Breath-Triggered Haptic and Acoustic Guides to Support Effortless Calm Breathing.

Stress is a common issue in today's society and can be caused by a variety of triggers in activities such as work or driving. Various negative consequences can arise of stress such as reduced job productivity, sleep disorders, or physiological diseases like depression or anxiety. A popular approach to manage stress is voluntary deep and slow breathing.

Little Hans and the "Enigmatic Messages" of His Parents.

The authors discuss the psychoanalytic treatment of Little Hans, drawing on the perspective offered by Laplanche's concept of "enigmatic messages," which they believe can contribute to a better understanding of this case history. They conclude that Little Hans's positive Oedipus complex conceals his negative Oedipus complex in which he represents his parents' oedipal problems in a distorted fashion. They demonstrate the way his parents project aspects of these problems into Hans's psyche, where his subsequent identifications with them lead to substitutive formations.

Hallucination in Adolescence-Or, Nora in Nowhereland Between Neurosis and Psychosis.

The authors present a case history in which they investigate the psychic mechanisms behind the production and function of adolescent hallucinations against the background of Freud's framework and Laplanche's concept of enigmatic messages. They conclude that these hallucinations, although to all appearance psychotic, are basically neurotic in nature, and that both their content and hallucinatory form serve to protect the defense mechanisms with which parents ward off their unconscious conflicts.

Psychoanalysis Today-A Pseudoscience? A Critique of the Arbitrary Nature of Psychoanalytic Theories and Practice.

The article centers on psychoanalysts' indifferent attitude to the mutually exclusivity of theoretical conceptualizations and the ensuing technical rules for treatment. In the author's view this indifference is due to psychoanalysts being business people for whom the exchange value of their service is essentially of greater interest than its utility value, which latter is only of interest as a means of realizing the former. The author argues that, as a consequence of the disparate coexisting conceptualizations being treated as equally valid, psychoanalysis becomes a science without truth, that is, a pseudoscience, and demonstrates that all attempts to appropriate the epithet ornans "scientific" to psychoanalysis by linking its concepts to findings in areas beyond its conceptual field have failed.

Penis Envy and the Female Oedipus Complex: A Plea to Reawaken an Ineffectual Debate.

Going along with Laplanche's assumption that there is no endogenous sexuality, the authors discuss Freud's concepts of the female Oedipus complex and penis envy and some of its proposed alternatives. The female oedipal conflict turns out to be the outcome of a projective identification with the Oedipus complexes of the mother and father. In the context of the rivalry with the mother, penis envy refers to the maternal power over the father's penis that the daughter wants to have in herself, while, in the context of the rivalry with the father, penis envy arises from the jealousy of the father's penis that the daughter believes is necessary to have on herself in order to satisfy her mother.