This book explores the clinical processes of psychoanalysis by charting modern developments in logic and applying them to the study of insight. Offering an epistemic approach to clinical psychoanalysis this book places value on the clinical interpretations of both the analysand and analyst and engages in a critique on purely linguistic approaches to psychoanalysis, which forsake crucial dimensions of clinical practice.
Drawing on the work of key twentieth century thinkers including Jerome Richfield, Ignacio Matte-Blanco, Gregory Bateson and the pioneering contribution on insight made by James Strachey, topics of discussion include:
- the structure and role of clinical interpretation
- interpretation and creationism
- body, meaning and language
- logical levels and transference.
As such, this book will be of great interest to all those in the psychoanalytic field, in particular those wanting to learn more about the study of insight and its relationship to clinical processes of psychoanalysis.
Boesky, Foreword. Preface. Introduction: On the Place and Limits of Psychoanalytic Knowing. Logical Types and Ostensive Insight. Interpretation and Creationism. What is a Clinical Fact? Clinical Psychoanalysis as Inductive Method. Body, Meaning and Language. Fact, Context, Image, Narrative: A Bio-logical Approach. Toward the Epistemology of Clinical Psychoanalysis. Disclosures and Refutations: Clinical Psychoanalysis as a Logic of Enquiry. Counterinduction in Psychoanalytic Practice: Epistemic and Technical Aspects. Logical and Communicational Levels of Transference. The Double Work on the Clinical Evidences, and the Nature and Limits of Symbolization. The Analytic Mind at Work. Counterinductive Knowledge and the Blunders of So-called ‘Theory of Science’. Postscript: 'What Hath God Wrought?' A Plea for Insight in Media Society.
Biography
Jorge L. Ahumada is a training analyst of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association and a Distinguished Fellow in the British Psychoanalytical Society. He is Mary S. Sigourney Awardee for 1996 and is a past Editor for Latin America of The International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
"the reader can expect, I think, to have the opportunity to examine and gain insight into their own ideas that shape their psychoanalytic experience. This will be a private experience but well worth the effort that I think needs putting into the reading to gain the most out of it. I certainly found that there were times when it seemed too daunting for me but on reaching the conclusion I felt I had gained something new, challenging and very helpful." - James Rose, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis
"This is an important, illuminating book by one of the few psychoanalysts who are intellectually equipped to deal authoritatively with the crucially important links between our failure to improve methods for evaluating clinical evidence and the culture wars in psychoanalysis in recent decades." - Dale Boesky, from the Foreword
