Letter from the Editors

Res. in Psychoanal. 23│2017 Research in Psychoanalysis 23│2017/1 Letter from the Editors Éditorial [Online] May 8, 2017 Olivier Putois Amos Squverer Manoel Madeira Tamara Guenoun Sarah Troubé Rémy Potier The authors: Olivier Putois, PhD Psychoanalyst, Clinical Psychologist. Associate professor with tenure, Clinical Psychopathology and Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity, Social Link and Modernity EA 3071, Department of Psychology. Faculté de Psychologie Université de Strasbourg 12 rue Goethe 67000 Strasbourg France Amos Squverer, PhD Psychoanalyst, Clinical Psychologist. Clinical Psychology of the Subject (Subjectivity, Unconscious, Culture). UFR Psychologie Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès 5, allées Antonio Machado 31058 Toulouse France Manoel Madeira, PhD Psychoanalyst. Lecturer, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul Av. Paulo Gama, 110 - Bairro Farroupilha Porto Alegre - Rio Grande do Sul CEP: 90040-060 Brazil Tamara Guenoun, PhD Clinical psychologist. Comedian. Associate professor with tenure, Psychopathology and Clinical Psychology. Center for Research in Psychopathology and Clinical Psychology (CRPPC). Université Lumière-Lyon II 5, avenue Pierre Mendès France 69676 Bron France 4 Journal of Psychoanalytic Studies Hosted by the Department of Psychoanalytic Studies, Paris Diderot at Sorbonne Paris Cité University Res. in Psychoanal. 23│2017 Sarah Troubé, PhD Clinical Psychologist. Post-doctoral researcher, LabEx « Who am I ? ». Center for Research in Psychoanalysis, Medicine and Society EA 3522. Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité Campus Paris Rive Gauche Bâtiment Olympe de Gouges 11, rue Jean Antoine de Baïf 75013 Paris France Rémy Potier, PhD Psychoanalyst, Clinical Psychologist. Associate professor with tenure, Clinical Psychopathology and Psychoanalysis, Center for Research in Psychoanalysis, Medicine and Society EA 3522. Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité Campus Paris Rive Gauche Bâtiment Olympe de Gouges 11, rue Jean Antoine de Baïf 75013 Paris France Electronic Reference: Olivier Putois, Amos Squverer, Manoel Madeira, Tamara Guenoun, Sarah Troubé & Rémy Potier, “Letter from the Editors”, Research in Psychoanalysis [Online], 23|2017/1 published May 8, 2017. This article is a translation of Éditorial. Full text Copyright All rights reserved Conflict of Interest Statement Olivier Putois declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Amos Squverer declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Manoel Madeira declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Tamara Guenoun declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Sarah Troubé declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Rémy Potier declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. This issue, which brings together prestigious contributors from several different continents, pursues the evolution that got underway in the previous issue. In particular, we will now be bringing out three issues per year – April / May, August / September, and late December – with each issue including six or seven texts. This format will allow for greater modularity in the treatment of the themes, and a more flexible reflection of research projects in psychoanalysis in progress. 5 Journal of Psychoanalytic Studies Hosted by the Department of Psychoanalytic Studies, Paris Diderot at Sorbonne Paris Cité University Res. in Psychoanal. 23│2017 This issue opens with a “Letter.” After New York, it is the current state of psychoanalysis in Sao Paulo that finds itself being presented here by one of its eminent representatives, Maria Livia Tourinho Moretto. This text, which offers a contemporary reading of the vitality of psychoanalysis in Brazil, presents first and foremost a few brief pieces of information on Brazil, a country of continental dimensions, by bringing to the fore its cultural diversity, the social inequality that reigns there, and the characteristic features of its present-day circumstance. It then highlights some of the elements of the history of the psychoanalytical movement in Brazil and the reasons behind the success of its spread – in particular its theoretical plurality, but also how it takes into account what is currently at stake, the specific analysis of the cultural context, or the presence of Brazilian analysts in various fields of professional action. In conclusion, the author insists on the fact that this current circumstance of psychoanalysis in Brazil continues to be a specific prism on the current state of Brazil. Next comes the first appearance of a section on “Radicalization,” which will feature in several future issues in serial form. The section is coordinated for the journal by Amos Squverer. Treating the problematic of radicalization from the psychoanalytical point of view envelopes at least three major issues. On the one hand, in highlighting the pertinence and the originality of psychoanalysis in its approach to collective phenomena: through its unprecedented position between individual psychology and collective psychology, it opens up new perspectives in the approach to this clinical phenomenon. On the other hand, dealing with this theme underlines the fruitfulness of psychoanalysis in the approach to contemporaneity: radicalization is one of the forms of the contemporary style of discontent in culture. In the article that opens the first appearance of this series, Thierry Lamote and Fethi Benslama aim to bring to light an “epistemological loophole” in the recent existing work on radicalization, illustrating in this way the singularity of the axis of their research. To understand radicalization entails, in their eyes, the adoption of a psychoanalytical perspective, which alone is apt to grasp singularity while shedding light on the psychological mechanisms that lead the subject towards radicalization. They show the irreplaceablility of this approach when it comes to thinking about the modalities through which the subject may be led to abandon this radical attachment. Lastly, they suggest that we should locate these psychological processes at different levels of human realities, the macro levels (contemporary civilization), the meso level (local cultures with effects of “niche ecology”), and micro levels (the individual and / or the subject). In the second article, Charles B. Strozier and Deborah Mart underline the fundamental place of humiliation – the group analogon of shame in the individual subject – as the motive for group violence. In the same line as the pioneering work of Strozier, the authors analyze the unconscious mainsprings of the rewriting, by a leader, of an authentic humiliation and a past real that caused a trauma, into a constructed narrative of humiliation: the symbolic narration of the humiliation that results from this produces its own justification and calls upon a real violence that has a reparatory aim. This sense of constructed humiliation would thereby be the base of major political violence. The authors put this hypothesis to the test in different historical contexts of political violence, from Nazism up to the recent attacks committed in the name of a radical Islamism. Next, we offer a double article, the first in our “Epistemology” section. Jocelyn Benoist, a prominent philosopher who has already contributed to the journal a few years ago in the framework of an interview with our editor Olivier Putois, has offered a detailed response to the recently published book by Bruno Karsenti on Freud’s Moses and Monotheism (Karsenti, 2012). As a philosopher committed to 6 Journal of Psychoanalytic Studies Hosted by the Department of Psychoanalytic Studies, Paris Diderot at Sorbonne Paris Cité University Res. in Psychoanal. 23│2017 underscoring the irreducibility of psychoanalysis and its impact on the conceptualization of the real, Jocelyn Benoist looks at the notion of “historical truth” – which is central to Freud’s later approach to the psychoses. Through a close commentary on the Freudian text, which is as accessible both to philosophers and to specialists in the human sciences as it is to analysts, he raises an objection to Karsenti’s reading at the level of the essential role played by the paradigm of psychosis in the clinical intelligence of the monotheistic phenomenon. The regime of truth that is specific to monotheism has to be grasped through its equivalence with a delusional construction. The novelty of Moses and Monotheism is not due to its mobilization of the notion of historical truth, which was already operative in The Future of an Illusion. Rather it is due to the enriching of this notion through the Freudian approach to psychosis in the nineteen thirties that gives its meaning to the “mono-” of monotheism. It is on the basis of the “literality of psychosis,” which alone is apt to explain the enacted repetition of the inaugural murder to the primal father, that the realism of the late Freud is to be understood. There follows a new section: “Methodology of Research Projects,” which opens with a contribution from Jean-Michel Thurin, one of the French specialists on the question of the evaluating of psychotherapies. At the international level, those studies that look at the effectiveness of the psychoanalytic approach are multiple: what is the state of play in France, since the publication of the Inserm collective expert report? This article restores in magisterial fashion the historical progression that has led research projects in psychotherapy to go from general comparisons of approach to studies that are focused on the conditions and the causes that play a role in the processes of change. He then presents the specificity of work carried out in the Inserm network around the hubs of autism and borderline psychosis, within the reconfiguration of the evolution in research projects on psychotherapy. Lastly, the final contribution to this issue opens the section “Psychoanalysis and Medicine.” On the basis of an investigation carried out with a French medical research team on uterine transplantation, as well as a clinical experience of hysterectomy, Diane Garnault – the author of a doctoral thesis on this question – proposes to explore certain psychical issues of this emerging technique. Through testimonies from candidates for this experimentation, there is a persistent shaping of representations that situate femininity in the register of having (the organ and / or the child). The intense imaginary investment in the experience of pregnancy motivates these volunteers to take an unprecedented path in order to gain access to maternity: to temporarily receive a uterine graft, which entails a complex medical process that draws on various specialties that will give rise to a path that is far removed from an ordinary pregnancy. Bibliography: Karsenti, B. (2012). Moïse et l’idée de peuple. Paris: Le Cerf. 7 Journal of Psychoanalytic Studies Hosted by the Department of Psychoanalytic Studies, Paris Diderot at Sorbonne Paris Cité University