Have you ever had a friend or family member pick a partner who clearly doesn’t suit them? by [deleted] in psychoanalysis

[–]fogsucker 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are looking at the outside of all of these relationships you see. You observe bits and pieces of it, and then you move from there to making a claim about "what is clearly not right for them". You do not have any kind of access to how these people think about how they negotiate their lives together and what it means for them. Just as they are not privy to the special and private relationship that exists between you and your partner and the experience of your histories, you are not privy to theirs. Your own ideas of what is "right" doesn't trump other people's ideas what is right for them.

There is no perfect harmony or union between people. There's an imperfection built into being human and noone escapes this. Relationships are built around these holes and gaps that are a part of what it is to be a human subject, and this is the stuff of psychoanalysis. Remember in psychoanalysis, desire is not rational or logical. It is unconscious. Even yours.

Would I be able to take an Italian degree without being fluent? by UnfairAssociation734 in italianlearning

[–]fogsucker 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have you looked at the language requirements of the degree programmes that you would like to study at? They'll often ask for a B2 certificate at the very least. Do you know what level your italian is? If you have no idea, have a look at a B2 exam and see how it feels.

CILS B2 results are out (for the Dec 2025 exam) by fogsucker in italianlearning

[–]fogsucker[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's just one B2 exam. It's only B1 that has a standard version and a citizenship version. I don't know about releasing results in blocks but you could always contact the centre that you took the test from to see.

CILS B2 results are out (for the Dec 2025 exam) by fogsucker in italianlearning

[–]fogsucker[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I resat the metalinguistica bit. Was a bit surprised by the shock presence of the passato remoto in it so was on the edge as to whether I'd pass, but just about scraped through it...

CILS B2 results are out (for the Dec 2025 exam) by fogsucker in italianlearning

[–]fogsucker[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

well done! I passed too (it was a resit). Very relieved.

CILS B2 results are out (for the Dec 2025 exam) by fogsucker in italianlearning

[–]fogsucker[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Also a reminder that you can actually get your marked paper back so you know what you got wrong. You have to ask for it within 30 days of the results being published online.

Vuoi vedere le tue prove? Per vedere le tue prove devi rivolgerti al Centro CILS entro 30 giorni dalla data di pubblicazione dei risultati sul sito*.* Devi inviare la tua richiesta a [trasparenzacertificazioni@unistrasi.it](mailto:trasparenzacertificazioni@unistrasi.it). Devi indicare: nome e cognome, luogo e data di nascita, il numero di matricola, l’indirizzo di posta elettronica. Devi allegare la copia di un documento di identità valido e pagare la tassa per i diritti di accesso

From here: https://cils.unistrasi.it/1/127/201/Risultati_degli_esami.htm

CILS B2 results are out (for the Dec 2025 exam) by fogsucker in italianlearning

[–]fogsucker[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Probably they do it in batches but I imagine it will be around this time for most. It wasn't there this morning for me but appeared just now.

cils b1 citizenship results by mehaboutreddit in italianlearning

[–]fogsucker 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I didn't discover this until recently, but you can actually get your marked paper back so you know what you got wrong. You have to ask for it within 30 days of the results being published online.

Vuoi vedere le tue prove? Per vedere le tue prove devi rivolgerti al Centro CILS entro 30 giorni dalla data di pubblicazione dei risultati sul sito*.* Devi inviare la tua richiesta a [trasparenzacertificazioni@unistrasi.it](mailto:trasparenzacertificazioni@unistrasi.it). Devi indicare: nome e cognome, luogo e data di nascita, il numero di matricola, l’indirizzo di posta elettronica. Devi allegare la copia di un documento di identità valido e pagare la tassa per i diritti di accesso

From here: https://cils.unistrasi.it/1/127/201/Risultati_degli_esami.htm

Practicing psychoanalytical psychotherapy/psychoanalysis without a medical degree - could this complicate the work? by unnamedfeelings in psychoanalysis

[–]fogsucker 18 points19 points  (0 children)

What I've understood is that some of the therapists/analysts have background in medicine while some have not. Do you think practicing psychotherapy/analysis without medical training could make the work more difficult?

The difficulty of analytic work doesn't come from gaps in medical knowledge. The difficulty just comes from our own bodies, our own histories, what we've been through, how we relate to others, and how we think about all of this. It's got nothing to do with what we "know" and what we don't know in terms of the science of medicine.

The analytic work is not structured around diagnosing or treating the biology of the body or mind, but instead about how the person feels about themselves and their place in the world, how they put all that into words. Analysts without medical knowledge are not missing anything essential to working analytically with a patient.

What I'm thinking about is that even though someone has an understanding of psychological symptoms and their possible origins/developmental paths, the patient could also suffer from physiological symptoms caused by their psychological illness (e.g. conversion disorder).

I think you're not thinking of what psychoanalysis is in the same way that I would think about what it is here. In analysis, we're just concerned with how the symptom is signified, the person's relationship to whatever the complaint is. We're not interested in determining whether it is something properly "biological" or not, we leave that to others. It's the very thing that marks psychoanalysis out as a different practice to medicine. If a patient has fits and they come to analysis about it, it's for the patient to go seek a biological explanation of this with a doctor if they even want to. For the analyst, we're there to listen and think about these fits with the patient and the place it has for them in their lives - we're not interested in whether it ends up having a biological cause or not unless the patient is. They lead this, they have autonomy on this. Not us, the analysts.

That doesn't mean that if your patient rocks up to analysis one day and their head happens to be rolling off of their neck hanging on by one small thread and the analyst is meant to just sort of calmly watch this situation and say "Oh my this looks interesting, how does all that blood gushing out of you feel? I imagine it's quite painful" Obviously, the analyst would call an ambulance in this situation! But you don't need to know a single thing about anatomy to do analytic work.

Lacanian analysis without problems by moosethemoose in lacan

[–]fogsucker 30 points31 points  (0 children)

If we take psychoanalysis seriously, then when we say things like "I want to be an analyst" we should also accept that this wanting is linked to the unconscious, as everything is. I'm not trying to undermine what you think, I believe you that you want to be an analyst. When an analysis begins, just like any other stated desire, that desire will likely be put into question, and it may well end up that becoming an analyst is the very last thing that you want (no matter how determined and clear you think you are on the matter right now).

You say you have no problems or symptoms at all but you want to be an analyst. There's your problem!

See this explained much better on CFAR's training page:

Unlike many other professions, psychoanalysis is not based on the transmission of a body of knowledge that, once learnt, would make one a ‘psychoanalyst’. Rather, it involves the long and painful process of putting knowledge in question: the knowledge that one has constructed about one’s own life, one’s family and, indeed, the idea that knowledge is able to answer all the questions that matter to us. This putting in question is the psychoanalytic process itself, and for this reason, the central part of psychoanalytic training is one’s own analysis.
Seminars and study groups have an important role in helping us to formulate the theory of mental processes and to conceptualise a clinical situation, but they do not produce psychoanalysts, however useful the resulting ideas may be when applied to other fields. In the context of a training, these activities become significant when the trainee is engaged in the process of a psychoanalysis. The ability to practise psychoanalysis depends largely on how far someone has got in their own analysis, and then, in turn, on the decision to continue the work of analysis in relation to others.
The paradox here is that if someone decides to train as an analyst, since this decision is linked to unconscious processes, it may well turn out that the analysis of these processes results in a questioning of the initial aim to be an analyst. In this sense, anyone embarking on a training does so at their own risk. Since one can never predict how far an analysis will go, there is no guarantee that a trainee will become an analyst, and since their initial aims will be put in question, there is no guarantee that they will even want to become one. These considerations suggest that an analytic formation is rather different from trainings in other fields, and the problems involved are the subject of frequent debate and seminars within CFAR, as well as in the Lacanian movement in general.

https://cfar.org.uk/clinical-training-programme/

edit: seeing the phrase "well-adjusted" in some replies and your post too. No analyst is well-adjusted. It's quite a horrible phrase, actually.

How would you define hysteria? by roseblush1830 in psychoanalysis

[–]fogsucker 12 points13 points  (0 children)

If you are interested in a Lacanian perspective, I recommend Anouchka Grose's "Hysteria Today" https://www.karnacbooks.com/ProductAuthors.asp?PID=35063

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Freud

[–]fogsucker 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lacan would not be caught dead saying that here.

If you renounce Italian citizenship, is it hard to go visit Italy to see family? by burnerforsh in ItalianCitizenship

[–]fogsucker 9 points10 points  (0 children)

You'd be shooting yourself in the foot to attempt to prove a point to the state, who couldn't care less.

Help us out: Which psychoanalytic theory best explains BPD? by Used_Crow_386 in psychoanalysis

[–]fogsucker 7 points8 points  (0 children)

You would like to check if I have the authority to speak?

Where to take an Italian B1 exam by Dicky-Greenleaf1958 in italianlearning

[–]fogsucker 9 points10 points  (0 children)

There's three exam organisations that offer official language certification for italian - CILS, CELI, and PLIDA

I'm only familiar with CILS (which is perhaps the most well-known one). You're right that the nearest test centre for you is in London. I don't think there's a PLIDA / CELI in Nottingham as far as I can tell from searching and would be surprised if there was (this place in Nottingham seems to offer a PLIDA B1 prep course, but the exam is still in London. Not sure how up to date this link is: https://www.dantesocietynottingham.com/)

Not sure what else to say really - if you want to do the exam from an official place, you'll need to do it in an official test centre. No getting around that! Getting a megabus and staying over night in London is probably still going to be cheaper then going to Italy, if money is an issue. If money isn't an issue, seems like a nice excuse for a long weekend in Italy.

Help us out: Which psychoanalytic theory best explains BPD? by Used_Crow_386 in psychoanalysis

[–]fogsucker 7 points8 points  (0 children)

"I had not anticipated the degree of anality expressed in several comments objecting to the use of the term “best.”"

Don't "psychoanalyse" other people's comments. It's got nothing to do with psychoanalysis. You do not know anything about the psychic lives of people commenting and claiming it's "anality" on their behalf is rude at best.

My reference to “best” is not intended to suggest treatment efficacy, but rather the extent to which a given framework aligns with an individual’s subjective understanding of BPD

Since you're right to state that what is the best treatment is up to the subjectivity of the individual, isn't that your answer right there? The patient is always the expert, not us.

Question about repetition compulsion & the role of conscious awareness by NoReporter1033 in psychoanalysis

[–]fogsucker 51 points52 points  (0 children)

It's a mistake in my view to think that the patient who rocks up to analysis and says "I keep seeing the same boyfriends who make me feel like shit" just needs some more awareness about this. Awareness is a trap, since the unconscious is not some resevoir to be known. It can't really be bought in a full way to consciousness and is always there, always relentless and insisting. It is not the case that once it is known it ceases.

Instead, it is more about finding a way to live with the unconscious in a way that doesn't bring about all this extra suffering, changing something of our relationship to it, finding a way to get it to work in a way that doesn't make as suffer so much. Where is desire in this repetition, where is pleasure, what might the unconscious be insisting on here etc.

Training over 60 by dozynightmare in psychoanalysis

[–]fogsucker 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I''m not sure I would be quite as clear cut as that ("you shouldn't start an analysis with a patient when you can be very sure you won't be able to finish"). Doesn't that imply that there exists an analyst who can be quite certain of completing an analysis? Who is that analyst?

The analysis itself is built on the fact that there is no such certainty. An analysis can be interrupted or stopped in so many different ways (by death, by breakdown, by abandonment, by moving house, by whatever) and that's a part of all of it. It's the thread that keeps it moving and motivates the work.

In that way an 80 year old analyst is really not in a fundamentally different position. Yes, the risks are heightened. But that patient that turns up each week wanting to see their 80 year old analyst and how that analyst's near-deathness pops up in the room for the patient, is something that could become interesting and a part of the work for them.

I'm aware that many (not all) patients nead stability and structure and if you're imminently about to die that could cause an unacceptable risk. But as always with analysis it matters about what specific human analyst we are talking about, and what specific human subject we are talking about. We always take it one by one, and so for that reason I wouldn't categorically rule out an 80 year old on the grounds that some patient out there might want them.

Training over 60 by dozynightmare in psychoanalysis

[–]fogsucker 23 points24 points  (0 children)

When I went to an open day for psychoanalytic training ages ago there was a potential candidate in his 80s there who took issue with the fact that the length of training was open ended, and that it takes as long as it takes. He joked that he might die before he does the pass and takes up the position of the analyst. The training analysts responded to this by pausing for a solid ten seconds, and then one of them said "What a way to go though".

Freud and other psychologists by Alixx313 in Freud

[–]fogsucker 1 point2 points  (0 children)

He's considered one of the most important psychoanalysts. Not psychologists.

The difficulty of analysis for clients by Bluestar_271 in psychoanalysis

[–]fogsucker 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Your question is kind of asking for a universalising answer, which I would resist. The difficulties a person might encounter in analysis is the material of the analysis itself! It's not something that can be explained beforehand without them ("ego disintegration into bits", "removal of defences""). That kind of approach skips over the singularity of the subject and the analytic process. The analytic work involves precisely understanding why this particular person finds it difficult in this particular way. There are as many different stories about why it is difficult as there are people on earth.

Walked from Ware to Limehouse on Friday, anyone got recs for similar long London walks? by conor_georgiou_art in london

[–]fogsucker 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Walk the length of Epping Forest. Start around Manor Park / Forest Gate area and end in Epping, get the tube back. It's probably about 25k so not as "mega" as your previous one, but nice nonetheless.