Power and Shame: Reply to Mark Blechner and to Ruth Stein

I touch briefly on my own experience of shame as triggered by what my discussants have written. I look at how shame and power interact in psychoanalytic discourse, examine their play in relation to questions of aggression and activity, and refer as well to what I am calling “an ethics of relativism.” Cautioning against uncritical binary thinking, I conclude that, if we forget the intimacy of good and bad, we are going to write jouissance, that site of extremity and transcendence where pain and pleasure are indistinguishable, right out of our sexual lives. And, if we do that, we are once again going to write sexuality out of psychoanalysis.     

Reply to Tomlinson and Bisschop

The notion of the devolution of power from central to regional and local levels is gaining popularity across a wide front as a point of departure ‐ a rudimentary strategy ‐ to conceptualise ways in which South African society can be transformed. The South African government has contributed to this exercise by launching a process of establishing Regional Services Councils, new multi‐racial metropolitan and ‘areawide’ bodies outside South African ‘homelands’. This article identifies and analyses the stances of the most important opposition political actors operating legally on the South African stage to the establishment of these new bodies. These actors range from the right‐wing white parties ‐ the CP and the HNP‐to AZAPO and the UDF. Three general stances to this government‐initiated process are identified, and its chances for success are assessed.     

Similarities with a (Crucial) Difference: Reply to Commentaries by Shapiro and Marshall

Reviewing Sigmund Freud's essays and correspondence during World War I, we find that for the most part he minimized or denied the impact the war was having on him and his patients. Just as Sandor Ferenczi's emphasis on the impact of “real” childhood events and the “real” relationship between patient and analyst was seen as aberrant, so too was Ferenczi's warning Freud to leave Germany in 1933 Ferenczi , S. ( 1933 ). Confusion of tongues between adults and the child—the language of tenderness and of passion . Contemporary Psychoanalysis , 24 , 196 – 206 . [Google Scholar] treated as paranoia. Freud's later works apply his psychoanalytic theories to society as a whole but do not consider ways to “cure” social ills, so it is not surprising that Freud didn't hear Albert Einstein's famous question, Why War? as a plea for insight into how to end war. The author suggests a reconsideration of Einstein's question from the perspective of Buddhist psychology and finds a more optimistic albeit difficult answer.