[Xmca-l] Re: Doctoral Theses and autobiography

[Martin John Packer]

Andy,

I think you probably didn't intend to post this to the whole list. But "working through" is a term in Freudian psychoanalysis. It is related to Freud's use of the ancient notion of "catharsis," but not identical. (Compare "abreaction.")

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_through>

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6836082>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abreaction>

Martin

On Oct 17, 2014, at 8:14 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> Recently I read an interesting paper. By one Rumen Petrov, it is an autobiographical essay on doing his PhD. It was fascinating.
> In the course of this he says "many Doctoral theses are various forms of working through." Petrov is a Bulgarian Freudian with an interest in Vygotsky, so "working over" means catharsis, or perezhivanie.
> I thought this was a nice observation.
> Are all you PhD students going through this?
> Andy
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>