International Psychoanalytic Ideas

October 16, 2021

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Consultant:  

Avner Bergstein

Ramat Gan, Israel

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Presenter:  

Susan Donner

May 15-16 2021

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Consultant:  

Dominique Scarfone

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

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Presenter:  

Lyn Yonack

ENCOUNTER WITH MARILIA AISENSTEIN

   

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Primary Erotogenic Masochism: 

Desire, Pain and Thought

March 6, 2021

Paris, France

Presenter:

Gabriela Legorreta

"I have long been interested in the Freudian conception of primary erotogenic masochism, described by Freud in 1924, a text that I have always found deeply moving. In this paper Freud asks himself: is it possible that pain is tainted with pleasure? Worse still: could it be that pain, and the search for pain, govern psychic life? But, if so, what becomes of the pleasure principle? These questions were crucial for him and they still are today.

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The notion of “incomplete masochism” (Fain) or of the “incompletion of primary masochism” (my term) is at the crossroads of the psychoanalysis of the neuroses, psychoses and borderline states as well as that of somatizing patients.

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Masochism has a bad press, even amongst psychoanalysts, and I am pleading for its rehabilitation: “But now here is again the confounded problem of masochism!” exclaimed Sándor Ferenczi in 1931.

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In two texts, “The problem of the acceptance of unpleasant ideas” (1926) and “On the acceptance of unpleasure” (14 February, 1932) Ferenczi tackles the question of the pleasant passivity studied later by Fain.

 

Masochism is the “guardian of life”; without it we would commit suicide at the first disappointment. It helps us to resist and maintain hope. It is what enables human beings to survive and resist the most tragic and extreme conditions in wars of religion and genocides when the barbarity of man, the most inhuman of animals, is unleashed."

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--Marilia Aisenstein

January 9, 2021

IN HONOR OF CHRIS MAWSON

Consultant:  

Paul Williams

San Francisco, CA 

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Presenter:  

Aisha Abbasi

October 17, 2020

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Consultant:  

Joshua Durban

Tel Aviv, Israel 

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Presenter:  

Alistair McKnight

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June 13, 2020

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Consultant:  

Marilia Aisenstein

Paris, France 

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Presenter:  

Lucinda DiDomenico

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