Intimacy and Separateness in Psychoanalysis

Clinical psychoanalysis serves as our best laboratory for exploring the riddle of what it is to be a person, and how a person is at once singularly unique while always a piece of the interpersonal fabric of humanity. In Intimacy and Separateness in Psychoanalysis, Warren Poland casts a freshly erudite eye on this paradox, resisting individual or intersubjective bias and avoiding the parochial allegiances common in our age of pluralism. Poland combines vivid reports from clinical analyses, literary readings, and his own life – all unfolding original observations on a person as both a part of and apart from human commonality. His consideration of how one person’s witnessing facilitates another’s self-definition, a concept extended here in his study of outsiderness as part of human nature, has been marked a keynote contribution. Clinical illustrations of moments that matter but are usually omitted from public presentation are set alongside examples of reading powerful fiction to show how analyst and author both incite fresh openness in a person’s mind. Poland goes farther, exposing the personal power of union and separateness in its keenest form, facing the ultimate separation of one’s own actual death. Only with separateness can true intimacy grow, and only within the fabric of others can true individuality exist. This evocative book, ranging from the lightness of whimsy to the dread of dying, allows every reader to taste of and learn from Poland’s thinking. Psychoanalyst or patient, writer or reader, each one living one’s own life – all can find new understandings in this work.

Table of Contents:
PREFACE – NANCY CHODOROW INTRODUCTION – A FREEDOM OF MIND: WARREN POLAND IN WORD AND DEED – WILLIAM CORNELL PART I: OPENING CONCLUSIONS 1) REGARDING THE OTHER 2) RATHER MY OWN SHORTCOMINGS PART II THE PSYCHOANALYTIC SITUATION 3) THE ANALYST’S WITNESSING AND OTHERNESS 4) OUTSIDERNESS IN HUMAN NATURE 5) THE INTERPRETIVE ATTITUDE 6) THE ANALYST’S APPROACH AND THE PATIENT’S PSYCHIC GROWTH 7) THE ANALYST’S FEARS PART III: CHALLENGES WITHIN THE PSYCHOANALYTIC PROCESS 8) PROBLEMS IN PLURALISM: NARCISSISM AND CURIOSITY 9) ON IMMEDIACY: "VIVID CONTRAST BETWEEN PAST AND PRESENT" 10) THE LIMITS OF EMPATHY 11) BEYOND BEDROCK: THE TRAP OF ABANDONING PSYCHOLOGY 12) OEDIPAL COMPLEXES, OEDIPAL SCHEMA PART IV: BEYOND THE CLINICAL SETTING 13) READING FICTION AND THE PSYCHOANALYTIC EXPERIENCE: PROUST ON READING and ON READING PROUST 14) PSYCHOANALYSIS AND CULTURE 15) THE MIND BEYOND CONFLICT: WHIMSY 16) PATHOLOGIZING MENTAL PROCESSES: WHIMSY PART V: ENDINGS IN POETRY, PSYCHOANALYSIS, AND LIFE 17) WHAT PLAY DID SHAKESPEARE WRITE WHEN HE WROTE TWELFTH NIGHT? 18) POLYMORPHOUSLY NORMAL SEXUALITY 19) EPHEMERA: UNFINISHED THOUGHTS ON PSYCHOANALYSIS, POETRY, ENDINGS, AND DEATH 20) SLOUCHING TOWARDS MORTALITY: THOUGHTS ON TIME AND DEATH