Psychoanalysis Books
The Thinking Heart: Three Levels of Psychoanalytic Work in Psychotherapy with Children and Adolescents
How do we talk about feelings to children who are cut off from feeling? How do we raise hope and a sense of safety in despairing and terrified children without offering false hope? How do we reach... (more)
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)
Why I Hate You and You Hate Me: The Interplay of Envy, Greed, Jealousy and Narcissism in Everyday Life
‘Man’ himself is the source of the dark forces against which he is constantly struggling. The book shows how is possible to transcend this basic malice by knowing how, what, why and when it arises.... (more)
The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
'This book is about change.' We are all storytellers - we make stories to make sense of our lives. But it is not enough to tell tales. There must be someone to listen. In his work as a practising... (more)
Bion and Being: Passion and the Creative Mind
With his concept of “O,” Wilfred Bion provided a new psychoanalytic space in which to explore the mind. Dr Annie Reiner’s new book, Bion and Being: Passion and the Creative Mind, examines the... (more)
Experiencing Endings and Beginnings
Throughout life we undergo many changes in our circumstances, beginnings and endings of relationships, gains and losses. This book highlights the emotional turmoil which, to a greater or lesser... (more)
Donald Winnicott Today
What in Winnicott's theoretical matrix was truly revolutionary for psychoanalysis? In this book, the editor and contributors provide a rare in-depth analysis of his original work, and highlight the... (more)
Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis
Wilfred Bion once said, “I use the Kabbalah as a framework for psychoanalysis.” Both are preoccupied with catastrophe and faith, infinity and intensity of experience, shatter and growth of being that... (more)
Seeing and Being Seen: Emerging from a Psychic Retreat
Seeing and Being Seen: Emerging from a Psychic Retreat examines the themes that surface when considering clinical situations where patients feel stuck and where a failure to develop impedes the... (more)
The Significance of Dreams: Bridging Clinical and Extraclinical Research in Psychoanalysis
This book looks at dreams from a twenty-first century perspective. It takes its inspiration from Freud’s insights, but pursues psychoanalytic interest into both neuroscience and the modern... (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)
Independent Psychoanalysis Today
Independent Psychoanalysis Today is a book that shows how contemporary Independent psychoanalysts think and work. There are three themes to the book: Independent thinking including the theory of... (more)
Men and Mothers: The Lifelong Struggle of Sons and Their Mothers
Not all men vie with their fathers for the love of their mothers. In some families the mother becomes the central figure for her son - the father is excluded (or excludes himself) and does not come... (more)
Psychoanalytic Listening: Methods, Limits, and Innovations
'Joseph Breuer’s celebrated patient, Anna O., designated psychoanalysis to be a "talking cure". She was correct insofar as psychoanalysis does place verbal exchange at the center stage. However, the... (more)
The Stolen Girl and Other Stories: Seven Psychoanalytical Tales
The Stolen Girl is a collection of seven tales written in the genre of short stories. The narratives are fictionalised accounts based on the author’s work as an analyst. They carefully open the door... (more)
Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life
All of us lead two parallel lives: the life we actually live and the one that we wish for and fantasise about. And this life unlived (the one that never actually happens, the one we might be living... (more)
The Violence of Emotions: Bion and Post-Bionian Psychoanalysis
In The Violence of Emotions the author marries an ability to introduce the reader to the intimate climate of an analytic session with a passionate rereading of Bion. To emphasize both the empirical... (more)
Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and the Growth of the Personality
This is the second edition of the remarkable Inside Lives, expanded with a chapter on the last years of the life cycle. It provides a perspective on the relationship between psychoanalytic theory and... (more)
Envy is Not Innate: A New Model of Thinking
This book is a comprehensive revision of the notion of envy, suggesting that envy is not innate and proposing some fresh ideas about its relation to psychopathology. Its argument is that envy is not... (more)
On Freud's "On Beginning the Treatment"
Like his other papers on technique, Freud's 1913 essay "On beginning the treatment" had an enduring influence on psychoanalysts for generations to come, providing them with a solid and... (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)
Bion's Sources: The Shaping of His Paradigms
There are an increasing number of publications concerned with the work of Wilfred Bion (1897-1979). Many have sought new ideas from his writing, however, little attention has been paid to the... (more)
Bion Today
Bion Today explores how Bion's work is used in contemporary settings; how his ideas have been applied at the level of the individual, the group and the organisation; and which phenomena have been... (more)
Absolute Truth and Unbearable Psychic Pain: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Concrete Experience
The title of this book refers to a particular construction of the world that brooks no uncertainty: ‘things are the way I believe them to be’. There is no other way! This can be a real boost to... (more)
Research on the Couch: Single Case Studies, Subjectivity, and Psychoanalytic Knowledge
Is psychoanalysis knowledge? Is psychoanalysis a science, or is it hermeneutics? Can clinical material be considered research data? Psychoanalysis is ambiguous about whether it is about meaning or... (more)
What Will You Do With My Story?
Psychoanalyst Elizabeth Meakins uses her popular columns from The Independent to explore the therapeutic process. Successful analysis, she argues, is less about following pre-formulated theory and... (more)
If You Can't Trust Your Mother, Who Can You Trust?: Soul Murder, Psychoanalysis, and Creativity
The main theme of this book concerns the continuing psychic centrality of parents for their children. Several chapters examine an author and his works, outlining that author’s relationships with... (more)
Understanding Dunblane and other Massacres: Forensic Studies of Homicide, Paedophilia, and Anorexia
The book predominantly explores the psychic histories of patients who display their transgenerational conflicts/trauma through forensic acts. It establishes the need to consider the details of... (more)
Waiting To Be Found: Papers on Children in Care
This book is about children in State care and its title – Waiting to be Found – is derived from an observation about such children by the child psychotherapist Hamish Canham.
In one of his... (more)