Psychic Experience And Problems Of Technique (the New Library Of Psychoanalysis, No 13)

Psychic Experience and Problems of Technique Harold Stewart, a distinguished psychoanalyst of more than 30 years’ experience, began his medical career as a general practitioner. He was drawn first towards hypnotherapy, then to psychoanalysis, as a more sensitive, productive and far-reaching method of exploring patients’ problems. In this book Dr Stewart draws deeply on his own clinical experience to focus on changes in the patient’s experience of inner space, and to record the growth of his own understanding of the patient’s experience and how this can change. Beginning with a vivid account of the role of collusion in the myth of Jocasta and Oedipus, he goes on to a theoretical discussion of thinking, dreams, inner space, and the hypnotic state, in the context of extensive clinical experience. The second part of the book centres on practical clinical issues and problems of technique, tackling in particular the role of transference interpretations, other agents of change, and the problems encountered in benign and malignant types of regression. The wealth of clinical material and the author’s informality and openness in presenting his experiences of working with very disturbed patients will be of immense practical value to other practitioners. Psychic Experience and Problems of Technique will help psychoanalysts and psychotherapists to understand the nature of clinical problems which are often encountered but seldom acknowledged. The New Library of Psychoanalysis was launched in 1987 in association with the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London. Its purpose is to facilitate a greater and more widespread appreciation of what psychoanalysis is really about and to provide a forum for increasing mutual understanding between psychoanalysts and those working in other disciplines such as history, linguistics, literature, medicine, philosophy, psychology, and the social sciences. It is intended that the titles selected for publication in the series should deepen and develop psychoanalytic thinking and technique, contribute to psychoanalysis from outside, or contribute to other disciplines from a psychoanalytical perspective. The Institute, together with the British Psycho-Analytical Society, runs a low-fee psychoanalytic clinic, organizes lectures and scientific events concerned with psychoanalysis, publishes the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis and the International Review of Psycho-Analysis, and runs the only training course in the UK in psychoanalysis leading to membership of the International Psychoanalytical Association—the body which preserves internationally agreed standards of training, of professional entry, and of professional ethics and practice for psychoanalysis as initiated and developed by Sigmund Freud. Distinguished members of the Institute have included Michael Balint, Wilfred Bion, Ronald Fairbairn, Anna Freud, Ernest Jones, Melanie Klein, John Rickman, and Donald Winnicott. Volumes 1–11 in the series have been prepared under the general editorship of David Tuckett, with Ronald Britton and Eglé Laufer as associate editors. Subsequent volumes are under the general editorship of Elizabeth Bott Spillius, with Christopher Bollas, David Taylor, and Rosine Jozef Perelberg as associate editors. IN THE SAME SERIES 1 Impasse and Interpretation Herbert Rosenfeld 2 Psychoanalysis and Discourse Patrick Mahony 3 The Suppressed Madness of Sane Men Marion Milner 4 The Riddle of Freud Estelle Roith 5 Thinking, Feeling, and Being Ignacio Matte-Blanco 6 The Theatre of the Dream Salomon Resnik 7 Melanie Klein Today Volume 1: Mainly Theory Edited by Elizabeth Bott Spillius iii 8 Melanie Klein Today Volume 2: Mainly Practice Edited by Elizabeth Bott Spillius 9 Psychic Equilibrium and Psychic Change: Selected Papers of Betty Joseph Edited by Michael Feldman and Elizabeth Bott Spillius 10 About Children and Children-No-Longe