Meaning, Mind, and Self-Transformation

Victor L. Schermer, MA, LFAGPA, is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in Philadelphia, PA, in the practice of individual, group, and family psychotherapy. He received a masters degree in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and Certification with Honours in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from the Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies, where he later served as a faculty member. He is a life fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association (AGPA). In 2002 he was co-recipient of the Alonso Award for scholarship in the field of dynamic group psychotherapy awarded by the Group Psychotherapy Foundation of AGPA. He is on the editorial board of the 'International Journal of Group Psychotherapy' and has published seven books and over forty journal articles and reviews about psychoanalysis, group psychotherapy, object relations theory, self psychology, psycho-spirituality, and the psychoanalytic interpretation of poetry and cinema.

'I applaud this valuable book that seeks to loosen the grip of scientism on traditional Anglo-American psychoanalysis by arguing persuasively that it is a hermeneutic discipline with interpretation lying at the core of its method. Victor Schermer adds his voice to the growing number of contemporary authors who wish to help psychoanalysis find its rightful place among the human sciences.'- Robert D. Stolorow, PhD, author of World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis'Victor Schermer's book describes the journey between scientific causality and hermeneutic meaning. Starting with Freud's undeniable contribution to hermeneutics - the understanding of dreams as meaningful wishes fulfilled - this book grasps a vast swathe of European philosophy, from Herder to Husserl and beyond. Freud and later psychoanalysts, especially in the object relations tradition of Winnicott and Bion, have shown that the human contribution to nature is to have experiences and to construct narratives. Psychoanalysis must prioritise that. The core of the book for me is the Heideggerian sense of being in the world of the other and with the other. The Talmudic inspiration for Freud's dissection of dreams is well known, but here, it is modern hermeneutics that gives psychoanalysis its true philosophical foundation in the Continental tradition. For psychoanalysts, there is an education here in this branch of philosophy.'- Robert D. Hinshelwood, PhD, author of Research on the Couch: Single Case Studies, Subjectivity, and Psychoanalytic Knowledge'This book manages to cover a huge field - hermeneutics - in a thoughtfully focused manner that whilst not fully inclusive (how could it be?) is remarkably wide ranging. The act of interpretation is too often put in the margins of other actions within the psychoanalytical field, but Victor Schermer returns it to the limelight and any reader interested in the history and practice of psychoanalysis, within the larger field of hermeneutics, will be fascinated by his study.'-Christopher Bollas, PhD, author of The Freudian Moment

• Foreword , Preface and Acknowledgments , An Introductory Note , Psychoanalysis at a crossroads: Between science and humanism—a path to understanding , Interpreting Interpretation: Psychoanalysis and Hermeneutics , Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, ancient and modern thought, and the hermeneutics of Greek antiquity and Judaic sources , Romantic era hermeneutics , Twentieth-century Continental philosophy: Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida , Hermeneutics in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy , The psychoanalytic situation: Scientific “laboratory” or interpretive process? , Dimensions and dualities: The architecture of psychoanalytic interpretation , Hermeneutics in the unfolding process , Interpretation and self-transformation , Paradigms of Contemporary Psychoanalytic Understanding , Melanie Klein: The phenomenology of the unconscious , Donald Winnicott: the infant’s being-in-the-world , Self psychology, intersubjectivity, and relational psychoanalysis: “American originals” , Bion’s psychoanalytic work: From positivism and Kant to psychospirituality and beyond , Psychoanalysis and neuroscience: An uneasy marriage