Description
What does it mean to practice psychoanalysis as Jacques Lacan did? How did Lacan translate his original theoretical insights into moment-to-moment psychoanalytic technique? And what makes a Lacanian approach to treatment different from other approaches? These are among the questions that Bruce Fink, a leading translator and expositor of Lacan's work, addresses in Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique by describing and amply exemplifying the innovative techniques (such as punctuation, scansion, and oracular interpretation) developed by Lacan to uncover unconscious desire, lift repression, and bring about change.
Unlike any other writer on Lacan to date, Fink illustrates his Lacanian approach to listening, questioning, punctuating, scanding, and interpreting with dozens of actual clinical examples. He clearly outlines the fundamentals of working with dreams, daydreams, and fantasies, discussing numerous anxiety dreams, nightmares, and fantasies told to him by his own patients. By examining transference and countertransference in detail through the use of clinical vignettes, Fink lays out the major differences (regarding transference interpretation, self-disclosure, projective identification, and the therapeutic frame) between mainstream psychoanalytic practice and Lacanian practice. He critiques the ever more prevalent normalizing attitude in psychoanalysis today and presents crucial facets of Lacan's approach to the treatment of neurosis, as well as of his entirely different approach to the treatment of psychosis.
Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique is an introduction to psychoanalytic technique from a Lacanian perspective that is based on Fink's many years of experience working as an analyst and supervising clinicians, including graduate students in clinical psychology, social workers, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and psychoanalysts. Designed for a wide range of practitioners and requiring no previous knowledge of Lacan's work, this primer is accessible to therapists of many different persuasions with diverse degrees of clinical experience, from novices to seasoned analysts.
Fink's goal throughout is to present the implications of Lacan's highly novel work for psychoanalytic technique across a broad spectrum of interventions. The techniques covered (all of which are designed to get at the unconscious, repression, and repetition compulsion) can be helpful to a wide variety of practitioners, often transforming their practices radically in a few short months.
About the Author
Bruce Fink, PhD, is a practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst and analytic supervisor who trained in France with the psychoanalytic institute Jacques Lacan created shortly before his death, the Ecole de la Cause freudienne in Paris. He has translated several of Lacan's works into English-including Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English, Seminar XX: Encore, and Seminar VIII, Transference-and is the author of numerous books on Lacan, including The Lacanian Subject, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Lacan to the Letter, Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique, Against Understanding (2 volumes), and most recently Lacan on Love. A board member of the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Center, he has also penned several mysteries involving a character loosely based on Jacques Lacan: The Psychoanalytic Adventures of Inspector Canal, Death by Analysis, Odor di Murderer/Scent of a Killer, and The Purloined Love.
Reviews
"Bruce Fink restores psychoanalysis's relevance and explains it in ways I dare say few of us ever understood or appreciated. . . . Every chapter contains insights worth pondering, not just about the analytic process, but about human nature itself. . . . [It] deserves to be read by a wide audience." -- PsychCentral
"[A] useful and detailed work for the professionals who want to familiarize themselves with Lacan's psychoanalytic theories." -- APA Division 39 Newsletter
"[A] fervent, an appealing, and a unique contribution in the literature of psychoanalysis...should enjoy a wide readership." -- Journal of Phenomenological Psychology
"Here readers will find trenchant discussions of a variety of topics central to psychoanalytic practice, such as analytic listening, punctuation, scanding, interpretation, transference, and countertransference. Dr. Fink is especially brilliant in his consideration of other psychoanalytic theories and writers, and demonstrates with striking clarity the differences between them and Lacanian analysis." -- Mitchell Wilson, MD, San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California
"With his new book, Bruce Fink is proving once again that he is the undisputed leader of clinical Lacanian psychoanalysis in the Anglo-American world. With his characteristic blend of theoretical rigor, clinical acumen, and dry wit, Fink has quite simply reinvented the truth of Lacanian psychoanalysis, and his book will no doubt be as fundamental for a whole generation of scholars and practitioners as the techniques that it sets out to explain and advance." -- Dany Nobus, professor of psychology and psychoanalysis, Brunel University, London, UK
Book Information
ISBN 9780393707250
Author Bruce Fink
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint WW Norton & Co
Publisher WW Norton & Co
Weight(grams) 395g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 157mm * 23mm
Unlike any other writer on Lacan to date, Fink illustrates his Lacanian approach to listening, questioning, punctuating, scanding, and interpreting with dozens of actual clinical examples. He clearly outlines the fundamentals of working with dreams, daydreams, and fantasies, discussing numerous anxiety dreams, nightmares, and fantasies told to him by his own patients. By examining transference and countertransference in detail through the use of clinical vignettes, Fink lays out the major differences (regarding transference interpretation, self-disclosure, projective identification, and the therapeutic frame) between mainstream psychoanalytic practice and Lacanian practice. He critiques the ever more prevalent normalizing attitude in psychoanalysis today and presents crucial facets of Lacan's approach to the treatment of neurosis, as well as of his entirely different approach to the treatment of psychosis.
Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique is an introduction to psychoanalytic technique from a Lacanian perspective that is based on Fink's many years of experience working as an analyst and supervising clinicians, including graduate students in clinical psychology, social workers, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and psychoanalysts. Designed for a wide range of practitioners and requiring no previous knowledge of Lacan's work, this primer is accessible to therapists of many different persuasions with diverse degrees of clinical experience, from novices to seasoned analysts.
Fink's goal throughout is to present the implications of Lacan's highly novel work for psychoanalytic technique across a broad spectrum of interventions. The techniques covered (all of which are designed to get at the unconscious, repression, and repetition compulsion) can be helpful to a wide variety of practitioners, often transforming their practices radically in a few short months.
About the Author
Bruce Fink, PhD, is a practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst and analytic supervisor who trained in France with the psychoanalytic institute Jacques Lacan created shortly before his death, the Ecole de la Cause freudienne in Paris. He has translated several of Lacan's works into English-including Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English, Seminar XX: Encore, and Seminar VIII, Transference-and is the author of numerous books on Lacan, including The Lacanian Subject, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Lacan to the Letter, Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique, Against Understanding (2 volumes), and most recently Lacan on Love. A board member of the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Center, he has also penned several mysteries involving a character loosely based on Jacques Lacan: The Psychoanalytic Adventures of Inspector Canal, Death by Analysis, Odor di Murderer/Scent of a Killer, and The Purloined Love.
Reviews
"Bruce Fink restores psychoanalysis's relevance and explains it in ways I dare say few of us ever understood or appreciated. . . . Every chapter contains insights worth pondering, not just about the analytic process, but about human nature itself. . . . [It] deserves to be read by a wide audience." -- PsychCentral
"[A] useful and detailed work for the professionals who want to familiarize themselves with Lacan's psychoanalytic theories." -- APA Division 39 Newsletter
"[A] fervent, an appealing, and a unique contribution in the literature of psychoanalysis...should enjoy a wide readership." -- Journal of Phenomenological Psychology
"Here readers will find trenchant discussions of a variety of topics central to psychoanalytic practice, such as analytic listening, punctuation, scanding, interpretation, transference, and countertransference. Dr. Fink is especially brilliant in his consideration of other psychoanalytic theories and writers, and demonstrates with striking clarity the differences between them and Lacanian analysis." -- Mitchell Wilson, MD, San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California
"With his new book, Bruce Fink is proving once again that he is the undisputed leader of clinical Lacanian psychoanalysis in the Anglo-American world. With his characteristic blend of theoretical rigor, clinical acumen, and dry wit, Fink has quite simply reinvented the truth of Lacanian psychoanalysis, and his book will no doubt be as fundamental for a whole generation of scholars and practitioners as the techniques that it sets out to explain and advance." -- Dany Nobus, professor of psychology and psychoanalysis, Brunel University, London, UK
Book Information
ISBN 9780393707250
Author Bruce Fink
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint WW Norton & Co
Publisher WW Norton & Co
Weight(grams) 395g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 157mm * 23mm
