Confessions from the Couch: Psychoanalytical Notions Illustrated with Extracts from Sessions

The unconscious? The Oedipus complex? The castration complex? Neurosis? The objet a? What are they? And what does one say to an analyst? What happens during an analysis?

For those asking questions about psychoanalysis, Confessions from the Couch gives clear and simple answers. The principal psychoanalytical notions, both Freudian and Lacanian, are explained and illustrated with chosen extracts from actual analytical sessions.

Valérie Blanco has brilliantly used an everyday language to explain concepts that can be difficult to grasp. This book is accessible to everybody. It offers a riveting opening into psychoanalysis and allows the reader a glimpse of actual psychoanalytical practice.

Table of contents

FOREWORD

CHAPTER 1 – The unconscious and symptoms

CHAPTER 2 – Castration

CHAPTER 3 – Oedipus

CHAPTER 4 – The psychic structures

CHAPTER 5 – The three registers: the Real, the Symbolic, the Imaginary

CHAPTER 6 – The lost object and desire

CHAPTER 7 – The hysteric neurosis and the obsessional neurosis

CHAPTER 8 – The mirror stage

CHAPTER 9 – The other and the Other

CHAPTER 10 – Jouissance, repetition and fantasy

CHAPTER 11 – The analysis