Jean-Bertrand Pontalis – författare

Sigmund Freud evolved his theories throughout his lifetime. This entailed many revisions and changes which he himself never tried to standardize rigidly into a definitive conceptual system. The need for some sort of a reliable guide which would spell out both the pattern of the evolution of Freud's thinking, as well as establish its inherent logic, was felt for a long time by both scholars and students of psychoanalysis. Drs. Laplanche and Pontalis of the Association Psychoanalytique de France succeeded admirably in providing a dictionary of Freud's concepts which is more than a compilation of mere definitions. After many years of creative and industrious research, they were able to give an authentic account of the evolution of each concept with pertinent supporting texts from Freud's own writing (in the Standard Edition translation), and thus have endowed us with an instrument for work and research which is characterized by its thoroughness, exactitude and lack of prejudice towards dogma.The Language of Psychoanalysis has already established itself as a classic, and will long continue to be indispensible guide to psychoanalytic vocabulary for both student and research-worker in psychoanalysis.

Sigmund Freud evolved his theories throughout his lifetime. This entailed many revisions and changes which he himself never tried to standardize rigidly into a definitive conceptual system. The need for some sort of a reliable guide which would spell out both the pattern of the evolution of Freud's thinking, as well as establish its inherent log

Sigmund Freud evolved his theories throughout his lifetime. This entailed many revisions and changes which he himself never tried to standardize rigidly into a definitive conceptual system. The need for some sort of a reliable guide which would spell out both the pattern of the evolution of Freud's thinking, as well as establish its inherent logic, was felt for a long time by both scholars and students of psychoanalysis. Drs. Laplanche and Pontalis of the Association Psychoanalytique de France succeeded admirably in providing a dictionary of Freud's concepts which is more than a compilation of mere definitions. After many years of creative and industrious research, they were able to give an authentic account of the evolution of each concept with pertinent supporting texts from Freud's own writing (in the Standard Edition translation), and thus have endowed us with an instrument for work and research which is characterized by its thoroughness, exactitude and lack of prejudice towards dogma.

Winner of the Prix Femina and considered a masterpiece of autobiography, this is J. B. Pontalis' lyrical meditation on his own life. One of France's pre-eminent psychoanalysts, he is co-author of the classic The Language of Psychoanalysis and he has also been a member of the editorial committee of Les Temps Modernes. Love of Beginnings is a reverie on his personal trajectory and ponders especially his 'love and hatred of words' - language's limits and abuse and the impirialistic claims made on its behalf, in their different ways, by Satre and Lacan. It is also as essay that instantiates aspects of Pontalis' life, including his experience as a pupil of Sartre at a Paris lycee in 1941 and as a student of Lacan in 1954.