Howard Levine, MD
Beyond Neurosis:
Freud's Theory of Representation and the Expansion of Psychoanalytic Technique
March 8-9, 2025
Kinzie Hotel
20 West Kinzie Street, Chicago
& ZOOM
Dr.Howard B. Levine, is a member of APSA, PINE, the Contemporary Freudian Society and Pulsion, on the faculty of NYU Post-Doc’s Contemporary Freudian Track, on the Editorial Board of the IJP and Psychoanalytic Inquiry, editor-in-chief of the Routledge Wilfred Bion Studies Book Series and in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is the author of Transformations de l’Irreprésentable (Ithaque 2019) and Affect, Representation and Language: Between the Silence and the Cry (Routledge 2022) and editor of The Post-Bionian Field Theory of Antonino Ferro (Routledge 2022), The Freudian Matrix of Andre Green. Towards A Psychoanalysis For The 21st Century by André Green (Routledge/IPA 2023) and Andre Green’s On The Destruction and Death Drives (Phoenix/Karnac 2023). His co-edited books include Unrepresented States and the Construction of Meaning (Karnac 2013); On Freud’s Screen Memories (Karnac 2014); The Wilfred Bion Tradition (Karnac 2016); Bion in Brazil. (Karnac 2017); The Clinical Thinking of W.R. Bion in Brazil (Routledge 2024); Andre Green Revisited: Representation and the Work of the Negative (Karnac 2018); Covidian Life (2021 Phoenix); Psychoanalysis of the Psychoanalytic Frame Revisited: A New Look at Bleger’s Classical Work (Routledge/IPA, 2022); and Autistic Phenomena and Unrepresented States: Explorations in the Emergence of Self (Phoenix 2023).
Seminar Title: Beyond Neurosis
Freud’s Theory of Representation and the Expansion of Psychoanalytic Technique
Seminar Description: Current analytic practice presents clinicians with aspects of their work for which the answers provided by an analytic theory centered exclusively on representation and neurotic organization proves insufficient. We are daily forced to encounter the problems of borderline organizations and ‘limit cases’ in which annihilation anxiety and survival and maintenance of identity and a sense of self is at stake. In order to better understand and address these problems, a psychoanalytic theory and conception of analytic functioning that goes beyond that of neurosis is required. Such a theory is indicated, but not yet fully developed, especially in Freud’s later writings beginning with Beyond the Pleasure Principle, The Ego and the Id, Negation and On Construction. The outlines of such a theoretical expansion have been further explicated by post-Freudian authors such as Bion, Winnicott, Andre Green, the Botellas and members of the Paris Psychosomatics School. This seminar will elaborate upon the concept of figurability, exploring the question and problems of ideational representation and transformation of unrepresented - i.e., non-ideationally represented - states and will address the implications of this proposed theoretical expansion for analytic technique.
1. Towards a two-track model of psychoanalysis
- Levine, H.B. (2014). Towards a two-track model for psychoanalysis. Revista Portuguesa de Psicanálise 34 [1]: 7-14.
2. Freud’s theory of representation and the expansion of psychoanalytic technique
- Levine, HB (2022). Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry. London and New York: Routledge/IPA.
3. Clinical Implications of unrepresented states
- Case example (pp. 28-35) in Levine, H.B. (2022) Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry. London and New York: Routledge/IPA.
- Clinical implications of unrepresented states (pp. 36-48) in Levine, H.B. (2022) Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry. London and New York: Routledge/IPA.
- Introduction (pp. 1-5) and Chapter 2 (pp. 19-28)
4. Trauma, Process and Representation
- Trauma, process and representation (pp. 91-105) in Levine, H.B. (2022) Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry. London and New York: Routledge/IPA.
5. Autism, ASD and Representation
- Making the unthinkable thinkable (pp. 106-121) in Levine, H.B. (2022) Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry. London and New York: Routledge/IPA.
6. Psychosomatics and Unrepresented States
- Word, body, thing – (pp. 122-131) in Levine, H.B. (2022) Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry.
- - Psychosomatics and unrepresented states – (132-142) in Levine, H.B. (2022) Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry. London and New York: Routledge/IPA.
References
Levine, H.B. (2022) Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry.London and New York: IPA/Routledge.
Levine, H.B. (2010). Creating analysts, creating analytic patients. IJPA 91:1385-140Levine, H.B. (2012). The colourless canvas: Representation, therapeutic action and the creation of mind. IJPA 93: 607-629.
Levine, H.B. (2021). Trauma, process and representation. IJPA 102: 794-807.
Levine, H.B. (2023). On Looking Into The Ego and the Id 100 Years After Its Publica tion. IJPA 104: 1054-1062.