'This is an extraordinary and exciting book, the work of a truly original and creative psychoanalytic theoretician and most astute clinician. Ogden continues to expand and to deepen his reformulations of the British object-relations theorists, M. Klein, W. R. Bion, D. W. Winnicott, W. R. D. Fairbairn, H. Guntrip, to illuminate further the world of internalized object relations. His concepts are evolutionary and at times revolutionary. Exploring the area of human experience that lies beyond the psychological territories addressed by the previous theorists, he introduces the concept of an autistic-contiguous mode as a way of conceiving of the most primitive psychological organization through which the sensory 'floor' of the experience of self is generated. He conceives of this mode as a sensory-dominated, presymbolic area of experience in which the most primitive form of meaning is generated on the basis of organization of sensory impressions, particularly at the skin surface. A major tenet in the book is a conceptualization of human experience throughout life as the product of a dialectical interplay among three modes of generating experience: the depressive, the paranoid-schizoid, and the autistic-contiguous. Each mode creates, preserves, and negates the other. No single mode of generating experience exists independently of the others. Psychopathology is conceptualized as a 'collapse' of the dialectic in the direction of one or another mode of generating experience. The outcome of such collapse may be entrapment in rigid, asymbolic patterns of sensation (collapse in the direction of the autistic-contiguous mode), or imprisonment in a world of omnipotent internal objects where thoughts and feelings are experienced as things and forces which occupy or bombard the self (collapse in the direction of paranoid-schizoid mode) or isolation of the self from lived experience and aliveness of bodily, sensations (collapse in the direction of the depressive mode). Ogden presents his unique development of the autistic-contiguous mode as the synthesis, interpretation, and extension of the works of D. Meltzer, E. Bick, and F. Tustin. He is careful to state that this psychological organization is a developing and ongoing) mode of generating experience and not a limited phase of development; an elaboration of this primitive organization is an integral part of normal development. All three modes are considered not 'positions' to be passed through, outgrown, or overcome, and relegated to the past, but as integral dimensions of present adult ego functioning. Sensory experience in an autistic-contiguous mode has rhythmicity that is becoming the continuity of being; it has boundedness that is the beginning of experience of the place where one feels things and lives; it has features such as shape, hardness, cold, warmth and texture, beginnings of the qualities of who one is. As his generous case examples aptly demonstrate, Ogden's theories are solidly grounded in his discerning work with a broad variety of patients. His brilliant pathfinding will enlighten and enrich the reader with invaluable insights. He will listen with new ears and with a fresh conceptual framework with which to comprehend the most primitive elements of human development and the complex interplay among the different modes of experience. This is a bold, important, instructive, and stimulating book of equally great clinical and theoretical applicability.' —The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association A Jason Aronson Book

Subjects of Analysis is a work of incomparable significance for the field of psychoanalysis. Ogden reworks and recombines the basic contributions of Freud, Klein, and Winnicott to create a vision of the analytic process that has never existed beforeDstartling in its freshness, moving in its depth and integrity.

An examination of projective identification and its clinical uses from a Kleinian perspective. The author puts forward the hypothesis that identification is the patient's way of mastering significant trauma.

"Ogden constructs an anatomy and physiology of the psychic apparatus based on the interplay of the depressive, the paranoid-schizoid and the autistic - contiguous positions. The last position is his unique creation and refer to a primitive mode of experiencing that involves the moulding and shaping of boundaries."--Provided by publisher.

Thomas H. Ogden is the winner of the 2004 International Journal of Psychoanalysis Award for the Most Important Paper of the year and the 2010 Haskell Norman Prize – an international award for "outstanding achievement as a psychoanalytic clinician, teacher and theoretician". Thomas Ogden is internationally recognized as one of the most creative analytic thinkers writing today. In this book he brings his original analytic ideas to life by means of his own method of closely reading major analytic works. He reads watershed papers in a way that does not simply cast new and discerning light on the works he is discussing, but introduces his own thinking regarding the ideas being discussed in the texts. Ogden offers expanded understandings of some of the most fundamental concepts constituting psychoanalytic theory and practice. He does so by finding in each of the articles he discusses much that the author knew, but did not know that he or she knew. An example of this is how Freud, in his conception of the unconscious workings of mourning and melancholia, was providing the foundation of a theory of unconscious internal object relations. Ogden goes on to provide further re-readings of classic material from the following key contributors to contemporary psychoanalysis: W. R. D. Fairbairn Donald Winnicott Wilfred Bion Hans Loewald Harold Searles. This book is not simply a book of readings, it is a book about reading, about how to read in a way that readers actively rewrite what they are reading, and in so doing makes the ideas truly their own. The concepts that Ogden develops in his readings provide a significant step in the reader’s expansion of his or her understanding of many of the ideas that lie at the cutting edge of contemporary psychoanalysis. It will be of particular interest to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists who use a psychodynamic approach, as well as professionals and academics with an interest in contemporary psychoanalysis.

Reading Winnicott brings together a selection of papers by the psychoanalyst and paediatrician Donald Winnicott, providing an insight into his work and charting its impact on the well-being of mothers, babies, children and families. With individual introductions summarising the key features of each of Winnicott’s papers this book not only offers an overview of Winnicott’s work, but also links it with Freud and later theorists. Areas of discussion include: the relational environment and the place of infantile sexuality aggression and destructiveness illusion and transitional phenomena theory and practice of psychoanalysis of adults and children. As such Reading Winnicott will be essential reading for all students wanting to learn more about Winnicott’s theories and their impact on psychoanalysis and the wider field of mental health.

"Bold, provocative, and highly readable." -V. S. Ramachandran, M.D., author of Phantoms in the Brain What are near-death experiences, out-of-body sensations, and spiritual ecstasy? And what do they have in common? Perhaps no one is more qualified to answer these questions than renowned neurobiologist Dr. Kevin Nelson. Drawing on his more than three decades of groundbreaking research into the "borderlands of consciousness," Dr. Nelson offers an unprecedented journey into the site of spiritual experience: the brain. Filled with amazing firsthand accounts as varied as a patient seeing the devil battling with his guardian angel to a man watching the universe synchronize around a pinball machine, The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain is an eloquent examination of our brains' spiritual "hardwiring" that will enthrall believers and skeptics alike.