Tome XVIII, no. 2 - 2025 (9)

Editorial / Gabriel Balaci

Abstract: In this issue, the Romanian Journal of Psychoanalysis brings together a series of clinical and theoretical reflections centered on the same fundamental question: how is the subject transformed when confronted with their own limits? The authors refer to limits of perception, intuition, psychic time, and the relationship with the other—whether that other is the analyst, the partner, or even an apparently empathic technological device.Read moreKeywords: .

1 - Alterity between epiphany and intuition / Bogdan Sebastian Cuc

Abstract: Questioning the processes and phenomena associated with intuition has ancient roots. The earliest references associate intuition with a special kind of attention that allows for direct and immediate perception of certain elements of reality that are not evident to everyone. In psychoanalysis, W.R. Bion, one of the frequent users of this term, employs intuition in a complex form, best defined by his own words: “If you hear me using it often, I hope you’ll get a rough idea of what I mean. It will highlight a pattern where it would seem appropriate to say: Aha, that’s what intuition means!” (Bion 1976, 42). However, the phenomena and processes present in what we might call intuition can also be found in other authors, even if they do not use this term. An extremely interesting perspective, when we attempt to explore intuition in psychoanalysis, is the one proposed by Piera Aulagnier, who introduces the notion of the pictogram to capture the earliest forms of organizing complex contents in the primary register and how they change to become interpretations. But how is intuition applied as a psychoanalytic technique in the analysis of mystical phenomena, where the term used is epiphany? Read moreKeywords: intuition, pictogram, figuration, insight, epiphany, alterity

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2 - The function of anamnesis in Freudian psychoanalysis and its philosophical resonances / Virgil Ciomoș

Abstract: The relationship between knowledge and anamnesis has been analyzed since the beginnings of philosophy through Plato’s work, as a dialectic between thing and idea, between time and eternity. In modernity, the very concept of analysis underwent a transformation. Starting with Kant, it no longer designated the horizontal operation of separating what is already united, but rather the vertical origin of synthesis itself, a transcendental synthesis that would lead to the hypothesis of the unconscious. Beginning with the temporal opposition between perception – whose time is oriented toward the future – and anamnesis – whose time is directed toward the past – Freud demonstrated that psychoanalytic experience is not limited to a simple reconstruction of a history, but rather involves thematizing its own origin, designated as “pre-historical”, namely in the sense of Lacan’s “personal myth of the neurotic”. Revisiting the case of Emma from A Project for a Scientific Psychology provides a clinical verification of this new architectonic perspective. Freud demonstrates that anamnesis is merely the occasion for a certain conversion of the arrow of time, meant to highlight the point around which this conversion itself takes place, redefined as consciousness, and, ultimately, the “zenithal” point of its own rotation, which is the unconscious. Read moreKeywords: anamnesis, analysis, trauma, phobia, unconscious, therapy

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3 - Remote sessions: a counter-phobic solution? / Roland Havas

Abstract: How is it that in Europe, in countries where neither geographical distances nor a lack of analysts would justify remote practices, a significant number of psychoanalysts have turned to these methods? This article aims to examine the clinical reasons behind this phenomenon, which has only expanded since the 2020 pandemic, through the lens of phobia, whether it manifests in the patient or the analyst. Are remote practices an anti-phobic solution to a situation that is most often poorly identified and unacknowledged? Read moreKeywords: distance, phobia, avoidance, claustrum, analytic third

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4 - Two paths of intuition: reverie and selected fact / Fulvio Mazzacane

Abstract: In this paper, I will begin by outlining how Bion conceptualizes the role of intuition within the analytic setting. I will then explore two possible developments: one concerning the emergence of a sensory impression, specifically reverie, and the other, the identification of a selected fact, which arises from the analytic pair’s search for meaning and the analyst’s negative capability. These two paths tend to intersect and blur, as I will illustrate through two clinical sessions. I took in consideration thick disguise to protect the patient confidentialit. Read moreKeywords: analytic field, Bion, intuition, narrative function, reverie, selected fact

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5 - The Unconscious and the Paradox of Emergence / a psychoanalytic research study/ two-part publication, part I / Gabriela Romaneț

Abstract: The work is conceived as a unified whole and has been divided into two parts for publication. This is Part Two, which develops the clinical and intersubjective dimension of the architecture of emergence formulated in Part One, where I approached the emergence of the unconscious as a continuous movement through which what is hidden incessantly seeks to come to the surface, while transformation becomes possible only when it encounters a barrier. Drawing on Freudian theory of the dynamic unconscious, Kleinian contributions on early phantasy, Bion’s theory of the alpha function and thoughts without a thinker, Deleuze’s conception of surface effects and divergent series, as well as contemporary theories of complexity, I formulated a metapsychological architecture of the emergence of the unconscious and conceptualized the preconscious as the architectural space of emergence, whose dynamics evolve from a function of barrier and censorship to one of containment, transformation, and the emergence of subjectivity. Whereas in the first part the space of emergence is intrapsychic, the preconscious functioning as an intermediate site of transformation into representation and meaning, in the second part it becomes a living space of encounter, analogous to the mother’s arms: an intersubjective field constituted within the analyst–analysand thinking couple. Within this space, architectural modifications of the internal object take place, making possible the establishment of a new psychic continuity. Unconscious-to- unconscious communication, sustained by the analyst’s reverie, proves to be the royal road of emergence; accordingly, dreams, the body, and reverie become privileged sites of emergence. The internal object appears as a living organism, capable of movement and transformation, and, on the basis of clinical material, I detail the process through which it acquires representation, meaning, and depth. Mutative change is thus conceived as the result of an architectural transformation of the internal object, occurring within a functional relationship shaped by the emergence of the analyst’s internal object. In the intersubjective field, the emergence of the unconscious is no longer merely an intrapsychic phenomenon, but a process that transforms the architecture of the internal object and makes possible the establishment of a new psychic continuity—emergence itself. Read moreKeywords: dynamic unconscious; emergence of the unconscious; paradox of emergence; intersubjective field; architecture of the internal object

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6 - Three Stages of Change in Modern Kleinian Therapy: Working with Loss in the Clinical Moment / Robert Waska

Abstract: Using one extensive clinical case report, disguised for confidentiality, the paper describes and demonstrates the three areas of potential progress and therapeutic change using Kleinian psychoanalytic therapy. The terms naming, claiming, and taming are used as shorthand to explore the manner in which containment and interpretation can lead to the patient gaining new psychological awareness, facing previously unknown or unbearable thoughts and feelings, and gradually managing and resolving those internal conflicts and relational struggles. Loss is often a primary element in treatment problems which the case report highlights. Read moreKeywords: interpretation, loss, Kleinian, change, technique, integration identity

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7 - The Couple Relationship and the Couple Bond. The Stages of the Couple / Claudiu Ganciu

Abstract: This article explores a perspective on the stages of a couple’s development. From the three epistemic theories of psychoanalysis, those of stages, positions, and organizers, the author chooses the first, using the mathematical model of a number axis: from minus one (the single person, the one-person theory), through zero (the constitutive scene of the couple’s formation), to stage one, marked by narcissism; stage two, marked by the fraternal bond; and stage three, marked by the child. The article focuses on the first stages, illustrating them with moments from therapy in which a specific stage is strongly manifested. The therapeutic aim is to follow evolution along two coordinates – that of relationship (the real axis, of direct expression and verbal communication) and that of bond (the unconscious axis, of transmission and unconscious alliances). From the article’s perspective, the five stages can be found in the evolution of any couple that survives. Due to space constraints, this article focuses on the initial stages. Read moreKeywords: Stages of evolution, psychoanalytic couple psychotherapy, bond, unconscious, narcissistic bond, fraternal bond, constitutive scene of the couple

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8 - Algorithmic objectivity and the analyst’s subjectivity / Mădălina Lincă

Abstract: The article explores the relationship between conversational artificial intelligence and human subjectivity, in the context of the transformations brought about by the digital age. It examines how conversational AI technology, though offering constant availability and an appearance of empathy, cannot substitute the affective and relational experience that characterizes the human therapeutic encounter. Dialogue with AI represents a space in which the subject projects thoughts and emotions without these being truly received, contained, or transformed through the presence of a living being. The importance of the therapist’s subjectivity, corporeality, and emotional presence in the analytic process is reaffirmed, elements that are impossible to replicate by a non-human entity. The paper argues that psychological development and transformation require contact with a real otherness, capable of containing and reflecting, but also of frustrating, essential aspects that artificial intelligence, no matter how sophisticated, cannot embody. Read moreKeywords: conversational artificial intelligence, online socialization, therapist’s subjectivity, symbolization, containment, empathy

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