The Origins and Organization of Unconscious Conflict

Book excerpt: The Origins and Organization of Unconscious Conflict provides a comprehensive set of contributions by Martin S. Bergmann to psychoanalytic theory, technique, and its applications. Following a general approach, Bergmann synthesizes Freud’s major contributions, the development of his thinking, the ramifications to present day psychoanalytic theory and practice and finally, discusses unresolved problems requiring further work. In these selected papers, profound meditations are offered on love and death, the leap from hysteria to dream interpretation in Freud’s intellectual development, the genetic roots of Psychoanalysis in the creative clash between Enlightenment and Romantic ideas, old age as a clinical and theoretical phenomenon, the death instinct as clinical controversy, and the interminable debate about termination in psychoanalysis and how to effect it. Crucial clinical and theoretical questions are constantly addressed and the challenges they pose will engage and enlighten the reader. Bergmann was a philosopher of mind as much as he is a psychoanalyst and the range and scope of the ideas in these selected papers is impressive, instructive and illuminating. Bergmann deals with psychoanalysis as a science, and with an ideology, referring to psychoanalysis as a "Weltanschauung", a philosophical basis for psychoanalytic theory. He presents an original, penetrating analysis of Freud’s inner struggle, about empirical research, validation and related to five other sciences; about irrational forces that constitute major motivators of human life, and require taking an existential position regarding their implications, the search for the meaning of one’s existence. The Origins and Organization of Unconscious Conflict is an exciting intellectual journey of the scientific and ideological aspects of psychoanalysis and the study of love. It will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychologists, philosophers and both undergraduate and postgraduate students studying in these fields, as well as anyone with an interest in mental health and human behaviour.