ABSTRACT

This collection of papers, spanning the last fifteen years, presents a spirited defence of Freud’s clinical method, considering the ’crisis of psychoanalysis’ in the wider context of a crisis of reflective thought in society as a whole. Expressing the wish to ’clarify and polish the glass through which we see the psychoanalytic experience’, Jorge Ahumada seeks to redefine the functions of psychoanalysis for the era of mass media, in which the classic Freudian neuroses have mostly been replaced by what he terms ’pathologies of peremptory gratification’.

chapter |13 pages

Introduction

The crisis of culture and the crisis of psychoanalysis

chapter Two|14 pages

The analyst as "base"

chapter Three|14 pages

On the transposition of self and object

chapter Four|18 pages

The unconscious delusion of "goodness"

chapter Seven|10 pages

Trauma, identification, evolution

chapter |16 pages

Epilogue

The role of writing and psychoanalytic writings