Reading French Psychoanalysis (New Library of Psychoanalysis Teaching Series) - Hardcover

"...a useful tool for US psychologists and psychoanalyists eager for a stimulating encounter with the work of our French colleagues. Indeed, this rich and beautifully edited compendium is that, and even more, but with a twist: It is an encyclopedic sourcebook, and tremendously useful summary and synthesis, of the history of psychoanalysis in France, but not the French psychoanalysis most US readers will expect...masterfully and accessibly written...When important ideas find effective expression, nothing is ever the same again - a touchstone belief in our work. Thus the pleasure of introducing colleagues to this volume is considerable, a disruptive and impassioned desire." - Richard Ruth and Idith Kahn, DIVISION/Review Vol.1 No.1

"I find Reading French Psychoanalysis to be the single best introduction we have to French psychoanalytic thinking so far. All involved in bringing this book to fruition deserve congratulations. In whatever format, one hopes it will go on to reach a new generation of English-speaking psychoanalysts." The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2014

“It is a book that will challenge many American readers intellectually, even relentlessly. It tells the story of a psychoanalytic universe that evolved from ruins of the Second World War into a generative culture mixing classicism and innovation in the 1980s and ’90s.” -Eric Glassgold, MD, Psychiatrist

How has psychoanalysis developed in France in the years since Lacan so dramatically polarized the field?

In this book, Dana Birksted-Breen and Sara Flanders of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and Alain Gibeault of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society provide an overview of how French psychoanalysis has developed since Lacan. Focusing primarily on the work of psychoanalysts from the French Psychoanalytical Association and from the Paris Psychoanalytical Society, the two British psychoanalysts view the evolution of theory as it appears to them from the outside, while the French psychoanalyst explains and elaborates from inside the French psychoanalytic discourse. Seminal and representative papers have been chosen to illuminate what is special about French thinking. A substantial general introduction argues in favour of the specificity of 'French psychoanalysis', tracing its early influences and highlighting specific contemporary developments.

Sections are made up of introductory material by Alain Gibeault, followed by illustrative papers in the following categories:

• the history of psychoanalysis in France
• the pioneers and their legacy
• the setting and the process of psychoanalysis
• phantasy and representation
• the body and the drives
• masculine and feminine sexuality
• psychosis.

An excellent introduction to French psychoanalytical debate, Reading French Psychoanalysis sheds a complementary light on thinking that has evolved differently in England and North America. It will be ideal reading for beginners and advanced students of clinical theory as well as experienced psychoanalysts wanting to know more about French Psychoanalytic theory, and how it has developed.