This fascinating collection explores the life of renowned theorist Michael Balint in his native Budapest. With a Balint revival in mind, Michael Balint and his World: The Budapest Years brings together the work of psychoanalysts, social thinkers, historians, literary scholars, artists and medical doctors who draw on Balint’s work in a variety of ways. The book focuses on Balint’s early years in Budapest, where he worked with Sándor Ferenczi and a circle of colleagues, capturing the transformations of psychoanalytic thinking as it happens in a network of living relationships. Tracing creative disagreements as well as collaborations, and setting these exchanges in the climate of scientific, social and cultural developments of the time, Michael Balint and his World: The Budapest Years follows the development of psychoanalytic thinking during these critical times.The book recalls the story of several ‘lost children’ of the Budapest School and reconstitutes Balint’s important early contributions on primary love. It also examines his little-known relationship with Lacan, including the extended discussion of Balint’s work by Wladimir Granoff in Lacan’s first public seminar in Paris in 1954, published here for the first time. This important book provides a fresh perspective on Balint’s enormous contribution to the field of psychoanalysis and will interest both scholars and clinicians. It will also inspire those interested in clinical practice and the applications of psychoanalysis to the cultural sphere.

This fascinating collection explores the life of renowned theorist Michael Balint in his native Budapest. With a Balint revival in mind, Michael Balint and his World: The Budapest Years brings together the work of psychoanalysts, social thinkers, historians, literary scholars, artists and medical doctors who draw on Balint’s work in a variety of ways. The book focuses on Balint’s early years in Budapest, where he worked with Sándor Ferenczi and a circle of colleagues, capturing the transformations of psychoanalytic thinking as it happens in a network of living relationships. Tracing creative disagreements as well as collaborations, and setting these exchanges in the climate of scientific, social and cultural developments of the time, Michael Balint and his World: The Budapest Years follows the development of psychoanalytic thinking during these critical times.The book recalls the story of several ‘lost children’ of the Budapest School and reconstitutes Balint’s important early contributions on primary love. It also examines his little-known relationship with Lacan, including the extended discussion of Balint’s work by Wladimir Granoff in Lacan’s first public seminar in Paris in 1954, published here for the first time. This important book provides a fresh perspective on Balint’s enormous contribution to the field of psychoanalysis and will interest both scholars and clinicians. It will also inspire those interested in clinical practice and the applications of psychoanalysis to the cultural sphere.

This volume takes up perspectives from object relations theory and other psychoanalytic approaches to ask questions about the role of television as an object of the internal worlds of its viewers, and also addresses itself to a range of specific television programs, ranging from Play School, through the plays of Jack Rosenthal to recent TV blockbuster series such as In Treatment . In addition, it considers the potential of television to open up new public spaces of therapeutic experience. At the same time, however, the pitfalls of reality programming are explored with reference to the politics of entertainment and the televisual values that heighten the drama of representation rather than emphasizing the emotional experience of reality television participants and viewers. A recurring theme throughout is that television becomes a psychological object for its viewers and producers, maintaining the psychological "status quo" on the one hand and yet simultaneously opening up playful spaces of creative, therapeutic engagement for these groups. This collection of essays arises from a conference organized by the Media and the Inner World research network in collaboration with the Freud Museum."

Despite the prominence of television in our everyday lives, psychoanalytic approaches to its significance and function are notoriously few and far between. This volume takes up perspectives from object relations theory and other psychoanalytic approaches to ask questions about the role of television as an object of the internal worlds of its viewers, and also addresses itself to a range of specific television programmes, ranging from Play School, through the plays of Jack Rosenthal to recent TV blockbuster series such as In Treatment. In addition, it considers the potential of television to open up new public spaces of therapeutic experience. Interviews with a TV producer and with the subject of a documentary expressly suggest that there is scope for television to make a positive therapeutic intervention in people's lives. At the same time, however, the pitfalls of reality programming are explored with reference to the politics of entertainment and the televisual values that heighten the drama of representation rather than emphasising the emotional experience of reality television participants and viewers.

Why do human beings feel shame? What is the cultural dimension of shame and sexuality? Can theory understand the power of affect? How is psychoanalysis integral to cultural theory?

The experience of shame is a profound, painful and universal emotion with lasting effects on many aspects of public life and human culture. Rooted in childhood experience, linked to sexuality and the cultural norms which regulate the body and its pleasures, shame is uniquely human. Shame and Sexuality: Psychoanalysis and Visual Culture explores elements of shame in human psychology and the cultures of art, film, photography and textiles.

This volume is divided into two distinct sections allowing the reader to compare and contrast the psychoanalytic and the cultural writings. Part one, Psychoanalysis, provides a psychoanalytic approach to shame, using clinical examples to explore the function of unconscious fantasies, the shame shield in child sexual abuse, and the puzzling manner in which shame attaches itself to sexuality. Part two, Visual culture, is illustrated throughout with textual analysis; contributors explore shame and sexuality in art history, politics and contemporary visual culture, including the gendering of shame, shame and abjection, and the relationship between shame and shamelessness as a strategy of resistance.

Claire Pajaczkowska and Ivan Ward bring together debates within and between the discourses of psychoanalysis and visual culture, generating new avenues of enquiry for scholars of culture, theory and psychoanalysis.

Why do human beings feel shame? What is the cultural dimension of shame and sexuality? Can theory understand the power of affect? How is psychoanalysis integral to cultural theory? The experience of shame is a profound, painful and universal emotion with lasting effects on many aspects of public life and human culture. Rooted in childhood experience, linked to sexuality and the cultural norms which regulate the body and its pleasures, shame is uniquely human. Shame and Sexuality explores elements of shame in human psychology and the cultures of art, film, photography and textiles. This volume is divided into two distinct sections allowing the reader to compare and contrast the psychoanalytic and the cultural writings. Part I, Psychoanalysis, provides a psychoanalytic approach to shame, using clinical examples to explore the function of unconscious fantasies, the shame shield in child sexual abuse, and the puzzling manner in which shame attaches itself to sexuality. Part II, Visual Culture, is illustrated throughout with textual analysis; contributors explore shame and sexuality in art history, politics and contemporary visual culture, including the gendering of shame, shame and abjection, and the relationship between shame and shamelessness as a strategy of resistance. Claire Pajaczkowska and Ivan Ward bring together debates within and between the discourses of psychoanalysis and visual culture, generating new avenues of enquiry for scholars of culture, theory and psychoanalysis.

The book contains reflections from Eva Almassy, Jacqueline Amati-Mehler, Pina Antinucci, Antal Bokay, Julia Borossa, John Clare, Ferenc Ero s, Susan Haxell,Eva Hoffman, Kathleen Kelley-Laine , Leon Kleimberg, W. Gordon Lawrence, Judit Me sza ros, Gershon J. Molad, George Pick, Rachel Rosenblum, Tamara Stajner-Popovic, Riccardo Steiner, Judit Szekacs-Weisz, Judith E. Vida, Shula Wilson, and Ali Zarbafi. Lost Childhood and the Language of Exile invites the reader to enter a territory which is not only multilingual but multidimensional: defined and shaped by history, politics, economy, and sociocultural transformations. The contributions give important insights on the psychodynamic processes involved in working with, and being part of, exiled and immigrant populations. The majority of the stories take as their base the upheaval caused by the Second World War but their stories are still, sadly, relevant today with the ongoing plight of refugees the world over. By presenting their experiences, the contributors provide a vital record of what it means to leave your homeland behind, to make a new life in a new land, and to live and work in a second tongue. The aim was, and is, to provide stimulus for further thinking and research. Two contributors, Ali Zarbafi and Shula Wilson, took up that challenge and we were delighted to publish their contribution to this debate in their edited work, Mother Tongue and Other Tongues: Narratives in Multilingual Psychotherapy (2021).

Freud is a compelling account of his life. It is the only biography of the great man to contain 15 items of memorabilia from the Sigmund Freud Archives in the US, and the Freud Museum, London. It examines how he developed the theories for which he became famous, as well as revealing his struggles, neuroses and his attempts to use his own techniques to understand himself. The diary extracts and personal notes shown provide a small insight into the extraordinary mind of the man who defined our own.