Introduction

The present work, Clinical Spinoza: Integrating His Philosophy with Contemporary Therapeutic Practice, is rooted in overdetermination, a form familiar to psychoanalysts. On the one hand, the illuminative experience of a “flash”, a common-enough experience in reading Spinoza (Andreas-Salomé, 1964; Deleuze, 1988; Wolstein, 1987, p. 635; Vermorel, 2009), linked directly to my intuition that Spinozan thought showed great correspondence with psychoanalytic thinking. On the other hand, Freud's own reference to Baruch Spinoza, mediated by Heinrich Heine, led me along the path of pre-psychoanalytic history and thought.