Psychoanalysis And The Birth Of The Self

This book draws psychoanalysis out of unsubstantiated, hermeneutic speculation and into the science and philosophy of the Self. Mark Leffert offers a survey of where we as human beings come from, going back into prehistory and our development as individuals. Psychoanalysis and the Birth of the Self is written to provide psychoanalysts with interdisciplinary information drawn from fields that they may have had little access to. Leffert undertakes a novel integration of topics not frequently discussed together, resulting in a radical critique of the theorization of psychoanalysis. The book begins by setting the story with a short analysis of the history of psychoanalysis. A new science has been founded on the recognition of the impossibility of separating evolution from development; it is called Evo-Devo. Applied to the human condition, it integrates development with palaeoanthropology and forms the basis for exploring such topics as the neurophilosophy of consciousness, the birth of the Self, and its neurodevelopment. It includes epigenetics in the conversation. Leffert then takes a radical turn, integrating the biological Evo-Devo of the Self with the study of its Existence that is, Existentialism and Phenomenology. The integration of these two threads, Evo-Devo and Existentialism offers a powerful and unique tool for exploring the Self. The author offers an innovative way of understanding an individual that pulls together their biology, their development, and the way they choose to exist in the world. It steps outside of the traditional ways of clinically understanding an individual not by abandoning them but rather by powerfully supplementing them. Psychoanalysis and the Birth of the Self offers a novel, interdisciplinary braiding of disparate strands of knowledge that will be of interest to psychoanalysts as well as those in the disciplines of neuroscience, existentialism and phenomenology, and anthropology.

The concept of the self is the subject of intense debate in psychoanalysis - as it is in neuro-science, cognitive science, and philosophy. In The Private Self Arnold Modell, a leading thinker in American psychoanalysis, studies selfhood from the inside by examining variations on the theme of the self in Freud and in the work of object relations theorists, self psychologists, and neuro-scientists. His significant contribution is an interdisciplinary perspective in formulating a theory of the private self. Modell contends that the self is fundamentally paradoxical in that it is both dependent and autonomous - dependent upon social affirmation, but autonomous in generating itself from within: we create ourselves by selecting values that are endowed with private meanings. (Modell presents an extensive view of these self-generative and self-creative aspects.) The private self is an embodied self: the psychology of the self is rooted in biology. By thinking of the unconscious as a neurophysiological process and the self as the subject and object of its own experience, Modell is able to explain how identity can persist in the flux of consciousness. In arriving at his unique synthesis of psychoanalytic observations and neurobiological theory, Modell draws on the contributions of Donald Winnicott in psychoanalysis, William James in philosophy, and Gerald Edelman in neurobiology. The Private Self boldly explores the frontier between psychoanalysis and biology. In replacing the "instinct-driven" self and the "attachment-oriented" self with the "self-generating" self, the author offers an exciting and original perspective for our understanding of the mind and the brain.

Each person invests many of the objects in his life with his or her own unconscious meaning, each person subsequently voyages through an environment that constantly evokes the self's psychic history. Taking Freud's model of dreamwork as a model for all unconscious thinking, Christopher Bollas argues that we dreamwork ourselves into becoming who we are, and illustrates how the analyst and the patient use such unconscious processes to develop new psychic structures that the patient can use to alter his or her self experience. Building on this foundation, he goes on to describe some very special forms of self experience, including the tragic madness of women cutting themselves, the experience of a cruising homosexual in bars and bathes and the demented ferocity of the facist state of mind. An original interpreter of classical theory and clinical issues, in Being a Character Christopher Bollas takes the reader into the very texture of the psychoanalytic process.

Self-examination in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy provides open and intimate accounts of the experience of being in psychotherapy. The internal life of the therapist is as much at the heart of the stories told as those of the clients. William F. Cornell here writes in a more personal and literary voice, avoiding as much as possible, the dense theoretical language that often typifies analytic writing. Central to the thesis elaborated in this book is that of how the therapist’s own personal history and unconscious motivations can deepen or distort the therapist’s understanding of the client. One chapter is devoted to the frank discussion of the author’s work with a client that was not only unhelpful but in fact harmful. Cornell emphasizes the capacity to call one’s self into question as a fundamental outcome of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Attention is paid to the conscious and unconscious forces that create profound dynamic tensions between the enlivening desire for a fuller life and the defenses that deaden one’s capacity to think and to engage more fully in one’s life and relationships. The dynamics of transgenerational transmission of grief, loss, and trauma are also examined closely. The psychotherapist as person and professional, rather than the clients, is at the heart of this book. Self-examination in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy will appeal to all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists who will find an exceptionally open discussion of the challenges, learning, and meanings of being a psychotherapist.

As inequality widens in all sectors of contemporary society, we must ask: is psychoanalysis too white and well-to-do to be relevant to social, economic, and racial justice struggles? Are its ideas and practices too alien for people of color? Can it help us understand why systems of oppression are so stable and how oppression becomes internalized? In A People’s Historyof Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology, Daniel José Gaztambide reviews the oft-forgotten history of social justice in psychoanalysis. Starting with the work of Sigmund Freud and the first generation of left-leaning psychoanalysts, Gaztambide traces a series of interrelated psychoanalytic ideas and social justice movements that culminated in the work of Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire, and Ignacio Martín-Baró. Through this intellectual genealogy, Gaztambide presents a psychoanalytically informed theory of race, class, and internalized oppression that resulted from the intertwined efforts of psychoanalysts and racial justice advocates over the course of generations and gave rise to liberation psychology. This book is recommended for students and scholars engaged in political activism, critical pedagogy, and clinical work.

Now available in paper for the first time, this classic text is about how an analyst analyzes. Rooted in the theory of psychoanalytic self psychology as put forth by Heinz Kohut and his colleagues, Treating the Self focuses on the application of the self-psychological concept of the psyche to the actual conduct of psychoanalytic treatment. The result is not a "how-to" approach, but rather a volume that suggests a theory of treatment and offers guidelines for creative ways of thinking about therapy. Written by Ernest Wolf, a close collaborator of Heinz Kohut, this is a personal account of the process of self psychology presented by one of the foremost experts in the field.

In Self and Other, Robert Rogers presents a powerful argument for the adoption of a theory of object relations, combining the best features of traditional psychoanalytic theory with contemporary views on attachment behavior and intersubjectivity. Rogers discusses theory in relation both to actual psychoanalytic case histories and imagined selves found in literature, and provides a critical rereading of the case histories of Freud, Winnicott, Lichtenstein, Sechehaye, and Bettelheim. At once scientific and humanistic, Self and Other engagingly draws from theoretical, clinical, and literary traditions. It will appeal to psychoanalysts as well as to literary scholars interested in the application of psychoanalysis to literature.

"The question, 'Who am I?' resounded throughout the surrealist movement. The exploration of dreams and the unconscious prompted surrealists to reject the notion of a unified, indivisible self by revealing the subject to be haunted by otherness and instability. In this book David Lomas explores the surrealist concepts of the self and subjectivity from a psychoanalytic viewpoint. Employing a series of case studies devoted to individual artists, Lomas arrives at a radically new account of surrealist art and its cultural and intellectual roots." "Weaving together psychoanalytic and historical material, the author analyses works by Ernst, Dali, Masson, Miro and Picasso with regard to such themes as automatism, hysteria, the uncanny and the abject. Lomas focuses closely on individual artworks, examines the specific circumstances in which they were produced and offers new insights into the artists and their projects as well as the theories of Bataille, Breton and others. Lomas demonstrates the powerful connection between the history of psychoanalysis and the history of surrealism, and along the way shows the unique value of psychoanalytic theory as a tool for the art historian."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Hailed as "a superb textbook aimed at introducing psychoanalytic self psychology to students of psychotherapy" (Robert D. Stolorow), Psychotherapy After Kohut is unique in its grasp of the theoretical, clinical, and historical grounds of the emergence of this new psychotherapy paradigm. Lee and Martin acknowledge self psychology's roots in Freud's pioneering clinical discoveries and go on to document its specific indebtedness to the work of Sandor Ferenczi and British object relations theory. Proceeding to readable, scholarly expositions of the principal concepts introduced by Heinz Kohut, the founder of self psychology, they skillfully explore the further blossoming of the paradigm in the decade following Kohut's death. In tracing the trajectory of self psychology after Kohut, Lee and Martin pay special attention to the impact of contemporary infancy research, intersubjectivity theory, and recent empirical and clinical findings about affect development and the meaning and treatment of trauma.

Adrian Johnston and Catherine Malabou defy theoretical humanities' deeply-entrenched resistance to engagements with the life sciences. Rather than treat biology and its branches as hopelessly reductive and politically suspect, they view recent advances in neurobiology and its adjacent scientific fields as providing crucial catalysts to a radical rethinking of subjectivity. Merging three distinct disciplines—European philosophy from Descartes to the present, Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, and affective neuroscience—Johnston and Malabou triangulate the emotional life of affective subjects as conceptualized in philosophy and psychoanalysis with neuroscience. Their experiments yield different outcomes. Johnston finds psychoanalysis and neurobiology have the potential to enrich each other, though affective neuroscience demands a reconsideration of whether affects can be unconscious. Investigating this vexed issue has profound implications for theoretical and practical analysis, as well as philosophical understandings of the emotions. Malabou believes scientific explorations of the brain seriously problematize established notions of affective subjectivity in Continental philosophy and Freudian-Lacanian analysis. She confronts philosophy and psychoanalysis with something neither field has seriously considered: the concept of wonder and the cold, disturbing visage of those who have been affected by disease or injury, such that they are no longer affected emotionally. At stake in this exchange are some of philosophy's most important claims concerning the relationship between the subjective mind and the objective body, the structures and dynamics of the unconscious dimensions of mental life, the role emotion plays in making us human, and the functional differences between philosophy and science.