Christopher Bollas: A Contemporary Introduction(Routledge Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis)

This book provides a clear and accessible overview of the seminal clinical thinking of Christopher Bollas. Placing Bollas’s writings besides those of analysts including Milner, Bion, Winnicott, Lacan, and Green, Steven Jaron examines the central concept of the unthought known in terms of unconscious communication in the primary environment while occasioning a reworking of Oedipal configurations. Through vivid narratives of character analyzing a range of adult patients, at times requiring a rethinking of the conventional psychoanalytic frame, Jaron offers a fresh perspective on Bollas in arguing for the importance of considering not only the patient’s self experience but also the psychoanalyst's. This important study will be rewarding to beginning and seasoned analysts alike, offering suggestions for using Bollas’ work in the consulting room as well as when faced with the demands of civic life today.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; 1. A Psychoanalytic Epistemology: The Unthought Known; 2. Idiom, Character, and Musical Objects: ‘Who, if I cried’ 3. Hysteria: Insufferable Pain; 4. Schizophrenia: The Elephant and the Orphan Child; 5. Self Experience in a Covidian Dream; 6. Psychic Transformations: Air Hunger

About the Author :
Steven Jaron, PhD, is a psychoanalyst working in the 15-20 National Ophthalmology Hospital and in private practice in Paris. Before studying at the Psychoanalytic Society for Research and Training (SPRF), he obtained a doctorate in French and Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Review :
"The subject of this book is nothing less than "the necessity" and problematics "of seeking truth" as analysts confront the vital enigmas of the human mind and attempt to articulate and address the problems to which they give rise.It is not only an important explication of the contributions of a remarkable analyst, but it is a remarkable book by a remarkable author, one that should prove essential reading to clinicians at all levels as they struggle to engage with and create the psychoanalysis of the 21st century." — Howard B. Levine, Editor-in-chief, The Routledge W.R. Bion Studies series. "Steven Jaron’s moving account of his work with his patients, with Christopher Bollas as his theoretical and psychic guide, gives the lay reader a touching insight into how the psychoanalytic process can bring compassion and healing. Bollas’s work to uncover the mostly hidden, in the form of the unthought known, is given historical and emotional background in Jaron’s thoughtful book whose starting point is the search for reverie in Bollas – the analyst as a seer, a feeling observer of our shadow selves." — Anish Kapoor