Description
Since its inception, and throughout its history, psychoanalysis has been defined as a psychology of conflict. Freud’s tripartite structure of id, ego and superego, and then modern conflict theory, placed conflict at the center of mental life and its understanding at the heart of therapeutic action. As psychoanalysis has developed into the various schools of thought, the understanding of the importance of mental conflict has broadened and changed.
In Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Conflict, a highly distinguished group of authors outline the main contemporary theoretical understandings of the role of conflict in psychoanalysis, and what this can teach us for everyday psychoanalytic practice. The book fills a gap in psychoanalytic thinking as to the essence of conflict and therapeutic action, at a time when many theorists are re-conceptualizing conflict in relation to aspects of mental life as an essential component across theories.
Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Conflict will be of interest to psychologists, psychoanalysts, social workers, and other students and professionals involved in the study and practice of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, cognitive science and neuroscience.
Table of Contents
About the authors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
- Inner Conflict in Freudian Theory – Morris N. Eagle
- The Evolution of Modern Conflict Theory – Chris Christian
- The Fate of Conflict and the Impoverishment of Our Clinical Methods – Fred Busch
- Conflict from the Perspective of Free Association – Anton O. Kris
- Inner Conflict in Fairbairn’s Theory of Endopyschic Structure – Morris N. Eagle
- Kleinian and Post-Kleinian Perspectives on Conflict – Neal Vorus
- Analytic Trust, Transference and the Importance of Conflict – Steve Ellman
- Emergence of Conflict During the Development of Self: A Relational Self Psychology Perspective – James L. Fosshage
- The Phenomenological Contextualism of Conflict: An Intersubjective Perspective – Chris Jaenicke
- Conflict and Change: Producer, Trigger, Sign, Outcome – Adrienne Harris
- The Dialectic of Desire: a view of intrapsychic conflict in the work of Jacques Lacan – David Lichtenstein
- Forces at Play in Psychical Conflict – Jean Laplanche
- On Conflict in Attachment Theory and Research – Howard Steele and Miriam Steele
- Addressing Defenses against Painful Emotions: Modern Conflict Theory in Psychotherapeutic Approaches with Children – Leon Hoffman, Timothy R. Rice and Tracy A. Prout
- Implicit Attitudes, Unconscious Fantasy, and Conflict – Benjamin A. Saunders and Philip S. Wong
- Neural Basis of Intrapsychic and Unconscious Conflict and Repetition Compulsion – Heather A. Berlin and John Montgomery
References
