An introduction to psychoanalytic technique from a Lacanian perspective. What does it mean to practice psychoanalysis as Jacques Lacan did? How did Lacan translate his original theoretical insights into moment-to-moment psychoanalytic technique? And what makes a Lacanian approach to treatment different from other approaches? These are among the questions that Bruce Fink, a leading translator and expositor of Lacan's work, addresses in Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique by describing and amply exemplifying the innovative techniques (such as punctuation, scansion, and oracular interpretation) developed by Lacan to uncover unconscious desire, lift repression, and bring about change. Unlike any other writer on Lacan to date, Fink illustrates his Lacanian approach to listening, questioning, punctuating, scanding, and interpreting with dozens of actual clinical examples. He clearly outlines the fundamentals of working with dreams, daydreams, and fantasies, discussing numerous anxiety dreams, nightmares, and fantasies told to him by his own patients. By examining transference and countertransference in detail through the use of clinical vignettes, Fink lays out the major differences (regarding transference interpretation, self-disclosure, projective identification, and the therapeutic frame) between mainstream psychoanalytic practice and Lacanian practice. He critiques the ever more prevalent normalizing attitude in psychoanalysis today and presents crucial facets of Lacan's approach to the treatment of neurosis, as well as of his entirely different approach to the treatment of psychosis. Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique is an introduction to psychoanalytic technique from a Lacanian perspective that is based on Fink's many years of experience working as an analyst and supervising clinicians, including graduate students in clinical psychology, social workers, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and psychoanalysts. Designed for a wide range of practitioners and requiring no previous knowledge of Lacan's work, this primer is accessible to therapists of many different persuasions with diverse degrees of clinical experience, from novices to seasoned analysts. Fink's goal throughout is to present the implications of Lacan's highly novel work for psychoanalytic technique across a broad spectrum of interventions. The techniques covered (all of which are designed to get at the unconscious, repression, and repetition compulsion) can be helpful to a wide variety of practitioners, often transforming their practices radically in a few short months.

One of the eternal problems of mankind is that of love and hate. Why and how does it happen that we love this one of our fellow-men, feel safe in his affection, expect satisfactions of our needs from him and are attracted to him, while we hate and avoid other? Ever since the publication of Freud's first works one of the main objects of psycho-analytic research has been the study of these powerful currents of the human mind. The author contributed several important papers on this subject, and Primary Love and Psychoanalytic Technique is a collection of his material from 1930 to 1952. The first half of this volume is a collection of all his papers on this topic. The first, "Psycho-Sexual Parallels to the Fundamental Law of Biogenetics", is an attempt to trace the development of the erotic instincts from their earliest biological beginnings in unicellular organisms to their highest manifestations in human beings. Other papers deal with the problems of "Genital Love". "Transference of Emotions", of "Love and Hate" and so on.

This systematic and comprehensive volume, written in a lively and clear style, is devoted essentially to the fundamentals of psychoanalytic technique: transference and resistance. The author approaches psychoanalytic technique from a classical theoretical framework, but he frequently gives an entirely fresh view of traditionally accepted procedures. His most important new contribution consists in the clear distinction between the patient's 'real relationship' to the analyst, the 'working alliance', and the transference relationship. His discussion of the contradictory and often conflicting demands which each of these elements makes on the technical skills of the analyst is particularly illuminating. In many fascinating case illustrations, he shows how the analyst carries out therapeutic psychoanalysis while respecting the diversity of psychic constellations in different patients and at different points in their analyses. This book can be recommended - without qualification - to the beginning student because of the thorough clarification and documentation of the basic principles of psychoanalytic technique.

The work of Jacques Lacan is associated more with literature and philosophy than mainstream American psychology, due in large part to the dense language he employs in articulating his theory – including often at the expense of clinical illustration. As a result, his contributions are frequently fascinating, yet their utility in the therapeutic setting can be difficult to pinpoint. Lacanian Psychotherapy fills in this clinical gap by presenting theoretical discussions in clear, accessible language and applying them to several chapter-length case studies, thereby demonstrating their clinical relevance. The central concern of the book is the usefulness of Lacan's notion that the unconscious is structured like and by language. This concept implies a peculiar manner of listening ("to the letter") and intervention, which Miller applies to a number of common clinical concerns – including including case formulation, dreams, transference, and diagnosis – including all in the context of real-world psychotherapy.

Lacan's psychoanalytic take on what makes a pervert perverse is not the fact of habitually engaging in specific "abnormal" or transgressive sexual acts, but of occupying a particular structural position in relation to the Other. Perversion is one of Lacan's three main ontological diagnostic structures, structures that indicate fundamentally different ways of solving the problems of alienation, separation from the primary caregiver, and castration, or having limits set by the law on one's jouissance. The perverse subject has undergone alienation but disavowed castration, suffering from excessive jouissance and a core belief that the law and social norms are fraudulent at worst and weak at best. In Perversion, Stephanie Swales provides a close reading (a qualitative hermeneutic reading) of what Lacan said about perversion and its substructures (i.e., fetishism, voyeurism, exhibitionism, sadism, and masochism). Lacanian theory is carefully explained in accessible language, and perversion is elucidated in terms of its etiology, characteristics, symptoms, and fundamental fantasy. Referring to sex offenders as a sample, she offers clinicians a guide to making differential diagnoses between psychotic, neurotic, and perverse patients, and provides a treatment model for working with perversion versus neurosis. Two detailed qualitative clinical case studies are presented—one of a neurotic sex offender and the other of a perverse sex offender—highlighting crucial differences in the transference relation and subsequent treatment recommendations for both forensic and private practice contexts. Perversion offers a fresh psychoanalytic approach to the subject and will be of great interest to scholars and clinicians in the fields of psychoanalysis, psychology, forensic science, cultural studies, and philosophy.