International Journal of Psychoanalysis and Education: Subject, Action & Society

Psychiatric Emergencies Revisited Between Institutions and Myth Writing

2025-09-11T10:19:31+02:00

This article analyses the psychiatric emergencies’ clinic in order to identify a myth: the myth of care. Following a brief review of the literature, we draw on a qualitative institutional situation and a theoretical conception combining mythology, psychoanalysis and the institution. Our own conception of the myth of care is demonstrated here: in particular where the event is an emergency, the institution uses repetition to deal with the ineliminable, in other words a non-symbolic point. We discover that the curative ideal, explicitly illustrated by the myth of care, tends to objectify the emergency, whereas the objective is the discursive construction of a temporality. The conclusion of our analysis proves the non-symbolic point of the emergency, which paralyses an institutional temporality. Moreover, the way out would be to use myth as a relay of knowledge.

The Adventures of a Black Bag

2026-04-28T18:35:51+02:00

The general practitioner (GP) is a key player in the Italian healthcare system—not only as a provider of first-line care, but as a long-term, reliable figure in patients' lives. This study explores the emotional and symbolic dimensions of the GP-patient relationship through qualitative interviews of 65 patients. We examined affective representations that are shared coming up in the narratives of patients a computer assisted text analysis. Our findings substantiate the preeminent position of this association as a pillar of clinical effectiveness and psychological security. The evidence points to two underlying dynamics: one, the tension between the patient's imperative requirement for care and their sense of the doctor's occupational autonomy; two, a symbolic construction of the GP as rational expert and caring parent—a secure haven in times of vulnerability. What is perhaps noteworthy here is that patients' expectations are motivated less by fear of clinical incompetence and more by an impassioned desire for reassurance, presence, and empathic listening. This affective need, if unacknowledged, can become a source of misunderstanding that GPs might confuse with disagreement with their professional worth. These findings indicate that relational and communication competencies in GP training is critical to maintaining therapeutic relationships. This research provides a culture-based lens that can guide policy and practice—favoring more humane, emotionally competent primary care provision.

The Maternal Gaze and Fractured Subjectivity in Hitchcock's Psycho

2026-04-28T23:34:28+02:00

This article examines Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) through a Lacanian psychoanalytic framework, analyzing how the film's spatial organization, vocal dynamics, and visual strategies construct a fractured subjectivity that challenges traditional narrative cinema. By examining the interplay between the maternal voice, architectural spaces, and the voyeuristic gaze, this study demonstrates how Hitchcock's masterpiece functions as a cinematic exploration of the unconscious, where the repressed maternal figure returns to disrupt both Norman Bates's psyche and the spectator's comfortable position. The analysis reveals how the film's famous house/motel dichotomy serves as a spatial metaphor for the conscious/unconscious divide, while the omnipresent maternal voice operates as both Lacanian superego and the "Name-of-the-Father," ultimately destabilizing conventional gender roles and spectatorial identification.

The Architecture of the Void

2026-05-03T17:57:32+02:00

This article reframes the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:16–21) by shifting the analytical focus from a traditional moral critique of greed and practical atheism to a structural investigation of “the damaged core” and “psychic inertia”. Utilising a heuristic dialogue between theology and psychodynamic theory, the author synthesises the frameworks of Ogden, Bollas, Anzieu, Bick, Spotnitz, Akhtar, Khan and Green to decode the narrative into three specific psychic “architectures”. The protagonist’s retreat into “bigger barns” is reframed not as simple greed, but as a desperate struggle for “boundedness” against a “sensory inundation” that threatens his fragile ego. By constructing a “Skin-Ego” or “Second Skin” of masonry and grain, the man attempts to replace a missing internal psychological membrane with a rigid material envelope to prevent the “leakage” of his self into the void of the “Other”. This “Narcissistic Closed Loop” effectively mummifies his internal life, creating a “Static Perfection” that bypasses the transience of human existence and the “anxiety of Lack”. Ultimately, the “requirement” of his soul represents the inevitable collapse of this “architecture of the void,” proving that a self-imposed sarcophagus of total security results in total psychological annihilation.

Help me not to say goodbye to you

2026-06-23T17:56:48+02:00

Death has always represented the insurmountable boundary around which every culture has built its own systems of meaning. With the advent of digital technology, this boundary has become porous: technologies such as chatbots trained on the deceased’s messages, three-dimensional avatars, interactive holograms and social media profiles that outlive their owners open up the possibility of a continuous, dialogical and — at least in appearance — inexhaustible post-mortem presence. This paper examines the phenomenon of digital immortality through an interdisciplinary lens, bringing sociology and Lacanian psychoanalysis into dialogue. In the first section, building on Bell and Gray’s (2000) distinction between unidirectional and bidirectional immortality, the main technological projects of digital survival are analysed—from Replika to Eterni.me, from LifeNaut to 8i’s holograms—interpreted as an expression of a broader cultural transformation that Jacobsen (2017) has defined as the ‘post-mortem society’. In the second section, Lacanian theory of double death allows us to interpret digital persistence as a device that defers symbolic death, producing a structural form of digital melancholia: the surviving subject cannot experience the void because it is constantly and artificially filled. The analysis shows how digital simulacra operate predominantly in the Imaginary register, preventing the work of mourning that only symbolic distance makes possible, and how the transformation of the contemporary superego — from an instance of prohibition to an imperative of exhibited jouissance — constitutes the cultural structure within which these technologies proliferate. The paper concludes by outlining prospects for future research in clinical, legal and comparative fields.