Routledge A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World

A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World: On the Body examines the importance of the body in everyday psychoanalytic practice and beyond. Written by world leading clinicians and international scholars, this important book aims to relocate the psychoanalytic body in the modern, more challenging world. Bringing together perspectives from across the range of psychoanalytic schools of thought, it covers essential analytic topics such as family and parenting, sex and gender, illness and psychosomatics, and concepts of the body in infancy.Though in Freud’s writing the intertwining of body and psyche is fundamental, psychoanalytic thought has sometimes downplayed or ignored this idea. This book returns the body to its rightful place in psychoanalysis, and brings the body into the contemporary world of technology and change, offering fresh insight into the sick body, the sexual body, the speaking body, the body of the changing family in which the traditional gendered labels no longer fit seamlessly, gender dynamics and much more.A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World gives renewed and increased emphasis to an essential tenant of psychoanalysis. With contributions from some of the most important modern psychoanalysts, this book will prove an essential work for both psychotherapists and academics. Review "Fidelity to Freud's method in this book featuring contributions by many eminent psychoanalysts, becomes the creative spur towards bold new theories and ideas on the centrality of the body in psychoanalysis. The multiplicity of approaches guarantees a multidimensional and insightful journey that dares to tread new paths while remaining grounded in inalienability of the Freudian perspective.The academic rigor of On the Body makes it stand out and I have no doubt that it will great interest to those working in the field of mental health."Antonino Ferro, President of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society, and Training and Supervising Analyst in the American Psychoanalytic Association."The authors demonstrate that if today’s psychoanalysis wants to remain relevant, the body of the drives should be restored to a central position. Yet our world is dramatically changing. A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body raises fundamental questions that stem from philosophical and clinical thoughts on the body in post Freudian psychoanalysis. The complexity of infantile and adult sexuality is explored here, and this exploration gives rise to fascinating elaborations on the role of technology, gender, transgenderism. Every analyst should read it."Marilia Aisenstein, a training analyst and the former president of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society."This book reclaims a fundamental connection/integration of the contemporary psychoanalytic mind with the reality of the body of drives. Like a tree’s branches, post-freudian achievements and visions have made psychoanalysis an advanced science and practice, but now we need a harmonious re-integration of the trunk of that analytic tree: as Freud asserted, body and its drives are the basis for a deep psychoanalytic view. This is the role of this wonderful book in our contemporary psychoanalytic literature."Stefano Bolognini, psychiatrist, training and supervising analyst of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society and the President of the International Psychoanalytical Association."This fascinating collection of essays proposes to restore and elaborate original conceptions of drive and body sidelined in contemporary psychoanalysis, and thereby reopen their exciting intellectual and clinical potential. The complex theoretical contributions by brilliant and erudite scholars offer a fresh take on the existing body of thought on sexuality and drive in psychoanalysis. Based in primarily French traditions, On the Body offers rich and radical reflections on the body and its psychic representation that will challenge and enlighten readers of all backgrounds.