1st Edition

The Psychoanalyst, the Theatre of Dreams and the Clinic of Enactment

By R.M.S. Cassorla Copyright 2018

    This book is recommended to psychoanalysts and therapists interested in the analytical technique, and particularly that work with patients who have deficits in their symbolization capacity. It presents studies of technical aspects of the analytical process with patients who are difficult to reach.

    Collusions named 'chronic enactments' show that the analytic dyad cannot dream and the analytical field is paralyzed without the analyst perceiving it. Chronic enactments are undone through unconscious acts or behaviours that threaten to destroy the analytical process: behaviours that are named 'acute enactments'. The thorough study of these enactments show that they take the dyad to an awareness of the discrimination between self and object and re-establish the capacity to dream. It is demonstrated that this occurs in an attenuated traumatic form, revealing in the analytical field the externalization of primitive non-dreamed traumas.

    Clinical, artistic, and mythical models are part of the discussion. The emphasis on clinical aspects allows readers to use different theories to consider the clinical facts. The clinical theories used by the author are mostly post-Kleinian and Bionian.

    PREFACE TO ENGLISH EDITION

    PREFACE TO BRAZILIAN EDITION

    INTRODUCTION

    CHAPTER ONE The analytic field and dream-for-two

    CHAPTER TWO Dreaming non-dreamed dreams

    CHAPTER THREE The theater of dreaming

    CHAPTER FOUR Non-dream and enactment

    CHAPTER FIVE Symbolizing traumas: acute enactment

    CHAPTER SIX From bastion to enactment: intersubjective models

    CHAPTER SEVEN Enactment and implicit alpha-function in the analysis of borderline configurations

    CHAPTER EIGHT Dreaming bizarre objects and early traumas: the continuum dream <-> non-dream continuum

    CHAPTER NINE What happens before and after acute enactment: the validation of clinical facts

    CHAPTER TEN When the analyst becomes stupid; between Narcissus and Oedipus

    CHAPTER ELEVEN Oedipus, Tiresias and the Sphinx: from non-dream to transformations into dreams

    Biography

    Roosevelt M.S. Cassorla, MD, PhD is Titular Member and Training Analyst of the Brazilian Psychoanalytic Society of São Paulo and the Campinas Study Group. He works as Full Professor of Psychological Medicine and Psychiatry at the Medical School of the State University of Campinas. He is member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and collaborator of the IPA Encyclopaedic Dictionnary . He has edited four books and is author of a number of book chapters and papers on psychoanalysis and medical psychology.