Being a Character: Psychoanalysis and Self-Experience

Author(s) : Christopher Bollas

Being a Character: Psychoanalysis and Self-Experience

Book Details

  • Publisher : Routledge
  • Published : April 1993
  • Cover : Paperback
  • Pages : 304
  • Category :
    Psychoanalysis
  • Catalogue No : 2695
  • ISBN 13 : 9780415088152
  • ISBN 10 : 0415088151

Also by Christopher Bollas

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Each person invests many of the objects in his life with his or her own unconscious meaning, each person subsequently voyages through an environment that constantly evokes the self's psychic history. Taking Freud's model of dreamwork as a model for all unconscious thinking, Christopher Bollas argues that we dreamwork ourselves into becoming who we are, and illustrates how the analyst and the patient use such unconscious processes to develop new psychic structures that the patient can use to alter his or her self experience. Building on this foundation, he goes on to describe some very special forms of self experience, including the tragic madness of women cutting themselves, the experience of a cruising homosexual in bars and bathes and the demented ferocity of the facist state of mind. An original interpreter of classical theory and clinical issues, in Being a Character Christopher Bollas takes the reader into the very texture of the psychoanalytic process.

Reviews and Endorsements

Being a Character explores the subject of self-knowledge and the individuals' construction of meaning in their lives. It is always stimulating, particularly through the author's use of his own self-experience. This book is well worth reading by anyone involved in psychotherapy or related work. Indeed, it could fruitfully be read by a much wider audience.
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Table of Contents


Introduction

Part I
Aspects of Self Experiencing
The Evocative Object
Being a Character
Psychic Genera
The Psychoanalyst's Use of Free Association

Part II
Cutting
Cruising in the Homosexual Arena
Violent Innocence
The Fascist State of Mind
Contents
Why Oedipus?
Generational Conciousness

References
Index

About the Author(s)

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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