Concerning the Nature of Psychoanalysis

Gregorio Kohon is a Training Analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Among other books, he edited The Dead Mother: The Work of André Green (1999) and British Psychoanalysis: New Perspectives on the Independent Tradition (2018). He also published Love and its Vicissitudes (co-authored with André Green, 2005) and Reflections on the Aesthetic Experience: Psychoanalysis and the Uncanny (2016).

'"Do psychoanalysts have a story to tell?", asks Gregorio Kohon. Yes, he says, but not one that everybody wants to hear. Kohon presents psychoanalysis as a unique relationship between individuals that in principle can never be understood completely. He criticises attempts to tame psychoanalysis, making it more manageable by distorting its essential singularity. The book’s wide-ranging discussion of these themes is enjoyably clear and direct. Kohon relates psychoanalysis to scientific, social and political ideologies, insisting on its true character in a way that is valuable in itself, and especially needed today.'-Michael Parsons, British Psychoanalytical Society and French Psychoanalytic Association'Gregorio Kohon’s book is a passionate, evocative and persuasive defence of the particular nature of the psychoanalytic endeavour. Kohon argues that, belonging neither to science nor to art, and yet to both, psychoanalysis is a unique and intimate encounter between two people that confronts the complexities of the human mind and in which fundamental primary phantasies can emerge in symptoms, dreams and the ever-evolving changes in the relationship itself. With this in mind, Kohon argues for the pre-eminence of the clinical case report as the most truly meaningful way in which the psychoanalytic method can be understood and its value assessed.'-Priscilla Roth, Training Analyst and Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society'This powerful new book by Gregorio Kohon addresses the disquieting question of how we may best study and give credence to that singular endeavour, psychoanalysis. Kohon argues that psychoanalytic clinical practice and ‘evidence based’ research differ fundamentally in aim and approach. At the heart of his book lies the immense and irreducible complexity (‘the unbridled imagination’) of psychoanalysis, exemplified by two psychoanalytic case studies that give a real sense of the paradoxical and conjectural nature of the analytic couple at work. For Kohon, psychoanalysis itself is also the analyst’s prime research tool.'-Helen Taylor Robinson, Child Analyst and Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society

• Preface 1 Psychoanalysis – a literature of excess 2 "Tony": from the analysis of a psychotic young man 3 "Barbara": a symbiotic identification with an omnipotent mother imago 4 Between the fear of madness and the need to be mad 5 The heroic achievement of sanity 6 The question of uncertainty 7 What is to be done?