A Volume (5) in the series The New Library of Psychoanalysis Published in Association with the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London Ignacio Matte-Blanco's lifelong contribution to psychoanalysis is one of the most original since Freud. In this book, which includes an introductory chapter summarizing his work, he turns his attention to the ways we conceive mental life and particularly to the concept of an inner world of thoughts and feelings, and the problems involved in thinking about it. He argues that by conceptualizing the Freudian unconscious as structured to the principles of formal (Aristotelian) logic and those of what Matte-Blanco christens symmetrical logic (in which by symmetrical thinking everything is ultimately equivalent to everything else), it is possible to clarify the psychoanalytically crucial process of projection and introjection and also those involved in dreams, symbolic operations, emotion and psychological symptoms. In this way, the author argues, the momentousness of Freud's discovery of the unconscious and its implications for thinking in psychoanalysis and other disciplines can be made clearer. The book, illustrated by clinical material drawn from his work as a psychoanalyst, offers a bridge between psychoanalytic and other modes of thought and offers psychoanalysts the opportunity to think and theorize more clearly. Reviews "In applying the complexities and paradoxes of mathematical logic to psychoanalysis, Matt-Blanco has enriched it incredibly and has given us fascinating new instruments to wield in the clinical situation." - James S. Grotstein, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis Table of Contents Acknowledgements. Part One: The Subject. An Introduction to Matte-Blanco's Reformulation of the Freudian Unconscious and his Conceptualization of the Internal World. Bi-logical Structures, the Unconscious, and the Mathematical Infinite. The Fundamental Antinomy of Human Beings and World. Part Two: Projection, Introjection, and Internal World. Freud's Concept of Projection in the Light of the Three Logics. Identification and Projection. The Notion of Internal World: Problems and Hopes. A Perspective on Melanie Klein's Contribution. Part Three: Projective and Interjective Processes: A Bi-logical Point of View. Some Guiding Concepts for Understanding Clinical Reality. Levels of Depth: A Working Scheme for Use in Clinical Practice. The Fundamental Antinomy as Seen in Clinical Examples. Part Four: Symmetrical Frenzy, Bi-logical Frenzy, and Bi-model Frenzy. The Multiplication of Three Dimensional Objects. Bi-model Frenzy. The Upheaval of Spatial and Temporal Structures in the Dream World: The Spatio-temporal Miltidim Structure. Part Five: Towards the Future. The Notion of Object. Some More Mathematical Concepts of Space, Dimension, Outside, and Inside. The Concept of Internal World: Past, Present and Future. Appendix. Bibliography. Index.
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