Reinventing Psychoanalysis for the Great Unknown: The Never-Ending Challenge
Book Details
- Publisher : Routledge
- Published : July 2026
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 200
- Category :
Forthcoming - Category 2 :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 98570
- ISBN 13 : 9781041137313
- ISBN 10 : 1041137311
Also by Ofra Eshel
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This book explores extreme experiences in psychoanalysis and examines how to work with and understand such experiences both theoretically and practically.
It invites readers into new, transformative quantum frontiers of psychoanalytic thought and clinical experience. Taking her profound work as the heart of the conversation, Eshel and a distinguished range of authors examine the essence of the great unknown in diverse realms of psychoanalysis—from massively traumatic states and enigmatic telepathic dreams to the sudden, shattering death of a patient. They focus on the decisive shift from classical psychoanalysis and its epistemological boundaries to the traumatic, the catastrophic, and the unknowable—charting an ontological–experiential, quantum frontier of analytic work. Inspired by Winnicott and Bion, yet reaching beyond them, these contributions open both mind and heart to a dimension of radical presence and deeply transformative forms of analytic oneness, making possible encounters with even the most seemingly unreachable patients.
This is essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists seeking to extend the reach of psychoanalytic treatment and to work with some of the most difficult clinical situations.
Reviews and Endorsements
Ofra Eshel’s Reinventing Psychoanalysis for the Great Unknown: The Never-Ending Challenge is a magnificent tribute to her work in which she reinvents psychoanalysis in a form that is suited to treating severe traumatic states and other forms of psychic difficulty previously unreachable. She delves deeply into her experience with the patient to accompany him or her through the depths of darkness in which the patient has lived alone and consequently without the possibility of continuing the journey into becoming oneself. This is an invaluable book that marks the frontier of contemporary psychoanalysis. Thomas Ogden, author of What Alive Means and Coming to Life in the Consulting Room
In this remarkable new volume, Ofra Eshel deepens and expands her groundbreaking original ideas on analytic oneness, exploring its vital role in psychoanalytic work at the deepest levels of the mind. With illuminating commentaries by distinguished psychoanalytic thinkers, the book ventures courageously into the unknown frontiers of analytic experience—where challenge, mystery, and transformation intertwine. Eshel’s notion of “quantum interconnectedness” opens a visionary path, suggesting that psychoanalysis, like quantum physics, can transcend the boundaries of conventional science. Her striking clinical illustrations exemplify her rare capacity to think, feel, and write from within the very heart of psychoanalysis. João Carlos Braga MD, PhD, Training and Supervising Analyst, the Brazilian Psychoanalytic Society of São Paulo, and Brazilian Psychoanalytic Society of Curitiba, Brazil
Table of Contents
Part I: Reinventing psychoanalysis for the great traumatic unknown
1. Being Totally in the dark: On working analytically within the depths of the great unknown of psychic catastrophe
2. Into the wilderness with Ofra Eshel and her patient Clari
3. Fascinated and troubled in contemporary psychoanalysis: Ofra Eshel’s extension of the Bion-Winnicott framework for working with severe traumatic states
Part II: The enigma of telepathic dreams
4. Where are you, my beloved? On absence, loss, and the enigma of telepathic dreams
5. “To approach what is radically other”: Ofra Eshel’s “Where are you, my beloved?”
Part III: Reinventing psychanalysis for severe perversion
6. Calamities and secrets, the power of the fetish: Clinical case
7. Delving into the never-ending challenge of reinventing psychanalysis for severe perversion
8. Bearing the Unbearable—in reply
About the Author(s)
Ofra Eshel is faculty and training and supervising analyst of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society and a fellow of the IPA. She is an honorary member of the New Center for Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles. She founded and heads the post-graduate track “Winnicott, Bion, and Independent Psychoanalysis: Radical Breakthrough” at Tel Aviv University, and also (in 2024) the advanced program “Radical Breakthroughs in Contemporary Psychoanalysis” in Beijing, China. Her book, The Emergence of Analytic Oneness (Routledge, 2019), has been translated into Chinese, Brazilian-Portuguese, and Hebrew, with Spanish and Russian translations in progress.
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