ABSTRACT The COVID‐19 pandemic led to nationwide lockdowns, placing citizens under enforced isolation and quarantine. During successive waves of the outbreak, economic and esthetic production activities were undertaken in dispersed ways, with films increasingly shot and released on Over‐the‐Top (OTT) streaming platforms. At this crucial juncture, Malayalam cinema emerged as a significant site of pandemic cultural production, with numerous films produced and distributed digitally. Bhoothakalam ( Past , Rahul Sadasivan, 2022), released on SonyLiv, narrates the story of generational trauma and the fraught relationship between a mother and son in self‐isolation. This paper reads the film as a psychological narrative of isolation both within and beyond the mise‐en‐scène, situated in the socio‐political context of its pandemic‐era release. Drawing on Freud's framework of isolation as a defense mechanism, the compulsion to repeat, and the uncanny ( Unheimlich ), alongside Derrida's hauntology, the study examines the complexities of psychological trauma experienced by the mother and son and the spectral presence haunting their quarantined domestic space. The paper further argues that the pandemic's enforced physical isolation did not produce the characters' psychic defenses but stripped away the social buffers that had kept those defenses liveable. The analysis proposes that Bhoothakalam , distributed via OTT to isolated viewers during lockdown, functions not merely as a representation of catharsis but as a mechanism of it.
ABSTRACT Large language models produce fluent, contextually appropriate language that invites the inference that something behind the output is thinking. The psychoanalytic theory of thinking, specifically the work of Wilfred Bion and Donald Winnicott read together, allows us to specify what thinking requires, what the LLM lacks, and what occurs when a system so constituted occupies the position of the container in a relational encounter with a human being. Bion and Winnicott identify an ecology of interdependent conditions, somatic, affective, relational, without which thinking cannot occur. LLMs lack this ecology in its entirety. A technical account of LLM architecture is provided and Bion's Grid is applied systematically to the system, showing that its output is constitutively absent from the Grid's lower rows (beta elements, alpha elements, dream thoughts, preconceptions) and produces only formal resemblance to its upper rows (conceptions, concepts, scientific deductive systems). This formal resemblance, not the system's failures but its successes, is what generates the confusion the article addresses. Hallucination and sycophancy are analyzed not as defects to be corrected but as revelations of what the system was never doing. The concept of pseudo‐containment is introduced to describe what follows: a relational configuration in which the user brings genuine affect and need to a system that can receive neither, and in which the user's own capacity for thinking may be progressively compromised. The argument is psychoanalytic but engages throughout with philosophy of mind, computer science, affective neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, whose findings converge with the psychoanalytic account at the level of the organism.
ABSTRACT In recent years, many Unaccompanied Minor Refugees have arrived in our “Western” countries. They all face numerous health risk factors, particularly in terms of mental health: separation from or loss of parents, trauma, exile, and immersion in an unfamiliar environment, all of this as a minor. However, their distress is often overlooked or underestimated. Particularly, the psychological impact of being separated from familiar adults, as well as from their cultural environment of reference, is rarely taken into account in the care they receive. Paradoxically, and likely as a result, the extent of their suffering very rarely leads to psychotherapy. It is as if the psychoanalyst's encounter with a culturally‐different, further burden by heavy trauma patient, stirs up both the familiar and the unfamiliar. On the one hand, as a human being the patient functions, consciously and unconsciously, in a similar way to the analyst, and hence is recognizable. On the other hand, differences between them linked to their cultural backgrounds or to the extreme trauma effects, bring in the unfamiliar. For instance, material may emerge that is repressed in the culture of one but given open expression in that of the other, bringing the return of the repressed and the uncanny. Collective fantasies in the analyst about the patient's culture, including unconscious stereotypes, may also be present and impact the transference and countertransference dynamic.
Psychoanalysis in the community has deep historical roots, being the heir to the initial Freud's impetus to establish a system of free psychoanalytic practice (free clinics). The historical recovery of this legacy is marked by the demands of contemporary society, which impose the need to take analytical listening outside private practice. Here, as a community practice, psychoanalysis works with the subject's subjectivity set against the backdrop of unconscious processes and transference relationships. In Portugal, psychoanalytic intervention in the community is not formally documented, although there is informal knowledge of psychoanalysts' activities in the field. Thus, the present study aimed to: (1) Map the interventions of psychoanalysis in the community in Portugal; (2) Understand their theoretical and technical characteristics and the instruments used. Data were collected using two main instruments: (a) a socio-demographic characterization survey on the types of community intervention conducted by psychoanalysts; (b) a semi-structured interview on the theoretical and technical characteristics of the interventions. Understanding psychoanalytic interventions in the community provides better knowledge of the theoretical and technical scope of psychoanalytic assumptions, their limitations and adaptations, thus fostering dialog and building bridges with other fields of knowledge.
This paper explores how social movements help people improve their mental well-being, especially in relation to internalized oppression. It is informed by numerous accounts of workers leaving abusive relationships after unionizing. Specifically discussed is the epistemological politics of internalized oppression, cultural hegemony theory, and psychoanalysis. Research findings and specific recommendations as to how social movements can improve participants' mental well-being are provided. The paper argues for overcoming the controversies of internalized oppression by (A) focusing on the general concept of internalized oppression rather than specific manifestations of it, (B) viewing internalized oppression a spectrum phenomenon, (C) identifying points of friction through Du Bois's conceptualization of "double consciousness," and (D) focusing upon how people internalize both being oppressed and the reproduction of oppression. Then Antonio Gramsci's conceptualization of cultural hegemony and "organic intellectuals" is explored as well as the idea of psychodynamic leadership. Finally, psychoanalytic thought is utilized to situate individuals within capitalist cultural hegemony. Next, object relations theory and ego psychology are specifically explored. For the former I review Winnicott's notions of the True Self/False Self, "holding environments" and "abrogation." I argue that social movements can function as holding environments that enable people to develop their True Self. For the latter I explore Anna Freud's conceptualization of identification with the aggressor. Penultimately, research findings are presented to argue for the development of psychodynamic organic intellectuals and the development of social movements as holding environments. Finally, specific programmatic suggestions are enumerated.
ABSTRACT This paper is based on a webinar delivered on 10th July 2025 for the Britain Palestine Project. It examines the impact of war on the children in Gaza, including developmental delay, symptoms of psychological trauma and the consequences on the mind of the child as they attempt to defend against them. It looks at the science behind those symptoms and their effect not only on the developing brain but also their effect on the baby in utero whose development may be compromised by severe maternal trauma. The paper cites the work of Palestinian and western researchers and clinicians.
ABSTRACT In many Western liberal‐democratic countries, there have been increasing efforts over recent decades to teach democratic norms and values in the primary and secondary school systems. However, there has been little agreement on how such democratic education can be effectively implemented. This article argues that an underlying core principle of Western liberal‐democratic norms and values is what the economic historian Thomas Sowell calls the restricted vision—that is, the idea that decision making is best left in the hands of those who are directly impacted by these decisions, as opposed to concentrating decision‐making power in a small group of “experts” (or even one person, as in dictatorships) with allegedly superior knowledge and skills. Next, it asserts that liberal‐democratic countries can only flourish if the majority of their people internalize the conviction that liberal‐democratic norms and values are superior to more power‐centralizing (i.e., authoritarian) alternatives. It uses the Federal Republic of Germany as an example, where official federal guidelines for democracy education rightfully demand that students need to “live democracy” in everyday school life in order to internalize liberal‐democratic values, but fail to sufficiently specify how this can be implemented in the classroom. In order to fill this implementation gap, this article finally argues that group analysis can help teachers learn how to more effectively involve students in dealing with serious conflicts and disagreements that occur in everyday school life. Only if students experience for themselves that their active involvement in dealing with conflicts leads to better results, will they internalize the conviction that Western liberal‐democratic decision‐making is superior to authoritarianism.
ABSTRACT This article offers a Lacanian psychoanalytic interpretation of emerging forms of human–artificial intelligence (AI) relationships, particularly emotionally responsive systems such as AI companions and AI girlfriends. It addresses the notion of “AI psychosis,” understood not as a diagnostic category but as a descriptive term for disturbances in reality testing, derealization, and psychotic‐like experiences that may arise in vulnerable individuals. The paper compares three relational configurations—human–human, human–God, and human–AI—and examines how each structures desire, lack, and the function of the Big Other. It argues that the key difference does not lie in whether the Other is human or non‐human, but in the presence or absence of symbolic limits. While interpersonal and religious relationships are structured by incompleteness, distance, and the possibility of silence, AI systems tend to provide continuous, personalized responses that can reduce tension and transform relational experience into a form of narcissistic regulation. The article further suggests that AI‐related difficulties should be understood in a broader relational and social context. Rather than being a primary cause, AI may function as a catalyst in situations marked by isolation, relational deprivation, or vulnerability. The main risk is therefore not the technology itself, but its potential to occupy the place of the Big Other without symbolic constraint, thereby weakening the conditions necessary for the formation of subjectivity.
ABSTRACT This paper explores the mounting global threats to democracy. Tracing democracy's Western origins in ancient Athens through the Enlightenment revolutions and the rise of liberal democracies, the paper examines how contemporary democracies—both established and emerging—are under strain. Drawing on recent empirical research and theoretical frameworks, it identifies five intersecting drivers of democratic erosion: The resurgence of authoritarianism, the institutional weakening of democratic norms, political polarization fueled by populism, disinformation and the collapse of shared epistemic foundations, deepening economic inequality and the inability of democratic systems to adequately respond to global crises such as climate change and pandemics. The analysis emphasizes that democratic backsliding often occurs gradually and legally, masked in procedural legitimacy and fueled by psychological dynamics of fear and disavowal. Ultimately, this paper calls attention to the urgent need for civic engagement, institutional resilience, and critical public discourse to safeguard democracy in an increasingly volatile world. Finally, it is suggested that it is important to consider a range of disciplinary perspectives to understand these deeply troubling trends.
ABSTRACT For decades, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have lived under chronic political violence, a context that shapes not only their external realities but also their inner, subjective worlds. While research has documented rates of post‐traumatic stress, less is understood about the phenomenological experience of continuous traumatic stress (CTS) and the culturally specific ways people find meaning and endure. This study sought to understand the psychological and emotional landscape of Palestinian adults living under ongoing threat, exploring how they experience trauma, process loss, and construct meaning through coping strategies rooted in their culture. We employed a convergent parallel mixed‐methods design. During January 2024, we surveyed 402 adults from high‐exposure locations in the northern West Bank (Jenin, Askar, Balata, Ein Beit Alma refugee camps, and Nablus Old City) using the Politically Violent Events Scale (PVES), the Continuous Traumatic Stress Response (CTSR) Scale, and a culturally adapted Jalowiec Coping Scale (JCS). In February 2024, we conducted in‐depth phenomenological interviews with a purposive subsample of 10 participants. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics; qualitative data were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis, prioritizing the lived experiences of participants. Quantitative findings revealed extensive exposure to political violence, with home searches by soldiers being the most common event (76.6%). Levels of CTSR were elevated, particularly in the domains of fear/helplessness (63.6%) and exhaustion/detachment (62.7%). However, these numbers gain meaning only through the qualitative findings, which revealed six central themes: (1) Military occupation as a source of pervasive terror and humiliation; (2) Political violence as a cause of psychological and physical illness; (3) The profound and ambivalent grief following the loss of loved ones, where pride and pain are inextricably linked; (4) Remembering martyrs as a complex emotional space of both connection and sorrow; (5) Sumud (steadfastness) as a form of active, meaningful resistance that reframes daily survival as a political and personal act; and (6) Diverse coping mechanisms, with spirituality and religious faith serving as an unassailable anchor. For Palestinians living under occupation, trauma is not a discrete event but a continuous, shaping force. Their responses are not merely symptoms but are interwoven with cultural narratives of loss, resistance, and faith. Sumud and religious practice represent profound, culturally grounded forms of resilience. Mental health support must move beyond pathologizing normal responses to abnormal circumstances and instead work to understand, validate, and strengthen these existing, meaning‐making resources.
ABSTRACT A fascist state of mind may refer to a political ideology as well as an internal psychological state. Extremist right‐wing ideology associated with nativism and xenophobia vilifies “others” so that they may be violently devalued and attacked. In some individuals, splitting and projective identification enable a pathological organization of the mind to defend against exposure to shameful vulnerability. Doubt, complexity, and inner conflict are eliminated to create a simplified, rigid, and violent mindset, producing idealization and denigration. In this paper, we consider Rosenfeld's (1987) description of destructive narcissism and Bollas' (1992/2012) depiction of a fascist state of mind to explore possible links between an individual's psychopathological experience and the destructive processes that contribute to the development of oppressive societies and totalitarian states.
ABSTRACT Kyiv Rus was an early medieval state in Eastern Europe centered in Kyiv, which now is the capital of Ukraine. This paper examines the systematic distortion of the history of Kyiv Rus by Russia as a tool for legitimizing its current territorial claims to Ukraine. The author analyzes the methods of historical falsification used from the eighteenth century to the present day, as well as their impact on the formation of public opinion and international relations. Based on a content analysis of key Russian historiographical and educational texts, this study outlines the mechanisms of historical falsification, including selective interpretation of sources, the construction of imperial myths, and the institutional dissemination of the narrative of the “common origin” of Russians and Ukrainians. The connection between these falsifications and the current Russian aggression against Ukraine, as well as their implications for international security, is also considered.
ABSTRACT Psychoanalytic communities increasingly face a practical and ethical question: who may legitimately claim the title “psychoanalyst” in a landscape where training routes, institutional standards, and legal regulation vary widely. This commentary argues that psychoanalytic legitimacy should be grounded primarily in demonstrable competence and ongoing accountability, rather than in institutional residence alone. To clarify the debate, the paper distinguishes four analytically distinct registers of legitimacy—legal permission, professional credentialing, community recognition, and psychological legitimacy—which often overlap but can diverge in practice. It then defines competence as a multi‐domain capacity that includes sustained analytic process skill, reflective function, theoretical literacy, and ethical accountability, while noting that these domains may not align neatly within individuals or institutions. The paper examines the enduring strengths of institute‐based formation and the contemporary pressures it faces (including economic barriers and adult‐learning constraints), alongside the promises and vulnerabilities of self‐directed pathways (including informal hierarchy, charismatic authority, prestige markets, and “supervision shopping”). As a concrete exemplar of competency‐based recognition, the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Psychology (ABAPPP) is presented as a portfolio‐plus‐expert‐review model that can accommodate plural training routes while preserving rigor—without being treated as universally transferable in its specific requirements. Finally, the paper proposes “portable” process standards (e.g., transparency, qualified supervision, peer review, honest self‐representation) paired with jurisdiction‐ and discipline‐specific mechanisms, with attention to DEI risks and safeguards in portfolio‐driven evaluations.
The mass migrations of the past decade have rekindled political narratives that center on perceived threats to society. Refugees are often portrayed as socio-economic, cultural, or biological threats to the identity and existence of nations. While these narratives reached their peak in the first half of the 20th century with racial theories, eugenics, and mass genocide, they have resurfaced in contemporary society in a diluted yet structurally comparable form. I attempt to investigate these narratives through psychoanalytical means, using Serbian extreme right wing politics in a last several decades as an example how ideology relies on vehement emotions, unconscious fantasies as well as sociological structures. Several psychoanalytical authors have written about extreme right ideology within the framework of psychosexual development and early anxieties related to otherness and primal scene. These anxieties are taken over by existing societal structures and it is this transformation of unconscious fantasies into hostile political action may elucidate the mechanisms that distort perceptions of society and the world, mobilizing vulnerable individuals to align with populist and extreme right ideologies.
ABSTRACT This paper attempts to contribute to thinking about the ethical responsibilities of the psychoanalytic profession in the context of the Gaza genocide. In a world inured to mass suffering, and paralyzed by a sense of impotence, the crisis in Palestine has had a unique impact on the collective consciousness and conscience, engendering unprecedented mobilizations across society. A situation with such devastating consequences for the physical and psychological well‐being of a whole society confronts health professionals with pressing questions about their response, as citizens and as members of civil society institutions, made more urgent by their location, more often than not, within societies that have participated in the genocide. The approach is idiosyncratic. The paper explores a perceived split between an acceptance of moral responsibility matched with a sense of agency where harm is perpetrated in the domestic and private setting, as against the denial or avoidance of a recognition of being implicated in analogous situations in the public realm. It does this through an overlapping discussion of two issues, one from each sphere: pedophilia/child sexual exploitation, and settler colonialism. With an eye to the relevance of this to the ethical life of psychoanalysis, this author argues that the basis for inaction—a performative commitment to human rights accompanied by a tenacious passivity or paralysis—is ripe for revision, to bring the profession into line with long‐established medical ethics.
Trauma and loss constitute recurring themes in both Murakami's fictional and non-fictional writing. In the short story Tony Takitani, Murakami portrays a father and son confronting trauma and loss in the aftermath of the Second World War and the nuclear devastation of Japan. The text suggests that the collective trauma of the war functions as an unclaimed and largely unspeakable experience, giving rise to parallel psychic processes in both the first and second generations. These processes are characterized by absent grief and forms of manic undoing, which operate as defensive attempts to seal painful experiences within a psychic crypt, thereby generating transgenerational phantom formations. Within this crypt are encapsulated unprocessed affects associated with loss, including grief over family members, as well as shame and disgust tied to the historical context of the war. Their efforts to reconstruct their lives unfold within a postwar reality marked by an absence of dialog regarding the traumatic experiences they endured. This silence reflects broader social attempts to recover from collective trauma without engaging in mourning or working through painful contents, leaving traumatic material embedded in the personal and social unconscious. Moreover, Murakami's narrative illustrates not only the manifestations of absent grief across two generations, but also the ways in which such unprocessed loss is transmitted intergenerationally, even when experience remains enveloped in silence. The analysis further considers the convergence of fictional, collective, and personal narratives considering Murakami's biographical context.
ABSTRACT This paper explores the foundations of Balint groups, a method for studying clinical relationships and countertransference. Enid and Michael Balint began holding seminars with general practitioners at the Tavistock Clinic in 1950, aiming to apply psychoanalytic principles to understand the doctor‐patient relationship. Balint groups have since evolved and spread around the world primarily via the medical community. This applied psychoanalytic method is supported by a substantial body of research, including over 250 qualitative and 30 quantitative studies from 39 nations. Drawing on this international medical literature, we examine themes from the field research on Balint groups through various contemporary psychoanalytic lenses. This integrative approach highlights parallels between Balint group process and psychoanalytic work (including treatment, training, and supervision). We conclude by considering the historical arc of Balint groups and advocating for their reintegration into psychoanalytic theory and practice. This research also supports wider adoption of Balint groups in psychotherapy and other helping professions.
ABSTRACT This article offers a theoretical analysis, grounded in a critical narrative review within the Freudian‐Lacanian tradition, of how platform algorithms shape contemporary forms of subjectivity and raise new questions for psychoanalytic practice. The discussion focuses specifically on algorithmic systems of curation, ranking, personalization, and engagement metrics that organize visibility and circulation across social media, dating apps, streaming services, and search environments. Rather than treating such systems as autonomous causes of novel psychic structures, the article advances the hypothesis that platform algorithms function as complex socio‐technical operators that reorganize, accelerate, and intensify pre‐existing drive circuits. In this sense, they may come to occupy the fantasmatic position of an “algorithmic Other”: not a new symbolic Other, but a semblance of consistency, predictability, and seamless responsiveness that bears significant consequences for desire, fantasy, symptom formation, jouissance, and transference. The article pursues three aims: to clarify the epistemological status of the platform algorithm in relation to psychoanalytic theory; to distinguish between quantitative intensifications of already‐described psychic mechanisms and qualitative specificities of digital platform environments; and to examine the clinical and ethico‐political implications of these transformations, including the limits of chatbot‐mediated interventions. It argues, in conclusion, that psychoanalysis remains uniquely positioned to interrogate the contemporary alliance between algorithmic mediation, the promise of frictionless satisfaction, and the disavowal of lack.
ABSTRACT This article offers an applied psychoanalytic reading of Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad , examining how the monstrous Whatsitsname embodies collective trauma in post‐2003 Iraq. Building on Freud's Moses and Monotheism , the study theorizes the novel as a conceptual laboratory for understanding how societies metabolize violence when symbolic authority collapses. Using a qualitative interpretive methodology grounded in psychoanalytic hermeneutics with structured textual indexing, the analysis develops two interrelated concepts: collective superego failure—the erosion of shared symbolic structures that ordinarily regulate aggression through law and memory—and distributed traumatization—a form of collective psychic life in which unassimilated historical violence circulates across subjects, institutions, and generations without integration into a unified national ego. The novel's stitched, decaying creature materializes Iraq's unresolved founding trauma, transforming Gothic horror into diagnostic allegory. By demonstrating how literary narrative can function as a site for theorizing institutional trauma, the article extends Freud's account of transgenerational transmission into the domain of state failure and contributes to applied psychoanalytic thinking about post‐conflict recovery, symbolic repair, and the reconstruction of civic authority.
