The Psychoanalyst The Theatre Of Dreams And The Clinic Of Enactment

This book is recommended to psychoanalysts and therapists interested in the analytical technique, and particularly that work with patients who have deficits in their symbolization capacity. It presents studies of technical aspects of the analytical process with patients who are difficult to reach. Collusions named 'chronic enactments' show that the analytic dyad cannot dream and the analytical field is paralyzed without the analyst perceiving it. Chronic enactments are undone through unconscious acts or behaviours that threaten to destroy the analytical process: behaviours that are named 'acute enactments'. The thorough study of these enactments show that they take the dyad to an awareness of the discrimination between self and object and re-establish the capacity to dream. It is demonstrated that this occurs in an attenuated traumatic form, revealing in the analytical field the externalization of primitive non-dreamed traumas. Clinical, artistic, and mythical models are part of the discussion. The emphasis on clinical aspects allows readers to use different theories to consider the clinical facts. The clinical theories used by the author are mostly post-Kleinian and Bionian.

This book brings together international contributors to share insight from their theoretical and clinical work with adolescents, considering the different psychopathological responses they see in adolescent patients and how these can be worked with in analysis. Each chapter addresses a specific topic, focusing on representing the clinical realities facing psychoanalysts in treating adolescents with different types of disturbances at the psychic level. They cover a range of situations and perspectives, including discussion of maternal violence, the erotic field, self-mutilation, and social withdrawal, with a core focus on issues affecting contemporary adolescents. Bringing together a vast range of experience, The Astonishing Adolescent Upheaval in Psychoanalysis presents a new approach which re-establishes the impact of the responses of significant objects in the impasses present in narcissistic suffering. This book will be of great interest to all psychoanalytic and psychodynamic clinicians working with adolescents.

This clinically focused book explores W. R. Bion’s thinking on primitive and unrepresented mental states and shows how therapists can work effectively with traumatized patients who are difficult to reach. The author illuminates how trauma survivors suffer from direct access to primal undifferentiated positions of the psyche that lie outside the symbolic order of the mind and are resistant to treatment. This access, unmediated by symbolic representation but represented in the body, disrupts the normal trajectory of development and of relationship. Integrating theory and clinical application, the book addresses processes of symbolization, somatic receptivity, and the use of countertransference when working therapeutically with undeveloped areas of the mind. It also demonstrates how primitive body relations and object relations include the body of the analyst as part of the analytic frame and are essential in establishing a therapeutic alliance. Illustrated with detailed clinical vignettes, Bion and Primitive Mental States is important reading for psychoanalysts, psychologists, social workers, and educators who wish to understand primitive states of mind and body in patients who have previously been considered untreatable.

Winner of the 2022 Gradiva® Award for Best Edited Book! This book explores the role of bodily phenomena in mental life and in the psychoanalytic encounter, encouraging further dialog within psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the humanities, and contributing new clinical and theoretical perspectives to the recent resurgence of psychoanalytic interest in the body. Presented in six parts in which diverse meanings are explored, Body as Psychoanalytic Object focuses on the clinical psychoanalytic encounter and the body as object of psychoanalytic inquiry, spanning from the prenatal experience to death. The contributors explore key themes including mind–body relations in Winnicott, Bion, and beyond; oneiric body; nascent body in early object relations; body and psychosensory experience; body in breakdown; and body in virtual space. With clinical vignettes throughout, each chapter provides unique insight into how different analysts work with bodily phenomena in the clinical situation and how it is conceived theoretically. Building on the thinking of Winnicott and Bion, as well as contributions from French psychoanalysis, Body as Psychoanalytic Object offers a way forward in a body-based understanding of object relations theory for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.

Melanie Klein's extension of Freud's ideas - in particular her explorations into the world of the infant and her emphasis on the complex interactions between the infant's internal world of powerful primitive emotions of love and hate and the mothering that the infant receives - were greeted with skepticism but are now widely accepted as providing an invaluable way of understanding human cognitive and emotional development. Klein's insights shed light on persecuted states, guilt, the drive to create and to repair; they also provide the clinician with a theory of technique. Klein's work has inspired the work of psychoanalysts around the world. Her concept of projective identification with its implications for the understanding of countertransference made a significant impact on her followers and on psychoanalysts in other countries and from other schools of thought. Further exploration of these ideas has led to greater understanding of how change occurs in psychoanalysis and has inspired a large literature with a particular focus on technique.

This book offers a comparative study of the major schools of psychoanalysis by exploring their historical development, their differences and similarities, and the underlying assumptions made by each. Encompassing the expertise of colleagues from different schools of psychoanalytic thought, each chapter explores a particular perspective, defining specific theoretical assumptions, theories of etiology, and implications for technique, as well as providing each author’s view on the historical development of key psychoanalytic concepts. With contributions from leading authors in the field, and covering both historical and international schools, the book provides an enlightening account that will prove essential to psychoanalytic practitioners and students of psychoanalysis and the history of medicine.

On Freud’s "The Uncanny" explores Freud’s 1919 essay of the same name and elaboration of the concept of the uncanny and how others or ‘the Other’ can impact on our selves. Catalina Bronstein and Christian Seulin bring together contributions from renowned psychoanalysts from different theoretical backgrounds, revisiting Freud’s ideas 100 years after they were first published and providing new perspectives that can inform clinical practice as well as shape the teaching of psychoanalysis. Covering key topics such as drives, clinical work, the psychoanalytic frame, and the influence of Ferenczi, On Freud’s "The Uncanny" will be useful for anyone wishing to understand the continued importance of the uncanny in contemporary psychoanalysis.

The Tripartite Matrix in the Developing Theory and Expanding Practice of Group Analysis explores the social unconscious in persons, groups and societies in terms of the "un-acknowledged" restraints and constraints of our social and cultural groupings. In this context, Earl Hopper and an international team of contributors elucidate the theory and concept of the tripartite matrix as a tool for the deeper understanding of the human condition and for clinical work in various settings. They consider topics ranging from envy to intersectionality, and from addiction to the inability to mourn. The Tripartite Matrix in the Developing Theory and Expanding Practice of Group Analysis will be of great interest to group analysts, psychoanalytical group therapists, psychoanalysts and psycho-dramatists, as well as to social scientists more generally. Its extensive bibliography will be of particular value to students.

Psychosocial Group Work with Vulnerable Children presents a simple, accessible, and preventative approach to psychotherapeutic interventions. The authors explore how this form of group work can strengthen resilience and prevent an increase in antisocial behavioural tendencies among children. Based on a process of shared meaning communication, the book explains how professionals can help children to engage in in-group creative play and allow them to experience their self in relation to others. Castrechini-Franieck and Bittner draw on their experiences of working with children in groups, supplemented with therapeutic elements from Gestalt therapy and ontological psychoanalysis. This approach helps children to achieve a stable state of emotional well-being while improving their behaviour at school, along with their social skills. Psychosocial Group Work with Vulnerable Children will be a key reading for psychotherapists and other professionals working with vulnerable children including psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers.

Communicating with Vulnerable Patients explores ways to improve the communication process between highly vulnerable patients and the therapist, based on the assumption of the permanent presence of an ‘outsider’ or potential space in the communication field between them. In this space, the therapist and highly vulnerable patients can undergo transitional states of mind established between and within their relationship. Leticia Castrechini-Franieck, also known as Maria Leticia Castrechini Fernandes Franieck, presents practical methods to overcome communication issues and engage therapeutically with highly vulnerable patients suffering from personality disorders, addiction, and trauma, as well as with deprived children. Communicating with Vulnerable Patients is presented in five parts, with Part one focused on building communication through a Transient Interactive Communication Approach (TICA) and Part two applying TICA in forensic settings with five case studies illustrating the approach in a range of contexts. Part three considers TICA in intercultural settings, including work with refugees, and Part four outlines adaptations of the approach, including T-WAS (Together We Are Strong), which aims to avoid an increase of antisocial behavior in deprived children, and the use of TICA in the COVID-19 pandemic. The book concludes in Part five with reflections on outcomes and limitations of both TICA and T-WAS. Communicating with Vulnerable Patients will be invaluable reading for professionals, psychotherapists, group therapists, and group analysts working with at-risk populations.