The Sphinx and the Riddles of Passion, Love and Sexuality: Contributions by Stefano Bolognini, Rainer Gross and Sylvia Zwettler-Otte- Preface by Alain

ISBN-13: 9783631639825 / Angielski / Miękka / 2013 / 105 str.

Sylvia Zwettler-Otte; Alain Gibeault; Rainer Gross

Opis

An international cooperation of psychoanalysts presents the role of symbolization in the development of the human mind. Based on Freud s theory of the Unconscious and of infantile sexuality we have now a deeper understanding of myths like Oedipus and the Sphinx and the representations of human struggles in art. In this book, this is illustrated from prehistoric paintings until poetry of the 20th century. The Sphinx, half animal, half human, represents the elaborations of sexual fantasies revealing desires and fears. She symbolizes an archaic maternal imago, seductive and threatening, omnipotent and enigmatic. She is a symbol of contradictions like drive and reason or gain and loss of knowledge. Case stories show that patients today feel not -devoured by the Sphinx-, but by their work (-burn out-), by annihilation anxiety, narcissistic or borderline disturbances, psychosomatic problems etc. But the -archaic mother never dies-."

Spis treści

Contents: Alain Gibeault: Preface - Sylvia Zwettler-Otte: Introduction - Stefano Bolognini: The «countertransferenceless» Sphinx: the narcissistic myth of impenetrability - Rainer Gross: The Sphinx as Oedipus' other Mother - Sylvia Zwettler-Otte: Three balancing acts of the Sphinx.

O autorze

Sylvia Zwettler-Otte holds degrees in Latin, German and Psychology. She works in full-time private practice and is a training analyst of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society, whose president she was from 2000 to 2004. She has published and edited several books in German and English.