The Psychoanalytic Post

Addictive drugs are responsible for mass killing. Neither persons with addiction nor the general populace seem conscious of the malevolence of governments and drug dealers working together. How could this be? What is the place of psychoanalysis in thinking about deaths from addiction and in responding to patients with addiction? To answer these questions, we revise concepts of SEEKING, drive, instinct, pleasure, and unpleasure as separable. We review the neurobiological mechanism of cathexis. We…

This article casts a critical eye over the development of American psychiatry from 1980 to the present. It notes the rapid decline of psychoanalysis that followed the publication of DSM III; the rising influence of genetics and neuroscience; the re-emphasis on the biology of mental illness; and the collapse of public psychiatry that accompanied deinstitutionalization. It argues that while genetics and neuroscience have made scientific progress, the clinical utility of their findings to date has…

This work describes in detail the use of a new tool, a web-app, based on the conceptual framework of affective neuroscience, in particular on Panksepp’s 7 basic emotional systems. Affective neuroscience has been used effectively in many areas, but there have been very few applications in the workplace, due to the lack of a smart implementation tool. The novelty of this work does not lie in the new information, but in a new “clinical” approach. There is a theoretical framework that allows data to…

The “in-fans”, who cannot speak, needs a narrator, especially a psychoanalyst in the transference in order to be able to hear again the “silent” language that is expressed in the time of the “Jetztzeit”. Through a reflection on Freud’s work on aphasias and his exchange of letters with Fliess, it is possible to identify important previews which constitute a sort of pre-semiotics, as well as a theory on memory. In addition, history, sociology, semiotics and the neurosciences are all necessary…

Transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP) represents a specific extension of psychoanalytic therapy for treatment of individuals with personality disorders, who may be helped without the more significant time investment required of a standard psychoanalysis. The treatment represents a contemporary formulation of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, updated in light of both empirical research and scientific developments in boundary fields close to the psychodynamic endeavor, particularly affective…