Psychoanalytic encounters are filled with the unknowability of two unconscious minds meeting. Here one may forge a link that enables the process of meaning-making, or else it can become the space for destruction, perversion, evacuation, regression, and stasis. The area that lies between the mind of the analyst and that of the analysand is thus the liminal area of psychoanalysis – of growth, change, turbulence, as well as that of impasse, bastion, and failure. This latter could be what Bion...

In Psychoanalysis from the Indian Terroir, Manasi Kumar, Anup Dhar, and Anurag Mishra discuss the synergies and diachronic thought that is emblematic of the current psychoanalytic narrative in India and examine what psychoanalysis in India could become. The contributors to this edited collection connect problems around culture, family, traditions, and the burgeoning political changes in the Indian landscape in order to provide critical rejoinders to the maternal-feminine thematic in India’...

The Divided Self, R.D. Laing's groundbreaking exploration of the nature of madness, illuminated the nature of mental illness and made the mysteries of the mind comprehensible to a wide audience.First published in 1960, this watershed work aimed to make madness comprehensible, and in doing so revolutionized the way we perceive mental illness. Using case studies of patients he had worked with, psychiatrist R. D. Laing argued that psychosis is not a medical c...

In ‘The Politics of Experience’ and the visionary ‘Bird of Paradise’, R.D. Laing shows how the straitjacket of conformity imposed on us all leads to intense feelings of alienation and a tragic waste of human potential. He throws into question the notion of normality, examines schizophrenia and psychotherapy, transcendence and ‘us and them’ thinking, and illustrates his ideas with a remarkable case history of a ten-day psychosis. ‘We are bemused and crazed creatures,’ Laing suggests. This o...

A collection of some of Freud's most famous essays, including ON THE INTRODUCTION OF NARCISSISM; REMEMBERING, REPEATING AND WORKING THROUGH; BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE; THE EGO AND THE ID and INHIBITION, SYMPTOM AND FEAR.

What Freud Really Said offers the most lucid overview available of Sigmund Freud, his legacy, and his place in our world. As the person responsible for the birth of psychoanalysis and one of the sharpest clinical minds of the twentieth century, Freud continues to be one of the most influential thinkers of our time and one of the most controversial. For those interested in understanding the life and work of this seminal figure as well as the current debates that surround them, this book wil...

Essentially clinical in its approach, Psychic Retreats discusses the problem of patients who are 'stuck' and with whom it is difficult to make meaningful contact. John Steiner, an experienced psychoanalyst, uses new developments in Kleinian theory to explain how this happens.He examines the way object relationships and defences can be organized into complex structures which lead to a personality and an analysis becoming rigid and stuck, with little opportunity for developm...

Winner of the 2013 Sigourney Award!Psychoanalysis seen through Bion's eyes is a radical departure from all conceptualizations which preceded him. In this major contribution to the series Makers of Modern Psychotherapy, Joan and Neville Symington concentrate on understanding Bion's concepts in relation to clinical practice, but their book is also accessible to the educated reader who wishes to understand the main contours of Bion's thinking. Rather...

In this volume, Michael Balint, who over the years made a sustained and brilliant contribution to the theory and technique of psychoanalysis, develops the concept of the 'basic fault' in the bio-psychology structure of every individual, involving in varying degree both mind and body. Balint traces the origins of the basic fault to the early formative period, during which serious discrepancies arise between the needs of the individual and the care and nurture available. These Discrepancies ...

In a style that is writerly and audacious, Adam Phillips takes up a variety of seemingly ordinary subjects underinvestigated by psychoanalysis--kissing, worrying, risk, solitude, composure, even farting as it relates to worrying.He argues that psychoanalysis began as a virtuoso improvisation within the science of medicine, but that virtuosity has given way to the dream of science that only the examined life is worth living. Phillips goes on to show how the drive to omniscience has ...

This reader brings together a selection of seminal papers by Christopher Bollas.Essays such as "The Fascist State of Mind," "The Structure of Evil," and "The Functions of History" have established his position as one of the most significant cultural critics of our time. Also included are examples of his psychoanalytical writings, such as "The Transformational Object" and "Psychic Genera," that deepen and renew interest in unconscious cre...

In The Violence of Emotions the author marries an ability to introduce the reader to the intimate climate of an analytic session with a passionate rereading of Bion. To emphasize both the empirical nature of psychoanalysis and its extraordinary capacity to engender illuminating hypotheses concerning the functioning of the mind, clinical examples alternate with theoretical argument. The psychoanalytic model espoused by Giuseppe Civitarese in his approach to both is analytic field t...