Emotional Presence in Psychoanalysis provides a detailed look at the intricacies of attaining emotional presence in psychoanalytic work. John Madonna and a distinguished group of contributors draw on both the relational and modern psychoanalytic schools of thought to examine a variety of different problems commonly experienced in achieving emotional resonance between analyst and patient, setting out ways in which such difficulties may be overcome in psychoanalytic treatment, practical clinical settings and in training contexts. A focused review of relevant comparative literature is followed by chapters featuring individual clinical case studies, each illustrating particularly challenging aspects. The uniqueness of this book lays not simply in the espousal of the commonly accepted importance of emotional resonance between analyst and patient; rather it is in the way in which emotional presence is registered by both participants, requiring a working through, which at times can be not only difficult but dangerous. Such efforts involve a theory which enables the lens to understanding, an effective methodology which guides intervention. The book also calls for the art of the analyst to construct with patients meanings which heal, and possess the heart to persist in commitment despite the odds. Emotional Presence in Psychoanalysis is about patients who suffer, struggle, resist and prevail. It offers distinctive, transparently told accounts of analysts who engage with patients, navigating through states of confusion, hatred and more controversial feelings of love. Emotional Presence in Psychoanalysis features highly compelling material written in an accessible and easily understood style. It will be a valuable resource for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, psychologists and clinical social workers as well as teachers, trainers and students seeking to understand the power and potential of the analytic process and the resistances to it.

Emotional Presence in Psychoanalysis provides a detailed look at the intricacies of attaining emotional presence in psychoanalytic work. John Madonna and a distinguished group of contributors draw on both the relational and modern psychoanalytic schools of thought to examine a variety of different problems commonly experienced in achieving emotional resonance between analyst and patient, setting out ways in which such difficulties may be overcome in psychoanalytic treatment, practical clinical settings and in training contexts. A focused review of relevant comparative literature is followed by chapters featuring individual clinical case studies, each illustrating particularly challenging aspects. The uniqueness of this book lays not simply in the espousal of the commonly accepted importance of emotional resonance between analyst and patient; rather it is in the way in which emotional presence is registered by both participants, requiring a working through, which at times can be not only difficult but dangerous. Such efforts involve a theory which enables the lens to understanding, an effective methodology which guides intervention. The book also calls for the art of the analyst to construct with patients meanings which heal, and possess the heart to persist in commitment despite the odds. Emotional Presence in Psychoanalysis is about patients who suffer, struggle, resist and prevail. It offers distinctive, transparently told accounts of analysts who engage with patients, navigating through states of confusion, hatred and more controversial feelings of love. Emotional Presence in Psychoanalysis features highly compelling material written in an accessible and easily understood style. It will be a valuable resource for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, psychologists and clinical social workers as well as teachers, trainers and students seeking to understand the power and potential of the analytic process and the resistances to it.

Adrian Johnston and Catherine Malabou defy theoretical humanities' deeply-entrenched resistance to engagements with the life sciences. Rather than treat biology and its branches as hopelessly reductive and politically suspect, they view recent advances in neurobiology and its adjacent scientific fields as providing crucial catalysts to a radical rethinking of subjectivity. Merging three distinct disciplines—European philosophy from Descartes to the present, Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, and affective neuroscience—Johnston and Malabou triangulate the emotional life of affective subjects as conceptualized in philosophy and psychoanalysis with neuroscience. Their experiments yield different outcomes. Johnston finds psychoanalysis and neurobiology have the potential to enrich each other, though affective neuroscience demands a reconsideration of whether affects can be unconscious. Investigating this vexed issue has profound implications for theoretical and practical analysis, as well as philosophical understandings of the emotions. Malabou believes scientific explorations of the brain seriously problematize established notions of affective subjectivity in Continental philosophy and Freudian-Lacanian analysis. She confronts philosophy and psychoanalysis with something neither field has seriously considered: the concept of wonder and the cold, disturbing visage of those who have been affected by disease or injury, such that they are no longer affected emotionally. At stake in this exchange are some of philosophy's most important claims concerning the relationship between the subjective mind and the objective body, the structures and dynamics of the unconscious dimensions of mental life, the role emotion plays in making us human, and the functional differences between philosophy and science.

In this in-depth and unique collaboration between a patient and his psychoanalyst, Psychoanalysis, Intersubjective Writing, and a Postmaterialist Model of Mind: I Woke Up Dead examines the unconscious mind by analysing the patient’s novel written during his treatment as the focus. Using the patient’s creative writing and their intersubjective relationship as evidence, Dan Gilhooley and Frank Toich show how psychoanalysis fits within a postmaterialist model of mind. In this ground-breaking exploration, Gilhooley and Toich together demonstrate how a nonlocal unconscious can reshape the psychoanalytic conception of the mind. Split into four parts, Intersubjective, Quantum, History and Collaboration, Dan introduces three themes in the first: recovery from death, the intersubjective nature of therapeutic work and the role of creative imagination, combining these themes with analysis of Frank’s work and short, related stories from his own life. Part II, Quantum, introduces the concept of nonlocality to describe the mind and draws on the appearance of quantum physics in Frank’s science fiction, before moving onto Part III, History, which examines the emergence of psychoanalysis out of animal magnetism, looking at rapport, telepathy and love in psychotherapy. Finally, Collaboration discusses their ongoing psychotherapeutic experiment, the role of imagination, dissociation and the cosmic mind in psychological growth. Interweaving creative writing, psychoanalytic theory and real-life stories, the book re-contextualizes the history and future of psychoanalysis. Due to its multidisciplinary nature, this book will appeal to psychotherapists and psychologists in practice and in training. It would also be a vital resource for academics and students of counseling, consciousness studies, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and psychology.

This tightly edited volume opens a new vista in psychoanalysis by focusing upon positive and life-enhancing emotions and attitudes. The realms it covers include love, friendship, enthusiasm, courage, tact, resilience, and forgiveness, among others. Seminal papers on these topics have existed but remain scattered throughout the psychoanalytic literature. This book brings them together in a harmonious gestalt. It is more than an anthology, however. Each paper is followed by a freshly written commentary that critically evaluates the paper and brings it in consonance with up-to-date, contemporary psychoanalytic knowledge. Issues of development, adaptation, psychopathology, and analytic technique, as these pertain to the positive dimension of affective experience, are elucidated. The book also deals with the broader and overarching issue of the 'goodness' that accompanies, causes, and is enhanced by the positive emotions in consideration here. Thus the ever-elusive and puzzling issue of psychoanalytic morality finds a place in the discourse, with all its rich and complex theoretical and technical implications.

This offers an integrated theory of communication, an alternative to classical, contemporary relational and inter-subjective approaches to treatment.