est de réévaluer la notion de la pulsion de mort comme un élément inhérent à la pensée freudienne. Le texte s’interroge sur l’origine (pré-)freudienne du concept et examine son statut à la fois métapsychologique et clinique. La question centrale est : comment donner un sens à l’idée de la pulsion de mort de Freud du point de vue métapsychologique et clinique ? Méthode À partir d’une note de bas de page d’ Au-delà du principe de plaisir (1920), cet article développe une petite généalogie de la pulsion de mort. En révélant une « histoire de l’action » préfreudienne beaucoup plus longue que ce qui est généralement admis, cette recherche nous confronte aux divers contextes (cliniques) d’origine du concept. En relisant Au-delà du principe de plaisir (1920) et les textes subséquents, la question directrice est : quel est le contexte de recherche clinique spécifique qui a incité Freud à introduire l’idée de la pulsion de mort ? Résultats Cet article rappelle que, depuis Deuil et mélancolie (1916–1917), Freud était extrêmement préoccupé par le problème de la mélancolie. Il fait valoir que ce dernier modèle psychopathologique constitue la matrice de recherche métapsychologique contextualisant l’introduction de la pulsion de mort par Freud. Dans le même temps, cependant, il soutient que, afin de comprendre le caractère instinctif spécifique de la pulsion de mort, l’intérêt apparemment marginal que Freud manifeste pour l’épilepsie doit être pris en compte. Ceci est illustré par une vignette clinique. Discussion Cet article plaide la pertinence métapsychologique et clinique du concept énigmatique de la pulsion de mort, en relisant Freud et en prêtant attention aux modèles de recherche pathologiques spécifiques qu’il utilise. Conclusion En prenant en compte la mélancolie et l’épilepsie, il est possible de redonner un sens à la fois métapsychologique et clinique à la pulsion de mort de Freud. Objective This article aims to reappraise the concept of the death instinct as an inherent element of Freudian thinking. It raises the question of the pre-Freudian origin of the concept and examines both its meta-psychological and its clinical status and relevance. The central question is how to make sense of Freud's death instinct, meta-psychologically and clinically. Method Starting from a footnote in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), this article develops a brief genealogy of the death instinct. This investigation reveals a much longer pre-Freudian ‘history’ than is usually assumed, and confronts us with a diverse range of (clinical) contexts for the origin of the concept. Re-reading Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) and subsequent texts, the guiding question is: what was the specific clinical research context that led Freud to introduce the idea of the death instinct? Results This article recalls that, after Mourning and Melancholia (1916–1917), Freud was extremely preoccupied with the problem of melancholia. It is argued that this psychopathological model provides the meta-psychological research matrix that contextualizes Freud's introduction of the death instinct. At the same time, however, it is argued that Freud's seemingly marginal interest in epilepsy should be taken into account in order to apprehend the specific, instinctual nature of the death instinct. This is illustrated by a short clinical vignette. Discussion This article argues for the meta-psychological and clinical relevance of Freud's enigmatic concept of the death instinct from a return to Freud's writings and a focus on the specific pathological research models he uses. Conclusion By taking into account both melancholia and epilepsy it is possible to make sense of Freud's death instinct both meta-psychologically and clinically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé Objectifs Le but de l’article est d’étudier dans quelle mesure le concept de « pulsion de mort » développé par Freud peut être pertinent pour analyser l’économie. Méthode Deux terrains sont mobilisés. Le premier puise dans la littérature, puisqu’il s’agit d’étudier l’ouvrage Capitalisme et pulsion de mort publié par Gilles Dostaler et Bernard Maris en 2009. Le second est empirique, il concerne les politiques d’austérité mises en œuvre en Europe ces dernières années. Résultats La pertinence économique de la notion de pulsion de mort est avérée. Selon Dostaler et Maris, la pulsion de mort se retrouve au cœur des comportements de travail, d’investissement, d’épargne ou de consommation propre au capitalisme. De même, nous estimons que les politiques d’austérité en Europe relèvent de la pulsion de mort en ce qu’elles cherchent à faire revenir l’économie à un état antérieur. Discussion La discussion porte sur la possibilité de proposer des politiques autres que celles qui ressortent de la pulsion de mort. Nos propositions reposent sur l’écologie, la réduction du temps de travail, et des politiques coordonnées à l’échelle européenne. Conclusions Ni le capitalisme livré à lui-même ni les politiques d’austérité ne sont source de bonheur individuel et de fonctionnement harmonieux de la société. Des politiques favorables à la pulsion de vie sont possibles, mais elles sont difficiles à mettre en place. Objectives The aim of the article is to determine to what extent the concept of the death drive proposed by Freud is useful in the analysis of economic issues. Method Two materials are used. The first is theoretical, it is the book Capitalisme et pulsion de mort published by Gilles Dostaler and Bernard Maris in 2009. The second is empirical, and relates to the policies of austerity implemented in Europe in recent years. Results The economic relevance of the notion of the death drive seems to be established. According to Dostaler and Maris, the death drive underpins a variety of economic phenomena (work, investment, consumption, savings…) that define capitalism. Likewise, we consider that the austerity policies in Europe are another example of the death drive since they are an attempt to return to economies at an earlier stage of development. Discussion The discussion revolves around the scope for alternative policies to those based on the death drive. Our proposals are based on ecology, working time reduction, and coordinated policies at European level. Conclusions Neither capitalism left to its own devices nor austerity policies are sources of individual happiness or a harmonious functioning of society. Policies favourable to life instincts are theoretically possible, but they are difficult to implement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a reflection on the concept of the anarchist drive coined by Nathalie Zaltzman in the homonymous text during 1979; concept that articulates a specific manifestation of the death drive: to serve life as a last resort for survival. Its main objective is to deal with this last resource that emerges when the individual is faced with experiences of acute precariousness. Thus, the study of a case is the background of Zaltzman's reflection around these situations called boundary experiences, in which the guarantees of survival and unity are ruined. That is when the excesses of deprivation or a totalitarian and paralyzing love threaten the survival of the individual. Because of this, the libertarian impulse of anarchism becomes the figure for this death instinct, since, in these situations, it is from him that the subject feeds to survive. With this theoretical construction, it is possible to verify the need to recognize the role of the death drive without the moralization of its requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the first psychoanalytic elaborations concerning the topic of suicide theme, primarily from the records of the Psychoanalytic Society of Vienna’s Wednesday meetings. This discussion provides a central point for understanding the self-extermination theme: its intrinsic relationship with the object relations and with unconscious sexuality. There is still an impasse on these elaborations, which we can, retrospectively, attribute to the lack of elaborations that only later would be built in psychoanalytic theory, with the advent of the death drive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the new theory of drives that accompanied his second topographical model, Freud took human destructivity into account, moving beyond--without renouncing--his earlier model based exclusively on the conflictuality of the sexual drives. The definition of the death instinct as concerning primarily the individual, and the change of status of the unconscious--from agency to psychic quality--represent a metapsychological revolution. The life instinct (combining Eros and the instinct of self-preservation, which were formerly opposed) and the death instinct do not merely combat each other. In the psyche they are in constant fusion in varying degrees, and different situations of defusion also occur. From this point of view, the death instinct throws light not only on self-destructivity but also on the birth of the psyche and the dynamics of neurosis. The author emphasizes its role in promoting the anti-narcissism necessary for love, and the child's investment of the object as a separate being. Although Winnicott refuted the Kleinian version of the death instinct, fruitful convergences with Winnicott and Bion are revealed if one takes into account the object's libidinal investment of the child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author refers to the problems deriving from the fact that the same psychoanalytic institution which trains its psychoanalysts in theory, supervision and personal analysis is reluctant to be studied psychoanalytically by its own members. He attributes this difficulty to the fact that this group, in which one would expect a supposed moderation of the effects of the ineffable inherent in the human condition, provides a space conducive to the circulation of the destructive and anxiety-provoking effects of the death drive. Since that these effects derive from the same psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, they reside within the interior of the institution. The author refers to the death drive in the institutions as a permanent effort for the expropriation of subjectivity. The existence of the law does not impliy universal respect, it only marks what is necessary to say in order to give a chance to human condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé Dans un article de 1923, Freud attire l’attention sur le cas curieux de certains patients qui refusent, consciemment ou non, d’améliorer leurs symptômes et qui préfèrent conserver leurs symptômes et leur souffrance plutôt que s’en débarrasser. Il a donné à ce processus le nom de « réaction thérapeutique négative », qu’il différencie nettement des résistances qui sont analysées au cours du processus analytique et de ce fait concourent à la guérison. Il a cherché à déceler les causes de cette attitude paradoxale, qui va à l’encontre de tous les buts de la psychanalyse. Cet exposé se propose de rappeler les causes de ce curieux processus en montrant qu’elles débordent largement la psychanalyse pour se retrouver dans des domaines aussi différents que la médecine générale, la psychiatrie et même la littérature. On en trouve, en effet, un exemple saisissant dans le roman de Dostoïevski, Crime et châtiment . Parmi les causes les plus fréquentes de la « réaction thérapeutique négative », on trouve le masochisme moral, qui mêle sexualité et souffrance, la compulsion de répétition, détectée par Freud chez certains névrosés qui ont tendance à répéter indéfiniment leur symptôme, la pulsion de mort, qui n’est que l’envers mortifère de la pulsion érotique et, in fine , le dispositif analytique lui-même, qui dans certains cas, comme l’a montré André Green dans son livre sur Le travail du négatif , peut favoriser la survenue « d’une analyse interminable ». In an article of 1923, Freud emphasizes the strange behaviour of some patients, who refuse to be healed seeming to prefer keeping their sickness than recover their former health. Freud called that bizarre occurrence, “the negative therapeutic reaction”. He radically differentiates it from the various forms of “resistance”, which, after being analysed, leads to a curative process. Freud finds three main reasons to “that negative therapeutic reaction”: “Moral masochism”, which is a mixture of sexuality and suffering, “compulsive repetition”, which is the tendency for neurotic patients to repeat their symptoms indefinitely, “death compulsion”, which is the wrong side of eroticism. Besides that, such patients may be found in other fields than psychoanalysis: In the medical field, for example, where some patients prefer remaining sick, because their disease gives a meaning to their lives, in psychiatry, where certain persons avoid being confronted to the reality and even in literature, where some characters prefer being jailed rather to escape to the punishment. In Dostoïevski's novel, Crime and punishment , Raskolnikov gives oneself up, because he no longer supports not being punished for his crime, even though the police had not caught him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most essential metapsychological issues in the Freudian work is the drive theory. Freud developed two theories - the first consisted of a division between the ego drives and sexual drives, while the second proposed the existence of a death drive which focused on decathexization, and a Life Drive, seeking investment and unification. Knowing that the second theory created foundations for a different understanding of aggression, sadism and masochism, and even psychopathology, this work aims to hypothesize about what led Freud to change his first drive theory, and, in this way, try to understand both the foundations that shaped the second drive theory and the theory itself. It is concluded that the development of the concept of narcissism, that unified the sexual and ego drives, the resumption of the principle of constancy, and the understanding of the existence of a repetition compulsion were the elements that led Freud to propose a new way of organizing drives. Moreover, one can think of personal experiences in which Freud went through that contributed to a change in his thinking, such as the Great War of 1914 to 1918, and the premature death of his daughter Sophie, which happened around 1920. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article intends to make some reflections on the metapsychology of the transgressive act, which we perceive as the incidence of a joint operation of the primary masochism, the superego and the death drive. In fact, we believe that these three concepts are so interlaced that, thinking about the functioning of one of them enforces, automatically, into call the others, if we wish to consider a more comprehensive overview regarding the metapsychology. Our guide for this endeavor are the Freudian constructions of the early twenties, specifically: Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), The Ego and the Id (1923) and The Economic Problem of Masochism (1924). Our starting point is the idea that, if in the 1920 work, the death drive can be considered only a speculative hypothesis, it is only in his 1923 work that Freud articulates, in a more efficient manner, the theoretical and clinical tools that allows the solidification and integration of this notion. Finally, with the help of Freudian descriptions about "criminals by guilt feelings", we elaborate a brief explanation about the incidence of this trio from "hell" in the realization of the transgression, trying to set a thorough scenario with respect to the metapsychology that underlies this action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the twenty-first century approaches, humanity experiences unprecedented contradictions in its history. First, we have experienced the domination of science over nature, and technological advances and comfort, never seen before, but cruelty and segregation are becoming more frequent and exacerbated. This paper shows that the pair cruelty-vulnerability is inherent to both the constitution of the subject from the Other, and to the social link, and, also, its appearance is made possible due to historical conditions, such as neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to its privileged position in the apparatus of sexuality, psychoanalysis is part of a profuse network of disciplinary and normalizing technologies engaged in the de-politicization display of bio-politics. However, we propose an interpretation of the polemic Freudian concept of the death drive from the perspective of the immune paradigm put forth by Roberto Esposito. The death drive informs the aphoristic nature of immunity, in so far that it allows for an opening-up to the productivity of the negative and the inclusion of otherness within the composition of self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A few years ago, the evidence raised by the neurosciences and the proliferation of psychopathological categories have contributed to the legitimacy and the multiplication of speeches filled with promises of cure for mental suffering. In this context - where psychopathology is approached from a predominantly biological understanding and the proliferation of diagnostic categories is accompanied by the predominance of a syndromic approach to mental illness - the emphasis on biological therapy operates as a promise of exclusion of the malaise of life. This is a process of naturalization of psychological distress in which the proliferation of diagnostic categories is proportional to the diversity of mental suffering that can be medicated. In this paper, we present some concepts, forged by Freud, as anxiety, helplessness and death drive, as indicators of the possibility of intervening in psychological distress through different perspectives of those who promise the exclusion of evil from life. If evil is a sign of disorder sponsored by the drive that could not enroll in the psychic apparatus, then psychoanalysis includes evil at the heart of the psychic life itself. The latter only is constituted and transformed by the possibility of creating new meanings, new forms of satisfaction for the vital impulse, insistent on excellence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The death drive is a psychoanalytical concept that was apprehensively acknowledged by the psychoanalytical world, despite the fact that Freud, ever since the moment he stated it, refused to ever question it again. Melanie Klein embraced the concept, but only developed it within her own theory, while the concept was restored to the psychoanalytical world in its entire complexity by André Green. The psychoanalytical practice faces regressive situations in which the field of drives is at the disposal of the course of therapy and its protagonists (therapist and patient) in which the "fusion - defusion " couple ("liaison - déliaison") finds its confirmation as well as its theoretical value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the twenty-first century approaches, humanity experiences unprecedented contradictions in its history. First, we have experienced the domination of science over nature, and technological advances and comfort, never seen before, but cruelty and segregation are becoming more frequent and exacerbated. This paper shows that the pair cruelty-vulnerability is inherent to both the constitution of the subject from the Other, and to the social link, and, also, its appearance is made possible due to historical conditions, such as neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the idea of a concrete position is proposed as a way of conceptualizing a psychic experience proper to patients with an impoverished symbolically internal world. This position is articulated with the concept of lethic drive. This notion is proposed and described further by the author as an oversight, or absence force, embryo of the death drive. Also, the object relation question and moreover a reflection on psychic and relational traumatisms are discussed. This work is therefore a synthesis of the many trends of psychoanalytic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Freud's early work, both in his theory of the psychic apparatus and in his theory of neuroses, two experiences are thought of as organizing the normal and the pathological mental functioning: the "experience of satisfaction" and "experience of pain", respectively. In a second phase of this theory, the role of the experience of pain is minimized and the experience of satisfaction becomes the primary foundation from which the development of the psyche emerges. However, from "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" (1920) onwards, the concept of experience of pain returns, in another context and at another level of significance. In fact, it is also brought to the foreground and regarded as the primary experience in the constitution of mind. This resumption of the experience of pain--which is then referred to as "trauma"--is closely related to the formulation of the concepts of repetition compulsion and death instinct. In "Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety" (1926) Freud once again places the trauma at the origins of neuroses and, in "Analysis Terminable and Interminable" (1937), he reflects on the role played by the death instinct both in the etiology of neuroses and in the obstacles faced by psychoanalytic therapy. This paper aims at discussing some of the changes in Freud's hypotheses on the constitution of the psychic apparatus and the etiology of the neuroses, which seem to originate from such resumption of the experience of pain and from the introduction of the concept of death instinct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relation to time in fiction literary works has much evolved in the course of the twentieth century. The linear type of narrative gave way to complex and very different types of writing, which in some cases may be compared to the relation to time of some patients during their psychoanalysis. In this paper the author tries to show the differences between Proust's "Time refound" and the temporal regression in James Joyce' s novel "Portrait of the Artist as a young Man". Then two novels of the Argentinian author Adolfo Bioy Casares are compared. In "The Invention of Morel" repetition has the function to perpetuate the primary process. In "The Dream of Heroes", repetition is confronted to the unavoidable reality of the passage of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of language creates a separation between words and things, a movement that in Lacanian terms can be defined as a transposition of register. Through symbolization, something dies in the real, where, to be rigorous, it had only ex-sistence (term which Lacan borrows from Heidegger), and emerges in the symbolic, where it becomes part of reality (which in Lacan differs from the real as a register). Already in Freud the founding act of the symbolic order is linked to death: the murder of the father of the primal horde and his subsequent reappearance as totem paradigmatically represents the death of the thing that gives rise to the significant. More precisely, the symbolic is related to the concept of death drive: the transition from nature to culture implies that man functions in a regime of excess, other than that of the normal biological functioning; the symbolic is like a prosthesis, an artificial device attached to the human organism, which makes man a kind of cyborg and mortifies him. The satisfaction aimed by the death drive is the enjoyment, an unbridled urge for pleasure generating repetition, excess, displeasure, devastating sensations which put in check our balance. The symbolic arises with the inscriptions of the enjoyment in the infant and, at the same time, establishes retrospectively the enjoyment and limits it. Thus, human life draws a symbolic arch between the undifferentiated real of absolute enjoyment and the undifferentiated real of death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper argues that Freud''s insights into human aggression can at the very least be viewed as one-sided and problematic, and that the heuristic potential of the Œdipus myth, correspondingly, is limited. It considers how the Hungarian psychiatrist Lipót Szondi, tries to bridge this gap using the myth of Cain and Abel. The aim of this paper is to explore how Szondi''s interpretation of this myth offers a much more subtle approach to human aggression. Szondi''s alternative and distinctive look at aggressive phenomena offers an exciting and fruitful addition to Freud''s interpretation as exclusively referring to sadism and/or the death instinct. This contribution wants to highlight Szondi''s amendment to Freud''s Œdipus and aims to show that psychoanalysis can benefit from taking into account the mythical figures of Cain and Abel as its “prodigal sons”. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The author examines the clinical implications of situations where the conflict of ambivalence—the differentiation between love and hate—has failed to develop a coherent psychic organization. Several paradoxes result, which are described and explored, particularly manifestations of negative therapeutic reaction. This is followed by exploration of four kinds of primary traumatic development that interfere with drive fusion and the individual's future capacity to organize a conflict of ambivalence capable of constraining the clinical manifestations of destructiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author of this article argues against the position that considers anorexia a new pathology, as defended by certain health professionals and the media. Freud's and Lacan's main contributions to the study of this topic are discussed here. Through clinical examples, the tie between oral libido and the death drive is described, as well as the subject's refusal to satisfy the Other's demand. In this case, the subject stands at the dividing line between the pleasure of desire and the jouissance of privation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study examines a few epistemological reflections establishing the interest that literature and psychoanalysis can have for each other. It then attempts, through a structural analysis of the works of the contemporary English novelist Ian McEwan, to elucidate a point of theory: the use of the term “demonic” by Freud to qualify the death instinct. This leads us to raise anew the question of evil in relation to the forms taken by the rejection of castration as existential trauma. The emphasis is laid in particular on the perverse montage. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this article, the author describes his investigation of self-soothing procedures, which he sees as an anti-traumatic defence system that is both fragile and non-neurotic (I mean non neuro-psychotic). Repetitive behaviour involving motor functions and/or sensory perceptions that aim to control levels of excitation, which cannot be bound by more psychical means belongs to this category. Since the methods employed are not suitable for the kind of discharge that leads to satisfaction, they simply bring about a return to a state of calm. According to the author, there is a considerable number of these “volunteer galley slaves” who try to soothe themselves by repeating a particular kind of excitation, by automatically performing actions involving the body as a substitute for thought or by driving themselves to exhaustion. These procedures, which are not age-specific, may take on various aspects such as self-soothing functional disorders in infants (e.g. rumination/regurgitation or rocking behaviour) or the self-soothing use of dangerous activities in adolescents or those who practise high-risk sports. The stereotyped behaviour typical of autistic spectrum disorder is also discussed in this perspective. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Violence takes a place of its own in psychoanalysis. Within the analytical framework, the actualization of violence in transference may definitely be seen as a threat. However, under certain conditions, violence may indeed be integrated to the analytical process. One major factor of this integration is the importance that the analyst will attach to violence, whether he tends to subscribe to the concept of originary violence or death drive, two major metapsychological hypotheses brought to us by Freud. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The author explored the evolution of the concept of "psychose maniaco-dépressive", as a French diagnostic category related to bipolar disorders. He highlighted the contributions from Freud and Lacan, and provided support to the use of psychotherapy in this condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]