British Psychoanalytical Society

ABSTRACT The introduction of remote communication technology in psychoanalytic practice and training raises multiple psychoanalytic, clinical, and ethical issues that require qualitative and empirical process and outcome research, careful psychoanalytic reflection, and open but transparent searching dialogue between practitioners.

ABSTRACT This psychoanalytic, philosophical, feminist and personal perspective on contemporary mothering explores the unwitting complicity of mothers in the agenda of patriarchal power and capitalist growth by way of the neoliberal subject it produces. Starting with Foucault, it takes up the question of power and its oblique operation in contemporary mothering practice that not only promotes the neoliberal agenda but also serves to disable the ‘feminine power for transformation’ (Rose). The paper interrogates how psychoanalytic theory has contributed to a homogenous mothering rhetoric resistant to change but is also uniquely positioned to consider what might be at work in the mothering zeitgeist. Referencing Freud, Lacan and Zizek it first lays out the capitalist unconscious in the relentless drive of contemporary mothering characterised by a manic panic, and then turns to the body, foregrounding maternal transformation in Baraitser, Kristeva and Ettinger, positing birth as a site of potential political radicality. The paper concludes with a bid for psychoanalysis to embrace a myriad of mothering that supports Rich’s distinction between motherhood as institution and mothering as a force for social change.

ABSTRACT The objective of this paper is to discuss the ways in which primitive aspects of the mind, in particular, the archaic elements of character, become manifest within the analytic field. After a review of the concept, it is proposed that a “normal” character manifests through memories in behaviours/feelings, which seek the object to satisfy their needs. The characterological structure keeps primitive traumatic inscriptions under control. Other emotional experiences can activate these inscriptions, causing them to detach from the seemingly stable organization. New attempts to freeze traumatic situations occur within the analytic field and manifest as a mimetic theatre that keeps the analytic pair paralysed. So-called chronic enactments take root. Analytical work in parallel areas disrupts the collision, leading to an acute enactment. The abrupt access to triangularity revives traumatic situations. Understanding these situations expands the symbolic network of thought. The text articulates the behaviours/feelings using the Freudian concept of Agieren. Its two connotations - discharge and mimetic theatre - are discussed and their similarities and differences with enactments are highlighted. The accompanying feeling of uncanniness (Unheimlich) reflects the ambiguity of the known (registered) and the unknown (unsymbolized). The ideas presented stem from clinical investigation. The facts are discussed through detailed clinical material.