Reclaiming Unlived Life: Experiences in Psychoanalysis

207 Pages·2016·2.781 MB·English

by  Thomas Ogden

Reclaiming Unlived Life
In Reclaiming Unlived Life, influential psychoanalyst Thomas H. Ogden
uses rich clinical examples to illustrate how different types of think -
ing may promote or impede analytic work. With a unique style of
“creative reading,” the book builds upon the work of Winnicott and
Bion, discussing the universality of unlived life and the ways unlived
life may be reclaimed in the analytic experience. The book examines
the role of intuition in analytic practice and the process of developing
an analytic style that is uniquely one’s own.
Ogden deals with many forms of interplay of truth and psychic
change, the transformative effect of conscious and unconscious
efforts to confront the truth of experience and how psychoanalysts
can understand their own psychic evolution, as well as that of their
patients. Reclaiming Unlived Life sets out a new way that analysts can
understand and use notions of truth in their clinical work and in their
reading of the work of Kafka and Borges.
Reclaiming Unlived Life: Experiences in Psychoanalysis will appeal
to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as
postgraduate students and anybody interested in the literature of
psychoanalysis.
Thomas H. Ogden, MD, has published eleven books of essays on
the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, most recently Creative
Readings: Essays on Seminal Analytic Works; Rediscovering Psychoanalysis;
and This Art of Psychoanalysis. His work has been translated into more
than twenty languages. He was awarded the 2012 Sigourney Award
for his contributions to the field of psychoanalysis. He has also
published two novels: The Parts Left Out and The Hands of Gravity
and Chance.
THE NEW LIBRARY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
General Editor: Alessandra Lemma
The New Library of Psychoanalysis was launched in 1987 in association with the Institute
of Psychoanalysis, London. It took over from the International Psychoanalytical Library
which published many of the early translations of the works of Freud and the writings
of most of the leading British and Continental psychoanalysts.
The purpose of the New Library of Psychoanalysis is to facilitate a greater and more
widespread appreciation of psychoanalysis and to provide a forum for increasing mutual
understanding between psychoanalysts and those working in other disciplines such as
the social sciences, medicine, philosophy, history, linguistics, literature and the arts. It
aims to represent different trends both in British psychoanalysis and in psychoanalysis
generally. The New Library of Psychoanalysis is well placed to make available to the
English-speaking world psychoanalytic writings from other European countries and to
increase the interchange of ideas between British and American psychoanalysts.
The Institute, together with the British Psychoanalytical Society, runs a low-fee
psychoanalytic clinic, organizes lectures and scientific events concerned with psycho-
analysis and publishes the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. It runs a training course
in psychoanalysis which leads to membership of the International Psychoanalyt ical
Association – the body which preserves internationally agreed standards of training, of
professional entry, and of professional ethics and practice for psychoanalysis as initiated
and developed by Sigmund Freud.
Distinguished members of the Institute have included Michael Balint, Wilfred Bion,
Ronald Fairbairn, Anna Freud, Ernest Jones, Melanie Klein, John Rickman and
Donald Winnicott. Current members of the Advisory Board include Giovanna Di
Ceglie, Liz Allison, Anne Patterson, Josh Cohen and Daniel Pick.
For a full list of all the titles in the New Library of Psychoanalysis main series as
well as both the New Library of Psychoanalysis Teaching and ‘Beyond the Couch’
subseries, please visit the Routledge website.
RECENT TITLES IN THIS SERIES:
Formless Infinity: Clinical Explorations of Matte Blanco and Bion
Riccardo Lombardo
Murdered Father, Dead Father: Revisiting the Oedipus Complex
Rosine Jozef Perelberg
The Work of Psychoanalysis: Sexuality, Time and the Psychoanalytic Mind
Dana Birksted-Breen
Truth and the Unconscious in Psychoanalysis
Giuseppe Civitarese
Psychoanalytic Education at the Crossroads
Otto Kernberg
Reclaiming Unlived Life: Experiences in Psychoanalysis
Thomas H. Ogden
THE NEW LIBRARY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
General Editor: Alessandra Lemma
Reclaiming Unlived Life
Experiences in Psychoanalysis
Thomas H. Ogden
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Thomas H. Ogden
The right of Thomas H. Ogden to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification
and explanation without intent to infringe.
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: Ogden, Thomas H.
Title: Reclaiming unlived life : experiences in psychoanalysis / Thomas H.
Ogden.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015046984| ISBN 9781138955998 (hardback) | ISBN
9781138956018 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychoanalysis.
Classification: LCC RC506 .O3427 2016 | DDC 616.89/17—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015046984
ISBN: 978-1-138-95599-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-95601-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-66594-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
For SPO
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1 Truth and psychic change: In place of an introduction 1
2 On three forms of thinking: Magical thinking, dream
thinking, and transformative thinking 17
3 Fear of breakdown and the unlived life 47
4 Intuiting the truth of what’s happening: On Bion’s
“Notes on memory and desire” 71
5 On becoming a psychoanalyst 93
6 Dark ironies of the “gift”of consciousness: Kafka’s
“A hunger artist” 115
7 A life of letters encompassing everything and nothing:
Borges’s “Library of Babel” 139
8 A conversation with Thomas H. Ogden 165
Index 183
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank The Psychoanalytic Quarterly for permission to
use the following papers in this volume:
Kafka, Borges, and the creation of consciousness. Part I. Kafka: Dark
ironies of the “gift” of consciousness. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 78:
343–367, 2009. Copyright The Psychoanalytic Quarterly.
Kafka, Borges, and the creation of consciousness. Part II. Borges:
A life of letters encompassing everything and nothing. Psychoanalytic
Quarterly 78: 369–396, 2009. Copyright The Psychoanalytic Quarterly.
On three types of thinking: magical thinking, dream thinking, and
transformative thinking. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 79: 314–347, 2010.
Copyright The Psychoanalytic Quarterly.
Intuiting the truth of what’s happening: On Bion’s “Notes on
memory and desire.” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 84: 285–306, 2015.
Copyright The Psychoanalytic Quarterly.
The International Journal of Psychoanalysishas kindly granted permission
to use the following papers in this volume:
Fear of breakdown and the unlived life. International Journal of
Psychoanalysis 91: 205–224, 2014. Copyright The Institute of
Psychoanalysis.
On becoming a psychoanalyst (co-authored with G. O. Gabbard).
International Journal of Psychoanalysis90: 311–327, 2009. Copyright The
Institute of Psychoanalysis.
I am grateful to Rivista di Psicoanalisi (The Journal of the Italian
Psychoanalytic Society) for permission to publish:
Thomas H. Ogden in conversation with Luca Di Donna. Rivista di
Psicoanalisi 59: 625–641, 2013. Copyright Rivista di Psicoanalisi.
ix