Routledge The Couch in the Marketplace: Psychoanalysis and Social Reality

The book bridges the conceptual and practical gap between a psychoanalytic focus on the internal world and the dynamics of external reality by examining an array of junctures in which the two perspectives combine to enrich each other. Starting from the inherent bias of the psychoanalytic immersion in working with the internal world, the book deals with a wide array of phenomena in which a binocular perspective is potentially contributing. One such bridge is exemplified by the Group Relations approach, which richly combines psychoanalytic insights with systemic ones. This unique merger is valuable in studying a variety of phenomena both within psychoanalysis and outside it. The work of the analyst in the psychoanalytic setting implies situating oneself on several boundaries - internal and external, love and admiration as well as death and destructive impulses - and the courage and sacrifice demanded by taking up this role. This binocular perspective has significant implications for the formation and maintenance of identity and particularly for the psychoanalytic identity. Review "In this book the Israeli psychoanalyst H. Shmuel Erlich examines human identity and links between internal and external living. His motivation comes from his own life experiences from childhood on, crossing political and geographical boundaries, sometimes under dangerous conditions. His psychoanalytic observations are coupled with insights derived from Open Systems theory and his vast experiences in the Group Relations approach. He covers a wide range of topics: Sigmund Freud's struggle integrating his Jewish identity with other identities in Vienna, connections between intrapsychic and external enemies, wounded societies, prejudice and paranoia in groups, and the terrorist mind. His personal recollections of conducting psychoanalysis during the Gulf War in 1990-1991, a time when there were horrifying expectations that Iraqi missiles with biological or chemical warheads would hit Israel, are most moving. This book is written by a pioneer in illustrating clearly how psychoanalysis can and should reach wider audiences. It should be read not only by clinicians and psychoanalytic educators, but everyone who wishes to obtain deeper understanding of how societal and political events impact the human mind, as individuals and also as members of small or large groups."--Vamik D. Volkan, MD, author of Enemies on the Couch: A Psychopolitical Journey Through War and Peace, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, University of Virginia, and Senior Erik Erikson Scholar "This wonderfully engaging and stimulating account of work across the 'frontier' of psychoanalysis and social reality is a major, and at times highly original, contribution to understanding the interplay of dynamics within and between the individual, the group and the socio-cultural field, both organisational and political. In perhaps the book's central chapter, 'Discourse with the Enemy', Dr Erlich refers to the need to 'learn to think of enmity as spanning internal and external reality, the subjective inner world and the objective environment'. More generally, it is just such a 'learning to think', at and across these boundaries that marks both what this book describes and what it invites. As such it is a signal challenge to all of us working on either side of the frontier."--David Armstrong, Associate Consultant "When we look at the world around us, we can become really frightened. But our fears come from our minds, our bodies, and our developmental histories. So how do we know when we are afraid that we are accurately grasping reality? H. Shmuel Erlich's brilliant effort to link what is in our minds with our outer world perceptions opens the possibility of a more complex engagement in our lives. Using the tools of psychoanalysis and social systems theory, he brings us from the intimacies of the consulting room to the Gulf War, the paranoid organization, the mind o