Book
Freud and Beyond: A History of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought
Freud and Beyond, by Stephen A. Mitchell and Margaret J. Black (BasicBooks, 1995), is an introductory survey of psychoanalytic thought after Freud, written for clinicians and for general readers interested in psychoanalysis as a treatment and as a cultural creation. Starting from the observation that Freud's ideas have entered everyday psychological vocabulary while psychoanalysis itself has changed considerably over the following decades, it presents each major school through its leading figures: Freud and the classical tradition, ego psychology, Harry Stack Sullivan and interpersonal psychoanalysis, Melanie Klein and the contemporary Kleinians, Fairbairn, Winnicott and the British object relations school, Erikson and Kohut on identity and the self, and the Freudian revisionists Kernberg, Schafer, Loewald and Lacan. It places each thinker's contribution within the history of psychoanalytic ideas and illustrates the theories with clinical examples. Two closing chapters take up current controversies in theory and in technique. A Hebrew translation by Amit Fachler, edited and introduced by Meir Berger, was published by Tola'at Sfarim in 2006.
Main ideas
- Psychoanalytic thought after Freud is best understood as a succession of schools, each presented through its leading figures and placed in the history of psychoanalytic ideas.
- The classical Freudian tradition and ego psychology form the starting point from which later schools developed or departed.
- Sullivan's interpersonal psychoanalysis, the Kleinian tradition and the British object relations school of Fairbairn and Winnicott are treated as major lines of development beyond Freud.
- Erikson and Kohut are grouped together for their work on identity and the self.
- Kernberg, Schafer, Loewald and Lacan are presented as Freudian revisionists who reinterpreted Freud from within.
- The book closes with the controversies that divide contemporary psychoanalysis, in theory and in clinical technique.