Ethical Upheaval, Creative Upheaval: The Actual of Ethics in Psychoanalysis and in Life
Part of New Library of Psychoanalysis series - more in this series
Book Details
- Publisher : Routledge
- Published : September 2026
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 264
- Category :
Forthcoming - Category 2 :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 98598
- ISBN 13 : 9781041246848
- ISBN 10 : 1041246846
Also by Viviane Chetrit-Vatine
Free UK Delivery over £35
There are currently no reviews
Be the first to review
In a profound new interweaving of the ideas of Levinas and Laplanche, this book rethinks the origin of ethical capacity in human life.
It elaborates on the implications of ethics at the beginning of life in the care of infants; in psychoanalytic practice; and in the socio-political sphere. The author puts forward the hypothesis of the feminine maternal dimension as the origin of ethical capacity, and proposes the notion of “ethical seduction” to address the asymmetry between analyst and analysand. With rich clinical vignettes, the text offers an expansive metapsychology linking three elements: the organic body and the “Vital-Identital”; the erotic body and the “Sexual”; and the infinite part of our psyche arising through the “Ethical”.
Written in the long shadow of the Shoah and amid contemporary violence, this book is original and meaningful reading for all psychoanalysts.
Reviews and Endorsements
I do not know of any psychoanalyst who would not advocate the need for “psychoanalytic ethics”, but the most pertinent question is how this need fits into the concrete practice of psychoanalysts. Viviane Chetrit-Vatine’s book is organized around this essential question. It is not enough to proclaim loudly and clearly the need for ethics; the conditions that make it possible must also be described, and these cannot overlook the question of what is known as countertransference. This question is usually linked to the weight of the impact of the analyst’s past emotional life and to those aspects of it that have not been sufficiently integrated into their psychic functioning. There is undoubtedly some relevance in this way of thinking about countertransference, but it is perhaps not the most essential issue, as the author shows in her book. Countertransference is also fundamentally organized by the theoretical models of psychic functioning to which the psychoanalyst subscribes as well as by the place given in these models to the subject’s unique history; and within that by the place given to the impact of the mode of presence, response and reaction of the significant objects with which the subject had to construct themselves. All of this occupies a central place from the very beginning and throughout the subject's early life: no one is self-generated. This is why the author’s choice of theoretical references is essential in order to ensure that ethics is not just a pipe dream but can become a reality in practice.
René Roussillon, Professor Emeritus, Clinical Psychology and Psychopathology, University of Lyon, France; Training Member, Société Psychanalytique de Paris and Groupe Lyonnais de Psychanalyse Rhône-Alpes; Recipient of the Bouvet Prize (1991) and the Sigourney Award (2016)
In her brave, brilliant, and ambitious new book, Viviane Chetrit-Vatine offers readers a rich tableau of thought on the very heart of psychoanalytic praxis: its irreducibly ethical and transcendental dimensions. Ethical Upheaval, Creative Upheaval is a work of great originality; it is also an exemplary instance of collective study, as Chetrit-Vatine gives us vivid descriptions of how she and her colleagues at the annual French Speaking Analysts Conference (CPLF) engaged key psychoanalytic questions with rigor and extraordinary inventiveness. In this sense, we get a bird’s-eye view of the workings of a vibrant psychoanalytic community in which the most important questions in psychoanalysis are addressed. Thus, in addition to Chetrit-Vatine’s fruitful explorations of key notions such as matricial space, enigmethical messages, ethical upheaval, and subjectal moments, she also shows the reader a particular ethics of care for the other, in this case, for her colleagues of the CPLF. Ethical Upheaval, Creative Upheaval is both a seminal contribution to psychoanalytic theory and practice, and also an anthropology of a psychoanalytic community at work.
Mitchell Wilson, Editor Emeritus, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association; Training and Supervising Analyst, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis
Viviane Chetrit-Vatine’s new book is an extraordinary achievement on many fronts. It presents a contemporary elaboration rooted in French psychoanalytic scholarship, which may be novel for some readers but will richly reward them. The central theme of this elaboration is the Ethical, a dimension that expands psychoanalytic ethics immeasurably beyond its usual restricted focus on violations. It draws on “matricial space”, the unique and early confluence of seduction and responsibility that marks being human. It also presents a remarkable expansion of object relations through the ethical responsibility that stems from the encounter with the Other, joining Levinas’ philosophy with fundamental psychoanalytic principles and bearing deeply on the psychoanalytic encounter. The originality and depth of these amalgamations are certain to engage and expand the horizons of readers of all psychoanalytic persuasions.
Shmuel Erlich, Training and Supervising Analyst, Israel Psychoanalytic Society; Founding Member, OFEK, The Israeli Association for the Study of Group and Organizational Processes; Chair, PCCA
Table of Contents
Introduction
PART ONE: At the dawn of psychic life: ethical seduction in analysis and in life
1. Primal seduction, matricial space and asymmetry in the psychoanalytic encounter
2. From mastery to the caress: time and the sublimatory moment
3. The significance of meaning, or the ethical dimension of the analyst’s listening and saying
4. Ethical upheaval, passion of the analyst, and subjective appropriation
PART TWO: Between the body and the psyche: ethics
5. Wounded Oedipus and ethical upheaval
6. The matricial third: the feminine/maternal sphere in every human subject
7. The actual of ethics in psychoanalysis
8. Can we speak of a life Sexual?
9. Psychic bisexuality, ethical seduction and matricial space
PART THREE: Elements for a contemporary metapsychology?
10. From an altered unconscious ego to a revitalized unconscious ego
11. The triple asymmetry of the fundamental anthropological situation
12. Touching on the dimension of infinity when the Sexual is equally involved
13. Time and space of the other or, the analytic situation and the dimension of infinity: Makom
14. The Ethical: for a negotiation between the “Vital-Identital” and the Sexual
PART FOUR: Societal implications
15. Freud’s Why War? Revisited
16. Why Evil?
17. A voice from another bank (2016)
18. Religious belief and its vicissitudes
19. For an ethics of saying well in the light of contemporary parental configurations
Recapitulation
Homage to Éliane Amado Lévy-Valensi
Epilogue
About the Author(s)
Viviane Chetrit-Vatine, former President of the Israeli Psychoanalytic Society and faculty member of the Israel Institute of Psychoanalysis, is a training analyst for adults and children. Her professional activity includes: a private practice in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, teaching and training at the Israel Institute of Psychoanalysis and on other Israeli psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic post-graduate programmes, and research activity in the laboratory run by Francois Villa at Paris VII Diderot University (CPRMS). She is a member of the international reading committee of the Revue Française de Psychanalyse, of the international scientific committee of Monographies de Psychanalyse and of the reading committee of Maarag. She publishes articles in Israeli journals (Sihot, Maarag), in French journals (RFP, Le coq heron), as well as in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
Customer Reviews
Our customers have not yet reviewed this title. Be the first add your own review for this title.
You may also like
Bluebird: The Place of Death and Fear of Dying in My Long, Good Life
Andrew Cooper
Price £15.99
save £4.00
Axioms of Mind and Lived Experience: On Character and the Assumed
Christopher Bollas
Price £19.99
save £5.00