Metapsychology for Contemporary Psychoanalysis

Metapsychology for Contemporary Psychoanalysis
Author: Richard Sembera
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2017-04-28
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 131527888X

Metapsychology for Contemporary Psychoanalysis is a complete revision of the theoretical underpinnings of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy. It seeks to replace the traditional drive–defence model of Freudian tradition with an information processing model of the mind. This book argues that the central human need is for self-knowledge, and that drives are best understood as means towards this end. Richard Sembera begins with a close reading of Freud’s own metapsychological writings, isolating the many unresolved difficulties and inconsistencies which continue to burden psychoanalytical theory today. By returning to the actual observable clinical phenomena in the analytic situation, it is shown that an alternative interpretation is possible that eliminates the theoretical difficulties in question. In the analytic situation, Sembera argues that clinicians do not in fact see individuals struggling against the expression of biological drives, rather they observe individuals struggling to clarify their experience of themselves in the presence of the analyst and put this experience into words. When this process is formalized and expressed in theoretical terms, it is found to consist of three distinct aspects: objectification, imagination, and symbolization. This process as a whole—ascent towards the other, relationship with the other, disclosure of self in the light of the other—is termed the dialectical structure of the self. It is conceptualized as the main accomplishment of the core mental process, the process of contextualization. This work is distinguished from other attempts at theoretical revision by its fundamental commitment to coherence and clarity as well as its determination to challenge accepted psychoanalytic dogma. It argues for the complete irrelevance of biology and neuroscience to the psychoanalytic enterprise and rejects the theory of drives in its entirety. Instead it affirms the centrality of the traumatic response to mental functioning, emphasises the social matrix in which drives are embedded, re-examines the concepts of free will, accountability, and responsibility, and concludes with an attempt to understand waking life as a creative product analogous to the lucid dream. Drawing on major psychoanalytic thinkers including Bollas and Benjamin, and current philosophy of mind, this book provides readers with a clear, updated model of metapsychology. Metapsychology for Contemporary Psychoanalysis will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, as well as philosophy scholars and anyone with an interest in the philosophy of psychoanalysis.

The Metapsychology of Christopher Bollas

The Metapsychology of Christopher Bollas
Author: Sarah Nettleton
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2016-09-13
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1317635981

The Metapsychology of Christopher Bollas: An Introduction explores Bollas’s extraordinarily wide contribution to contemporary psychoanalysis. The book aims to introduce and explain the fundamentals of Bollas’s theory of the mind in a systematic way, addressing many of the questions that commonly arise when people approach his work. Through chapters on topics such as the receptive subject, the creative unconscious and the implications of Bollas’s metapsychology for the technique of free association, the book enables the reader to acquire an understanding of his unique psychoanalytic language, to grasp the conceptual building blocks of his thinking and how these interrelate, and to appreciate the theoretical and clinical coherence of his thinking. The Metapsychology of Christopher Bollas: An Introduction will be of use to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and counsellors, as well as psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers wishing to explore the applications of psychoanalytic thinking to their practice. It will be of great value to trainees in these disciplines, as well as to postgraduate students and academics interested in contemporary psychoanalysis.

From Classical to Contemporary Psychoanalysis

From Classical to Contemporary Psychoanalysis
Author: Morris N. Eagle
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2011-03-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 113525222X

The landscape of psychoanalysis has changed, at times dramatically, in the hundred or so years since Freud first began to think and write about it. Freudian theory and concepts have risen, fallen, evolved, mutated, and otherwise reworked themselves in the hands and minds of analysts the world over, leaving us with a theoretically pluralistic (yet threateningly multifarious) diffusion of psychoanalytic viewpoints. To help make sense of it all, Morris Eagle sets out to critically reevaluate fundamental psychoanalytic concepts of theory and practice in a topical manner. Beginning at the beginning, he reintroduces Freud's ideas in chapters on the mind, object relations, psychopathology, and treatment; he then approaches the same topics in terms of more contemporary psychoanalytic schools. In each chapter, however, there is an underlying emphasis on identification and integration of converging themes, which is reemphasized in the final chapter. Relevant empirical research findings are used throughout, thus basic concepts - such as repression - are reexamined in the light of more contemporary developments.

Freud as Philosopher

Freud as Philosopher
Author: Richard Boothby
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2015-10-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317972597

Using Jacques Lacan's work as a key, Boothby reassesses Freud's most ambitious-and misunderstood-attempt at a general theory of mental functioning: metapsychology

Richard M. Billow's Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis and Group Process

Richard M. Billow's Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis and Group Process
Author: Tzachi Slonim
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2021-05-05
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000365409

This comprehensive volume presents Richard M. Billow’s unique contributions to the theory and technique of psychotherapy, along with summaries and explications by the volume’s editor, Tzachi Slonim. Through their behavior, therapists define the clinical culture: how relationships are to be regarded and the depth to which narratives and exchanges may be considered. Known for his integration of Bion’s metapsychology with contemporary psychoanalysis, Billow extends our understanding of "relational" to include the emotional relationships people have with individual and collective ideas, and the behaviors attached to these ideas. "Doing our work" (the title of the last section) involves the therapist’s whole being, including cognitions, dreams, words, deeds, and very presence—mental and somatic. Drawing on Lacan, Billow suggests that therapeutic work ought to include a willingness to penetrate other minds with provocative, controversial ideas. His clinical vignettes portray a masterly clinician-in-action, describing his evolving feelings, thoughts, and assessments. Billow’s intimate knowledge of Bionian theory, coupled with his down-to-earth demeanour and clear writing, allows him to explicate and expand upon Bion’s important contributions in a manner accessible to the novice and expert therapist alike. With one eye on therapeutic process, and the other on each participant including the therapist himself, Billow invites each of us to change our minds.

Thinking for Clinicians

Thinking for Clinicians
Author: Donna M. Orange
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2009-06-24
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1135468672

Thinking for Clinicians provides analysts of all orientations with the tools and context for working critically within psychoanalytic theory and practice. It does this through detailed chapters on some of the philosophers whose work is especially relevant for contemporary theory and clinical writing: Emmanuel Levinas, Martin Buber, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Orange presents the historical background for their ideas, along with clinical vignettes to help contextualize their theories, further grounding them in real-world experience. With a hermeneutic sensibility firmly in mind, Thinking for Clinicians rewards as it challenges and will be a valuable reference for clinicians who seek a better understanding of the philosophical bases of contemporary psychoanalytic theory.

Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory

Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory
Author: Jay R. Greenberg
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2013-12-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0674417003

Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory provides a masterful overview of the central issue concerning psychoanalysts today: finding a way to deal in theoretical terms with the importance of the patient's relationships with other people. Just as disturbed and distorted relationships lie at the core of the patient's distress, so too does the relation between analyst and patient play a key role in the analytic process. All psychoanalytic theories recognize the clinical centrality of “object relations,” but much else about the concept is in dispute. In their ground-breaking exercise in comparative psychoanalysis, the authors offer a new way to understand the dramatic and confusing proliferation of approaches to object relations. The result is major clarification of the history of psychoanalysis and a reliable guide to the fundamental issues that unite and divide the field. Greenberg and Mitchell, both psychoanalysts in private practice in New York, locate much of the variation in the concept of object relations between two deeply divergent models of psychoanalysis: Freud's model, in which relations with others are determined by the individual's need to satisfy primary instinctual drives, and an alternative model, in which relationships are taken as primary. The authors then diagnose the history of disagreement about object relations as a product of competition between these disparate paradigms. Within this framework, Sullivan's interpersonal psychiatry and the British tradition of object relations theory, led by Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, and Guntrip, are shown to be united by their rejection of significant aspects of Freud's drive theory. In contrast, the American ego psychology of Hartmann, Jacobson, and Kernberg appears as an effort to enlarge the classical drive theory to accommodate information derived from the study of object relations. Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory offers a conceptual map of the most difficult terrain in psychoanalysis and a history of its most complex disputes. In exploring the counterpoint between different psychoanalytic schools and traditions, it provides a synthetic perspective that is a major contribution to the advance of psychoanalytic thought.

Reading French Psychoanalysis

Reading French Psychoanalysis
Author: Dana Birksted-Breen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 840
Release: 2014-01-14
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1317723325

How has psychoanalysis developed in France in the years since Lacan so dramatically polarized the field? In this book, Dana Birksted-Breen and Sara Flanders of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and Alain Gibeault of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society provide an overview of how French psychoanalysis has developed since Lacan. Focusing primarily on the work of psychoanalysts from the French Psychoanalytical Association and from the Paris Psychoanalytical Society, the two British psychoanalysts view the evolution of theory as it appears to them from the outside, while the French psychoanalyst explains and elaborates from inside the French psychoanalytic discourse. Seminal and representative papers have been chosen to illuminate what is special about French thinking. A substantial general introduction argues in favour of the specificity of 'French psychoanalysis', tracing its early influences and highlighting specific contemporary developments. Sections are made up of introductory material by Alain Gibeault, followed by illustrative papers in the following categories: the history of psychoanalysis in France the pioneers and their legacy the setting and the process of psychoanalysis phantasy and representation the body and the drives masculine and feminine sexuality psychosis. An excellent introduction to French psychoanalytical debate, Reading French Psychoanalysis sheds a complementary light on thinking that has evolved differently in England and North America. It will be ideal reading for beginners and advanced students of clinical theory as well as experienced psychoanalysts wanting to know more about French Psychoanalytic theory, and how it has developed.

The Legacy of Sandor Ferenczi

The Legacy of Sandor Ferenczi
Author: Adrienne Harris
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2015-04-17
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1317590783

Winner of the 2016 Gradiva Award for Edited Book The Legacy of Sándor Ferenczi, first published in 1993 & edited by Lewis Aron & Adrienne Harris, was one of the first books to examine Ferenczi’s invaluable contributions to psychoanalysis and his continuing influence on contemporary clinicians and scholars. Building on that pioneering work, The Legacy of Sándor Ferenczi: From Ghost to Ancestor brings together leading international Ferenczi scholars to report on previously unavailable data about Ferenczi and his professional descendants. Many—including Sigmund Freud himself—considered Sándor Ferenczi to be Freud’s most gifted patient and protégé. For a large part of his career, Ferenczi was almost as well known, influential, and sought after as a psychoanalyst, teacher and lecturer as Freud himself. Later, irreconcilable differences between Freud, his followers and Ferenzi meant that many of his writings were withheld from translation or otherwise stifled, and he was accused of being mentally ill and shunned. In this book, Harris and Kuchuck explore how newly discovered historical and theoretical material has returned Ferenczi to a place of theoretical legitimacy and prominence. His work continues to influence both psychoanalytic theory and practice, and covers many major contemporary psychoanalytic topics such as process, metapsychology, character structure, trauma, sexuality, and social and progressive aspects of psychoanalytic work. Among other historical and scholarly contributions, this book demonstrates the direct link between Ferenczi’s pioneering work and subsequent psychoanalytic innovations. With rich clinical vignettes, newly unearthed historical data, and contemporary theoretical explorations, it will be of great interest and use to clinicians of all theoretical stripes, as well as scholars and historians.

Affect, Representation and Language

Affect, Representation and Language
Author: Howard B. Levine
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2021-11-17
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000471667

This book presents and elaborates on the rationale and implications of the transformational dimension of psychoanalysis. In so doing, it attempts to extend psychoanalytic theory and practice beyond neurosis and beyond what were formerly thought to be the limits of analytic understanding. Its theoretical vision sits at the crossroads of the thinking of Freud, Bion, Winnicott, Green and the Paris Psycho-Somatic School. Other sources include the contributions of contemporary French psychoanalysts such as Laplanche, Donnet, L. Kahn, P. Miller and the Botellas, along with the work of Alvarez, Scarfone, Ferro, Ogden, and more. In re-examining the very epistemological foundations of psychoanalysis and their implications for a theory of psychic functioning, it follows upon and extends the radical implications of Freud’s 1937 Constructions paper, the thoughts of Bion on intuition and Winnicott’s understanding of the working through of the consequences of early pre-verbal environmental failure. In so doing, it makes a case for psychoanalysis as a powerful treatment for borderline, primitive narcissistic, post-traumatic and other character disorders and conditions – including perversions, addictions, psychosomatic, autistic and panic disorders. By presenting a revised metapsychology that is Freudian, contemporary and clinically near, Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry offers practitioners at all levels of analytic experience a way of understanding and treating the expanding range of patients and disorders that present for treatment in our modern era.