Short description:

The Loss of Self considers distinctions and connections between the writing of survival and survival as a mode of being and thinking encountered in analytic work with borderline patients.

Long description:

The Loss of Self considers distinctions and connections between the writing of survival and survival as a mode of being and thinking encountered in analytic work with borderline patients.

Jean?Francois Chiantaretto draws a parallel between Freud?s use of writing in constructing the psychoanalytic edifice and the way each analyst may turn to writing when reflecting on a patient?s analysis. With close reference to the writings of Imre Kertész, the book brings a unique perspective to the literary and historical concept of survival.

The Loss of Self will be of interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training.

This book offers a brilliant discussion of one of the most troubling elements of contemporary practice ? the borderline ? which forces the subject to confront the foundations of his identity, constructed in the relation with the other. Based on his extensive experience as an analyst, and drawing on literature with its ability to portray the torments and the loss of the self, Jean-François Chiantaretto describes the ways in which the life of the psyche is constantly subjected to a painful, conflictual process combining the consent to change with the requirement of remaining oneself. This requirement is founded on an internal listening function altered by the other, a function personified by the ?internal witness?. As the author aptly points out, the Freud-Ferenczi dialogue is emblematic of this transformation inherent to the subjective experience.

Laurent Danon-Boileau is a training psychoanalyst and full member of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society, professor emeritus of general linguistics at the Cité University of Paris. He is editor-in-chief of the collection ?Le silence des sir?nes? (Fario).

For the past thirty years, Jean-François Chiantaretto has been elaborating an original oeuvre based on an innovative metapsychological approach centred on ?the infans in the adult? and on ?internal interlocution?, in   analytic treatment and in ?self-writing?. His work ? somewhere between literary criticism and writing as a curative practice ? focuses primarily on starting and starting over: in the history of psychoanalysis, in writing as self-preservation, in establishing self-representation.

Patrick Guyomard is a psychoanalyst and University Professor emeritus. He is the founder of the Freudian Psychoanalytic Society, and Director of Éditions Campagne Premi?re.

Jean-François Chiantaretto?s books and articles present a mode of original thinking which views writing as a trace of life. His work, grounded in Freudian metapsychology and influenced by analysts from different theoretical schools, also draws on authors like Imre Kertész and Aaron Appelfeld. We travel with them to significant limits in the history of psychoanalysis and of analysts. Grounding his work in literature allows Chiantaretto to take an innovative approach to the treatment of borderline patients. His powerful writing style opposes the exclusion and isolation imposed by a reductionist ?application? of psychoanalysis.

Jean-Yves Tamet is a psychoanalyst and full member of the French Psychoanalytical Association. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Le présent de la psychanalyse.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Prologue: Back and Forth between Treatment and Writing

Part One

The Beginnings

Chapter I

Unease about Origins, Unease at the Origins

Chapter II

The Original, the Originary

Part Two

Renewing Psychoanalysis

Chapter I

The Ferenczian Renewal

Chapter II

Beginning, Starting Over

Chapter III

Welcoming the Unwelcome Child

Part Three

Writing at the Borderline

Chapter I

Survival in Words

Chapter II

Writing for...

Chapter III

Writing against...

Part Four

Borderline Existence

Chapter I

Disappearance or Loss

Chapter II

From Culture to Treatment: Malaise in Transparency

Epilogue

The Analyst's Transference, Transferential Writing

Addendum

The Self in Question