Why Psychoanalysis?

Author: Elisabeth Roudinesco
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231518420
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 199

Book Description
Why do some people still choose psychoanalysis-Freud's so-called talking cure-when numerous medications are available that treat the symptoms of psychic distress so much faster? Elisabeth Roudinesco tackles this difficult question, exploring what she sees as a "depressive society": an epidemic of distress addressed only by an increasing reliance on prescription drugs. Far from contesting the efficacy of new medications like Prozac, Zoloft, and Viagra in alleviating the symptoms of any number of mental or nervous conditions, Roudinesco argues that the use of such drugs fails to solve patients' real problems. In the man who takes Viagra without ever wondering why he is suffering from impotence and the woman who is given antidepressants to deal with the loss of a loved one, Roudinesco sees a society obsessed with efficiency and desperate for the quick fix. She argues that "the talking cure" and pharmacology represent not just different approaches to psychiatry, but different worldviews. The rush to treat symptoms is itself symptomatic of an antiseptic and depressive culture in which thought is reduced to the firing of neurons and desire is just a chemical secretion. In contrast, psychoanalysis testifies to human freedom and the power of language.

The How-To Book for Students of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

Author: Sheldon Bach
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429921012
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 87

Book Description
This is a book that grew out of the many practical "how-to" questions that the author's psychotherapy students have asked him over the years. It is neither an evidence-based compendium nor an attempt to summarize general practice or the viewpoints of others, but rather a handbook of practical answers to many of the questions that may puzzle students of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Some of the short chapters include: How to choose a personal psychoanalyst. How to do an initial interview. How to listen to a patient. How to recognize and understand self-states, multiple identities, true and false selves, etc. How to tell what the transference is. How to deal with the sadomasochistic transference. How to understand the need for recognition. How to think about analytic processHow to practice holistic healing. How to refer a patient for medication. How to get paid for your work. How to manage vacations, weekends, illnesses, no-shows and other disturbances of continuity.

Reading French Psychoanalysis

Author: Dana Birksted-Breen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317723325
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 840

Book Description
How has psychoanalysis developed in France in the years since Lacan so dramatically polarized the field? In this book, Dana Birksted-Breen and Sara Flanders of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and Alain Gibeault of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society provide an overview of how French psychoanalysis has developed since Lacan. Focusing primarily on the work of psychoanalysts from the French Psychoanalytical Association and from the Paris Psychoanalytical Society, the two British psychoanalysts view the evolution of theory as it appears to them from the outside, while the French psychoanalyst explains and elaborates from inside the French psychoanalytic discourse. Seminal and representative papers have been chosen to illuminate what is special about French thinking. A substantial general introduction argues in favour of the specificity of 'French psychoanalysis', tracing its early influences and highlighting specific contemporary developments. Sections are made up of introductory material by Alain Gibeault, followed by illustrative papers in the following categories: the history of psychoanalysis in France the pioneers and their legacy the setting and the process of psychoanalysis phantasy and representation the body and the drives masculine and feminine sexuality psychosis. An excellent introduction to French psychoanalytical debate, Reading French Psychoanalysis sheds a complementary light on thinking that has evolved differently in England and North America. It will be ideal reading for beginners and advanced students of clinical theory as well as experienced psychoanalysts wanting to know more about French Psychoanalytic theory, and how it has developed.

Psychoanalysis

Author: Janet Malcolm
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030779783X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 188

Book Description
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

Author: Burness E. Moore
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300080780
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 612

Book Description
In this important book, experts in the field survey current psychoanalytic theory, discussing its principles, technical aspects, clinical phenomena, and applications. The book is both an introduction to and a statement of mainstream American psychoanalysis today and will be a standard reference for psychoanalytic trainees, authors, and teachers. Under the direction of the editors and a distinguished panel of advisors, the contributors present a broad overview of more than forty key clinical and theoretical concepts. They define each concept, trace its historical development within psychoanalysis, describe its present status, discuss criticisms and controversies about it, and point out emerging trends. A selected reference list is supplied for each concept. Together, the articles provide a systematic examination of the theoretical infrastructure of psychoanalysis. The book has been designed as a companion volume to Psychoanalytic Terms and Concepts, a glossary edited by Drs. Moore and Fine under the auspices of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

A People’s History of Psychoanalysis

Author: Daniel José Gaztambide
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498565751
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
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.

Psychoanalysis

Author: Daniel Pick
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191665002
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 173

Book Description
Since its inception, psychoanalysis has been hailed as a revolutionary theory of how the mind works, whilst some of its ideas such as the Oedipus complex have become part of everyday conversation. In Psychoanalysis: A Very Short Introduction, Daniel Pick offers a lucid, lively, and wide-ranging survey of psychoanalysis. This book offers the reader a flavour of what it might be like to enter treatment, and suggests the possible surprises that can await both analyst and patient, as well as the potential benefits. Yet whilst Freud's writings have shaped the way many of us understand dreams, desires, and destructiveness, as well as anxieties, blunders, and guilt, numerous critics have warned of the dangerous methods and time-bound assumptions of psychoanalysis, doubted the efficacy of its drawn-out methods, and dismissed its core claims as pseudo-science. Looking at modern ideas of the self, exploring the nature of unconscious aspects of relationships, and considering how psychoanalysis has evolved, Pick ponders the particular challenges now facing the analytic profession, and shows why psychoanalysis remains an important resource for investigating the mind, its creative functioning and many afflictions. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Psychoanalysis, Behavior Therapy, and the Relational World

Author: Paul L. Wachtel
Publisher: Amer Psychological Assn
ISBN: 9781557984098
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 484

Book Description
In this update of Dr. Wachtel's seminal work, Psychoanalysis and Behavior Therapy, the author has developed a new integrative theory, cyclical psychodynamics, that has reworked traditional psychoanalytic concepts and proved capable of addressing observations and clinical experiences on which both psychoanalytic and behavioral theories are based. Psychoanalysis, Behavior Therapy, and the Relational World carefully examines the implications of new developments in both psychoanalytic and behavioral approaches and significantly extends the cyclical psychodynamic model clinically and theoretically. The book addresses the increasingly powerful influence of cognitive perspectives in the thinking of behavior therapists and the emergence of a distinctive and integrative "relational" point of view in psychoanalysis. Both developments have been incorporated into the evolving cyclical psychodynamic model, as has increasing attention to the systemic point of view that guides the work of family therapists. In addition, this book introduces the reader to an innovative approach to the therapist's use of language. Dr. Wachtel considers in detail what the therapist says and how his or her choice of words can enhance or impede the therapeutic process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)

The Foundations of Psychoanalysis

Author: Adolf Grunbaum
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520907329
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Book Description
This study is a philosophical critique of the foundations of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis. As such, it also takes cognizance of his claim that psychoanalysis has the credentials of a natural science. It shows that the reasoning on which Freud rested the major hypotheses of his edifice was fundamentally flawed, even if the probity of the clinical observations he adduced were not in question. Moreover, far from deserving to be taken at face value, clinical data from the psychoanalytic treatment setting are themselves epistemically quite suspect.

Literature and psychoanalysis

Author: Jeremy Tambling
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526135132
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Book Description
Literature and Psychoanalysis is an exciting, and compulsive working through of what Freud really said, and why it is so important, with a chapter on Melanie Klein and object relations theory, and two chapters on Lacan, and his work on the unconscious as structured like a language. Investigating different forms of literature through a careful examination of Shakespeare, Blake, the Sherlock Holmes stories, and many other examples from literature, the book makes the argument for taking literature and psychoanalysis together, and essential to each other. The book places both literature and psychoanalysis into the context of all that has been said about these subjects in recent debates in the theory of Derrida and Foucault and Žižek, and into the context of gender studies and queer theory.