Letters to a Young Psychoanalyst

Lessons on Psyche, Human Existence, and Psychoanalysis

Heitor O'Dwyer de Macedo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317207184
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Written in the form of letters from an experienced analyst to a young colleague, Letters to a Young Psychoanalyst expands the psychoanalytic frame to include South American, French, and British theory, and examine a wide variety of theoretical and clinical topics.

Letters to a Young Psychoanalyst is ground-breaking in more than one respect. It re-examines major psychoanalytic theories in the light of rich clinical practice, and in the light of the practice of friendship, whilst portraying the practice of analysis as the choice of a personal code of ethics. Covering such core issues as transference, trauma, hysteria, the influence of the mother, and love and hate, and drawing on the work of notable analysts such as Winnicott, McDougall, Pankow and Ferenczi, the book explores the many facets of healing function of psychoanalysis in practice and discloses the workings of the psyche in human existence.

This book considers psychoanalysis a humanist endeavour, focussing on its healing function and using captivating examples to illustrate different modes of commitment on the part of the analyst. Rejecting a view of psychoanalysis as a painful and laborious process, the book insists instead on the joyous and passionate nature of the work of psychic elaboration. Uniquely, the transmission of knowledge and skill which it provides, constituting a veritable training, is not at all didactic in tone. It places the two interlocutors, as well as the reader, on the same level: people who share the desire to remain attentive to themselves and to others, and who believe that empathy heals, within the setting of therapy and in human relations in general.

Written in a remarkably engaging and accessible style, Letters to a Young Psychoanalyst will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, students of all levels studying in these fields, as well as lay readers wishing to understand fundamental psychoanalytic concepts.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Letter 1 The interlocutor
• Letter 2 The young psychoanalyst
• Letter 3 The setting
• Letter 4 Françoise Dolto and psychoanalytic amorality
• Letter 5 Couch or chair
• Letter 6 Transference
• Letter 7 The Ferenczi predicament
• Letter 8 Psychosis: the encounter with Gisela Pankow
• Letter 9 Gisela Pankow and her teaching
• Letter 10 Winnicott's concept of continuity of being: transference and treatment of trauma
• Letter 11 Reading Beyond the Pleasure Principle: the insistence of Eros
• Letter 12 Helio Pellegrino
• Letter 13 Humour
• Letter 14 Paranoia as seen by Philippe Réfabert
• Letter 15 The player
• Letter 16 Freud, Michel Neyraut, Piera Aulagnier: anxiety between theory and practice
• Letter 17 Perversion and somatisation: the work of Joyce McDougall
• Letter 18 Money
• Letter 19 Transference and friendship
• Letter 20 Hysteria
• Letter 21 The therapist
• Letter 22 Victor Smirnoff: an example to follow
• Letter 23 Françoise Davoine and Jean-Max Gaudillière: history beyond trauma
• Letter 24 Winnicott's contemporaneity and psychoanalytic societies
• Letter 25 Psychic health
• Letter 26 Trust
• Letter 27 The divine part of man
• Letter 28 Loup Verlet: psychoanalysis as a revolution of the conceptual framework
• Letter 29 The inner mother
• Letter 30 Writing
• Letter 31 Hallucination as a defence and Claude Lanzmann's triple knowledge
• Letter 32 Totalitarian regimes and psychosis
• Letter 33 True love
• Letter 34 Hate
• Letter 35 The Celestina superego and the Dulcinea superego
• Letter 36 Freud and Spinoza
• Index