Akhtar Salman - On Freuds Negation

IPA Publications Committee

This significant series was founded by Robert Wallerstein and first edited by Joseph Sandler, Ethel Spector Person, and Peter Fonagy, and its important contributions have greatly interested psychoanalysts of different latitudes.

The objective of this series is to approach Freuds work from a present and contemporary point of view. On the one hand, this means highlighting the fundamental contributions of his work that constitute the axes of psychoanalytic theory and practice. On the other, it implies the possibility of getting to know and spreading the ideas of present psychoanalysts about Freuds oeuvre, both where they coincide and where they differ.

This series considers at least two lines of development: a contemporary reading of Freud that reclaims his contributions and a clarification of the logical and epistemic perspectives from which he is read today.

Freuds theory has branched out, and this has led to a theoretical, technical, and clinical pluralism that has to be worked through. It has therefore become necessary to avoid a snug and uncritical coexistence of concepts in order to consider systems of increasing complexities that take into account both the convergences and the divergences of the categories at play.

Consequently, this project has involved an additional taskthat is, gathering psychoanalysts from different geographical regions representing, in addition, different theoretical stances, in order to be able to show their polyphony. This also means an extra effort for the reader that has to do with distinguishing and discriminating, establishing relations or contradictions that each reader will have to eventually work through.

Being able to listen to other theoretical viewpoints is also a way of exercising our listening capacities in the clinical field. This means that the listening should support a space of freedom that would allow us to hear what is new and original.

In this spirit we have brought together authors deeply rooted in the Freudian tradition and others who have developed theories that had not been explicitly taken into account in Freuds work.

In Negation, Freud stated that negation is the way of reaching consciousness of what is repressed without removing the repressive process. In a very synthetic way, he puts at stake the origin of intellectual judgement, its relation to the pleasure principle, the concept of negative judgement as a mark of repression, as well as decisions related to the recognition of the internal and external world, subjective and objective categories, and the role of perceptions and reality-testing in this frame.

The editors, Mary Kay ONeil and Salman Akhtar, together with the contributors to this volume, accepted the challenge to consider Freudian ideas and update them.

Special thanks are due to Charles Hanly, the President of the IPA, for his support, to the editors, and to the contributors to this volume, which enriches the Contemporary Freuds series.

Leticia Glocer Fiorini
Series Editor
Chair of the Publications Committee of
the International Psychoanalytical Association