The Ego and Analysis of Defense, by Paul Gray, without a doubt represents a major advance in analytic technique. This book, together with the series of seminal journal articles he published over the past 30 years are a testament to Gray's pioneering intellect. They have stirred up enormous interest and controversy about the most important part of psychoanalytic technique: how the analyst listens. This second edition of Gray's book contains four additional papers, two of them known to his readership from their publication in 1996 and 2000. The two others contain ideas not published before.
The Ego and Analysis of Defense, by Paul Gray, without a doubt represents a major advance in analytic technique. How therapists listen and what they do with what they hear must be the primary issues that any technical approach addresses. Paul Gray shows how technique has, until now, lagged far behind theory in addressing these and other important questions. This book is essential reading for every practicing clinician.
"Joseph Fernando provides the first in-depth exploration and up-to-date revision of the psychoanalytic theory of defenses since Anna Freud's 1936 classic, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. The workings of three basic forms of defense - repression, denial, and post-traumatic defenses - are clearly described and illustrated with examples from Dr. Fernando's clinical practice, and new concepts including the zero process, contrast defenses, and compound defenses are introduced." --Book Jacket.
This book includes the development of the concept of "splitting" from both metapsychological and clinical perspectives, emphasizing the great importance of this topic for contemporary psychoanalysis. Starting with the history of the concept, the book covers recent French, English and Latin American theorizations on the theme. In regard to clinical approaches it presents the relationship between the "splitting" and complex clinical cases such as borderline, perverse and psychosomatic conditions. The book also includes aspects of "splitting" and virtual reality, as well as in traumatic situations: factors so important in contemporary life. The premise behind this work was to invite authors from different regions and orientations to promote a fruitful debate on the theme, thus enriching one of Sigmund Freud's most seminal concepts.
Significant developments within the past few years have made possible the publication of this rather large volume focusing on specific emotions of human experience, such as interest, joy, anger, distress, fear, shame, shyness, and guilt. The relevant events include new evidence on the relationship of emotions to cognitive processes and to personality traits and defense mechanisms. They also include discoveries relating to the biological foundations of emotions and theory regarding their significance in human evolution. Finally, there have been important findings on the role of emotions and emotion expressions in social relations, pain, grief, and psychopathology. These developments are elaborated in the pages of this volume. The contributors represent the disciplines of clinical, social, and experi mental psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. The contributions show important common themes that cut across disciplines, but they also reflect some differences that invite further thought and research. Above all, they add to our knowledge of human emotions and to our ability to understand and resolve human problems. The Department of Psychology of the University of Delaware has pro vided an excellent intellectual climate for work on a volume that ranges across several specialities and disciplines. Conversations with colleagues in the offices and hallways of Wolf Hall have provided answers to many questions. They also yielded some questions that compelled me to seek greater clarification of an issue.
Although the term 'jouissance' is common currency in psychoanalysis today, how much does it really tell us? While often taken to designate a fusion of sexuality, suffering and satisfaction, the term has fallen into a purely descriptive use that closes down more questions than it opens up. Although assumed to explain the coalescence of pleasure and pain, it tends to cover a range of quite different issues that should be distinguished rather than conflated. By returning to some of the sources of the concept in Freud, and their elaborations in Lacan, this book hopes to stimulate a debate around the relations of pleasure to pain, autoerotism, the links of satisfaction to arousal, the effects of repression, and the place of the body in psychoanalytic theory. Leader aims to provide context for Lacan's work and encourage dialogue with other analytic traditions.
What is the scientific status and the "truth value" of the concept of defense mechanisms? Among contemporary psychologists, three types of answers to this question may be expected. Some would wholeheartedly endorse the theoretical, clinical, and research value of this notion; others would reject it outright. Between these two extremes, a large number of observers, perhaps the majority, would suspend their judgment. Their attitude, compounded of hope and doubt, would capitalize on defense as an interesting and promising concept. At the same time, these psy chologists would express skepticism and disappointment over its clinical limitations, theoretical ambiguity, and research failures. The present volume is primarily addressed to the audience of hopeful skeptics-those who have not given up on the notion of defense, yet have been frustrated by the difficulties of incorporating it into the modern, streamlined structure of psychology. To this end, we have brought together theoretical and empirical contributions germane to defense together with reports about their applications to clinical and personality assessment, especially in relation to psychopathology, psychosomatics, and psycho therapeutic intervention.
Bringing a fresh contemporary Freudian view to a number of current issues in psychoanalysis, this book is about a psychoanalytic method that has been evolved by Fred Busch over the past 40 years called Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind. It is based on the essential curative process basic to most psychoanalytic theories - the need for a shift in the patient's relationship with their own mind. Busch shows that with the development of a psychoanalytic mind the patient can acquire the capacity to shift the inevitability of action to the possibility of reflection. Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind is derived from an increasing clarification of how the mind works that has led to certain paradigm changes in the psychoanalytic method. While the methods of understanding the human condition have evolved since Freud, the means of bringing this understanding to patients in a way that is meaningful have not always followed. Throughout, Fred Busch illustrates that while the analyst's expertise is crucial to the process, the analyst's stance, rather than mainly being an expert in the content of the patient's mind, is primarily one of helping the patient to find his own mind. Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists interested in learning a theory and technique where psychoanalytic meaning and meaningfulness are integrated. It will enable professionals to work differently and more successfully with their patients.
