The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known - Hardcover

Bollas, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 113821843X ISBN 13: 9781138218437

Publisher: Routledge, 2017

Synopsis

In The Shadow of the Object, Christopher Bollas integrates aspects of Freud’s theory of unconscious thinking with elements from the British Object Relations School. In doing so, he offers radical new visions of the scope of psychoanalysis and expands our understanding of the creativity of the unconscious mind and the aesthetics of human character.

During our formative years, we are continually "impressed" by the object world. Most of this experience will never be consciously thought, and but it resides within us as assumed knowledge. Bollas has termed this "the unthought known", a phrase that has ramified through many realms of human exploration, including the worlds of letters, psychology and the arts.

Aspects of the unthought known --the primary repressed unconscious --will emerge during a psychoanalysis, as a mood, the aesthetic of a dream, or in our relation to the self as other. Within the unique analytic relationship, it becomes possible, at least in part, to think the unthought -- an experience that has enormous transformative potential.

Published here with a new preface by Christopher Bollas, The Shadow of the Object remains a classic of the psychoanalytic literature, written by a truly original thinker.

About this title

About the Author

Christopher Bollas is a Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society and the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytical Research.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 113821843X
• ISBN 13: 9781138218437
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224