Edges of the Voice in Psychoanalysis

2021

In this rich and prolific book Amir brings to our attention the many aspects of the relations between psychic processes and the principles of language. She casts a light on regions that are outside the reach of verbal expression or even clash with any effort at articulation. Her clinical innovations, anchored in her profound understanding of the mazes of psychic syntax, make a daring and original addition to the psychoanalytic canon.' -Prof. Aner Govrin, Doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis,

Research frequently addresses a gap between practice and research in the field of psychotherapy. Castonguay et al (2010) suggest that the practice of many full-time psychotherapists is rarely or nonsubstantially influenced by research. Boisvert and Faust (2005) ask 'why do psychotherapists not rely on the research to consistently inform their practice?' and suggest that concerns 'have echoed through the decades' about psychotherapists' failings to integrate of research and practice. This study focuses on therapists' (counsellors and psychotherapists) reasoning about their engagement with 'research' as described in dissertations and in personal, anonymously presented documents, research journals and interviews included. The study focuses on the stages which generally are referred to as 'data analysis', which in this study refers research stages where interpretation typically is required with synthesising and analysing in mind. Turning our attention to the therapists' 'narrative knowing' about research during these stages where generating own new knowledge is put to the forefront, have highlighted a complex relationship involving epistemological discrepancies, real or imagined, between practice and research. It also highlighted gender issues, culture and commonly held constructs about what constitutes a 'counsellor', which we believe influence therapists' presence in research. We decided to include the citation "Therapists have a lot to add to the field of research, but many don't make it there" in the title to illustrate some of the complexity. The study is based on a Professional Doctorate programme, which engages with psychologists, counsellors and psychotherapists in practice-based research. In addition to drawing from dissertations already in the public domain students and graduates from the doctoral programme were invited to contribute their own embodied experiences from 'doing' a data analysis. The paper suggests a hybrid for narrative analysis, discussing the options to (re-)present narratives guided by a combined interest into the unique, personal whilst also looking for 'themes' within and across these narratives.

Revista PsicoFAE: Pluralidades em Saúde Mental, 2021

The interview centres on Ian Parker's book Psychoanalysis, Clinic and Context: Subjectivity, History and Autobiography. London: Routledge (2019). In this publication Parker provides an account of psychoanalysis and history, situating his own biography. In this critical analysis of psychoanalytic theory and practice, Parker explores key psychoanalytic concepts based on Marxist and Foucauldian perspectives, through a biographical journey. Parker brings important contributions to a critical view on psychoanalytic theory and practice, exploring deadlocks of psychoanalytic theories and insights towards subjectivity. Interwiever: First of all, thank you very much for participating in the interview. We could start by talking about your book Psychoanalysis, Clinic and Context: Subjectivity, History and Autobiography (London: Routledge, 2019), which brings important insights into psychoanalytic theory and practice, particularly on the contributions from Foucauldian Discourse Analysis and Marxist perspectives for critical perspectives in and outside psychoanalysis. Ian: What you have been describing are all of the things that are in the book, and I think the first thing to say is that the book, is one book simply focusing on psychoanalysis, there is going to be another book that will be published next year that will be focused on psychology. I think those are two very difficult questions for us here in Britain. I am not sure whether the same applies for you in Brazil, but in Britain the discipline of psychology usually treats psychoanalysis as a strange subspeciality and usually gets Freud out of the way in the first year of the degree, and then there are studies of developmental psychology, neuro psychology, cognitive psychology, etc., etc. without any references to psychoanalysis. So, that's one thing, psychoanalysis, which we are focusing on in this book, is a study and experience of human subjectivity in the practice of care in the clinic that has operated usually outside the discipline of psychology and usually outside the universities. So, I'm focusing on the way that I encountered psychoanalysis, the way that I trained in psychoanalysis, and I look at the limitations of psychoanalysis as an epistemological framework to comprehend political matters and matters that psychology should be concerned with.

British Journal of Social Psychology, 1997

Discourse analysis presents a challenge to mainstream psychology, but it risks either neglecting individual experience by employing a quasi-behaviourist notion of 'blank Subjectivity' or folding back into simple humanism through an appeal to 'uncomplicated Subjectivity'. This paper argues that productive links can be made with psychoanalysis to elaborate an alternative notion of 'complex subjectivity' which would provide a better theory of the subject, and so circumvent these problems. Eight aspects of transformative theoretical work that would need to be applied to psychoanalytic writing-a move to a human science frame, a turn to collective phenomena, a shift away from always intentional authorial responsibility, a reading of texts as reconstructions of the past, an attention to researcher subjectivity, an understanding of the text as 'other', an emphasis on language in reframing accounts, and a sensitivity to the cultural specificity of analytic vocabularies-are described, and some reflections on method, including a description of the 'discursive complex' as an appropriate analytic device, are outlined. * Requests for reprints.