What Is It About?: (A Possible Answer)

By Héctor Krakov

The title of this book, What is it about, asks about the therapeutic factor of psychoanalysis. It is a question that calls into question the psychoanalytic clinical work and, therefore, why and how an analysis treatment “cures”. The reason for addressing this issue is based on the fact that the issue is still valid, despite the large number of conceptual developments that come from the different schools of psychoanalysis. That is why the subtitle of the book clearly indicates that the author's intention is to give a possible answer to the question. Thus, in the first part of the book, a graphic sequence is presented that offers a panoramic vision of psychic devices, just as the authors of the different schools have modeled them. In the second part, the book deals with specific clinical issues: how the material appears in an individual session, exemplifications of dreams and two clinical cases: the patients Leandro and Hernán. Then he dedicates himself to the couples clinic through two examples: Estela and Juan, and Jazmín and Roberto. In chapter 6, and based on what has already been exposed, the author gives a possible answer to the question. Part of postulating that, from his perspective, the session material rotates. Sometimes the analysts will embody the patient in session, and other times the significant others. A "doing different from the analyst", by embodying the patient in the transference scene, will allow promoting the disidentification of the significant other, who is part of the insistent scene and continues to maintain psychic validity. This disidentification will imply that the repetitive scene collapses, and with it that the psychic change comes. That is what it is about, for the author, "healing" with psychoanalysis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Me vas a Escribir
• Release date: Sep 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9789878637686

Book preview

Captura de Pantalla 2021-08-26 a la(s) 15.43.38

Edición Digital a cargo de Natalia Monsegur

What Is It About?

(A Possible Answer)

Dr. Héctor Krákov

2021

~Table of Contents~

~Introduction~

~Preface by Dr. Gabriela Renault~

~Preface by Dr. Claudia Lucia Borensztejn~

~Sameness And Otherness~

The Experience of Satisfaction

Breastfeeding

Facilitated Multiple Registering System

The Neuron

On the psychology of dream processes: regression

The passage from an extended model to a circular one (from neuron to eyeball)

The Ego and the Id

The Ego

The Id

Types of Unconscious

The Division Of The Psychic Personality (1933)

Wisdom’s Model

The Inner Object-relation

Meltzer’s Model

The Imaginary and the Specular Other: Lacan’s Schema L

The Place of Narcissism in the Different Psychoanalytic Theories

In Freud

In Klein and Wisdom

In Meltzer

In Lacan (Schema I)

Overlapping Schema I and Freud´s second topography

The Mechanism of Symptom Formation: Dora’s Disgust

The Representational Sequence in Freud’s Work

A Biological Metaphor of Bond Formation: The Optical Chiasm

The Bonding World: The Inscription of the Other

Interpenetration of Psychic Worlds

The Bond and its Subjects

Multiple Transferences in a Bonding Session

Transference from the perspective of bonding

The Experience of Sameness

~CHAPTER 1~ The Individual Clinic. The Appearance Of Analytical Material In Session

1- María del Carmen and the theme of the bulkhead

2- Roberto and his inhibition at work

3- Ricardo and his childhood accident

4- Lucia. The custom of carrying herself on her own

5- Esteban. The theme of 3D vision

~CHAPTER 2~ Story Of The Dreams In Session

1- Marcos. The dream of the empty head

2- Cecilia. Dream in which the walls are filtered

3- Blanca. Problems in the head

4- Mariana. The dildo topic

~CHAPTER 3~ Two Clinical Examples

Leandro

Hernán

~CHAPTER 4~ Processing In Act And Psychic Change

~ CHAPTER 5~ Bonding Clinic

Theoretical reference concepts

~CHAPTER 6~ A Possible Answer

~Introduction~

The title of this book What Is It About? interrogates the therapeutic factor of psychoanalysis. It is a matter that questions the clinical task and, therefore, why and how a psychoanalytical treatment cures. The reason why I approach this topic is based on the fact that the question is still valid, despite the large number of conceptual developments that stem from the different schools in psychoanalysis. Therefore, the subtitle of the book shows my intention clearly: I propose a possible answer to the question.

Thus, in the first part of the book I include a graphic sequence of psychic apparatus outlines, as the authors themselves have modeled them. And I also include others in which I try to model graphically ideas that Freud exposed theoretically in his work.

In the second part, the book addresses specific topics of the clinic: the way in which the material appears in individual sessions, examples of dreams, two cases of individual patients, Leandro and Hernan, to finally highlight the relationship between processing in act and psychic change, two theoretical-clinical proposals of which I am the author. I then present couple clinic through two examples: Estela and Juan, and Jasmine and Roberto. In the final chapter, I give a possible answer to the question. The subjective appropriation by the patient of a different doing from the analyst when he embodies his place in the compulsive repetition will be what allows dismantling the insistent scene so that it finally collapses.

I am convinced that is what curing with psychoanalysis is about.

~Preface~

Reading a book raises expectations, committing to reading is a responsibility, being able to deepen psychoanalytic concepts when everything seems read and re-read while appealing to creativity, is a provocative invitation.

In Greek tradition, there are those who distinguish the writer’s work as poiesis -action-, and its result as poiema -act, work. The root poe means to create, and poem, from the Greek poieo, refers to a production based on images resulting from relationships discovered by imagination and language. It could be said there is a peculiar relationship between imaginary, symbolic and real in that relations discovered by imagination reveal the inexistence of a substance of images, this being a void that the poet knows how to close.

Dr. Krakov’s book appeals to us from the question of his title, which makes us give or at least try to give an answer after having read it. It seems like a simple question, it seems not to connote anything that bothers, but invites to read it and at least want to answer it.

In The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis (1981), Lacan says that analysis aims at the advent of a true word and the realization by the subject of his history in its relation to a future (P. 290) as its goal. This objective forms a dialectic that opposes any orientation that may render analysis objective. Reading the book implies knowing that one will enter into a dialectic which for some will be an answer and for others will be new questions.

The order in which the reader is taken provides the assuredness that the author is taking us by the hand to a state of depth where we are immersed to take a look at the clinic from different theoretical frameworks, inviting us not to give up reading, not to stop. The ability to combine the psychoanalytic framework with the theoretical framework adds, and it also appeals to thinking about the interrelation of theories.

The effort is greater because the book proposes going from praxis to theory, i.e., conjecturing theories from the clinic. This is valid not only for those of us who are immersed in these readings along with years of clinic, but also for the beginner who dares to read and add the experience of a great professional to his becoming in his daily task, or who, at the dawn of his journey, has not yet graduated and is motivated by the hunger for knowledge. It is then necessary to know how to respond to the subject in analysis, and this is very well stated in the chapters on clinical cases.

To this end, it is good to reflect on one of Lacan’s observations: here it is that one must... first recognize where his ego (the analyzand’s) is placed, the ego that Freud himself defined as the ego formed by a verbal nucleus, in other words, it must be known in regard to whom and for whom the subject raises his question. As long as it is not known, there will be a risk of contradiction about the desire that should be recognized there and about the object to which that desire is directed. So this is about directing and listening to the question arising from the interviews, about being able to answer why that that subject is undergoing analysis, a question that will be answered throughout the sessions and should lead us by all means to what needs to be revealed. The inscription we make of our patients as subjects is from the other as such, not as an object of analysis.

Responding to the sameness or the otherness is a challenge posed throughout the book, which is very well cared for by the author.

When we talk about the subject, we also mention that in the analytical experience ‒for it not to be interminable‒ a saying must be constructed, that there is a saying inherent to each subject; at this point, interpretation takes place precisely as an operation whose effect is the production of knowledge.

This reading journey captivates because it shows the author’s seriousness, his years of clinic and the great gift of being an excellent pedagogue and an innovative visionary.

Finally, aside from my journey in clinic, research and administration, I am personally passionate about teaching. Thus, I feel the increasingly imperative need to convey and reach others so that they can train themselves in a serious, intelligent way that is at the same time appealing and inviting to continue learning.

I thank the author for allowing me to be part of this project. I believe, and I am not mistaken, that we are facing an experience that is worth living, rereading, transmitting and continuing for several more books.

Just because I find it illustrative and fascinating, with the pertinent distances, I find this book an omen of an immediate future in a way that quickly reminded me of how Jorge Luis Borges prefaced The Martian Chronicles beautifully in 1955. This text is still remembered today: "Because of its anticipation of a possible or probable future, the Somnium Astronomicum prefigures, if I