Sigmund Freud repeatedly revised his understanding of how our minds work, how to understand mental illness, and how to relieve emotional, psychological suffering. With each revision, however, he did not methodically integrate previous ideas with newer ones. In How Talking Cures: Revealing Freud's Contributions to All Psychotherapies, a careful review of his concepts at each stage of his thinking reveals six different ways that talking cures--six distinct generic modes of therapeutic action by which all present-day psychotherapies work. Lee Jaffe demonstrates how these therapeutic actions can...

Freud s Theory of Dreams: A Philosophico-Scientific Perspective evaluates Freud s theory of dreams in light of the many philosophical and scientific criticisms that have been brought against it. Michael T. Michael addresses the validity of Freud s method of dream interpretation, the scientific nature of the theory, and how Freud s ideas bear up to modern research on dreams, engaging on the way with critics such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Clark Glymour, Karl Popper, Adolf Grunbaum, and J. Allan Hobson. Michael reaches beyond the traditional for and against polarity to offer a more balanced...

In Nabokov's Mimicry of Freud: Art as Science, Teckyoung Kwon examines the manner in which Nabokov invited his readers to engage in his ongoing battle against psychoanalysis. Kwon looks at Nabokov's use of literary devices that draw upon psychology and biology, characters that either imitate Freud or Nabokov in behavior or thought, and Jamesian concepts of time, memory, and consciousness in The Defense, Despair, Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada. As Kwon notes, the transfiguration of biological mimicry and memory into an artistic form involves numerous components, including resemblance with a...

Harris presents neuroscience findings and reveals fantasy as the brain's default mode as it alters identity during unbearable trauma or loss. The book also presents case histories of cultural conflicts, and examines populist bias vs. elite global influence in a neuropsychoanalytic context.

The author's primary concern is to challenge the current perception that Freud's metapsychology was a drive centered theory with little regard for the object and object relations. The thinking regarding Klein, who had been heralded by Guntip and others, as the 'originator' of object relations theory will be proven a false perception. It will be shown that Klein was essentially a drive theorist who adhered to Freud's instinct theories. Despite her frequent references to the object, external reality played a minimal role in her theoretical constructs and interpretations. The object for Klein...

Michael Lavin and M. Andrew Holowchak critically analyze the concept of repetition in the early stages of Freud's development of psychoanalysis, both as a therapeutic technique and as part of a theoretical system. Holowchak and Lavin also examine how such uses of the term affected the formation of the compulsion to repeat and the death drive.