Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse

This short article is divided into two parts. The first part explains how the concept of ›surprise‹ is understood in theoretical neuroscience today. The second part shows how remarkably closely the modern neuroscientific conception of the brain...

In this article, we offer some reflections on the concept of surprise by questioning its place and role in the practice of analytic processes. After discussing some elements related to the preconditions for surprise to occur in the analytic...

Unconscious perception can only take place between two unconscious minds, as already described by Freud. This gains in significance in the context of a technique that orients itself on the structural model and that emphasizes the analyst’s...

This paper argues that the distinction between the dynamic and the descriptive unconscious is in danger of being lost and indicates some of the practical, clinical consequences of this loss. It does so against the background of Freud’s own...

In further elaboration of her revised drive theory (briefly summarised here), the author develops the economical and structural-theoretical conditions of the unconscious. The focus is on the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the two opposing...

Winnicott was commited to the unconscious as an essential aspect of psychoanalytic theory and practice though he neither elaborated his use nor provided definitions for the term. He argues for the development of the unconscious as one strand of the...

Freud claimed that objects are means of satisfying drives (Freud, 1916), a view that was strengthened by object-relation theories, which claims that drives are primarily object-seeking (Fairbairn, 1946). In a recently published paper, I have...

What is pain? How is it perceived and how is it processed? Where is it situated and how can it be specified within the framework of a theory of the psychic apparatus? These problems arose for Sigmund Freud ever since his »Project for a Scientific...

Facilitating the patient’s ability to grasp reality truthfully is at the heart of psychoanalytic work. However, Bion’s radical contribution to psychoanalysis and its affinity with contemporary insights from quantum theory, highlight the...

In this paper I will try to show how the chimera, as I understand it, is the result of an unsettling encounter between the traumatic traces of the two protagonists, culminating in a process of reverie, a process, indeed, of hallucinatory emergence,...

Analytic awareness of the process of meaning-making involves tracking premonitions and intuitions to their sources. As precursors of symbolic processing, premonitions are essential elements in any relationship, including the analytic relationship....

Knowledge arising from the clinician’s bodily sensations and visual imagination are considered through a clinical example where disruption to the setting culminated in the psychotherapist developing temporarily incapacitating physical symptoms in...

In this essay we take up two related questions facing us in everyday, contemporary analytic practice: How can we grasp what we don’t know? How can something new come into being through the analytic encounter? We approach both questions from within...