Berkeley Psychoanalytic Society
Exploring the Unconscious: Arts, Science and the Humanities
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Anorexia: Between Desire for Recognition and the Death Drive
Saturday, October 14, 2023 @ 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
In this lecture we will address the enigma of mental anorexia from the perspective of psychoanalysis. From the beginning, Freud perceived in this syndrome, which predominantly affects young women from puberty onward, two heterogeneous and irreducible structural sides of its manifestation: the hysterical and the melancholic declination. In the hysterical version, a dynamic of anorexia takes shape that accentuates its dialectical-relational, conflictual, communicative side. Conversely, in the melancholic version we are dealing with an autarchic-autistic dynamic, which pushes the subject toward a deadly isolation, disengaged from the relationship with the other. We find this dual face of anorexia, via different formulations, in the history of psychoanalysis, particularly among authors who have dealt with it in their clinical practice. In our lecture we will try to highlight how this dual aspect is not only a way of distinguishing two different structural frameworks of anorexia, but also lays bare an internal tension in the anorexic functioning itself, divided as it is between an attempt to open a channel of intimate contact with the Other, and a self-destructive dynamic animated by the death drive.
SPEAKER
Domenico Cosenza, psychologist and psychotherapist, PhD in Psychoanalysis from the University of Paris 8. He is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Milan, Italy. He is an Analyst Member (AME) and past President of the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis (SLP) (2013-2016) and member of the World Association of Psychoanalysis (WAP). He was AE (Analyste de l’Ecole) from May 2017 to May 2020. He was President of the Euro Federation of Psychoanalysis (EFP) from July 2017 to July 2021. He teaches in the Clinical Section of Milan and is frequently invited to teach in other clinical sections in different countries of Europe and America . He also teaches Developmental Psychopathology and Eating Behaviour Psychopathology in the Department of Psychology at Pavia University. He has long experience working in clinical institutions for Eating Disorders in Italy, and is vice-President of the FIDA (Federazione Italiana Disturbi Alimentari, [Italian Federation of Eating Disorders]). He is the author of several books, among them: Jacques Lacan e il problema della tecnica in psicoanalisi (Roma: Astrolabio, 2003); Jacques Lacan y el problema de la tecnica en psicoanalisis (Madrid: Gredos, 2008); Il muro dell’anoressia (Roma: Astrolabio, 2008; Spanish tr. El muro de la anorexia, Gredos, Madrid 2013; 2 edition Xoroi 2021); La comida y el inconsciente. Psicoanalisis y trastornos alimentarios (Buenos Aires: Tres Haces, 2013; Introducción a la clinica psicoanalitica de la anorexia, bulimia y obesidad, Logos n. 8 (Buenos Aires: Grama, 2014); Le refus dans l’anorexie (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2014); Il cibo e l’inconscio psicoanalisi e disturbi alimentari (FrancoAngeli, Milano 2018; ed. Sp. La comida y el inconsciente (nueva ediccion ampliada), NED, Barcelona 2019); Clinica dell’eccesso. Derive pulsionali e soluzioni sintomatiche nella psicopatologia contemporanea (FrancoAngeli, Milano 2022); A Lacanian Reading of Anorexia (Routledge, London 2023).