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psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Psychoanalysis Janet Malcolm, 2011-06-08 From the author of In the Freud Archives and The Journalist and the Murderer comes an intensive look at the practice of psychoanalysis through interviews with “Aaron Green,” a Freudian analyst in New York City. Malcolm is accessible and lucid in describing the history of psychoanalysis and its development in the United States. It provides rare insight into the contradictory world of psychoanalytic training and treatment and a foundation for our understanding of psychiatry and mental health. Janet Malcom has managed somehow to peer into the reticent, reclusive world of psychoanalysis and to report to us, with remarkable fidelity, what she has seen. When I began reading I thought condescendingly, 'She will get the facts right, and everything else wrong.' She does get the facts right, but far more pressive, she has been able to capture and convey the claustral atmosphere of the profession. Her book is journalism become art. —Joseph Andelson, The New York Times Book Review |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Education, an 'impossible Profession'? Tamara Bibby, 2010 This book will provide a way of using psychoanalytic psychologies to think about some of the processes and experiences of learning and teaching. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Dear Candidate: Analysts from around the World Offer Personal Reflections on Psychoanalytic Training, Education, and the Profession Fred Busch, 2020-11-23 In this first-of-kind book, senior psychoanalysts from around the world offer personal reflections on their own training, what it was like to become a psychoanalyst, and what they would like most to convey to the candidate of today. With forty-two personal letters to candidates, this edited collection helps analysts in training and those recently entering the profession to reflect upon what it means to be a psychoanalytic candidate and enter the profession. Letters tackle the anxieties, ambiguities, complications, and pleasures faced in these tasks. From these reflections, the book serves as a guide through this highly personal, complex, and meaningful experience and helps readers consider the many different meanings of being a candidate in a psychanalytic institute. Perfect for candidates and psychoanalytic educators, this book inspires analysts at all levels to think, once again, about this impossible but fascinating profession and to consider their own psychoanalytic development. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: The Very Thought of Education Deborah P. Britzman, 2009-05-26 Winner of the 2009 Gary A. Olson Award presented by JAC - a journal of rhetoric, culture, and politics For anyone who has ever been to school, the very thought of education recalls an emotional world denounced. What happens then if we try to understand the emotional scenery of education? Author Deborah P. Britzman proposes that the psychoanalysis of love and hate in learning provides creative commentary on our contemporary educational controversies. Drawing upon novels, art, psychoanalytic theory, clinical material, and philosophical debates on human nature, Britzman presents a psychoanalytic education of uncertainty. She focuses on key encounters: thinking, development, reading, psychology, transference, countertransference, and learning a profession. From the collapse of contemporary pedagogical themes to the work of reparation, Britzman explores the fantasies of education for the purpose of returning ideas of grace, hope, humor, and humility to the impossible professions (education, government, and medicine). |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Secrets of the Soul Eli Zaretsky, 2005-08-09 The fledgling science of psychoanalysis permanently altered the nineteenth-century worldview with its remarkable new insights into human behavior and motivation. It quickly became a benchmark for modernity in the twentieth century--though its durability in the twenty-first may now be in doubt. More than a hundred years after the publication of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, we’re no longer in thrall, says cultural historian Eli Zaretsky, to the “romance” of psychotherapy and the authority of the analyst. Only now do we have enough perspective to assess the successes and shortcomings of psychoanalysis, from its late-Victorian Era beginnings to today’s age of psychopharmacology. In Secrets of the Soul, Zaretsky charts the divergent schools in the psychoanalytic community and how they evolved–sometimes under pressure–from sexism to feminism, from homophobia to acceptance of diversity, from social control to personal emancipation. From Freud to Zoloft, Zaretsky tells the story of what may be the most intimate science of all. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: The Journalist and the Murderer Janet Malcolm, 2011-06-22 Named one of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books by The Modern Library and The Guardian • With surgical precision, Janet Malcolm dissects the famous case of journalist Joe McGinniss and murderer Jeffrey MacDonald. A riveting exploration of the uneasy dynamic between writers and their subjects and a must-read for anyone intrigued by journalism, the complexities of human nature, and true crime Malcolm deftly analyzes the real-life lawsuit of Jeffrey MacDonald, a convicted murderer, against Joe McGinniss, the author of Fatal Vision. At the heart of this masterfully crafted narrative is McGinniss's controversial portrayal of MacDonald, a former Green Beret convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and two young daughters. While writing the true crime book Fatal Vision, McGinniss ingratiated himself with MacDonald under the guise of supporting his innocence, only to portray him as guilty in the final publication. The resulting libel case put McGinniss's methods on trial, sparking a gripping examination of the ethics governing the writer-subject covenant. Through probing interviews with the key players - the principals, their lawyers, members of the jury, and expert witnesses - Malcolm provides an atmospheric retelling of the sensational trial. But her true subject is the treacherous territory writers must navigate when trying to objectively chronicle the lives of others. With piercing self-awareness, Malcolm examines her own role and motivations, laying bare the inherent conflicts and power dynamics that arise when a journalist pursues a story. Her candid, rueful reflections transform a seemingly straightforward work of reportage into a profound exploration of journalistic ethics and the limits of factual truth. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Shamans, Mystics, and Doctors Sudhir Kakar, 2013-04-03 Shamans, Mystics and Doctors is a detailed and thoroughly fascinating account of the many ways in which the ancient healing traditions of India—embodied in the rituals of shamans, the teachings of gurus and the precepts of the school of medicine known as Ayurveda—diagnose and treat emotional disorder. Drawing on three years of intensive fieldwork and his own psychoanalytic training and experience, Sudhir Kakar takes us into a world of Islamic mosques and Hindu temples, of assembled multitudes, and dingy, out-of-the-way consultation rooms… a world where patients and healers blame evil spirits for emotional disturbances… where dreams and symptoms that would be familiar to Freud are interpreted in terms of a myriad of deities and legends… where trance-like “dissociation states” are induced to bring out and resolve the conflicts of repressed anger, lust and envy… where proper grooming, diet, exercise and conduct are (and have been for centuries) seen as essential to the preservation of a healthy mind and body. As he witnesses the practitioners and their patients, as he elucidates the therapeutic systems on which their encounters are based, as he contrasts his own Western training and biases with evidence of his eyes (and the sympathies of his heart), Kakar reveals the universal concerns of these individuals and their admittedly foreign cultures—people we can recognize and feel for, people (like their Western counterparts) trying to find some balance between the pressures and rewards of the external world and the fantasies and desires of the internal. This is a major work of cultural interpretation, a book that challenges (and should enhance) our understanding of therapy, mental health and individual freedom. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: A Record of Friendship Wilhelm Reich, 1984 |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: The Trauma of Freud Paul Roazen, 2001-12-31 Over one hundred years have passed since Sigmund Freudfirst created psychoanalysis. The new profession flourishedwithin the increasing secularization of Westernculture, and it is almost impossible to overestimate its influence.Despite its traditional aloofness from ethical questions,psychoanalysis attracted an extraordinary degree of sectarianbitterness. Original thinkers were condemned as dissidentsand renegades and the merits of individual cases havebeen frequently mixed up with questions concerning powerand ambition, as well as the future of the movement. In TheTrauma of Freud, Paul Roazen shows how, despite this contentiousness,Freud's legacy has remained central to human selfawareness. Roazen provides a much-needed sequence and perspectiveon the memorable issues that have come up in connection withthe history of Freud's school. Topics covered include the problemof seduction, Jung's Zurich school, Ferenczi's Hungarianfollowing, and the influence of Melanie Klein and Anna Freud inEngland. Also highlighted are Lacanianism in France, ErikErikson's ego psychology, and Sandor Rado's innovations. In consideringthese historical cases and related public scandals,Roazen continually addresses important general issues concerningethics and privacy, the power of orthodoxy, creativity, andthe historiography of psychoanalysis. Throughout, he argues thatrival interpretations are a sign of the intellectual maturity andsophistication of the discipline. Vigorous debate is healthy andessential in avoiding ill-considered and dogmatic self-assurance. He observes that potential zealotry lies just below the surfaceof even the most placid psychoanalytic waters even today. Examiningthe past, so much a part of the job of scholarship, mayinvolve challenging those who might have preferred to let sleepingdogs lie. Roazen emphasizes that Freud's approach restedon the Socratic conviction that the unexamined life is not worthliving and that this constitutes the spiritual basis of its influencebeyond immediate clinical concerns. The Trauma of Freudis a major contribution to the historical literature on psychoanalysis. Paul Roazen is professor emeritus of social and political scienceat York University in Toronto, Ontario, and the author ofThe Historiography of Psychoanalysis, Freud: Political and SocialThought, Helene Deutsch: A Psychoanalyst's Life, EncounteringFreud: The Politics and Histories of Psychoanalysis, andBrother Animal: The Story of Freud and Tausk. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: The Crime of Sheila McGough Janet Malcolm, 2013-01-16 [N]o other writer tells better stories about the perpetual, the unwinnable, battle between narrative and truth. --The New York Times Book Review The Crime of Sheila McGough is Janet Malcolm's brilliant exposé of miscarriage of justice in the case of Sheila McGough, a disbarred lawyer recently released from prison. McGough had served 2 1/2 years for collaborating with a client in his fraud, but insisted that she didn't commit any of the 14 felonies she was convicted. An astonishingly persuasive condemnation of the cupidity of American law and its preference for convincing narrative rather than the truth, this is also a story with an unconventional heroine. McGough is a zealous defense lawyer duped by a white-collar con man; a woman who lives, at the age of 54, with her parents; a journalistic subject who frustrates her interviewer with her maddening literal-mindedness. Spirited, illuminating, delightfully detailed, The Crime of Sheila McGough is both a dazzling work of journalism and a searching meditation on character and the law. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Dare to Be Human Michael Shoshani Rosenbaum, 2013-05-13 Daniel is 35, successful, a high level professional and an accomplished academic - yet he is also a virgin, who fears that he will spend the rest of his life alone. More importantly, Daniel has existed in an emotional bubble all of his life, and has had no intimate friendships. In other words, he is not fully alive, and seeks psychotherapy because he is haunted by not understanding what is wrong with him. He is attractive to women, yet as soon as a woman tries to get close to him, he runs away. Lacking an inner foundation, he fears that women will annihilate him, like his overbearing mother who abused him as a child. Quite simply, this book is an unprecedented achievement, taking the reader into actual psychoanalytic sessions and sharing with the reader Michael Shoshani Rosenbaum’s dialogues with Daniel, vividly illustrating his pain and struggle to transcend his existential plight. Furthermore, as the author of two sections of the book, Daniel himself provides a rare, insightful view from the other side of the couch, illuminating the challenge and change experienced within the other half of the therapeutic relationship. It is a compelling psychological adventure, fusing together the intimacy of the therapy with an account of the revolutionary changes that have occurred in the practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis over the last decades. Daniel is like no one else, and yet he is everyone, making this book a must for every person searching for self-knowledge, allowing the reader to identify with Daniel and his struggle to become human. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Psychoanalysis Janet Malcolm, 1980 |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Leaving It at the Office John C. Norcross, Gary R. VandenBos, 2018-07-07 Cover -- Half Title Page -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- About the Authors -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- 1. Valuing the Person of the Psychotherapist -- 2. Refocusing on the Rewards -- 3. Recognizing the Hazards -- 4. Minding the Body -- 5. Nurturing Relationships -- 6. Setting Boundaries -- 7. Restructuring Cognitions -- 8. Sustaining Healthy Escapes -- 9. Maintaining Mindfulness -- 10. Creating a Flourishing Environment -- 11. Profiting from Personal Therapy -- 12. Cultivating Spirituality and Mission -- 13. Fostering Creativity and Growth -- References -- Index. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Nobody's Looking at You Janet Malcolm, 2019-02-19 A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. A 2019 NPR Staff Pick. Malcolm is always worth reading; it can be instructive to see how much satisfying craft she brings to even the most trivial article. --Phillip Lopate, TLS Janet Malcolm’s previous collection, Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers, was “unmistakably the work of a master” (The New York Times Book Review). Like Forty-One False Starts, Nobody’s Looking at You brings together previously uncompiled pieces, mainly from The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. The title piece of this wonderfully eclectic collection is a profile of the fashion designer Eileen Fisher, whose mother often said to her, “Nobody’s looking at you.” But in every piece in this volume, Malcolm looks closely and with impunity at a broad range of subjects, from Donald Trump’s TV nemesis Rachel Maddow, to the stiletto-heel-wearing pianist Yuju Wang, to “the big-league game” of Supreme Court confirmation hearings. In an essay called “Socks,” the Pevears are seen as the “sort of asteroid [that] has hit the safe world of Russian Literature in English translation,” and in “Dreams and Anna Karenina,” the focus is Tolstoy, “one of literature’s greatest masters of manipulative techniques.” Nobody’s Looking at You concludes with “Pandora’s Click,” a brief, cautionary piece about e-mail etiquette that was written in the early two thousands, and that reverberates—albeit painfully—to this day. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Final Analysis Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, 2024-04 He was the rising star of psychoanalysis, an intimate associate of Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler, a member of the Freudian inner circle with unrestricted access to the Freud Archives. And then Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson threw it all away because he dared to break the psychoanalytic community's deepest taboo: he told the truth in public. As he unmasks the pretensions and abuses of this elite profession, Masson invites us to eavesdrop on the shockingly unorthodox analysis he was subjected to in the course of his analytic training. But the more prestige Masson attained, the more he came to doubt not only the integrity of his colleagues, but the validity of their method. In the end, he blew the whistle-fully aware of the personal and professional consequences. With wit, wonder, and unflinching candor, Masson brilliantly exposes the cult of psychoanalysis and recounts his own self-propelled fall from grace. A sensation when it first appeared, Final Analysis is even more provocative and engrossing today. Written with passion and humor, this is the book that revealed a revered profession for what it was-and launched Masson on his true career. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Lying On The Couch Irvin D. Yalom, 2014-03-25 From the bestselling author of Love's Executioner and When Nietzsche Wept comes a provocative exploration of the unusual relationships three therapists form with their patients. Seymour is a therapist of the old school who blurs the boundary of sexual propriety with one of his clients. Marshal, who is haunted by his own obsessive-compulsive behaviors, is troubled by the role money plays in his dealings with his patients. Finally, there is Ernest Lash. Driven by his sincere desire to help and his faith in psychoanalysis, he invents a radically new approach to therapy -- a totally open and honest relationship with a patient that threatens to have devastating results. Exposing the many lies that are told on and off the psychoanalyst's couch, Lying on the Couch gives readers a tantalizing, almost illicit, glimpse at what their therapists might really be thinking during their sessions. Fascinating, engrossing and relentlessly intelligent, it ultimately moves readers with a denouement of surprising humanity and redemptive faith. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: The Creative Self Tamara Bibby, 2017-08-07 The Creative Self engages with the work of the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott to develop alternative ways of thinking about key issues at the heart of pedagogy; specifically pedagogic relationships, creativity, defiance and compliance. These issues underpin the desires and defences of professionals located in educational institutions, such as the desire to know what is best, to know how to reach all learners, normalised expectations of behaviours and outcomes, and sometimes challenging engagements with students and the curriculum. Each chapter provides both a theoretical focus and illustrative demonstrations of the ways in which Winnicott’s theories may be relocated and used productively as tools for professional and academic reflexivity. By building extensively on Winnicott’s understanding of the ways in which relationships facilitate (or hinder) the development of the self, this book extends his clinical focus on parental and analytical relationships to think about the ways in which the pedagogic relationship can provide an environment in which people may (or may fail to) develop as learners. This approach provides powerful ways of thinking about pedagogy and pedagogic relationships that stand apart from the cognitive and rationalist tradition. This focus can be used constructively to support people working in educational settings to re-establish a sense of personal and professional autonomy in an environment recently typified by compliance. The Creative Self is an engaging and innovative read appealing to postgraduate students, teachers, researchers and academics with a desire for a new analytic lens through which to explore the educational experiences of both learners and teachers in schools, colleges and universities. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Against Therapy Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, 2024-02-20 In this ground-breaking and highly controversial book, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson attacks the very foundations of modern psychotherapy from Freud to Jung, from Fritz Perls to Carl Rodgers. With passion and clarity, Against Therapy addresses the profession's core weaknesses, contending that, since therapy's aim is to change people, and this is achieved according to therapist's own notions and prejudices, the psychological process is necessarily corrupt. With a foreword by the eminent British psychologist Dorothy Rowe, this cogent and convincing book has shattering implications. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Psychoanalysis , 1982 |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Forty-One False Starts Janet Malcolm, 2013-08-01 Selected essays from America's foremost literary journalist and essayist, featuring ruminations on writers and artists as diverse as Edith Wharton, Diane Arbus and the Bloomsbury Group. This charismatic and penetrating collection includes Malcolm's now iconic essay about the painter David Salle. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy Justin Clemens, 2013-05-31 Justin Clemens examines psychoanalysis under the rubric of 'antiphilosophy': a practice that offers the strongest possible challenges to thought. Drawing on the work of Badiou, Freud, Lacan, Zizek and Agamben, he examines the relationships of humans to dr |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Inside Therapy Ilana Rabinowitz, 2000-05-24 A scintillating collection of writings on the mysterious, controversial, and intimate process of psychotherapy. Everyone with an interest in the art and science of psychotherapy - practitioners, patients, students, and avid readers of Freud, Jung, et al-will find this lively anthology an engrossing read. A varied mix of essays, book chapters, case histories, and compelling fiction written by veterans of both sides of the couch and representing many schools of thought, Inside Therapy includes: Janet Malcolm's The Impossible Profession * Mark Epstein's Thoughts Without a Thinker * Eric Fromm's The Art of Listening * A. M. Homes's In a Country of Mothers * Theodore Reik's The Third Ear * and others. The foreword by Irvin D. Yalom, author of Love's Executioner, offers additional wisdom, humor, and perspective. At a time when managed care threatens the psychoanalytic tradition, this dramatic, inspiring collection reminds us of the healing power of insight and the unique gifts of the patient-therapist relationship. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism Matt ffytche, Daniel Pick, 2016-05-20 Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism provides rich new insights into the history of political thought and clinical knowledge. In these chapters, internationally renowned historians and cultural theorists discuss landmark debates about the uses and abuses of ‘the talking cure’ and map the diverse psychologies and therapeutic practices that have featured in and against tyrannical, modern regimes. These essays show both how the Freudian movement responded to and was transformed by the rise of fascism and communism, the Second World War, and the Cold War, and how powerful new ideas about aggression, destructiveness, control, obedience and psychological freedom were taken up in the investigation of politics. They identify important intersections between clinical debate, political analysis, and theories of minds and groups, and trace influential ideas about totalitarianism that took root in modern culture after 1918, and still resonate in the twenty-first century. At the same time, they suggest how the emergent discourses of ‘totalitarian’ society were permeated by visions of the unconscious. Topics include: the psychoanalytic theorizations of anti-Semitism; the psychological origins and impact of Nazism; the post-war struggle to rebuild liberal democracy; state-funded experiments in mind control in Cold War America; coercive ‘re-education’ programmes in Eastern Europe, and the role of psychoanalysis in the politics of decolonization. A concluding trio of chapters argues, in various ways, for the continuing relevance of psychoanalysis, and of these mid-century debates over the psychology of power, submission and freedom in modern mass society. Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism will prove compelling for both specialists and readers with a general interest in modern psychology, politics, culture and society, and in psychoanalysis. The material is relevant for academics and post-graduate students in the human, social and political sciences, the clinical professions, the historical profession and the humanities more widely. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis Salman Akhtar, 2018-05-01 This book provides easy to read, concise, and clinically useful explanations of over 1800 terms and concepts from the field of psychoanalysis. A history of each term is included in its definition and so is the name of its originator. The attempt is made to demonstrate how the meanings of the term under consideration might have changed, with new connotations accruing with the passage of time and with growth of knowledge. Where indicated and possible, the glossary includes diverse perspectives on a given idea and highlights how different analysts have used the same term for different purposes and with different theoretical aims in mind. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Diana & Nikon Janet Malcolm, 1980 The relationship of photography to painting, the polarity of the fine art and vernacular traditions, and the connection between photography and modernism are some of the topics which crop up again and again in this collection of 16 essays which explore the works of a number of photographers. The ess |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Freud Peter Gay, 1998 A biography and study of the psychoanalyst's career, family, personal life, and professional struggles. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Speculum of the Other Woman Luce Irigaray, 1985 A radically subversive critique brings to the fore the masculine ideology implicit in psychoanalytic theory and in Western discourse in general: woman is defined as a disadvantaged man, a male construct with no status of her own. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire Hans Jurgen Eysenck, 1985 |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Freud's Patients Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, 2021-10-13 Portraits of the thirty-eight known patients Sigmund Freud treated clinically—some well-known, many obscure—reveal a darker, more complex picture of the famed psychoanalyst. Everyone knows the characters described by Freud in his case histories: “Dora,” the “Rat Man,” the “Wolf Man.” But what do we know of the people, the lives behind these famous pseudonyms: Ida Bauer, Ernst Lanzer, Sergius Pankejeff? Do we know the circumstances that led them to Freud’s consulting room, or how they fared—how they really fared—following their treatments? And what of those patients about whom Freud wrote nothing, or very little: Pauline Silberstein, who threw herself from the fourth floor of her analyst’s building; Elfriede Hirschfeld, Freud’s “grand-patient” and “chief tormentor;” the fashionable architect Karl Mayreder; the psychotic millionaire Carl Liebmann; and so many others? In an absorbing sequence of portraits, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen offers the stories of these men and women—some comic, many tragic, all of them deeply moving. In total, thirty-eight lives tell us as much about Freud’s clinical practice as his celebrated case studies, revealing a darker and more complex Freud than is usually portrayed: the doctor as his patients, their friends, and their families saw him. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Nightbitch Rachel Yoder, 2021-07-20 SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING AMY ADAMS • In this blazingly smart and voracious debut novel, an artist turned stay-at-home mom becomes convinced she's turning into a dog. • A must-read for anyone who can’t get enough of the ever-blurring line between the psychological and supernatural that Yellowjackets exemplifies. —Vulture One day, the mother was a mother, but then one night, she was quite suddenly something else... An ambitious mother puts her art career on hold to stay at home with her newborn son, but the experience does not match her imagination. Two years later, she steps into the bathroom for a break from her toddler's demands, only to discover a dense patch of hair on the back of her neck. In the mirror, her canines suddenly look sharper than she remembers. Her husband, who travels for work five days a week, casually dismisses her fears from faraway hotel rooms. As the mother's symptoms intensify, and her temptation to give in to her new dog impulses peak, she struggles to keep her alter-canine-identity secret. Seeking a cure at the library, she discovers the mysterious academic tome which becomes her bible, A Field Guide to Magical Women: A Mythical Ethnography, and meets a group of mommies involved in a multilevel-marketing scheme who may also be more than what they seem. An outrageously original novel of ideas about art, power, and womanhood wrapped in a satirical fairy tale, Nightbitch will make you want to howl in laughter and recognition. And you should. You should howl as much as you want. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: The Unconscious in Social and Political Life David Morgan, 2019-07-14 Traumatic events happen in every age, yet there is a particularly cataclysmic feeling to our own epoch that is so attractive to some and so terrifying to others. The terrible events of September 11th 2001 still resonate and the repercussions continue to this day: the desperation of immigrants fleeing terror, the uncertainty of Brexit, Donald Trump in the White House, the rise of the alt-right and hard left, increasing fundamentalism, and terror groups intent on causing destruction to the Western way of life. If that were not enough, we also have to grapple with the enormity of climate change and the charge that if we do not act now, it will be too late. Is it any wonder many are left overwhelmed by the events they see on the news? Galvanised by the events outside of his consulting room, in 2015, David Morgan began The Political Mind seminars at the British Psychoanalytical Society and their successful run continues today. A series of superlative seminars, mostly presented by colleagues from the British Society plus a few select external experts, that examine a dazzling array of relevant topics to provide a psychoanalytic understanding of just what is going on in our world. This book is the first in The Political Mind series to bring these seminars to a wider audience. The Unconscious in Political and Social Life contains compelling contributions from Christopher Bollas, Michael Rustin, Jonathan Sklar, David Bell, Philip Stokoe, Roger Kennedy, David Morgan, M. Fakhry Davids, Ruth McCall, R. D. Hinshelwood, Renée Danziger, Josh Cohen, Sally Weintrobe, and Margot Waddell. They investigate so many vital issues affecting us today: the evolution of democracy, right-wing populism, prejudice, the rise of the far right, attitudes to refugees and migrants, neoliberalism, fundamentalism, terrorism, the Palestine-Israel situation, political change, feminism, austerity in the UK, financial globalisation, and climate change. This book needs to be read by all who are concerned by the state of the world today. Psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts with their awareness of what motivates human beings bring clarity and fresh insight to these matters. A deeper understanding of humanity awaits the reader of The Unconscious in Political and Social Life. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Practical Psychoanalysis for Therapists and Patients Owen Renik, 2010-09-07 A clear and readable how-to manual for results-oriented psychoanalysis. By now, the term practical psychoanalysis has become an oxymoron. The way psychoanalytic treatment is generally conducted is extremely impractical and doesn't serve the needs of the vast majority of potential patients, who want to achieve maximum relief from emotional distress as quickly as possible. This unfortunate state of affairs is ironic, considering that psychoanalysis became popular on the basis of its therapeutic efficacy. In this essential new book, Owen Renik describes how clinical psychoanalysis can focus on symptom relief and deliver results efficiently. With a humane, direct, and engaging voice, he takes up how to begin treatment, how to end it, and how to deal with the in-between. He offers chapters on the therapy of panic attacks and depersonalization, on how to get out of an impasse, on the relation between sexual desire and power in the analytic relationship, on patients who seem to want to sabotage their treatments, on flying blind as an analyst, and on a number of other intriguing, important practical topics. Renik's down-to-earth presentation and discussion of clinical anecdotes, combined with useful recommendations for both analyst and patient, amounts to a clear and readable how-to manual. The book is intended for all mental health caregivers, patients and potential patients, and for anyone who is curious about what makes for effective, helpful psychotherapy. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Psychoanalytic Object Relations Therapy Althea J. Horner, 1995 |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders Aaron T. Beck, 1979-10-01 Is the emotionally disturbed person a victim of forces beyond his awareness, over which he has no control? This is the belief on which neuropsychiatry, psychoanalysis, and behavior therapy are all based. But what if this premise is wrong? What if a person’s psychological difficulties stem from his own erroneous assumptions and faulty concepts of himself and the world? Such a person can be helped to recognize and correct distortions in thinking that cause his emotional disturbance. Now one of the founders of cognitive therapy has written a clear, comprehensive guide to its theory and practice, highlighting such important concepts as: · Learning the meaning of hidden messages · Listening to your automatic thoughts · The role of sadness, anger, and anxiety · Understanding and overcoming phobias and depression · Applying the cognitive system of therapy to specific problems “A book by a significant contributor to our knowledge… immensely readable, logical, and coherent… This is Beck at his best.”—Psychiatry |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Reading Chekhov Janet Malcolm, 2007-12-18 To illuminate the mysterious greatness of Anton Chekhov’s writings, Janet Malcolm takes on three roles: literary critic, biographer, and journalist. Her close readings of the stories and plays are interwoven with episodes from Chekhov’s life and framed by an account of Malcolm’s journey to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Yalta. She writes of Chekhov’s childhood, his relationships, his travels, his early success, and his self-imposed “exile”—always with an eye to connecting them to themes and characters in his work. Lovers of Chekhov as well as those new to his work will be transfixed by Reading Chekhov. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Psychoanalysis and Education Alan Bainbridge, Linden West, 2018-03-22 This book provides a unique and highly topical application of psychoanalytic theory to the broad context of education, including schools, universities, and adult learning. Education is understood as a crucial element in a lifelong project to gain more coherent and meaningful understanding of self and others. Psychoanalysis has taken the contingency, construction, and development of human subjectivity, as well as the difficulty of thinking, to be its prime preoccupation. Yet - at a time of increasing doubt and anxiety about the purposes and practice of education - psychoanalytic understanding, from various traditions, has never been more marginal in educational debate. The book seeks, in these terms, to bridge some of this gap: it is written for teachers, trainers, policy-makers, clinicians, researchers, and diverse academics who want to look beyond bland superficialities to deeper struggles for self and understanding. This includes unconscious processes in the relationships that constitue education as well as resistance to new ideas and practices. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Progress in Psychoanalysis Steven D. Axelrod, Ronald C. Naso, Larry M. Rosenberg, 2018-05-11 Is psychoanalysis in decline? Has its understanding of the human condition been marginalized? Have its clinical methods been eclipsed by more short-term, problem-oriented approaches? Is psychoanalysis unable (or unwilling) to address key contemporary issues and concerns? With contributors internationally recognized for their scholarship, Progress in Psychoanalysis: Envisioning the Future of the Profession offers both an analysis of how the culture of psychoanalysis has contributed to the profession’s current dilemmas and a description of the progressive trends taking form within the contemporary scene. Through a broad and rigorous examination of the psychoanalytic landscape, this book highlights the profession’s very real progress and describes a vision for its increased relevance. It shows how psychoanalysis can offer unparalleled value to the public. Economic, political, and cultural factors have contributed to the marginalization of psychoanalysis over the past 30 years. But the profession’s internal rigidity, divisiveness, and strong adherence to tradition have left it unable to adapt to change and to innovate in the ways needed to remain relevant. The contributors to this book are prominent practitioners, theoreticians, researchers, and educators who offer cogent analysis of the culture of psychoanalysis and show how the profession’s foundation can be strengthened by building on the three pillars of openness, integration, and accountability. This book is designed to help readers develop a clearer vision of a vital, engaged, contemporary psychoanalysis. The varied contributions to Progress in Psychoanalysis exemplify how the profession can change to better promote and build on the very real progress that is occurring in theory, research, training, and the many applications of psychoanalysis. They offer a roadmap for how the profession can begin to reclaim its leadership in wide-ranging efforts to explore the dynamics of mental life. Readers will come away with more confidence in psychoanalysis as an innovative enterprise and more excitement about how they can contribute to its growth. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Psychoanalytic Collisions Joyce Slochower, 2014-10-24 Psychoanalytic Collisions Second Edition wrestles with a theme that confronts every psychotherapist: the gap between illusions and realities about the professional self. Joyce Slochower closely examines situations in which the therapist’s professional and personal wishes collide with the actuality of everyday clinical work. The book unpacks the dynamics of these collisions on both beginning and seasoned therapists, offering ways of sustaining a professional ideal while also exploring the mixed impact of that ideal on clinical work. In examining how illusions and ideals affect the therapeutic encounter for both better and worse, Psychoanalytic Collisions invites the reader into the consulting room. This Second Edition has been substantially revised. It includes updated clinical and theoretical material as well as a new chapter about mutual idealizations that coalesce between patient and analyst. Slochower argues that psychoanalytic collisions can be productively engaged, even if they often cannot be fully resolved.The very act of engagement—whether by establishing new grounds for collaboration in the wake of real-world catastrophe, wrestling with clinical impasses that arise from the divergent expectations of analyst and patient, or owning up to and addressing the analyst’s secret delinquencies—reveals how therapeutic hopefulness can coexist with an acceptance of the analyst’s all-too-human fallibility. Psychoanalytic Collisions shows how idealization is intrinsic both to forging an analytic identity and practicing across a lifetime. Slochower’s work challenges readers to confront their own vulnerabilities and limits while also embracing a professional ideal that is at once human and inspiring. The book is an essential resource for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, pastoral counselors, and readers interested in the practice of psychotherapy today. |
psychoanalysis the impossible profession: Silence and Silencing in Psychoanalysis Aleksandar Dimitrijević, Michael B. Buchholz, 2020-11-16 This book is the first comprehensive treatment in recent decades of silence and silencing in psychoanalysis from clinical and research perspectives, as well as in philosophy, theology, linguistics, and musicology. The book approaches silence and silencing on three levels. First, it provides context for psychoanalytic approaches to silence through chapters about silence in phenomenology, theology, linguistics, musicology, and contemporary Western society. Its central part is devoted to the position of silence in psychoanalysis: its types and possible meanings (a form of resistance, in countertransference, the foundation for listening and further growth), based on both the work of the pioneers of psychoanalysis and on clinical case presentations. Finally, the book includes reports of conversation analytic research of silence in psychotherapeutic sessions and everyday communication. Not only are original techniques reported here for the first time, but research and clinical approaches fit together in significant ways. This book will be of interest to all psychologists, psychoanalysts, and social scientists, as well as applied researchers, program designers and evaluators, educators, leaders, and students. It will also provide valuable insight to anyone interested in the social practices of silence and silencing, and the roles these play in everyday social interactions. |
Psychoanalysis - Wikipedia
Psychoanalysis [i] is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious processes and their influence on conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on dream …
Psychoanalysis: Freud's Psychoanalytic Approach to Therapy
Jan 24, 2024 · Psychoanalysis is a therapeutic approach and theory, founded by Sigmund Freud, that seeks to explore the unconscious mind to uncover repressed feelings and interpret deep …
Psychoanalysis | Definition, Theory, & Therapy | Britannica
May 23, 2025 · psychoanalysis, method of treating mental disorders, shaped by psychoanalytic theory, which emphasizes unconscious mental processes and is sometimes described as …
Psychoanalysis - Psychology Today
Psychoanalytic therapy encompasses an open conversation that aims to uncover ideas and memories long buried in the unconscious mind. Psychoanalysts employ specific techniques, …
An Introduction and Brief Overview of Psychoanalysis - PMC
Sigmund Freud (Born May 6th, 1856) was an Austrian neurologist widely known as the father of psychoanalysis. His revolutionary theories, thoughts, and challenges to the field of psychology …
Psychoanalysis: Freud, Therapy, and More - WebMD
May 12, 2023 · Psychoanalysis is a type of mental health theory and therapy focused on uncovering unconscious feelings, desires, and conflicts that affect your life and may be the …
How Psychoanalysis Influenced the Field of Psychology
May 5, 2023 · Psychoanalysis is a method of therapy in which the patient talks about experiences, early childhood, and dreams. It refers to both a theory and a type of therapy based on the …
Psychoanalysis: A History of Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
Nov 10, 2024 · In this article, we’ll introduce the history of psychoanalytic theory, the basic tenets of the psychoanalytic model of the mind, and the clinical approach called psychoanalysis. We’ll …
Psychoanalysis - American Psychological Association (APA)
Psychoanalysts are trained to know about how things we are not aware of can cause us to act in ways that feel out of our control. Psychoanalysis looks at how our experiences shape who we …
Understanding Psychoanalysis: Techniques and Theories
Jun 23, 2024 · What is Psychoanalysis? 🔗. Psychoanalysis is a therapeutic approach that seeks to explore the unconscious mind to identify unresolved conflicts that affect mental health.
Psychoanalysis - Wikipedia
Psychoanalysis [i] is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious processes and their influence on conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on dream …
Psychoanalysis: Freud's Psychoanalytic Approach to Therapy
Jan 24, 2024 · Psychoanalysis is a therapeutic approach and theory, founded by Sigmund Freud, that seeks to explore the unconscious mind to uncover repressed feelings and interpret deep …
Psychoanalysis | Definition, Theory, & Therapy | Britannica
May 23, 2025 · psychoanalysis, method of treating mental disorders, shaped by psychoanalytic theory, which emphasizes unconscious mental processes and is sometimes described as “depth …
Psychoanalysis - Psychology Today
Psychoanalytic therapy encompasses an open conversation that aims to uncover ideas and memories long buried in the unconscious mind. Psychoanalysts employ specific techniques, such …
An Introduction and Brief Overview of Psychoanalysis - PMC
Sigmund Freud (Born May 6th, 1856) was an Austrian neurologist widely known as the father of psychoanalysis. His revolutionary theories, thoughts, and challenges to the field of psychology …
Psychoanalysis: Freud, Therapy, and More - WebMD
May 12, 2023 · Psychoanalysis is a type of mental health theory and therapy focused on uncovering unconscious feelings, desires, and conflicts that affect your life and may be the root of mental …
How Psychoanalysis Influenced the Field of Psychology
May 5, 2023 · Psychoanalysis is a method of therapy in which the patient talks about experiences, early childhood, and dreams. It refers to both a theory and a type of therapy based on the belief …
Psychoanalysis: A History of Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
Nov 10, 2024 · In this article, we’ll introduce the history of psychoanalytic theory, the basic tenets of the psychoanalytic model of the mind, and the clinical approach called psychoanalysis. We’ll …
Psychoanalysis - American Psychological Association (APA)
Psychoanalysts are trained to know about how things we are not aware of can cause us to act in ways that feel out of our control. Psychoanalysis looks at how our experiences shape who we are …
Understanding Psychoanalysis: Techniques and Theories
Jun 23, 2024 · What is Psychoanalysis? 🔗. Psychoanalysis is a therapeutic approach that seeks to explore the unconscious mind to identify unresolved conflicts that affect mental health.