Psychoanalytic Theory

Anthony Elliott presents a comprehensive introduction to psychoanalytic theory and its applications in the social sciences and humanities in this new and fully revised second edition of Psychoanalytic Theory. Elliott provides lucid interpretations of key psychoanalytic theorists such as Freud, Klein, Winnicott, Lacan, Deleuze, Kristeva, and Zizek. This revised edition has much new material, including a survey of psychoanalytic approaches to race and postcolonialism from Fanon to Homi Bhabha, as well as a look at the reframing of sexuality studies by such feminist theorists as Judith Butler, Helene Cixous, and Luce Irigaray. The book follows major themes, highlighting the similarities and differences among influential thinkers and schools of thought. At the same time, Psychoanalytic Theory is structured so that the chapters can be read in any order. Each one includes an introductory overview and summary, as well as biographical and historical material for each theorist discussed. This book is an essential starting point for any exploration of the contribution of psychoanalysis to contemporary theory.

This book aims to integrate different psychoanalytic schools and relevant research findings into an integrated psychoanalytic theory of the mind. A main claim explored here, is that a revised and expanded ego psychology constitutes the strongest foundation not only for a unified psychoanalytic theory, but also for the integration of relevant research findings from other disciplines. Sophisticated yet accessible, the book includes a description of the basic tenets of ego psychology and necessary correctives and revisions. It also discusses research and theory on interpersonal understanding, capacity for inhibition, defense, delay of gratification, autonomous ego aims and motives, affect regulation, the nature of psychopathology; and the implications of a revised and expanded ego psychology for approaches to treatment. The book will appeal to readers who are interested in psychoanalysis, the nature of the mind, the nature of psychopathology, and the implications of theoretical formulations and research findings for approaches to treatment. As such, it will also be of great value on graduate and training courses for psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalytic theory remains hugely influential to our understanding of the mind and human behaviour. It provides a rich source of ideas for therapeutic practice, while offering dramatic insights for the study of culture and society. This comprehensive review of the field: - Explores the birth of psychoanalysis, taking the reader step by step through Freud's original ideas and how they developed and evolved - Provides a clear account of fundamental psychoanalytic concepts - Discusses the different schools of psychoanalysis that have emerged since Freud - Illustrates the wider applications of psychoanalytic ideas across film, literature and politics Written by a highly respected authority on psychoanalysis, this book is essential reading for trainees in counselling and psychotherapy, as well as for students across the arts, humanities and social sciences.

Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory provides a masterful overview of the central issue concerning psychoanalysts today: finding a way to deal in theoretical terms with the importance of the patient's relationships with other people. Just as disturbed and distorted relationships lie at the core of the patient's distress, so too does the relation between analyst and patient play a key role in the analytic process. All psychoanalytic theories recognize the clinical centrality of “object relations,” but much else about the concept is in dispute. In their ground-breaking exercise in comparative psychoanalysis, the authors offer a new way to understand the dramatic and confusing proliferation of approaches to object relations. The result is major clarification of the history of psychoanalysis and a reliable guide to the fundamental issues that unite and divide the field. Greenberg and Mitchell, both psychoanalysts in private practice in New York, locate much of the variation in the concept of object relations between two deeply divergent models of psychoanalysis: Freud's model, in which relations with others are determined by the individual's need to satisfy primary instinctual drives, and an alternative model, in which relationships are taken as primary. The authors then diagnose the history of disagreement about object relations as a product of competition between these disparate paradigms. Within this framework, Sullivan's interpersonal psychiatry and the British tradition of object relations theory, led by Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, and Guntrip, are shown to be united by their rejection of significant aspects of Freud's drive theory. In contrast, the American ego psychology of Hartmann, Jacobson, and Kernberg appears as an effort to enlarge the classical drive theory to accommodate information derived from the study of object relations. Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory offers a conceptual map of the most difficult terrain in psychoanalysis and a history of its most complex disputes. In exploring the counterpoint between different psychoanalytic schools and traditions, it provides a synthetic perspective that is a major contribution to the advance of psychoanalytic thought.

From the inception of psychoanalysis as an exploration of unconscious motivations and the power of fantasy life, the field has adopted a Cartesian worldview. From this perspective, the focus of analysis was the intraspychic, what is called the internal world, consisting primarily of fantasies and dreams in opposition to the external world of perceptions and interpersonal relationships. The recognition of the bias toward the internal as opposed to the interpersonal motivated the development of alternative theories, primarily object relations and relational analysis, to bring together the intrapsychic with the interpersonal. Such a view accepts uncritically the existence of an intrapsychic realm somehow separated from an external world to which it must be joined. In this way, even the relational perspective unwittingly accepts the Cartesian subject-object split. These theories are attempting to heal a rift their Cartesian assumption has created. This book begins by discussing psychoanalysis as way of being-in-the-world. It then discusses psychoanalysis and the inverted totalitarianism of neoliberal capitalism; mass production and individuality; violations of human rights; different types of traumatization; understanding workplace stress; some new thoughts about the real relationship in psychoanalytic supervision.

In this first English translation of a classic text by one of the foremost commentators on Lacan's work, Nasio eloquently demonstrates the clinical and practical import of Lacan's theory, even in its most difficult or obscure moments. Five Lessons on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Jacques Lacan is the first English translation of a classic text by one of the foremost commentators on Lacan's work. Juan-David Nasio makes numerous theoretical advances and eloquently demonstrates the clinical and practical import of Lacan's theory, even in its most difficult or obscure moments. What is distinctive, in the end, about Nasio's treatment of Lacan's theory is the extent to which Lacan's fundamental concepts -- the unconscious, jouissance, and the body -- become the locus of the overturning or exceeding of the discrete boundaries of the individual. The recognition of the of the implications of Lacan's psychoanalytic theory, then, brings the analyst to adopt what Nasio calls a "special listening".

This book collates and clarifies psychoanalytic theories on affect, and how they relate to the clinical process. The author outlines and analyses the most important theories on affect, and examines empirical work presented over the past 100 years, exposing the rigidity of some existing notions.

Essays discuss the relations among gender, self, and society, the significance of women's mothering for gender personality and gender relations, and how the psychodynamics of gender create and sustain individualism