The author had a deep impact on psychoanalysis, combining a deep knowledge thereof with an avid interest in social psychology, to the benefit of both. He was a fresh thinker, always innovative, with an extensive range of interests. This is an affectionate, incisive, intelligent paean to one of the greats of psychoanalysis.

The author had a deep impact on psychoanalysis, combining a deep knowledge thereof with an avid interest in social psychology, to the benefit of both. He was a fresh thinker, always innovative, with an extensive range of interests. This is an affectionate, incisive, intelligent paean to one of the greats of psychoanalysis.

Underpinned by rigorous close readings of his oeuvre, this book provides a comprehensive guide to the development, practice and evolution of Wilfred Bion’s clinical psychoanalytic work. Starting with the significance of Kant during Bion’s years as a student, the author traces the key influences on Bion in his psychoanalytic and personal development, progressing through Bion’s particularly productive pre-psychoanalytic work based on social field theory, his well-known elaboration of Klein’s schizoid mechanisms known as the theory of containment, all the while with his deeply thoughtful clinical approach inspired latterly by an understanding of literary creativity. Extending this unique emphasis on Bion’s clinical work, rather than his theory, Hinshelwood also explores how Bion’s early traumatic experiences helped shape his attitudes and approach to effective clinical work. With comprehensive coverage of the key tenets of Bion’s work, this should be essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in practice and in training who seek a clear guide to the practical applications of his theory.

The empirical baseline of today's psychoanalytic vernacular may be inferred from what psychoanalysts read. Contemporary information aggregation provides us with a unique moment in "reading" today's psychoanalytic vernacular. The PEP Archive compiles data on journal articles analogous to radio stations' "hit parades" of contemporary favorites. Defining Psychoanalysis: Achieving a Vernacular Expression provides a close reading of this contemporary assemblage, including three "strong" readings by Winnicott and two by Bion. It pursues the elements generated by these papers as an indication of contemporary psychoanalytic "common sense", our consensual building blocks of theory and practice.

Psychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Retrospective offers in-depth discussions of and conversations with six psychoanalytic writers: Christopher Bollas, Nancy Chodorow, Sander L. Gilman, Adam Phillips, and Allen and Joan Wheelis. All are genuinely interdisciplinary in their work, bridging multiple cultural and professional positions, but all are deeply rooted in the humanities. They are all also highly controversial, challenging and critiquing conventional psychoanalytic wisdom while also devoting themselves to expanding psychoanalytic knowledge. Drawing on interviews as well as his own readings, Jeffrey Berman examines the continuities and discontinuities in each writer's work while also exploring the interrelationships between psychoanalysis and the humanities. The book ultimately offers a portrait of psychoanalysis as a work in progress, a plurality of visions that might more aptly be termed psychoanalyses.

So who does own psychoanalysis? Equally pertinent, what is psychoanalysis? Even before the death of Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis was splintering into different groups, each convinced of their superiority to the other. There was little co-operation between them plus a great deal of resentment, recrimination and suspicion. The status quo has been evolving slowly in recent years, with increased tolerance and communication between the different factions, leading to the birth of this book.The result is an international and inter-group collaboration of eminent psychoanalysts and scholars of psychoanalysis discussing and reflecting on the meaning psychoanalysis holds for them. Their contributions have been grouped into four sections: academic, historical, political and scientific. Each paper is varied in its subject matter, looking at such issues as psychoanalytic ownership, the genealogy of the word "psychotherapy", historical perspectives on the situation, whether there can be a monopoly on psychoanalysis, and the role of the brain in relation to the mind, and has been grouped according to its main theme.

Clinical psychoanalysis serves as our best laboratory for exploring the riddle of what it is to be a person, and how a person is at once singularly unique while always a piece of the interpersonal fabric of humanity. In Intimacy and Separateness in Psychoanalysis, Warren Poland casts a freshly erudite eye on this paradox, resisting individual or intersubjective bias and avoiding the parochial allegiances common in our age of pluralism. Poland combines vivid reports from clinical analyses, literary readings, and his own life – all unfolding original observations on a person as both a part of and apart from human commonality. His consideration of how one person’s witnessing facilitates another’s self-definition, a concept extended here in his study of outsiderness as part of human nature, has been marked a keynote contribution. Clinical illustrations of moments that matter but are usually omitted from public presentation are set alongside examples of reading powerful fiction to show how analyst and author both incite fresh openness in a person’s mind. Poland goes farther, exposing the personal power of union and separateness in its keenest form, facing the ultimate separation of one’s own actual death. Only with separateness can true intimacy grow, and only within the fabric of others can true individuality exist. This evocative book, ranging from the lightness of whimsy to the dread of dying, allows every reader to taste of and learn from Poland’s thinking. Psychoanalyst or patient, writer or reader, each one living one’s own life – all can find new understandings in this work.

For three decades Jeremy Holmes has been a leading figure in psychodynamic psychiatry in the UK and across the world. He has played a central role in promoting the ideas of John Bowlby and in developing the clinical applications – psychiatric and psychotherapeutic – of Attachment Theory in working with adults. Drawing on both psychoanalytic and attachment ideas, Holmes has been able to encompass a truly biopsychosocial perspective. As a psychotherapist Holmes brings together psychodynamic, systemic and cognitive models, alert to vital differences, but also keenly sensitive to overlaps and parallels. This volume of selected papers brings together the astonishing range of Holmes' interests and contributions. The various sections in the book cover: An extended interview – covering Holmes’ career and philosophy as a psychodynamic psychiatrist 'Juvenilia' – sibling relationships, the psychology of nuclear weapons, and the psychodynamics of surgical intervention. Psychodynamic psychiatry: Integrative and Attachment-Informed A psychotherapy section in which he develops his model of psychotherapeutic change 'Heroes' – biographical pieces about the major influences including, John Bowlby, Michael Balint, David Malan, Jonathan Pedder and Charles Rycroft. 'Ephemera' – brief pieces covering such topics as frequency of psychodynamic sessions and fees. Attachments: Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis - The Selected Works of Jeremy Holmes will be essential and illuminating reading for practitioners and students of psychiatry and psychotherapy in all its guises.

From Crowd Psychology to the Dynamics of Large Groups offers transdisciplinary research on the history of the study of social formations, ranging from nineteenth-century crowd psychology in France and twentieth-century Freudian mass psychology, including the developments in critical theory, to the study of the psychodynamics of contemporary large groups. Carla Penna presents a unique combination of sociology, psychoanalysis, and group analysis in the study of social formations. This book revisits the epistemological basis of group analysis by introducing and discussing its historical path, especially in connection with the study of large groups and investigations of the social unconscious in persons, groups, and societies. It also explores early work on group relations and contemporary research on the basic-assumption group in England, particularly Hopper’s theory of Incohesion as a fourth basic assumption. From Crowd Psychology to the Dynamics of Large Groups enables the reader to map out the field of the unconscious life of crowds illuminating the darkness of twenty-first century collective movements. The reflections in this book present new perspectives for psychologists, psychoanalysts, group analysts, sociologists, and historians to investigate the psychodynamics of contemporary crowds, masses, and social systems.

The Poetics of Psychoanalysis: In the Wake of Klein explores the literary aspects of the twentieth-century psychoanalytic tradition that has come to be known as British Object Relations psychoanalysis. Focusing on Melanie Klein's legacy to psychoanalysis between the 1930s and 1970s, it deals with major figures such as Riviere, Isaacs, Winnicott, Milner, and Bion, as well as Klein's contemporary, Ella Sharpe. Mary Jacobus breaks new ground by giving a central place to the literary and aesthetic concerns of the British Object Relations tradition. Paying close attention to writing that is often side-lined by literary critics and theorists, she makes fruitful connections with particular works of literature and art, along with pressing contemporary issues. The three sections focus on the transitions, mediations, and transformations that took place in British Object Relations psychoanalysis as Klein's ideas were developed and transformed. Situating Kleinian thought in relation to later developments and differences, while making it accessible to non-psychoanalytic readers, The Poetics of Psychoanalysis argues against the separation of British and continental traditions and for the continuing links between psychoanalysis and aesthetics. Rather than applying psychoanalytic ideas to literature and aesthetics, the book traces the British Object Relations tradition as a form of proto-modernist discourse in its own right. Linked by a common thread of ideas and structured to reflect a roughly chronological trajectory, individual chapters can also be read as free-standing critical essays. Aimed at literary readers, this book will also be of interest to psychoanalytic practitioners and cultural theorists.