Language, Symbolization, and Psychosis

This book compares different psychoanalytic thinking and models - from a rigorously Freudian perspective - on three concepts of great theoretical and clinical importance: 'Language', 'Symbolization', and 'Psychoses'. These concepts are significantly interwoven with each other both in personal development as well as in the atypical and individual forms of pathology. The authors have endeavoured to reply to one of the foremost queries that has occupied Jacqueline Amati Mehler's thinking: whether and how the acquisitions of modern psychoanalysis have brought about changes in our criteria of analysability; whether our increased knowledge has lead to a greater therapeutic capacity, as she believes; and whether, as a consequence, we must endorse the so-called flexibility of the setting and the classical methods, as she does not believe.'This present book...is our way of honouring Jacqueline Amati Mehler, in the hope that its contents of critical and dialectic confrontation on fundamental issues of psychoanalysis may enrich not only the intimate circle of her friends, but also the wider audience of all those who today love and practise psychoanalysis.' - Giovanna Ambrosio and Simona Argentieri, from the Foreword