Essays and papers

   Dialectics, since before the time of Socrate s (1) refers to a method of enquiry between two people of opposing points of view. It ends with either a synthesis of the two ideas, or a refutation of a proposition which is consequently exposed as false. The dialectic method is distinguished from the didactic method, where one side teaches the other.  In his 2023 seminar on negativity, Psychologist and Psychoanalyst, David Ferraro, posed the rhetorical question, 'What is dialectical about dialectical behavior therapy?'  My rhetorical answer is that Marsha Linehan, psychologist and founder of dialectical behavior therapy, known as DBT, liked the idea of 'synthesis.' She describes her reasoning below:  'The overarching dialectical worldview... emphasizes the synthesis of opposites... The term dialectical is also meant to convey both the multiple tensions that co-occur in therapy with suicidal clients … as well as the emphasis in DBT of enhancing dialectical thinki...

  The  psychotic subject has no question: in place of the question that the neurotic subject might present with - "Am I a man or a woman?" Or, "Am I dead or alive?" - the psychotic subject is concerned not with questioning the world, but with holding the world together. Freud proposed that for the psychotic subject, the delusion is not the crisis, but rather, the delusion is the solution to a crisis. The analyst seeks to understand the correlates of the delusion, not in order to question the psychotic subject’s position in the world, but, rather to find ways to help the subject hold the world - or their delusion about the world - together.  However, if the psychotic subject does not present with a question, the psychotic subject nevertheless raises a question: if we know that the psychotic subject’s view of the world is deluded, how do we know that the analyst’s view of the world is not? In short, is there an objective reality? More specifically, is there such a thi...