On Private Madness, Green, Andre

The key concepts and issues explored in this book include:

• Are transference interpretations necessary for positive therapeutic outcomes?
• Are the analyst's countertransference reactions a reliable guide to the patient's unconscious mental states?
• Is projective identification a coherent concept?
• Psychoanalytic styles of thinking and writing.

Unlike other previous discussions of such concepts, this book systematically evaluates them in the light of conceptual critique as well as recent research-based evidence and empirical data.

Written with Eagle's piercing clarity of voice, Core Concepts in Contemporary Psychoanalysis challenges previously unquestioned psychoanalytic assumptions and will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, and anyone interested in integrating core psychoanalytic concepts, research, and theory with other disciplines including psychiatry, psychology, and social work.

The key concepts and issues explored in this book include:

• Unconscious processes and research on them - what evidence is there for a dynamic unconscious?
• Is there a universal Oedipus complex?
• The importance of inner conflict.
• The concept of defense.

Unlike other previous discussions of these concepts, this book systematically evaluates them in the light of conceptual critique as well as recent research based evidence and empirical data.

Written with Eagle's piercing clarity of voice, Core Concepts in Classical Psychoanalysis challenges previously unquestioned psychoanalytic assumptions and will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, and anyone interested in integrating core psychoanalytic concepts, research, and theory with other disciplines including psychiatry, psychology, and social work.

Giuseppe Civitarese here argues that the psychoanalytic theory of sublimation and the aesthetic theory of the sublime are theories of subjectivation that can illuminate each other and give us a better understanding of the birth of the psyche. The aesthetic experience in art and in psychoanalytic practice are concerned with the social constitution of the individual, understood at its pre-reflective, non-verbal or inter-corporeal level. It is at this level that, thanks to the encounter with a receptive other, the turbulences of sensations and proto-emotions become soothing rhythms, proto-ideas or sensible ideas at first and, once words are added, concepts.

In Bionian terms, the at-one-ment between mother and baby is a form of primordial abstraction and occurs first in the dimension of the purely sensory and indistinct, and then in the affective space, which nonetheless is always a symbolic space if we take account that sociality is provided for the couple-system by the mother. It is exactly the intersubjective process of elevating toward conceptual thinking, but without ever detaching oneself from the thinking deposited in the body as procedural knowledge, that justifies the definition adopted here of human beings as Sublime Subjects.

This book explores these topics not only through the lens of the concept of sublimation or the theory of the sublime, but also through those of masochism, hypochondria, truth and two readings of classical Freudian papers such as the clinical case of Dora and 'Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning'. Sublime Subjects will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as literature and philosophy scholars.

Poland combines vivid reports from clinical analyses, literary readings, and his own life - all unfolding original observations on a person as both a part of and apart from human commonality. His consideration of how one person's witnessing facilitates another's self-definition, a concept extended here in his study of outsiderness as part of human nature, has been marked a keynote contribution. Clinical illustrations of moments that matter but are usually omitted from public presentation are set alongside examples of reading powerful fiction to show how analyst and author both incite fresh openness in a person's mind. Poland goes farther, exposing the personal power of union and separateness in its keenest form, facing the ultimate separation of one's own actual death.

Only with separateness can true intimacy grow, and only within the fabric of others can true individuality exist. This evocative book, ranging from the lightness of whimsy to the dread of dying, allows every reader to taste of and learn from Poland's thinking. Psychoanalyst or patient, writer or reader, each one living one's own life - all can find new understandings in this work.

Hemda Arad outlines the theoretical and clinical concepts that allow the integration of Relational Psychoanalysis with EMDR's unique contributions, specifically appreciating the neurological and embodied experience in an individual's development in relation to the classic talking cure's approach to dealing with "big T" trauma and with "small t" everyday attachment-related trauma. Arad describes a view of a modified EMDR approach capable of reaching many patients, beyond the trauma work for which it originally became known, in order to lend its more embodied approach to the advancement of the relational endeavor. Vivid clinical illustrations, chosen to elucidate theoretical concepts, make the complex theoretical ideas more accessible. The clinical portions illustrate a range of ways that EMDR and relational work, which may at first seem incompatible, may be integrated to help therapists navigate the two methods.

Integrating Relational Psychoanalysis and EMDR: Embodied Experience and Clinical Practice will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists and psychodynamic therapists who wish to learn about the relational tradition in theory and practice or are seeking a way to integrate their work with other versatile approaches such as EMDR, as well as advanced students studying across these areas and EMDR clinicians who would like to broaden the scope of their skills.

Donald Moss explores a wide range of issues--the loosening of constraints on deep systematized forms of hatred, clinical and technical matters, the puzzling status of revenge and forgiveness, a consideration of the dynamics of climate change denial, and an innovative look at the problem of voice in the clinical situation. Because it is rooted in a profound reconsideration of the origins of psychic life, psychoanalysis remains vital, in spite of the perennial efforts to keep it effaced and quieted. Moss covers a range of central psychoanalytic concepts to argue that only by examining and challenging our everyday assumptions about issues like sexuality, punishment, creativity, analytic neutrality, and trauma, can psychoanalysis offer a radical alternative to other forms of therapy.

At War with the Obvious will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, cultural theorists and anyone for whom incisive psychoanalytic thought matters.