John Steiner

This book explores the conflict between holding on to and letting go of loss, paying homage to Freud’s classic Mourning and Melancholia and building on its foundation with contemporary ideas. Losses are met throughout life and are either accepted and mourned or resented and denied. Sometimes mourning is inappropriate or premature because losses can be prevented, and unfinished business needs to be completed. Eventually, however, accepting and mourning the loss confers enormous benefits, many of which arise from the development of symbolic thinking that enables ghosts to be turned into ancestors. These themes are explored in clinical material and in extracts from literature. They enable some of the ideas of Freud, Klein, and Bion to be expanded and updated. The book ends with an edited transcript of interviews discussing the author’s personal history in relation to his work. With insights from across the author’s distinguished psychoanalytic career and deep understanding of literature, this is key reading for all psychoanalysts, and anyone who wants to understand loss.

This book explores the conflict between holding on to and letting go of loss, paying homage to Freud’s classic Mourning and Melancholia and building on its foundation with contemporary ideas. Losses are met throughout life and are either accepted and mourned or resented and denied. Sometimes mourning is inappropriate or premature because losses can be prevented, and unfinished business needs to be completed. Eventually, however, accepting and mourning the loss confers enormous benefits, many of which arise from the development of symbolic thinking that enables ghosts to be turned into ancestors. These themes are explored in clinical material and in extracts from literature. They enable some of the ideas of Freud, Klein, and Bion to be expanded and updated. The book ends with an edited transcript of interviews discussing the author’s personal history in relation to his work. With insights from across the author’s distinguished psychoanalytic career and deep understanding of literature, this is key reading for all psychoanalysts, and anyone who wants to understand loss.

Illusion, Disillusion, and Irony in Psychoanalysis explores and develops the role of illusion and daydream in everyday life, and in psychoanalysis. Using both clinical examples and literary works, idealised illusions and the inevitable disillusion that is met when reality makes an impact, are carefully explored. Idealised phantasies which involve a timeless universe inevitably lead to disillusion in the face of reality which introduces an awareness of time, ageing, and eventually death. If the illusions are recognised as phantasy rather than treated as fact, the ideal can be internalised as a symbol and serve as a measure of excellence. Steiner shows that the cruelty of truth needs to be recognised, as well as the deceptive nature of illusion, and that relinquishing omnipotence is a critical and difficult developmental task that is relived in analysis. Illusion, Disillusion, and Irony in Psychoanalysis will be of great use to the psychoanalyst or psychotherapist seeking to understand the patient’s withdrawal into a phantasy world, and the struggle to allow the impact of reality.

Illusion, Disillusion, and Irony in Psychoanalysis explores and develops the role of illusion and daydream in everyday life, and in psychoanalysis. Using both clinical examples and literary works, idealised illusions and the inevitable disillusion that is met when reality makes an impact, are carefully explored. Idealised phantasies which involve a timeless universe inevitably lead to disillusion in the face of reality which introduces an awareness of time, ageing, and eventually death. If the illusions are recognised as phantasy rather than treated as fact, the ideal can be internalised as a symbol and serve as a measure of excellence. Steiner shows that the cruelty of truth needs to be recognised, as well as the deceptive nature of illusion, and that relinquishing omnipotence is a critical and difficult developmental task that is relived in analysis. Illusion, Disillusion, and Irony in Psychoanalysis will be of great use to the psychoanalyst or psychotherapist seeking to understand the patient’s withdrawal into a phantasy world, and the struggle to allow the impact of reality.

Business, Government, and Society, by Steiner and Steiner, tells the story of how forces in business, government and society shape our world. While current events move rapidly over the surface of the subject matter, the underlying principles and relationships at its core lie undisturbed. This popular textbook is equipped with new chapter opening stories and cases that reflect current concerns in a changing environment. The thorough blend of history and today’s events help students understand the entire context of forces at work in business, government, and society. A new emphasis on management issues and processes allows students to apply the principles they learn to real world situations.

Seeing and Being Seen: Emerging from a Psychic Retreat examines the themes that surface when considering clinical situations where patients feel stuck and where a failure to develop impedes the progress of analysis. This book analyses the anxieties and challenges confronted by patients as they begin to emerge from the protection of psychic retreats. Divided into three parts, areas of discussion include: embarrassment, shame, and humiliationhelplessness, power, and dominancemourning, melancholia, and the repetition compulsion. As well as offering fresh ideas, Steiner bases his creative and integrative efforts on previous contributions by psychoanalysts including Freud, Klein, Rosenfeld, and Bion. As such, this book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, clinical psychotherapists, and all those with an interest in the psychoanalytic field.

Seeing and Being Seen: Emerging from a Psychic Retreat examines the themes that surface when considering clinical situations where patients feel stuck and where a failure to develop impedes the progress of analysis. This book analyses the anxieties and challenges confronted by patients as they begin to emerge from the protection of psychic retreats. Divided into three parts, areas of discussion include: embarrassment, shame, and humiliationhelplessness, power, and dominancemourning, melancholia, and the repetition compulsion. As well as offering fresh ideas, Steiner bases his creative and integrative efforts on previous contributions by psychoanalysts including Freud, Klein, Rosenfeld, and Bion. As such, this book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, clinical psychotherapists, and all those with an interest in the psychoanalytic field.

Essentially clinical in its approach, Psychic Retreats discusses the problem of patients who are 'stuck' and with whom it is difficult to make meaningful contact. John Steiner, an experienced psychoanalyst, uses new developments in Kleinian theory to explain how this happens. He examines the way object relationships and defences can be organized into complex structures which lead to a personality and an analysis becoming rigid and stuck, with little opportunity for development or change. These systems of defences are pathological organisations of the personality: John Steiner describes them as 'psychic retreats', into which the patient can withdraw to avoid contact both with the analyst and with reality. To provide a background to these original and controversial concepts, the author builds on more established ideas such as Klein's distinction between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, and briefly reviews previous work on pathological organizations of the personality. He illustrates his discussion with detailed clinical material, with examples of the way psychic retreats operate to provide a respite from both paranoid-schizoid and depressive anxieties. He looks at the way such organizations function as a defence against unbearable guilt and describes the mechanism by which fragmentation of the personality can be reversed so the lost parts of the self can be regained and reintegrated in to the personality. Psychic Retreats is written with the practising psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in mind. The emphasis is therefore clinical throughout the book, which concludes with a chapter on the technical problems which arise in the treatment of such severely ill patients.