Creativity And The Erotic Dimensions Of The Analytic Field

Creativity and the Erotic Dimensions of the Analytic Field centers on the mutually reinforcing relationship between erotic and creative energies. Erotic embodiment is given context within a contemporary model of clinical process based in analytic field theory and highlighting Winnicott. Dianne Elise uses clinical material to bring theory alive, giving clinicians an explicit picture of how they might utilize the ideas presented. In a fascinating return to Freud’s emphasis on libido and Eros, a creative mind is seen as located within a libidinal connection to the erotic body. The erotic is underscored as an important ingredient of the clinical situation—a lively spontaneity that partakes of the analyst’s as well as the patient’s creative self, vitalizing the field of clinical engagement. A full formulation of the analytic field must include awareness of the centrality of the erotic in the maternal matrix, in ongoing development, and in the clinical setting. The erotic-aesthetic dimension of the mind potentiates the creative interplay of the analytic process. Written in an engaging and accessible style, this original contribution makes complex theory available to psychoanalytic clinicians at all levels, and to a wide range of readers, while offering sophisticated theoretical and clinical innovations. Elise addresses the need to engage multiple aspects of erotic life while maintaining a reliable professional boundary.

Offering a uniquely psychoanalytic developmental perspective on male gender identity and the sense of maleness, this book provides an in-depth analysis of the development of masculinity in childhood and its continued evolution throughout a man’s life. Drawing on classical Freudian theory, as well as on more contemporary psychoanalytic theories, this book explores early infancy and child development, preoedipal factors and the oedipal complex, the influence of parenting and the unconscious transmission of gendered factors both by mothers and both biological and symbolic fathers, the male ego ideal, social, cultural, and biological influences, the role of inherent psychic bi-genderality in the context of gender binaries, and the inherent gendered tensions and challenges experienced as an individual progresses into adult and later life. This book is original in its characterization of the male developmental trajectory as underpinned by psychoanalytic principles pertaining to conflict and inherent tensions that continue throughout the life cycle and strongly impact other areas of life. Deeply rooted in the unconscious, a man’s multiply determined sense of masculinity requires deconstructing the mother, the feminine, and the other in the male psyche. As the text illustrates via clinical vignettes, an awareness and an understanding of these areas can improve the clinical work of psychoanalysts working with men who struggle with the intrinsic conflicts in their sense of maleness. This book will be of great clinical value to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and other mental health practitioners, and will stimulate the thinking of scholars in such areas as gender theory, psychodynamic and sociocultural aspects of gender roles, and the changing social definition of masculinity.

Creativity is of rising interest to scholars and laypeople alike. Creativity in the arts, however, is very different from creativity in science, business, sports, cooking, or teaching. This book brings together top experts in the field from around the world to discuss creativity across many different domains. Each chapter includes clear definitions, intriguing research, potential measures, and suggestions for development or future directions. After a broad discussion of creativity across different domains, subsequent chapters look deeper into those individual domains (traditional arts, sciences, business, newer domains, and everyday life) to explore how creativity varies when expressed in different ways. Ultimately, the book offers a future-looking perspective integrating the different variations of creativity across domains.

The classic, in-depth history of psychoanalysis, presenting over a hundred years of thought and theories Sigmund Freud's concepts have become a part of our psychological vocabulary: unconscious thoughts and feelings, conflict, the meaning of dreams, the sensuality of childhood. But psychoanalytic thinking has undergone an enormous expansion and transformation since Freud's death in 1939. With Freud and Beyond, Stephen A. Mitchell and Margaret J. Black make the full scope of twentieth century psychoanalytic thinking—from Harry Stack Sullivan to Jacques Lacan; D.W. Winnicott to Melanie Klein—available for the first time. Richly illustrated with case examples, this lively, jargon-free introduction makes modern psychoanalytic thought accessible at last.

A bold look at the body as a source of contention for those who suffer from personality disorders. This work connects interpersonal neurobiology, attachment theory, and psychoanalytic theory with cognitive and neuroscientific work on implicit memory, trauma theory, and dissociation to propose an integrated method for treating severe borderline and narcissistic disorders, with the prime aim of resolving the affect dysregulation that affects the various realms of bodily discomfort and existential pain. Each chapter presents a particular case and illustrates the methods for working with the specific problems that arise: from bulimia to self-cutting to sexual identity diffusion to suicidality. Treatment is illustrated from the initial level of careful diagnosis to the first stages of the interaction to the further steps and development of the interpersonal work of the dyad patient-therapist, including powerful enactments. In accessible language that references psychodynamic and relational psychoanalytic theory, the book proposes a revision of the etiopathogenesis of personality disorders, starting from the traumatic interpersonal exchanges (early relational trauma, maltreatment, deprivation, and abuse). The book breaks new ground on several levels. For the first time the body is accorded full attention in the treatment: developmentally and epigenetically situation as it is "in-between" the self and the other (at first, the caregiver, then in other circumstances of upbringing and traumatic personal relationships). The body is viewed as the main vehicle of this dysfunctional development, so that both the body and the subject are at once the "victim"—the recipient of the dysregulation resulting in impulsivity, destructiveness, self-harm, or eating disorders—and the internalized persecutor, i.e. the abuser of one's own body that sometimes also becomes the aggressor of others. Profoundly humane and scientifically sound, this book is a must-read for professionals, clients, and families involved in the difficult task of relieving the symptoms and reorganizing the personalities of subjects living in "borderline bodies."

In The Shadow of the Object, Christopher Bollas integrates aspects of Freud’s theory of unconscious thinking with elements from the British Object Relations School. In doing so, he offers radical new visions of the scope of psychoanalysis and expands our understanding of the creativity of the unconscious mind and the aesthetics of human character. During our formative years, we are continually "impressed" by the object world. Most of this experience will never be consciously thought, and but it resides within us as assumed knowledge. Bollas has termed this "the unthought known", a phrase that has ramified through many realms of human exploration, including the worlds of letters, psychology and the arts. Aspects of the unthought known --the primary repressed unconscious --will emerge during a psychoanalysis, as a mood, the aesthetic of a dream, or in our relation to the self as other. Within the unique analytic relationship, it becomes possible, at least in part, to think the unthought -- an experience that has enormous transformative potential. Published here with a new preface by Christopher Bollas, The Shadow of the Object remains a classic of the psychoanalytic literature, written by a truly original thinker.

The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts is a major collection of new writings on research in the creative and performing arts by leading authorities from around the world. It provides theoretical and practical approaches to identifying, structuring and resolving some of the key issues in the debate about the nature of research in the arts which have surfaced during the establishment of this subject over the last decade. Contributions are located in the contemporary intellectual environment of research in the arts, and more widely in the universities, in the strategic and political environment of national research funding, and in the international environment of trans-national cooperation and communication. The book is divided into three principal sections – Foundations, Voices and Contexts – each with an introduction from the editors highlighting the main issues, agreements and debates in each section. The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts addresses a wide variety of concepts and issues, including: the diversity of views on what constitutes arts-based research and scholarship, what it should be, and its potential contribution the trans-national communication difficulties arising from terminological and ontological differences in arts-based research traditional and non-traditional concepts of knowledge, their relationship to professional practice, and their outcomes and audiences a consideration of the role of written, spoken and artefact-based languages in the formation and communication of understandings. This comprehensive collection makes an original and significant contribution to the field of arts-based research by setting down a framework for addressing these, and other, topical issues. It will be essential reading for research managers and policy-makers in research councils and universities, as well as individual researchers, research supervisors and doctoral candidates.

Braving the Erotic Field in the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Adolescents and Children is a groundbreaking collection of chapters by an international group of analytic authors. The book addresses the general lack of psychoanalytic writing on working with erotic feelings in the consulting room when treating children and adolescents. This lack is doubly odd given Freud’s emphasis on childhood sexuality as well as the intensities of the adolescent body/mind. This book takes the view that the subtle interchange of feelings, dreams, narratives and images that arise when erotic feelings are in the fore is better conceptualized as an erotic field, than with the binary of transference/countertransference. In contemporary psychoanalysis the idea that transference love offers the possibility of knowing the other in the deepest possible way is supplanting an attitude of suspicion. Clinical work with small children to late adolescents will be offered, including gay and gender-fluid adolescents. This book makes a decisive contribution to assist clinicians to brave the erotic field with children and adolescents.