1st Edition

Why Read Ogden? The Importance of Thomas Ogden's Work for Contemporary Psychoanalysis

Edited By Marina F R Ribeiro Copyright 2025
    288 Pages
    by Routledge

    288 Pages
    by Routledge

    Why Read Ogden? explores the importance of Thomas Ogden's work to contemporary psychoanalysis, both as an interpreter of classic psychoanalytic thinkers and as a new and original theorist and clinician in his own right.

    Ogden writes about the literary genre of psychoanalytic writing, emphasising the amalgamation of theoretical and clinical writing with the author’s personality. Ogden also considers psychoanalytic writing a form of thinking: We do not write what we think, but we are thinking something unprecedented in writing. Inspired by Ogden's proposal of a transitive and creative reading, which the authors show him to demonstrate in his own writing about Freud, Klein, Bion and Winnicott, this book takes as its organising principle the question of how Ogden’s texts resonate with them personally. Ogden is regarded as one of the most important and influential living psychoanalysts, and this book addresses the lack of attention given to summarising and examining his key contributions.

    This book will be essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, in practice and in training, who wish to gain a comprehensive understanding of Ogden's work.

     

    Introduction - Reading Thomas H. Ogden

    Marina F. R.  Ribeiro

     

    01. An Experience in Language: A General Overview of The Work of Thomas H. Ogden

    Alberto Rocha Barros

     

    02. Tradition and Innovation: The Style of Thomas Ogden 

    Nelson Ernesto Coelho Júnior 

     

    03. Ogden reader of Freud 

    Érico Bruno Viana Campos

     

    04. Ogden reader of Melanie Klein: understanding Klein to Move Beyond Her.

    Janderson Farias Silvestre Ramos e Elisa Maria Ulhôa Cintra

           

    05. Ogden reader of Bion: from the theory of thinking to intuitive thinking.

     Marina F R Ribeiro e Davi Berciano Flores

     

    06. Thomas Ogden, reader of Winnicott: epistemological, clinical theoretical and aesthetic dialogues.

    Pedro Hikiji Neves e Daniel Kupermann

     

    07. From projective identification to Thomas Ogden's concept of the analytic third party: A Psychoanalytic Thought in Search of an Author

    Marina F R. Ribeiro

     

    08. An encounter with Ogden in the analytic third.

    Gina Tamburrino

     

    09. Supervising with Thomas H. Ogden: Narratives from the Analytic Third

     Idete Zimermann Bizzi

     

    10. From Limbo to Light: Reverie in Thomas H. Ogden.

    Ana Fátima Aguiar,  Marina F R Ribeiro e Pedro Hikiji Neves.   

     

    11.The Winged Words of Thomas Ogden

    Fátima Flórido César e Marina F R Ribeiro

     

    12. A reflection on Thomas Ogden's direct, tangential, and non sequiturs discourses and the search for the unlived life. Visitation: when words come to meet us.

    Fátima Flórido Cesar e Marina F R Ribeiro

     

    13. Appendix

    Alberto Rocha Barros

    Biography

    Marina F. R. Ribeiro, PhD, is a psychoanalyst, associate professor and research supervisor and advisor for master’s and PhD students in the Clinical Psychology Postgraduate Program at the University of São Paulo. She is also the author of several books and papers and most recently co-authored Reading Bion’s Transformation (2024).

    Why Ogden? is a compilation of papers that offers a scholarly assessment of Thomas Ogden's contributions to psychoanalysis in many aspects and through different angles. It is written and edited by leading Brazilian academics psychoanalysts and addresses not only Ogden’s work but also the way through which he reads classic authors of psychoanalysis such as Freud, Klein, Bion and Winnicott. Ogden’s writing never tries to merely explain a concept and never seeks to be revered: he invites the reader to think alongside him and reinvent psychoanalysis as a whole for him or herself. I was going to say that Ogden's work is vast, but it would be more accurate to say that the experience of being in the world with someone else, of living a shared story in a consulting room, is vast. Ogden is an explorer of this vastness.’

    Elias Mallet da Rocha Barros is a training and supervising analyst and docent at the Brazilian Psychoanalytic Society of São Paulo (SBPSP); and a fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.