Psychoanalysis
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Item The psychogenesis of a case of melancholia in a woman - an alternative interpretation of freud’s 1920 case.(Dublin Business School, 2018) Heltzel, Julian; Donohue, GráinneThis thesis examines Freud’s 1917 text Mourning and Melancholia paying particular attention to Freud’s concept of the Melancholic. Through the reading of Mourning and Melancholia, a question developed around the melancholic subject as a whole. Using the diagnostic system that Freud writes about in Mourning and Melancholia, this thesis examines the concepts of the loved/hated object choices, and the possible events and processes that have led to those object choices. Freud’s concepts of the id, the ego and the formation of the ego-ideal / super-ego, paying particular attention to the persecutory attacks of the harsh super-ego on the ego, narcissistic desire and narcissistic identification will also be explored. These concepts will then be applied to Freud’s 1920 case The Psychogenesis of a case of Homosexuality in a Woman. The research will show how this case by Freud is an example of Melancholia as set out in Freud’s text Mourning and Melancholia.Item What lies behind motherhood?(Dublin Business School, 2018) Marshall, Jennifer; Errity, MonicaThis thesis will seek to explore the complex and unique experience of motherhood from a psychoanalytic perspective. Various theorists assert that motherhood is not a biological construct which therefore leads to the question as to what lies behind motherhood for a woman. To address this question, the concept of becoming and being a mother will be explored within the psychoanalytic theory of female sexuality, the Great Debate, human subjectivity and the mother child relation to the phallus. Freud’s theory on the sexual development of the little girl and the symbolic equation of penis equals baby will first be examined. The little girl on becoming a mother will then be reviewed through the early debate on female sexuality with particular emphasis on contributions from Helene Deutsch, Karen Horney and Ernest Jones being closely reviewed. The emergence of the child as a human subject becoming a mother will be considered in relation to the phallus through Jacques Lacan’s papers on “The Meaning of the Phallus” along with Seminar IV and V.Item Is there such a thing as an autistic language?(Dublin Business School, 2018) Fenwick, Amalia; Loose, RikNo abstract providedItem An invisible man: The phallus dentatus and the atypical end identity of Little Hans(Dublin Business School, 2018) Ward, Conor; Ball, TerryHerbert Graf died in Switzerland in 1973. In 1972, he gave four interviews in which he stated publicly that he was the Little Hans of Sigmund Freud's famous case study ("Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy" [1909]). In the interview Graf stated that he had no interest in psychoanalysis, and described himself as an 'Invisible Man' within a professional career, where he had gained some renown. The starting point of this thesis is thereby to take Herbert Graf at his word, and examine what his identification as an 'Invisible Man' might mean, in relation to the outcome of his case. According to Freud the outcome of Little Hans' case was that he recovered from a phobia of horses. The phobia for Freud, was an expression of the boy's difficulty in overcoming his Oedipus complex. Through a process of gradual enlightenment with regard to the child's infantile sexual researches, supervised by Freud, a point was reached whereby, he recovered from his phobia, and resolved his Oedipus complex. In 1975, while delivering a lecture on the symptom in Geneva, Jacques Lacan focused on the case of Little Hans and made some significant statements in this regard. He noted that Little Hans' phobia expressed a fundamental meaning of rejection. For Lacan, the child's castration anxiety fixated in a phobia and could not resolve itself through a normal Oedipus complex, because of the nature of his parents' relationship. The boy experienced an impasse, and elaborated his phobia, as a myth to express his rejection. In Seminar IV (1956-57) Lacan defined the theme of Little Hans' myth with the phrase 'phallus dentatus'. While devouring was noted by Lacan as the theme of phobia, with the term 'phallus dentatus' he seemed to recognise that the action of castration, in the case, had been impaired by the more primordial theme. The rejection suffered by Little Hans derived therefore, from the locus of the parental matrix. This thesis will examine the relationship between castration and the end of analysis, in the case of Little Hans. In particular it will make use of Herbert Graf's nomination of 'Invisible Man‘ to question what effect of separation accrued to him in the end, as a result of this signification of a devouring phallus. This thesis will suggest that this saying of Herbert Graf, his nomination as 'Invisible Man' is not without sense, as a plausible crystallisation, of his Oedipus complex, which dissolved atypically in a matriarchal solution.Item The development of psychoanalysis as explored in the anorexic symptom of refusal(Dublin Business School, 2016) Paruk, Nadia; Conway, Joanneaim of this dissertation is to explore the anorexic symptom of refusal as it is situated within psychoanalytic discourse which has evolved and changed over time. A discourse which begins from an early instinctual drive-based perspective, evolving to an object-relational formulation then finally emerges within a theory of the unconscious as structured like a language which produces the divided subject. It is necessary therefore to explore a number of relevant psychoanalyst’s theories, beginning with Sigmund Freud’s conception of the duality of the drives. His influence on subsequent theorists such as Anna Freud and Lacan will be discussed, in terms of a move from a theory of the individual within a dyadic to a triadic relation as observed in Lacanian psychoanalysis. A discussion of these theories are relevant since they provided the foundation for later theories of anorexia that emerged, such as evident in the work of Ripa di Meana, Cosenza and Recalcati. The focus of the discussion will then shift to an exploration of these contemporary theorists perspectives on anorexic refusal. Chapter Two examines Freud’s influential drive theory which laid the foundation for subsequent psychoanalytic thought. Particular focus will be drawn on the way in which the drive is incorporated within the unconscious which proves essential in the later theories on the anorexic subject’s refusal. Chapter Three is an examination of Anna Freud’s ‘A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Feeding Disturbances (1946)’ read through the lens of Jacques Lacan’s theories of the maternal imago and the weaning complex laid out in ‘Family Complexes as a Formation of the Individual (1938)’. The notion of the pleasurable nature of the early experience of the child with the mother and the oral drive will be contrasted with Lacan’s ideas on the importance of the interruption to this relationship. The aim of this chapter is to establish the crucial differences between the two psychoanalytic approaches, highlighting elements that a re-reading can suggest regarding the establishment of feeding disturbances. Chapter Four concerns a discussion of Lacan’s concepts of the Real, Imaginary and Symbolic registers and the notion of the unconscious as that which exists in relation to the Other, where an assimilation of language is paramount. This will open up the Lacanian exploration of the anorexic symptom of refusal in relation to the life and death drives and the relationship to desire. Finally, Chapter Five focuses on the ‘trans-structural’ quality of the ‘no’ of the anorexic subject within the context of a discussion of contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives via the work of Ripa di Meana, Cosenza and Recalcati. Author keywords: Anorexia, Refusal, Psychoanalysis