Metapsychologica - rivista di psicanalisi freudiana

Naturalizing the mind. Ideas for a multidisciplinary reflection on the phenomenon of hunger

Franco Baldini — 2024-05-07

This essay begins from the observation of the difficulty of modelling the phenomenon of hunger in its entirety, a difficulty consisting in the impossibility of passing seamlessly from the somatic to the psychic aspect and vice versa. The reason for this difficulty is found in the fact that it involves some important epistemological problems such as the relationship between reduction and naturalization, the relationship between objectivity and ontology, the relationship between different objectivities and the constitution of the objectivities themselves. It is therefore considered that the Freudian metapsychological model - whose basic epistemological lines are revealed - is crucial in achieving a suture between the somatic and the psychic. With specific regard to the phenomenon of hunger, it is shown how a restoration of the Freudian notion of «self-preservation drives» is decisive for its satisfactory modelling from both a theoretical and clinical point of view.

L’attività psichica del vivente in una prospettiva metapsicologica: uno studio dei casi di Dick e Robert

Pamela Cagna — 2024-05-07

This article will resume, from a metapsychological perspective, some of the salient points of two infant clinical cases, those of Dick (Klein’s patient) and Robert (Lefort’s patient), on which an article was written in volume 1/2020 of this journal. The role of the self-preservation drives in the genesis of these two infant pathologies will be highlighted and will clarify that their importance is not only from the link with the somatic functions necessary for the survival of the individual, but also from the principal function they play both in the constitution of the ego-subject and in the relationship with the sexual drives. The reasons why hunger and all the other drives of the ego are considered in Freudian theory to be the trigger of psychic activity in the human being will be explained. Consideration will also be given to the criteria for evaluating the relevance or irrelevance of the elements that emerge during an anamnesis and the relationship between theory and clinical observation.

Un confronto tra Freud e Husserl sulla fame

Silvana Dalto — 2024-05-07

A comparison is made between Freud’s and Husserl’s conceptions on the topic of drives and, in particular, hunger. Both do not envisage hunger only as a physiological concept. In fact, from Freud’s elaboration it appears that hunger, as a self-preservation drive, also has a fundamental relevance from a psychic point of view, as it is a directive drive in the original constitution of the subject; in Husserl, however, hunger is placed at the origin of the intentionality that characterizes the relationship of the transcendental subject with the world, within a teleological dimension of Aristotelian origin. In the comparison between the two approaches, the cognitive loss that is produced by sacrificing the clinical approach, as in Husserl unlike Freud, is underlined.

La teoria pulsionale: Freud e Lacan a confronto

Stefania Olivier — 2024-05-07

This article revisits the Freudian concept of drive, analysing its fundamental characteristics. In particular, it highlights the decisive role played by the selfpreservation drives in the constitution of the Ego and in offering an objective basis to the sexual drives, providing them with support and guidance towards the retrieval of drive objects. The components of the drive – source, drive, goal, and object – are analysed through Baldini’s formalization of the Freudian concept of the drive as a vector. At the same time, a precise analysis is carried out of some excerpts from the 13th and 14th chapters in Lacan’s Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, in which a deviation from Freudian drive theory is detected, despite Lacan’s initial declaration of a return to it.

Repliche a una pretesa critica di Schatzman a Freud sul caso clinico del presidente Schreber. Contributi eziologici precipui della psicanalisi sulla paranoia (Parte seconda: construens)

Maria Grazia Tosto — 2024-05-07

This article constitutes the second and final part of a study by the author devoted to a rereading of Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic Notes ( Psychoanalytische Bemerkungen, 1910) on the clinical case of President Schreber. More precisely, in the function of pars construens, it intends to complete and conclude the argument undertaken in the first part (pars destruens), which appeared in the previous issue
of this same journal, by following up the rebuttals made to Morton Schatzman’s purported critique of Freud (1973) with a more systematic identification of the strengths that make Freud’s examination not only paradigmatic for every later psychoanalytic study of paranoia, but also almost unimpeachable on the epistemological level, by virtue of a complex of prerogatives, including the following: 1) a selection and treatment of sources consistent with the specific nature of the object of psychoanalysis i.e. the subject; 2) an etiological investigation selected according to a functional and modern causal framework; 3) an evident methodological rigour, beginning with the consideration of the various avenues that can be pursued and the limitations as well as the advantages that each of them may present, and ending with the choice of the one most suitable for the specific case under consideration; 4) a proper focus, within a mare magnum of data, of the most versatile for a productive start of the study, identified in this particular case, in Schreber’s dreams, as the «royal road» to access the unconscious; 5) a predominantly heuristic development of the discourse, which proceeds through cogent questions and hypotheses, some accepted, some discarded; 6) a perfect and constant relationship of coherence and consistency between the theory on the one hand and the available empirical data set on the other. Finally, after
moving on from clarifications which, as a stringent refutation of certain serious misinterpretations of the Freudian text, have occurred in the past, and have recently been authoritatively made on the Bemerkungen (see F. Baldini, Metapsychologica, 2019/1), the present article suggests a debate on some further hypotheses.

Lettera a Sigmund Freud del 31 marzo 1915

Karl Abraham — 2024-05-07

L’arte del digiuno: gli ultimi racconti di Franz Kafka. Con un’appendice su Balzac

Michele Bertolini — 2024-05-07

The essay proposes a reading of one of Kafka’s last short stories, A Hunger Artist, as an interpretive key to understanding some contemporary art practices marked by the poetics of silence, absence, subtraction, exile and isolation. Through an analysis of the reflections on gesture as a pure medium elaborated by Benjamin, Adorno and Agamben, the figure of the faster, like those of the trapeze artist and
of the mouse Josephine the songstress, at the center of the Prague writer’s last literary collection, delineate a performative practice that shifts the center of gravity of art from aesthetics to ethics, toward an art of living and everyday behaviour. The art of the faster, in Kafka’s tale, assumes the character of a somatic-spiritual and ascetic technique, capable of suspending subservience to the natural impulse
of hunger, loading itself with possible ethical-political meanings and regaining the original meaning of the artistic event. The bulimic collecting and enormous appetite of the protagonist of Balzac’s last great novel, Cousin Pons, represent, on the other hand, the mirror reversal of the ascetic fasting of Kafka’s character and underscore another fundamental character of modernity: the impulse to accumulate signs, objects, and works in front of which is mirrored the silent withdrawal of the faster.

Riflessioni teoriche sul racconto Un digiunatore di F. Kafka. Commento a L’arte del digiuno di M. Bertolini

Annalena Guarnieri — 2024-05-07

Theoretical reflections on F. Kafka’s short story A Hunger Artist. Comment to The art of fasting by M. Bertolini. In Bertolini’s essay The art of fasting: the last stories of Franz Kafka. With an appendix on Balzac, the author analyses widely from a sociological and literary perspective the theme of hunger through an examination of the short story A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka. Here the intention is to offer a further interpretation of the short story which, in reference to Freudian metapsychology, will highlight the importance of the self-preservation drives and their interaction with sexual drives in the drive development of the subject. In particular these theoretical reflections will seek to develop further on the theme of the eroticization of hunger.

Presentazione del libro Transfert. Sette lezioni sulla teoria freudiana del trattamento psicanalitico

Franco Baldini — 2024-05-07

Analisi della società cristiano-sadiana. Il sadismo come perversione della pulsione di sapere. Considerazioni a partire da F. Baldini, Transfert

Edoardo Toffoletto — 2024-05-07

The underlying theme of this contribution is the relationship between truth and love as expressed in Franco Baldini’s book, since it appears as the central question of psychoanalysis and its polarity through which one can identify the origins of the OEdipus complex and its relationship with the incest taboo. The objective of this paper is to develop and clarify the idea of a Christian-Sadian Society as a semantic horizon from which to identify the truth-love tension which appears to be rooted in the tension between the erotic-obsessive (Christian) type and the narcissistic (sadistic) type. Developing the relationship between truth and love entails dealing with the expression of partial drives, ergo with drive theory, and in particular the drive for knowledge (as sublimation of the drive for mastery) and the sexual drives. Furthermore this article suggests the possibility of fundamentally reconsidering the relationship between Nietzsche and Freud. By way of conclusion, there’s an allusion to overcoming the tension between truth and love by referring back to courtly love and in particular to the figure of Guillaume d’Aquitaine.

Per un’epistemologia dei concetti psicoanalitici. Considerazioni a partire da F. Baldini, Transfert

Marco Ferrari — 2024-05-07

Starting from a comparison with Franco Baldini’s recent volume, Transfert. Sette lezioni sulla teoria freudiana del trattamento psicanalitico, this paper will aim to develop some remarks on the nature of what I have called the epistemology of psychoanalytic concepts. In the first section, drawing extensively from the French epistemological tradition (particularly Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem, but not only), I will try to explain what it means to exercise philosophy in the manner of an epistemology of concepts. In the second section, I will explain what I mean by the epistemology of psychoanalytic concepts and why it turns its attention to Freud’s and Lacan’s reflections. Finally, in the third section, starting with some reflections developed by Baldini and other SPF members, I will frame the issue of experimentalism in psychoanalysis within the boundaries of the epistemology of psychoanalytic concepts.

Una chiosa al saggio di Marco Ferrari Per un’epistemologia dei concetti psicoanalitici

Franco Baldini — 2024-05-07