ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. It introduces Positive Psychoanalysis and the interdisciplinary theory and research behind it. Subjective Well-Being (SWB) comes together with positive psychoanalysis. The study of SWB has largely to do with understanding individual happiness. The book identifies three particular areas of function encompassed by SWB: Personal meaning, aesthetics, and desire and the importance of these factors in our positive experiences in everyday life, and how they are manifested in clinical psychoanalytic work. This work discusses and integrates research findings, phenomenology, and psychoanalytic thought that have not yet been considered together. Drawing on ideas from across neuroscience, philosophy, and social and culture studies, the book sets out a new agenda for covering the positive in psychoanalysis. Positive psychoanalysis will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, neuroscientists and philosophers, as well as academics across these fields and in psychiatry, comparative literature, and literature and the mind.
