#76 Geographies of Psychoanalysis: Encounters Between Cultures in Tehran, Edited by Lorena Preta
Can psychoanalytical hypotheses have a universal value? Can they describe the same or a similar psychic dynamic for any human, regardless of the historical, social and cultural context? Can psychoanalysis help with mental suffering in different realities?
In our times, the questions psychoanalysis has to face are very complex. The modern world is dominated by technology that subverts the perception of the body, by new families and group organization, and by a global violence that enforces a changed geometry of the mind. The answers to these new situations differ from country to country, regardless of the uniformity brought about by globalization. Consequently, the role of psychoanalysis changes across different nations. Presenting their different experiences and problem areas, the authors of the essays contained herein have laid out a map which is different from the geographical and geopolitical ones that we all know.
#77 Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in China: Volume 1
This peer-reviewed journal proposes to explore the introduction of psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic therapy, and the wider application of psychoanalytic ideas into China. It aims to have articles authored by Chinese and Western contributors, to explore ideas that apply to the Chinese clinical population, cultural issues relevant to the practice of analysis and psychotherapy, and to the cultural interface between Western ideas underpinning psychoanalysis, and the richness of Chinese intellectual and philosophical ideas that analysis must encounter in the process of its introduction.
#78 The Temptation of Biology: Freud's Theories of Sexuality by Jean Laplanche
The Temptation of Biology is one of Laplanche’s central achievements in the latter half of his career: a major monograph on sexuality. Originally published in 1987 as Le fourvoiement biologisant de la sexualité chez Freud, republished in 1999 as La sexualité humaine and as Problématiques VII in 2006, in this volume it is followed by Laplanche’s 1997 talk at the University of Buenos Aires when he was awarded the title Doctor Honoris Causa, a paper which addresses a key aspect of the monograph: “Biologism and Biology.”
Laplanche’s work is widely recognized as offering what may be the most important – certainly the most coherent – development and correction of Freud’s theories of sexuality. Building upon the 1984 volume New Foundations for Psychoanalysis, which Laplanche called the "hinge" of his theorizing, this book examines the origins of infantile sexuality. Laplanche works to demystify and demythologize the cult of biology within the work of Freud and his successors, to develop a theory of sexuality that both challenges and restores Freud's own foundational insights. In this remarkable translation, the text remains just as clear and illuminating as the original French. It is stimulating, rigorous, and (perhaps atypical for a work of theory) a pleasure to read.
#79 On Revelation by Eric Rhode
Revelation occurs to each of us at every hour in the form of thoughts, feelings, dreams, insights and intuitions that seemingly derive from an unknown source. It feels like a gift. And yet it is inseparable from the catastrophic. Eric Rhode shows how this might be so. Writing from within a psychoanalytic tradition, he draws on material from anthropology, mythology and from theories of place and pilgrimage. He looks to Kafka's parable of the dying emperor to discover how revelation as gift and revelation as catastrophe co-exist in tragic disjunction.
#80 Confessions from the Couch: Psychoanalytical Notions Illustrated with Extracts from Sessions by Valérie Blanco
The unconscious? The Oedipus complex? The castration complex? Neurosis? The objet a? What are they? And what does one say to an analyst? What happens during an analysis?
For those asking questions about psychoanalysis, Confessions from the Couch gives clear and simple answers. The principal psychoanalytical notions, both Freudian and Lacanian, are explained and illustrated with chosen extracts from actual analytical sessions.
Valérie Blanco has brilliantly used an everyday language to explain concepts that can be difficult to grasp. This book is accessible to everybody. It offers a riveting opening into psychoanalysis and allows the reader a glimpse of actual psychoanalytical practice.
#81 A Rumor of Empathy: Resistance, Narrative and Recovery in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy by Lou Agosta
Agosta depicts the unconscious forms of resistance and raises our understanding of the fears of merger that lead a therapist to take a step back from the experience of their patients, using ideas such as "alturistic surrender" and "compassion fatigue" which are highlighted in a number of clinical vignettes. Empathy itself is not self-contained. It is embedded in social and cultural values, and Agosta highlights the mental health culture and its expectations of professional organizations. This outstanding text will be relevant to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists who wish to make a contribution to reducing the suffering and emotional distress of their clients, and also to trainees who are more vulnerable to the professional demands on their capacity for empathic listening.
Book preview: A Rumor of Empathy: Resistance, Narrative and Recovery in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy
#82 Entering Night Country: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Loss and Resilience by Stephanie Brody
None of us will escape the experience of personal loss, illness, aging, or mortality. Yet, psychoanalysis seems to shy away from a discussion of these core human experiences. Existential vulnerability is painful and we all avoid this awareness in different ways. However, when analysts fail to explore the topic of mortality, their own and their patients, they may foreclose an important exploration and short-change patient and therapist. Entering Night Country focuses on the existential condition, and explores how it penetrates professional lives, analytic work, and theoretical formulations.
#83 Humanizing Evil: Psychoanalytic, Philosophical and Clinical Perspectices, Edited by Ronald Naso and Jon Mills
Psychoanalysis has traditionally had difficulty in accounting for the existence of evil. Freud saw it as a direct expression of unconscious forces, whereas more recent theorists have examined the links between early traumatic experiences and later ‘evil’ behaviour. Humanizing Evil: Psychoanalytic, Philosophical and Clinical Perspectives explores the controversies surrounding definitions of evil, and examines its various forms, from the destructive forces contained within the normal mind to the most horrific expressions observed in contemporary life.
#84 On the Lyricism of the Mind: Psychoanalysis and Literature by Dana Amir
On the Lyricism of the Mind presents a new psychoanalytic understanding of the capacity to heal, to grieve, to love and to know, using literary illustrations but also literary language in order to extract a new formulation out of the classic psychoanalytic language of Winnicott and Bion. This book will appear to a wide audience to include psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and art therapists. It is also extremely relevant to literary scholars, including students of literary criticism, philosophers of language and philosophers of mind, novelists, poets, and to the wide educated readership in general.
#85 Torments of the Soul: Psychoanalytic Transformations in Dreaming and Narration by Antonino Ferro
Antonino Ferro explores the concepts of 'transformations in dreaming', the session as a dream, individuals transformed into characters, the interpretation of these characters, and readings of them as the functioning of a single mind or as an analytic field created by the meeting of two minds: the client's and the analyst's. Here, a new identity, the analytic field, is formed from the reverie of both participants, which makes it possible to work on complex, nonlinear phenomena in a radical way, creating a 'royal road' to the unconscious communication of the patient.
#86 Tales from the Madhouse: An Insider Critique of Psychiatric Services by Gary Sidley
Current psychiatric practices are based on pseudo-scientific assumptions that are barely more valid than those of witchcraft and demonic possession that dominated society's approach to madness in bygone centuries. The author's 33 years of experience working as a mental health professional - psychiatric nurse, clinical psychologist and manager - has enabled the creation of a distinctive insider account of the shameful failings of the Western psychiatric system. Not only is the evidence for psychiatry's deficiencies comprehensively reviewed, but disturbing anecdotes are shared to illustrate how these failings are currently playing out within a psychiatric service near you.
#87 Psychoanalysis in an Age of Accelerating Cultural Change: Spiritual Globalization by Neil Altman
The field of mental health has suffered from the mutual isolation of psychoanalysis, community-based clinical work, and cultural studies. Here, Neil Altman shows how these areas of study and practice require and enrich each other - the field of psychoanalysis benefits by engaging marginalized communities; community-based clinical work benefits from psychoanalytic concepts, while all forms of clinical work benefit from awareness of culture. Including reports of clinical experiences and programmatic developments from around the world, its international scope explores the operation of culture and cultural differences in conceptions of mental health. In addition the book addresses the origin and treatment of mental illness, from notions of spirit possession treated by shamans, to conceptions of psychic trauma, to biological understandings and pharmacological treatments. In the background of this discussion is globalization, the impact of which is tracked in terms of its psychological effects on people, as well as on the resources and programs available to provide psychological care around the world.
#88 Nourishing the Inner Life of Clinicians and Humanitarians: The Ethical Turn in Psychoanalysis by Donna Orange
Nourishing the Inner Life of Clinicians and Humanitarians: The Ethical Turn in Psychoanalysis, demonstrates the demanding, clinical and humanitarian work that psychotherapists often undertake with fragile and devastated people, those degraded by violence and discrimination. In spite of this, Donna M. Orange argues that there is more to human nature than a relentlessly negative view. Drawing on psychoanalytic and philosophical resources, as well as stories from history and literature, she explores ethical narratives that ground hope in human goodness and shows how these voices, personal to each analyst, can become sources of courage, warning and support, of prophetic challenge and humility which can inform and guide their work. Over the course of a lifetime, the sources change, with new ones emerging into importance, others receding into the background.
Book preview: Nourishing the Inner Life of Clinicians and Humanitarians: The Ethical Turn in Psychoanalysis
#89 The Topological Transformation of Freud's Theory by Jean-Gerard Bursztein
In this book Jean-Gerard Bursztein presents his reading of psychoanalysis in the spirit of its founder Sigmund Freud, and explores the transformations of Freud's work by his followers. The author notes that some of these followers trimmed it down even to exclude the death drive, which was one of Freud's fundamental principles. Freud's theory has also been transformed by Lacan, who, in the mid-1950s embarked on a lifelong enterprise to recast it in a fruitful debate with the sciences and the humanities. Such a transformation brought by Lacan was (somewhat paradoxically) necessary to show the importance of Freud's findings for the understanding of subjectivity.
Book preview: The Topological Transformation of Freud's Theory
#90 A New Therapy for Politics? by Andrew Samuels
Now, in a long-anticipated tour-de-force that is both compassionate and intellectually stimulating, this book deepens in a new and innovate style his engagement with themes such as economics, ecopsychology, leadership, aggression and violence, the role of the individual in progressive politics, and sexuality and spirituality in political contexts.
The reader is encouraged to move beyond conventional professional or academic discourse by the inclusion of experiential exercises in the text. In this way, activism and analysis, public and private, therapeutic and more-than-personal are all brought together in a satisfying yet challenging synthesis.
Book preview: A New Therapy for Politics?
#91 Conservative and Radical Perspectives on Psychoanalytic Knowledge: The Fascinated and the Disenchanted by Aner Govrin
Psychoanalysis really should not exist today. Until a few years ago, most of the evidence suggested that its time was drawing to a close, and yet psychoanalysis demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of criticism, alongside significant resurgence over the course of the last years. In "Conservative and Radical Perspectives on Psychoanalytic Knowledge: The Fascinated and the Disenchanted" psychoanalyst and philosopher Aner Govrin describes the mechanisms of sociology within the psychoanalytic community which have enabled it to withstand the hostility levelled at it and to flourish as an intellectual and pragmatic endeavour. He defends the most criticized aspect of psychoanalysis: the fascination of analysts with their theories. Govrin demonstrates that fascination is a common phenomenon in science and shows its role in the evolution of psychoanalysis.
Book preview: Conservative and Radical Perspectives on Psychoanalytic Knowledge: The Fascinated and the Disenchanted
#92 Medea: Myth and Unconscious Fantasy, Edited by Esa Roos
This book takes Euripides' tragedy of Medea as its starting point. Our unconscious fantasies can be embedded in age-old myths, and many modern works about Medea reflect our ever-present interest in such myths. The Danish film director T.H. Dreyer had plans to produce a film about the story of Medea, while his countryman Lars von Trier did in fact make his own version of Medea, based on Dreyer's previous work on the theme.
In this remarkable new book the 'Medea fantasy' is introduced as an unconscious determinant of psychogenic sterility, a fantasy that may form an unrecognized and dissociated part of the self-representation which can lead women to believe that their lovers (like Jason in the original myth) will deceive and abandon them, and that this anxiety might cause them to react violently towards their children. For such women it is imperative to forgo any creative femininity. The carefully written chapters study the so called 'dark continent' - hidden or unknown areas of womanhood, that are often felt to be difficult to approach, understand, or conceptualise.
Book preview: Medea: Myth and Unconscious Fantasy, Edited
#93 Art, Psychoanalysis, and Adrian Stokes: A Biography by Janet Sayers
Illustrated with Barbara Hepworth's abstract stone carving, with other works of art, and with fascinating vignettes from Adrian Stokes's writing, this biography highlights his revolutionary emphasis on the materials-led inspiration of architecture, sculpture, painting, and the avant-garde creations of the Ballets Russes.
Book preview: Art, Psychoanalysis, and Adrian Stokes: A Biography
#94 Female Sexuality: The Early Psychoanalytic Controversies by Russell Grigg (Author, Editor), Dominique Hecq (Editor), Craig Smith (Editor)
The papers collected together in this volume laid the groundwork for contemporary psychoanalytic women's studies and gender theory. They cover a period from June 1917, when Johan van Ophuijsen presented his paper on the masculinity complex in women to the Dutch Psycho-Analytical Society, to April 1935, when Ernest Jones read a paper on early female sexuality to the Vienna Psycho-Analytical Society.
This collection contains papers by Karl Abraham, Marie Bonaparte, Ruth Mack Brunswick, Helene Deutsch, Otto Fenichel, Karen Horney, Ernest Jones, Melanie Klein, Jeanne Lampl de Groot, Josine Müller, Carl Müller-Braunschweig, Johan H. W. van Ophuijsen, Joan Riviere, and August Stärcke.
Book preview: Female Sexuality: The Early Psychoanalytic Controversies
#95 The Economics of Libido: Psychic Bisexuality, the Superego, and the Centrality of the Oedipus Complex by Trevor Pederson
This book is an attempt to get beyond pluralism by embedding psychoanalysis in philosophy and returning to Freud qua psychologist to link the depths of the mind to its surface. Beginning with the proposition that egoism and altruism are a more accurate representation of the binary of activity and passivity, The Economics of Libido revisits Freud’s work to contextualize his central concepts and expand upon them.
Book preview: The Economics of Libido: Psychic Bisexuality, the Superego, and the Centrality of the Oedipus Complex
#96 The Abandonment Neurosis by Germaine Guex
First published in 1950, La nevrose d'abandon was and still is a ground-breaking work. Guex's research turns on two clinical observations: the frequent occurrence of analysands whose neurotic symptoms are unrecognizable when measured against any of the Freudian diagnostic models, and the relatively large number of these patients who sought help from her, having already undergone thorough classically Freudian treatments with analysts whose abilities were never in question, but whose efforts did nothing to relieve patient suffering.What all these subjects had in common, Guex observed, were extme and debilitating feelings of abandonment, insecurity and lack of self-worth, originally ignited by severe pre-oedipal trauma. Having described the neurosis of abandonment, Guex goes on to outline every diagnostic tool and treatment methodology, developed over many years, which can be deployed in the successful and lasting eradication of this pervasive neurosis.Despite its trail-blazing research and ideas, Guex's book never received the accolades or attention it deserved. Now, translated into English for the first time by Peter D. Douglas, it is brought to a new and wider audience, for whom the ideas it explores are just as relevant and significant today.
Book preview: The Abandonment Neurosis
#97 The Oedipus Complex: Solutions or Resolutions? by Rhona M. Fear
Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex is seminal to psychoanalytic theory, but often ignored because of failure to appreciate the nuances. This book seeks to demystify this fascinating topic by exploring the theory in approachable language. In the early pages of the book the author takes us through Freud's gradual development of his theory and then moves the reader towards a different view as expressed by Melanie Klein. At the end of the first part of the book the author seeks to promulgate the thesis that there is a causal correlation between attachment theory and the Oedipus complex.
Book preview: The Oedipus Complex: Solutions or Resolutions?
#98 A New Body-Mind Approach: Clinical Cases by Jean Benjamin Stora
Integrative psychosomatics is a new approach to explaining illnesses and how patients relate to their problems. This new discipline draws on psychoanalysis, medicine and the neurosciences, rather than solely on psychoanalysis, which has inspired all the psychosomatic approaches until now. Amongst the fascinating and compelling questions that this book raises are: how can we understand an illness if we only analyse the psyche? How can we understand patients if we only take account of their biological data? Are hypochondriac problems generated by the mind, as some doctors believe, or are the problems in fact more complex?
Book preview: A New Body-Mind Approach: Clinical Cases
#99 Grief and its Transcendence: Memory, Identity, Creativity by Adele Tutter (Editor), Léon Wurmser (Editor)
Grief and its Transcendence: Memory, Identity, Creativity is a landmark contribution that provides fresh insights into the experience and process of mourning. It includes fourteen original essays by pre-eminent psychoanalysts, historians, classicists, theologians, architects, art-historians and artists, that take on the subject of normal, rather than pathological mourning. In particular, it considers the diversity of the mourning process; the bereavement of ordinary vs. extraordinary loss; the contribution of mourning to personal and creative growth; and individual, social, and cultural means of transcending grief.
#100 A Nazi Legacy: Depositing, Transgenerational Transmission, Dissociation, and Remembering Through Action by Vamik D. Volkan
This book relates the psychoanalytic journey of a man in his thirties, a grandson of a high-level SS officer, whose case illustrates how individuals can sometimes suffer greatly or cause the suffering of other innocent persons, simply because they are descendants of perpetrators. In it, technical considerations in treating such an individual, including countertransference issues and concepts related to transgenerational transmissions-for example, identification, depositing, dissociation, encapsulation, and remembering through actions-are explored.
The man had a repeating daydream of carrying a big egg under his arm. The imagined egg, representing his encapsulated dissociated state, contained the mental representation of his Nazi grandfather and his grandfather's victims, along with images of most tragic historical events. He attempted to turn his grandfather's image from a life-taker to a life-giver and wished to own the older man's grandiose specialness, while fearing the loss of his own life. These opposite aims created unnamed 'catastrophes'. This book describes his psychoanalytic process from beginning to end and how he slowly cracked open his metaphorical egg, facing and naming the 'catastrophes', and eventually taming them.
Book preview: A Nazi Legacy: Depositing, Transgenerational Transmission, Dissociation, and Remembering Through Action
#101 The Quotable Jung, Edited by Judith Harris
The Quotable Jung is the single most comprehensive collection of Jung quotations ever assembled. It is the essential introduction for anyone new to Jung and the Jungian tradition. It will also inspire those familiar with Jung to view him in an entirely new way. The Quotable Jung presents hundreds of the most representative selections from the vast array of Jung’s books, essays, correspondence, lectures, seminars, and interviews, as well as the celebrated Red Book, in which Jung describes his own fearsome confrontation with the unconscious. Organized thematically, this collection covers such topics as the psyche, the symbolic life, dreams, the analytic process, good and evil, creativity, alchemical transformation, death and rebirth, the problem of the opposites, and more. The quotations are arranged so that the reader can follow the thread of Jung’s thought on these topics while gaining an invaluable perspective on his writings as a whole.
Book preview: The Quotable Jung
