Conversation With Mark Solms.

Occasioned by the publication of , the text represents exchanges held in the summer of 2024 at the invitation of . It addresses the genesis and the history of the project, and its impact on psychoanalytic rethinking, formation, and practice. While exploring the potential and the limits of revisioning, it also raises questions about the nature of transmission of psychoanalytic knowledge and about the field's relation to the state of its own standards in the age of Anthropocene.

Psychoanalytic object relations theory revised: Affect systems and the notion of drives.

This paper explores the concept of drives as basic motivational neurobiological structures determining the organization of psychic life. I express my agreement with Mark Solms' radical reformulation of the general principles organizing human behaviour at the neurobiological and psychodynamic levels, his combination of Friston's computational information theory and Panksepp's affect systems. I agree with him that the affect systems described by Panksepp constitute the primary drives and that the conflicts between affect systems are the origin of unconscious intrapsychic conflict.

Treatment Objectives, Memory, and Desire.

This article explores the problems of the frequent loss, in the course of treatment, of the initial goals and motivation for treatment by both patient and therapist, and the connected lack of clarity of the real initial motivation for treatment on the part of both participants. It is strongly proposed that a true coincidence of at least one important initial motivational goal of patient and therapist is essential to assure the success of psychotherapy and that particular care is required to establish such agreement. On this basis, the goals of therapy may be expanded in the course of the therapist's experience, countertransference, and the patient's changing reality during treatment, and the existential and philosophical value systems of the therapist may play an important role in such widening of the therapist's expectations for the patient.

Aging, Dying, and the Analytic Process.

The panel discussion presented at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute's 1066th Scientific Meeting held on June 8, 2023, takes up aging and dying of an analyst and their impact on patients and on the nature of analytic process. Participants reflect on conflicts and challenges arising with more analysts and patients living to an advanced age, on the unregulated nature of analysts' retirement, and on multilayered meanings of analysts' ethical commitment to their work.

Borderline personality disorder: a comprehensive review of diagnosis and clinical presentation, etiology, treatment, and current controversies.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) was introduced in the DSM-III in 1980. From the DSM-III to the DSM-5, no major changes have occurred in its defining criteria. The disorder is characterized by instability of self-image, interpersonal relationships and affects.