The Loss of Self: Self-Writing as a Tool in Borderline Psychoanalysis
Book Details
- Publisher : Routledge
- Published : April 2025
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 158
- Category :
Forthcoming - Category 2 :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 98037
- ISBN 13 : 9781032893846
- ISBN 10 : 1032893842
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The Loss of Self considers distinctions and connections between the writing of survival and survival as a mode of being and thinking encountered in analytic work with borderline patients.
Jean-François Chiantaretto draws a parallel between Freud’s use of writing in constructing the psychoanalytic edifice and the way each analyst may turn to writing when reflecting on a patient’s analysis. With close reference to the writings of Imre Kertész, the book brings a unique perspective to the literary and historical concept of survival.
The Loss of Self will be of interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training.
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This book offers a brilliant discussion of one of the most troubling elements of contemporary practice – the borderline – which forces the subject to confront the foundations of his identity, constructed in the relation with the other. Based on his extensive experience as an analyst, and drawing on literature with its ability to portray the torments and the loss of the self, Jean-François Chiantaretto describes the ways in which the life of the psyche is constantly subjected to a painful, conflictual process combining the consent to change with the requirement of remaining oneself. This requirement is founded on an internal listening function altered by the other, a function personified by the “internal witness”. As the author aptly points out, the Freud-Ferenczi dialogue is emblematic of this transformation inherent to the subjective experience.
Laurent Danon-Boileau is a training psychoanalyst and full member of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society, professor emeritus of general linguistics at the Cité University of Paris. He is editor-in-chief of the collection Le silence des sirènes (Fario)
For the past thirty years, Jean-François Chiantaretto has been elaborating an original oeuvre based on an innovative metapsychological approach centred on “the infans in the adult” and on “internal interlocution”, in analytic treatment and in “self-writing”. His work – somewhere between literary criticism and writing as a curative practice – focuses primarily on starting and starting over: in the history of psychoanalysis, in writing as self-preservation, in establishing self-representation.
Patrick Guyomard is a psychoanalyst and University Professor emeritus. He is the founder of the Freudian Psychoanalytic Society, and Director of Éditions Campagne Première
Jean-François Chiantaretto’s books and articles present a mode of original thinking which views writing as a trace of life. His work, grounded in Freudian metapsychology and influenced by analysts from different theoretical schools, also draws on authors like Imre Kertész and Aaron Appelfeld. We travel with them to significant limits in the history of psychoanalysis and of analysts. Grounding his work in literature allows Chiantaretto to take an innovative approach to the treatment of borderline patients. His powerful writing style opposes the exclusion and isolation imposed by a reductionist “application” of psychoanalysis.
Jean-Yves Tamet is a psychoanalyst and full member of the French Psychoanalytical Association. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Le présent de la psychanalyse
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Prologue: Back and Forth between Treatment and Writing
Part One - The Beginnings
1. Unease about Origins, Unease at the Origins
2. The Original, the Originary
Part Two - Renewing Psychoanalysis
1. The Ferenczian Renewal
2. Beginning, Starting Over
3. Welcoming the Unwelcome Child
Part Three - Writing at the Borderline
1. Survival in Words
2. Writing for...
3. Writing against...
Part Four - Borderline Existence
1. Disappearance or Loss
2. From Culture to Treatment: Malaise in Transparency
Epilogue - The Analyst's Transference, Transferential Writing
Addendum
The Self in Question
About the Author(s)
Jean-François Chiantaretto is a Paris-based psychoanalyst and professor emeritus of clinical psychopathology at Sorbonne Paris North University. Trained in philosophy and clinical psychology, he is a member and scientific secretary of the Quatrième Groupe.
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