Psychoanalysis in Britain, 1893–1913

Psychoanalysis in Britain, 1893–1913
Author: Philip Kuhn
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2017-01-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1498505236

Historians and biographers of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, psychology, medicine and culture, even Wikipedia, believe Ernest Jones discovered Freud in 1904 and had become the first English-speaking practitioner of psychoanalysis by 1906. Psychoanalysis in Britain, 1893–1913 offers radically different versions to that monolithic Account propagated by Jones over 70 years ago. Detailed readings of the contemporaneous literature expose the absurdities of Jones’s claim, arguing that he could not have been using psychoanalysis until after he exiled himself to Canada in September 1908. Removing Jones reveals vibrant British cultures of ‘Mind Healing’ which serve as backdrops for widespread interest in Freud. First; the London Psychotherapeutic Society whose volunteer staff of mesmerists, magnetists, hypnotists and spiritualists offered free psycho-therapeutic treatments. Then the wondrous Walford Bodie, who wrought his free ‘miraculous cures,’ on and off the music-hall stage, to adoring and hostile audiences alike. Then the competing religious and spiritual groups actively promoting their own faith healings, often in reaction to fears of Christian Science but often cow-towing to orthodox medical and clerical orthodoxies. From this strange milieu emerged medically qualified practitioners, like Edwin Ash, Betts Taplin, and Douglas Bryan, who embraced hypnotism and psychotherapy. From 1904 British Medical Journals began discussing Freud’s work and by 1908 psychiatrists, working in lunatic asylums, were already testing and applying his theories in the treatment of patients. The medically qualified psychotherapists, who formed the Medical Society for the Study of Suggestive Therapeutics, soon joined with medical members from the Society for Psychical Research in discussing, proselytizing, and practising psychoanalysis. Thus when Jones returned to London, in late summer 1913, there were thriving psychotherapeutic cultures with talk of Freud and psychoanalysis occupying medical journals and conferences. Psychoanalysis in Britain, 1893–1913, with its meticulous research, wide sweep of vision and detailed understanding of the subtle inter-connections between the orthodox and the unorthodox, the lay and the medical, the social and the biographical, as well as the byzantine complexities of British medical politics, will radically alter your understanding of how those early twentieth century ‘Mind Healing’ debates helped shape the ways in which the ‘talking cure’ first started infiltrating our lives.

The Maternalists

The Maternalists
Author: Shaul Bar-Haim
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2021-08-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812299647

The Maternalists is a study of the hitherto unexplored significance of utopian visions of the state as a maternal entity in mid-twentieth century Britain. Demonstrating the affinities between welfarism, maternalism, and psychoanalysis, Shaul Bar-Haim suggests a new reading of the British welfare state as a political project. After the First World War, British doctors, social thinkers, educators, and policy makers became increasingly interested in the contemporary turn being made in psychoanalytic theory toward the role of motherhood in child development. These public figures used new notions of the "maternal" to criticize modern European culture, and especially its patriarchal domestic structure. This strand of thought was pioneered by figures who were well placed to disseminate their ideas into the higher echelons of British culture, education, and medical care. Figures such as the anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski and Geza Róheim, and the psychiatrist Ian Suttie—to mention only a few of the "maternalists" discussed in the book—used psychoanalytic vocabulary to promote both imagined perceptions of motherhood and their idea of the "real" essence of the "maternal." In the 1930s, as European fascism took hold, the "maternal" became a cultural discourse of both collective social anxieties and fantasies, as well as a central concept in many strands of radical, and even utopian, political thinking. During the Second World War, and even more so in the postwar era, psychoanalysts such as D. W. Winnicott and Michael Balint responded to the horrors of the war by drawing on interwar maternalistic thought, making a demand to "maternalize" British society, and providing postwar Britain with a new political idiom for defining the welfare state as a project of collective care.

Freud in Cambridge

Freud in Cambridge
Author: John Forrester
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 719
Release: 2017-03-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 052186190X

The authors explore the influence of Freud's thinking on twentieth-century intellectual and scientific life within Cambridge and beyond.

Translation/Transformation

Translation/Transformation
Author: Dana Birksted-Breen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2021-03-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000326187

Translation is at the heart of psychoanalysis: from unconscious to conscious, experience to verbal expression, internal to enacted, dream thought to dream image, language to interpretation, unrepresented to represented and transference of past to present. The book’s first part discusses the question of translation, literal and metaphoric. Both linguistic and cultural translations are closely tied to specific and significant personalities who were involved in the early history of psychoanalysis and thus in the development of the IJP. There was a close relationship between the IJP and the visual arts via the Bloomsbury Group. The link between the visual arts and the IJP is indeed to be found in its logo, which is taken from a painting by Ingres. The second part of the book approaches transformations between psychoanalysis and the arts from conscious, unconscious and non-represented elements into non-verbal modes, specifically visual, poetic and musical; it also looks at the developments and transformations in psychoanalytic ideas about artistic expression as expressed within the pages of the IJP. This book will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, and to those interested in the history of psychoanalysis and the IJP.

Freud’s British Family

Freud’s British Family
Author: Roger Willoughby
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2024-10-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1040165230

Freud’s British Family presents ground-breaking research into the lives of the British branch of the Freud family, their connections to the founder of psychoanalysis, and into Freud’s relationship to Britain. Documenting the complex relationships the elder Freud brothers had with their much younger brother Sigmund, Freud’s British Family reveals the significant influence these hitherto largely forgotten Freuds had on the mental economy of the founder of psychoanalysis. Roger Willoughby shows how these key family relationships helped shape Freud’s thinking, attitudes, and theorising, including emerging ideas on rivalry, the Oedipus complex, character, and art. In addition to considering their correspondence and meetings with Freud in continental Europe, the book carefully documents Freud’s own visits to his brothers and to Britain in 1875 and again in 1908. Freud’s British Family concludes with a discussion of Freud’s final 15 months in London after he left Nazi Vienna as a refugee. Freud’s British Family offers a rich, contextualised understanding of the sibling, familial, and socio-cultural ties that went into forming the tapestry of psychoanalysis. Freud’s British Family will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in practice and in training, and to scholars of the history of psychoanalysis, twentieth century history, psychosocial studies, and Jewish studies.

Probation and the Policing of the Private Sphere in Britain, 1907-1962

Probation and the Policing of the Private Sphere in Britain, 1907-1962
Author: Louise Settle
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2021-12-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350233463

In 1907 the Probation of Offenders Act introduced a system which allowed offenders to be rehabilitated at home under supervision, rather than being sent to prison. This book explores how the probation system was used to regulate the private lives, emotions and behaviours of people in Britain between 1907 and 1962. Access to the private sphere, both physically and psychologically, meant that the probation system was particularly well-suited to offences related to intimate and personal relations. With each chapter focusing on a particular type of offence, including wife assault, attempted suicide, male sexual offences and female prostitution, Settle shows how experiences of the probationers were shaped by the everyday practices of probation, and assesses the extent to which probation was successful in rehabilitating offenders and protecting the public. Also examining the role of probation officers in marriage reconciliation, the book explores how ideas about gender and domesticity were crucial to both the process of rehabilitation and the endeavour to make the home a safe environment in which these domestic ideals could come into fruition. Probation and Policing of the Private Sphere in Britain enriches our understanding of the role of the state in policing, monitoring and promoting the well-being of its citizens, and explores the nuances of probation's dual purpose as a form of social control as well as a social work service designed to help the most vulnerable in society.

Introducing Contemporary Psychodynamic Counselling and Psychotherapy: the Art and Science of the Unconscious

Introducing Contemporary Psychodynamic Counselling and Psychotherapy: the Art and Science of the Unconscious
Author: Alistair Ross
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2019-06-07
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0335226833

Dr Alistair Ross is a University of Oxford academic whose previous work has been described by Ruby Wax as ‘very, very smart’. This new introductory book strikes an easy balance between theory and practice. It takes the reader from the field’s Freudian roots to its contemporary applications, skills and insights. Over the last 30 years, important new theoretical ideas, skills and clinical practices have emerged in counselling and psychotherapy. While key Freudian concepts like transference, counter-transference and the influence of the past on the present remain vital to psychodynamic work, research drawn from infant development, neuroscience, the role of the sacred, and intersubjective approaches to relationships has changed the way therapists understand and work with clients. Either in its own right or as part of an integrative approach, psychodynamic counselling and psychotherapy have an important role to play in developments to come. The book’s features include: • A re-discovery of the importance and relevance of Freud for present-day therapeutic relationships. • An encounter with the breadth and depth of our understanding about, and experience of, the unconscious. • An introduction to research that has evolved after Freud, revealing new ways of applying his ideas. • A contemporary perspective on traditional counselling and psychotherapy skills, illustrated by vignettes and personal insights from Alistair Ross’s professional practice. • An encouragement to develop new skills for relating at depth with our clients’ past, present and future, motivated by revealing how life-changing therapy can be. This book is a must-read for trainee and practising (psychodynamic or integrative) therapists who want an overview of new thinking and practice or might benefit from greater insight into psychodynamic practice, applying Freud’s theoretical world to improving the lives of real people today. ‘It is good to see Alistair, a valued student of mine and now an equally valued colleague, taking up the torch for psychodynamic counselling and psychotherapy for a new generation. He has written a book that collates much of the valuable writing to date and at the same time adds new dimensions that should not be overlooked.’ Michael Jacobs, Visiting Professor, University of Leeds and Bournemouth University, UK

Work and Occupation in French and English Mental Hospitals, c.1918-1939

Work and Occupation in French and English Mental Hospitals, c.1918-1939
Author: Jane Freebody
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2023-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 3031131053

This open access book demonstrates that, while occupation has been used to treat the mentally disordered since the early nineteenth century, approaches to its use have varied across different countries and in different time periods. Comparing how occupation was used in French and English mental institutions between 1918 and 1939, one hundred years after the heyday of moral therapy, the book is an essential read for those researching the history of mental health and medicine more generally. It provides an overview of the legislation, management structures and financial conditions that affected mental institutions in France and England, and contributed to their differing responses to the new theories of occupational therapy emerging from the USA and Germany during the interwar period.

Novel Relations

Novel Relations
Author: Alicia Mireles Christoff
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2022-05-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0691234590

The first comprehensive look at how Victorian fiction and British psychoanalysis shaped each other Novel Relations engages twentieth-century post-Freudian British psychoanalysis in an unprecedented way: as literary theory. Placing the writing of figures like D. W. Winnicott, W. R. Bion, Michael and Enid Balint, Joan Riviere, Paula Heimann, and Betty Joseph in conversation with canonical Victorian fiction, Alicia Christoff reveals just how much object relations can teach us about how and why we read. These thinkers illustrate the ever-shifting impact our relations with others have on the psyche, and help us see how literary figures—characters, narrators, authors, and other readers—shape and structure us too. For Christoff, novels are charged relational fields. Closely reading novels by George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, Christoff shows that traditional understandings of Victorian fiction change when we fully recognize the object relations of reading. It is not by chance that British psychoanalysis illuminates underappreciated aspects of Victorian fiction so vibrantly: Victorian novels shaped modern psychoanalytic theories of psyche and relationality—including the eclipsing of empire and race in the construction of subject. Relational reading opens up both Victorian fiction and psychoanalysis to wider political and postcolonial dimensions, while prompting a closer engagement with work in such areas as critical race theory and gender and sexuality studies. The first book to examine at length the connections between British psychoanalysis and Victorian fiction, Novel Relations describes the impact of literary form on readers and on twentieth- and twenty-first-century theories of the subject.

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud
Author: Alistair Ross
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2022-04-29
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1538113538

Sigmund Freud’s name is known throughout the world. He opened up the world of the unconscious, so people can understand themselves so much better than before. His unique ideas are discussed in academic circles. His psychoanalytic techniques influenced mental health, counselling, psychotherapy and psychiatry. His words form part of everyday language. Lying on a couch and having dreams interpreted by an analyst is an iconic picture of modern life and popular culture. Sigmund Freud: A Reference Guide to Her Life and Work captures his eventful life, his works, and his legacy. The volume features a chronology, an introduction, a comprehensive bibliography, and the dictionary section lists entries on Freud, his family, friends (and foes), colleagues, and the evolution of psychoanalysis.