Aklilu Lemma
Biographic Data
| ID | 204504 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Aklilu Lemma |
| GIVEN NAMES | Aklilu |
| FAMILY NAME | Lemma |
| SIGNATURE | LEMMA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9465-9054 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 91 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Articulation without a witness
I am grateful to Dr Kuchar for his thoughtful engagement with my paper, and especially for bringing forward the case of Mr F., which extends the discussion in an important direction. His clinical o
Some reflections on the nature of psychoanalytic debate in academic publishing
What we don’t talk about enough when we talk about teleanalysis
On Not Having it All
The appeal of transgender pornography, especially involving “pre-op”(erative) trans women, has steadily increased placing it in the top six most searched categories. In this paper I explore one unconscious function of the “pre-op” trans woman sexual fantasy that I have observed in some young heterosexual gynandromorphophilic men (i.e., men sexually drawn to the MtF “pre-op” body) who use transgender pornography and/or escorts. In contrast to a ps…
At the meniscus of self-understanding
Human development unfolds within a psychic ecology increasingly shaped by AI: we have entered technogenetic times. No longer merely a tool, AI structures how we understand ourselves and relate to others. In AI-mediated contexts, self-exploration often remains superficial, particularly among adolescents, eclipsing the messy, non-linear process of self-discovery, which depends on the capacity to tolerate uncertainty. I propose the metaphor of the m…
Mourning, melancholia and machines
Death and mourning are being shaped by posthumous opportunities for the dead to affect current life in ways not possible in pre-digital generations. The psychological and sociological impact of the dead 'online' and of 'grief tech' is only beginning to be understood. It has not yet been explored psychoanalytically until this paper that examines one type of grief tech, namely the griefbot. This development is critically explored through a psychoan…
Remembering Dana Birksted-Breen
Response to
To be, or not to be? The role of the unconscious in transgender transitioning
The exponential rise in transgender self-identification invites consideration of what constitutes an ethical response to transgender individuals’ claims about how best to promote their well-being. In this paper, we argue that ‘accepting’ a claim to medical transitioning in order to promote well-being would be in the person’s best interests iff at the point of request the individual is correct in their self-diagnosis as transgender (i.e., the dist…
The Seductions of Identity
In this paper I first outline a conceptual compass to think about identity generally before addressing more specifically the question of transgender identity. To this end, I draw on Gilles Deleuze's (1993) related concepts of the rhizome and of the fold. I then argue that the body has always been and is ever-more-so the place for figurating the self, for finding and substantiating identity-hence, the unconscious psychic investments that we have i…
Who do you think you are? Some reflections on analytic identity
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 https://www.ucl.ac.uk/clinical-psychology/competency-maps/psychodynamic-map.html
The missing
This paper focuses on how for some young people who identify as transgender, the anticipation, and/or the actual process, of transitioning represents a movement away from something in themselves that feels wrong, painful, or traumatic and that has not yet been consciously recognised as such. This becomes a 'missing' part of the self's experience, locked into the body. I suggest that the process of identifying and restitution of 'the missing' part…
Writing and Intimate Privacy
Transgender Identities
Trans-itory identities
Commentary on
Beauty matters
Cosmetic surgery and minimally invasive techniques have recently become popular. Noting the compulsive way in which many people approach these procedures, psychoanalytic scholars have conducted several studies to evaluate the possible presence of mental disorders. In this regard, Alessandra Lemma (2009, 2010a, 2010b) argued that the craving for beauty may hide narcissistic disturbances akin to those identified in Rosenfeld's theory of narcissism …
Trans-itory identities
The capacity of transgender to incorporate all gender variance and sexual preferences has become a powerful tool of activism and personal identification. Rather than being an index of marginality "trans" has become a central cultural site. In this paper, I will argue that this identity label encompasses a complex range of internal psychic positions in relation to consciously stated sexual preferences and gender identifications. My aim is to explo…
The Digital Age on the Couch
The Digital Age is on the couch. Working today, it is essential that clinicians understand the world we live in. The transition from an industrial economy to an information economy impacts not just the external structure of society and commerce, but also the internal psychic economies of our brains and, inevitably, how clinicians conceptualise the analytic setting in which they practice as therapists and analysts. The Digital Age on the Couch see…
Psychoanalysis in times of technoculture
This article discusses psychoanalysis in times of technoculture. We cannot escape that this generation is growing up in a network culture where communication is mediated and digital connectivity along with different strands of virtuality are now an integral part of our quotidian practices. Global networks impact on identity formation: groups of individuals now organize and validate their experience as a community virtually. Cyberspace is not a ho…
The body of the analyst and the analytic setting
In this paper the author questions whether the body of the analyst may be helpfully conceptualized as an embodied feature of the setting and suggests that this may be especially helpful for understanding patients who develop a symbiotic transference and for whom any variance in the analyst's body is felt to be profoundly destabilizing. In such cases the patient needs to relate to the body of the analyst concretely and exclusively as a setting 'co…
Off the Couch, into the Toilet
The analyst’s consulting room toilet lends itself to myriad uses in the context of the analytic relationship. It is a place where “dirty” secrets may be excitedly deposited and where perverse fantasies can be fueled and acted out, as illustrated in the analysis of Mr. D. This perverse use of the analyst’s toilet is contrasted with the case of Ms. C., whose anxieties about the destructiveness of her aggression led initially to a phobic avoidance o…
Feasibility study of a psychodynamic online group intervention for depression
Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy (DIT) was originally developed as a brief psychodynamic intervention for the treatment of depression and anxiety. More recently it has become the psychodynamic protocol for depression specifically within Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services across the U.K. \n \nThe aim of the present study was to pilot and evaluate the feasibility of a group online version of DIT—Online Group Dynamic Interpersonal The…
A perfectly modern Frankenstein
Like shedding layers of skin, Almodovar’s latest narrative painfully unravels to reveal the rawness of losses that cannot be mourned. The skin – that ‘scrim’ on which we project our fantasies and f
The body one has and the body one is
The transsexual individual confronts the analyst with a disturbing otherness. How this otherness is understood, that is, how the analyst 'looks' at the patient through her distinctive theoretical lens impacts, in turn, on the patient's experience and what transpires between them. In this paper the author outlines a developmental model rooted in attachment and object relations theory to provide one alternative way of 'looking' at some of these pat…
The body of the analyst and the analytic setting
In this paper the author questions whether the body of the analyst may be helpfully conceptualized as an embodied feature of the setting and suggests that this may be especially helpful for understanding patients who develop a symbiotic transference and for whom any variance in the analyst's body is felt to be profoundly destabilizing. In such cases the patient needs to relate to the body of the analyst concretely and exclusively as a setting 'co…
The body one has and the body one is
The transsexual individual confronts the analyst with a disturbing otherness. How this otherness is understood, that is, how the analyst 'looks' at the patient through her distinctive theoretical lens impacts, in turn, on the patient's experience and what transpires between them. In this paper the author outlines a developmental model rooted in attachment and object relations theory to provide one alternative way of 'looking' at some of these pat…
Trans-itory identities
The capacity of transgender to incorporate all gender variance and sexual preferences has become a powerful tool of activism and personal identification. Rather than being an index of marginality "trans" has become a central cultural site. In this paper, I will argue that this identity label encompasses a complex range of internal psychic positions in relation to consciously stated sexual preferences and gender identifications. My aim is to explo…
Psychoanalysis in times of technoculture
This article discusses psychoanalysis in times of technoculture. We cannot escape that this generation is growing up in a network culture where communication is mediated and digital connectivity along with different strands of virtuality are now an integral part of our quotidian practices. Global networks impact on identity formation: groups of individuals now organize and validate their experience as a community virtually. Cyberspace is not a ho…
The many faces of lying
In this paper the author explores the psychic functions of lying and draws on Glasser's (1979) notions of self-preservative and sadistic violence to identify three selfobject configurations. Each of these is associated with specific anxieties to which the lie offers an apparent solution. The first configuration is sadistic lying. Here the intent is to attack and triumph over the duped other. The lie allows the object to be controlled and humiliat…
An Order of Pure Decision
Technological advances and the dominant values of contemporary culture make it possible and acceptable to alter, extend, or altogether bypass the body and its functions in actuality and in virtual space. This has contributed to a split between the body and the self, leading to a disembodied subjectivity that may encourage a neglect of the body’s unconscious meaning for the individual. Due to the psychic requirement during adolescence to accommoda…
The missing
This paper focuses on how for some young people who identify as transgender, the anticipation, and/or the actual process, of transitioning represents a movement away from something in themselves that feels wrong, painful, or traumatic and that has not yet been consciously recognised as such. This becomes a 'missing' part of the self's experience, locked into the body. I suggest that the process of identifying and restitution of 'the missing' part…
Africa beyond Famine
Mourning, melancholia and machines
Death and mourning are being shaped by posthumous opportunities for the dead to affect current life in ways not possible in pre-digital generations. The psychological and sociological impact of the dead 'online' and of 'grief tech' is only beginning to be understood. It has not yet been explored psychoanalytically until this paper that examines one type of grief tech, namely the griefbot. This development is critically explored through a psychoan…
Being seen or being watched? A psychoanalytic perspective on body dysmorphia
The focus of this paper is on individuals who present as excessively preoccupied with their body, perceiving some aspect(s) to be 'ugly' such that they feel compelled to alter and/or conceal this 'ugly' body part. These difficulties are understood as symptoms of an underlying narcissistic disturbance. The author suggests that the relative pervasiveness of an identification with a 'super'-ego accounts for the degree of severity of the disturbance …
What we don’t talk about enough when we talk about teleanalysis
The Seductions of Identity
In this paper I first outline a conceptual compass to think about identity generally before addressing more specifically the question of transgender identity. To this end, I draw on Gilles Deleuze's (1993) related concepts of the rhizome and of the fold. I then argue that the body has always been and is ever-more-so the place for figurating the self, for finding and substantiating identity-hence, the unconscious psychic investments that we have i…
Who do you think you are? Some reflections on analytic identity
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 https://www.ucl.ac.uk/clinical-psychology/competency-maps/psychodynamic-map.html
Off the Couch, into the Toilet
The analyst’s consulting room toilet lends itself to myriad uses in the context of the analytic relationship. It is a place where “dirty” secrets may be excitedly deposited and where perverse fantasies can be fueled and acted out, as illustrated in the analysis of Mr. D. This perverse use of the analyst’s toilet is contrasted with the case of Ms. C., whose anxieties about the destructiveness of her aggression led initially to a phobic avoidance o…
A perfectly modern Frankenstein
Like shedding layers of skin, Almodovar’s latest narrative painfully unravels to reveal the rawness of losses that cannot be mourned. The skin – that ‘scrim’ on which we project our fantasies and f
Copies Without Originals
The use of cosmetic surgery and procedures has sharply increased in recent years. This paper outlines an object-relational framework for understanding the unconscious fantasies that may drive the pursuit of body modification and proposes three categories of such fantasies. For some individuals, the pursuit of "beauty" through cosmetic surgery provides a psychic retreat from the reality of dependency as the self retreats into believing that it can…
Intestinal parasitism in seminomadic pastoralists and subsistence farmers in and around irrigation schemes in the Awash Valley, Ethiopia, with special emphasis on ecological and cultural associations
Africa beyond Famine
Introduction to the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy
The many faces of lying
In this paper the author explores the psychic functions of lying and draws on Glasser's (1979) notions of self-preservative and sadistic violence to identify three selfobject configurations. Each of these is associated with specific anxieties to which the lie offers an apparent solution. The first configuration is sadistic lying. Here the intent is to attack and triumph over the duped other. The lie allows the object to be controlled and humiliat…
Being seen or being watched? A psychoanalytic perspective on body dysmorphia
The focus of this paper is on individuals who present as excessively preoccupied with their body, perceiving some aspect(s) to be 'ugly' such that they feel compelled to alter and/or conceal this 'ugly' body part. These difficulties are understood as symptoms of an underlying narcissistic disturbance. The author suggests that the relative pervasiveness of an identification with a 'super'-ego accounts for the degree of severity of the disturbance …
Copies Without Originals
The use of cosmetic surgery and procedures has sharply increased in recent years. This paper outlines an object-relational framework for understanding the unconscious fantasies that may drive the pursuit of body modification and proposes three categories of such fantasies. For some individuals, the pursuit of "beauty" through cosmetic surgery provides a psychic retreat from the reality of dependency as the self retreats into believing that it can…
An Order of Pure Decision
Technological advances and the dominant values of contemporary culture make it possible and acceptable to alter, extend, or altogether bypass the body and its functions in actuality and in virtual space. This has contributed to a split between the body and the self, leading to a disembodied subjectivity that may encourage a neglect of the body’s unconscious meaning for the individual. Due to the psychic requirement during adolescence to accommoda…
A perfectly modern Frankenstein
Like shedding layers of skin, Almodovar’s latest narrative painfully unravels to reveal the rawness of losses that cannot be mourned. The skin – that ‘scrim’ on which we project our fantasies and f
The body one has and the body one is
The transsexual individual confronts the analyst with a disturbing otherness. How this otherness is understood, that is, how the analyst 'looks' at the patient through her distinctive theoretical lens impacts, in turn, on the patient's experience and what transpires between them. In this paper the author outlines a developmental model rooted in attachment and object relations theory to provide one alternative way of 'looking' at some of these pat…
Feasibility study of a psychodynamic online group intervention for depression
Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy (DIT) was originally developed as a brief psychodynamic intervention for the treatment of depression and anxiety. More recently it has become the psychodynamic protocol for depression specifically within Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services across the U.K. \n \nThe aim of the present study was to pilot and evaluate the feasibility of a group online version of DIT—Online Group Dynamic Interpersonal The…
The body of the analyst and the analytic setting
In this paper the author questions whether the body of the analyst may be helpfully conceptualized as an embodied feature of the setting and suggests that this may be especially helpful for understanding patients who develop a symbiotic transference and for whom any variance in the analyst's body is felt to be profoundly destabilizing. In such cases the patient needs to relate to the body of the analyst concretely and exclusively as a setting 'co…
Off the Couch, into the Toilet
The analyst’s consulting room toilet lends itself to myriad uses in the context of the analytic relationship. It is a place where “dirty” secrets may be excitedly deposited and where perverse fantasies can be fueled and acted out, as illustrated in the analysis of Mr. D. This perverse use of the analyst’s toilet is contrasted with the case of Ms. C., whose anxieties about the destructiveness of her aggression led initially to a phobic avoidance o…
Psychoanalysis in times of technoculture
This article discusses psychoanalysis in times of technoculture. We cannot escape that this generation is growing up in a network culture where communication is mediated and digital connectivity along with different strands of virtuality are now an integral part of our quotidian practices. Global networks impact on identity formation: groups of individuals now organize and validate their experience as a community virtually. Cyberspace is not a ho…
The Digital Age on the Couch
The Digital Age is on the couch. Working today, it is essential that clinicians understand the world we live in. The transition from an industrial economy to an information economy impacts not just the external structure of society and commerce, but also the internal psychic economies of our brains and, inevitably, how clinicians conceptualise the analytic setting in which they practice as therapists and analysts. The Digital Age on the Couch see…
Beauty matters
Cosmetic surgery and minimally invasive techniques have recently become popular. Noting the compulsive way in which many people approach these procedures, psychoanalytic scholars have conducted several studies to evaluate the possible presence of mental disorders. In this regard, Alessandra Lemma (2009, 2010a, 2010b) argued that the craving for beauty may hide narcissistic disturbances akin to those identified in Rosenfeld's theory of narcissism …
Trans-itory identities
The capacity of transgender to incorporate all gender variance and sexual preferences has become a powerful tool of activism and personal identification. Rather than being an index of marginality "trans" has become a central cultural site. In this paper, I will argue that this identity label encompasses a complex range of internal psychic positions in relation to consciously stated sexual preferences and gender identifications. My aim is to explo…
Commentary on
Transgender Identities
Trans-itory identities
To be, or not to be? The role of the unconscious in transgender transitioning
The exponential rise in transgender self-identification invites consideration of what constitutes an ethical response to transgender individuals’ claims about how best to promote their well-being. In this paper, we argue that ‘accepting’ a claim to medical transitioning in order to promote well-being would be in the person’s best interests iff at the point of request the individual is correct in their self-diagnosis as transgender (i.e., the dist…
The Seductions of Identity
In this paper I first outline a conceptual compass to think about identity generally before addressing more specifically the question of transgender identity. To this end, I draw on Gilles Deleuze's (1993) related concepts of the rhizome and of the fold. I then argue that the body has always been and is ever-more-so the place for figurating the self, for finding and substantiating identity-hence, the unconscious psychic investments that we have i…
Who do you think you are? Some reflections on analytic identity
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 https://www.ucl.ac.uk/clinical-psychology/competency-maps/psychodynamic-map.html
The missing
This paper focuses on how for some young people who identify as transgender, the anticipation, and/or the actual process, of transitioning represents a movement away from something in themselves that feels wrong, painful, or traumatic and that has not yet been consciously recognised as such. This becomes a 'missing' part of the self's experience, locked into the body. I suggest that the process of identifying and restitution of 'the missing' part…
Writing and Intimate Privacy
Mourning, melancholia and machines
Death and mourning are being shaped by posthumous opportunities for the dead to affect current life in ways not possible in pre-digital generations. The psychological and sociological impact of the dead 'online' and of 'grief tech' is only beginning to be understood. It has not yet been explored psychoanalytically until this paper that examines one type of grief tech, namely the griefbot. This development is critically explored through a psychoan…
Psychology (23 works) · Psychoanalysis (19 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Psychoanalytic theory (9 works) · Psychotherapist (9 works) · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications (9 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Sociology (7 works)