The Future of Psychoanalysis

By Richard D. Chessick

Subjects: Psychiatry
Paperback : 9780791468968, 281 pages, June 2007
Hardcover : 9780791468951, 281 pages, November 2006

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Table of contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
1. What Is Psychoanalysis?
2. Psychoanalysis as Science and Art
3. The Psychoanalyst as Translator
4. The Continental Contribution to Modern Psychoanalysis
5. The Secret Life of the Psychoanalyst
6. What Can Modern Psychoanalysts Learn from a Medieval Psychoanalysis?
7. Freud’s Great Discovery
8. The Effect on Countertransference of the Collapse of Civilization
9. The Contemporary Failure of Nerve and the Crisis in Psychoanalysis
10. Psychoanalysis at the End of the Third Millennium: A Fantasy
11. What Constitutes Progress in Psychoanalysis?
12. Understanding the Human Mind in the Contemporary World
Notes
References
Index

Addresses the problem of multiple theories of psychoanalysis, arguing for a return to Freud.

Description

The Future of Psychoanalysis explores the contemporary problem of multiple theories of psychoanalysis and argues for a return to a more classical position based on Freud's work. Using his training in psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and philosophy, Richard D. Chessick examines the special combination of hermeneutics and natural science that characterizes Freud's psychoanalysis, and investigates what goes on in the mind of the psychoanalyst during the psychoanalytic process. He maintains that while relativistic and intersubjective theories of psychoanalysis have value, they have gone too far and generated a plurality of theories removed from Freud, which has led to chaos in the field. The Future of Psychoanalysis challenges these trends and places this debate in the context of current mind/brain controversies and unresolved questions about human nature.

Richard D. Chessick is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University, Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst Emeritus at the Center for Psychoanalytic Study in Chicago, and Senior Attending Psychiatrist Emeritus at Evanston Hospital in Evanston, Illinois. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He is the author of many books, including Freud Teaches Psychotherapy; Emotional Illness and Creativity: A Psychoanalytic and Phenomenologic Study; and Psychoanalytic Clinical Practice.