Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
In Analysis
IN ANALYSIS WITH FREUD HIMSELF
Anna G, a gifted and tenacious young psychiatrist, educated to the clinical standards of the Burghölzli in Switzerland, arrived in a Vienna ravaged by inflation, hunger, and inflation, in 1921. In the midst of the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, she was there to undertake a cursus of analysis with professor Freud. Thus, she ventures to Berggasse, 19. The master, now 65 and empoverished by the war, has assembled a financially comfortable clientèle. Freud is unmovable: fixed fees, a daily session of one hour, six days out of seven for four months. Military-style intervention? No, but high- pressure tactics. In those days, becoming well did not mean crying over one’s momentary feelings.
Three quarters of a century have gone by when, Anna Koellereuter, psycho-analyst, discovers the two precious notebooks where her grand-mother has commented, with great finesse, her analysis with Freud. April 1921-July 1921. Four decisive months and
eighty sessions, dense, intense. Freud, hardly distracted, follows the break lines of the young woman’s psychic conflict. Anna G, caught up in an endless engagement, is in love with a handsome sculptor but can’t manage to make the leap. It is with the skill of an archeologist that Freud examines the psychic layers. The current strata, is her amorous indecision; the one underneath concerns her brothers; finally, the most profound, reveals her parents. «Have you read Fragment of an Analysis of Hysteria: Dora»? asks the master. Yes, but I have no memory, reflects Anna G.
Transference, the road to a cure
«Your dream is a total copy of that of Dora. You are putting yourself in the shoes of Dora and we well know she is in love with her father,» Sound the alarm! Freud is overstepping. The overwhelming reference to Dora, the most well-known hysteric in psychoanalysis, falls heavily on Anna. «I love you in such an undescribable fashion, as I have never loved anyone, it seems to me», she declares. «It is a tranference to me of the ancient love, suggests Freud, and of the love sentiment you used to experience toward your father. Disappointment, amorous jealousy, etc, will follow as well.» It is the crucial issue of transference, prime agent in establishing a cure, that Freud is accepting with total equanimity. «This love for your father was so without measure that all that followed it was but its mere shadow.»
A forced interpretation? Suggestion, analyst interference, self-delusion? Psychoanalysis was long forced to deal with this reproach. But Anna’s love admission
bears witness that the nub of the psychic conflict has been found. To all his critics, Freud answered in Construction dans l’analyse(1937): «Without boasting, I can affirm that there never was any abuse of suggestion in my analytic practice.» Anna G, a young 27 year old woman, cannot untangle herself from a fantasy love for her father. She decides she has a donjuanesque temperament, wants the penis of a seducer, would like a child with her own parent. «People are extraordinarily inventive where the unconscious is involved», comments Freud. Thus a recourse to the symbolic, that holy fixture of the couch, the cheap trick of the psycho-analyst short on interpretation. In this line of thought, an umbrella would be a virile member, and a small box would suggest female intimacy. Thus anything goes. It is the subject of analysis, according to Freud, who makes a difference. «If he accepts the interpretation, all is well, but if he contradicts it, it is but a sign of his resistance, and we are still right,» The interpretation is a looser if and only if the subject over-reacts. In July, Freud tells her: «You are in the grips of rebellion against your parents.» Anna has earned her psychic independance.
«The young G girl has become totally transparent and, in effect, the analysis is over; but I have no way of knowing what life has in store for her from now on» writes Freud to Pastor Pfister. In 1923, she marries her beloved sculptor and the couple will have four children. So indeed this is the journal of a mission accomplished!
from: LIRE, mars 2010
a review of Mon Analyse avec le professeur Freud, par Anna G
Texte de Alain Rubens
Anna G, a gifted and tenacious young psychiatrist, educated to the clinical standards of the Burghölzli in Switzerland, arrived in a Vienna ravaged by inflation, hunger, and inflation, in 1921. In the midst of the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, she was there to undertake a cursus of analysis with professor Freud. Thus, she ventures to Berggasse, 19. The master, now 65 and empoverished by the war, has assembled a financially comfortable clientèle. Freud is unmovable: fixed fees, a daily session of one hour, six days out of seven for four months. Military-style intervention? No, but high- pressure tactics. In those days, becoming well did not mean crying over one’s momentary feelings.
Three quarters of a century have gone by when, Anna Koellereuter, psycho-analyst, discovers the two precious notebooks where her grand-mother has commented, with great finesse, her analysis with Freud. April 1921-July 1921. Four decisive months and
eighty sessions, dense, intense. Freud, hardly distracted, follows the break lines of the young woman’s psychic conflict. Anna G, caught up in an endless engagement, is in love with a handsome sculptor but can’t manage to make the leap. It is with the skill of an archeologist that Freud examines the psychic layers. The current strata, is her amorous indecision; the one underneath concerns her brothers; finally, the most profound, reveals her parents. «Have you read Fragment of an Analysis of Hysteria: Dora»? asks the master. Yes, but I have no memory, reflects Anna G.
Transference, the road to a cure
«Your dream is a total copy of that of Dora. You are putting yourself in the shoes of Dora and we well know she is in love with her father,» Sound the alarm! Freud is overstepping. The overwhelming reference to Dora, the most well-known hysteric in psychoanalysis, falls heavily on Anna. «I love you in such an undescribable fashion, as I have never loved anyone, it seems to me», she declares. «It is a tranference to me of the ancient love, suggests Freud, and of the love sentiment you used to experience toward your father. Disappointment, amorous jealousy, etc, will follow as well.» It is the crucial issue of transference, prime agent in establishing a cure, that Freud is accepting with total equanimity. «This love for your father was so without measure that all that followed it was but its mere shadow.»
A forced interpretation? Suggestion, analyst interference, self-delusion? Psychoanalysis was long forced to deal with this reproach. But Anna’s love admission
bears witness that the nub of the psychic conflict has been found. To all his critics, Freud answered in Construction dans l’analyse(1937): «Without boasting, I can affirm that there never was any abuse of suggestion in my analytic practice.» Anna G, a young 27 year old woman, cannot untangle herself from a fantasy love for her father. She decides she has a donjuanesque temperament, wants the penis of a seducer, would like a child with her own parent. «People are extraordinarily inventive where the unconscious is involved», comments Freud. Thus a recourse to the symbolic, that holy fixture of the couch, the cheap trick of the psycho-analyst short on interpretation. In this line of thought, an umbrella would be a virile member, and a small box would suggest female intimacy. Thus anything goes. It is the subject of analysis, according to Freud, who makes a difference. «If he accepts the interpretation, all is well, but if he contradicts it, it is but a sign of his resistance, and we are still right,» The interpretation is a looser if and only if the subject over-reacts. In July, Freud tells her: «You are in the grips of rebellion against your parents.» Anna has earned her psychic independance.
«The young G girl has become totally transparent and, in effect, the analysis is over; but I have no way of knowing what life has in store for her from now on» writes Freud to Pastor Pfister. In 1923, she marries her beloved sculptor and the couple will have four children. So indeed this is the journal of a mission accomplished!
from: LIRE, mars 2010
a review of Mon Analyse avec le professeur Freud, par Anna G
Texte de Alain Rubens
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
GPS
NO GPS WITHOUT RELATIVITY
Global Positioning Systems are only possible where one makes two types of adjustments based on relativity theory. Not to do so would lead to errors of the magnitude of tens of meters every day. Where are dealing here with a concrete application of space-time and the curvature of space. On the one hand, a satellite in space travels at 3,874 km\s with respect to earth. The correction to be made is in the square of the speed of the satellite over the square of the speed of light, thus on the order of 10^-10 (0,...ten zeros before the 1). This may seem ridiculously little but it translates into some ten meters after 5 minutes of operations. The positioning error for a day would thus be 2 kilometers if this were not corrected. To this simple relativistic correction should be added one from General Relativity. Earth curves space-time in its vicinity, which entails a diference in period for two clocks situated at different altitudes within the gravitational field of the planet. A clock on board a satellite goes a bit more quickly than the same on earth, for the gravitational field is weaker at high altitude. The difference is appreciable, 46 microseconds per day: the effect from gravitation is here more important than that for the speed of the satellite with respect to that of the earth. The two effects go in opposite directions, but the resulting temporal imbalance of 39 us per day is not negligeable. The satellite moved by 15 centimeters during that time. Within a few days, Global Positioning Systems would become totally useless without the help of relativistic equations.
from: Deiber, André et al, La Physique pour les nuls, éditions First 2009.
Global Positioning Systems are only possible where one makes two types of adjustments based on relativity theory. Not to do so would lead to errors of the magnitude of tens of meters every day. Where are dealing here with a concrete application of space-time and the curvature of space. On the one hand, a satellite in space travels at 3,874 km\s with respect to earth. The correction to be made is in the square of the speed of the satellite over the square of the speed of light, thus on the order of 10^-10 (0,...ten zeros before the 1). This may seem ridiculously little but it translates into some ten meters after 5 minutes of operations. The positioning error for a day would thus be 2 kilometers if this were not corrected. To this simple relativistic correction should be added one from General Relativity. Earth curves space-time in its vicinity, which entails a diference in period for two clocks situated at different altitudes within the gravitational field of the planet. A clock on board a satellite goes a bit more quickly than the same on earth, for the gravitational field is weaker at high altitude. The difference is appreciable, 46 microseconds per day: the effect from gravitation is here more important than that for the speed of the satellite with respect to that of the earth. The two effects go in opposite directions, but the resulting temporal imbalance of 39 us per day is not negligeable. The satellite moved by 15 centimeters during that time. Within a few days, Global Positioning Systems would become totally useless without the help of relativistic equations.
from: Deiber, André et al, La Physique pour les nuls, éditions First 2009.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
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