An Experience-based Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice looks at each individual as a motivated doer doing, seeking, feeling, and intending, and relates development, sense of self, and identity to changes that are brought about in analytic psychotherapy. Based on conceptualizing experience as it is lived from infancy throughout life, this book identifies three major pathways to development and applies Lichtenberg, Lachmann, and Fosshage’s experience-based vision to psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Using detailed clinical narratives and vignettes, as well as organizational studies, the book takes up the distinction between a person’s responding to a failure in achieving a goal with disappointment and seeking an alternative path, or with disillusion and a collapse in motivation. From the variety of topics covered, the reader will get a broad overview of an experience-based analytic conception of motivation begun with Lichtenberg’s seven motivational systems. This title will be of great interest to established psychoanalysts, as well as those training in psychoanalysis and clinical counselling psychology programs.

"An Experience-based Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice looks at each individual as a motivated doer doing, seeking, feeling, and intending, and relates development, sense of self, and identity to changes that are brought about in analytic psychotherapy. Based on conceptualizing experience as it is lived from infancy throughout life, this book identifies three major pathways to development and applies Lichtenberg, Lachmann and Fosshage's experience-based vision to psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Using detailed clinical narratives and vignettes, as well as organizational studies, the book takes up the distinction between a person's responding to a failure in achieving a goal with disappointment and seeking an alternative path or by disillusion and a collapse in motivation. From the variety of topics covered, the reader will get a broad overview of an experience-based analytic conception of motivation begun with Lichtenberg's 7 motivational systems. This title will be of great interest to established psychoanalysts, as well as those training in psychoanalysis and clinical counselling psychology programs"--

This book offers a comparative study of the major schools of psychoanalysis by exploring their historical development, their differences and similarities, and the underlying assumptions made by each. Encompassing the expertise of colleagues from different schools of psychoanalytic thought, each chapter explores a particular perspective, defining specific theoretical assumptions, theories of etiology, and implications for technique, as well as providing each author’s view on the historical development of key psychoanalytic concepts. With contributions from leading authors in the field, and covering both historical and international schools, the book provides an enlightening account that will prove essential to psychoanalytic practitioners and students of psychoanalysis and the history of medicine.

Living Psychoanalysis: From Theory to Experience represents a decade of work from one of today's leading psychoanalysts. Michael Parsons brings to life clinical psychoanalysis and its theoretical foundations, offering new developments in analytic theory and vivid examples of work in the consulting room. The book also explores connections between psychoanalysis, art and literature, showing how psychoanalytic insights can enrich our lives far beyond the clinical situation. Living Psychoanalysis comprises four main sections: Life and Death – asks what it means to be fully and creatively alive, and introduces the concept of avant-coup Sexuality, Narcissism and the Oedipus complex – develops fresh ways of understanding these key concepts How analysts listen – explores links between psychoanalytic listening and the way artists look at the world, and introduces the concept of the internal analytic setting The Independent tradition in British psychoanalysis – considers the theoretical foundations of Independent clinical technique, and discusses from various perspectives the role of training in developing the identity of analysts and analytic therapists With fresh theoretical concepts and a focus on specific aspects of clinical practice, Living Psychoanalysis: From Theory to Experience will be a valuable resource for analysts, therapists and professionals who wish to extend their vision of psychoanalysis. It will also be of great interest to general readers concerned to deepen their understanding of the links between culture and the mind.

Arnold Wm. Rachman and Clara Mucci provide a detailed examination of the significance of Sándor Ferenczi’s paradigm shifting theory of trauma, the Confusion of Tongues, and confirm its relevance for the psychoanalytic theory and analysis of trauma today. As the first alternative to Freud’s theory of the Oedipal complex, Ferenczi’s Confusion of Tongues theory expanded the theoretical and clinical boundaries of psychoanalysis to establish that psychological trauma as a result of childhood sexual abuse and trauma experiences are a significant contributing factor to the development of psychological disorders. The authors address the lack of attention paid to the significance of sexual abuse trauma to understanding psychological ill health in psychoanalysis, and integrate the latest research on neurobiology to demonstrate how Ferenczi’s theory is meaningful to understanding many aspects of human behavior today. This work will be formative to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists both in training and in practice and provide renewed insight into the treatment of childhood sexual abuse and psychological trauma.

By viewing psychoanalysis through the lens of embodiment, Brothers and Sletvold suggest a shift away from traditional concept-based theory and offer new ways to understand traumatic experiences, to describe the therapeutic exchange and to enhance the supervisory process. Since traditional psychoanalytic language does not readily lend itself to embodied experience, the authors place particular emphasis on the words I, you, we and world, to describe the flow of human attention. Offering new insights into trauma, this book demonstrates how traumatic experiences and efforts to regain certainty in one’s psychological life involve profound disruptions of this flow. With a new understanding of transference, resistance and interpretation, the authors ultimately show how much can be gained from viewing the analytic exchange as a meeting between foreign bodies. Grounded in detailed case material, this book will change the way therapists from all disciplines understand the therapeutic process and how viewing it in terms of talking bodies enhances their efforts to heal.

'Personality Theories' by Albert Ellis - the founding father of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy - provides a comprehensive review of all major theories of personality including theories of personality pathology. Importantly, it critically reviews each of these theories in light of the competing theories as well as recent research.