The Psychoanalytic Mind

Bringing a fresh contemporary Freudian view to a number of current issues in psychoanalysis, this book is about a psychoanalytic method that has been evolved by Fred Busch over the past 40 years called Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind. It is based on the essential curative process basic to most psychoanalytic theories - the need for a shift in the patient's relationship with their own mind. Busch shows that with the development of a psychoanalytic mind the patient can acquire the capacity to shift the inevitability of action to the possibility of reflection. Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind is derived from an increasing clarification of how the mind works that has led to certain paradigm changes in the psychoanalytic method. While the methods of understanding the human condition have evolved since Freud, the means of bringing this understanding to patients in a way that is meaningful have not always followed. Throughout, Fred Busch illustrates that while the analyst's expertise is crucial to the process, the analyst's stance, rather than mainly being an expert in the content of the patient's mind, is primarily one of helping the patient to find his own mind. Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists interested in learning a theory and technique where psychoanalytic meaning and meaningfulness are integrated. It will enable professionals to work differently and more successfully with their patients.

Psychoanalysts working in clinical situations are constantly confronted with the struggle between conservative forces and those which enable something new to develop. Continuity and change, stasis and transformation, are the major themes discussed in The Work of Psychoanalysis, and address the fundamental question: How does and how can change take place? The Work of Psychoanalysis explores the underlying coherence of the complex linked issues of theory and practice. Drawing on clinical cases from her own experience in the consulting room Dana Birksted-Breen focuses on what takes place between patient and analyst, giving a picture of the interlocking and overlapping vertices that make up the work needed in psychoanalysis. Some of the key topics covered include: sexuality; aspects of female identity; eating disorders; time; dreams; disturbances in modalities of thought; and terminating psychoanalysis. This book draws different traditions into a coherent theoretical position with consequences for the mode of working analytically. The Work of Psychoanalysis will appeal to psychoanalysts and academics in psychoanalysis, psychotherapists, as well as postgraduate students studying courses in these fields.

Despite the widespread influence of psychoanalysis in the field of mental health, until now no single book has been published that explains the psychoanalytic model of the mind to the many students and practitioners who want to understand it. The Psychoanalytic Model of the Mind represents an important breakthrough: in simple language, it presents complicated ideas and concepts in an accessible manner, demystifies psychoanalysis, debunks some of the myths that have plagued it, and defuses the controversies that have too long attended it. The author effectively demonstrates that the psychoanalytic model of the mind is consistent with a brain-based approach. Even in patients whose mental illness has a predominantly biological basis, psychological factors contribute to the onset, expression, and course of the illness. For this reason, treatments that focus exclusively on symptoms are not effective in sustaining change. The psychoanalytic model provides clinicians with the framework to understand each patient as a unique psychological being. The book is rich in descriptive detail yet pragmatic in its approach, offering many features and benefits: In addition to providing the theoretical scaffolding for psychodynamic psychotherapy, the book emphasizes the critical importance of forging a strong treatment alliance, which requires understanding the transference and countertransference reactions that either disrupt or strengthen the clinician-patient bond. The book is respectful of Freud without being reverential; it considers his contribution as founder of psychoanalysis in the context of the historical and conceptual evolution of the field. The final section is devoted to learning to use the psychoanalytic model and exploring how it can be integrated with existing models of the mind. In addition to being a valuable reference for mental health clinicians, the text can serve as a resource for undergraduate and graduate students of philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, literature, and all academic disciplines outside of the mental health professions who may want to learn more about what psychoanalysts have to say about the mind. Important features include an extensive glossary of terms, a series of illustrative tables, and appendixes addressing libido theory and defenses. Drawing upon a broad range of sources to make her case, the author persuasively argues that the basic tenets of the psychoanalytic model of the mind are supported by empirical evidence as well as clinical efficacy. The Psychoanalytic Model of the Mind is a fascinating exploration of this complex model of mental functioning, and both clinicians and students of the mind will find it comprehensive and riveting.

This work discusses the view that there is no thought, and thus no meaning, without language, and shows how this concurs with psychoanalytic theory and practice. It includes coverage of: the explanation of action; the concept of subjectivity; and the geneology of morals.

An intellectual biography aiming to demonstrate, despite his denials, that Freud was a "biologist of the mind". The author analyzes the political aspects of the complex myth of Freud as "psychoanalytic hero" as it served to consolidate the analytic movement.

In an effort to expand the clinical theory of psychoanalysis, John E. Gedo and Arnold Goldberg delineate and order the various generally accepted systems of psychological functioning, considered here as "models of the mind." The authors provide a historical review of four major models of the mind: the topographic model, the reflex arc model, the tripartite model, and an object relations model. They then investigate the possible hierarchical interrelationships of such models. Each model is shown to represent a different facet of mental functioning and is thus employable on an ad hoc basis. The models are shown not to cancel on another out but to allow for theoretical complementarity. Gedo and Goldberg apply their theory to four classic psychoanalytic case studies to demonstrate its effectiveness: Freud's Rat Man, his Wolf Man, the case of Daniel Paul Schreber, and a case of arrested development. For each of these cases the authors show how it would have been both possible and advantageous to apply a variety of different theories as facts about each continued to accumulate.

On the Lyricism of the Mind: Psychoanalysis and Literature explores the lyrical dimension (or the lyricism) of the psychic space. It is not presented as an artistic disposition, but rather as a universal psychic quality which enables the recovery and recuperation of the self. The specific nature of human lyricism is defined as the interaction as well as the integration of two psychic modes of experience originally defined by the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion: The emergent and the continuous principles of the self. Dana Amir elaborates Bion's general notion of an interaction between the emergent and the continuous principles of the self, offering a discussion of the specific function of each principle and of the significance of the various types of interaction between them as the basis for mental health or pathology. The author applies these theoretical notions in her analytic work by means of literary illustrations showing how the lyrical dimension may be used to teach psychoanalytic readings of literature and explore the connection between psychoanalytic and literary languages. On the Lyricism of the Mind presents a new psychoanalytic understanding of the capacity to heal, to grieve, to love and to know, using literary illustrations but also literary language in order to extract a new formulation out of the classic psychoanalytic language of Winnicott and Bion. This book will appear to a wide audience to include psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and art therapists. It is also extremely relevant to literary scholars, including students of literary criticism, philosophers of language and philosophers of mind, novelists, poets, and to the wide educated readership in general.

This book is based on various cases whose common factor is how the psychoanalytic setting is created: the internalization and realization inside the patient`s mind: with the feeling of fixed hours and the transferential relation with the psychoanalyst. Referring to the great masters of psychoanalysis, the author guides us step by step through the mysterious terrain of the mind, especially in its most regressive, primitive and psychotic aspects. Thomas Ogden, commenting on the papers collected here, wrote that 'they represent two of the most important contributions of the past decade to the understanding of the psychoanalytic treatment of psychotic patients'. This book is intended to be felt and thought about. The reader is asked to read between the lines, to imagine and feel beyond the words on the page. It will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and students.