Christopher Bollas
Christopher Bollas is a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies, and Honorary Member of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. He is a member of ESGUT, the European Study Group of Unconscious Thought.
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Catch Them Before They Fall: The Psychoanalysis of Breakdown
In this exploration of a radical approach to the psychoanalytical treatment of people on the verge of mental breakdown, Christopher Bollas offers a new and courageous clinical paradigm. He suggests... (more)
China on the Mind
Several thousand years ago Indo-European culture diverged into two ways of thinking; one went West, the other East. Tracing their differences, Christopher Bollas examines how these mentalities are... (more)
The Freudian Moment: Second Edition
With a new foreword by André Green.
Bollas eloquently argues for a return to our understanding of how Freudian psychoanalysis works unconscious to unconscious. Failure to follow Freud's basic... (more)
The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known.
In this important collection of essays based on the independent tradition, the author integrates his experience in clinical practice with the unique contribution of the British school of object... (more)
The Christopher Bollas Reader
This reader brings together a selection of seminal papers by Christopher Bollas. Essays such as "The fascist state of mind", "The structure of evil," and "The functions of history" have established... (more)
Being a Character: Psychoanalysis and Self-Experience
Shows how each person unconsciously invests the ordinary objects of life with particular and private meaning. As each person subsequently voyages through the environment he encounters objects that... (more)
The Infinite Question
Christopher Bollas uses detailed studies of real clinical practice to illuminate a theory of psychoanalysis which privileges the human impulse to question. From earliest childhood to the end of our... (more)
Forces of Destiny: Psychoanalysis and the Human Idiom
The author looks at what makes us unique as individuals? and how does this uniqueness manifest itself in our personalities, our lives, relationships, and in the psychoanalytic process? 223 pages.... (more)
The Evocative Object World
Christopher Bollas builds on Freud's account of dream formation, combining it with perceptive clinical, theoretical and cultural insights to show how the psychoanalytical method can provide a rich... (more)
Cracking Up: Unconscious Work in Self Experience
In this book Bollas examines how people educate one another in the idioms of their unconscious lives, and considers also the nature and consequences of the traumas which prevent us from doing... (more)
I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing
This dark comic novella follows the life of "the psychoanalyst" in an urban village engaging a cast of characters with whom he shares his life and his ideas. A vulnerable yet thoughtful person... (more)
The Mystery of Things
A philosophical reflection on the paradox of the psychoanalytical process, which objectifies psychic life through the deep subjectivity of its two engaged participants - a mysterious encounter which... (more)
The New Informants
Confidentiality is one of the cornerstones of psychotherapy, and yet this confidence is betrayed with increasing regularity. This text attempts to answer three questions: how did this loss of privacy... (more)
Dark at the End of the Tunnel
This cross-genre novella introduces a comic hero-"the psychoanalyst"-who muses on ordinary yet essential psychological, philosophical and theological questions following The Catastrophe. Everyday... (more)
Theraplay and Other Plays
The main characters of these five plays by Christopher Bollas struggle to survive in a post "Catastrophe" world. As they go about ordinary life it is clear that something insidious has both preceded... (more)



















