In his latest groundbreaking book, the author examines the history of psychoanalysis from a resolutely independent perspective. At once spellbinding case histories and meticulously crafted gems of scholarship, Rudnytsky's essays are "re-visions" in that each sheds fresh light on its subject but they are also avowedly "revisionist" in their scepticism towards all forms of psychoanalytic orthodoxy. Beginning with a judicious reappraisal of Freud and ranging in scope from King Lear to contemporary neuroscience, the author treats in depth the lives and work of Ferenczi, Jung, Stekel, Winnicott, Coltart, and Little, each of whom sought to "rescue psychoanalysis" by summoning it to live up to its highest ideals.
Theories and Practices of Psychoanalysis in Central Europe explores the close relationship between psychoanalysis, psycho-medical discourses, literature, and the visual arts of the late 1800s and early 1900s in Central Europe. Agnieszka Sobolewska addresses the issue of theories and practices of psychoanalysis in Central Europe and the need to undertake interdisciplinary reflection on the specificity of psychoanalytic literary genres and fin-de-siècle psycho-medical discourses. With a focus on the circulation of Freudianism in the territories of present-day Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany, the book considers the creative transformations that psychoanalytic thought underwent in these countries and reflects on the specificity of psychoanalytic literary genres and the pivotal role of lifewriting genres in the psychoanalytic movement. Sobolewska’s work both fills a visible gap in research on the history of psychoanalysis in Central Europe before the outbreak of World War II and offers the first insightful analysis of the role of life writing in the development of psychoanalytic thought. Theories and Practices of Psychoanalysis in Central Europe will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training as well as scholars of the history of psychoanalysis, the history of psychology, literature, cultural anthropology, and modernism.
Cesare Romano revisits Dora's clinical case in light of Freud's own seduction theory. His central thesis is that Freud failed to follow through with his initial proposition of confirming his theories on the traumatic aetiology of hysteria. He also suggests a new dating for the duration of Dora's therapy, placing the beginning of the analysis within the context of Freud's concurrent and recent life events. A detailed analysis of Dora's first dream shows that Freud did not go back to Dora's first infantile traumas, but stopped instead at the period of her infantile masturbation. In analysing this dream, Romano's theory begins to take shape around the idea that Dora suffered an early trauma: possibly, a sexual abuse inflicted by her father. Drawing on Ferenczi, the author uses the notion of the 'traumatolytic function of the dream' to show that Dora, through her two dreams, was elaborating her early sexual trauma. Dora's analysis is investigated alongside what was happening in Freud's life at the time of the therapy.
The Cut and the Building of Psychoanalysis Volume II explores how the unformulated trauma associated with surgery performed on Emma Eckstein’s genitalia, and the hallucinations that Eckstein experienced, influenced Freud’s self-analysis, oriented his biological speculations, and significantly influenced one of his closest followers, Sándor Ferenczi. This thought-provoking and incisive work shows how Ferenczi filled the gaps left open in Freud’s system and proved to be a useful example for examining how such gaps are transmitted from one mind to another. The first of three parts explores how the mind of the child was viewed prior to Freud, what events led Freud to formulate and later abandon his theory of actual trauma, and why Freud turned to the phylogenetic past. Bonomi delves deeper into Freud’s self-analysis in part two and reexamines the possible reasons that led Freud to discard the impact and effects of trauma. The final part explores the interpersonal effects of Freud’s self-dissection dream, arguing that Ferenczi managed to dream aspects of Freud’s self-dissection dream on various occasions, which helped him to incorporate a part of Freud’s psyche that Freud had himself failed to integrate. This book questions the subject of a woman’s body, using discourse between Freud and Ferenczi to build a more integrated and accurate narrative of the origins and theories of psychoanalysis. It will therefore be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychologists and social scientists, as well as historians of medicine, science and human rights. Bonomi’s work introduces new arguments to the contemporary debate surrounding Female Genital Mutilation.
In 1921, a young female doctor started analysis with Sigmund Freud. In a diary, she recorded what moved her. The present volume not only contains a full translation of these records, but also collects four essays by two psychoanalysts and two analytical historians who take their cue from the young doctor's notes to think about Freud and his methods. The discovery of the diary marks a small sensation for the history of social science. Three factors make the document unique: first, it records not a training analysis, but the analysis of an actual patient, second, the analysis took place before Freud fell ill with cancer, and third, the analysand obviously noted down what was said in the practice word by word.
This book explores the life and work of a neglected figure in the history of psychoanalysis, Karl Stern, who brought Freudian theory and practice to Catholic (and Christian) audiences around the world.Karl Stern was a German-Jewish neurologist and psychiatrist who fled Germany in 1937 - first to London, then to Canada, where he taught at McGill University and the University of Ottawa, becoming Chief of Psychiatry at several major clinics in Ottawa and Montreal between 1952 and 1968, when he went into private practice. In 1951 he published The Pillar of Fire, a memoir that chronicled his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, his medical and psychiatric training, his first analysis, and his serial flirtations with Jewish Orthodoxy, Marxism and Zionism - all in the midst of the galloping Nazification of Germany. It also explored the long-standing inner-conflicts that preceded Stern's conversion to Catholicism in 1943.
A moody Freud posed against a background of holiday pictures pinned to a wall; or lurking at the very edge of a large family group; or lost in a crowd of nineteenth-century scientists. These snapshots or posed portraits not only tell stories, they also carry a specific emotional charge. The earlier essays in this book follow traces of Freud's early years through the evidence of such album photographs; the later essays use them to reconstruct the stories of various family members. An unknown photo of his half-brother Emanuel initiates an investigation into the Manchester Freuds. An identity photo of his daughter Anna, and the document to which it is attached, throw light on the critical final days of her trip to England in 1914. A faded idyllic print of children playing evolves into a discussion of Ernst Freud's luck and childhood. The suicide of Anna's artist cousin, Tom Seidmann Freud, emerges from a snap of her infant daughter Angela.
In Formulated Experiences, Peter L. Rudnytsky continues his quest for a "re-vision" of psychoanalysis by coupling his revival of the unjustly neglected figure of Erich Fromm with his latest groundbreaking research on Ferenczi and Groddeck. Committed at once to a humanistic and to a literary psychoanalysis, Rudnytsky explores the subjective roots of creativity and critiques the authoritarianism that has been a tragic aspect of Freud’s legacy. Through his clinically informed interpretations he brings out both "hidden realities" and "emergent meanings" of the texts and authors he examines, including Shakespeare’s Othello and Macbeth, as well as Milton’s Paradise Lost. A preeminent scholar of the history and theory of psychoanalysis, Rudnytsky displays an interdisciplinary expertise that makes Formulated Experiences truly sui generis and unlike any existing book. Bridging the artificial divide between the academic and clinical worlds, his eloquent championing of the interpersonal and relational traditions will captivate contemporary psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, while his insightful close readings provide a model for psychoanalytic literary critics.
Sigmund Freud is best known as the father of psychoanalysis. Born in 1856, he was a physiologist, medical doctor and psychologist who spent most of his life in Vienna, Austria. He developed revolutionary ideas about the unconscious mind, repression and the meaning of dreams and the clinical method of treatment through dialogue. Here you will find insights from his greatest works.The School of Life series takes a great thinker and highlights those ideas most relevant to ordinary, everyday dilemmas. These books emphasize ways in which wise voices from the past have urgently important and inspiring things to tell us.
