ABSTRACT
In this remarkable survey of "the communicative repertory of humans," John Gedo demonstrates the central importance to theory and therapeutics of the communication of information. He begins by surveying those modes of communication encountered in psychoanalysis that go beyond the lexical meaning of verbal dialogue, including "the music of speech," various protolinguistic phenomena, and the language of the body. Then, turning to the analytic dialogue, Gedo explores the implications of these alternative modes of communication for psychoanalytic technique. Individual chapters focus, in turn, on the creation of a "shared language" between analyst and analysand, the consequences of the analytic setting, the form in which the analyst casts particular interventions, the curative limits of empathy, the analyst's affectivity and its communication to the patient, and the semiotic significance of countertransference and projective identification.
Gedo does not proffer semiotics as a substitute for metapsychology. He is explicit that communicative skill is always dependdent on somatic events within the central nervous system. Indeed, it is because Gedo's hierarchical approach to communication builds on our current understanding of a hierarchically organized central nervous system that his clincal observations become insights into basic psychobiological functioning. Grounded in Gedo's four decades of clinical experience, The Languages of Psychoanalysis points to a new venue of clinical research and conceptualization, one in which attentiveness to issues of communication will not only foster linkages with contemporary neuroscience, but also clarify and enlarge the therapeutic possibilities of psychoanalytic treatment.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|54 pages
Psychoanalysis and Semiotics
chapter 1|10 pages
Psychoanalysis and Nonverbal Communication
chapter 2|13 pages
Protolinguistic Phenomena in Psychoanalysis
chapter 3|11 pages
The Primitive Psyche, Communication, and the Language of the Body
chapter 4|8 pages
Speech as Manipulation
chapter 5|10 pages
Epigenesis, Regression, and the Problem of Consciousness
part II|68 pages
On the Analytic Dialogue
chapter |11 pages
Treatment as the Development of a Shared Language
chapter 7|9 pages
Channels of Communication and the Analytic Setup
chapter 9|11 pages
Empathy, New Beginnings, and Analytic Cure
chapter 10|12 pages
More on the Affectivity of the Analyst
part III|40 pages
Intrapsychic Communication