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Dana Amir

University of Haifa, Counselling and Human Development, Faculty Member

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Dana Amir is a clinical psychologist, supervising and training analyst at the Israel psychoanalytic society, full professor, vice dean for research and head of the interdisciplinary doctoral program in psychoanalysis at Haifa University, editor of Maarag – the Israel Annual of Psychoanalysis (the Hebrew University), poetess and literature researcher. She is the author of six poetry books, two memoirs in prose, and four psychoanalytic non-fiction books: Cleft Tongue (Karnac, 2014), On the Lyricism of the Mind (Routledge, 2016), Bearing Witness to the Witness (Routledge, 2018) and Psychoanalysis on the Verge of Language: Clinical Cases on the Edge (Routledge, 2021). She is the winner of many literary as well as academic prizes, including five international psychoanalytic awards: The Frances Tustin International Memorial Prize (2011), the IPA (International Psychoanalytic Association) Sacerdoti Prize (2013), the IPA Hayman Prize (2017), and the IFPE (International Forum of Psychoanalytic Education) Distinguished Psychoanalytic Educators Award (2017). In 2020, she won the Outstanding Senior Researcher Award of the University of Haifa. She also won, together with Her post-doc student, the annual International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies prize for the best paper published in our journal in 2020.

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Papers by Dana Amir

ON REVENGE PARDON AND fORGIVENESS

Political violence has long been a focus of psychoanalytic writing. Jessica Benjamin's concepts o... more Political violence has long been a focus of psychoanalytic writing. Jessica Benjamin's concepts of the complementarity, or twoness, and that of thirdness can serve as a point of departure allowing us to challenge the dichotomy between positions of revenge and forgiveness (on the victim's part) and positions of evil and remorse (on the perpetrator's), and to suggest a spectrum of encounters between victims and perpetrators that includes four types of interaction: (1) between the position of extreme evil on the perpetrator's part, and the position of revenge on the victim's; (2) between the perpetrator's position of banal evil, and the victim's position of false pardon; (3) between the perpetrator's position of guilt and atonement, and the victim's position of full pardon; (4) between the position of remorse on the perpetrator's part, and the position of forgiveness on the victim's. A thorough analysis of various testimonies illustrates how these four positions manifest, with varying degrees of dominance, in every encounter (whether concrete or imagined) between victim and perpetrator.

Metaphoric, metonymic and psychotic somatoform dissociation

The present paper seeks to propose, using a combination of psychoanalytic and linguistic thinking... more The present paper seeks to propose, using a combination of psychoanalytic and linguistic thinking, a distinction between three degrees of symbolicity across the somatoform dissociative continuum: the metaphorical, in which there is a symbolic connection between the somatoform phenomenon and the traumatic content, the metonymic, which constitutes a revival of the traumatic experience without the ability to reflect on it, and the psychotic, in which the somatoform phenomenon is experienced as ego-syntonic, thus neither causes distress nor evokes thinking. Three clinical vignettes demonstrate how the higher the degree of symbolization, the more effective the therapeutic process. Finally, a fourth vignette demonstrates how acoustic association in the therapist's countertransference can constitute an antidote to the patient's acoustic dissociation, allowing the reclaiming of the capacity for linking.

From the Collapse of Signifiers to the Reconstruction of Language: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Robert Antelme’s The Human Race

American Imago, 2018

When Language Meets Traumatic Lacuna: The Metaphoric, the Metonymic, and the Psychotic Modes of Testimony

Psychoanalytic Inquiry, Nov 14, 2016

Tonality and atonality in the psychic space

Journal of Poetry Therapy, May 23, 2017

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the relations between tonal and atonal regions of the psychic space... more ABSTRACT This paper discusses the relations between tonal and atonal regions of the psychic space as being responsible for the relations between movement and stasis. Drawing on a musical terminology, I describe the constant tension between a harmonious pole of thinking and an idiosyncratic one, both in psychoanalytic meta-reflection as well as in the clinical realm, presenting thereby bibliotherapy, poetry therapy, and the poetic zones of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy as the therapeutic forces which “pull” toward the link to atonal psychic areas, enabling in that way the ongoing integration of the homely and un-homely, the syntax and the anti-syntax of the psychic space.

Studium and Punctum in Psychoanalytic Writing: Reading Case Studies Through Roland Barthes

Psychoanalytic Review, The, Feb 1, 2018

When the Writer’s Eye Meets the Reader’s Eye: A Review of “A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature: Reading the Reader” by Merav Roth

Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 2021

Merav Roth’s (2020) unique book, A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature: Reading the ... more Merav Roth’s (2020) unique book, A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature: Reading the Reader, looks at the psychic processes, both unconscious and conscious, that come into play in the internal world of a reader during the course of reading literary texts. Come into play, meaning that these processes don’t merely serve as the inner environment that facilitates the reading of literature but are, also, the very result of that reading itself. This book is a textbook in a very literal (text-book) and profound sense. In addition to uncovering the maps of reader and reading, it succeeds in laying bare a map of the psyche itself, including the infinite ways in which it collapses and reconstitutes itself. While the literary reader is its formal subject, the book extends beyond her or him. It is, in fact, an exemplary book on psychoanalysis which can variously be read as dealing with what happens to the analyst facing the patient’s text, or what happens to the patient facing the analyst’s text—or as dealing with what we all experience in the presence of not only printed texts but the complex text of our own reality—both external and internal. Looking into close accounts that touch on the unconscious aspect of literary reading (as she describes in the preface), Roth had an idea that came to be the central focus of her doctoral dissertation on which this book is based. She extracted and studied testimonies about reading experiences from 17 literary works, which differed in terms of genre, style, and content (two novels, two essays, two short stories, a play, and five poems), sharing one thing in common: they carried references—direct and indirect, explicit and implicit—

Bearing Witness to the Witness

From Actual Evil to Possible Forgiveness: Three Positions on the Axes of Self and Other

Psychoanalytic Perspectives

This article focuses on three positions, from malignant to benign, located on the respective axes... more This article focuses on three positions, from malignant to benign, located on the respective axes of object and subject in the context of forgiveness. A helpful graph is provided. The most malignant position on the axis of the object is the position of evil or indifference toward evil, paralleled, on the axis of the subject, by a position of vengefulness. The second position on the axis of the object is the position of guilt/atonement, which is paralleled, on the axis of the subject, by the position of amnesty. The third position on the axis of the object is the position of regret, which has its parallel on the subject axis in the position of forgiveness. Though presented as three clearly demarcated positions, they are present, with fluctuating dominance, in any encounter, whether concrete or imagined, between subject and object. These three positions are illustrated by means of a close reading of three memoirs.

From Actual Evil to Possible Forgiveness: Three Positions on the Axes of Self and Other

This article focuses on three positions, from malignant to benign, located on the respective axes... more This article focuses on three positions, from malignant to benign, located on the respective axes of object and subject in the context of forgiveness. A helpful graph is provided. The most malignant position on the axis of the object is the position of evil or indifference toward evil, paralleled, on the axis of the subject, by a position of vengefulness. The second position on the axis of the object is the position of guilt/atonement, which is paralleled, on the axis of the subject, by the position of amnesty. The third position on the axis of the object is the position of regret, which has its parallel on the subject axis in the position of forgiveness. Though presented as three clearly demarcated positions, they are present, with fluctuating dominance, in any encounter, whether concrete or imagined, between subject and object. These three positions are illustrated by means of a close reading of three memoirs.

שיחות גרסת הדפוס טונָליוּת ואַ־טונָליוּת בתוך המרחב הנפשי

שפה טפילית לשיחות גרסת הדפוס

ארבעה פרמטרים של קול וגילומם בהאזנה האנליטית שיחות גרסת הדפוס

דנה אמיר שפת הנקמה, שפת החנינה, שפת הסליחה - גרסת שיחות לדפוס

Boys Don't Cry: On the Radical Unsaturation of Gender Dichotomy

The Psychoanalytic Review

Using Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of “becoming” and the “rhizome,” as well as Bion's ... more Using Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of “becoming” and the “rhizome,” as well as Bion's discussion of the interaction between the “establishment” and the “messianic idea,” the author analyzes Boys Don't Cry (1999), a film that presents the story of a young transgender man who was raped and murdered. The author focuses on how the radical unsaturation of gender dichotomy may turn into an unbearable threat as it turns the linear, hierarchical “tree-like” relations of body and mind into a process of deterritorialization.

The inner witness *

Cleft Tongue, 2018

Parasitic Language

The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2020

This paper presents initial thoughts about the phenomenon of parasitic language. This is a langua... more This paper presents initial thoughts about the phenomenon of parasitic language. This is a language which clings to the other’s linguistic patterns and in doing so produces a double manifestation of omnipotence and impotence; a language that forges a linguistic “prosthesis,” and while allowing for a false manifestation of language and thinking, constitutes thoughts as foreign objects that are mechanically and artificially “stuck” to the speaking subject. The early roots of this language, as illustrated in a detailed analytical case description, inhere in the infiltration of language by multi-generational traumatic traces. This turns language itself into a scene of simultaneous repetition of the act of salvation and the act of annihilation.

“And in that Dream, I Have Another Dream”

Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 2021

ABSTRACT My discussion of Roitman’s paper focuses on the patient’s refusal of the work of mournin... more ABSTRACT My discussion of Roitman’s paper focuses on the patient’s refusal of the work of mourning, producing, instead, an idealizing, hermetic narrative which attacks any link with loss. This hermetic narrative leaves her trapped in a hollow territory in which language evacuates grief, or gets between her and her grief, rather than allowing contact with it. This also affects the therapeutic process, in which no vital link between therapist and patient, either, is allowed. The only way out of this grip is the therapist’s willingness to give up symbolic/metaphoric interpretations for the sake of working on the level of metonymic interventions, or even surrendering to the psychotic level of pure enactment.

Autobiographical fiction or fictional autobiography

ON REVENGE PARDON AND fORGIVENESS

Political violence has long been a focus of psychoanalytic writing. Jessica Benjamin's concepts o... more Political violence has long been a focus of psychoanalytic writing. Jessica Benjamin's concepts of the complementarity, or twoness, and that of thirdness can serve as a point of departure allowing us to challenge the dichotomy between positions of revenge and forgiveness (on the victim's part) and positions of evil and remorse (on the perpetrator's), and to suggest a spectrum of encounters between victims and perpetrators that includes four types of interaction: (1) between the position of extreme evil on the perpetrator's part, and the position of revenge on the victim's; (2) between the perpetrator's position of banal evil, and the victim's position of false pardon; (3) between the perpetrator's position of guilt and atonement, and the victim's position of full pardon; (4) between the position of remorse on the perpetrator's part, and the position of forgiveness on the victim's. A thorough analysis of various testimonies illustrates how these four positions manifest, with varying degrees of dominance, in every encounter (whether concrete or imagined) between victim and perpetrator.

Metaphoric, metonymic and psychotic somatoform dissociation

The present paper seeks to propose, using a combination of psychoanalytic and linguistic thinking... more The present paper seeks to propose, using a combination of psychoanalytic and linguistic thinking, a distinction between three degrees of symbolicity across the somatoform dissociative continuum: the metaphorical, in which there is a symbolic connection between the somatoform phenomenon and the traumatic content, the metonymic, which constitutes a revival of the traumatic experience without the ability to reflect on it, and the psychotic, in which the somatoform phenomenon is experienced as ego-syntonic, thus neither causes distress nor evokes thinking. Three clinical vignettes demonstrate how the higher the degree of symbolization, the more effective the therapeutic process. Finally, a fourth vignette demonstrates how acoustic association in the therapist's countertransference can constitute an antidote to the patient's acoustic dissociation, allowing the reclaiming of the capacity for linking.

From the Collapse of Signifiers to the Reconstruction of Language: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Robert Antelme’s The Human Race

American Imago, 2018

When Language Meets Traumatic Lacuna: The Metaphoric, the Metonymic, and the Psychotic Modes of Testimony

Psychoanalytic Inquiry, Nov 14, 2016

Tonality and atonality in the psychic space

Journal of Poetry Therapy, May 23, 2017

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the relations between tonal and atonal regions of the psychic space... more ABSTRACT This paper discusses the relations between tonal and atonal regions of the psychic space as being responsible for the relations between movement and stasis. Drawing on a musical terminology, I describe the constant tension between a harmonious pole of thinking and an idiosyncratic one, both in psychoanalytic meta-reflection as well as in the clinical realm, presenting thereby bibliotherapy, poetry therapy, and the poetic zones of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy as the therapeutic forces which “pull” toward the link to atonal psychic areas, enabling in that way the ongoing integration of the homely and un-homely, the syntax and the anti-syntax of the psychic space.

Studium and Punctum in Psychoanalytic Writing: Reading Case Studies Through Roland Barthes

Psychoanalytic Review, The, Feb 1, 2018

When the Writer’s Eye Meets the Reader’s Eye: A Review of “A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature: Reading the Reader” by Merav Roth

Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 2021

Merav Roth’s (2020) unique book, A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature: Reading the ... more Merav Roth’s (2020) unique book, A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature: Reading the Reader, looks at the psychic processes, both unconscious and conscious, that come into play in the internal world of a reader during the course of reading literary texts. Come into play, meaning that these processes don’t merely serve as the inner environment that facilitates the reading of literature but are, also, the very result of that reading itself. This book is a textbook in a very literal (text-book) and profound sense. In addition to uncovering the maps of reader and reading, it succeeds in laying bare a map of the psyche itself, including the infinite ways in which it collapses and reconstitutes itself. While the literary reader is its formal subject, the book extends beyond her or him. It is, in fact, an exemplary book on psychoanalysis which can variously be read as dealing with what happens to the analyst facing the patient’s text, or what happens to the patient facing the analyst’s text—or as dealing with what we all experience in the presence of not only printed texts but the complex text of our own reality—both external and internal. Looking into close accounts that touch on the unconscious aspect of literary reading (as she describes in the preface), Roth had an idea that came to be the central focus of her doctoral dissertation on which this book is based. She extracted and studied testimonies about reading experiences from 17 literary works, which differed in terms of genre, style, and content (two novels, two essays, two short stories, a play, and five poems), sharing one thing in common: they carried references—direct and indirect, explicit and implicit—

Bearing Witness to the Witness

From Actual Evil to Possible Forgiveness: Three Positions on the Axes of Self and Other

Psychoanalytic Perspectives

This article focuses on three positions, from malignant to benign, located on the respective axes... more This article focuses on three positions, from malignant to benign, located on the respective axes of object and subject in the context of forgiveness. A helpful graph is provided. The most malignant position on the axis of the object is the position of evil or indifference toward evil, paralleled, on the axis of the subject, by a position of vengefulness. The second position on the axis of the object is the position of guilt/atonement, which is paralleled, on the axis of the subject, by the position of amnesty. The third position on the axis of the object is the position of regret, which has its parallel on the subject axis in the position of forgiveness. Though presented as three clearly demarcated positions, they are present, with fluctuating dominance, in any encounter, whether concrete or imagined, between subject and object. These three positions are illustrated by means of a close reading of three memoirs.

From Actual Evil to Possible Forgiveness: Three Positions on the Axes of Self and Other

This article focuses on three positions, from malignant to benign, located on the respective axes... more This article focuses on three positions, from malignant to benign, located on the respective axes of object and subject in the context of forgiveness. A helpful graph is provided. The most malignant position on the axis of the object is the position of evil or indifference toward evil, paralleled, on the axis of the subject, by a position of vengefulness. The second position on the axis of the object is the position of guilt/atonement, which is paralleled, on the axis of the subject, by the position of amnesty. The third position on the axis of the object is the position of regret, which has its parallel on the subject axis in the position of forgiveness. Though presented as three clearly demarcated positions, they are present, with fluctuating dominance, in any encounter, whether concrete or imagined, between subject and object. These three positions are illustrated by means of a close reading of three memoirs.

שיחות גרסת הדפוס טונָליוּת ואַ־טונָליוּת בתוך המרחב הנפשי

שפה טפילית לשיחות גרסת הדפוס

ארבעה פרמטרים של קול וגילומם בהאזנה האנליטית שיחות גרסת הדפוס

דנה אמיר שפת הנקמה, שפת החנינה, שפת הסליחה - גרסת שיחות לדפוס

Boys Don't Cry: On the Radical Unsaturation of Gender Dichotomy

The Psychoanalytic Review

Using Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of “becoming” and the “rhizome,” as well as Bion's ... more Using Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of “becoming” and the “rhizome,” as well as Bion's discussion of the interaction between the “establishment” and the “messianic idea,” the author analyzes Boys Don't Cry (1999), a film that presents the story of a young transgender man who was raped and murdered. The author focuses on how the radical unsaturation of gender dichotomy may turn into an unbearable threat as it turns the linear, hierarchical “tree-like” relations of body and mind into a process of deterritorialization.

The inner witness *

Cleft Tongue, 2018

Parasitic Language

The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2020

This paper presents initial thoughts about the phenomenon of parasitic language. This is a langua... more This paper presents initial thoughts about the phenomenon of parasitic language. This is a language which clings to the other’s linguistic patterns and in doing so produces a double manifestation of omnipotence and impotence; a language that forges a linguistic “prosthesis,” and while allowing for a false manifestation of language and thinking, constitutes thoughts as foreign objects that are mechanically and artificially “stuck” to the speaking subject. The early roots of this language, as illustrated in a detailed analytical case description, inhere in the infiltration of language by multi-generational traumatic traces. This turns language itself into a scene of simultaneous repetition of the act of salvation and the act of annihilation.

“And in that Dream, I Have Another Dream”

Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 2021

ABSTRACT My discussion of Roitman’s paper focuses on the patient’s refusal of the work of mournin... more ABSTRACT My discussion of Roitman’s paper focuses on the patient’s refusal of the work of mourning, producing, instead, an idealizing, hermetic narrative which attacks any link with loss. This hermetic narrative leaves her trapped in a hollow territory in which language evacuates grief, or gets between her and her grief, rather than allowing contact with it. This also affects the therapeutic process, in which no vital link between therapist and patient, either, is allowed. The only way out of this grip is the therapist’s willingness to give up symbolic/metaphoric interpretations for the sake of working on the level of metonymic interventions, or even surrendering to the psychotic level of pure enactment.

Autobiographical fiction or fictional autobiography