Introducing Psychoanalysis: Essential Themes and Topics

Introducing Psychoanalysis brings together leading analysts to explain what psychoanalysis is and how it has developed, setting its ideas in their appropriate social and intellectual context.

Based on lectures given at the British Psychoanalytic Society, the contributions capture the diversity of opinion among analysts to provide a clear and dynamic presentation of concepts such as:

• sexual perversions
• trauma and the possibility of recovery
• phantasy and reality
• interpreting and transference
• two views of the Oedipus complex
• projective identification
• the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions
• symbolism and dreams.

Frequently misunderstood subjects are demystified and the contributors' wealth of clinical and supervisory experience ensures that central concepts are explained with refreshing clarity. Clinical examples are included throughout and provide a valuable insight into the application of psychoanalytic ideas. This overview of the wide variety of psychoanalytic ideas that are current in Britain today will appeal to all those training and practicing in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, as well as those wishing to broaden their knowledge of this field.