This book proposes new perspectives on relational wellness and the contemporary family-combining a psychoanalytic overview with scientific research about the burgeoning popularity of divorce, the increase in "stepfamilies," and the use of social networks as well as other technologies. In this day and age, psychoanalysis has become increasingly interested in hyper-modern scenarios; for example, social networks and apps provide matching algorithms, which allow users to connect with people of similar interests. These networks have become one of the places where dissatisfied partners seek "more satisfactory situations." In the United Kingdom, cohabitation lasts for up to two years, on average, and 40% of marriages end in divorce. In the United States, the percentage rises: it has now reached 50%. Today the value of temporariness, in which everything is fragmented, is exalted. On the other hand, is it wrong to deny the natural ebb and flow of human feeling?

This book explores the place of the flesh in the linguistically-inflected categories of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, drawing explicit attention to the organic as an inherent part of the linguistic categories that appear in the writings of Freud and Lacan. Lacan's 'return to Freud' famously involves a 'linguistic turn' in psychoanalysis. The centering of language as a major operator in psychic life often leads to a dualistic or quasi-dualistic view in which language and the enjoyment of the body are polarized. Exploring the intricate connections of the linguistic and the organic in both Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis from its beginnings, Zisser shows that surprisingly, and not only in Lacan's late teaching, psycho-linguistic categories turn out to be suffused with organicity. After unfolding the remnant of the flesh in the signifier as a major component of Lacan's critique of Saussure, using visual artworks as objective correlatives as it does so, the book delineates two forms of psychic writing. These are aligned not only with two fundamental states of the psychic apparatus as described by Freud (pain and satisfaction), but with two ways of sculpting formulated by Alberti in the Renaissance but also referred to by Freud. Continuing in a Derridean vein, the book demonstrates the primacy of writing to speech in psychoanalysis, emphasizing how the relation between speech and writing is not binary but topological, as speech in its psychoanalytic conception is nothing but the folding inside-out of unconscious writing. Innovatively placing the flesh at the core of its approach, the text also incorporates the seminal work of psychoanalyst Michele Montrelay to articulate the precise relation between the linguistic and the organic. Writing, Speech and Flesh in Lacanian Psychoanalysis will be indispensable to psychoanalysts, literary theorists, rhetoricians, deconstructionists, and those studying at the intersection of psychoanalysis, language, and the visual arts.

The Life of Gregory Zilboorg, 1890-1940: Psyche, Psychiatry, and Psychoanalysis is the first volume of a meticulously researched two-part biography of the Russian-American psychoanalyst Gregory Zilboorg and chronicles the period from his birth as a Jew in Tsarist Russia to his prominence as a New York psychoanalyst on the eve of the Second World War. Educated in Kiev and Saint Petersburg, Zilboorg served as a young physician during the First World War and, after the revolution, as secretary to the minister of labour in Kerensky's provisional government. Having escaped following Lenin's takeover, Zilboorg requalified in medicine at Columbia University and underwent analysis with Franz Alexander at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. His American patients ranged from wealthy and artistic figures such as George Gershwin and Lillian Hellman to prison inmates. His writing includes important histories of psychiatry, for which he is still known, as well as examinations of gender, suicide, and the relationship between psychiatry and the law. His socialist politics and late work on Freud's (mis)understanding of religious belief created a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, from members of the Warburg banking family to the Trappist monk Thomas Merton. Drawing on previously unpublished sources, including family papers and archival material, The Life of Gregory Zilboorg, 1890-1940: Psyche, Psychiatry, and Psychoanalysis offers a dramatic narrative that will appeal to general readers as well as scholars interested in the First World War, the Russian revolution, the Jewish diaspora, and the history of psychoanalysis.

- There is a gap in the market for a practical book about working psychoanlaytically with LGBTQ clients. - Includes contributions from prominent clinicians working today in the UK, US and Australia. - Covers a range of topics, from the psychosexual to aging, transgenderism to parenting.

This book examines the importance of language and writing in psychoanalytic theory and practice, offering an understanding of how language works can give a deeper insight into the psyche both in clinical practice and everyday life. Bringing together psychoanalytic insights that hinge on the language of "difficult cases", this collection also includes contributions dedicated to meta-study of psychoanalytic writing. The first chapter shows how music includes tonal regions that deploy existing rules and syntax, alongside atonal ones dominated by caesuras, pauses, and tensions. The second chapter discusses the malignant ambiguity of revealing and concealing typical of incestuous situations, pinpointing how the ambiguous language of incest "deceives by means of the truth,". The third chapter brings in Virginia Woolf's character Orlando in order to illustrate two types of gender crossing. Distinctions defined by the linguist Roman Jakobson help in the fourth chapter to offer an integrative description of obsessive-compulsive phenomenon as an interaction between metaphoric and metonymic dimensions, as well as with a third, psychotic dimension. The fifth chapter focuses on what is called the "screen confessions" typical of the perpetrator's language. George Orwell's "newspeak" is used here to decipher the specific means by which the perpetrator turns his or her "inner witness" into a blind one. The final chapter uses Roland Barthes' concepts of "studium" and "punctum" to discuss the limits of psychoanalytic writing. As a whole, this book sets the psychoanalytic importance of language in a wider understanding of how language helps to shape and even create internal as well as the external world. Drawing on insights from psychoanalytic theory and practice, as well as from linguistics and cultural theory, this book will be invaluable for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists and bibliotherapists, as well as anyone interested in how language forms our reality.

This essential new book gives the reader an introduction to the fundamental concepts of gestalt therapy in a stimulating and accessible style. It supports the study and practice of gestalt therapy for clinicians of all backgrounds, reflecting a practice-based pedagogy that emphasises experiential learning. The content in this book builds on the curriculum taught at the Norwegian Gestalt Institute University College (NGI). The material is divided into four main sections. In the first section, the theoretical basis for gestalt therapy is presented with references to gestalt psychology, field theory, phenomenology, and existential philosophy. In the later parts, central theoretical terms and practical models are discussed, such as the paradoxical theory of change, creative adjustment, self, contact, contact forms, awareness, polarities, and process models. Clinical examples illustrate the therapy form's emphasis on the relational meeting between therapist and client. Detailed description of gestalt therapy theory from the time of the gestalt psychologists to today, with abundant examples from clinical practice, distinguishes this book from other texts. It will be of great value to therapists, coaches, and students of gestalt therapy.

This book examines the importance of language and writing in psychoanalytic theory and practice, offering an understanding of how language works can give a deeper insight into the psyche both in clinical practice and everyday life. Bringing together psychoanalytic insights that hinge on the language of "difficult cases", this collection also includes contributions dedicated to meta-study of psychoanalytic writing. The first chapter shows how music includes tonal regions that deploy existing rules and syntax, alongside atonal ones dominated by caesuras, pauses, and tensions. The second chapter discusses the malignant ambiguity of revealing and concealing typical of incestuous situations, pinpointing how the ambiguous language of incest "deceives by means of the truth,". The third chapter brings in Virginia Woolf's character Orlando in order to illustrate two types of gender crossing. Distinctions defined by the linguist Roman Jakobson help in the fourth chapter to offer an integrative description of obsessive-compulsive phenomenon as an interaction between metaphoric and metonymic dimensions, as well as with a third, psychotic dimension. The fifth chapter focuses on what is called the "screen confessions" typical of the perpetrator's language. George Orwell's "newspeak" is used here to decipher the specific means by which the perpetrator turns his or her "inner witness" into a blind one. The final chapter uses Roland Barthes' concepts of "studium" and "punctum" to discuss the limits of psychoanalytic writing. As a whole, this book sets the psychoanalytic importance of language in a wider understanding of how language helps to shape and even create internal as well as the external world. Drawing on insights from psychoanalytic theory and practice, as well as from linguistics and cultural theory, this book will be invaluable for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists and bibliotherapists, as well as anyone interested in how language forms our reality.

This book presents key psychoanalytic theories from a fresh perspective: that of the mystical element. The author explores the depth-structure of central assumptions in psychoanalytic theory to uncover the mystical core of conventional analytic thinking. Exploring authors from Freud and Ferenczi, through Bion and Winnicott, to contemporary voices such as Ogden, Bollas and Eigen, the book shows that psychoanalysis has always operated on the assumption of psychic overlap, a "soul-to-soul" contact, between patient and analyst. Surprisingly, the book shows how this "magical" facet goes hand in hand with a pragmatic worldview that explores the epistemological complexities of psychoanalysis in search of a way to join the subjective, even the mystical, with the practical aim of serving as a validated mental health discipline. This is accomplished through an interdisciplinary and intertextual encounter between psychoanalysis and the innovative pairing of William James' pragmatic philosophy and Martin Buber's dialogic thought. The author's paradoxical stance surrounding the nature and role of psychoanalysis and its mystical facet resonate the great challenge embedded in Winnicott's insistence on tolerating paradox and Bion's demand to respect all parts of the (psychoanalytic) truth, in this case, the practical and mundane alongside the mystical and magical. The book's broad, interdisciplinary outlook will captivate both psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic therapists as well as scholars of philosophy.

First published in 1947, with a second edition in 1950, the original blurb reads: 'This is an illuminating description of a complete Freudian analysis of a single case. From the first interview to the last the reader's attention is engrossed with the almost-normal personality of the individual who is being analysed. We see his thoughts, philosophy, and emotions gradually unfolding under the application of analytical technique (lightly explained in the second chapter), until - and this is where the book is such a tremendous advance upon the psychological novel - the very springs and mechanisms of his psychic pattern and emotional structure are abundantly and lucidly revealed. We see and understand the hidden depths of the nature of the human mind, and obtain introductory insight not only into normal mental functioning, but into almost all its psychopathic aberrations including frigidity, impotence, love, hate, hysteria, obsessions, and even paranoia and schizophrenia - all in minor degrees an integral part of normality. In spite of this the book is light reading and, though particularly instructive to doctor and professional psychologist, understandable to the average intelligent layman.' This book is a re-issue originally published in 1950. The language used is a reflection of its era and no offence is meant by the Publishers to any reader by this re-publication.

Originally published in 1948 the blurb read: 'Dr Berg has an extraordinary flair for presenting a difficult subject in a most realistic and attractive manner, without sacrifice of scientific essentials. The patients are made to speak for themselves, with the result that we feel actually present at the analytical sessions, sharing the most intimate details of each individual's life and feelings. Throughout it is alive with real, vivid clinical material. The reader is led through a panorama of troubled minds and disturbed emotions - from the simplest worries and anxieties, through increasing severity of stresses, to incipient major disorders. The whole subject of treatment is reviewed and expounded in compendious detail, concluding with a critical review and revolutionary suggestions for the future. In spite of its novel and entertaining method of exposition, the book covers a surprisingly wide field - the whole field of clinical psychology up to date - and more.' Today it can be read and enjoyed in its historical context. This book is a re-issue originally published in 1948. The language used is a reflection of its era and no offence is meant by the Publishers to any reader by this re-publication.

Global contributors and IPA connection could ensure large geographic market. Potential readership could include a huge spectrum of health workers, as well as psychiatrists. Little work has been done on the subject - fills a niche.

Dieter Flader explores how current social and cultural concerns are connected to the unconscious, and how this affects our responses to them. Flader focuses on the role of the ego, assessing how our feelings about these issues in adulthood grow from childhood fears and desires, and integrating the existing psychoanalytic theories of Winnicott, Lacan, Kohut, and others with sociological and political theory. The interdisciplinary approach not only analyses current social issues but also generates new perspectives and solutions, and examines examples including climate change, bullying, and vegetarianism.

- First book that homes in on the theories the widely studied Antonino Ferro - An exploration and extension of Bion's theories of thinking and emotional development

Global contributors and IPA connection could ensure large geographic market. Potential readership could include a huge spectrum of health workers, as well as psychiatrists. Little work has been done on the subject - fills a niche.

Originally published in 1951, the implications of this book were thought to be far wider and deeper than its title suggests. 'Hair-activities are chosen merely as a sample of uncritically accepted human behaviour. The author then proceeds to examine them very carefully in the light of dreams, anthropology, folklore, symptoms and perversions. He shows them to be an expression of instinct-driven tensions and conflicts. The popular illusion that they are determined by reason or adaption to reality is exploded. The corollary is inescapable; if in this innocent particular our thoughts and behaviour are symptomatic expressions of an unconscious conflict or complex, how much more psychopathic would our more significant ideas, beliefs, institutions, customs and laws prove to be on similar detailed investigation! Is, therefore, our self-expression in life and civilization nothing more than a symptom, identical in its source and mechanism with the symptoms of nervous and mental illness? The book is really a psychiatric criticism of normality based upon a chosen item of typically normal behaviour. It is, however, written in a way that will be easily understood by every intelligent reader.' This book is a re-issue originally published in 1951. The language used is a reflection of its era and no offence is meant by the Publishers to any reader by this re-publication.

Learning from our Mistakes: Beyond Dogma in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy examines some of the problems that are inherent to psychoanalysis, particularly in view of the analyst's claim to know the patient's mind better than the patient which can blind the analyst to those times when he is in error. Patrick Casement examines the processes of supervision and internal supervision by which practitioners can develop their awareness of the patient's experiences within the clinical encounter, and particularly considers the issue of mistakes and enactments by the analyst. Illustrated with numerous clinical descriptions and taking into account psychoanalysis over the past 100 years, Casement makes a strong case for being open minded rather than dogmatic in clinical practice.
This book will be invaluable to practitioners, trainers and trainees of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, and is readily accessible to the educated general reader.

Breathing fresh air into debates surrounding foreign policy and interstate relations, Bianca Naude presents a holistic theory of states as collectives of people that cannot be reduced to their individual constituents. Moving among current research on the ontological status of the state alongside important arguments in support of the state personhood thesis, Naude begins by exploring Freud's personality theory and the ways in which this theory has evolved over time in response to newer insights from the field of experimental psychology. Recognizing that Freud's work is in many ways outdated, she considers more recent literature on narcissism as an aspect of self-esteem rather than a form of psychopathology, drawing specifically on Kohut's expansion of the concept of narcissism as a normal feature of personality development. Using the South African state as a case study, Naude demonstrates the various ways in which the state presents itself to the outside world on the one hand, and how it wishes to see itself on the other. She further considers how narcissistic defenses help protect the state's ego from criticism and self-judgments. Revisiting State Personhood and World Politics will help readers understand how the state sees itself, why or when the state experiences shame, humiliation, guilt or pride, and how it responds to these self-conscious emotions. It will be a valuable resource to researchers and students of International Relations.

This book does not dumb down complex material but presents it in accessible, emotionally compelling language; it appeals to general readers seeking self-help for shame as well as to professional psychotherapists. It has a broad base in various developmental, relational, and neurobiological theories that are seen as complementary and mutually explanatory; this capacity to synthesize draws well-read, seasoned psychotherapists It presents a specific new understanding of the problem of chronic shame - an experience that accompanies many "mental health" issues. * With this new understanding of the problem of shame, the book, especially in this second edition, presents specific different therapeutic approaches applicable to specific different shame-based or shame-infused disorders.

Wilfred Bion and Literary Criticism introduces the work of the British psychoanalyst, Wilfred Bion (1897-1979), and the immense potential of his ideas for thinking about literature, creative process, and creative writing. There is now renewed interest in Bion's work following the publication of his Complete Works but the complexities of his theory and his distinctive style can be forbidding. Less well-known than Freud or Lacan, the work of Wilfred Bion nevertheless offers new insights for psychoanalytic literary criticism and creative writing. For newer readers of his work, this book offers an engaging introduction to several of Bion's key ideas, including his theory of thinking (the 'thought without a thinker'), the container/contained relationship, alpha-function; alpha-elements, beta-elements, and bizarre objects; K and -K; the Grid, O, and the caesura. It also offers a way in to Bion's astonishing and challenging experimental work, A Memoir of the Future, and explores the impact of his devastating personal experiences as an officer during the First World War. Each chapter of Wilfred Bion and Literary Criticism draws on one or more specific aspects of Bion's theory in relation to creative texts by Sigmund Freud, Stevie Smith, B.S. Johnson, Mary Butts, Jean Rhys, Nicholas Royle, J.G. Ballard, and Wilfred Bion himself. The first full-length study to explore the potential of Bion's ideas for literary criticism, Wilfred Bion and Literary Criticism introduces his complex and extensive work for a new audience in an accessible and engaging way, and will be of great interest to scholars of creative writing, literary criticism, and psychoanalysis.

This book aims to present an up-to-date introduction and critical study of one of the most important psychoanalysts of all times, Sandor Ferenczi. The book presents Ferenczi as a person; his discovery of psychoanalysis and his relationship with Freud; the theoretical and clinical novelties he introduced to psychoanalysis; his deep political and social commitment, striving for the democratization of psychoanalysis; and the great relevance of his thought and perspective for the future. It also talks about his repression in the history of psychoanalysis as well as his influence in the following generations of psychoanalysts. The reader will be presented with the most relevant historical milestones and concepts, with new insights regarding some of Ferenczi's most fundamental ideas (such as his trauma theory, his technical innovations or his developments regarding the end of analysis), as well as an informed viewpoint of his legacy, the contemporary readings of his work and the institutions and associations that continue following the path traced by l'enfant terrible of psychoanalysis. This book will be of interest both for the novel reader who has had none or scarce contact with the person and/or work of Sandor Ferenczi, as well as to the psychoanalysts, clinicians and scholars, who have a deeper contact and understanding of the work of the Hungarian analyst.

* Offers a deeper exploration of social, political and organizational dynamics, through applied psychoanalytic theory. * Focuses on the complexity of political life in the United States 2015-2020 and embraces sense making of the chaotic world of alternate facts, conspiracy theories, reality TV politics, hoax pandemics to help explain the 'Age of Trump'. * Offers psychodynamic insights into the unconscious undercurrents of contemporary culture and politics in the US

Gives comprehensive overview of Laplanche's work in contemporary context * Shows how non-partisan approach to key psychoanalytic topics offers effective way of practicing * Covers classic topics such as the unconscious as well as hot topics such as gender, sexuality and identity, and class and race

Self and Other in an Age of Uncertain Meaning explores the nature and origins of widespread problems of self in modern societies. It examines the paradoxical interplay between the modern world's many benefits and freedoms, and its mounting social challenges and psycho-emotional impacts. Over time the character of consciousness has shifted in concert with societal trends. The experienced world has become more nuanced, fragmented, and uncertain, as well as increasingly personal and intimate, reshaping social relationships. Chapters analyze the interdependence of language, mind, intimacy, the self, and culture, arguing that as the coevolution of these five factors produced the modern world, many features of contemporary culture have become disruptive to security of being. The book explores the importance to the vital sense of self in constructing relationships based in mutual recognition of moral and intellectual equality between partners. Rich with examples from everyday experience, this text offers profound insights for those interested in sociology, psychoanalysis, psychology, communication, history, and culture.

- The authors have direct experience of working in a wide range of statutory and non-statutory mental health, social care, housing and criminal justice agencies. - Will appeal to a broad range of scholars across the behavioural and social sciences. - Critically examines the concept of trauma, very much a hot topic, from a broad, societal standpoint.

Demystifying Meaningful Coincidences (Synchronicities): The Evolving Self, the Personal Unconscious, and the Creative Process offers an original theory of the nature of meaningful coincidences (synchronicities) and their practical use from a naturalistic (nonsupernatural and non-Jungian) perspective. The findings are the outgrowth of Gibbs A. Williams's forty-year investigation, both as a professional observer of some of his synchronicity prone patients receiving psychoanalytic psychotherapy as well as of his own intimate experience of these intellectually challenging and emotionally powerful occurrences. His naturalistic perspective is in marked contrast to the findings of Jung and his followers, who view these odd events as "channeled" messages from a transcendent realm of spiritual reality. Instead, Williams concludes that meaningful coincidences are the surface manifestations of an individual's unique creative process, accommodating the "best" available resolution of a problem for a person initially feeling "stuck" in a seemingly intractable dilemma. While his analysis robs the magic associated with only reacting to the "numinous uncanny aura" associated with synchronicities, it nevertheless affirms a wondrous appreciation for the creative capacities of each person to order his or her own chaos. Readers are treated to a rich mine of historical data, novel concepts, and theoretical insights drawn from speculative philosophy, depth psychology, and esoteric occult and spiritual traditions, and they are shown how to decode their own synchronicities in order to be able to use their embedded "messages" for increased self-awareness, cohesiveness, and expanding consciousness.