Appeal to the Work of F. M. Dostoevsky by Russian Emigration in Chekhia: A. L. Bem and the Psychoanalytic Method of Interpreting a Work of Art

The article is devoted to the conversion around works of F. M. Dostoevsky which took place among Czech intellectuals, among whom there were a lot of immigrants from Russia. In this context, the example of Alfred Ludwigovich Bem is indicative. The article reveals main reasons for the interest in Dostoevsky in Czechoslovakia. An important role in the study of Dostoevsky was played by the so-called ‘Russian action of aid’ and ‘Russian trace’ left by the exiles in Prague. In this regard, A. L. Bem is interesting not only as a researcher who devoted many works to Dostoevsky’s work but also as one of the founders of Dostoevsky’s first international society. Bem was also one of the first researchers who applied psychoanalysis to the interpretation of Dostoevsky’s literary works. He was also one of those who also analyzed the specifics of using psychoanalytic methods in literary criticism. The article reveals the methodological basis of Bem’s interpretation: attention is drawn not only to the connection between the theme “Dostoevsky and his Reader” and psychoanalysis (Bem’s ‘method of small observations’), but also to the origins of Bem’s interpretation of psychoanalysis associated with the formal school in literary criticism; the disadvantages of psychoanalysis as a way of interpreting a work of art are emphasized.

How and why psychoanalysts become storytellers. Part 2

In this paper, I wish to look at the approach of psychoanalysts to folklore texts. The evaluation of psychoanalytic interpretations of two Russian fairy tales shows that psychoanalysts, not knowing the methods of anthropology and folklore, freely and mistakenly construed the text material. Such a free interpretation is based on the confidence of analysts that the psychoanalytic method itself can provide a correct key to understanding any text. According to our opinion, such erroneous interpretations lead to the discrediting of psychoanalysis and may ultimately lead to fatal errors in psychotherapy.

How and why psychoanalysts become storytellers

In this paper, I wish to look at the approach of psychoanalysts to folklore texts. The evaluation of psychoanalytic interpretations of two Russian fairy tales shows that psychoanalysts, not knowing the methods of anthropology and folklore, freely and mistakenly construed the text material. Such a free interpretation is based on the confidence of analysts that the psychoanalytic method itself can provide a correct key to understanding any text. According to our opinion, such erroneous interpretations lead to the discrediting of psychoanalysis and may ultimately lead to fatal errors in psychotherapy.

Communication disorder: contemporary art and psychoanalysis

This revision seeks to analyze the methodological intersections of contemporary art and psychoanalysis, by considering the value attributed to communication disorders by both fields. I will analyze elements of "In the Face of time: History of art and anachronism of Images" (2000), by Didi-Huberman. In addition, I will single out two texts that are crucial to the psychoanalytic method: "The Uncanny” (1919), by Freud and "Function and field of speech and Language" (1953), by Lacan. The concept of the uncanny is central to this approach, since it reveals the proximity between strangeness and familiarity. It is through the concept of the uncanny that psychoanalysis unfolds the perspective of a negative aesthetics, which is not at the service of the completeness of communication. Instead, it focuses on the cracks that paradoxically allow us to say more and to look at the latent contents of communication. Contemporary art and psychoanalysis both use non-linear communication. Research performed at their intersection is based on qualitative methodologies and seeks to analyze exemplary situations in culture, such as the discourses of an epoch and works of art. In this methodological encounter, there isn’t a single meaning to be sought. On the contrary, it is the researcher’s task to reflect on the paths that lead to the creation of a work of art, as well as on the ideals it conveys, its singularity and its relationship with culture. He can then render visible the complexity and the multiple meanings embedded in the work of art.

Problems in Freud’s Psychology of Women

Freud’s ideas on the development and psychological characteristics of girls and women, though laden with rich clinical and theoretical discoveries and achievements, appear to have been significantly flawed by the influence of traditional patriarchal and evolutionary values. This influence is evident in certain questionable presuppositions, logical errors and inconsistencies, suspensions of intensive inquiry, underemphasis on certain developmental variables, and confusions between observations, definitions, and value preferences. Under three headings—The Problem of Women’s Morality and Objectivity, The Problem of Neglected Prephallic Development, and The Problem of Naming—I discuss Freud’s generalizations concerning ego and superego development in boys and girls, penis envy, biologically predestined procreativity, the role of the mother, the fateful linkages male-masculine-active-aggressive-dominant and female-feminine-passive-masochistic-submissive, and other topics as well. In general, it is argued that Freud’s generalizations concerning girls and women do injustice to both his psychoanalytic method and his clinical findings.

Imagination and Reason, Method and Mourning in Freudian Psychoanalysis

This chapter begins with a consideration of transience and mourning as a way of thinking about what a failure of imagination might be. It then considers why the ‘fundamental rule’ of psychoanalysis is truly fundamental: not only for psychoanalytic method, but also for understanding why Freudian psychoanalysis is of philosophical significance. The fundamental rule opens up a new meaning of speaking one’s mind. The chapter argues that the psychoanalytic method is a deployment of reason, properly understood. For it is that activity of mind through which reason comes to an understanding of the mental activities—the thinkings—of non-rational and unconscious parts of the human psyche. It thus illuminates Socrates’ claim in the Republic that reason ought to take the lead in organizing human life because it has insight into the whole psyche. The chapter examines what it is for the unconscious to function as a fate.