Using elements of Ricoeur’s thought, psychoanalysts respond as both theoreticians and clinicians to his groundbreaking dialogue.
Beginning with Sigmund Freud, the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis has fallen short of its mutually enriching potential. This volume builds on Ricoeur’s sustained effort to construct an innovative bridge between the two disciplines and contributes to a long-overdue dialogue.
Ricoeur’s engagement with the Freudian opus was a vehicle for his philosophical anthropology, emphasizing the creativity of imagination and the power of the possible. Over the last sixty years, the challenges of Ricoeur’s commentary have changed in conjunction with the contemporary evolution of psychoanalysis. In this volume, the contributors explore the connections between philosophy and psychoanalysis, bringing the two into fruitful conversation.
Table of Contents:
Notes on Contributors
Part 1: Introduction and the Criteria for Analytic Experience
Introduction, Jeffrey Sacks (Willam Alanson White Institute, NY, USA) and Pascal Sauvayre (Willam Alanson White Institute, NY, USA)
1. Ricoeur’s Criteria of Analytic Experience, Michael Becker (Willam Alanson White Institute, NY, USA)
Part 2: Intersubjectivity
2. Intersubjectivity, Transference, Metaphor: Hegel, Freud, Ricoeur, Molly MacDonald (Queen Mary University of London, UK)
Part 3: Narration
3. Narration and Norms: Ricoeur's Hermeneutics of Narrative and the Normative Structure of the Psyche, Michael J. Thompson, (William Paterson University, NJ, USA, and William Alanson White Institute, NY, USA)
4. Never the Master: Psychoanalytic Clinical Experience between Hermeneutics and Anti-Hermeneutics, Katharina Rothe (Sigmund Freud Private University Berlin, Germany, and William Alanson White Institute, NY, USA) and Pascal Sauvayre
5. From Sign to Metaphor: A Ricoeurian Case Study, Sean Meggeson (Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute, Canada)
Part 4: Inventive Imagination
6. The Poetics of Psychoanalysis: Interpretation as Inventive Imagination, Faroudja Hocini (Université Paris Cité, France), trans. Pascal Sauvayre
7. A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Productive Imagination from Paul Ricoeur’s Lectures on Imagination, Michael Monhart (Jungian Psychoanalytic Association and the Blanton-Peale Institute, NY, USA)
8. The Pictorial Foundation of Psychoanalysis in Ricoeur's Writing: Implications for Clinical Work, Orsi Hunyady (William Alanson White Institute, NY, USA)
Part 5: Faith
9. Faithful Suspicion: Ricoeur between Freud and Hegel, Gal Katz (William Alanson White Institute, NY, USA)
10. An Overdue Conversation: Does Contemporary Psychoanalysis Have Anything to Say to Ricoeur's Critique of Freud's Atheism, Daniel Rosengart (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, NY, USA)
Afterword. Afterwards: From Analysis to Synthesis, from the Hermeneutics of Suspicion to a Synthesis with Affirmation, Jeffrey Sacks
Index
About the Author :
Jeffrey Sacks is Supervising Analyst and Chief Psychiatrist at the William Alanson White Institute, New York, USA.
Pascal Sauvayre is Training Analyst and faculty member at the William Alanson White Institute, New York, USA.
Review :
This collection of essays, most by practicing psychoanalysts, offers an illuminating rethinking of the interrelation between the thought of Paul Ricoeur and psychoanalysis. The collection also benefits its readers by introducing into psychoanalytic thinking topics from Ricoeur that might initially seem divergent from the field, such as his work on metaphor, imagination, narrative, and the relation between explanation and understanding. In turn, the psychoanalytic engagement with these themes expands their implications. The inclusion of case studies in many of the chapters is a considerable additional contribution demonstrating the merit of Ricoeurian topics not only in theory but in practice.
This volume responds to the prescient decades-old invitation by Ricoeur to engage in a vitalizing dialogue that begins to form a bridge between philosophy and psychoanalysis. Fallibility is embraced and addressed through vulnerability and interpersonal hermeneutical two-person “sense making,” both within the clinical dyad and across disciplines.
A vital and welcome contribution to our understanding of Paul Ricoeur and the impact of his philosophy across disciplines. This impressive collection of essays, ably arranged and edited by interpersonal psychoanalysts, brings together seasoned writers who reflect on Ricoeur’s essential relevance for clinical endeavors.
In this illuminating volume, editors Jeffrey Sacks and Pascal Sauvayre invite contemporary authors into dialogue with the legacy of Paul Ricoeur. The authors thus offer a rare clarity, translating complex philosophical insights into the language of lived experience. A grand text emerges.
