Psychoanalysis Books
What Alive Means: Psychoanalytic Explorations
Internationally acclaimed for the clarity of his writing and thinking, Ogden radically reconceives psychoanalysis as a therapeutic process in which a person comes not only to better know him- or... (more)
Streams of Consciousness: Notebooks 1991–2024
Never originally intended for publication, Streams of Consciousness represent the private stream of ongoing thinking that has accompanied Christopher Bollas’ clinical practice and extensive published... (more)
The Allure of Psychic Retreats: Clinical and Theoretical Inquiries
This book celebrates the eminent contributions by John Steiner to psychoanalytic theory and practice. It contains papers by colleagues and friends concerning one of his most important concepts, the... (more)
Beyond the Dynamic Unconscious
Franco De Masi opens psychotherapeutic practice to include psychic suffering considered unreachable. ‘Unanalysable’ patients have an inactive dynamic unconscious, so clinicians must go beyond to... (more)
Night Vision: Wilfred Bion's Epistemological Poetics and the Experience of the First World War
The first comprehensive study of Wilfred Bion’s autobiographical and literary writings: an in-depth analysis of how, throughout his life, Bion sought a narrative form for his traumatic experiences as... (more)
Knowing What Psychoanalysts Do and Doing What Psychoanalysts Know
This book, founded on the in-depth discussion of sixteen clinical cases of psychoanalysis, tries to answer the question of what psychoanalysts do when they are practicing psychoanalysis.
The... (more)
The Joy of Torment: Understanding and Managing Sadomasochism
A search for answers on the subject of sadomasochism: its origins, forms and functions, nature, and societal status. An international group of distinguished psychiatrists, psychologists, and... (more)
Healing the Fractured Mind: A Revolutionary Method for Treating Addiction and Other Disorders
Healing the Fractured Mind: A Revolutionary Method for Treating Addiction and Other Disorders offers the reader a journey into the human mind in search of an answer to the human paradox: how can we... (more)
Streams of Consciousness: Notebooks 1974–1990
Never originally intended for publication, Streams of Consciousness represent the private stream of ongoing thinking that has accompanied Christopher Bollas’ clinical practice and extensive published... (more)
The Analyst’s Torment: Unbearable Mental States in Countertransference
Dhwani Shah moves the focus from using psychoanalytic theory and technique to explore the patient’s mind from a safe distance. Instead, he concentrates on the analyst’s feelings, subjective... (more)
The Forgotten Analyst: Hermine Hug-Hellmuth (1871–1924)
Why was the first Viennese child psychoanalyst murdered by her nephew? Hermine Hug-Hellmuth was much admired by Freud but her tragic end was seen as bringing shame to the psychoanalytic world; her... (more)
The Hardest Passage: A Psychoanalyst Accompanies Her Patient’s Journey into Dementia
A fascinating narrative of a psychoanalyst’s experience of working with a patient with dementia. It is interspersed with current theory from the literature on attachment, object relations, and... (more)
The Relational Revolution in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy
Written by a leading teacher and scholar of relational thinking, The Relational Revolution in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy provides a comprehensive overview of relational psychoanalysis in one... (more)
Freud and the Changing World: Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Its Troubles
A highly original, convivial dialogue between two leading psychoanalysts invites the reader to pause and reflect on current transformations and emotional affects in a changing world. Two analysts of... (more)
An Introduction to Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
This book presents and illustrates the theory and technique of working with young people, their parents, and their families. Wide-ranging in focus from individuals to communities, it gives a... (more)
Love Songs: Listening to Couples
Perrine Moran considers the power of popular love songs to trigger emotion and capture what is at the heart of couple dynamics. In songs, music and words – the non-verbal and verbal – combine to... (more)
Who Am I? Exploring Identity through Sexuality, Politics, and Art
Identity as a concept does not appear in psychoanalysis until the work of Erik Erikson in the 1950s, but today it is considered a key factor in understanding individuals and groups. It is a concept... (more)
Three Characters: Narcissist, Borderline, Manic Depressive
It is important to point out that these essays are about character types; it is not to suggest that all borderlines, narcissists or manic depressives are the same. Everyone is an individual and are... (more)
Bion in the Consulting Room: An Implicit Method of Clinical Inquiry
Bion in the Consulting Room addresses the long unanswered question of Bion’s clinical and supervisorial technique and examines the way Bion’s conceptual model and clinical practices informed his... (more)
Erotic Transference: A Contemporary Introduction
Erotic Transferences: A Contemporary Introduction offers a comprehensive introduction to this key, yet challenging aspect of the psychoanalytic process.
Despite emerging frequently in the... (more)
The Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: 24-Volume Set
The wholly updated Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (RSE) is grounded in James Strachey’s canonical translation while annotating and clarifying... (more)
First Principles: Applied Ethics for Psychoanalytic Practice
In First Principles, Alessandra Lemma examines the centrality of applied ethics to psychoanalytic practice, The book focuses on the articulation of an accessible framework for developing and... (more)
Unlit Corners: Dirtiness, Miserliness, Shyness, Outrageousness, Shallowness, Indecisiveness, Restlessness, and Cowardliness
Unlit Corners endeavours to bring light to neglected character traits which many struggle to overcome. Filled with relevant case studies and carefully crafted psychoanalytic theory, the book... (more)
The Work of the Negative
The author draws attention to the work of the negative in Freud, examining aspects such as dream works and the work of mourning. The "work of the negative" refers to how we cope, or do not cope, with... (more)
Life and Death: Our Relationship with Ageing, Dementia, and Other Fates of Time
Life and Death considers ageing and mortality from a psychoanalytic perspective and from the point of view of the individual, the couple, and the family.
Andrew Balfour’s approach focuses on... (more)
The Indian Jungle: Psychoanalysis and Non-Western Civilizations
For more than a century, the cultural imagination of psychoanalysis has been assumed and largely continues to be assumed as Western. Although the terroirs of psychoanalysis in South America, France,... (more)
On the Destruction and Death Drives
‘Living with the idea of bearing a death-force fundamentally directed at oneself is hardly easy to admit. It is less so in any case than the idea that we are all murderers, that we are ever ready to... (more)
In Session, on the Thread of Affect and Emotion: Contemporary Approaches
With contributions from Sara Boffito, Lesley Caldwell, Roosevelt Cassorla, Giuseppe Civitarese, Maria Teresa Flores, Beatrice Ithier, Howard B. Levine, Ruggero Levy, Mauro Manica, Maria Grazia... (more)
Bion: An Introduction
Wilfred R. Bion’s life spanned key events in the twentieth century. Born in India in 1897, he came to boarding school in England aged 8 and at 18 fought in the tanks in World War One. He trained as a... (more)
The Soft Power of Culture: Art, Transitional Space, Death and Play
Psychoanalysis is a valuable tool to add to the sciences and the arts: all contain unconscious hidden depths that can become insight and understanding and contribute to humanity as culture. Using the... (more)