Siamak Movahedi
Biographic Data
| ID | 189461 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Siamak Movahedi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Siamak |
| FAMILY NAME | Movahedi |
| SIGNATURE | MOVAHEDI S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Massachusetts Boston |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 30 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Books
The body as an imaginary object of fantasy on the couch
Our theories about the body in the analytic consulting room influence our modes of therapeutic listening and practice. In this article, we address ourselves to the discourse of the body on the couch. Is that an instance of a discourse rooted in medicine, focusing on the biological organism? Is it a discourse of the physical body as a foundation for drives, instincts, and impulses that operate independently of the interpersonal context of analysis…
Analyse métalinguistique du discours thérapeutique: Fuite Dans Une Autre Langue Quand Analyste Et Analysant Sont Multilingues
Le choix de la langue pendant la cure s'impose comme une question théorique et clinique importante lorsque l'analyste et l'analysant sont multilingues et partagent les mêmes langues. Le passage d'une langue à une autre en cours d'analyse est une question d'égale portée. Cet article propose une analyse de l'échappée vers une seconde langue à la fois par l'analysant et l'analyste au sein de la matrice transféro-contre-transférentielle. La discussio…
The Musical Semiotics of Voice in Distance: Some Reflections on the Question of Teleanalysis
Within the context of the debate over teleanalysis, I wish to reintroduce the discussion of voice as the primary link between analyst and patient, a link present in analysis on the phone. Far from questioning the importance of the in-person analysis, I aim to emphasize the voice, the musical semiotics of emotions, as a critical, if not the most vital, aspect of psychoanalysis as a “talking cure” and an art of listening. Insofar as the speaking is…
Is the Noise the Message in Psychoanalytic Listening
In psychoanalytic discourse, the question of meaning or lack thereof should be relegated only to the domain of the interlocutor's perception. Not every slip of the tongue or bungled action is necessarily precipitated by some unconscious motivation, although one may construct meaning for it après coup (Nachträglichkeit). What is a message versus a noise depends on the perceptual experience of the analytic couple, and a cigar, if not just a cigar, …
Persian tales on the couch: Notes on folktales as the mirror of the contemporary cultural struggles with gender and sexuality
This paper presents a report on our psychoanalytic investigation of cultural folktales, myths, and fables, in which we study, primarily, the extent to which such narratives lurk behind contemporary representations of men and women. Our aim is to identify the multiple narrative structures that form the core plots and storylines of these tales. Following Roland Barthes’ work on mythologies, we want to decode the tales’ ideological components by dec…
The Evolution of the Notion of Intimacy in Psychoanalysis and Culture
The Evolution of the Notion of Intimacy in Psychoanalysis and Culture Alistair Mcknight (bio) and Siamak Movahedi (bio) When we are young we adore and poeticize those with whom we are in love: love and happiness with us are synonyms. Among us in Russia, marriage without love is despised, sensuality is ridiculed and inspires repulsion, and the greatest success is enjoyed by those tales and novels in which women are beautiful, poetical, and exalted…
Psychoanalysis
Freud defined psychoanalysis as a form of therapy, a mode of observation and inquiry, and a theory of psychic functioning. However, his passion lay primarily in psychoanalysis as a mode of scientific investigation. Psychoanalytic theory is based on Freud's image of the individual and his notion of psychic reality. The individual is presented as profane, irrational, self‐deceptive, narcissistic, power hungry, and the slave of the most primitive de…
Contextualized Language and Transferential Aspects of Context
The analytic process, in which the patient’s and the analyst’s internal characters struggle to create a script through the analysand’s mouth and the analyst’s pen, resembles Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921): different characters come together on the analytic stage to rehearse the analyst’s role as coauthor of a play that depicts the ongoing analytic saga. To compose the text for the interplay of characters, the author mus…
The Narcissism of Minor Differences
The Narcissism of Minor Differences: The Status Anxiety and Disciplinary Intolerance between Sociology and Psychoanalysis
In this essay, I show how arbitrary the disciplinary boundary is between psychoanalysis and sociology, how psychoanalysis can complement sociology, how structural analysis in one discipline needs the other to explain its causal efficacy, how symbolic interaction relates to psychoanalysis, and how many psychoanalytic concepts—including the analytic situation—can be expressed in sociological language. My analysis is a form of deconstruction of soci…
The couch and the chador
The authors present a clinical discussion of the psychic functions of the chador, a veil-like outer garment worn in public by some Iranian women. Drawing on Anzieu's theoretical concept of the skin ego, the authors suggest that the chador does not just cover the body; it may also envelop the psyche and function as a second skin for the ego. The maternal function of a holding environment is symbolically displaced on any clothing that 'hides,''cove…
Wall Street Scandals: The Myth of Individual Greed1
There is rarely an introductory text in sociology that does not begin with C. Wright Mills’s (1967)distinction between personal troubles and structural or public issues. To lack sociological imagination is to confuse between these two levels of analysis in trying to explain public issues in terms of personal troubles, or history in terms of the individual’s biography. “Troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of …
Psychoanalysis
Freud defined psychoanalysis as a form of therapy, a mode of observation and inquiry, and a theoretical system. However, his passion lay primarily in psychoanalysis as a mode of scientific investigation. Psychoanalytic theory is based on Freud's image of the individual and his notion of psychic reality. The individual is presented as profane, irrational, self‐deceptive, narcissistic, power hungry, and the slave of the most primitive desires. This…
The Utopian Pursuit of Death
American Imago - Volume 56, Number 1, Spring 1999
Women in Multinational Corporations: Old Myths, New Constructions and Some Deconstruction
When compared with domestic business operations, multinational corporations include fewer women at managerial levels in their foreign subsidiaries. Debates have ensued regarding whether women's absences from these positions are due to lack of the particular managerial abilities required for international assignments. In this article we argue that too much has been assumed about the sociopsychological requirements for international management, bot…
Metalinguistic Analysis of Therapeutic Discourse: Flight into a Second Language When the Analyst and the Analysand Are Multilingual
The choice of a particular language for the conduct of analysis becomes an important theoretical and clinical question when both the analyst and the analysand are multilingual and share the same languages. Shift from one language into another language during analysis is an equally important question. This paper offers an analysis of the flight into a second language by both the analysand and the analyst within the transference-countertransference…
Cultural Preconceptions of Time: Can We Use Operational Time to Meddle in God's Time
Almost on the eve of the Iranian revolution, the shah's regime adopted a policy of daylight-saving time to cope with a chronic power shortage in Tehran, a densely populated city of more than four million people. The clock was moved ahead by an hour in the spring and set back again in the fall. Few decisions of the old government evoked as much public criticism and outcry as this one. Thousands of complaints were registered against the plan. The D…
Networks, Exchange, and Coercion: The Elementary Theory and Its Applications.David Willer , Bo Anderson
The Drug Addict and Addiction: Cultural Stereotypes and Clinical Theories
Prediction and Inference in Criminology
The calculus of probability constitutes an elegant formal model for the various questions of prediction in criminology. However, the use of this model has been criticized for its failure to deal with individual instances vis‐à‐vis group phenomena. It has been argued that since probability is a function of classes or sequence of events, no meaning can be attached to the probability of a single event. This paper presents a logical analysis of this …
How Should One Load the Dice
Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison: "A methodological analysis": Reply
Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison: "A methodological analysis": Reply
Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison: A methodological analysis
Analyzes the Stanford Prison experiment of P. G. Zimbardo et al (1973) and questions, on methodological grounds, various of their inferences. Empirical evidence is presented to elucidate and buttress these criticisms, and an alternative interpretation of the outcome of the Stanford experiment is proposed. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)
Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison: A methodological analysis
Analyzes the Stanford Prison experiment of P. G. Zimbardo et al (1973) and questions, on methodological grounds, various of their inferences. Empirical evidence is presented to elucidate and buttress these criticisms, and an alternative interpretation of the outcome of the Stanford experiment is proposed. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)
Wall Street Scandals: The Myth of Individual Greed1
There is rarely an introductory text in sociology that does not begin with C. Wright Mills’s (1967)distinction between personal troubles and structural or public issues. To lack sociological imagination is to confuse between these two levels of analysis in trying to explain public issues in terms of personal troubles, or history in terms of the individual’s biography. “Troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of …
Cultural Preconceptions of Time: Can We Use Operational Time to Meddle in God's Time
Almost on the eve of the Iranian revolution, the shah's regime adopted a policy of daylight-saving time to cope with a chronic power shortage in Tehran, a densely populated city of more than four million people. The clock was moved ahead by an hour in the spring and set back again in the fall. Few decisions of the old government evoked as much public criticism and outcry as this one. Thousands of complaints were registered against the plan. The D…
Metalinguistic Analysis of Therapeutic Discourse: Flight into a Second Language When the Analyst and the Analysand Are Multilingual
The choice of a particular language for the conduct of analysis becomes an important theoretical and clinical question when both the analyst and the analysand are multilingual and share the same languages. Shift from one language into another language during analysis is an equally important question. This paper offers an analysis of the flight into a second language by both the analysand and the analyst within the transference-countertransference…
"Axiomatic Theory, Informative Value of Propositions, and "Derivation Rules of Ordinary Language
We present a logical analysis of Hans Zetterberg's strategy of axiomatic construction, especially his derivation of ordinary from theoretical propositions. Using formal criteria for assessing the relative logical or empirical content of propositions, we show that not only is Zetterberg's distinction vague but his derivation rules are logically faulty, and his assessment of the relative informative value of propositions is inconsistent. Thus we ar…
Loading the Dice in Favor of Madness
The gloomy biographies of mental patients most often represent psychiatric artifacts-produced through a loaded process of sampling only the bleak events of the patients' lives. If a social identity were constructedfor any person based on a biased sample of his life events, he could easily be portrayed as a villain or as a man of character, as a criminal or as a man of law and order, as a sinner or as a saint, and as an insane or as a sane person.…
The Evolution of the Notion of Intimacy in Psychoanalysis and Culture
The Evolution of the Notion of Intimacy in Psychoanalysis and Culture Alistair Mcknight (bio) and Siamak Movahedi (bio) When we are young we adore and poeticize those with whom we are in love: love and happiness with us are synonyms. Among us in Russia, marriage without love is despised, sensuality is ridiculed and inspires repulsion, and the greatest success is enjoyed by those tales and novels in which women are beautiful, poetical, and exalted…
Contextualized Language and Transferential Aspects of Context
The analytic process, in which the patient’s and the analyst’s internal characters struggle to create a script through the analysand’s mouth and the analyst’s pen, resembles Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921): different characters come together on the analytic stage to rehearse the analyst’s role as coauthor of a play that depicts the ongoing analytic saga. To compose the text for the interplay of characters, the author mus…
The couch and the chador
The authors present a clinical discussion of the psychic functions of the chador, a veil-like outer garment worn in public by some Iranian women. Drawing on Anzieu's theoretical concept of the skin ego, the authors suggest that the chador does not just cover the body; it may also envelop the psyche and function as a second skin for the ego. The maternal function of a holding environment is symbolically displaced on any clothing that 'hides,''cove…
"Axiomatic Theory, Informative Value of Propositions, and "Derivation Rules of Ordinary Language
We present a logical analysis of Hans Zetterberg's strategy of axiomatic construction, especially his derivation of ordinary from theoretical propositions. Using formal criteria for assessing the relative logical or empirical content of propositions, we show that not only is Zetterberg's distinction vague but his derivation rules are logically faulty, and his assessment of the relative informative value of propositions is inconsistent. Thus we ar…
Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison: "A methodological analysis": Reply
Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison: "A methodological analysis": Reply
Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison: A methodological analysis
Analyzes the Stanford Prison experiment of P. G. Zimbardo et al (1973) and questions, on methodological grounds, various of their inferences. Empirical evidence is presented to elucidate and buttress these criticisms, and an alternative interpretation of the outcome of the Stanford experiment is proposed. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)
Loading the Dice in Favor of Madness
The gloomy biographies of mental patients most often represent psychiatric artifacts-produced through a loaded process of sampling only the bleak events of the patients' lives. If a social identity were constructedfor any person based on a biased sample of his life events, he could easily be portrayed as a villain or as a man of character, as a criminal or as a man of law and order, as a sinner or as a saint, and as an insane or as a sane person.…
Prediction and Inference in Criminology
The calculus of probability constitutes an elegant formal model for the various questions of prediction in criminology. However, the use of this model has been criticized for its failure to deal with individual instances vis‐à‐vis group phenomena. It has been argued that since probability is a function of classes or sequence of events, no meaning can be attached to the probability of a single event. This paper presents a logical analysis of this …
How Should One Load the Dice
The Drug Addict and Addiction: Cultural Stereotypes and Clinical Theories
Networks, Exchange, and Coercion: The Elementary Theory and Its Applications.David Willer , Bo Anderson
Cultural Preconceptions of Time: Can We Use Operational Time to Meddle in God's Time
Almost on the eve of the Iranian revolution, the shah's regime adopted a policy of daylight-saving time to cope with a chronic power shortage in Tehran, a densely populated city of more than four million people. The clock was moved ahead by an hour in the spring and set back again in the fall. Few decisions of the old government evoked as much public criticism and outcry as this one. Thousands of complaints were registered against the plan. The D…
Women in Multinational Corporations: Old Myths, New Constructions and Some Deconstruction
When compared with domestic business operations, multinational corporations include fewer women at managerial levels in their foreign subsidiaries. Debates have ensued regarding whether women's absences from these positions are due to lack of the particular managerial abilities required for international assignments. In this article we argue that too much has been assumed about the sociopsychological requirements for international management, bot…
Metalinguistic Analysis of Therapeutic Discourse: Flight into a Second Language When the Analyst and the Analysand Are Multilingual
The choice of a particular language for the conduct of analysis becomes an important theoretical and clinical question when both the analyst and the analysand are multilingual and share the same languages. Shift from one language into another language during analysis is an equally important question. This paper offers an analysis of the flight into a second language by both the analysand and the analyst within the transference-countertransference…
The Utopian Pursuit of Death
American Imago - Volume 56, Number 1, Spring 1999
Psychoanalysis
Freud defined psychoanalysis as a form of therapy, a mode of observation and inquiry, and a theoretical system. However, his passion lay primarily in psychoanalysis as a mode of scientific investigation. Psychoanalytic theory is based on Freud's image of the individual and his notion of psychic reality. The individual is presented as profane, irrational, self‐deceptive, narcissistic, power hungry, and the slave of the most primitive desires. This…
Wall Street Scandals: The Myth of Individual Greed1
There is rarely an introductory text in sociology that does not begin with C. Wright Mills’s (1967)distinction between personal troubles and structural or public issues. To lack sociological imagination is to confuse between these two levels of analysis in trying to explain public issues in terms of personal troubles, or history in terms of the individual’s biography. “Troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of …
The couch and the chador
The authors present a clinical discussion of the psychic functions of the chador, a veil-like outer garment worn in public by some Iranian women. Drawing on Anzieu's theoretical concept of the skin ego, the authors suggest that the chador does not just cover the body; it may also envelop the psyche and function as a second skin for the ego. The maternal function of a holding environment is symbolically displaced on any clothing that 'hides,''cove…
The Narcissism of Minor Differences
The Narcissism of Minor Differences: The Status Anxiety and Disciplinary Intolerance between Sociology and Psychoanalysis
In this essay, I show how arbitrary the disciplinary boundary is between psychoanalysis and sociology, how psychoanalysis can complement sociology, how structural analysis in one discipline needs the other to explain its causal efficacy, how symbolic interaction relates to psychoanalysis, and how many psychoanalytic concepts—including the analytic situation—can be expressed in sociological language. My analysis is a form of deconstruction of soci…
Psychoanalysis
Freud defined psychoanalysis as a form of therapy, a mode of observation and inquiry, and a theory of psychic functioning. However, his passion lay primarily in psychoanalysis as a mode of scientific investigation. Psychoanalytic theory is based on Freud's image of the individual and his notion of psychic reality. The individual is presented as profane, irrational, self‐deceptive, narcissistic, power hungry, and the slave of the most primitive de…
Contextualized Language and Transferential Aspects of Context
The analytic process, in which the patient’s and the analyst’s internal characters struggle to create a script through the analysand’s mouth and the analyst’s pen, resembles Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921): different characters come together on the analytic stage to rehearse the analyst’s role as coauthor of a play that depicts the ongoing analytic saga. To compose the text for the interplay of characters, the author mus…
Persian tales on the couch: Notes on folktales as the mirror of the contemporary cultural struggles with gender and sexuality
This paper presents a report on our psychoanalytic investigation of cultural folktales, myths, and fables, in which we study, primarily, the extent to which such narratives lurk behind contemporary representations of men and women. Our aim is to identify the multiple narrative structures that form the core plots and storylines of these tales. Following Roland Barthes’ work on mythologies, we want to decode the tales’ ideological components by dec…
The Evolution of the Notion of Intimacy in Psychoanalysis and Culture
The Evolution of the Notion of Intimacy in Psychoanalysis and Culture Alistair Mcknight (bio) and Siamak Movahedi (bio) When we are young we adore and poeticize those with whom we are in love: love and happiness with us are synonyms. Among us in Russia, marriage without love is despised, sensuality is ridiculed and inspires repulsion, and the greatest success is enjoyed by those tales and novels in which women are beautiful, poetical, and exalted…
Is the Noise the Message in Psychoanalytic Listening
In psychoanalytic discourse, the question of meaning or lack thereof should be relegated only to the domain of the interlocutor's perception. Not every slip of the tongue or bungled action is necessarily precipitated by some unconscious motivation, although one may construct meaning for it après coup (Nachträglichkeit). What is a message versus a noise depends on the perceptual experience of the analytic couple, and a cigar, if not just a cigar, …
The Musical Semiotics of Voice in Distance: Some Reflections on the Question of Teleanalysis
Within the context of the debate over teleanalysis, I wish to reintroduce the discussion of voice as the primary link between analyst and patient, a link present in analysis on the phone. Far from questioning the importance of the in-person analysis, I aim to emphasize the voice, the musical semiotics of emotions, as a critical, if not the most vital, aspect of psychoanalysis as a “talking cure” and an art of listening. Insofar as the speaking is…
Analyse métalinguistique du discours thérapeutique: Fuite Dans Une Autre Langue Quand Analyste Et Analysant Sont Multilingues
Le choix de la langue pendant la cure s'impose comme une question théorique et clinique importante lorsque l'analyste et l'analysant sont multilingues et partagent les mêmes langues. Le passage d'une langue à une autre en cours d'analyse est une question d'égale portée. Cet article propose une analyse de l'échappée vers une seconde langue à la fois par l'analysant et l'analyste au sein de la matrice transféro-contre-transférentielle. La discussio…
Psychology (19 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Psychoanalysis (12 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · History (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Art (8 works) · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications (8 works) · Psychoanalytic theory (7 works)