Innovations in Psychoanalysis

Book excerpt: From its very inception, psychoanalysis has been a discipline encompassing two contradictory tendencies. This dualistic tendency – tradition alongside disenchantment and the will to improve knowledge – is likely responsible for psychoanalysis’s powerful capacity to survive. In Innovations in Psychoanalysis: Originality, Development, Progress, Aner Govrin and Jon Mills bring together the most eminent and diverse psychoanalysts to reflect upon the evolution, vitality, and richness of psychoanalysis today. Psychoanalysis is undergoing significant transformations involving the entire spectrum of disciplinary differences. This book illuminates these transformations, importantly revealing the innovations in technique, the evolving understanding of theory within existing schools of thought, the need for empirical resurgence, innovations in infant research, neuropsychoanalysis, in the development of new interventions and methods of treatment, and in philosophical and metatheoretical paradigms. Uniquely bringing together psychoanalysts representing different fields of expertise, the contributors answer two questions in this collection of ground-breaking essays: "What are the most important developments in psychoanalysis today?" and "What impact has your chosen perspective had on conducting psychoanalytic treatment?" Their thought-provoking and challenging answers are essential for anyone who wants to fully understand the field of psychoanalysis in our changing, current world. Innovations in Psychoanalysis brings a whole array of differing schools of thought in dialogue with one another and will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychotherapists, philosophers, and historians of the behavioral sciences worldwide.