Contemporary approaches to psychotherapeutic intervention increasingly utilize a medical-based diagnostic system focused on identifying and eradicating discrete symptoms. Mental "disorders" are determined by identifying "pathological" behaviors and superficial symptoms which are then lumped together arbitrarily and labeled as specific "mental illnesses." Despite a gross lack of supporting evidence, these "mental illnesses" are then attributed to various brain abnormalities and biological malfunctions, most often with reference to "chemical imbalances" believed to be the origin of mental distress. Evidence for such biological reductionism is presented conclusively, with little regard for the implicit ontological assumptions made by such a positivist perspective. When psychopathology is viewed in this way, the role of human experience is devalued, resulting in an egregious medicalization of human distress that has devastating consequences for those who suffer. <br> The work of Jacques Lacan offers a radically different approach to diagnostic formulation and treatment that has, until recently, largely been ignored in Western psychology. This dissertation seeks to participate in correcting this imbalance by offering a Lacanian clinical approach to working with obsession. I offer two case studies of former patients--both of whom presented with classic symptoms of the medical syndrome known as obsessive-compulsive disorder--to illustrate Lacan's structural approach in contradistinction to a descriptive, symptom-based approach. I endeavor to make Lacan's obsessive structure and his diagnostic schema accessible to mental health professionals interested in employing Lacan's work. To do so, I utilize a qualitative case study methodology, with particular emphasis on the psychoanalytic interview. I draw specific attention to the difference between obsessive-compulsive disorder and Lacan's obsessional structure. Finally, I highlight the ethical implications for clinicians of the ideological construction of mental distress as solely biological and suggest that Lacan offers a diametrically opposed discourse that is sorely lacking and needed at this time. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Clinical Psychology / PhD; / Dissertation;

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Miami University, Dept. of English, 2004. / Title from second page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 90-93).

A Umbanda comporta um vasto imaginário e grande riqueza simbólica manifestos numa ampla gama de elementos rituais, gestos, movimentos, expressões corporais, falas, danças, músicas, ou seja, em toda e qualquer expressão desta religião brasileira. O estudo foi feito em dois templos distintos: o Terreiro de Mãe Silvana, situado na cidade de Várzea Paulista, e o Templo de Umbanda Caboclo Flecha de Ouro, situado na cidade de Jundiaí, ambos situados no Estado de São Paulo. O objetivo foi delimitar os limites e as possibilidades de alguns conceitos psicanalíticos lacanianos na sua aplicabilidade aos fenômenos extáticos umbandistas no que concerne à esfera corporal. Os conceitos: corpo, significante, letra, objeto a, real e gozo, foram tratados como operadores no campo, sem haver uma aplicação da psicanálise como método de investigação da interioridade subjetiva nem como uma visão de mundo rival da umbandista, a fim de preservar a maneira como os próprios colaboradores narram suas experiências e as suas próprias concepções dos fenômenos. As entrevistas foram semi-estruturadas, assim como também foram realizadas anotações, gravações e observações de médiuns e entidades durante rituais umbandistas e fora deles. A análise e interpretação dos dados foram qualitativas. Os operadores analíticos lacanianos mostraram-se úteis, tanto por possibilitarem acesso aos aspectos simbólicos do êxtase, como por permitirem delimitar nas experiências extáticas o que elas comportam de inapreensível. / The Umbanda religion holds a vaste and rich symbolic imagery which manifests itself through an wide range of ritual elements, such as gestures, movements, bodily expressions, speechs, dance, music, or by many other particular expressions included in this Brazilian religion. The study was done in two separated temples: the first one, the Mother Silvana Temple, located in the city of Varzea Paulista and the second, the Temple \"Caboclo Flecha de Ouro\", located in the city of Jundiaí, both situaded in the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The objective of this research was to investigate the limits and possibilities of some Lacan psychoanalytic concepts in its applicability to the ecstatic phenomena in Umbanda religion, concerning the body sphere. The concepts: body, significant, letter, object a, real and jouissance, were treated as operators in the field, without an application, however, of psychoanalysis as a method of investigation of subjective interiority or as a rival vision of the Umbanda world, so that the way people narrate their own experiences and their own conceptions of the phenomena could be preserved. The interviews were semi-structured, and also were held notes, recordings and observations of mediums and entities during Umbanda rituals and outside them. The analysis andminterpretation of data was qualitative. Lacan\'s operators analytical concepts shown to be useful, both by allowing access to the symbolic aspects of the ecstasy, as for permitted by the experience define what it behave of incomprehensible.

A Umbanda comporta um vasto imaginário e grande riqueza simbólica manifestos numa ampla gama de elementos rituais, gestos, movimentos, expressões corporais, falas, danças, músicas, ou seja, em toda e qualquer expressão desta religião brasileira. O estudo foi feito em dois templos distintos: o Terreiro de Mãe Silvana, situado na cidade de Várzea Paulista, e o Templo de Umbanda Caboclo Flecha de Ouro, situado na cidade de Jundiaí, ambos situados no Estado de São Paulo. O objetivo foi delimitar os limites e as possibilidades de alguns conceitos psicanalíticos lacanianos na sua aplicabilidade aos fenômenos extáticos umbandistas no que concerne à esfera corporal. Os conceitos: corpo, significante, letra, objeto a, real e gozo, foram tratados como operadores no campo, sem haver uma aplicação da psicanálise como método de investigação da interioridade subjetiva nem como uma visão de mundo rival da umbandista, a fim de preservar a maneira como os próprios colaboradores narram suas experiências e as suas próprias concepções dos fenômenos. As entrevistas foram semi-estruturadas, assim como também foram realizadas anotações, gravações e observações de médiuns e entidades durante rituais umbandistas e fora deles. A análise e interpretação dos dados foram qualitativas. Os operadores analíticos lacanianos mostraram-se úteis, tanto por possibilitarem acesso aos aspectos simbólicos do êxtase, como por permitirem delimitar nas experiências extáticas o que elas comportam de inapreensível. / The Umbanda religion holds a vaste and rich symbolic imagery which manifests itself through an wide range of ritual elements, such as gestures, movements, bodily expressions, speechs, dance, music, or by many other particular expressions included in this Brazilian religion. The study was done in two separated temples: the first one, the Mother Silvana Temple, located in the city of Varzea Paulista and the second, the Temple \"Caboclo Flecha de Ouro\", located in the city of Jundiaí, both situaded in the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The objective of this research was to investigate the limits and possibilities of some Lacan psychoanalytic concepts in its applicability to the ecstatic phenomena in Umbanda religion, concerning the body sphere. The concepts: body, significant, letter, object a, real and jouissance, were treated as operators in the field, without an application, however, of psychoanalysis as a method of investigation of subjective interiority or as a rival vision of the Umbanda world, so that the way people narrate their own experiences and their own conceptions of the phenomena could be preserved. The interviews were semi-structured, and also were held notes, recordings and observations of mediums and entities during Umbanda rituals and outside them. The analysis andminterpretation of data was qualitative. Lacan\'s operators analytical concepts shown to be useful, both by allowing access to the symbolic aspects of the ecstasy, as for permitted by the experience define what it behave of incomprehensible.

This thesis carries out an analysis of Mary Shelley&rsquo / s Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevenson&rsquo / s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by focusing on the Lacanian concepts of desire, alienation and sexuality. It achieves this by providing brief background information about Lacanian psychoanalytic literary criticism and the relations of this criticism with the concepts of desire, alienation and sexuality. Through the analysis of the main characters in the mentioned novels, this study asserts that these concepts are structured with the effect of the Lacanian symbolic order and the language. In other words, in this study, it is argued that the formation of the human personality takes place in the unconscious, where desire, alienation and sexuality are formed. In both of these Gothic novels, the personalities of the characters are structured in relation to their life experience in the symbolic order.

Lacan is an influential figure of 20th Century thought. Being a psychoanalyst, a linguist and at the same time a philosopher, in his theory he combines all three of these disciplines. Even in his later works, he tried to combine his theory with mathematical formalization. His theory influenced three important political thinkers: Laclau, &amp / #381 / i&amp / #382 / ek and Badiou. The purpose of this dissertation is mainly to examine Lacan&rsquo / s thought and its impasses which could be found especially in the political applications of his theory. First I start with a critical reading of Lacan&rsquo / s own works. I try to figure out the idealizations, presuppositions and blind spots hidden in his work. I develop my critical reading by focusing on the works of Laclau, &amp / #381 / i&amp / #382 / ek and Badiou. The main argument of this dissertation is, such a critical reading of these philosophers will lead us to a general questioning of Lacan&rsquo / s theory and the legitimacy of its applications. Lacan&rsquo / s use of the impossibility as a founding principle and his passion for formalization cause several idealizations, like the idealization of the neutrality of the signifier, the idealization of the non-represented and so on. These problems are extended and transformed into other ones in his disciples&rsquo / works. For Laclau, the problem is transformed into a purely content-free understanding of elements of democracy which ends up with paradoxical results. For &amp / #381 / i&amp / #382 / ek and Badiou, because of their insistence on a political theory based on the impossible real, their subversive theories end up with a theory which take the form of messianic discourses. What I propose is a reconsideration of the role of the theory on the understanding of human reality: in principle every theory excludes some portions of the richness of human life-world, therefore every theory must have a retrospective and critical stance against its own founding principles. This cannot be done by formalized theories which keep the formal structure of itself untouchable.

ABSTRACT THE REAL AND THE IMAGINARY THRESHOLDS OF OTTOMAN SUBJECTIVITY TaStan, CoSkun Ph.D., Department of Sociology Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Erdogan YILDIRIM March 2010, 262 pages. This work examines the nature of frames that restrict our perspectives and thus give birth to such sociological entities like societies, communities and nations. How is the dualism of &ldquo / inside-outside&rdquo / created on sociological and psychic levels? More importantly, what instruments play what kind of roles in the creation of that dualism? Examining the formation of Ottoman subjectivity as a case, this study gives original answers to these questions. The psychoanalytic theory, which opened a new methodological domain for the social sciences in the past century, productively accommodated a good amount of works on these questions. Sigmund Freud&rsquo / s pioneering works on the dynamics of human psyche and Jacques Lacan&rsquo / s theories of human subjectivity played important roles in the improvement of this domain. Beginning from the second half of the past century, discussions on identity and belonging, as well as such furious social questions as nationalism, racism and xenophobia, have been held in the light of the new approaches of psychoanalytic theories in the field of social sciences. In this sense, this study can be seen as a part of those approaches, because methodologically, it bases itself on the opportunities offered by a particular psychoanalytic theory, namely, that of a French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan. I pick up two of Lacan&rsquo / s productively scrutinized concepts, namely the &ldquo / real&rdquo / and the &ldquo / imaginary&rdquo / , to develop a particular perspective towards this question: How is the dualism of inside-outside created in different contexts throughout the Ottoman history, so that this dualism could give birth to Ottoman subjectivity? Taking the two Lacanian concepts as a base, I analyze the instruments that play the role of &ldquo / thresholds&rdquo / in the formation of the dualism of &ldquo / inside-outside&rdquo / , under two general headings: The &ldquo / real thresholds&rdquo / and the &ldquo / imaginary thresholds&rdquo / . To put in a very brief manner, a &ldquo / real threshold&rdquo / is born out of any material obstacle that puts restrictions of any kind to the abilities of human body (natural obstacles like mountains, rivers and oceans, as well as designed obstacles like any object of war architecture, for instance, fall into this heading). Imaginary thresholds, on the other hand, are the &ldquo / images of selves&rdquo / that reflect back to us on the social ground, just in the same manner as our mirror-images come back to us and provide us with a subjective feeling of self (like the diplomatic texts and the mythologies). Although I borrow the two Lacanian terms (i.e. real and imaginary) to build up a theory of thresholds, I do not hesitate to bend and reshape those concepts whenever necessary, to build the conceptual tools into a rather ergonomic manner.

Thesis (Master of Arts)--Miami University, Dept. of Mass Communication, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains [1], iv, 63 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 58-63).

The thesis departs from the undetermined relation between René Daumal's unfinished novel Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing (1952) and its alleged adaptation, Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1973 film The Holy Mountain. The thesis discusses the two works from the perspective of Lacanian psychoanalysis, specifically, through the lens of the so-called Borromean knot that represents the three functions of the psyche: the Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary. The structure of the thesis supposes the following: the first chapter concentrates on the relevant terminology and aims to define such concepts as language and ideology for the purposes of the present thesis; the second chapter discusses the method of analysis that will be applied to Daumal's Mount Analogue and Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain, namely, it explores the possibilities of psychoanalysis and considers the 'unscientific' approach of pataphysics that favours the particular over the general; through the concept of the sinthome the aspect of action is emphasized in the analysis of Mount Analogue, while the fourth chapter analyses The Holy Mountain from the perspective of the 'hypertrophied' Symbolic and simultaneously stresses the importance of the element of balance in the film; the final chapter,...