Leading articles

A transcultural, psychoanalytic essay for migrants.

The root of my interest in transcultural psychoanalysis is probably anchored in my own biography, and this interest grew while working with patients at the Sigmund Freud University’s outpatient clinic, and later in my own private practice. During my time at the outpatient clinic, I observed the phenomenon that many patients longed for psychotherapy in their native language, despite being proficient in German. This phenomenon took on a new dimension when individual patients preferred psychotherapy in German, although they were not proficient. >> continue

In Part II, Dany Nobus discusses the Bloomsbury Group, the psychoanalytic tradition (or lack thereof) in the United Kingdom, Shakespeare and the status quo of mental health services.

When did psychoanalysis arrive in Britain? >> continue

                                                                              (Carol Of the Bell)

Christmas is the time of the year in-between ‘what is old and what is new’, what has been and what is yet to come. It is a period of suspension and balance. What is the role of Father Christmas in our lives? ...

Natale è quel periodo dell’anno che sta il “vecchio e il nuovo” tra ciò che è stato e ciò che deve ancora essere: come se fosse un momento di sospensione, di bilanci. Che funzione assume Babbo Natale nella vita di ognuno di noi? >> continue

Sociological concepts and their representation in "Tokyo blues (Norwegian Wood)" by Haruki Murakami.

Relationships take different forms depending on the type of society or culture. In this article, we will examine sociological concepts to understand the characteristics of modern societies and explore their influence on relationships and the phenomena that are wrapped in, such as emotional ties, sexuality, intimacy and others.

Algunos conceptos sociológicos y su observación en “Tokyo blues (Norwegian wood)”, de Haruki Murakami.

El aparejamiento es sin duda uno de los fenómenos más significativos del funcionamiento psicológico. A pesar de darse ya en el psiquismo más temprano y ser sentido como muy íntimo e individual, recibe una fuerte influencia contextual, tomando formas distintas según el tipo de sociedad o cultura en la que se produce. >> continue

Femininity - motherhood - imparting

The motherliness and femininity as relations between mother / maternal caregivers, daughters, sisters and wives are carefully depicted in the film. The still very young-looking mother of Yasemin, who has two other girls and a boy - the youngest child who evokes associations with the long-awaited son - is very asexual and fraught with the woman´s weak role as the stereotypical traditional Turkish woman. "You´re a woman, haven’t you understood yet?" (13 mins., 6 sec.), she asks Yasemin referring to the paternal prohibitions, defining Yasemin as her ilk, limiting her liveliness. At the same time she limits her even more by caressing Yasemin like a little baby ("Amanda Anasının Kuzusu!", "Oh, you mother´s lamb!" (13 min 15 sec.). >> continue

Growing up in two worlds as a female adolescent

On the relevance of the historical in psychoanalytic psychotherapies

I believe it was a Saturday night in 1988 when my parents took us children to visit a friendly "guest-worker family" in the neighborhood. I can remember a lively society, a room steeped in the bright light of the ceiling lamp – a space, in which the adults and children gathered in a world of their own. Our parents sat on the "couches" that were common in so-called "guest workers´ homes" and chatted while the children were absorbed in their games on the floor. We were enveloped in Turkish ... >> continue

“If you dream of a thief, you will be receiving a guest.”
Popular Egyptian saying


If the dream is a picture puzzle or rebus, as Freud reminds us, what then is the status of collective dreams or popular sayings? The popular Egyptian saying, “if you dream of a thief, you will be receiving a guest,” argued Najib Badawi in 1950, could in fact be aligned with psychoanalysis. Dissecting the saying according to both its symbolism and its predictive power, Badawi argued for an adaptation of Freud’s methodology in the Interpretation of Dreams to the collective unconscious of the popular as expressed in myths or sayings. >> continue

In his book, „Totem and Taboo” (1913), Freud deemed any attempt to etymologically explain the term as difficult. The word taboo is Polynesian in origin but lacks the idea which it connotes. The search for the term’s origins in ancient languages such as Roman (“sacer” -sacred, cursed), Greek άγος [hagos] – horrifying, ἅγιος [hagios] – sacred) and Hebrew resulted in ambiguous meanings. The word can mean either „sacred and consecrated“ or „prohibited and dangerous“, which Freud compared to the occidental term „sacred shyness”. >> continue

Let us take a step back though. I wonder why Souleymane presented us with this story of transformation and rebirth that night. What symbolic value does the story have for Souleymane himself? I do not remember how this conversation started. I may have told him about psychoanalysis and the ethnopsychoanalyst Paul Parin, who works in Dogon Country. >> continue

Prologue
This essay was written in 2011 after spending several weeks in Mali/West Africa. Along with my family, I visited a befriended couple working in Bandiagara. Bandiagara is a small town in southeastern Mali located on the edge of a sandstone cliff area, the Falaise, which was added to the UNESCO list in 1989 with its approximately 300 villages as a World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The walls of the escarpment around Bandiagara were populated during the 14th century by the Dogon people - ... >> continue

Indonesia is a country with various tribes and traditions. This is what makes this country rich in mythology and symbols of ancient civilizations that we will encounter many of the historic relics such as temples, reliefs, stupas, etc. One of the most famous mythology comes from Sunda, West Java, namely Sangkuriang. It is about a young man who killed his father and fell in love with his own mother. Surely, this Sangkuriang story will remind us of the Greek mythology that is the Story of Oedipus. And indeed it is, the story of Sangkuriang has a similar plot to the story of Oedipus, but also has certain differences. Particularly is the presence of symbolic elements in it. Before we discuss this further, let me invite the readers to a short overwie of the Sunda Mythology entitled Sangkuriang.

In ancient times in West Java, there lived a beautiful princess named Dayang Sumbi. The beauty of Dayang Sumbi makes the princes fight for her, so there is war in many places. It finally made Dayang Sumbi escape into the middle of the forest accompanied by a clever male hunt named Tumang. In the middle of the forest, Dayang Sumbi lives together with Tumang in an old hut. One day while weaving cloth, Dayang Sumbi dropped her loom. Because she feels lazy, she throws words out without thinking about them, "anyone who brings me back my loom, if he is a male I will make him my husband, if it is a women I will make her my sister". And unexpectedly, Tumang takes her loom. Dayang Sumbi had to fulfill her promise, so she married the hunt Tumang. From her marriage with Tumang, Dayang Sumbi gave birth to a son whom he named Sangkuriang. >> continue

I am delighted for the opportunity to describe my experience with participatory research methods in The Vienna Psychoanalyst with the Karen people and I hope for an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas on the subject. For example, I would be interested in how psychoanalysts interpret the children´s drawings ([see figure 1] The author thanks her father, Franz Vogler, for the technical processing of the drawings) in the continuous text. It would also be important to know what ethnopsychoanalysts have to say of the Karen people and their cultural symbolism.

As a PhD social scientist at Oxford University, I have been working with the Karen tribe people for more than ten years. The Karen people mainly live in the highlands of East Burma and northwest Thailand. Due to economic and cultural reasons, they have a marginalized position in Thai society: initially, most Karen people live as rice farmers in the highlands of northwest Thailand, where there are only limited opportunities to earn money through trade or services. Although many young Karen people spend time in urban areas to make money, most of them live in rural areas and have less income than the majority population. Culturally, the Karen people differ from the Thai population because they have their own mother tongue and their everyday life is characterized by other traditional behavior than is common among the majority population. The Karen people also wear different clothes and eat different food than the Thais. However, in everyday practice, there are always overlaps between Thai and Karen culture, not least because the Karen children go to state schools where Thai is spoken. >> continue

To talk about psychoanalysis in Indonesia is something very sad. I do not know when exactly psychoanalysis came to Indonesia, but in my opinion, psychoanalysis came along with psychiatry and psychology. However, psychoanalysis is the initiator of psychiatry and psychology.

Despite its incredible popularity and legendary knowledge, psychoanalysis is hardly recognized by Indonesian people. Only a few academics are familiar with psychoanalysis. But this is exactly where the bigger problem comes from. Psychoanalysis has been taught in a wrong way, it was taught with only one theory from psychology and only for less than 2 hours. Yes, there are only 2 hours to understand psychoanalysis. Without practicing, only theory. What make it worse is that the lecturers who teach this theory are not competent enough in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic theory has been mingled with hypnosis. The lecturers incomprehension about psychoanalysis makes it look like black magic because it talks about sexuality and unconscious.

Many defamations are uttered about psychoanalysis and Prof. Freud because of those lecturers incomprehnsion. Lets say, for example, that psychoanalysis as a knowledge is not worthy, not scientific, moreover it is full of pornography. As if this is not enough, Prof. Freud has been maligned, the rumors say that Prof. Freud left the hypnosis because he was not able in making a rapport, the betrayer, the lewd scientist.

We were curious why psychoanalysis in Indonesia is not well-known and be missunderstood in such a way. In our observations, we found 3 aspects that cause those problems: >> continue

The honoree, which died in 2009, would have been, on September 20, 2016 a hundred years old. To commemorate his work and his lovable personality several events are planned in Vienna and Zurich, which deal with the various aspects of his work as a physician, neurologist, psychoanalyst ethno-psychoanalyst and writer. We psychoanalysts, who came afterwards, are grateful to him especially for the renewal of psychoanalysis and for his lifelong socio-critical commitment. He was a fearless fighter against fascism and Stalinism and also a gifted storyteller.

As an adolescent he read Hitler´s “Mein Kampf" on his father´s estate in Nowikloster in Slovenia and henceforth knew what was coming. Shortly afterwards he experienced the first Jewish persecutions at his high school in Graz. Attending the university he studied the classics of Marxist and became an unorthodox Marxist. Clear-sighted he interrupted his medical studies before the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany and moved as a Swiss Abroad to Zurich. Here he frequented antifascist circles and met his future wife, originally from Graz, Goldy Matthèy, who also had to flee after the collapse of the Spanish Republic, where she had joined the International Brigades. It was not long until the two encountered the like-minded young Swiss doctor Fritz Morgenthaler, resulting in a lifelong friendship. >> continue