Leading articles

THE VIENNA PSYCHOANALYST wants to give not only already internationally established psychoanalysts, but also still unknown psychoanalysts the opportunity to post a self-written and not yet published article on the FrontPage of our online magazine!

Our Users then can leave comments, ask questions or discuss the articles in our forum. Our aim is to provide an international platform where for the first time anyone interested in psychoanalysis can exchange ideas on certain topics.
Articles are welcome in German and/ or English.

If you are interested, please send your article to
leadingarticle@theviennapsychoanalyst.at


(For reasons of readability, the male form is used with personal names, however the female form is also always intended.)

In our interview series "in conversation with“, we will briefly present the authors of the leading articles. We want to give our users the opportunity to read the leading article from a different point of view.


This week we are very glad to welcome Malte Tellerup:

Born 1989, Masters Student in Comparative Literature from University of Copenhagen and New School of Social Research currently working on my thesis about animal desire and desiring the animal. I have earlier written an article about and translated unpublished notes by performance artist Rudolf Schwarzkogler and have edited the literary journal TRAPPE TUSIND for several years.



DWP: What brought you to the topic of psychoanalysis?

Malte Tellerup: I have returned more intensely during last year working philosophically with how love and desire is thought together with or in opposition from non-human beings. If love is necessarily human, I ask why? Freud’s answer seems to me simple; shame. Bataille’s, whom I, too, have worked a lot with, answers the same and I feel uneasy about both of their arguments. But I do really hope this forum will challenge me.


DWP:  How did you choose the topic of your article which we will present to our readers next week?

Malte Tellerup: I followed cultural theorist Elizabeth Grosz back to Freud to better understand the importance of conceptualizing the “natural” in desires. It led me to examine how Freud works with oppositions between nature and culture (/civilization) in all of his works. But central is of course the “primordial” splitting apart of these two. The psychological point where man has raised from the animal, never to return.


DWP: If you had the opportunity to talk with Sigmund Freud, what would be the topic?
Are there any specific questions?

Malte Tellerup: I would really like to discuss the myth of the killing of the father, in every detail from his arguments rooted in others’ research, his intuition, readings of myths and speculations. I really enjoy the myth and would like to have him hear my critiques and reply.
I would really also love to hear him talk about his chows.


DWP: According to Bruno Bettelheim and the importance of fairy tales in childhood. Will you tell us your favorite fairy tale? And do you see parallels to your own adult life?

Malte Tellerup: This question gives me an urge to think more about the difference between H.C. Andersen whom influenced my childhood a lot and the Grimms brothers, whom I have returned to with great bafflement in later years. The difference in moral, psychology and logic is enormous and I am drawn to why my psyche understands Andersen much easier. But I would actually favor Selma Lagerlöf’s "The wonderful adventures of Nils" to any other fairy tale.


DWP: I dream,….

Malte Tellerup:  “We feel feline and wolfish, foxy and bitchy (…). Our muscular and vertebrate bodies transubstantiate into ooze, slime, mammalian sweat, and reptilian secretions, into minute tadpoles and releases of hot moist breath nourishing the floating microorganisms of the night air.” - Alphonso Lingis.


DWP:  Are there other psychoanalysts, in addition to Sigmund Freud, who you like to study?

Malte Tellerup: Jacques Lacan and more culture critical inquires into psychoanalysis by Adam Phillips, Leo Bersani and Lauren Berlant.


DWP: Do you have a favorite Freud - quote?

Malte Tellerup: “We may well heave a sigh of relief at the thought that it is nevertheless vouchsafed to a few to salvage without effort from the whirlpool of their own feelings the deepest truths, towards which the rest of us have to find our way through tormenting and with the restless groping.” (Civilization and Its Discontents)


Thank you very much for this conversation, we are already looking forward to your leading article!