Ola Andersson (1919-1990) was a member of the Swedish Psychoanalytic Society. He was an Associate professor at the University of Uppsala. In 1962 he published Studies in the prehistory of psychoanalysis. The etiology of psychoneuroses and some related themes in Sigmund Freud’s scientific writings and letters 1886-1896. Giordano Bruno is researcher and professor of Mathematical Ana…

The possibility of a theory of sociality and the question of the position of analysis are linked for Freud to the question of Jewish identity. In Moses and Monotheism the Jewish people are constituted through the adoption of the patronymic in an operation that is simultaneously a depropriation and an identification: the founding act of nomination comes from outside. Identity then is always dissociated and never fully completed, and any origin is divided. The origin of the Jewish people follows upon a murder repeating a latency, so that historicity is repetition. Sublimation is introduced in the Jewish prohibition of representation, equivalent to the prohibition of murder as well as to the potential for recognition of others.

From Chaos to Chaos: that is, from the insight of Lucretius-Epicurus to current theories of complex systems, by way of a brief illustrative tour of the fundamental stages of mathematical-physical thought.

The author intends to give the outlines of a possible “radical theory of emergence" in development processes (biological and cognitive). Said theory should be based on two main observations: 1) development processes are emergence phenomena starting from reticular connections that concern the integrated totality of the systems being studied (internal source of the order); 2) development processes occur within structurally coupled systems whose co-evolutional structure has characteristics of irreducible uniqueness and contingency (external source of the order). The endogenous aspect and the exogenous aspect in the production of order in complex systems are here to be understood as being complementary and simultaneous. The two observations on the exo-endogenous character of development can then be generalized into a third: the crisis of the computational paradigm is read via the crisis of adaptationalist thought, sketched by biologists like Francisco Varela, by evolutionists like Stephen J. Gould and Richard Lewontin, as well as philosophers of biology like Susan Oyama. Following the latter’s Development Systems Theory (DST), two possible directions are here explored to formulate an epistemological reflection on development in an emergentist and co-evolutionist key: a) a direction that tries to trace the “ontogenetic" (i.e. relevant to individual development) origins of the structural subject/object paring, which Varela defined as “embodiment" of knowledge; b) a direction that tries to trace the “phylogenic" (i.e. relevant to the biological evolution of our species) origins of this “incarnation" of the mind.

The author presents the first part of a work in which he proposes, on the basis of his group-analytic model and within the horizon of complexity, a structurally and dually relational configuration of the mind: 1. The inter-subjective relationship between intentionality and protomental devices. 2. The intra-subjective relationship between masculine elements (rationality, codes, the Self) and feminine elements (irrationality, silence, the non-Self). In this first part the author describes the experiences that, in recent years, have gradually shaped his theoretic proposal. The second part will examine the inter- and intra-subjective processes for which the relational nature of the mind conforms with its bipolarity. Part three will propose groupings of behavior within a nosographic framework that’s based on the criterion of the relative number of excess elements related to the Self versus the non-Self, and vice versa.

In a scientific approach to the phenomenon of dream, it is of crucial importance to draw a sharp distinction between the dream as it is dreamed by a dreamer, and the dream as it is accounted by the same dreamer. The dream dreamt is treated, from the perspective of Conversationalism, as an irruption of a fragment of Chaos, sent by the gods, or by the naturalistic functions of the brain. On the contrary, the account of the dream is seen as an attempted normalization of Chaos. The normalization of Chaos through the accounted dream is reached both by the elaborate narrative polyphonies that insert the content of the dream’s text into an iconographical tradition from Sophocles to Shakespeare, and by its pure grammatical and prosodic forms, ordered by the rules of iteration, repetition, recurrence. But it is above all such forms of repetition, iteration and recurrence which, as in poetry, ballads, responsories, lullabies, create the hypnotic trance which camouflages the Hydra of half-seen chaos.

Psychoanalysis was introduced in Sweden about a decade into the 20th century by two rivalling pioneers, Emanuel af Geijerstam and Poul Bjerre. After a slow start, the Danish-Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society and the Finnish-Swedish Psychoanalytical Society were formed in 1934 in Stockholm. The same year, Ericastiftelsen [The Erica Foundation], a psychotherapeutic clinic for children, was founded by Hanna Bratt. Ola Andersson's doctoral dissertation ("Studies in the Prehistory of Psychoanalysis", 1962) and the historian Gunnar Brandell's essay ("Freud, a Man of His Century") have had an international impact. An authorized and carefully edited translation of Freud's collected works has been published by Natur och Kultur, and the history of psychoanalysis in Sweden has just been written within the framework of the University of Gothenburg. As a result of a recent interest in the work of Jacques Lacan, the journal Psykoanalytisk Tid/Skrift was founded in 2002, in Gothenburg.

In his article, "A Supplement to Freud's Case History of 'Emmy von N'" (1979,) Ola Andersson outlines the life history of ‘Emmy’, whose real name, Fanny Moser, was not revealed out of consideration for her relatives, a few of them were then still alive. His biographical account, while based on source material other than Freud, at the same time notes that Freud did not distort the biographical information in his case report. The picture drawn by Andersson of Emmy von N reveals her complex personality. In a critical discussion of the diagnosis, Andersson also stresses the crucial significance of historical relativity when using diagnostic criteria.

(New York, NY: Other Press, 2003)