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Contrasting Message and The Book of Disquiet as two opposite facets of Pessoa's thinking shall convey the reader into the intricacies of the Portuguese poet's personal myth that he affixed to the national messianic ideal. The paper advances a link between the hidden family romance of the latter posthumous work and the former patriotic epic poem, rooted in making up for infantile loss as disclosed in The Book of Disquiet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dream is discussed as a herald announcing the issues and conflicts that will be deployed in the cure. The account given by the patient first serves the analyst's attention before ensuring the relevance of the interpretation. The dream narrative is compared to the various processes of imagery or remote sensing in the wave spectrum insofar as it anticipates the work to come in the treatment, at the three levels of external life, infantile sources, and transferential actualizations. Some shifts in the use of dreams in treatment are presented to illustrate the difficulty linked to a concern centered too exclusively on interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leaning on the study of ancient societies by the French historian Fustel de Coulanges which emphasizes belief as social bond, the author outlines aspects of belief as related to psychic life. Assent to representations and engagement accordingly into action are features of belief governing psychic life under conditions of uncertainty where knowledge is out of immediate reach. Belief is deemed necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sigmund Freud/Minna Bernays correspondence is examined as an unfolding example of the fraternal complex in Freud's life. Evident in the initial phase of the correspondence, it evolves with the constitution of Freud's own family into the shaping of a restitutive representation filling in for a lost object, cooling off as the children became grown-ups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Totem and Taboo is confounding and difficult, as the paper too easily sets the reader's mind afar from psychoanalysis. Yet Freud is looking here for a cogent validation of clinical process and a corrboration of psychoanalytic theory, through persistent ancient memory-traces, transmitted within the social fabric, as detected from its cultural remnants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transference symptom is a hazy notion in Freud's writings. It is presented here as a particular moment in the crystallization of the transference neurosis. It results from a double cathexis of the analytical frame and the analyst, resulting in a symbolic distortion that is represented plastically within the session, as occurs in dreams. A psychic space is thereby opened up for interpreting both the resistance and the unconscious derivatives of infantile conflict. The transference symptom is a compromise formation that includes the analyst and questions the countertransference stance. The concept is compared with enactment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author conducts a study dealing with change in Proust's writings after his mother's death. Proust's early writings are compared with À la recherche du temps perdu as to show the shift in the aesthetic paradigm guiding the novelist. Emphasis is laid on a transition period (1905-1909) in Proust's life where that shift occurred. Internal changes responsible for that evolution are discussed, mainly identification processes leading to creative achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides a discussion with Giuseppe Civitarese on dreaming. It unfolds along three lines. The first one nears the dream as psychic state. An issue of method draws a line between dreaming and reverie, as relevant to analytic listening. The second line tackles the dream as psychic object. An issue of theory scans Bion's notion of the dream as unconscious thinking extended so far as to tangle up any difference between day and night psychic processes; it dwells on Bion's theory of thinking. The last line takes up the dream as communication on a specific clinical issue: dreaming about the session in analysis. As related to transference neurosis, such a dream shall not be presented as a dream within a dream, yet it accounts for a significant past experience to be unfolded, hence the metaphor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from a counter-transferential impression, the author cathects the topic of maternal preoccupation while leaning on the frame set by Green's and Winnicott's initial formulations. Within that range the maternal preoccupation has been presented under various labels, such as madness, instinct, spirit. The main thesis of the article holds that the maternal preoccupation becomes a passion to be experienced smoothly as a general adaptation syndrome of early motherhood. Passion is taken here as an internal state affecting the mother to bind her to her newborn and appoint her to a specific task. Three elements of that passion are noted: withdrawal, hypersensitivity, selfabnegation. Some paradoxical dispositions of that state are identified like the stirring of opposite tendencies, within the mother and in her relationship with the newborn. These features lead to the presentation and discussion of three dynamic aspects: the bisexual attitude, the narcissistic support, and the regressive risk. The bisexual attitude is to be found within the maternal preoccupation as such, not only as opposite to the erotic female. The narcissistic support comes from twin aspects of the object relation with the child, often viewed as a work of art. The regressive risk comes from the primary inadequacy of the maternal attitude as the identification with the baby is skewed by the mother's fantasy. Finally, some outcomes of the maternal attitude are sketched, either as evolving gradually or as remnants, as shown for example by madame de Sévigné. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]