Book
Rediscovering Psychoanalysis: Thinking and Dreaming, Learning and Forgetting
A collection of essays published by Routledge in 2009 in its New Library of Psychoanalysis. Its central idea is that an analyst can develop a style of their own, a living way of practising that grows largely out of their personality and experience, by attending to their own idiosyncratic ways of thinking, feeling and responding to patients. Thomas Ogden approaches this from four vantage points: those of clinician, supervisor, teacher and reader of psychoanalysis. He begins with the creation of psychoanalysis afresh in the session through talking-as-dreaming, then turns to supervising and teaching psychoanalysis in a way unique to each supervisee and each seminar group. The book continues his close readings of seminal analytic works, extending the work of Bion, Loewald and Searles. Its chapters address Bion's clinical seminars and his four principles of mental functioning, a reconception of the Oedipus complex, and the writing of Harold Searles.
Main ideas
- An analyst develops a style of their own by attending to their idiosyncratic ways of thinking, feeling and responding to patients.
- Psychoanalysis has to be created afresh in each session, for instance through talking-as-dreaming.
- Supervising and teaching psychoanalysis should be done in a way that is the analyst's own and unique to each supervisee and seminar group.
- Close reading of seminal works by Bion, Loewald and Searles is a way of extending their theory.
- One chapter reconceives the Oedipus complex, drawing on Loewald.
What it shows
- 2007
Thomas H. Ogden introduced Talking-as-dreaming
- 2003
Thomas H. Ogden developed Alpha function
Following Bion, Ogden treats dreaming as the work that alpha function makes possible, in waking as in sleep. He builds his clinical idea of undreamt dreams on the failure of that work.
Wilfred Bion influenced Thomas H. Ogden
Bion's theories of reverie, container-contained, alpha function and dreaming are the main foundation of Ogden's work from the late 1990s on.
Harold Searles influenced Thomas H. Ogden
Ogden counts Searles's frank use of his own feelings with very disturbed patients among the analytic works he read closely and drew on.
Hans Loewald influenced Thomas H. Ogden
Ogden's reading of Loewald's 'The Waning of the Oedipus Complex' recasts the Oedipus complex as a process of taking over and transforming parental authority. Ogden received the Hans Loewald Award in 2014.