“How are you feeling?, or even the simple ‘How are you?”- are greetings clothed in an inquiry – curiousity about the other – but also an invitation to speak. We offer the same invitation to patients. ‘Say whatever it is that comes into your mind, don’t censor what you say’. We don’t mention feelings – […]
The Unforeseen and unclassifiable in Psychoanalysis
September 20, 2019 By
Unforseen is, of course, a staple of analysis, and a welcome one at that. We don’t aspire to a forensic model of treatment, nor uniformity in either diagnosis, or analytic orientation and unfolding. Psychoanalysis starts from the position that there is no precise cure, but that we need different ways of living with ourselves, and […]
The impossible in Psychoanalysis
September 20, 2019 By
In psychoanalysis, we are dealing with the unforseen-whether it is on the side of the patient or the analyst. And much of what we find, and what we are, is unclassifiable – not that it has no status or context within a praxis – a conceptual and practical model, of the human subject – it […]
BORN ASTRIDE THE GRAVE: THE BODY OF CASTRATION IN TRAUMA AND THE SIGNIFIER
September 20, 2019 By
Clearly the subject needs a body to function, and psychoanalysis requires a body, preferably in the room, for an analysis to take place. That is the relationship between these two entities at its most simplistic. But there is, of course, much more. Psychoanalysis was born from the attempt to treat the mysterious connection between the […]
THE SPEAKING BODY: THE PSYCHOANALYSIS OF GRAHAM GREENE
September 11, 2016 By
It is not possible to write well without reading. Reading is how writing is born – not because reading has to inform or provide information, but because it is in reading that the loose threads of what we wish to say emerge. The reading I have in mind is literary fiction, that is, language, which […]
The Poetry of Psychoanalysis
June 30, 2016 By
Psychoanalysis cannot be taught but it can be transmitted: Which is to say that knowledge can be imparted by means other than pedagogy. What is this other means, and what is the knowledge? This is, in some ways a trick question, as the two can be considered different sides of the same coin, as both […]
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
May 22, 2015 By
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. Samuel Beckett All success is due to failure, and all advances in knowledge come about as a result of failed attempts. This is the reality of achievement. It is a truth that, once grasped, frees us to experiment and innovate –to discover, rather […]
Men and the art of Motorcycles
November 12, 2014 By
I n 1948, Albert Camus wrote to his publisher Blanche Knopf asking if the sales of his novel, The Outsider, were as good as the reviews because “ je voudrais m’acheter une motocyclette” — he wanted to buy a motorcycle. He was not the first writer to be captured by the lure of two wheels. […]
Walk on air against your better judgement
July 16, 2014 By
Freud loved and respected literature. He not only read the classics for inspiration, but credited novelists, such as Lytton Strachey, and Arthur Schnitzler, (upon whose writing Stanley Kubrick’s film, Eyes Wide Shut, is based), as best grasping his work. Despite striving for scientific precision, Freud famously admitted that his case studies read more like novellas, […]
Failing for success
April 28, 2014 By
At a time when positive psychology is gaining ground, I want to ring the bell for the maligned art of coming to grips with failure. This is not a morbid preoccupation, but a wish to embrace possibility. As we approach the centenary of Anzac Day, it is worth reflecting that the myth sustaining Australian identity […]
