Howard B. Levine - Böcker

In the last several decades, the analytic field has widened considerably in scope. The therapeutic task is now seen by an increasing number of analysts to require that patient and analyst work together to strengthen, or to create, psychic structure that was previously weak, missing, or functionally inoperative. This view, which may apply to all patients, but is especially relevant to the treatment of non-neurotic patients and states of mind, stands in stark contrast to the more traditional assumption that the therapeutic task involves the uncovering of the unconscious dimension of a present pathological compromise formation that holds a potentially healthy ego in thrall. The contrast which this book calls attention to is that which exists roughly between formulations of psychic structure and functioning that were once assumed to have been sufficiently well explained by the hypotheses of Freud's topographic theory and those that were not. The former are modeled on neurosis and dream interpretation, where conflicts between relatively well-defined (saturated) and psychically represented desires were assumed to operate under the aegis of the pleasure-unpleasure principle.

The concept of "screen memories" was introduced by Freud for the first time in his 1899 paper, reprinted here in its entirety. Although the clinical interest in "screen memories" has perhaps diminished in recent analytic discussion, there is much to be gained from revisiting and re-examining both the phenomenon and Freud's original paper within a contemporary context. To this end, the authors have invited contributions from eight leading psychoanalysts on the current meaning and value to them of the screen memory concept. These comments come from contemporary psychoanalysts practicing in Italy, Francophone Switzerland, Argentina, Israel, and the United States of America, each of whom has been trained in one or another of a variety of psychoanalytic traditions, among which are ego psychology, a French version of Freud, an American version of Lacan and at least two variants of Kleinian thought - one British and one Latin American.

The discovery, translation into English, and publication of these previously unpublished recordings of Bion's clinical supervisions in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with commentaries by leading Brazilian psychoanalysts, gives readers the opportunity to experience for themselves his clinical and theoretical thought as it emerges and evolves through a series of fascinating case discussions.

This book, based on the 7th International Conference on the Work of Frances Tustin in 2014, offers readers a contribution to the understanding and treatment of primitive mental states and primitive character disorders.

This book provides a clear, comprehensive, and sequential account of Bion's thinking, his life experience and technical innovations, saturated with quotes from his diaries and theoretical papers. It offers clinical vignettes to illuminate salient aspects of the therapeutic encounter.

This exciting and original collection explores Antonino Ferro’s post-Bionian Field Theory, expanding upon the analytic work of Wilfred Bion to focus on the intersubjective development of psychic regulatory processes. Written by members of the Boston Group for Psychoanalytic Studies who have maintained a close and fruitful collaboration with Ferro and his colleagues, the book centers on understanding, engaging and treating primitive mental states. Ferro's Field Theory operationalizes Bion’s concept of an analyst who is not the repository of ‘the truth’, but is instead one who has the capacity to listen, to dwell in doubt, to utilize reverie, humor and play, and facilitate the transformation of previously unthinkable aspects of the patient’s experience into articulatable mental elements such as pictorial images, thoughts and dreams. Ferro’s contributions and their analysis are especially relevant to working with primitive character disorders, the difficulties of which lie beyond neurosis and the comfortable reach of the precepts of classical analytic technique. Each chapter features detailed clinical examples that explicate and apply post-Bionian Field Theory, making this book an interesting and useful read for analysts and analytic therapists of all orientations, who work with patients in all diagnostic categories.

This exciting and original collection explores Antonino Ferro’s post-Bionian Field Theory, expanding upon the analytic work of Wilfred Bion to focus on the intersubjective development of psychic regulatory processes. Written by members of the Boston Group for Psychoanalytic Studies who have maintained a close and fruitful collaboration with Ferro and his colleagues, the book centers on understanding, engaging and treating primitive mental states. Ferro's Field Theory operationalizes Bion’s concept of an analyst who is not the repository of ‘the truth’, but is instead one who has the capacity to listen, to dwell in doubt, to utilize reverie, humor and play, and facilitate the transformation of previously unthinkable aspects of the patient’s experience into articulatable mental elements such as pictorial images, thoughts and dreams. Ferro’s contributions and their analysis are especially relevant to working with primitive character disorders, the difficulties of which lie beyond neurosis and the comfortable reach of the precepts of classical analytic technique. Each chapter features detailed clinical examples that explicate and apply post-Bionian Field Theory, making this book an interesting and useful read for analysts and analytic therapists of all orientations, who work with patients in all diagnostic categories.

This book presents and elaborates on the rationale and implications of the transformational dimension of psychoanalysis. In so doing, it attempts to extend psychoanalytic theory and practice beyond neurosis and beyond what were formerly thought to be the limits of analytic understanding. Its theoretical vision sits at the crossroads of the thinking of Freud, Bion, Winnicott, Green and the Paris Psycho-Somatic School. Other sources include the contributions of contemporary French psychoanalysts such as Laplanche, Donnet, L. Kahn, P. Miller and the Botellas, along with the work of Alvarez, Scarfone, Ferro, Ogden, and more. In re-examining the very epistemological foundations of psychoanalysis and their implications for a theory of psychic functioning, it follows upon and extends the radical implications of Freud’s 1937 Constructions paper, the thoughts of Bion on intuition and Winnicott’s understanding of the working through of the consequences of early pre-verbal environmental failure. In so doing, it makes a case for psychoanalysis as a powerful treatment for borderline, primitive narcissistic, post-traumatic and other character disorders and conditions – including perversions, addictions, psychosomatic, autistic and panic disorders.By presenting a revised metapsychology that is Freudian, contemporary and clinically near, Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry offers practitioners at all levels of analytic experience a way of understanding and treating the expanding range of patients and disorders that present for treatment in our modern era.

This book presents and elaborates on the rationale and implications of the transformational dimension of psychoanalysis. In so doing, it attempts to extend psychoanalytic theory and practice beyond neurosis and beyond what were formerly thought to be the limits of analytic understanding. Its theoretical vision sits at the crossroads of the thinking of Freud, Bion, Winnicott, Green and the Paris Psycho-Somatic School. Other sources include the contributions of contemporary French psychoanalysts such as Laplanche, Donnet, L. Kahn, P. Miller and the Botellas, along with the work of Alvarez, Scarfone, Ferro, Ogden, and more. In re-examining the very epistemological foundations of psychoanalysis and their implications for a theory of psychic functioning, it follows upon and extends the radical implications of Freud’s 1937 Constructions paper, the thoughts of Bion on intuition and Winnicott’s understanding of the working through of the consequences of early pre-verbal environmental failure. In so doing, it makes a case for psychoanalysis as a powerful treatment for borderline, primitive narcissistic, post-traumatic and other character disorders and conditions – including perversions, addictions, psychosomatic, autistic and panic disorders.By presenting a revised metapsychology that is Freudian, contemporary and clinically near, Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry offers practitioners at all levels of analytic experience a way of understanding and treating the expanding range of patients and disorders that present for treatment in our modern era.

Wilfred Bion remains the most cited author in psychoanalytic literature after Sigmund Freud. His formulation of alpha function, waking dream thoughts, his theory of thinking and of the container/contained have proven seminal for the elaboration of psychoanalytic theory and practice, as well as the exploration of psychic functioning and the primordial mind.Growth and Turbulence in the Container/Contained is based on papers presented at the 2009 International Bion Conference held in Boston, Massachusetts. It represents the state of the art thinking of an outstanding international group of Bion scholars and experts. This book includes the most current trends in Bion scholarship, covering topics that range from the historical/biographical, to the clinical, the theoretical, the developmental, to the cultural and aesthetic. Proving a vital stimulus to further creative explorations in the field, Growth and Turbulence in the Container/Contained will be of particular interest to psychoanalytic practitioners, graduate psychoanalysts, analytic candidates, psychoanalytic therapists, advanced therapy trainees,and scholars of all schools.

Wilfred Bion remains the most cited author in psychoanalytic literature after Sigmund Freud. His formulation of alpha function, waking dream thoughts, his theory of thinking and of the container/contained have proven seminal for the elaboration of psychoanalytic theory and practice, as well as the exploration of psychic functioning and the primordial mind.Growth and Turbulence in the Container/Contained is based on papers presented at the 2009 International Bion Conference held in Boston, Massachusetts. It represents the state of the art thinking of an outstanding international group of Bion scholars and experts. This book includes the most current trends in Bion scholarship, covering topics that range from the historical/biographical, to the clinical, the theoretical, the developmental, to the cultural and aesthetic. Proving a vital stimulus to further creative explorations in the field, Growth and Turbulence in the Container/Contained will be of particular interest to psychoanalytic practitioners, graduate psychoanalysts, analytic candidates, psychoanalytic therapists, advanced therapy trainees,and scholars of all schools.

The analytic literature has heretofore been silent about the issues inherent in the nuclear threat. As a groundbreaking exploration of new psychological terrain, Psychoanalysis and the Nuclear Threat will function as a source book for what, it is hoped, will be the continuing effort of analysts and other mental health professionals to explore and engage in-depth nuclear issues.This volume provides panoramic coverage of the dynamic and clinical considerations that follow from life in the nuclear age. Of special interest are chapters deling with the developmental consequences of the nuclear threat in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and those exploring the technical issues raised by the occurrence in analytic and psychotherapeutic hours of material related to the nuclear threat. Additional chapters bring a psychoanalytic perspective to bear on such issues as the need to have enemies; silence as the "real crime"; love, work, and survival in the nuclear age; the relationship of the nuclear threat to issues of "mourning and melancholia"; apocalyptic fantasies; the paranoid process; considerations of the possible impact of gender on the nuclear threat; and the application of psychoanalytic thinking to nuclear arms strategy. Finally, the volume includes the first case report in the English language - albeit a brief psychotherapy - involving the treatment of a Hiroshima survivor. A noteworthy event in psychoanalytic publishing, Psychoanalysis and the Nuclear Threat betokens analytic engagement with the most pressing political and moral issue of our time, a cultivating of Freud's "soft voice of the intellect" in an area where it is desperately needed.

Following a case study approach organized around the psychoanalytic process, this book addresses clinical issues that arise in analytic work with adults who were sexually abused as children. Special emphasis is given to the way in which childhood sexual trauma affects the treatment process and influences the contents and quality of transference. Contributors also focus on the formation of the therapeutic alliance, countertransference issues, and disturbances in ego functions.

First published in 1993. This is Volume 13, No 4 of the Psychoanalytic Inquiry which focuses on locating transference: actuality and illusion in the psychoanalytic encounter. The interrelation between actuality and illusion within the clincal encounter is a subject that has influenced the tehory and pratcice of psychoanalysis since its beginnings, particulary with regard to how clinicians identify and construe the transference.

Psychoanalysis of the Psychoanalytic Frame Revisited provides an in-depth discussion of José Bleger’s work, broadening current knowledge and focusing on his significant contribution to psychoanalytic thinking. This work should prove especially relevant in considering the implications of changes in the treatment setting forced by the Covid pandemic.This edited collection proposes a current debate on José Bleger's ideas on the psychoanalytic setting. The contributors here provide a broad overview of current discussions about the analytic setting, its clinical expressions and its technical management, engaging and transforming the concept of "encuadre" (frame). The book covers topics including early experiences, the psychoanalytic setting, symbiosis and applications in a pandemic. A common thread, Bleger's brilliant intuition, runs through the book, and the tense relationship between the frame and the figure maintains its dynamics throughout. Psychoanalysis of the Psychoanalytic Frame Revisited will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training, as well as anyone seeking to understand the work of José Bleger.

Psychoanalysis of the Psychoanalytic Frame Revisited provides an in-depth discussion of José Bleger’s work, broadening current knowledge and focusing on his significant contribution to psychoanalytic thinking. This work should prove especially relevant in considering the implications of changes in the treatment setting forced by the Covid pandemic.This edited collection proposes a current debate on José Bleger's ideas on the psychoanalytic setting. The contributors here provide a broad overview of current discussions about the analytic setting, its clinical expressions and its technical management, engaging and transforming the concept of "encuadre" (frame). The book covers topics including early experiences, the psychoanalytic setting, symbiosis and applications in a pandemic. A common thread, Bleger's brilliant intuition, runs through the book, and the tense relationship between the frame and the figure maintains its dynamics throughout. Psychoanalysis of the Psychoanalytic Frame Revisited will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training, as well as anyone seeking to understand the work of José Bleger.

The Freudian Matrix of André Green presents seven papers, never previously published in English, that will allow readers to more closely follow and more fully understand the development of Green’s unique psychoanalytic thinking.The chapters in this book provide valuable insight into Green’s response to a perceived crisis in psychoanalysis. His thinking synthesizes the work of Lacan, Winnicott, Bion and other post-Freudian authors with his own extensive clinical experience, and results in a much needed extension of psychoanalytic theory and practice to non-neurotic patients. Green’s focus on drives, affect and the work of the negative and his introduction and exploration of the Dead Mother complex, narcissism, negative hallucination and the death instinct constitute a vital expansion of Freudian metapsychology and its application to the clinical setting. The Freudian Matrix of André Green will be essential reading for psychoanalysts in practice and in training, and for any reader looking to understand more about the enormity of his contribution.

The Freudian Matrix of André Green presents seven papers, never previously published in English, that will allow readers to more closely follow and more fully understand the development of Green’s unique psychoanalytic thinking.The chapters in this book provide valuable insight into Green’s response to a perceived crisis in psychoanalysis. His thinking synthesizes the work of Lacan, Winnicott, Bion and other post-Freudian authors with his own extensive clinical experience, and results in a much needed extension of psychoanalytic theory and practice to non-neurotic patients. Green’s focus on drives, affect and the work of the negative and his introduction and exploration of the Dead Mother complex, narcissism, negative hallucination and the death instinct constitute a vital expansion of Freudian metapsychology and its application to the clinical setting. The Freudian Matrix of André Green will be essential reading for psychoanalysts in practice and in training, and for any reader looking to understand more about the enormity of his contribution.

The Clinical Thinking of W. R. Bion in Brazil is comprised of thirteen transcriptions of supervisions Wilfred Bion conducted during his three teaching and speaking tours of Brazil.During these tours, Bion conducted over 130 public supervisions of analytic cases in English in which he explained his theories and illustrated their clinical application. Following on from the first volume, Bion in Brazil: Supervisions and Commentaries (2017), this book presents each supervision in full, with an accompanying commentary written by a senior Brazilian psychoanalyst and Bionian scholar. Arguably, no psychoanalyst has had as much impact on psychoanalytic development in Brazil than Bion, and this collection of his seminars, presented here for the first time, acts as a historical document and testament to his legacy in contemporary analysis.The Clinical Thinking of W. R. Bion in Brazil provides a unique opportunity for contemporary psychoanalysts, candidates, and students to hear the distinctive ‘voice’ of Bion, observe how he listens in conversation, and learn how he would intervene in and interpret a clinical situation.

The Clinical Thinking of W. R. Bion in Brazil is comprised of thirteen transcriptions of supervisions Wilfred Bion conducted during his three teaching and speaking tours of Brazil.During these tours, Bion conducted over 130 public supervisions of analytic cases in English in which he explained his theories and illustrated their clinical application. Following on from the first volume, Bion in Brazil: Supervisions and Commentaries (2017), this book presents each supervision in full, with an accompanying commentary written by a senior Brazilian psychoanalyst and Bionian scholar. Arguably, no psychoanalyst has had as much impact on psychoanalytic development in Brazil than Bion, and this collection of his seminars, presented here for the first time, acts as a historical document and testament to his legacy in contemporary analysis.The Clinical Thinking of W. R. Bion in Brazil provides a unique opportunity for contemporary psychoanalysts, candidates, and students to hear the distinctive ‘voice’ of Bion, observe how he listens in conversation, and learn how he would intervene in and interpret a clinical situation.

The analytic literature has heretofore been silent about the issues inherent in the nuclear threat. As a groundbreaking exploration of new psychological terrain, Psychoanalysis and the Nuclear Threat will function as a source book for what, it is hoped, will be the continuing effort of analysts and other mental health professionals to explore and engage in-depth nuclear issues.This volume provides panoramic coverage of the dynamic and clinical considerations that follow from life in the nuclear age. Of special interest are chapters deling with the developmental consequences of the nuclear threat in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and those exploring the technical issues raised by the occurrence in analytic and psychotherapeutic hours of material related to the nuclear threat. Additional chapters bring a psychoanalytic perspective to bear on such issues as the need to have enemies; silence as the "real crime"; love, work, and survival in the nuclear age; the relationship of the nuclear threat to issues of "mourning and melancholia"; apocalyptic fantasies; the paranoid process; considerations of the possible impact of gender on the nuclear threat; and the application of psychoanalytic thinking to nuclear arms strategy. Finally, the volume includes the first case report in the English language - albeit a brief psychotherapy - involving the treatment of a Hiroshima survivor. A noteworthy event in psychoanalytic publishing, Psychoanalysis and the Nuclear Threat betokens analytic engagement with the most pressing political and moral issue of our time, a cultivating of Freud's "soft voice of the intellect" in an area where it is desperately needed.

In the last several decades, the analytic field has widened considerably in scope. The therapeutic task is now seen by an increasing number of analysts to require that patient and analyst work together to strengthen, or to create, psychic structure that was previously weak, missing, or functionally inoperative. This view, which may apply to all patients, but is especially relevant to the treatment of non-neurotic patients and states of mind, stands in stark contrast to the more traditional assumption that the therapeutic task involves the uncovering of the unconscious dimension of a present pathological compromise formation that holds a potentially healthy ego in thrall.The contrast which this book calls attention to is that which exists roughly between formulations of psychic structure and functioning that were once assumed to have been sufficiently well explained by the hypotheses of Freud's topographic theory and those that were not. The former are modeled on neurosis and dream interpretation, where conflicts between relatively well-defined (saturated) and psychically represented desires were assumed to operate under the aegis of the pleasure-unpleasure principle. The latter involve a different level of psychic functioning and registration, one that is more closely associated with pre-verbal, and/or massive psychic trauma, as well as with primitive mental states. It operates 'beyond the pleasure principle.' In complementary fashion, psychoanalytic theorizing has begun to shift from conceiving solely or predominantly of a universe of presences, forgotten, hidden or disguised, but there for the finding, to a negative universe of voids where creation of missing structure, often referred to by the Freudian metapsychological designation, representation, becomes of necessity part of the cure.However it is conceptualized psychoanalytically, representation is the culmination of a process through which impulse and content, and in favorable circumstances disguised versions of that part of the content that is unconscious, must all be linked. It is a term with historical roots in Freud's metapsychology, and its psychoanalytic usage refers back to that tradition and theoretical domain. It should not be confused with the way it or similar terms are used in other disciplines - e.g., child development or neuroscience - nor should references to its absence be misunderstood to necessarily imply the total absence of some kind of registration or inscription in 'the being,' i.e., the psyche or the soma, of the individual.

This book engages a truly international group of distinguished Bion scholars, offering a wide variety of contemporary clinical and theoretical explorations and extensions of the seminal work of Wilfred Bion. Readers will discover personal accounts of contacts with Bion and his ideas, including an extensive report of an analysis with Bion, as well as previously unpublished supervisions that Bion conducted in Brazil in the 1970s, with commentaries by contemporary analysts. The book also includes detailed case reports and theoretical discussions on a wide variety of topics including autism, psychosomatics, representation, field theory, psychosis and truth; and essays on Sense, Myth and Passion, the late papers, groups and aesthetics.For both experienced analysts and candidates, for those already familiar with Bion and for neophytes, The Bion Tradition should serve as an essential and up-to-date resource for study, thought and exploration.

The concept of "screen memories" was introduced by Freud for the first time in his 1899 paper, reprinted here in its entirety. Although the clinical interest in "screen memories" has perhaps diminished in recent analytic discussion, there is much to be gained from revisiting and re-examining both the phenomenon and Freud's original paper within a contemporary context. To this end, Gail S. Reed and Howard B. Levine have invited contributions from eight leading psychoanalysts on the current meaning and value to them of the screen memory concept. These comments come from contemporary psychoanalysts practicing in Italy, Francophone Switzerland, Argentina, Israel, and the United States of America, each of whom has been trained in one or another of a variety of psychoanalytic traditions, among which are ego psychology, a French version of Freud, an American version of Lacan and at least two variants of Kleinian thought - one British and one Latin American. Their comments range from advocating that screen memories are an important, even central, feature of contemporary analytic work (LaFarge, Cohen), to finding the concept less universally applicable, but nonetheless compelling (Ahumada). The editors hope that the encounter with these creative and thought-provoking commentaries will give new meaning to our appreciation of this important clinical phenomenon and stimulate further research and clinical observation into its origins and uses. Contributors: Jorge L. Ahumada, Franco De Masi, Rivka R. Eifermann, Lucy LaFarge, Nellie Thompson, Shlomith Cohen, Florence Guignard, Howard B. Levine, Gail S. Reed, and John P. Muller.

Frances Tustin was a pioneering child psychotherapist who broke new ground in working with autistic children in the latter half of the twentieth century. This book amplifies and extends contributions by Tustin to the study and treatment of autism, autistic spectrum disorders and autistic defences and enclaves in non-autistic patients. It offers readers a contribution to the understanding and treatment of primitive mental states and primitive character disorders.

The discovery, translation into English, and publication of these previously unpublished recordings of Bion's clinical supervisions in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with commentaries by leading Brazilian psychoanalysts, gives readers the opportunity to experience for themselves his clinical and theoretical thought as it emerges and evolves through a series of fascinating case discussions.

André Green was a leading voice in French psychoanalysis, a brilliant thinker and an innovative contributor to our field. His writings sit at the crossroads of contemporary psychoanalysis, where the challenges posed and the opportunities presented by the work of Lacan, Klein, Winnicott and Bion meet the still generative insights of Freud, many of which Green reminded us have yet to be fully developed or appreciated. Green’s expansion of Freud’s theory of psychic representation and his own formulation of the work of the negative exemplify his idea of clinical thinking and herald what many believe is a new paradigm for psychoanalysis.This volume of essays, written by an international group of scholars in response to and appreciation of Green’s contributions, continues to explore the tension between presence and absence, loss and remainder, fort and da and the creative, dialectical arc that exists between these pairs in psychic development and the analytic process. It aims to expand the reach of our theory and practice to patients whose difficulties lie at the limits of analyzability, beyond the spectrum of neurotic disturbances for which classical psychoanalysis was originally intended, and to place the reader at the frontiers of contemporary clinical thinking and analytic technique.

With contributions from Anne Alvarez, Joshua Durban, Jeffrey L. Eaton, Bernard Golse, Didier Houzel, Howard B. Levine, Suzanne Maiello, Sylvain Missonnier, Bernd Nissen, Marganit Ofer, and Jani Santamaría.The capacity to create psychic representations is now understood to be a developmental achievement. Without it, meaning cannot be ascertained and this can lead to “psychic voids” and “unrepresented states”, which can contribute to the development of autism and autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). Unrepresented states are also implicated and encountered in other, non-autistic, non-neurotic conditions, such as psychosomatic disorders, addictions, perversions, and primitive character disorders. The affects that unrepresented states produce or are associated with are often those of terror, emptiness, annihilation and despair.The organisation of the psyche consists of psychotic – i.e. unstructured – as well as neurotic parts of the mind; unintegrated as well as integrated areas; and unrepresented areas with little meaning as well as represented states consisting of specific ideas imbued with affect. Given this organisation, we should expect to find both an unstructured and a dynamic unconscious in all patients. This implies that, to some degree, unrepresented and unintegrated states are universal and will exist and be encountered in all of us. Consequently, the opportunities and challenges presented by the understanding and treatment of autism and ASD, where the unrepresented and its consequences (e.g. defensive organisations employed to protect against annihilation anxiety and catastrophic dread) can be encountered may offer us metaphors and clues relevant to aspects of the treatment of all patients, no matter what their dominant diagnoses may be.Packed with theory and helpful case studies, this carefully edited collection from an international array of experts in the field is essential reading for all practising clinicians.

‘Living with the idea of bearing a death-force fundamentally directed at oneself is hardly easy to admit. It is less so in any case than the idea that we are all murderers, that we are ever ready to plead legitimate defence or the need to survive so as to strike out at another.’ André Green, from the ForewordWhat drives men to kill and self-destruct? On the Death and Destruction Drives traces the introduction and development of the controversial concept of the “death drive”, from the work of Freud (1920–1938) to the main contributions of classical and post-Freudian authors, including Ferenczi, Klein, Bion, Winnicott, and Lacan. Shedding light on non-neurotic phenomena and structures, such as anorexia, bulimia, depression, suicide, criminal behaviour, André Green offers a new perspective on the relationship between the life drive (Eros) and the death drive (Thanatos).André Green was a key figure in contemporary psychoanalysis, who embraced philosophy and an international outlook to enhance psychoanalytic theory. This book was one of his last works, originally published in French as Pourquoi les pulsions de destruction ou de mort? in 2012. Green’s defence of one of Freud’s most daring revisions of his drive theory remains relevant to psychoanalytic work today, and it is an honour to bring this excellent translation to the English-speaking world. To enhance its worth, the book includes an introduction from translator Steven Jaron to clarify certain technical terms and situate the book within Green’s oeuvre. This book is an important contribution to the development of psychoanalytic theory and essential reading for all trainee and practising psychoanalysts.