Thursday, December 19, 2019

The psychotherapy of psychosis and trauma: A relentless battle against objectification (Francoise Davoine, 2012)

Davoine, F. (2012). The psychotherapy of psychosis and trauma: A relentless battle against objectification. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 17(4), 339–347. https://doi.org/10.1057/pcs.2012.37

Abstract



Going beyond Jacques Lacan's teaching, this paper discusses the possibility of psychoanalysis for treating trauma and psychosis, and connects such possibility to the findings of two American pioneers in that field, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and Harry Stack Sullivan. The paper focuses on the kind of transference specific to such cases, cases that abolish any illusion of neutrality. A parallel is drawn with some of the discoveries made in physics during the same period between the First and the Second World Wars. Erwin Schrodinger and other contemporaries, such as Hannah Arendt and Ludwig Wittgenstein, are cited as protagonists in the fight against objectification.