L~:/ The Shadow. Of the Object. Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known. CHRISTOPHER BOLLAS. New York Columbia University Press. L~:/ The Shadow. Of the Object. Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known. CHRISTOPHER BOLLAS. New York Columbia University Press.

1. Christopher Bollas The Shadow Of The Object

More In The Shadow of the Object, Christopher Bollas integrates aspects of Freud’s theory of unconscious thinking with elements from the British Object Relations School. In doing so, he offers radical new visions of the scope of psychoanalysis and expands our understanding of the creativity of the unconscious mind and the aesthetics of human character.? During our formative years, we are continually 'impressed' by the object world. Most of this experience will never be consciously thought, and but it resides within us as assumed knowledge. Bollas has termed this 'the unthought known', a phrase that has ramified through many realms of human exploration, including the worlds of letters, psychology and the arts.

Aspects of the unthought known -the primary repressed unconscious -will emerge during a psychoanalysis, as a mood, the aesthetic of a dream, or in our relation to the self as other. Within the unique analytic relationship, it becomes possible, at least in part, to think the unthought - an experience that has enormous transformative potential.

Published here with a new preface by Christopher Bollas, The Shadow of the Object remains a classic of the psychoanalytic literature, written by a truly original thinker.

Author by: Christopher Bollas Language: en Publisher by: Routledge Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 31 Total Download: 783 File Size: 52,8 Mb Description: This reader brings together a selection of seminal papers by Christopher Bollas. Essays such as 'The Fascist State of Mind,' 'The Structure of Evil,' and 'The Functions of History' have established his position as one of the most significant cultural critics of our time. Also included are examples of his psychoanalytical writings, such as 'The Transformational Object' and 'Psychic Genera,' that deepen and renew interest in unconscious creative processes. Two recent essays, 'Character and Interformality' and 'The Wisdom of the Dream' extend his work on aesthetics and the role of form in everyday life. This is a collection of papers that will appeal to anyone interested in human experience and subjectivity.

Author by: Christopher Bollas Language: en Publisher by: Routledge Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 15 Total Download: 413 File Size: 47,5 Mb Description: Each person invests many of the objects in his life with his or her own unconscious meaning, each person subsequently voyages through an environment that constantly evokes the self's psychic history. Taking Freud's model of dreamwork as a model for all unconscious thinking, Christopher Bollas argues that we dreamwork ourselves into becoming who we are, and illustrates how the analyst and the patient use such unconscious processes to develop new psychic structures that the patient can use to alter his or her self experience. Building on this foundation, he goes on to describe some very special forms of self experience, including the tragic madness of women cutting themselves, the experience of a cruising homosexual in bars and bathes and the demented ferocity of the facist state of mind. An original interpreter of classical theory and clinical issues, in Being a Character Christopher Bollas takes the reader into the very texture of the psychoanalytic process. Author by: Christopher Bollas Language: en Publisher by: Psychology Press Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 58 Total Download: 674 File Size: 51,5 Mb Description: Hysteria has disappeared from contemporary culture only insofar as it has been subjected to a repression through the popular diagnosis of 'borderline personality disorder'. In Hysteria the distinguished psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas offers an original and illuminating theory of hysteria that weaves its well-known features - repressed sexual ideas; indifference to conversion; over-identification with the other - into the hysteric form.

Through a rereading of Freud, Bollas argues that sexuality in itself is traumatic to all children, as it 'destroys' the relation to the mother, transfiguring her from 'mamma', the infant's caregiver, to 'mother', the child's and father's sex object. For the hysteric this recognition is endlessly traumatic and the hysterical personality forms itself into an organised opposition to this knowledge. True to his earlier writings, Bollas' vision is thought provoking and mind expanding.

Hysteria brings new perspectives to long-standing ideas, making enlightening reading for students and professionals involved in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy alike, as well as the lay reader who takes an interest in the formation of personality in western culture. Author by: Christopher Bollas Language: en Publisher by: Routledge Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 19 Total Download: 486 File Size: 47,5 Mb Description: Several thousand years ago Indo-European culture diverged into two ways of thinking; one went West, the other East. Tracing their differences, Christopher Bollas examines how these mentalities are now converging once again, notably in the practice of psychoanalysis. Creating a freely associated comparison between western psychoanalysts and eastern philosophers, Bollas demonstrates how the Eastern use of poetry evolved as a collective way to house the individual self. On one hand he links this tradition to the psychoanalytic praxes of Winnicott and Khan, which he relates to Daoism in their privileging of solitude and non verbal forms of communicating. On the other, Bollas examines how Jung, Bion and Rosenfeld, assimilate the Confucian ethic that sees the individual and group mind as a collective, while Freudian psychoanalysis he argues has provided an unconscious meeting place of both viewpoints. Bollas's intriguing book will be of interest to psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, Orientalists, and those concerned with cultural studies.

Author by: Christopher Bollas Language: en Publisher by: Routledge Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 94 Total Download: 514 File Size: 42,8 Mb Description: In The Shadow of the Object, Christopher Bollas integrates aspects of Freud’s theory of unconscious thinking with elements from the British Object Relations School. In doing so, he offers radical new visions of the scope of psychoanalysis and expands our understanding of the creativity of the unconscious mind and the aesthetics of human character.?

During our formative years, we are continually 'impressed' by the object world. Most of this experience will never be consciously thought, and but it resides within us as assumed knowledge. Bollas has termed this 'the unthought known', a phrase that has ramified through many realms of human exploration, including the worlds of letters, psychology and the arts. Aspects of the unthought known -the primary repressed unconscious -will emerge during a psychoanalysis, as a mood, the aesthetic of a dream, or in our relation to the self as other. Within the unique analytic relationship, it becomes possible, at least in part, to think the unthought - an experience that has enormous transformative potential. Published here with a new preface by Christopher Bollas, The Shadow of the Object remains a classic of the psychoanalytic literature, written by a truly original thinker.

Author by: Christopher Bollas Language: en Publisher by: Psychology Press Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 43 Total Download: 591 File Size: 42,9 Mb Description: In The Mystery of Things, Christopher Bollas takes the reader right to the heart of psychotherapy, examining the mysterious aspects of the self that are revealed by analysis. The method of enquiry at the heart of psychoanalysis, that is, free association, runs contrary to everything that we are taught is the logical, rational, scientific way to acquire data. Yet it is only through using such an apparently illogical and subversive method that the pathological structures in thinking can be penetrated and the self underneath revealed and worked with by the analyst. Christopher Bollas focuses on the nature and effects of the free associative process. Using clinical studies, he highlights how aspects such as mental illness, and creative or artistic acts can reveal much about the self.

Author by: Sarah Nettleton Language: en Publisher by: Taylor & Francis Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 80 Total Download: 904 File Size: 45,8 Mb Description: The Metapsychology of Christopher Bollas: An Introduction explores Bollas's extraordinarily wide contribution to contemporary psychoanalysis. The book aims to introduce and explain the fundamentals of Bollas's theory of the mind in a systematic way, addressing many of the questions that commonly arise when people approach his work.

Through chapters on topics such as the receptive subject, the creative unconscious and the implications of Bollas's metapsychology for the technique of free association, the book enables the reader to acquire an understanding of his unique psychoanalytic language, to grasp the conceptual building blocks of his thinking and how these interrelate, and to appreciate the theoretical and clinical coherence of his thinking. The Metapsychology of Christopher Bollas: An Introduction will be of use to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and counsellors, as well as psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers wishing to explore the applications of psychoanalytic thinking to their practice. It will be of great value to trainees in these disciplines, as well as to postgraduate students and academics interested in contemporary psychoanalysis. Author by: Joseph Scalia Language: en Publisher by: SAGE Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 97 Total Download: 745 File Size: 52,7 Mb Description: `One of the most interesting theorists in contemporary psychoanalysis, Bollas emphasizes both the creativity of subjectivity itself and the key place of experience in the formation of psychical constructions and fantasy' - Anthony Elliott, Centre for Critical Theory, University of the West of England This eclectic collection of essays reflects the far-reaching, multi-dimensional influence of Christopher Bollas. Bollas galvanises our understanding of what happens when people encounter the objects - the endlessly variegated content - of external reality. Each of us has our own unique idiom through which we endow objects - a painting, a football, a stranger - with special meaning.

Bollas has added depth to our understanding of these relationships with vitality rarely found in psychoanalytic writing. The contributors to this volume offer definitions and illustrations that make Bollas' thought accessible for those approaching his work for the first time and illuminating for those more familiar with his canon. The Vitality of Objects reveals the possibilities for self-expression and growth that figure in the process of object relations and shows how and why thinkers and artists from so many different perspectives are attracted to Bollas' thought. Author by: Christopher Bollas Language: en Publisher by: Free Assn Books Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 56 Total Download: 234 File Size: 48,5 Mb Description: An art exhibition in which a curator showcases the history of her son's life.

Christopher Bollas The Shadow Of The Object

A whole country caught up in anxiety over its meaning. A disappearing act by the show's provocative organisers.

Observing it all, a psychoanalyst - the hero of Christopher Bollas's previous novellas - incensed by the latest trends in therapy: 'funeralism', a means to decide when relationships should be officially killed off, and 'clone-analysis', which claims to analyse the dead through 'necromantic empathy'. Often led by his unconscious into the uncanny, the psychoanalyst finds himself moving haphazardly about his own life - from an unsettling analysis to a deeply embarrassing sexual situation, from a restrained study group to the unexpected 'yelling cure' of a public rally. From the material of human un-ease, Mayhem weaves a design of the comic-absurd. The novella's anarchic movement perfectly embodies its theme, charting a course through deeply disturbing yet incredibly funny territory. Author by: Christopher Bollas Language: en Publisher by: Routledge Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 17 Total Download: 810 File Size: 54,5 Mb Description: In his latest book Christopher Bollas uses detailed studies of real clinical practice to illuminate a theory of psychoanalysis which privileges the human impulse to question. From earliest childhood to the end of our lives, we are driven by this impulse in its varying forms, and The Infinite Question illustrates how Freud's free associative method provides both patient and analyst with answers and, in turn, with an ongoing interplay of further questions. At the book's core are transcripts of real analytical sessions, accompanied by parallel commentaries which highlight key aspects of the free associative method in practice.

These transcripts are contextualised by further discussion of the cases themselves, as well as a wider theoretical framework which places its emphasis on Freud's theory of the logic of sequence: by learning to listen to this free associative logic, Bollas argues, we can discover a richer and more complex unconscious voice than if we rely solely on Freud's theory of repressed ideas. Bollas demonstrates, in an eloquent and persuasive manner, how the Freudian position of evenly suspended attentiveness enables the analyst's unconscious to catch the drift of the patient's own unconscious. He also shows that to stimulate further questioning is often of more benefit to the analytical process than to jump to an interpretation. Yet whatever fascinating course a session may take, neither the patient nor the analyst can halt the progress of the self-propelling interrogative drive. The Infinite Question will be invaluable to both the new student and the experienced psychoanalyst, read either on its own or as a practice-based extension of the theoretical ideas elaborated in its companion volume, The Evocative Object World (also published by Routledge).