SIG Revista de Psicanálise

Match by match, love goes viral

2025-05-19T21:43:01-03:00

This theoretical essay analyzes the new configurations of love and relationships in the digital age from a psychoanalytic perspective. Virtuality transforms human interactions, fostering new forms of bonding while also accentuating dynamics of idealization and frustration. Based on Freud’s conception of narcissism and Bauman’s concept of liquid love, the discussion explores how dating apps and social networks reinforce a consumerist logic in relationships, where individuals present themselves as commodities in search of validation and recognition. The analysis emphasizes how virtual space facilitates the creation of an "ideal self" that distances itself from the true self, intensifying the fragility of affective bonds. The relentless search for connections reflects the conflict between Eros and Thanatos, with the promise of immediate satisfaction often resulting in emptiness and anguish. Contemporary psychoanalytic authors contribute to understanding the complexity of love, highlighting its idealizations, expectations, and the impact of disillusionment. Psychoanalysis reveals that, despite technological transformations, the search for love remains marked by the subject’s incompleteness and need for recognition. The study concludes that the digital mediation of relationships expands both the possibilities and the challenges of emotional bonds, demanding a new interpretation of the psychic dynamics that shape affections and subjectivity in contemporary times.

Marks of original masochism and passivity considering Laplanche's theory of generalized seduction

2025-02-06T21:25:33-03:00

The theory of generalized seduction proposed by Laplanche addresses the constitution of the psyche, taking as its starting point the priority of the other adult who, in the management of self-preservation, in changing diapers, bathing, putting the baby to sleep and giving milk, immerses the human child in his or her unconscious sexuality through enigmatic verbal or non-verbal messages. The enigmatic messages may have an implantation quality that enables the process of translation, symbolization and construction of meaning in the baby's psyche and/or intrusion, characterized by violence, rigidity, imposition and submission. The incipience of the baby's psyche when receiving the sexuality of the other adult places the human child in a position of passivity and original masochism, universal to all and constitutive. The objective of this work is to interconnect and develop the theoretical concepts and illustrate them through vignettes of a clinical case to promote debate and clinical theoretical exercise. Furthermore, this writing aims to consider how the psychic constitution occurs in cases of borderline masochistic currents, how untranslated messages circulate within the psyche and, finally, how they present themselves in the present day of adult life. It is understood that a psyche invaded by enigmatic sexual messages soaked in violence, aggression and trauma will have obstacles in translating these messages and symbolizing them, promoting impoverishment of the Self and a psychic apparatus contaminated by the untranslatable and the disconnected, with a greater possibility of repetition than creation.

Between mother and daughter

2025-02-03T15:15:26-03:00

This article proposes to shed light on the theme of symbiotic relationships between mothers and their daughters, understanding how the process of the daughter becoming a woman occurs in these cases. The research employs an empirical and qualitative methodology, as well as audiovisual analysis, with an interpretation based on psychoanalytic film analysis. This theme is discussed theoretically through scenes presented in the films Black swan, Carrie, and Turning red. From this, it is possible to conclude that girls’ transition to womanhood is hindered when there is an excessive maternal presence, and that the path to becoming a woman is unique in each case.

The role of psychoanalytic writing in the psychoanalyst’s internal setting

2025-01-31T16:41:39-03:00

The aim of this essay is to examine the relationship between writing and psychoanalysis, focusing on its ethical and creative dimensions within the internal world of the psychoanalyst. Psychoanalytic writing is approached as a process of inscription that goes beyond the mere recording of information, facilitating an analytic experience and the creation of new meanings. This highlights the centrality of language in unconscious processes. This text proposes: (i) writing as a creative and ethically reflective practice that integrates the psychoanalyst's personal analysis with the patient's alterity; (ii) the importance of sensitization as a readiness for new possibilities, rejecting rigid methodologies and prioritizing movement and difference; and (iii) the conceptualization of psychoanalytic writing as an ethical act that generates meaning within both the analytic and cultural spheres.

The entire woman constitutes a taboo

2025-02-17T16:00:32-03:00

Starting from the question “Who is afraid of female desire and why?” and Freud’s quasi-statement that “the entire woman is taboo”, this article proposes a theoretical review of Freudian concepts about women, addressing the issues of having/not having a phallus, penis envy, the Oedipus complex, and women as taboo, until reaching the fundamental opening point based on Analysis Terminable and Interminable by Freud. In this text, we are interested in theorizing about the enigma of femininity as a concept that transcends phallic logic and female identity. From this point, I propose thinking beyond “woman,” toward all bodies onto which taboos are projected in response to the emergence of difference — a difference that returns as a threat and unfolds into violence. Based on this, the objective of the article is to provoke reflections toward a psychoanalysis committed to its time, situated in the ethics of the singularity of desire and implicated in a political stance that contemplates and respects differences.

Editorial

2025-10-08T14:02:34-03:00

Chegamos ao número 27 da SIG Revista de Psicanálise. Mantemos aqui o gesto que nos movimenta: fazer da revista um lugar de interlocução entre teoria, clínica e cultura, contemplando diferentes modalidades de escrita psicanalítica — Em Pauta, Artigos, Ensaios, Resenhas e Entrevista.

Víctor Guerra’s thesis

2025-10-16T23:48:42-03:00

Víctor Guerra's book "Psychic Life of the Baby: Parenting and the Processes of Subjectivation" is the result of many years of study and clinical experience with infants. In this work, the author delves into psychoanalytic concepts and presents his own conceptualizations, as well as a comprehensive bibliographical review that contributes significantly to understanding the metapsychology of the constitution of the psyche, the processes of subjectivation, and psychoanalytic clinical practice with infants. The concepts of intersubjectivity, rhythm, maternal law, tutor object, and false motor self are highlighted, as well as their functions in the process of subjectivation — illustrated in Guerra's "intersubjectivity indicator grid".

Reading masochism from the reverse side

2025-08-07T09:16:19-03:00

The book Gramáticas do masoquismo: escritos psicanalíticos, by Sander Machado da Silva, conducts a deep investigation into the concept of masochism. The path undertaken highlights the uniqueness of Freud’s and Lacan’s theoretical approaches to the theme, articulating psychoanalysis—both in its clinical and conceptual practice—with culture and other fields of knowledge. The development of the research also gives rise to a series of reflections that problematize the status of theory and clinical practice, as well as the inconclusiveness that marks the psychoanalytic endeavor.

Interview with Julieta Jerusalinsky

2025-10-15T23:36:44-03:00

The interview with Julieta Jerusalinsky situates contemporary childhood from the vantage point of the psychoanalytic clinic, considering that, since children are less structured, they are more exposed to the social symptom of their time, thus revealing the directions culture is taking. Childhood is traversed by the desire to “grow up”, where growing up is overlaid with the pursuit of ideals, while — unconsciously — intergenerational transmission carries the expectation that the next generation will succeed where the previous one failed. Hence, children’s heightened attention to the future. Yet we must question how the relation to the future is produced when such hope coexists with the threat of a civilizational project that promotes unrestrained consumption, causing environmental devastation, climate crises fueled by political denialism, and social injustices that exacerbate intolerance by suppressing sociability and respect for otherness. Children pay attention to these issues. The Covid-19 pandemic not only deprived babies, children, and adolescents of structuring experiences, it also catalyzed “electronic intoxications,” imposing an algorithmic overdetermination that fills temporal and spatial gaps from which inventive creations might otherwise emerge. Virtuality presents itself as a fourth register that has obstructed structural symptoms in their knotting of the Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary. As an ethical and clinical way forward, the proposal is to sustain play, shared experiences in daily coexistence, and conversation as modes of elaboration and of supporting bonds, so that the sense of living is not annihilated by individualism, competitiveness, and the immediacy imposed by ready-made answers that suppress the acts of naming producible through the subversion of the subject of desire.

The multimodality of language in the psychoanalytic clinic with infants

2025-09-24T22:27:43-03:00

This research is situated within infant psychoanalytic clinical practice and explores the role of the tactile field in early psychic construction. It is based on the case of Luca, a six-month-old infant brought to consultation at the request of his parents, who were concerned about their son’s lack of eye contact. The objective is to examine how touch can become a vector for interaction and connection with the other within the therapeutic process. Our reflection draws on Freud’s drive theory and the concept of the drive circuit as developed by Lacan and Laznik, as well as on Couvert’s proposal to include the tactile as a full drive field. A microanalysis of two video-recorded therapy sessions was conducted using ELAN software in order to objectify the baby’s motor, tactile, and visual interactions with his mother and the analyst. The results highlight an evolution in his interactions, increasingly oriented toward the other, as well as the construction of a bond with his mother. The study also emphasizes the importance, for professionals, of expanding their attention to the baby’s non-verbal modes of communication, particularly touch. By recognizing the tactile as one of the baby’s modes of interaction, this work brings to light the potential for early intervention with infants in distress and supports their process of subjectivization, within a perspective grounded in becoming rather than causality.

Autism or psychosis

2025-09-22T22:16:58-03:00

This article discusses the distinction between autism and psychosis in childhood from two perspectives: the psychiatric, with an emphasis on the nosographic evolution of the DSM and ICD manuals, and the psychoanalytic, highlighting the structural status of autism and its clinical implications. In psychiatry, it reconstructs the trajectory from the historical linkage of autism to childhood psychoses (DSM-I/II; ICD-6 to ICD-9) to its current separation as a neurodevelopmental disorder (DSM-5; ICD-11). In psychoanalysis, it is argued that autism and psychosis do not form a continuum but rather distinct structures, differing in their relation between language and body, the presence of hallucinations, temporality of onset, and the will to immutability. It concludes that the distinction between these two diagnoses — autism and psychosis — is a condition for guiding treatment and for the ethical articulation between clinical practice, research, and training.

The grammar of control and the language of childhoods

2025-09-13T10:37:43-03:00

The article offers a psychoanalytic and decolonial reading of symbolic, affective, and institutional forms of violence in schools, especially at the beginning of schooling. It draws on Sigmund Freud to understand trauma as a failure of symbolization and on Sándor Ferenczi to formulate the “confusion of languages” between the adult's normative discourse and the child’s bodily-affective language. It engages with Michel Foucault to highlight biopower within pedagogies of control and with Manfred Liebel to assert protagonistic childhoods as subjects of agency, rights, and participation. Through Silvia Bleichmar, it shows how institutional silencing produces traumatic adaptation and drives early medicalization. The text criticizes the dominance of performance, standardization, and productivity, which convert suffering into “deviance.” In response, it proposes the ethics of care — radical listening, presence, and bonding — as a clinical and political stance capable of sustaining suffering without erasure and transforming schools into spaces of symbolization and recognition.

The multimodality of language in the psychoanalytic clinic with infants

2025-06-15T14:26:49-03:00

This research is situated within infant psychoanalytic clinical practice and explores the role of the tactile field in early psychic construction. It is based on the case of Luca, a six-month-old infant brought to consultation at the request of his parents, who were concerned about their son’s lack of eye contact. The objective is to examine how touch can become a vector for interaction and connection with the other within the therapeutic process. Our reflection draws on Freud’s drive theory (Freud, 1915) and the concept of the drive circuit as developed by Lacan (1964) and Laznik (2000), as well as on Couvert’s (2018) proposal to include the tactile as a full drive field. A microanalysis of two video-recorded therapy sessions was conducted using the ELAN software in order to objectify the baby’s motor, tactile, and visual interactions with his mother and the analyste. The results highlight an evolution in his interactions, increasingly oriented toward the other, as well as the construction of a bond with his mother. The study also emphasizes the importance, for professionals, of expanding their attention to the baby’s non-verbal modes of communication, particularly touch. By recognizing the tactile as one of the baby’s modes of interaction, this work brings to light the potential for early intervention with infants in distress and supports their process of subjectivization, within a perspective grounded in becoming rather than causality.

Contemporary subjectivities

2025-09-23T18:56:15-03:00

This article investigates contemporary modes of subjectivation in light of the social and technological transformations shaping adolescence today. Drawing on clinical listening and psychoanalytic reflection, it explores the impact of the technological revolution on identity configurations and interpersonal bonds, which are marked by an unprecedented cultural acceleration. In a context where intergenerational dialogue is weakening and symbolic ideals are rapidly reconfigured, the text highlights the urgency of avoiding biologicist, psychologizing, or sociologizing reductions, revisiting Freud’s concept of complementary series. Psychoanalytic practice is called upon to reposition itself in the face of new forms of suffering and to attune to the echoes of contemporary malaise in adolescent bodies and narratives. The article proposes an open and critical reflection on the place of identity, narcissism, and symptoms at the intersection of subject and culture, in a time when subjectivity is constantly reinvented.