On Freud's "Negation"
Part of IPA - Contemporary Freud Turning Points and Critical Issues series - more in this series
Book Details
- Publisher : Routledge
- Published : 2011
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 304
- Category :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 32004
- ISBN 13 : 9781780490250
- ISBN 10 : 1780490259
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Ever since Freud proposed that certain ideas can be permitted to become conscious only in their inverted and negative forms, interest has grown into the entire realm of the presence of absence, so to speak. Or, perhaps, it is better to term such mental contents as the presence in the form of absence. These two ways of conceptualizing Freud's negation have led to a panoply of ideas that include negative hallucination, psychic holes, negative narcissism, selfishly motivated erasure of the Other, and the so-called "work of the negative". This volume elucidates these concepts and refines the distinction between Freud's negation and subsequently described mental mechanisms of denial, repudiation, isolation, and undoing. The book also provides contemporary perspectives on the developmental underpinnings of negation and the technical usefulness of the concept, including its implicit role in negative therapeutic reactions. A thought-provoking and conceptually illuminating volume.
Reviews and Endorsements
Contributors: Salman Akhtar, César Botella, Sára Botella, Jorge Canestri, Joachim F. Danckwardt, Antonino Ferro, André Green, Ilany Kogan, Bonnie E. Litowitz, Jorge Luis Maldonado, Mary Kay O'Neil, Brian M. Robertson
'This unique collection presents us with a variety of theoretical and clinical perspectives regarding Freud's 1925 paper on negation, articulated by well-known internationally based authors. Is negation just repression that didn't quite make it? How does negative therapeutic reaction relate to negation? What about negation and creativity? The writing - including that by the editors - affirms, and then builds on, Freud's original thinking, thereby providing for the reader a clear intellectual grasp of the concept, as well as lowering the countertransferential hurdles we often encounter with analysands who seem to persist in saying "No".'
- Sarah Usher, PhD, past President, Toronto Psychoanalytic Society
'Freud's paper "Negation" was published in 1925 amid the creative ferment produced by his introduction of a new paradigm for psychoanalysis, but because of its brevity and position among Freud's major writings, it has often been overlooked or underappreciated. Now, however, thanks to this volume of essays by a distinguished international group of leading contemporary psychoanalytic scholars, it should assume its rightful place, not only as a contribution to analytic technique, but as an important preliminary step in Freud's conceptualization of the creation and maintenance of reality sense and a foundational essay in the development of his theory of thinking.'
- Howard Levine, MD, training and supervising analyst, Psychoanalytic Institute of New England-East
About the Editor(s)
Mary Kay O'Neil, a Supervising and Training Analyst of the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis, is in private practice in Montreal, Quebec. Currently, she is Associate Director of the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis (Quebec, English). She completed her PhD at the University of Toronto, where she was on the staff at the University of Toronto Psychiatric Service and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry. She is author of The Unsung Psychoanalyst: The Quiet Influence of Ruth Easser and co-editor of Confidentiality: Ethical Perspectives and Clinical Dilemmas. Her research and publications include articles in areas such as depression and young adult development, emotional needs of sole-support mothers and their children, post-analytic contact between analyst and analysand, and psychoanalytic ethics. She has served on psychoanalytic ethics committees at local, national, and international levels; as a reviewer for JAPA, the Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis; and, currently, on the North American Editorial Board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
More titles by Mary Kay O'Neil
Salman Akhtar, MD, is professor of psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College and a training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. He has served on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. His more than 450 publications include twenty-three solo authored books – Broken Structures (1992), Quest for Answers (1995), Inner Torment (1999), Immigration and Identity (1999), New Clinical Realms (2003), Objects of Our Desire (2005), Regarding Others (2007), Turning Points in Dynamic Psychotherapy (2009), The Damaged Core (2009), Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (2009), Immigration and Acculturation (2011), Matters of Life and Death (2011), Psychoanalytic Listening (2013), Good Stuff (2013), Sources of Suffering (2014), No Holds Barred (2016), A Web of Sorrow (2017), Mind, Culture, and Global Unrest (2018), Silent Virtues (2019), Tales of Transformation (2022), In Leaps and Bounds (2022), and In Short (2024) – as well as sixty-nine edited or coedited volumes in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Dr. Akhtar has delivered many prestigious addresses and lectures including, most significantly, the inaugural address at the first IPA-Asia Congress in Beijing, China (2010). Dr. Akhtar is the recipient of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Best Paper of the Year Award (1995), the Margaret Mahler Literature Prize (1996), the American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians’ Sigmund Freud Award (2000), the American College of Psychoanalysts’ Laughlin Award (2003), the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Edith Sabshin Award (2000), Columbia University’s Robert Liebert Award for Distinguished Contributions to Applied Psychoanalysis (2004), the American Psychiatric Association’s Kun Po Soo Award (2004), the Irma Bland Award for being the Outstanding Teacher of Psychiatric Residents in the country (2005), and the Nancy Roeske Award (2012). He received the Sigourney Award (2013), which is the most prestigious honor in the field of psychoanalysis. Dr. Akhtar is an internationally sought speaker and teacher, and his books have been translated in many languages, including German, Turkish, and Romanian. His interests are wide and he has served as the film review editor for the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and is currently serving as the book review editor for the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. He has published eighteen collections of poetry and serves as a scholar-in-residence at the Inter-Act Theatre Company in Philadelphia. His Selected Papers (Vols I–X) were recently published and released at a festive event held at the Freud House & Museum in London.
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