Introduction to Michel De M’uzan’s “Slaves of Quantity”

Simpson, Richard B.

doi:10.1002/j.2167-4086.2003.tb00647.x

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Since he could not find a way to represent his experience, discharge of excitement was the only option. He resembled what de M'Uzan (2003) called a "slave of quantity" (see also Simpson 2003). These waves of pure discharge would eventually give way to other experiences-such as the present one-when there were fertile connections, and he and I could make links between multiple layers of experience.…”

Section: Clinical Illustrationmentioning

confidence: 81%

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When Theory Paints a Picture: a Clinician Reflects on Piera Aulagnier’s Metapsychology

Glassgold

2010

The Psychoanalytic Quarterly

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The author discusses a patient who, while not frankly psychotic, was prone to states of disintegration marked by fragmented thinking, retreats into extreme isolation, and an idiosyncratic relation to language that manifested in his speaking without seeming to communicate. The analyst used his own forms of dreaming and reverie, including looking at pictures, to help him understand the patient's unique forms of self-expression. The metapsychology of French analyst Piera Aulagnier was particularly useful to the analyst in conceptualizing the patient's experience an understanding his reactions to interventions.

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Section: Clinical Illustrationmentioning

confidence: 81%

“…I was sitting right there next to Eli, but I felt as if someone else were speaking. I had entered a passage à l'acte (Dean 1992, p. 40;de M'Uzan 2003;Simpson 2003). It was as if I were "not me" and "not there," or no where (Laplanche 2005;Pontalis 2003).…”

Section: Clinical Illustrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Theory Paints a Picture: a Clinician Reflects on Piera Aulagnier’s Metapsychology

Glassgold

2010

The Psychoanalytic Quarterly

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“…Several French theories of perversion developed around de M'Uzan's case of masochistic perversion (which will be described later), primarily because his description of erotogenic masochism disagreed with essential points in Freud's (1924) essay on masochism. De M'Uzan himself, in his 1973 paper, and particularly in a later theoretical paper Simpson, 2003), focused on excessive quantity of excitation related to fatal irrevocable traumatic situations early in life. Laplanche (1999) shifted from Freud's biologistic endogenous drive theory to primal seduction, which affi rms the priority of the other, not the Lacanian Other, but the concrete other-the adult facing the child, introducing 'a message to be translated'.…”

Section: IImentioning

confidence: 99%

Pentheus rather than Oedipus: On perversion, survival and analytic ‘presencing’

Eshel¹

2005

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis

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Following an introductory review of the main developments in the psychoanalytic thinking on perversion, the author focuses on her own understanding of perversion and its treatment, based on the psychoanalytic treatment of patients with severe sexual perversions. This paper uses the term ‘autotomy’ (borrowed from the fi eld of biology) to describe perversion formation as an ‘autotomous’ defence solution involving massive dissociative splitting in the service of psychic survival within a violent, traumatic early childhood situation; thus, a compulsively enacted ‘desire for ritualised trauma’ ensues. The specifi c nature of the perverse scenario embodies the specifi c experiential core quality of the traumatic situation. It is an actual repetition in the present of the imprint of a past destructive experience which is pre‐arranged and stage‐managed; it thus encounters haunting scenes of dread or psychic annihilation while, at the same time, controlling, sanitising and disavowing them. Hence, the world of severe perversion is no longer oedipal, but rather the world of Pentheus, Euripides's most tragic hero‐a world dominated by a mixture of a mother's madness, devourment, destruction and rituals of desire. According to this view, the (diffi cult) psychoanalytic treatment of perversion focuses on patient‐analyst interconnectedness‐brought about by the analyst's ‘givenness to being present’ or ‘presencing’‐at a deep, primary level of contact and impact (the emphasis being on the ontological dimension of experience). This evolving therapeutic entity creates and actualises a new, alternative experiential‐emotional reality within the pervert's alienated world, eventually generating a change in the perverse essence. The author illustrate this approach with three clinical vignettes.

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“…Even the important early paper of Marty and de M’Uzan (1963) that established the importance of the concept of la pensée opératoire (a form of concrete, non‐self‐reflective, stimulus‐bound thought) had never appeared in English, so that, when I was researching the subject in 2002, I had to prepare my own translation. In introducing his recent English translation of a paper of de M’Uzan (2003[1984]), Simpson attributed the relative lack of representation of this French school in the anglophone psychoanalytic world to “difficulties in translation, both linguistic and cultural” (Simpson, 2003, p. 699)…”

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confidence: 99%

Commentary on Pierre Marty’sThe narcissistic difficulties presented to the observer by the psychosomatic problem

Gottlieb

2010

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis

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Introduction to Michel De M’uzan’s “Slaves of Quantity”

Cited by 5 publications

References 2 publications

When Theory Paints a Picture: a Clinician Reflects on Piera Aulagnier’s Metapsychology

When Theory Paints a Picture: a Clinician Reflects on Piera Aulagnier’s Metapsychology

Pentheus rather than Oedipus: On perversion, survival and analytic ‘presencing’

Commentary on Pierre Marty’sThe narcissistic difficulties presented to the observer by the psychosomatic problem

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