C Zanne And The Post Bionian Field

By inviting a ‘conversation’ between them, this book offers a nuanced introduction both to Cézanne—the ‘father of modern art’—and perhaps the most vital body of theory in contemporary psychoanalysis, ‘post-Bionian field theory’, as it has been evolving in Italy in the hands of Antonino Ferro, Giuseppe Civitarese, and others. Cézanne and Bion, each insisting on his own truths, spearheaded quite new directions in painting and in psychoanalysis. Both point us towards a crucial insight: far from being isolated, self-contained ‘subjects’, we fundamentally exist only within a larger interpersonal ‘field’. Cézanne’s painting can give us a direct experience of this. For the Italian field analysts, building on Bion’s work, the field is accessed through reverie, metaphor, and dream, which now come to occupy the heart of psychoanalysis. Here primitive ‘proto-emotions’ that link us all might be transformed—as Cézanne transformed his ‘sensations’—into aesthetic form, into feelings-linked-to-thoughts that in turn enrich and expand the field. The book draws on the words of artists (Cézanne himself, Mann), philosophers (Merleau-Ponty, Bergson), art historians and theorists (Clark, Smith, Shaw), as well as psychoanalysts (Bion, Ferro, Civitarese, and others), and it is the first to focus on one particular—and seminal—painter as a way of exploring this aesthetic and ‘field’ dimension in depth and detail. Aimed at psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, artists, art historians, and the general reader, it suggests how far art and contemporary psychoanalysis are mutually generative.

What is it like to be an artist? Drawing on interviews with professional artists, this book takes the reader inside the creative process. The author, an artist and a psychotherapist, uses psychoanalytic theory to shed light on fundamental questions such as the origin of new ideas and the artist’s state of mind while working. Based on interviews with 33 professional artists, who reflect on their experiences of creating new works of art, as well as her own artistic practice, Patricia Townsend traces the trajectory of the creative process from the artist’s first inkling or ‘pre-sense’, through to the completion of a work, and its release to the public. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, particularly the work of Donald Winnicott, Marion Milner and Christopher Bollas, the book presents the artist’s process as a series of interconnected and overlapping stages, in which there is a movement between the artist’s inner world, the outer world of shared ‘reality’, and the spaces in-between. Creative States of Mind: Psychoanalysis and the Artist’s Process fills an important gap in the psychoanalytic theory of art by offering an account of the full trajectory of the artist’s process based on the evidence of artists themselves. It will be useful to artists who want to understand more about their own processes, to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in their clinical work, and to anyone who studies the creative process.

Elizabeth Severn, known as "R.N." in Sandor Ferenczi’s Clinical Diary, was Ferenczi’s analysand for eight years, the patient with whom he conducted his controversial experiment in mutual analysis, and a psychoanalyst in her own right who had a transformative influence on his work. The Discovery of the Self is the distillation of that experience and allows us to hear the voice of one of the most important patients in the history of psychoanalysis. However, Freud branded Severn Ferenczi’s "evil genius" and her name does not appear in Ernest Jones’s biography, so she has remained largely unknown until now. This book is a reissue of Severn’s landmark work of 1933, together with an introduction by Peter L. Rudnytsky that sets out the unrecognized importance of her thinking both for the development of psychoanalysis and for contemporary theory. Inspired by the realization that Severn has embedded disguised case histories both of herself and of Ferenczi, as well as of her daughter Margaret, Rudnytsky shows how The Discovery of the Self contains "the other side of the story" of mutual analysis and is thus an indispensable companion volume to the Clinical Diary. A full partner in Ferenczi’s rehabilitation of trauma theory and champion of the view that the analyst must participate in the patient’s reliving of past experiences, Severn emerges as the most profound conduit for Ferenczi’s legacy in the United States, if not in the entire world. Lacking any institutional credentials and once completely marginalized, Elizabeth Severn can at long last be given her due as a formidable psychoanalyst. Newly available for the first time in more than eighty years, The Discovery of the Self is simultaneously an engaging introduction to psychotherapy that will appeal to general readers as well as a sophisticated text to be savored by psychoanalytic scholars and clinicians as a "prequel" to the works of Heinz Kohut and a neglected classic of relational psychoanalysis.

Published in 2017 in Great Britain by National Portrait Gallery Publications, London.

Traditional psychoanalysis relies on the presence of certain meaning-making capacities in the patient for its effectiveness. Primitive Mental States examines how particular capacities including those for symbolising, fantasising, dreaming, experiencing and finding meanings in those experiences, can be taken for granted. Many of us lack these capacities in certain dimensions of our minds making traditional psychoanalysis ineffective. In this book, international contributors are brought together to consider a radical evolution in contemporary psychoanalytic theory developed from a combination of ultrasound studies, infant analysis, and observation of mothers and babies. These findings demonstrate how much mental life exists even before birth and considers unevolved, unborn and barely born aspects of the self such as the birth of emotion and the birth of alpha functioning. Topics covered include: prenatal imprints on the mind and body difficult to treat patients non-verbal, non-symbolic, disembodied states of being early relational and attachment trauma. Illustrated throughout with original data and extensive clinical discussions from some of the biggest names in the field, Primitive Mental States will be a useful resource for students and seasoned analysts alike.

Designed to be used as both a class text and a resource for researchers and practitioners, Arts Based Research provides a framework for those who seek to broaden the domain of qualitative inquiry in the social sciences by incorporating the arts as forms that represent human knowing.

This book examines the significance of the couple relationship in the 21st century, exploring in depth how couple relationships are changing in different parts of the world. It highlights global trends and cultural variations that are shaping couple relationships. The book discusses diverse relationships, such as intercultural couples, same sex couples, long distance couples, polygynous marriages, and later life couples. In addition, chapters offer suggestions for ways to best support couples through policy, clinical practices, and community support. The book also investigates aspects of a relationship that help predict fidelity and stability. Topics featured in this book include: Couple relationships when one partner has an acquired physical disability. Impact of smartphones on relationships. Online dating and its implications for couple relationships. Assessment and intervention in situations of infidelity and non-monogamy. Parenting interventions for the transition from partnership to parenthood. Online couple psychotherapy to support emotional links between long distance partners. Couple Relationships in a Global Context is an essential resource for researchers, professors, and graduate students as well as clinicians and practitioners in family therapy, clinical psychology, general practice/family medicine, social work, and related psychology and medical disciplines.

This book provides an exploration of the clinical practice of psychoanalysis and analytical psychology. It explores the ways psychoanalysts and other clinicians are taught to evade direct emotional connections with their patients. Sullivan, suggesting that relatedness is the basis of emotional health, examines the universal struggle between socially oriented energies that struggle toward truth and narcissistic impulses that push us to take refuge in lies. She maintains that, rather than making interpretations, it is the clinician’s capacity to bring relatedness to the clinical encounter which is the crucial factor. Examining the work of both Jung and Bion, Sullivan draws on the overlap between their ideas on the psyche and the nature of the unconscious. The book uses clinical examples to examine the implications that these perspectives have for the practising therapist. Specific areas of discussion include: the creative unconscious the structure of narcissism transformation in analytic work. New modes of listening and relating that deepen analytic work and greatly facilitate transformative changes are described in easy-to-follow language that will help the therapist to find new approaches to a wide range of patients. The Mystery of Analytical Work will be of interest to Jungians, psychoanalysts and all those with an interest in analytic work.