Professional Books
THE ENIGMA OF DESIRE
The Enigma of Desire: Sex, Longing and Belonging in Psychoanalysis, introduces new perspectives on desire and longing, in and outside of the analytic relationship. This exciting volume explores the known and unknown, ghosts and demons, sexuality and lust. Galit Atlas discusses the subjects of sex and desire and explores what she terms the Enigmatic and the Pragmatic aspects of sexuality, longing, female desire, sexual inhibition, pregnancy, parenthood and creativity.
The author focuses on the levels of communication that take place in the most intimate settings: between mothers and their babies; between lovers; in the unconscious bond of two people― in the consulting room, where two individuals sit alone in one room, looking and listening, breathing and dreaming. Atlas examines the ways in which different languages, translations and integrations focus on birth, death, sexuality, and human bonds.
In The Enigma of Desire each chapter opens with a narrative, a therapeutic story which illustrates both the analyst’s and patient’s desires and the ways these interact and emerge in the consulting room. This book will be of interest to anyone who is interested in the intricacies of sex and desire and of great appeal to psychoanalysts, therapists and mental health professionals.
DRAMATIC DIALOGUE
In Dramatic Dialogue, Atlas and Aron develop the metaphors of drama and theatre to introduce a new way of thinking about therapeutic action and therapeutic traction. This model invites the patient’s many self-states and the numerous versions of the therapist’s self onto the analytic stage to dream a mutual dream and live together the past and the future, as they appear in the present moment. The book brings together the relational emphasis on multiple self-states and enactment with the Bionian conceptions of reverie and dreaming-up the patient.
The term Dramatic Dialogue originated in Ferenczi’s clinical innovations and refers to the patient and therapist dramatizing and dreaming-up the full range of their multiple selves. Along with Atlas and Aron, readers will become immersed in a Dramatic Dialogue, which the authors elaborate and enact, using the contemporary language of multiple self-states, waking dreaming, dissociation, generative enactment, and the prospective function.
The book provides a rich description of contemporary clinical practice, illustrated with numerous clinical tales and detailed examination of clinical moments. Inspired by Bion’s concept of "becoming-at-one" and "at-one-ment," the authors call for a return of the soul or spirit to psychoanalysis and the generative use of the analyst’s subjectivity, including a passionate use of mind, body and soul in the pursuit of psychoanalytic truth. Dramatic Dialogue will be of great interest to all psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.
WHEN MINDS MEET
This extraordinary volume offers a sampling of Lewis Aron’s most important contributions to psychoanalysis.
One of the founders of relational thinking, Aron was an internationally recognized psychoanalyst, sought after teacher, lecturer, and the Director of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. His pioneering work introduced and revolutionized the concepts of mutuality, the analyst’s subjectivity, and the paradigm of mutual vulnerability in the analytic setting. During the last few years of his life, Aron was exploring the ethical considerations of writing psychoanalytic case histories and the importance of self-reflection and skepticism not only for analysts with their patients, but also as a stance towards the field of psychoanalysis itself. Aron is known for his singular, highly compelling teaching and writing style and for an unparalleled ability to convey complex, often comparative theoretical concepts in a uniquely inviting and approachable way. The reader will encounter both seminal papers on the vision and method of contemporary clinical practice, as well as cutting edge newer writing from the years just before his death. Edited and with a foreword by Galit Atlas, each chapter is preceded by a new introduction by some of the most important thinkers in our field: Jessica Benjamin, Michael Eigen, Jay Greenberg, Adrienne Harris, Stephen Hartman, Steven Kuchuck, Thomas Ogden, Joyce Slochower, Donnel Stern, Merav Roth, Chana Ullman, and Aron himself.
This book will make an important addition to the libraries of experienced clinicians and psychoanalytic scholars already familiar with Aron’s work, as well as students, newer professionals or anyone seeking an introduction to relational psychoanalysis and one of its most stunning, vibrant voices.