Sincerity and Freedom in Psychoanalysis 6: Therapeutic Ethics and Analytic Concepts

Summary: Panel 6: Therapeutic Ethics and Analytic ConceptsSincerity and Freedom in Psychoanalysis: a studio conference inspired by Sándor Ferenczi's Clinical Diary18-20 October 2013Julia Borossa - Translating Ferenczi’s Therapeutic Ethics for our Time: The Question of Being AlongsideHayuta Gurevich - The Return of Dissociation as Absence within AbsenceFacilitator: Antal BókayJulia Borossa - Translating Ferenczi’s Therapeutic Ethics for our Time: The Question of Being AlongsideFerenczi’s practice and therapeutic ethics as exemplified in the Clinical Diary reveal a profound sensitivity to the question of authority and freedom. This paper will engage with the ways in which this question has been taken up elsewhere and has become central to post war extensions of the psychoanalytic field, such as group analysis. A particular comparison will be made with group analytic notions of leadership and horizontal ways of relating, ie how to be alongside one another. It will be suggested that the translation of Ferenczi for our time opens up onto the question of the adaptability of psychoanalysis to different and changing socio-political contexts.Hayuta Gurevich - The Return of Dissociation as Absence within AbsenceMy aim is to translate Ferenczi’s central concepts of the intrapsychic impact and imprint of early developmental trauma into both revived and contemporary conceptualizations.The concept of dissociation was central to the Seduction Theory renounced by Freud, yet it is returning as a cornerstone of recent Trauma Theories. Ferenczi, following Freud, usually used the concepts of repression and splitting, but definitely used them in the sense of an intrapsychic imprint of early external trauma, that is – as dissociation, i.e., fragmentation of consciousness itself. Furthermore, early trauma is double: an absence of protection that threatens existence of the self, combined with an absence of attachment and of recognition of this threat and terror; thus – an absence-within-absence. This contemporary conceptualization entails a widening of the intrapsychic realm to include an intersubjective one, and regards dissociation as a unique and complex intrapsychic absence, which is a negative of the external absence-within-absence in the early environment.