1st Edition

Phantoms of the Clinic From Thought-Transference to Projective Identification

By Mikita Brottman Copyright 2011
    158 Pages
    by Routledge

    158 Pages
    by Routledge

    As Freud predicted, there has always been great anxiety about the place of psychoanalysis in contemporary life, particularly in relation to its ambiguous and complicated relationship to the realm of science. There is also a long history of widespread resistance, in both academia and medicine, to anything associated with the world of the supernatural; very few people, in their professional lives, at least, are willing to admit a serious interest in occult phenomena. As a result, paranormal traces have all but vanished from the psychoanalytic process - though not without leaving a residue. This residue remains, the author argues, in the acceptably "clinical" guise of projective identification, a concept first formulated by Melanie Klein, and widely used in contemporary psychoanalysis to suggest a different variety of transference and transference-like phenomena between patient and analyst that seem to occur outside the normal range of the sensory process.

    About the Author , Introduction , Psychoanalysis and magic , A brief history of thought-transference , Residues of the uncanny , Mothers and other ghosts , What is projective identification? , Afterword

    Biography

    Mikita Brottman