The Introduction of Eros: Reflections on the Work of Hans Loewald

Lear, Jonathan

doi:10.1177/000306519604400302

Cited by 30 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 4 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…And here is where the continuists come in, claiming that, after the abandonment of the seduction theory in its strict sense, Freud persisted in recognizing that actual seductions took place, and that they were harmful (see, e.g., Hanly 1986;Garcia 1987;Eissler 1993;Lear 1996). The essence of the continuist argument is that Freud did not ignore the importance of seduction after the seduction theory, but rather simply improved his theory by adding in concern for infantile sexuality and the power of its fantasies.…”

Section: Continuist Argumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Lear (1996) suggests that Freud did not give up attention to the impact of seduction but rather revised his epistemology: "Abandoning the seduction theory is, fundamentally, abandoning the idea that citing any actual event could be the end of one's psychological-explanatory activity. One needs to know how that event (or nonevent) is taken up into a person's imaginative life; how it is metabolized in fantasy" (p. 676).…”

Section: Continuist Argumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

“I no Longer Believe”: Did Freud Abandon the Seduction Theory?

Ahbel-Rappe

2006

J Am Psychoanal Assoc

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent accounts of the seduction theory and the question of its abandonment have emphasized the continuity of Freud's work before and after the seduction theory, claiming that Freud did not abandon his concern with the event of seduction but rather came to appreciate that an understanding of fantasy was also essential. This claim is challenged. It is shown that Freud did abandon the passionate concerns of his seduction theory for the most part; that he left behind his early interest in reconstructing unconscious infantile incest and focused instead on later, conscious seduction; that he at times clearly reduced apparent paternal incest to fantasy; that he turned away from the phenomenology of incest he had begun to develop; and that he theoretically nullified the value of the difference between real and fantasied seduction. It is also shown that, contrary to a persistent concern in psychoanalytic history, attention to actual seduction need not detract from the essential psychoanalytic concern with fantasy and infantile sexuality. Thinking about incest specifically illuminates the capacity for fantasizing, the core of the Freudian psyche. In this way the intuition of the seduction theory that there is something of distinctive psychoanalytic significance about incest finds support.

show abstract

Section: Continuist Argumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Continuist Argumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I no Longer Believe”: Did Freud Abandon the Seduction Theory?

Ahbel-Rappe

2006

J Am Psychoanal Assoc

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Through the subliminatory channels, desire will touch social and cultural life, informing our perceptions of beauty (Plato, 2006). Yet the range of Eros has rarely been the subject of psychoanalytic scrutiny, and although all of human development takes place at the behest of Eros, as Jonathan Lear (1966, p. 673) notes: “We lack an understanding of what Eros is.” We must conclude, along with such disparate thinkers as André Green and Harry Harlow, that psychology may have little to teach us about love beyond what we can learn from our greatest artists.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustaining the object through the erotic imagination: Karoly Makk’s Szerelem [love]

Weinstein

2013

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“… For relatively clear historical reasons Freud's metaphor of a death drive has been used by him and others to explain three different types of phenomena: aggression, unanalysable behaviour and psychological entropy (Lear, ). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychic reality and the nature of consciousness

Fonagy

Allison

2016

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper we make the case for a psychoanalytically informed reconsideration of the phenomena of consciousness. Classically, following Freud, who viewed consciousness as merely a reflection or perception of unconscious mental activity, psychoanalysts have tended to regard a focus on conscious experience as potentially reductionistic and at risk of overlooking the mind's deeper structures. We describe the case of Mr K, a patient who experienced disturbances of consciousness that forced us to consider the possibility that the capacity to experience ourselves as conscious, intentional agents in a coherent world of objects is not merely a modality of perception but rather a maturational and developmental achievement that to some degree depends on adequate experiences of caregiving and is vital in ensuring the possibility of human communication. As such, it is a capacity that is vulnerable to experiences of neglect and maltreatment. We suggest that as well as compromising the capacity to think about one's own and other people's feelings, such experiences may have the further adverse consequence of leading the individual to experience and risk becoming conscious of certain dangerously maladaptive, destructive states of mind which in normal development remain inaccessible to conscious experience. Phenomenologically, such states of mind are experienced as fragmentation and disturbances of consciousness. We discuss the clinical implications of these reflections and the limitations they place on psychoanalytic work in the context of their impact on the work with Mr K.

show abstract

The Introduction of Eros: Reflections on the Work of Hans Loewald

Cited by 30 publications

References 4 publications

“I no Longer Believe”: Did Freud Abandon the Seduction Theory?

“I no Longer Believe”: Did Freud Abandon the Seduction Theory?

Sustaining the object through the erotic imagination: Karoly Makk’s Szerelem [love]

Psychic reality and the nature of consciousness

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About