NYU Press Passions of the Mind: Unheard Melodies: a Third Principle of Mental Functioning

As social animals, each of us can only be partly understood through insights into our individual psychodynamics. There is, within us, another principle at work: to preserve the group, even at the expense of the individual. In this innovative synthesis of classical psychoanalysis and recent interpersonal and object relations psychology, Harold N. Boris constructs a necessary bridge between individual psychodynamics and group dynamics. This bridge rests upon two, complementary foundations: the egoistically- defined pleasure principle of The Couple and the socially defined selection principle of The Pair. Unheard Melodies shows how these two states of mind often compete, each being a distinct mental state seeking its own objectives. When analyzed, both mental states reveal their own characteristic themes and feelings, presences and absences, all of which are intertwined in the unique, patterned music of psychoanalysis. To demonstrate the patterning of these mental states, Boris presents the transcription of a composite analysis, an astonishing documentation of his own clinical experience, showing The Couple and The Pair playing together in the analytic setting. These clinical transcripts, complete with commentary, provide rare glimpses into the psychoanalytic process that will interest psychoanalysts, sociologists, and casual students of the mind and society.