Psychoanalysis, Group Analysis, and Beyond

Juan Tubert-Oklander, MD, PhD, is a psychoanalyst, group analyst, and marriage and family psychotherapist, who was born, studied medicine, and trained as a group therapist in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He lives and works in private practice in Mexico City. Reyna Hernández-Tubert, MD, PhD, is a Mexican psychiatrist, child and adolescent psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, group analyst, and marriage and family therapist, living and practising in Mexico City.

This is a novel, fascinating, and fundamental contribution, since it presents, soundly and realistically, the contemporary practice of psychoanalysis, lucidly including the social dimension in its cultural, historical, political, and ecological aspects that classical theories had actively ignored. It is necessary not only for those who have a psychoanalytical perspective of our modern world, but also for other professionals dealing with mental health.Carlos D. Nemirovsky, MD, President of the Buenos Aires Psychoanalytic Association. Author of Winnicott and Kohut on Intersubjectivity and Complex Disorders (Routledge, 2020)This book broadens our analytic insight by avoiding unilateral and uniform thinking and integrating information from several authors, cultures, and sciences, including the English, Latin-American, French, and Portuguese contributions to psychoanalysis and group analysis, as well as sociological, cultural, religious, and political perspectives, and biology and neuroscience. This is a courageous and important contribution to the never-ending search for the truth about the Human Being.Isaura Manso Neto, MD, President of the Portuguese Society of Group Analysis. Author of The Portuguese School of Group Analysis (Routledge, 2020)The authors critically review the contributions and limitations of psychoanalysis and link this to the novel view of group analysis, in its British school of S H Foulkes and the Latin-American one of Enrique Pichon-Rivière. Their approach is integrative, and they introduce the term ‘gossamer’, already used in botany for the networks of plants and trees that interconnect, to illuminate how these various centres of theory and practice articulate and fuse, thus paving the way for the development of a new paradigm of the human being. This is a major conceptual achievement that should be seriously considered.Malcolm Pines, MD, psychoanalyst and group and analyst. Former President of the Group-Analytic Society. Author of Circular Reflections and a forthcoming book of Selected Papers by Routledge.In this marriage of true minds, Juan Tubert-Oklander and Reyna Hernández-Tubert espouse and embody ‘a new paradigm of the human being’, grounded in holistic thinking and analogical hermeneutics, which transcends dichotomies and shows the perennially oscillating figure and ground relation of individual and collective phenomena. A profound, passionate, erudite, soaring summa analytica.Peter L. Rudnytsky, University of Florida and Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. Author of Formulated Experiences: Hidden Realities and Emergent Meanings from Shakespeare to Fromm (Routledge, 2019).

• AcknowledgementsForewordIntroductionPart I: The gelding of psychoanalysis1. Freud’s contradictions and the hybrid nature of psychoanalysis (2008–2020)Juan Tubert-Oklander2. Inclusion and exclusion in psychoanalysis (2013): from splitting to integration in our theory and practiceReyna Hernández-TubertChapter 3: Donald Winnicott: a revolutionary malgré lui (2017)Juan Tubert-Oklander4. The fundamental role of aggression and hate in the psychoanalytic treatment (2017)Reyna Hernández-Tubert5. Freudian anthropology and metasociology (2008)Reyna Hernández-Tubert6. The work of culture (Kulturarbeit) in Freud (2012)Reyna Hernández-Tubert7. The quest for the real (2016)Juan Tubert-OklanderPart II: A fresh look8. The matrix and the bond (2017-2020): the holistic theory of group analysisJuan Tubert-Oklander9. The British and the Latin-American traditions (2014): The Social Unconscious and the large group part I Juan Tubert-Oklander and Reyna Hernández-Tubert10. A context that becomes a text (2014): The Social Unconscious and the large group part IIJuan Tubert-Oklander and Reyna Hernández-Tubert11. Listening to the voices in the wind (2014): The Social Unconscious and the large group part IIIJuan Tubert-Oklander and Reyna Hernández-Tubert12. The politics of despair: from despair to dialogue and hopeReyna Hernández-TubertPart III: Bridging the gap13. Ferenczi and group analysisJuan Tubert-Oklander14. The wind and the tide (2013-2020): on personal acts and impersonal currents in human lifeJuan Tubert-Oklander15. Beyond psychoanalysis and group analysisJuan Tubert-Oklander16. And what next? (2021)AppendicesAppendix I: Analogical hermeneuticsAppendix II: The conception of the world (Weltanschauung)Appendix III: HolismAppendix IV: Thinking group or therapeutic group — a personal reflection on the large group experience Reyna Hernández-TubertReferences