Psychoanalysis Books
Reflections on Contemporary Psychoanalytic Thought: The Lisbon Lectures
Over the past decade, the Portuguese Psychoanalytical Society took the opportunity to restructure and redefine their organisation. As part of this process, they invited outstanding psychoanalysts... (more)
Bion and Primitive Mental States: Trauma and the Symbiotic Link
This clinically focused book explores W. R. Bion’s thinking on primitive and unrepresented mental states and shows how therapists can work effectively with traumatized patients who are difficult to... (more)
The Post-Bionian Field Theory of Antonino Ferro: Theoretical Analysis and Clinical Application
This exciting and original collection explores Antonino Ferro's post-Bionian Field Theory, expanding upon the analytic work of Wilfred Bion to focus on the intersubjective development of psychic... (more)
Projective Identification: A Contemporary Introduction
This clear and thoughtful book by Robert Waska provides an accessible introduction to Projective Identification and the role it plays in internal and external life.
Waska explores how... (more)
Psychoanalysis and Society's Neglect of the Sexual Abuse of Children, Youth and Adults: Re-addressing Freud's Original Theory of Sexual Abuse and Trauma
This book takes a comprehensive look at the understanding and treatment of child sexual abuse in psychoanalytic theory and practice, and in society as a whole.
This book will demonstrate how... (more)
Lost to Desire: The École Psychosomatique de Paris and its Encounter With Patients Who Do Not Thrive
This book covers the work of psychoanalysts in post WWII France with patients beset by somatic problems with little manifest fantasy life, and how their concept of operatoire continues to inform the... (more)
Hating, Abhorring and Wishing to Destroy: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Contemporary Moment
The kinds of hatreds that analysts have assumed make up part of the unspoken backdrop of Western civilization have now erupted into our daily foreground. This book, consisting of essays from eleven... (more)
Donald Meltzer: A Contemporary Introduction
In this intelligent and insightful work, Meg Harris Williams presents a clear and readable introduction to the works of influential psychoanalyst Donald Meltzer. The book covers Meltzer's ideas on... (more)
Reading Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality: From Pleasure to the Object
Sigmund Freud's 1905 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality is a founding text of psychoanalysis and yet it remains to a large extent an unknown text. In this book Freud's 1905 theory of sexuality... (more)
Human Virtuality and Digital Life: Philosophical and Psychoanalytic Investigations
This book is a psychoanalytic and philosophical exploration of how the digital is transforming our perception of the world and our understanding of ourselves.
Drawing on examples from everyday... (more)
Exigent Psychoanalysis: The Interventions of Jean Laplanche
Exigent Psychoanalysis: The Interventions of Jean Laplanche offers a bold exploration of the contemporary psychoanalytic field by focusing on key issues through the lens of one of this century's most... (more)
Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond
This book explores the role of bodily phenomena in mental life and in the psychoanalytic encounter, encouraging further dialog within psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the humanities, and contributing... (more)
First Thoughts: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Beginnings
‘…any Psychoanalyst must find his own way and come upon well-known and well-established theories through experiences of his own realisations.’ So says W. R. Bion in his Commentary in Second Thoughts.... (more)
Psychoanalysis After Freud: Memory, Mourning and Repetition
This book draws on a number of Freud's lesser-known works to explore psychoanalytic perspectives on memory, mourning and repetition.
It is remarkable that Freud in his speculations on the human... (more)
Freud's Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu and the Nazis
In this compelling book, the first in the new Freud Museum London series, Professor Brett Kahr describes how Sigmund Freud endured innumerable emotional pandemics during his eighty-three years of... (more)
Jouissance: Sexuality, Suffering and Satisfaction
Although the term 'jouissance' is common currency in psychoanalysis today, how much does it really tell us? While often taken to designate a fusion of sexuality, suffering and satisfaction, the term... (more)
Masculinity and Its Discontents: The Male Psyche and the Inherent Tensions of Maturing Manhood
Offering a uniquely psychoanalytic developmental perspective on male gender identity and the sense of maleness, this book provides an in-depth analysis of the development of masculinity in childhood... (more)
Postmemory, Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Ghosts: The Salonica Cohen Family and Trauma Across Generations
Through a collection of letters sent by members of a Jewish family between 1925-42, this fascinating book explores phenomenological and psychoanalytical aspects of the Holocaust and its associated... (more)
On Wanting to Change
From the UK's foremost literary psychoanalyst, a dazzling new book on the universal urge to change our lives.
We live in a world in which we are invited to change - to become our best selves,... (more)
Psychoanalysis as a Spiritual Discipline: In Dialogue with Martin Buber and Gabriel Marcel
The great existential psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger famously pointed out to Freud that therapeutic failure could "only be understood as the result of something which could be called a deficiency of... (more)
The Cure for Psychoanalysis
In his first essay, ‘The Magic of Winnicott: Playing and reality, and reality’, Adam Phillips makes clear the subtlety and wisdom of Winnicott’s concept of play. Its inspiration came from a wonderful... (more)
Selected Papers of Donald Meltzer: Volume 3: The Psychoanalytic Process and the Analyst
This new selection from the papers of Donald Meltzer spans his working life and serves as an introduction to all his key concepts, such as: aesthetic conflict, the claustrum, adhesive identification,... (more)
Cézanne and the Post-Bionian Field: An Exploration and a Meditation
By inviting a 'conversation' between them, this book offers a nuanced introduction both to Cezanne-the 'father of modern art'-and perhaps the most vital body of theory in contemporary psychoanalysis,... (more)
Emotional Communication and Therapeutic Change: Understanding Psychotherapy Through Multiple Code Theory
In this book, Wilma Bucci applies her skills as a cognitive psychologist and researcher to the fields of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, opening up new avenues for understanding the underlying... (more)
Dream Sequences in Shakespeare: A Psychoanalytic Perspective
This book takes a new approach to Shakespeare's plays, exploring them as dream-thought in the modern psychoanalytic sense of unconscious thinking.
Through his commitment to poetic language,... (more)
Dear Candidate: Analysts from around the World Offer Personal Reflections on Psychoanalytic Training, Education, and the Profession
In this first-of-kind book, senior psychoanalysts from around the world offer personal reflections on their own training, what it was like to become a psychoanalyst, and what they would like most to... (more)
Depending on Strangers: Freedom, Memory, and the Unknown Self
In this book, David Levine explores the unknown self. The unknown self is the self existing as a potential to become something yet to be determined. The shape our personalities and life experiences... (more)
Fairbairn's Object Relations Theory in the Clinical Setting
W. R. D. Fairbairn (1889-1964) challenged the dominance of Freud's drive theory with a psychoanalytic theory based on the internalization of human relationships. Fairbairn assumed that the... (more)
Psychoanalysis from the Inside Out: Developing and Sustaining an Analytic Identity and Practice
In the face of considerable scepticism over the function and effectiveness of psychoanalysis, Lena Ehrlich demonstrates how analysis is unique in its potential to transform patients at an emotionally... (more)
Accessing the Clinical Genius of Winnicott: A Careful Rendering of Winnicott`s Twelve Most Influential Clinical Papers
Donald Winnicott, psychoanalyst and pediatrician, is viewed by many in the psychodynamic field as the “other genius” in the history of psychodynamic theory and practice, along with Freud. This book... (more)