This collection of some of Louis Althusser's major essays on psychoanalytic thought documents his relationship with Jacques Lacan and presents aspects of his personal and intellectual life

Literature and Psychoanalysis is an exciting, and compulsive working through of what Freud really said, and why it is so important, with a chapter on Melanie Klein and object relations theory, and two chapters on Lacan, and his work on the unconscious as structured like a language. Investigating different forms of literature through a careful examination of Shakespeare, Blake, the Sherlock Holmes stories, and many other examples from literature, the book makes the argument for taking literature and psychoanalysis together, and essential to each other. The book places both literature and psychoanalysis into the context of all that has been said about these subjects in recent debates in the theory of Derrida and Foucault and Žižek, and into the context of gender studies and queer theory.

Sabina Spielrein’s writings explore the burning topics in the early days of psychoanalysis while providing insight into the culture of the time and her own personal struggles. After a comprehensive historical and biographical introduction to Spielrein by John Launer, The Essential Writings of Sabina Spielrein: Pioneer of Psychoanalysis presents full-length English translations of her first three and most essential writings, offering deep insight into her brilliant and pioneering mind: The first unabridged English rendition of her medical dissertation of 1911, entitled "On the Psychological Content of a Case of Schizophrenia (Dementia Praecox)", with an afterword by Adrienne Harris A new, improved English translation of Spielrein’s seminal essay of 1912, "Destruction as the Cause of Becoming" A faithful English rendition of her 1913 essay "Contributions to Understanding a Child’s Mind" The Essential Writings of Sabina Spielrein: Pioneer of Psychoanalysis presents a rich source of materials and inspiration to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists and analytical psychologists, as well as scholars in the humanities and the behavioral sciences.

A beautiful and thoughtful collection of essays on reading, writing and learning, Writing and Psychoanalysis grows out of a colloquium. The results are wondrous and impact on the reader at many different levels. In the act of writing, we all discover something about what we know previously unknown to us, and we learn more about our inner world that we knew before we set pen to paper (or hand to computer). Patrick Mahony goes so far as to argue that Freud's self-analysis was essentially a "writing cure." Writing in Psychoanalysis is the first volume in the projected Monograph Series, Psychoanalytic Issues, the Rivista di Psicoanalisi (the Journal of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society) is undertaking in conjunction with Karnac Books. This series constitutes a major effort to bring about a dialogue among psychoanalysts who while ultimately bound together by a common psychoanalytic heritage nonetheless are separated in their thinking by different idioms, whether linguistic or theoretical. While featuring writers of very different idioms, this series will also present a venue to make some important Italian voices known to English speaking analysts.

Edgar A. Levenson is a key figure in the development of interpersonal psychoanalysis whose ideas remain influential. Interpersonal Psychoanalysis and the Enigma of Consciousness builds on his previously published work in his key areas of expertise such as interpersonal psychoanalysis, transference and countertransference, and the philosophy of psychoanalysis, and sets his ideas into contemporary context. Combining a selection of Levenson’s own writings with extensive discussion and analysis of his work by Stern and Slomowitz, it provides an invaluable guide to how his most recent, mature ideas may be understood and applied by contemporary psychoanalysts in their own practice. This book explores how the rational algorithm of psychoanalytic engagement and the mysterious flows of consciousness interact; this has traditionally been thought of as dialectical, an unresolvable duality in psychoanalytic practice. Analysts move back and forth between the two perspectives, rather like a gestalt leap, finding themselves listening either to the "interpersonal" or to the "intrapsychic" in what feels like a self-state leap. But the interpersonal is not in dialectical opposition to the intrapsychic; rather a manifestation of it, a subset. The chapters pick up from the themes explored in The Purloined Self, shifting the emphasis from the interpersonal field to the exploration of the enigma of the flow of consciousness that underlies the therapeutic process. This is not the Freudian Unconscious nor the consciousness of awareness, but the mysterious Jamesian matrix of being. Any effort at influence provokes resistance and refusal by the patient. Permitted a "working space," the patient ultimately cures herself. How that happens is a mystery wrapped up in the greater mystery of unconscious process, which in turn is wrapped into the greatest philosophical and neurological enigma of all—the nature of consciousness. Interpersonal Psychoanalysis and the Enigma of Consciousness will be highly engaging and readable; Levenson’s witty essayist style and original perspective will make it greatly appealing and accessible to undergraduate and postgraduate students of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, as well as practitioners in these fields.

The arts.