Vaia Tsolas and Christine Anzieu-Premmereur - A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Todays World: On the Body

Fidelity to Freuds method in this book featuring contributions by many eminent psychoanalysts, becomes the creative spur towards bold new theories and ideas on the centrality of the body in psychoanalysis. The multiplicity of approaches guarantees a multidimensional and insightful journey that dares to tread new paths while remaining grounded in inalienability of the Freudian perspective.

The academic rigor of On the Body makes it stand out and I have no doubt that it will great interest to those working in the field of mental health.

Antonino Ferro, President of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society, and Training and Supervising Analyst in the American Psychoanalytic Association

The authors demonstrate that if todays psychoanalysis wants to remain relevant, the body of the drives should be restored to a central position. Yet our world is dramatically changing. A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body raises fundamental questions that stem from philosophical and clinical thoughts on the body in post Freudian psychoanalysis. The complexity of infantile and adult sexuality is explored here, and this exploration gives rise to fascinating elaborations on the role of technology, gender, transgenderism. Every analyst should read it.

Marilia Aisenstein, a training analyst and the former president of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society

This volume explores the dynamics between the experience of the biological body as the primary source of ego development, and the dissociation between the sexual body and the psychological determination of individuals core gender identity. This dissociation is explored from multiple viewpoints: controversies regarding drive theory, identity diffusion related to severe psychopathology, sociological and political assertion of multiple core gender potentials, and new psychoanalytic findings regarding early development. It is a complex, challenging, thought provoking volume that presents important controversies in contemporary psychoanalytic thinking.

Otto Kernberg, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, Director, Personality Disorders Institute, New York Presbyterian Hospital

This book reclaims a fundamental connection/integration of the contemporary psychoanalytic mind with the reality of the body of drives. Like a trees branches, post-freudian achievements and visions have made psychoanalysis an advanced science and practice, but now we need a harmonious re-integration of the trunk of that analytic tree: as Freud asserted, body and its drives are the basis for a deep psychoanalytic view. This is the role of this wonderful book in our contemporary psychoanalytic literature.

Stefano Bolognini, psychiatrist, training and supervising analyst of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society and the President of the International Psychoanalytical Association

This fascinating collection of essays proposes to restore and elaborate original conceptions of drive and body sidelined in contemporary psychoanalysis, and thereby reopen their exciting intellectual and clinical potential. The complex theoretical contributions by brilliant and erudite scholars offer a fresh take on the existing body of thought on sexuality and drive in psychoanalysis. Based in primarily French traditions, On the Body offers rich and radical reflections on the body and its psychic representation that will challenge and enlighten readers of all backgrounds.

Jessica Benjamin, author of Beyond Doer and Done to: Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity and the Third

A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Todays World: On the Body examines the importance of the body in everyday psychoanalytic practice and beyond. Written by world leading clinicians and international scholars, this important book aims to relocate the psychoanalytic body in the modern, more challenging world. Bringing together perspectives from across the range of psychoanalytic schools of thought, it covers essential analytic topics such as family and parenting, sex and gender, illness and psychosomatics, and concepts of the body in infancy.

Though in Freuds writing the intertwining of body and psyche is fundamental, psychoanalytic thought has sometimes downplayed or ignored this idea. This book returns the body to its rightful place in psychoanalysis, and brings the body into the contemporary world of technology and change, offering fresh insight into the sick body, the sexual body, the speaking body, the body of the changing family in which the traditional gendered labels no longer fit seamlessly, gender dynamics and much more.

A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Todays World gives renewed and increased emphasis to an essential tenet of psychoanalysis. With contributions from some of the most important modern psychoanalysts, this book will prove an essential work for both psychotherapists and academics.

Vaia Tsolas is a psychologist and psychoanalyst on the faculty at Columbia University Psychoanalytic Center and Albert Einstein Medical School, teaching Freud and Lacan. She is the director of Rose Hill Psychological Services. She is the winner of the IPA Sacerdoti Prize, Columbia Ovesey and Klar best teacher awards.

Christine Anzieu-Premmereur is an M.D., Ph.D. and Psychoanalyst, Member at the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Center, Member at the Socit Psychanalytique de Paris and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. She is currently the director of the Parent-Infant Program at the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center and Assistant Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at Columbia University.

Edited by
Vaia Tsolas and
Christine Anzieu-Premmereur

First published 2018

by Routledge

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2018 selection and editorial matter, Vaia Tsolas and Christine Anzieu-Premmereur; individual chapters, the contributors

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Tsolas, Vaia, editor. | Anzieu-Premmereur, Christine, editor.

Title: A psychoanalytic exploration of the body in todays world : on the body / [edited by] Vaia Tsolas & Christine Anzieu-Premmereur.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017025248 | ISBN 9781138065468 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138065475 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315159683 (e-book)