EscherIstituzioni

Why “¿Authority?” Observations on the Authority/Power Continuum

Abstract

The title of this work refers to the title chosen by the EPF (European Psychoanalytical Federation) for their congress in Berlin in March 2016 (¿Authority?) and references the themes that were chosen by Serge Frisch, Laurence Kahn and Leopoldo Bleger for a seminar they organised, also in Berlin, in September 2014 (Psychoanalysis in 2025). The questions that underlie these initiatives are numerous. Given the scope of this text, I’ll limit myself to pointing out the question that seems to me the most interesting: what can psychoanalysis offer for the understanding of a topic of such great social relevance as authority?
The following work begins with a series of two hypotheses.
The first assumes that authority and power are not substantially dissimilar manifestations, but constitute the poles of an unbreakable continuum. It is difficult to come across an authority entirely devoid of power, just as it is rare for the power of a subject, group or institution not to come with a certain amount of authority (of course, these terms require precise definitions that will be discussed in the next section).
The second hypothesis postulates that the problem of authority, despite being rarely discussed directly in psychoanalysis, is variously reformulated in several conceptual models that develop essential aspects of psychoanalytic theory and technique (it refers, as we shall see, the effects of the conflict between generations and the development of the Oedipus complex on psychic functioning: the formation of the super-ego and his ordinary and extraordinary maintenance).

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MemoriaFuturo

Wilfred’s Razor. A reading of W.R. Bion’s A Memoir of the Future

Abstract

The Author claims that Memoir of the Future is a text which develps with aesthetic and narrative methods the conceptual reform that had already out forward in Experience in groups and in Learning from Experience. The epistemological continuity between the Bionian texts is seen as a realization of the theoretical precautions and the methodological preoccupations which have been peculiar of the nominalism and the British empiricism: the avoidance of speculative excesses and the Read more

MagritteContenitore

Therapeutic groups and the institutional container: curative factors of the psychiatric institutional field and its destructive elements

Abstract

Starting from increasing destructiveness of symbolization processes in contemporary psychopathology, this paper try to suggest connections between institutional containers , subjective mind and group (mostly bionian one), allowing everyone a way to  keep available oniric elements for the care Read more