In a draft attached to a letter to his friend and confidante Wilhelm Fliess (May 31, 1897), Freud develops an idea: The mechanism of fiction is the same as that of hysterical fantasies. He supports this thought with a brief analysis of the biographical sources of Goethe's Werther. A few months later, on October 15, 1897, Freud mails Fliess a detailed account of remembered events from his childhood that, Freud believed, underlined the universality of Oedipus Rex and Hamlet. Freud's foray into literature initiated the beginning of a new critical approach. In Essential Papers on Literature and Psychoanalysis, Emanuel Berman presents classic and contemporary papers written at the intersection of literature and psychoanalysis. In bringing these essays together Berman traces the development of a discipline that has often been plagued by a polarization between self-confident, single-minded psychoanalysts reading literature as a series of case studies and literary loyalists who cling to manifest content or to the declared intentions of the authors, accepting them at face value and depriving the work of its emotional complexity. Berman covers the full range of old and new perspectives, and presents selections from today's mature phase. This collection includes papers by Sigmund Freud, Steven Marcus, Patrick J. Mahoney, Donald Spence, Otto Rank, Ernest Jones, Ernst Kris, Phyllis Greenacre, Florence Bonime and Maryanne Eckardt, David Werman, Ellen Handler Spitz, Jacques Lacan, Shoshana Felman, Norman N. Holland, Roy Schafer, Meredith Anne Skura, Gail S. Reed, Francis Baudry, Rivka R. Eifermann, and Bennett Simon.

Literature and Psychoanalysis is an exciting, and compulsive working through of what Freud really said, and why it is so important, with a chapter on Melanie Klein and object relations theory, and two chapters on Lacan, and his work on the unconscious as structured like a language. Investigating different forms of literature through a careful examination of Shakespeare, Blake, the Sherlock Holmes stories, and many other examples from literature, the book makes the argument for taking literature and psychoanalysis together, and essential to each other. The book places both literature and psychoanalysis into the context of all that has been said about these subjects in recent debates in the theory of Derrida and Foucault and Žižek, and into the context of gender studies and queer theory.

The most important writings on the psychoanalytic understandings and treatments of drug and vice addiction Drug abuse, alcoholism, compulsive gambling, and other destructive addictions plague our society. Theories of addiction locate its cause variously—in factors related to the substance, the addict's personality, or to the addict's environment. Arguments about effective treatment programs are fierce. Essential Papers on Addiction presents the most important writing and the various sides of the debate on the psychoanalytic understanding and treatment of addiction. Daniel Yalisove outlines the history of the treatment of addiction and introduces important psychoanalytic concepts used in understanding addicts. The book includes case studies which illustrate the course of addiction and presents the work of the most influential theorists in the field. Divided into eight sections focusing on historical work on addiction, psychoanalytic theories of addiction, transference and countertransference issues in treating addiction, psychoanalytic treatment for the addictions, psychoanalytic therapy and disease concepts, and psychiatric illness and addiction, this definitive volume includes contributions by the most experienced and renowned experts on the subject. Contributors include S. Freud, E. Glover, S. Rado, R. P. Knight, L. Wurmser, N. E. Zinberg, H. Krystal, D. Jacobs, R. Fine, J. Gustafson, C. L. Brown, M. L. Selzer, V. Davidson, J. Imhof, R. Hirsch, R. E. Terenzi, M. E. Chafetz, A. Silber, R. J. Rosenthal, E. M. Pattison, M. B. Sobell, L. C. Sobell, J. E. Zweben, E. Simmel, B. Brickman, E. J. Khantzian, R. D. Weiss, S. M. Mirin, A. T. McLellan, and H. J. Richards.

Brevity: rigidity and length of time frame - Treatment focus: the patient in the outside World - Therapist activity: focusing on (or away from) the unconscious - Patient selection: in sickness and in health - Brevity revisited: when less means more.

An essential collection on leading psychoanalyses of narcissism Narcissism has recently been the focus of debate among professionals, in large part due to the controversies surrounding the world of Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg. Yet much has been written about narcissism throughout the history of psychoanalysis and this carefully selected collection brings together the essential work on narcissism. The book first puts forth the major theoretical formulations - self-psychology, object relations, psychodynamics - and then explores diagnostic and therapeutic applications. The book offers landmark classic and contemporary contributions by authors such as Annie Reich, Heinz Kohut, Otto Kernberg, Alice Miller, Arnold Modell, and many others.

The book is divided into sections with seminal papers from each decade. The preface of each section, written by the editor, places each paper in it's historical context and making for a fascinating story of an aspect of the history of psychoanalysis and psychiatry in America.

Taking Sigmund Freud's theories as a point of departure, Jean-Michel Rabaté's book explores the intriguing ties between psychoanalysis and literature.