ABSTRACT

The term 'psychoanalytical process', though occurring but rarely in Freud's works, has become firmly established nowadays despite being hard to define, explain, or pin down in conceptual or meta-psychological terms. Although it is often employed as equivalent to 'psychoanalytic work', currents of thought that draw on the idea display a certain ambivalence, for it can relate both to a theory of treatment (the practice of analysis) and to a theory of mind (a theory of psychic functioning). Before developing his own original perspectives about the consequences of the heterogeneity of psychic functioning, the author examines how various practitioners have approached this subject since Freud. He shows how each has shed useful new light on this issue, leading to a diversity of points of view, thereby justifying the idea of the 'process' within psychoanalytic treatment.

chapter One|10 pages

Some preliminary observations

chapter Three|14 pages

Representing the psychoanalytic process

chapter Four|26 pages

Contributions by certain authors

chapter Five|9 pages

Initial encounters

chapter Six|5 pages

Movements and changes

chapter Seven|6 pages

The nature of defence mechanisms and anxieties

chapter Eight|9 pages

The heterogenous nature of psychic functioning

chapter Nine|15 pages

Transferences

chapter Twelve|16 pages

Psychic homosexuality and transference

chapter Thirteen|13 pages

Negativising transference

chapter Fifteen|14 pages

Narcissism and the psychoanalytic process

chapter Sixteen|15 pages

Different levels of listening

chapter Seventeen|16 pages

Mr E

chapter Nineteen|18 pages

The analytic process and the question of trauma

chapter |9 pages

Conclusion