TY - JOUR

T1 - The rejection of knowing

AU - Zeuthen, Katrine Egede

PY - 2022/8/9

Y1 - 2022/8/9

N2 - Cases of child sexual trauma are rarely understood in ways that lead to a clear separation of an internal and external reality. The child’s as well as the professionals’ meaning making process requires time, patience and listening rather than isolated structured observations, a process that opposes an empirical paradigm dictating what reality is, where to look for it and how. Just as the myth of King Oedipus deals with the significance of the outer reality and how it affects the inner world, various developments of psychoanalytic theory and practice have through time unfolded different descriptions of how we should understand the relation between our analysands’ outer world, and the world they present to us in the analytic room. Through case-material from two child analyses with children addicted to sexual excitement and with the theories of Laplanche and Lacan and the myth of Oedipus, the paper argues that the children’s expressions represent the enigmatic approach of the other as always being inside and also outside – always for real and in fantasy. Because children cannot find the answer in themselves, they act in realized ways that put the analyst to work in a position of not knowing.

AB - Cases of child sexual trauma are rarely understood in ways that lead to a clear separation of an internal and external reality. The child’s as well as the professionals’ meaning making process requires time, patience and listening rather than isolated structured observations, a process that opposes an empirical paradigm dictating what reality is, where to look for it and how. Just as the myth of King Oedipus deals with the significance of the outer reality and how it affects the inner world, various developments of psychoanalytic theory and practice have through time unfolded different descriptions of how we should understand the relation between our analysands’ outer world, and the world they present to us in the analytic room. Through case-material from two child analyses with children addicted to sexual excitement and with the theories of Laplanche and Lacan and the myth of Oedipus, the paper argues that the children’s expressions represent the enigmatic approach of the other as always being inside and also outside – always for real and in fantasy. Because children cannot find the answer in themselves, they act in realized ways that put the analyst to work in a position of not knowing.

U2 - 10.1080/01062301.2023.2260614

DO - 10.1080/01062301.2023.2260614

M3 - Journal article

VL - 45

SP - 106

EP - 115

JO - Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review

JF - Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review

SN - 0106-2301

IS - 2

ER -