Analytic process and dreaming about analysis.

Dreams about the analytic session feature a manifest content in which the analytic setting is subject to distortion while the analyst appears undisguised. Such dreams are a consistent yet infrequent occurrence in most analyses. Their specificity consists in never reproducing the material conditions of the analysis as such.

The personal myth: a re-evaluation.

This paper presents a re-evaluation of Kris's personal myth. The notion has been used rather sparingly despite the Delphi Symposium in 1984 on the question of its clinical usefulness. After framing the notion of myth, some difficulties related to the question are identified.

The role and importance of interpretation in the talking cure.

Starting with an exploration of how the concept of interpretation in analytical treatment has evolved, the author goes on to discuss the role and importance of interpretation in the changes that psychoanalysis brings about. Although interpretation is looked upon as the key element in psychoanalytic activity, the fact that it is subsumed within the transference raises questions as to its influence in the analytical domain. After discussing the foundations of interpretation with respect to the theory of psychoanalytic treatment and examining Strachey's views on this, the author defines the conditions and constraints surrounding interpretation and preparatory interventions in order to outline the essential nature of the interpretative process as seen against the wider background of the analyst's activity as manifested through speech.

Psychiatric aspects of chronic palliative care: waiting for death.

This article emphasizes the shifting paradigm of palliative care from cancer patients to vital organ failure in chronic diseases. It offers a view about a type of palliative care for patients reaching the pre-terminal phase of a chronic illness. Unlike cancer patients, time is not as sharply delineated and physical pain is not a major factor, but psychological distress is often a major component of the clinical condition.

Termination: the hidden face of analysis.

Although the question of analytic endings has been the subject of many contributions and round tables, it always presents a theoretical and clinical dilemma that remains unresolved by the search for more explicit criteria. The problem of the final phase is a post-Freudian development which coincides historically with the emergence of studies on the countertransference, and it presupposes prior questions concerning the goals and results of analytic treatment. The following question is posed: what is the specific psychoanalytic event of the final phase? The author begins by examining the theoretical issues linked to temporality and separation, clarifying certain clinical aspects linked to the precession of the countertransference in determining the ending, before going on to illustrate a number of indicators with a clinical vignette.

TakoTsubo syndrome and emotional stress: a heuristic approach.

While acute and reversible coronary syndrome without anatomical damage, called TakoTsubo syndrome, has been repeatedly associated with emotional stress, the specific categories of stressors have been ill-defined. Following a review of variously described emotional stressors associated with that specific cardiomyopathy, a clinical report is presented to raise two issues: the overlap of biological risk factors with emotional stress and the interplay of acute and subacute emotional stressors.

Notes on the beating fantasy.

This theoretical paper revisits the beating fantasy, which constitutes a crossroads of the psychic economy in that it condenses three primal phantasies, namely the primal scene, castration and seduction. Two forms of the phantasy have been distinguished: a 'fixed' form, apparently associated with the masochistic perversion, and a 'transitory' form, probably bound up with libidinal development. In Freud 's (1919) paper these two aspects are intertwined.

[Brief intervention in psychiatric consultation].

This essay presents a perspective on intervention in psychiatric consultation based on the patient's subjective experience as supported by Kendler in 2005 in the American Journal of Psychiatry in his position against biological reductionism in psychiatry, distinguishing the psychic approach from the biological. The paper presents aspects of the setting and major features of the assessment in the consultation process, then proceeds to discussing principles of intervention as to specify dimensions of the psychiatric intervention in this particular context.

Transference symptom.

Transference symptom is a hazy notion in Freud's writings. The notion is presented here as a particular moment in the crystallization of the transference neurosis. It results from a double cathexis of the analytic frame and the analyst resulting in a symbolic distortion that is represented plastically within the session, as occurs in dreams.

Aesthetic experience.

An initial clinical question, 'Why does an analysand talk about his/her relationship with an aesthetic object?' opens an investigation into the nature of aesthetic experience. Three principal aspects of the psychoanalytic approach are presented: sublimation, a Freudian concept concerning the vicissitudes of the drives; reparation, a Kleinian concept linked to depressive anxiety; and transformation, a concept of object-relations theory about primitive ego-states. The article discusses the psychic function of aesthetic feelings in mastering anxiety as related to ego, id and superego.

Steroid psychosis: a review.

This review is built upon a time-framed perspective to unfold the growth of evidence and the shifting of focus from primary affective short-term reactions to later findings of cognitive deficits and possible permanent impairment linked to steroid treatment. An incidence related to dosage has been documented and delirium and withdrawal symptoms have been reported in later studies. A hypothesis of sensitization process with multiple course of steroids has been proposed with the reporting of recurrent cases.