Both of the following sentences are from the same book. Does "to posit" in both of them mean "to define"? Sentence #1: These four chapters, Chapters 4 and 5 on the formation and critique of narcissism, Chapter 6 on its deformation in abjection, and Chapter 7 on its reformation in the work of black artists, form a pattern that oscillates between, on the one hand positing the ego, and on the other hand shattering its co-ordinates, which prepares for the focus in Chapter 8 on repetition compulsion and the death drive. Sentence #2: Clearly Lacan’s writing on the eye and the gaze is a development of the themes in his earlier essay ‘The Mirror-Stage’, which also posited fragmentation as being the other side of armoured reflection.

Does "rather than an individual artist’s psyche" in the last line of the sentence below imply: 1. rather than think about an individual artist’s psyche or 2. rather than think about how meaning operates in an individual artist’s psyche ? or are both of them possible? Sentence: This book will begin by exploring the shift in the relationship between art and psychoanalysis from a Surrealist engagement with psychoanalytic imagery to the more contemporary critical engagement by artists, art critics and historians that emphasises how psychoanalytic concepts such as fetishism, narcissism, abjection, etc., rather than being used as illustrational sources for art, can be used as tools to think about how meaning operates in the cultural reception of an artwork rather than an individual artist’s psyche.

Does "ritual" in the sentence below mean "aspect" and "phase"? Sentence: While for Freud the dream-work operated on an individual idiosyncratic basis, artist Susan Hiller, whose work is productively critical of the Freudian legacy, explores the collective ritual of this process which testifies to the more social aspect of the phenomenon as a source of creative inspiration.

Does "psychoanalysis proper" in the following sentence mean "the core of psychoanalysis"? Sentence: It will take its main impetus from the theories of Freud, which, as Richard Wollheim states, are strictly speaking psychoanalysis proper.

Does "ethics" in the following context mean something like "relations"? Context: However, the gist of my argument will be that the artist, rather than taking him- or herself as an object to be destroyed, finds a surrogate ‘object’ to channel the potentially dangerous defusion of the instincts involved in primary masochism so that the fragmentation they incur is experienced at a distance, although, paradoxically, an extremely intimate one. The ethics involved here is that the excess of destructiveness that seems to be inherent in human sexuality is dissipated via an internal relation to a surrogate self rather than projected outwards and inflicted on an external object in the exercise of ‘mastery or the will to power’.

Does "events that may or may not have occurred in a time and space different from the present" in the context below mean: 1. events that may have occurred in the present time and space or may have occurred in another time and space or 2. events that may have occurred in another time and space or may not have occurred at all? Context: From the ‘stories’ told to them in the clinic, psychoanalysts enable their patients to create equivalent narratives for events that may or may not have occurred in a time and space different from the present.

"Work over" and "work through" have several meanings in dictionaries. Can anyone explain which of these meanings are intended in the following context? Thanks. Context: Art is a metaphorical and material working over of and through bodily feelings, so that while the work relates to Hesse’s feelings of being a body in space and time, these feelings are transformed by the formal language available to her, to which she brings an awareness of the intimate qualities of materials, their translucency and opacity. Through this working over of materials, Hesse creates structures that allow the viewer to experience generalised fantasies of loss and absence.

Does "the social address of art" in the following context mean "art's social positions and tendencies"? Text: For Freud, the social address of art means that it is on the side of the pleasure principle, as even when it presents painful experiences there is a yield of pleasure in their working through. Freud separates art from the ‘tendencies beyond the pleasure principle’ which are ‘more primitive than it and independent of it’.

Does "a duality that is impossible to inhabit in three-dimensional space" in the context below mean: 1. we can not live in a three-dimensional space that has such a duality or 2. such a duality can not be constructed a in three-dimensional space Sentence: My purpose here is rather to note how their experiments with form destabilise space in such a way that it empties itself, turning the inside out or outside in, creating a duality that is impossible to inhabit in three-dimensional space but that echoes the entropic motion of the death drive, which, in seeking disintegration, inevitably spews out new forms.