A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World

A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World
Author: Vaia Tsolas
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2017-10-25
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1351660284

A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World: On the Body examines the importance of the body in everyday psychoanalytic practice and beyond. Written by world leading clinicians and international scholars, this important book aims to relocate the psychoanalytic body in the modern, more challenging world. Bringing together perspectives from across the range of psychoanalytic schools of thought, it covers essential analytic topics such as family and parenting, sex and gender, illness and psychosomatics, and concepts of the body in infancy. Though in Freud’s writing the intertwining of body and psyche is fundamental, psychoanalytic thought has sometimes downplayed or ignored this idea. This book returns the body to its rightful place in psychoanalysis, and brings the body into the contemporary world of technology and change, offering fresh insight into the sick body, the sexual body, the speaking body, the body of the changing family in which the traditional gendered labels no longer fit seamlessly, gender dynamics and much more. A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World gives renewed and increased emphasis to an essential tenant of psychoanalysis. With contributions from some of the most important modern psychoanalysts, this book will prove an essential work for both psychotherapists and academics.

The Conscious Body

The Conscious Body
Author: Perrin Elisha
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2011
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN:

The author takes readers through Western history to a comprehensive review of Freud's formative theories, the adaptations of psychotherapeutic theory by thinkers such as Kohut and Klein, and beyond, to modern attachment theory and the fascinating findings of neuropsychological studies. Elisha provides ample illustration of how the mostly unexamined beliefs about the body that we all share may impede efforts to work with body-based presenting problems such as psychosomatic disorders and eating disorders, and even with disorders less associated with the body, such as depression. Ultimately, this 'psychoanalysis of psychoanalysis' will lead mental health practitioners to see psychotherapy's view of the mind and body as not incorrect, but rather, incomplete.

Psychoanalytic Explorations of What Women Want Today

Psychoanalytic Explorations of What Women Want Today
Author: Margarita Cereijido
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2022-05-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000584704

In this book, international psychoanalytic writers address the question ‘What do Women Want Today?’ from a variety of lenses, bringing into focus the creative, resilient forces shown by women in their multiple social and psychological tasks. The book reviews classic psychoanalytic theories about the feminine within a new cultural context. It challenges hegemonic gender prejudices and discusses new conceptions that do not pathologize ‘different’ lifestyles and family configurations. With chapters by leading, international thinkers in the field, this book explores how to think about new feminine scenarios, gender identities, gender dynamics, motherhood, and desire, in light of modern psychoanalytic theories. In presenting how these changing contemporary notions of the feminine challenge classic psychoanalytic theory and practice, this book will compel both training and experienced analysts to think about new psychoanalytic theories and engage with their own prejudices regarding changing notions of the feminine. Offering ideas relevant to psychoanalysis, sociology, gender studies, psychology, and activism, this book will be of great interest to professionals, teachers and students in addition to any with an interest in psychoanalytic theory and women’s studies.

A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Contemporary Search for Pleasure

A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Contemporary Search for Pleasure
Author: Vaia Tsolas
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2023-07-19
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000907341

This interdisciplinary collection of essays explores the malaise of the contemporary individual by returning the economic point of view of Freudian thinking, the concept of satisfaction, libido, and pleasure–unpleasure principle to their rightful place as the motivating forces of human existence. For Freud, pleasure stands apart from other human experiences, side by side with unpleasure, always a bonus in the search for satisfaction of the pleasure principle and beyond. Along with libido, emotional fulfillment, and the capacities for sublimation and play, pleasure has not been given enough attention in the psychoanalytic literature. The editors of this book address this lack and highlight the importance of examining today’s social and individual malaise through these specific lenses of inquiry. It is particularly timely and important today to address this lack, and thereby examine the impact of the social phenomena of the pandemic, the crises of ideals and virtuality on the subject who feels in a state of constant emergency, overwhelmed, addicted, and delibidinalized. With contributions from across psychoanalysis, this book is essential reading for psychoanalysts in training and in practice who want to understand how the modern world has shaped our understanding of pleasure.

Primitive Mental States

Primitive Mental States
Author: Jane Van Buren
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2013-12-16
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1317723430

Traditional psychoanalysis relies on the presence of certain meaning-making capacities in the patient for its effectiveness. Primitive Mental States examines how particular capacities including those for symbolising, fantasising, dreaming, experiencing and finding meanings in those experiences, can be taken for granted. Many of us lack these capacities in certain dimensions of our minds making traditional psychoanalysis ineffective. In this book, international contributors are brought together to consider a radical evolution in contemporary psychoanalytic theory developed from a combination of ultrasound studies, infant analysis, and observation of mothers and babies. These findings demonstrate how much mental life exists even before birth and considers unevolved, unborn and barely born aspects of the self such as the birth of emotion and the birth of alpha functioning. Topics covered include: prenatal imprints on the mind and body difficult to treat patients non-verbal, non-symbolic, disembodied states of being early relational and attachment trauma. Illustrated throughout with original data and extensive clinical discussions from some of the biggest names in the field, Primitive Mental States will be a useful resource for students and seasoned analysts alike.

Body as Psychoanalytic Object

Body as Psychoanalytic Object
Author: Caron Harrang
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2021-08-19
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 100042362X

Winner of the 2022 Gradiva® Award for Best Edited Book! This book explores the role of bodily phenomena in mental life and in the psychoanalytic encounter, encouraging further dialog within psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the humanities, and contributing new clinical and theoretical perspectives to the recent resurgence of psychoanalytic interest in the body. Presented in six parts in which diverse meanings are explored, Body as Psychoanalytic Object focuses on the clinical psychoanalytic encounter and the body as object of psychoanalytic inquiry, spanning from the prenatal experience to death. The contributors explore key themes including mind–body relations in Winnicott, Bion, and beyond; oneiric body; nascent body in early object relations; body and psychosensory experience; body in breakdown; and body in virtual space. With clinical vignettes throughout, each chapter provides unique insight into how different analysts work with bodily phenomena in the clinical situation and how it is conceived theoretically. Building on the thinking of Winnicott and Bion, as well as contributions from French psychoanalysis, Body as Psychoanalytic Object offers a way forward in a body-based understanding of object relations theory for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.

A Psychoanalytic Exploration On Sameness and Otherness

A Psychoanalytic Exploration On Sameness and Otherness
Author: Anne-Marie Schlösser
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2019-12-06
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000731553

In dialogue with the most famous myth for the origin of different languages – The Tower of Babel – A Psychoanalytic Exploration on Sameness and Otherness: Beyond Babel? provides a series of timely reflections on the themes of sameness and otherness from a contemporary psychoanalytic perspective. How are we dealing with communication and its difficulties, the confusion of tongues and loss of common ground within a European context today? Can we move beyond Babel? Confusion and feared loss of shared values and identity are a major part of the daily work of psychoanalytic psychotherapists. Bringing together an international range psychoanalytic practitioners and researchers, the book is divided into six parts and covers an array of resonant topics, including: language and translation; cultural identity; families and children; the cyber world; the psychotherapeutic process; and migration. Whereas the quest for unity, which underpins the myth of Babel, leads to mystification, simplification, and the exclusion of people or things, multilingual communities necessitate mutual understanding through dialogue. This book examines those factors that further or threaten communication, aiming not to reduce, but to gain complexity. It suggests that diversification enriches communication and that, by relating to others, we can create something new. As opposed to cultural and linguistic homogeneity, Babel is not only a metaphor for mangled communication, alienation, and distraction, it is also about the acceptance or rejection of differences between self and other. This book will be of great interest to psychoanalytic psychotherapists and researchers from a wide variety of backgrounds.

The Bodily Unconscious in Psychoanalytic Technique

The Bodily Unconscious in Psychoanalytic Technique
Author: Sebastian Leikert
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2024-08-29
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1040094449

The Bodily Unconscious in Psychoanalytic Technique explores how corporeality and body memory can be more strongly integrated into psychoanalytic work. This book brings together an international range of contributors to consider the bodily unconscious from different theoretical perspectives. Concepts from the work of Freud, Bion, Winnicott, Lacan, Laplanche, and Fonagy are developed with the aim of incorporating body memory into psychoanalytic technique. The contributors consider how severe and complex clinical states, dominated by bodily symptoms and disorganization, can be approached with methods that go beyond classical interpretation. The book includes ten case histories and discussion of key themes including transference and countertransference, feelings of corporeality and bodily sensations, and features clinical material throughout. The Bodily Unconscious in Psychoanalytic Technique will be essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in practice and training, particularly those interested in somatic approaches.

Pregnancy, Assisted Reproduction and Psychoanalysis

Pregnancy, Assisted Reproduction and Psychoanalysis
Author: Renata Viola Vives
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2024-09-24
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1040123384

Pregnancy, Assisted Reproduction, and Psychoanalysis reflects on contemporary views on pregnancy, while offering guidance on how to work with women and couples experiencing infertility as well as the unique issues raised by having a child through assisted reproduction technologies. Comprised of chapters written by eminent analysts working with infertile couples and women, and parents who have a child born from assisted reproduction, this book offers insightful ways to better understand the challenges these patients undertake and the various issues this might bring into the analytic room. The contributors examine the myriad psychic problems subjects are confronted with which could impact their ability to bond with children born through ART: the mourning processes infertility entails, the identification with the fertile parental couple, the unconscious representation of origin, the representation of the primal scene, and the process of symbolic affiliation. They consider the working-through these processes necessitate in order to enable filiation and healthy parenting, and give invaluable tools to the analyst to enable the promotion of psychological growth. Throughout, the chapters address the emotions that infertility summons in which both patient and analyst find a spectrum of unconscious phantasies and anxieties. This book is an essential read for psychoanalysts and other professionals working in the field of ART, as well as those interested in motherhood and its vicissitudes and intersection with psychoanalysis.

The Infinite Infantile and the Psychoanalytic Task

The Infinite Infantile and the Psychoanalytic Task
Author: Nilde Parada Franch
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2022-11-10
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000646718

The Infinite Infantile and the Psychoanalytic Task is a fascinating collection of essays that proposes to restore and elaborate original conceptions of the complexity of mental processes in the early years of life until the onset of adolescence, and from then until adulthood. This book, led by the Committee on Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis (COCAP) of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), commits to shedding light on new developments in theory and practice in this area. Each chapter offers an expression of current thinking and clinical work with child and adolescent patients, as well as with their parents, families, and community. The complex contributions by brilliant and erudite scholars offer a fresh take on the existing body of thought on infancy and childhood in psychoanalysis that will challenge and enlighten readers of all backgrounds. Within these perspectives, the development of internal and external bonds is the focus, as well as a consideration of how analysts work in their time with young patients at these key moments of the life cycle. With their expertise in childhood, the contributors share complex views on the link between analysis with young children and psychoanalysis with adults, making it an essential read for child and adolescent psychoanalysts in practice and in training.