Although both Kleinian psychoanalysts and their critics take it for granted that there is a therapeutic technique distinctive to the Kleinian approach, comparatively little has been written about what it is. In Melanie Klein Today, Volume 2, Elizabeth Bott Spillius brings together classic and new papers to make it possible to understand the main elements of the Kleinian therapeutic technique. In recent years there have been important refinements in this technique, notably in regard to the balance to be struck in interpreting destructiveness, the use of the so-called part-object language, and the precise ways to understand and interpret 'acting-in' and the role of the past in the present. This collection draws these developments together and makes clear why an integral part of contemporary Kleinian theory and practice is concerned with the careful scrutiny of the therapeutic process itself. The volume includes detailed accounts of clinical work with both adults and children and takes further the theoretical ideas discussed in Melanie Klein Today, Volume 1. The papers and the editorial commentary in this book together comprise the most illuminating and coherent rationale for the Kleinian technique yet published. The ideas will be of interest to members of many disciplines and a final section includes papers on the application of the Kleinian approach in other fields of work.

Melanie Klein Today, Volume 1 is the first of two volumes of collected essays devoted to developments in psychoanalysis based on the work of Melanie Klein. The papers are arranged into four groups: the analysis of psychotic patients, projective identification, on thinking, and pathalogical organisation.

Melanie Klein Today, Volume 1 is the first of two volumes of collected essays devoted to developments in psychoanalysis based on the work of Melanie Klein. The papers are arranged into four groups: the analysis of psychotic patients, projective identification, on thinking, and pathalogical organisation.

Containment and Reciprocity shows how the psychoanalytic concept of containment and the child development concept of reciprocity can be used together to inform clinical work with young children and their families. Using extracts of mother/child and therapist/child interactions, Hazel Douglas explores, for the first time, the relationship between these concepts, and shows how they underpin the quality of an attachment. Using clinical examples from the author’s own psychoanalytic work with very young children as well as her recent research, the book explores these two concepts with important implications for psychotherapeutic technique. Containment and Reciprocity will make valuable reading for all those working in the field of infant mental health.

The members of the Betty Joseph Workshop have provided major contributions to psychoanalytic thinking since the meeting's inception in 1962. This book is a celebration of Betty Joseph's work, and the work of a group of analysts who have joined her to discuss obstacles to psychic change in psychoanalytic treatment. A prestigious line up of contributors present clinical material for discussion on a range of topics including: Supporting psychic change Complacency in analysis and everyday life Containment, enactment and communication. The history of psychoanalysis is one of an ongoing struggle to reach a new understanding of the human psyche and develop more effective methods of treatment. In Pursuit of Psychic Change reflects this tradition - discussions of each contribution by other members of the group provide an in-depth exploration of the merits and limitations of a developing analytic technique, in the hope of achieving true psychic change. All psychoanalysts will benefit from the insights provided into the original and stimulating work of the members of the Betty Joseph Workshop.

Working in the human services has always been stressful, and the current massive changes in the organization of these services, together with dwindling resources and ever greater demands for cost effectiveness, add to the stresses inherent in the work. Even in the best run and best resourced organizations there are pockets of irrationality where unconscious institutional processes undermine both effectiveness and morale. The contributors to this book use ideas drawn from psychoanalysis, open systems theory, Bion's work with groups, and group relations training to explore the difficulties experienced by managers and staff in a wide range of care settings. Each concept is illustrated with examples from practice to make it recognizable and useful to the reader. Each chapter develops a theme relating to work with a particular client group or setting (including hospitals, schools, day centres, residential units, community services and many others), or explores aspects of work organization (for example, the supervisory relationship, facing cuts and closure, or intergroup collaboration). By describing both the difficulties and their own feelings and thoughts while consulting to these institutions, the authors offer the reader new ways of looking at their own experiences at work which will be both enlightening and helpful.

Stories can explore complicated ideas and bring shared experiences to life. Footage of the Knicks’ upset win in the NBA finals triggers a traumatic memory of family tragedy. A young girl starts bullying her best friend after her big sister goes off to sleepaway camp. An adolescent works through her feelings of anger at her father over her parents’ divorce after discovering his infidelity. A patient’s ugly shoes remind an analyst of her own childhood scars. A daughter recognizes her Holocaust-survivor father’s resilience as she comes to terms with his vulnerability after a life-altering accident. Bringing together these narratives and many more, When the Garden Isn’t Eden reveals how psychoanalysis sheds light on the troubles of everyday life. Through poignant and sometimes painful stories from their personal and professional lives, three practicing psychoanalysts demonstrate the richness of psychodynamic thinking. Each chapter offers an illustrative and powerful personal vignette followed by an analytical reflection that explicates key psychodynamic concepts, showing how these ideas inform and deepen our understanding of what makes us human. Blending storytelling and psychotherapy, When the Garden Isn’t Eden makes psychodynamic theory vivid and accessible to students, teachers, clinicians, and anyone curious about how therapists work and think.

Since Freud's initial papers on transference and countertransference, these vast and inexhaustible subjects have occupied psychoanalysts. Transference and countertransference, the essence of the patient/analyst relationship, are concepts so central to pschoanalysis that, to our minds, they transcend theoretical orientation and, thus, can be seen as a unifying focus of psychoanalysis. However differently theoretical traditions conceptualize the transference, or disagree as to when and how to interpret it in our everyday analytic work, we all embrace the phenomenon as vital to psychic change.

This title was first published in 2001. Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of psychoanalysis, and on considerations of the nature of psychoanalytic theory itself, this book reveals new possibilities which psychoanalysis offers for an understanding of the mind - more broadly, the subject of mental states - and its relation to the world. Entailing a re-examination of an approach embedded in the work of certain Continental thinkers, notably Heidegger and Hegel, the connections between philosophy and psychoanalysis presented in this book represent a fresh departure. Linking Kleinian notions of an "inner world" of unconscious phantasy, to philosophical conceptions of non-linguistic meaning whose significance for the psychoanalytic understanding of subjectivity has been hitherto overlooked, Snelling argues that psychoanalysis demands a significant place in our philosophical understanding of ourselves.

Interest in the relationship between psychoanalysis and art - and other disciplines - is growing. In his new book Reflections on the Aesthetic: Psychoanalysis and the uncanny, Gregorio Kohon examines and reflects upon psychoanalytic understandings of estrangement, the Freudian notions of the uncanny and Nachträglichkeit, exploring how these are evoked in works of literature and art, and are present in our response to such works. Kohon provides close readings of and insights into the works of Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Louise Bourgeois, Juan Muñoz, Anish Kapoor, Richard Serra, Edvard Munch, Kurt Schwitters, amongst others; the book also includes a chapter on the Warsaw Ghetto Monument and the counter-monument aesthetic movement in post-war Germany. Kohon shows how some works of art and literature represent something that otherwise eludes representation, and how psychoanalysis and the aesthetic share the task of making a representation of the unrepresentable. Reflections on the Aesthetic is not an exercise in "applied" psychoanalysis; psychoanalysis and art are considered by the author in their own terms, allowing a new understanding of the aesthetic to emerge. Kohon’s book makes compelling reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, art therapists, literary and art critics, academics, students and all those interested in the matter of the aesthetic.