The Work of Psychic Figurability

The Work of Psychic Figurability PDF Author: César Botella
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9781583918159
Category : Psychoanalysis
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Based on experience of analytic practice and illustrated by fascinating clinical material, this book addresses what the authors call the work of figurability as a way of outlining the passage from the unrepresentable to the representational.

The Work of Psychic Figurability

The Work of Psychic Figurability PDF Author: César Botella
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9781583918159
Category : Psychoanalysis
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Based on experience of analytic practice and illustrated by fascinating clinical material, this book addresses what the authors call the work of figurability as a way of outlining the passage from the unrepresentable to the representational.

The Work of Psychoanalysis

The Work of Psychoanalysis PDF Author: Dana Birksted-Breen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317332156
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Psychoanalysts working in clinical situations are constantly confronted with the struggle between conservative forces and those which enable something new to develop. Continuity and change, stasis and transformation, are the major themes discussed in The Work of Psychoanalysis, and address the fundamental question: How does and how can change take place? The Work of Psychoanalysis explores the underlying coherence of the complex linked issues of theory and practice. Drawing on clinical cases from her own experience in the consulting room Dana Birksted-Breen focuses on what takes place between patient and analyst, giving a picture of the interlocking and overlapping vertices that make up the work needed in psychoanalysis. Some of the key topics covered include: sexuality; aspects of female identity; eating disorders; time; dreams; disturbances in modalities of thought; and terminating psychoanalysis. This book draws different traditions into a coherent theoretical position with consequences for the mode of working analytically. The Work of Psychoanalysis will appeal to psychoanalysts and academics in psychoanalysis, psychotherapists, as well as postgraduate students studying courses in these fields.

Reading Italian Psychoanalysis

Reading Italian Psychoanalysis PDF Author: Franco Borgogno
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317388135
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 759

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Book Description
Winner of the American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis Prize for best Edited book published in 2016 Psychoanalysis in Italy is a particularly diverse and vibrant profession, embracing a number of influences and schools of thought, connecting together new thinking, and producing theorists and clinicians of global renown. Reading Italian Psychoanalysis provides a comprehensive guide to the most important Italian psychoanalytic thinking of recent years, including work by major names such as Weiss, E.Gaddini, Matte Blanco, Nissim Momigliano, Canestri, Amati Mehler, and Ferro. It covers the most important theoretical developments and clinical advances, with special emphasis on contemporary topics such as transference, trauma and primitive states of mind where Italian work has been particular influential. In this volume, Franco Borgogno, Alberto Luchetti and Luisa Marino Coe of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society provide an overview of how Italian psychoanalysis has developed from the 1920’s to the present day, tracing its early influences and highlighting contemporary developments. Forty-six seminal and representative papers of psychoanalysts belonging to the two Italian psychoanalytical societies (the Italian Psychoanalytical Society and the Italian Association of Psychoanalysis) have been chosen to illuminate what is special about Italian theoretical and clinical thinking, and what is demonstrative of the specificity of its psychoanalytic discourse. The selected papers are preceded by a first introductory section about the history of psychoanalysis in Italy and followed by a "swift glance at Italian psychoanalysis from abroad". They are grouped into sections which represent the areas particularly explored by Italian psychoanalysis. Each section is accompanied by introductory comments which summarize the main ideas and concepts and also their historical and cultural background, so as to offer to the reader either an orientation and stimulus for the debate and to indicate their connections to other papers included in the present volume and to the international psychoanalytic world. The book is divided into six parts including: History of psychoanalysis in Italy Metapsychology Clinical practice, theory of technique, therapeutic factors The person of the analyst, countertransference and the analytic relationship/field Trauma, psychic pain, mourning and working-through Preverbal, precocious, fusional, primitive states of the mind This volume offers an excellent and detailed "fresco" of Italian psychoanalytic debate, shining a light on thinking that has evolved differently in France, England, North and Latin America. It is an ideal book for beginners and advanced students of clinical theory as well as experienced psychoanalysts wanting to know more about Italian psychoanalytic theory and technique, and how they have developed.

Formless Infinity

Formless Infinity PDF Author: Riccardo Lombardi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317395123
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
In contemporary psychoanalysis, a key concept and aim of clinical practice is to distinguish the boundaries of any mental state. Without this boundary-setting, the patient has nothing but the 'formless infinite' of primitive mental states. Formless Infinity: Clinical Explorations of Matte Blanco and Bion draws on the work of these two authors to explore how analysts can work with patients to reveal, understand and ultimately contain their primitive mental states. Riccardo Lombardi discusses the core concepts of the unconscious, the role of the body in analysis, time and death. He displays the clinical implications of Matte Blanco’s theoretical extension of Freud’s theory of the unconscious, presenting numerous clinical examples of working with psychosis and other severe pathologies. Formless Infinity, a stimulating teaching text for students, trainers and seasoned mental health practitioners, is essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists. It is particularly recommended to analysts interested in widening the scope of the analytic practice by exploring the functioning of the deep unconscious, primitive mental states, psychosomatic pathologies and psychotic conditions.

Intersubjective Processes and the Unconscious

Intersubjective Processes and the Unconscious PDF Author: Lawrence J. Brown
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136661425
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Intersubjective Processes and the Unconscious looks at how the minds of the therapist and the patient interact with each other in a profound and unconscious way: a concept first described by Freud. This book expands Freud’s ideas further and examines how these have been greatly elaborated by contributions from the Kleinian School as well as from the work of Bion. It explores how, together, patient and therapist co-create a narrative through these unconscious intersubjective processes. Topics of discussion include: the unconscious dimensions of intersubjective processes an historical overview of Freudian, Kleinian and Bionian contributions an integrated theory of the nature of unconscious intersubjective processes the central importance of dreaming in intersubjective processes the clinical implications of this intersubjective model The author offers in-depth clinical examples and case vignettes to illustrate the application of these principles when working with trauma, countertransference dreams and supervision. As such, this book will be invaluable to all psychoanalysts and psychotherapists interested in the topic of intersubjectivity as well as those who want to learn more about the interactional dimensions of Freud, Klein and Bion.

Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century

Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century PDF Author: David M. Black
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134181477
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
What can be gained from a dialogue between psychoanalysis and religion? Freud described religion as the universal obsessional neurosis, and uncompromisingly rejected it in favour of "science." Ever since, there has been the assumption that psychoanalysts are hostile to religion. Yet, from the beginning, individual analysts have questioned Freud's blanket rejection of religion. In this book, David Black brings together contributors from a wide range of schools and movements to discuss the issues. They bring a fresh perspective to the subject of religion and psychoanalysis, answering vital questions such as: How do religious stories carry (or distort) psychological truth? How do religions 'work', psychologically? What is the nature of religious experience? Are there parallels between psychoanalysis and particular religious traditions? Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic therapists, psychodynamic counsellors, and anyone interested in the issues surrounding psychoanalysis, religion, theology and spirituality.

Imaginary Existences

Imaginary Existences PDF Author: Ignes Sodre
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317644697
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Imaginary Existences: A psychoanalytic exploration of phantasy, fiction, dreams and daydreams interweaves scholarly psychoanalytic knowledge and extensive clinical experience with insights derived from close readings of great literature in a uniquely imaginative and creative manner, convincingly demonstrating how these two ways of thinking – psychoanalysis and literary criticism – organically relate to each other. This is simultaneously a psychoanalytic book and a book about literature, illuminating the imaginative possibilities present within both the psychoanalytic encounter and the act of reading fiction. Scholarly and well researched, the psychoanalytic ideas presented have their basis in the work of Freud and Klein and some of their followers; the extensive and innovative writing about the great authors in Western literature is equally scholarly and lucent. Here, Ignês Sodré explores creativity itself and, specifically, the impediments to creative thinking: defences, mostly narcissistic, against dependency, guilt and loss, and the mis-use of imagination to deny reality. In her studies of the characters created by authors such as George Eliot, Cervantes, Flaubert, Thomas Mann, Proust and Shakespeare, Sodré examines the way great writers create characters who mis-use their imagination, twisting reality into romantic daydreams or sado-masochistic enactments, which petrify experience and freeze the fluidity of thought. Her clinical studies continue and expand this theme, broadening the field and lending verification and weight to the arguments. These two poles of Sodré’s thinking – psychoanalysis and literature – interact seamlessly in Imaginary Existences; the two disciplines work together, each an intimate part of a learned exploration of the human condition: our desires, our fears and our delusions. This convergence pays tribute to the great depth of the fictional work being studied and to the psychological validity of the psychoanalytic ideas. This book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychotherapists, literary critics, and those interested in literature and literary criticism.

Symbiosis and Ambiguity

Symbiosis and Ambiguity PDF Author: José Bleger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136204148
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
Symbiosis and Ambiguity is the first English edition of the classic study of early object relations by influential Argentinian psychoanalyst José Bleger (1922-1972). It is rooted in Kleinian thinking and rich in clinical material. Bleger's thesis is that starting from primitive undifferentiation, prior to the paranoid-schizoid position described by Klein, autism and symbiosis co-exist as narcissistic relations in a syncretic ‘agglutinated’ nucleus. In symbiosis part of the mind is deposited in an external person or situation; in autism it is deposited in the patient's own mind or body. The nucleus is ambiguous and persists in adults as the psychotic part of the personality. Symbiosis tends to immobilise the analytic process, so the analyst must mobilise, fragment and discriminate the agglutinated nucleus, whose ambiguity tends to ‘blunt’ persecutory situations. The psychoanalytic setting functions as a silent refuge for the psychotic part of the personality, where it creates a ‘phantom world’. At some point, therefore, the setting itself has to be analysed and the analytic relationship de-symbiotised, as Bleger observes in a celebrated chapter on the setting. José Bleger’s work demonstrates the need to analyse early narcissistic object relations as they arise clinically, especially in the setting. More widely, he regards undifferentiation and participation as operating throughout life: in groups, institutions, and society as a whole.

Feeling the Words

Feeling the Words PDF Author: Mauro Mancia
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317724259
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
How are the implicit memory and the unrepressed unconscious related? Feeling the Words incorporates a thorough review of essential psychoanalytic concepts, a clear critical history of analytical ideas and an assessment of the contribution neuroscience has to offer. Mauro Mancia uses numerous detailed clinical examples to demonstrate how insights from neuroscience and infant development research can change how the analyst responds to his or her patient. Major topics such as the transference, the Oedipus complex, the interpretation of dreams and the nature of mental pain are reviewed and refined in the light of these recent developments. The book is divided into three parts, covering: Memory and the unconscious The dream: between neuroscience and psychoanalysis Further reflections on narcissism and other clinical topics Feeling the Words offers an original perspective on the connection between memory and the unconscious. It will be welcomed by all psychoanalysts interested in investigating new ways of working with patients.

Constructions and the Analytic Field

Constructions and the Analytic Field PDF Author: Domenico Chianese
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134174977
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Constructions and the Analytic Field questions the relationship between psychoanalysis, history and literature. Does the analyst help the analysand construct a narrative, or is their task more of a historical reconstruction? In seeking to answer this question, Domenico Chianese examines Freud's writing, beginning with 'Constructions in Analysis' and ending in 'Moses and Monotheism', as well as the impressions of analytic method reflected in contemporary writers such as Thomas Mann, and historical writings from both sides of the Atlantic. Drawing on vivid and persuasive clinical examples, he argues that psychoanalysis creates a 'scenic space' between analysand and analyst, a theatrical space wherein the cast of the patient's interior world enter and exit from the scene. Drawing on the rich Italian psychoanalytic tradition, this original approach to the analytic field will be of interest to psychoanalysts, historians and literary experts.