ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. There are many factors contributing to emotional dysfunction, or madness, in human beings, patients and therapists alike. By madness the author means all types of emotional disorders: psychotic, neurotic, narcissistic, characterological, somatic, and otherwise. Of the factors that might be considered—social and cultural, biological and psychobiological, intrapsychic and interpersonal, the influence of fantasy and perception, individual and family history, and so on—psychoanalysis, along with its offspring, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, has concerned itself largely with the intrapsychic and interpersonal dimensions of madness. Fundamental to the psychoanalytic therapeutic endeavour is the recognition of the importance of unconscious factors in all forms of madness. Psychotherapy attempts to be the insightful resolution of patient madness. It is constituted by a dyadic relationship and interaction in which madness is the domain, and unconscious communication is the most critical level of expression.
