Series:

The International Psychoanalytical Association Psychoanalytic Ideas and Applications

2 total works

Cover of Primitive Agony and Symbolization
The fundamental outlook of this book is clinical. It attempts to establish a unitary model of the processes at work in different forms of narcissistic pathology, and to offer a model that is both an alternative to, and complementary to, Freud's model of what are usually considered to be neurotic problems. The aim is to extract a sequence of mental processes that could be seen as typical of narcissistic disturbances of the sense of identity, with their several forms and clinical variations. The book describes how these are structured, together with their intrapsychic and intersubjective functions, based on the hypothesis of a defensive pattern that is set up to counter the effect of a split-off primary trauma and the threat that hangs over the mind and subjectivity.

Cover of The Deconstruction of Narcissism and the Function of the Object

The Deconstruction of Narcissism and the Function of the Object addresses the topic of narcissistic suffering and presents an innovative take on its psychoanalytic treatment through the deconstruction of its solipsism.

Presenting a new approach which builds on intuitions described by Freud and Winnicott, Rene Roussillon introduces the project of reconstructing what remains of "narcissistic" and solipsistic propositions in the theories of narcissism. Roussillon's work explores his views on narcissism, its multiple pathological manifestations, and its connection to the concept of the object. Spanning topics such as sexualisation and desexualisation in psychoanalysis, the symbolising function of the object, transference and associativity, this new approach to treatment provides more satisfactory therapeutic results than current practice which seeks to analyse narcissistic impasses from an intrapsychic perspective alone.

This book will be of interest to psychoanalytic and psychodynamic clinicians.