Freud and Psychoanalysis (Gethsemani Studies in Psychological and Religious Anthropology, 2) - Hardcover

Meissner S.J. M.D., W. W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0268028540 ISBN 13: 9780268028541

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000

Synopsis

One hundred years after the birth of psychoanalysis, renowned scholar W. W. Meissner combines a comprehensive account of the evolution of Freud’s thought with a synthesis of contemporary psychoanalytic theory that includes the contributions of Margaret Mahler and Erik Erikson, as well as those of Heinz Hartmann, Heinz Kohut, Otto Kernberg, Ronald Fairbairn, Donald Winnicott, and Anna Freud.

Dr. Meissner details the development of psychoanalytic theory, tracing its evolution from the earliest stages of Freud’s thinking to recent developments such as object relations theory and self-psychology. A chapter on psychoanalytic therapy completes this unique and essential volume.

Freud and Psychoanalysis was originally published as part of a reference work addressed to psychiatrists. The University of Notre Dame Press edition of this classic study makes it available for the first time to a wider audience. The only contemporary work on Freud and the field he founded written by a psychoanalytic psychiatrist, this will appeal to everyone interested in Freud or intellectual history―therapists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, medical students, collegiate, graduate, and divinity students and professors, and the general public.

About this title

About the Author:

W. W. Meissner, S.J., M.D., is professor of psychoanalysis at Boston College, training and supervising analyst at Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, and former clinical professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is the author of several books, including The Therapeutic Alliance (1996), Treatment of Patients in the Borderline Spectrum (1998), and Psychoanalysis and Religious Experience (1984).

Ernest Daniel Carrere has been a Trappist monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani for over thirty years. He holds a doctorate in psychological and religious anthropology from Emory University and a JD from Tulane University.

From Library Journal:

Here, in the face of Freud's declining status (and vigorous atheism), a Jesuit psychoanalyst (Boston Coll.) comes to his defense. Unfortunately, Meissner's text requires more background than most undergraduates or general readers possess, leaving much of the intended audience in the lurch. Yet advanced students and specialists will find only one post-1980 reference in the bibliography: Erik Erikson and others are brought in, but this is a 1960s period piece, ignoring feminist and gay/lesbian critiques. Meissner regards some Freudian ideas as obsolete (e.g. female masochism and deficient morality) but argues that Freud was not wrongly imposing a cultural/patriarchal bias as much as observing women as they were. Critics of psychoanalysis can use this book to illustrate how classical Freudian theory turns the analytic couch into a Procrustean bed. Not recommended; see instead Stephen Mitchell and Margaret Black's Freud and Beyond: A History of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought (LJ 10/15/95).
-E. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, DC
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0268028540
• ISBN 13: 9780268028541
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 296