The importance of knowing and being known is at the heart of the human experience and has always been the core of the psychoanalytic enterprise. Freud named his central Oedipal construct after Sophocles’ great play that dramatically encapsulated the desire, difficulty, and dangers involved in knowing and being known. Psychoanalysis’ founder developed a methodology to facilitate unconscious material becoming conscious, that is, making the unknown known to help us better understand ourselves and our relational lives, including psychic trauma, and multigenerational histories. This book will stimulate readers to contemplate knowing and being known from multiple perspectives. It bursts with thought-provoking ideas and intriguing cases illuminated by penetrating reflections from diverse theoretical perspectives. It will sensitize readers to this theme’s omnipresent, varied importance in the clinical setting and throughout life. Accomplished contributors discuss a wide variety of fascinating topics, illustrated by rich clinical material. Their contributions are grouped under these headings: Knowing through dreams; Knowing through appearances; Dreading and longing to be known; The analyst’s ways of knowing and communicating; Knowing in the contemporary sociocultural context; The known analyst; and No longer known. Readers will find each section deeply informative, stimulating thought, insights, and ideas for clinical practice. Psychoanalytic Explorations in Knowing and Being Known will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, clinical social workers, counselors, students in these disciplines, and members of related scholarly communities.

Nina E. Cerfolio masterfully explores the deeper spiritual and psychoanalytic understanding of the origins of human aggressive and destructive instincts which underlie mass shootings and terrorism. The author survived two terrorist attacks: developing breast cancer from being a first responder at 9/11, and being poisoned by an FSB agent while providing humanitarian aid in the Second Chechen War. Through a personal, scholarly investigation into her psyche, the author describes the spiritual awakening that was catalyzed by these events and their traumatic impact, and examines how a world could create the firmament for the kinds of destructive aggression that are a daily occurrence. Featuring cutting-edge quantitative research and case material, which illustrates the prevalence of undiagnosed and untreated psychiatric illness among mass shooters and terrorists, this book encourages dialogue about the stigma of mental illness and challenges the perception of terrorists as monsters with no societal responsibility. Championing the forgotten collective humiliation of the marginalized—which in turn breeds terrorism—and documenting a new spiritual lens through which healing is possible, this book will be essential reading for mental health workers and anyone wishing to understand the traumatizing epoch in which we are living.

'Any Psychoanalyst must find his own way and come upon well-known and well-established theories through experiences of his own realisations.' So says W. R. Bion in his Commentary in Second Thoughts. In First Thoughts, Jayne Hankinson does just this. She presents a personal account of her own 'realisations' and discoveries during an attempt to give thought to 'beginnings'. She explores the meaning and relevance of creation myths, leading to a deep realisation of how they unconsciously represent and shape much of our lives, even today. This exploration meanders through the Garden of Eden, leaving with a realisation that there is an 'Adam' and 'Eve' aspect in dynamic tension within each of our minds. This serpentine journey becomes a 'hermeneutic loop' in which dissatisfaction with parts of psychoanalytic theory leads to an engagement in the phenomena of beginnings and a consequent reappraisal and reinterpretation, via a closer look at Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, and Wilfred Bion to formulate an understanding of what their 'first thoughts' may be. The book ends with the author's own creation myth reshaped and a deeper awareness of how important 'beginnings' are.

Watching people protest, one hypothesis is that underlying these actions for specific justifiable causes is a sense of wishing to belong, of wishing not to be alone. Recent knowledge from patients and empirical research shows the importance of belonging to groups to both psychological and physical well-being. The problems of many students, minority group members, immigrants, terrorists, and lonely people are linked to an insufficient sense of belonging. Whereas psychoanalytic theory has focused on the need for a secure attachment to a primary caretaker, it has failed to note the importance of a sense of belonging to the family group, a friendship group, a community, a religious group, a nation-state, etc. This book demonstrates the difficulties faced by those who immigrate, those who never feel a sense of their true selves as belonging in a family or a cohesive professional group, and the difficulties of psychoanalysts themselves in knowing where they belong in patients’ lives. The problems of breaking up marital and professional relationships as well as our relationship with the Earth are also discussed. Freudian theory rejected the idea of a sense of "oneness" with humanity as being infantile. Recent developments regarding the similarities between meditational practices and psychoanalysis have questioned Freud’s idea. This book shows the importance of an interpersonal/relational psychoanalysis focusing on real relationships and not simply one that examines inner conflicts. It will be useful to psychologists, other mental health practitioners, social scientists, and anyone with normal struggles in life.

Every day, clinicians encounter challenges to empathy and communication while struggling to assist patients with diverse life histories, character, sexuality, gender, psychopathology, cultural, religious, political, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. Most writing pertaining to ideas of similarity, discrepancy, and ‘the Other’ has highlighted differences. Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity and Difference: Navigating the Divide offers a different focus, emphasising points of contact, connection, and how divisions between people can be transcended. In-depth case material, astutely elucidated by diverse theoretical approaches, furnishes stimulating ideas and valuable suggestions for facilitating a meeting of minds and psychological growth in patients who might otherwise be difficult or impossible to engage. Exploring how psychoanalysts can navigate obstacles to understanding and communicating with suffering individuals, topics covered include: internal experience of likeness and difference in the patient; in the analyst; and how analysts can find echoes of themselves in patients. Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists will appreciate the importance and value of this wide-ranging, groundbreaking exploration of these insufficiently addressed dimensions of human experience.

In Vitalization in Psychoanalysis, Schwartz Cooney and Sopher develop and explore the concept of vitalization, generating new ways of approaching and conceptualizing the psychoanalytic project. Vitalization refers to the process between two people that ignites new experiences and brings withdrawn aspects of the self to life. This book focuses on how psychoanalysis can be a uniquely creative encounter that can aid this enlivening internal process, offering a vibrant new take on the psychotherapeutic project. There is a long tradition in psychoanalysis that addresses the ways that the unique subjectivities of each member of the therapeutic dyad contribute to the repetition of entrenched patterns of relating, and how the processing of enactments can be reparative. But this overlap in subjectivities can also bring to life undeveloped experiences. This focus on generativity and progressive action represents a significant, cutting-edge turn in psychoanalysis. Vitalization in Psychoanalysis represents a deep meditation on this transformational moment in the history of psychoanalytic thought. Pulling together work from major writers on vitalization from all the main psychoanalytic schools of thought, and covering development, theory and clinical practice, this book will be an invaluable guide for clinicians of all backgrounds, as well of students of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

A contemporary, wide-ranging exploration of one of the most provocative topics currently under psychoanalytic investigation: the relationship of dissociation to varieties of knowing and unknowing. The twenty-eight essays collected here invite readers to reflect upon the ways the mind is structured around and through knowing, not-knowing, and sort-of-knowing or uncertainty. The authors explore the ramifications of being up against the limits of what they can know as through their clinical practice, and theoretical considerations, they simultaneously attempt to open up psychic and physical experience. How, they ask, do we tolerate ambiguity and blind spots as we try to know? And how do we make all of this useful to our patients and ourselves? The authors approach these and similar epistemological questions through an impressively wide variety of clinical dilemmas (e.g., the impact of new technologies upon the analytic dyad) and theoretical specialties (e.g., neurobiology).

Failure is a theme of great importance in most clinical conditions, and in everyday life, from birth until death. Its impact can be destabilizing, even disastrous. In spite of these facts, there has been no comprehensive psychoanalytic exploration of this topic. Understanding and Coping with Failure: Psychoanalytic Perspectives fills this gap by examining failure from many perspectives. It goes a long way toward increasing understanding of the numerous issues involved, and provides many valuable insights into ways of coping with these challenging experiences and several chapters discuss positive aspects of failure - what can be learned from what would otherwise simply be regrettable experiences. Brent Willock, Rebecca Coleman Curtis and Lori C. Bohm bring together a rich diversity of topics explored in thoughtful ways by an international group of authors from the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States of America. Failed therapies (which have been examined in the literature) are but one element freshly explored in this comprehensive exploration of the topic. The book is divided into sections covering the following topics: Failing and Forgiving; Society-Wide Failure; Failure in the Family; Therapeutic Failure; Professional Failure in the Consulting Room and on the Career Path; Integrity versus Despair: Facing Failure in the Final Phase of the Life Cycle; Metaphoric Bridges and Creativity; The Long Shadow of Childhood Relational Trauma. Understanding and Coping with Failure will be eagerly welcomed by all those trying to increase their awareness, understanding, and capacity to work with the many ramifications of this important issue. Because of the uniqueness of this broad, detailed exploration of the complexities of the failure experience, it will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, counselors, and students in these disciplines. It will also appeal to a wider audience interested in the psychoanalytic perspective.

Developmental Perspectives in Child Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy incorporates recent innovations in developmental theory and research into our understanding of the nature of change in child psychotherapy. Diverse psychoanalytic ideas and individual styles are represented, challenging the historical allegiance in analytic child therapy to particular, and so often singular, schools of thought. Each of the distinguished contributors offers a conceptually grounded and clinically rich account of child development, addressing topics such as refl ective functioning, the role of play, dreaming, trauma and neglect, the development of recognition and mutuality, autism, adoption, and non- binary conceptions of gender. Extended clinical vignettes offer the reader clear vision into the convergence of theory and practice, demonstrating the potential of psychoanalytic psychotherapy to move child development forward. This book will appeal to all practicing mental health professionals.

Founded on the in-depth discussion of sixteen clinical cases of psychoanalysis, this book answers the question of what psychoanalysts do when they are practicing psychoanalysis. The authors have collaborated with over a thousand colleagues worldwide to collect a unique dataset of everyday clinical sessions, using a new workshop discussion method designed to reveal differences. Faced with diversity and wanting to surface and understand it, they had to evolve a new theoretical framework. This framework covers different approaches to the analytic situation (using the metaphors of cinema, dramatic monologue, theater, and immersive theater): different sources of data to infer unconscious content; differences in the troubles patients unconsciously experience and how to approach them; and differences in when, about what, and how a psychoanalyst should talk. Taking the form of eleven very practical questions for psychoanalysts to ask of each session they conduct, the framework helps experienced psychoanalysts and students alike determine their intention and independently assess their progress. A final chapter applies the new framework and practical questions to contemporary technical controversies with some surprising results.