Description
Book SynopsisIn Reclaiming Unlived Life, influential psychoanalyst Thomas Ogden uses rich clinical examples to illustrate how different types of thinking may promote or impede analytic work. With a unique style of creative reading, the book builds upon the work of Winnicott and Bion, discussing the universality of unlived life and the ways unlived life may be reclaimed in the analytic experience. The book examines the role of intuition in analytic practice and the process of developing an analytic style that is uniquely one's own.
Ogden deals with many forms of interplay of truth and psychic change, the transformative effect of conscious and unconscious efforts to confront the truth of experience and how psychoanalysts can understand their own psychic evolution, as well as that of their patients. Reclaiming Unlived Life sets out a new way that analysts can understand and use notions of truth in their clinical work and in their reading of the work of Kafka and Borges.
<
Trade Review
"Like all great writers, Thomas Ogden creates a world that seems wonderfully new and yet also familiar: a world in which we discover that we had resources of humanity in us that we did not know existed. Reading his texts and letting ourselves be read by them, we live the intense and gratifying experience of feeling more alive and more human. This is why I have always thought that the extremely beautiful and original works which have been his gifts to us for years, are not only a matchless contribution to the development of psychoanalysis, and not only ensure that it remains something worthy of our lifelong passion, but go far beyond psychoanalysis. Reclaiming Unlived Lives: Experiences in Psychoanalysis is simply further testimony to Ogden’s incredible creativity. From chapter to chapter his unmistakable voice leads us with gentleness and wisdom to confront essential topics such as truth, dream-thought, missing forms of life, the aesthetic experience in the session, Borges and Kafka, the interface between literature and psychoanalysis. A delightful conversation with Luca Di Donna ends the book. It is easy to foresee this work remaining a classic of psychoanalysis."-Giuseppe Civitarese, editor of the Journal of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society.
"Thomas Ogden is one of the most highly esteemed analytic thinkers writing today. His writing is unique, at once lucid and profound. In this extraordinary new book, he offers a rare opportunity to accompany him as he reinvents psychoanalysis with each of his patients. Joining Ogden in this new venture is an opportunity not to be missed by psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic therapists seeking to deepen the way they think about their work and the experiences they have with their patients."-Glen O. Gabbard, MD, author of Love and Hate in the Analytic Setting and Boundaries and Boundary Violations in Psychoanalysis.
Table of ContentsTruth And Psychic Change: In Place Of An Introduction; On Three Types Of Thinking: Magical Thinking, Dream Thinking And Transformative Thinking; Fear Of Breakdown And The Unlived Life; Intuiting The Truth Of What’s Happening: On Bion’s ‘Notes On Memory And Desire’; On Becoming A Psychoanalyst; Dark Ironies Of The ‘Gift’ Of Consciousness: Kafka’s ‘A Hunger Artist’; A Life Of Letters Encompassing Everything And Nothing: Borges’s ‘Library Of Babel’; A Conversation With Thomas Ogden.
