{"title":"Theoretical and metapsychological aspects of digital immersion and presence: Towards a psychoanalytic understanding of being \"in\" a virtual environment and \"with\" the other on the screen.","authors":"Lucio Gutiérrez","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2024.2330589","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2024.2330589","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The concepts of immersion and digital presence have been widely used to describe the experience of being intensely engaged and the blurring of the differences between tangible and digital environments (e.g. being \"in\" the video game or \"with\" the other person on the screen). Existing theories have tended to explain these from models based on adaptation to the environment, evolutionary automatisms or social construction of the world. Alternatively, a psychoanalytic reading of these concepts will be proposed, including the problem of cathexis, defence, the negative work of the psyche, and the dynamic equilibria involved. This theory will be illustrated by applying it to teleanalysis, video gaming, and to some aspects of social networking. We shall also speculate about states of mind in immersion, psychopathologies of virtuality and some of the risks that digital immersion poses to primitive and early emotional development. Finally, the value of considering immersion and digital presence within the psychoanalytic research agenda on human relations in and with the virtual-digital is raised.</p>","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":"106 1","pages":"109-138"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143626491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Letter from Dresden.","authors":"Kai von Klitzing","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2025.2457236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2025.2457236","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In light of the upcoming conference of the European Psychoanalytical Federation (EPF) in Dresden, this letter deals with the eventful history of psychoanalysis in East Germany, especially in the state of Saxony. After a first heyday between 1923 and 1933, marked above all by the early clinical and scientific work of Therese Benedek, the development came to a sudden end with the seizure of power by the Nazis and could not be revived after the Second World War under the communist regime. This dark period of history clearly demonstrated that psychoanalysis can only flourish under social conditions of freedom. While psychoanalytic thought is slowly recovering from its decline during the two German dictatorships, psychoanalysts are facing the dark clouds of the resurgence of antiliberal and intolerant political movements that threaten liberal democracy in Europe and other parts of the free world.</p>","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":"106 1","pages":"3-10"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143626485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Thinking under fire: What can psychoanalysis contribute to understanding aspects of the Israel-Palestine conflict and our feelings about it?","authors":"Elizabeth Allison","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2025.2453293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2025.2453293","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":"106 1","pages":"139-143"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143626494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Psychoanalysis and the Israel-Palestine war: Perspectives on our relevance.","authors":"Harriet Wolfe","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2025.2453292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2025.2453292","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The relevance of psychoanalysis to geopolitical matters of war and large group suffering is explored. The presence of polarization within small and large psychoanalytic collectives is seen as an effort to manage clinicians' sense of helplessness in the face of overwhelming human suffering. The impact on the clinician of the inability to alleviate suffering that is occurring on a massive level, the difficulty in remaining empathic when the suffering of the other is unimaginable, and the use of projection to maintain internal coherence are considered. The ethical foundation of psychoanalysis defined by Levinas as responsibility for the other is highlighted as essential to restoring cohesion within the profession. A ceasefire within the profession is posited as an essential step toward a restored ability to think together, engage productively with one another, and determine a constructive role for psychoanalysis in the currently violent sociopolitical surround.</p>","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":"106 1","pages":"144-154"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143626487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Challenges to maintaining the analytic frame during the 2023/24 war on Gaza.","authors":"M Fakhry Davids","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2025.2453291","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2025.2453291","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":"106 1","pages":"174-183"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143626285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A butterfly painting its own colours: Enactment, visualisation and differentiation.","authors":"Sebastian J Kohon","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2024.2369850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2024.2369850","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The clinician's emotional and somatic responses to patients are an essential source of information, but how can we disentangle what belongs to whom? A certain blurring of boundaries is inevitable in psychoanalytic work, with oscillations between more and less differentiated states of mind↔body, patient↔clinician and patient-clinician dyad↔wider institutional setting. In one sense, psychoanalytic work can be conceived as a cycle of repeated regressive enactments, followed by elaboration and differentiation après-coup. Referring to two clinical vignettes with pubertal/young adolescent patients, I reflect on the role of the clinician's visual imagination in this process. Accessing an internal, dimensional space can re-establish a boundary, while simultaneously processing a communication, thus forming a bridge between somatic reaction and thought. The particular relevance of this in relation to working with young adolescent patients is considered.</p>","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":"106 1","pages":"62-81"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143626282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Homophobia, heteronormativity and melancholia: A psychoanalytic essay on the film <i>All of Us Strangers</i>.","authors":"Poul Rohleder","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2024.2402901","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2024.2402901","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper explores the impact of homophobia, internalised homophobia and heteronormativity on the psychic lives of some gay men, as depicted in the film \"All of Us Strangers\". Themes of Oedipal rejection, alienation, melancholia, mourning and loss are explored.</p>","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"1-15"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143068928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Thank you to contributors and reviewers for 2024.","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2024.2439166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2024.2439166","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":"105 6","pages":"i-ii"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143392314","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"We are made of time\": reverberation and the elasticity of time in psychoanalysis. Negotiating different temporalities in the session.","authors":"Catalina Bronstein","doi":"10.1080/00207578.2024.2429309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2024.2429309","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Inspired by Dana Birksted-Breen's ideas on reverberation time, the author explores the changeability and transformation of the sensations of time and space and their connection to early embodied phantasies in the treatment of a 10-year-old boy. The experience of time changes (summarized under \"time elasticity\" to reflect the various forms this can take) is lived out in the transference relationship from the beginning of the therapeutic encounter. The author proposes the simultaneous development of the capacity to accept \"objective\" time, the establishment of a tri-dimensional space within the self and between objects and tolerating separateness and separation. The development of a capacity for symbolic thinking and depressive anxiety, as well as acceptance of the Oedipal situation and separation, has, as Dana Birksted-Breen underlined, a fundamental effect on the acceptance of objective time. This paper also discusses the difference between dealing with the difficulty of accepting objective time under the impact of fear of death and from the terror and nameless dread arising from the phantasy of the annihilation of time.</p>","PeriodicalId":48022,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":"105 6","pages":"921-937"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143061165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}