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A Psychoanalytic Theory of Infantile Experience

Conceptual and Clinical Reflections

  • Price: $42.50 $38.25
  • Paperback: 240 pages
  • Published: September 1992
  • ISBN: 978-0-415-07435-3
  • Publisher: Routledge

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Series: New Library of Psychoanalysis.

Eugenio Gaddini, a pioneer within the Italian psychoanalytical movement, devoted a lifetime of research to the organization of infantile mental life.

In this edited collection of his papers Dr Adam Limentani introduces Gaddini's key theories showing how they are closely linked to, but different from, the thinking of Phyllis Greenacre, Donald Winnicott and Melanie Klein.

These ideas are of great clinical relevance for the treatment of adult patients, particularly in the understanding of psychosomatic disorders. The richness of the clinical evidence with which Gaddini supports his hypothesis, and the originality of his conceptions make this a rewarding and stimulating book for the practicing analyst and psychotherapist.

Table of Contents

Wallerstein, Foreword. Acknowledgements. Limentani, Introduction. On Imitation (1969). Aggression and the Pleasure Principle: Towards a Psychoanalytic Theory of Aggression (1972). Beyond the Death Instinct: Problems of Psychoanalytic Research on Aggression (1972). Formation of the Father and the Primal Scene (1974). On Father Formation in Early Childhood Development (1976). Therapeutic Technique in Psychoanalysis: Research, Controversies and Evolution (1975). The Invention of Space in Psychoanalysis (1976). Notes on the Mind-body Question (1980). Early Defensive Fantasies and the Psychoanalytical Process (1981). Acting Out in the Psychoanalytic Session (1982). The Pre-symbolic Activity of the Infant Mind (1984). The Mask and the Circle (1985). Changes in Psychoanalytic Patients up to the Present Day (1984). Bibliography. Name Index. Subject Index.

Reviews

"Essential reading." - Robert Whyte, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

"This is an important book. From Gaddini's wealth of ideas and experience it offers, particularly, his unique views on development, involving his correlations and creative combinations of the psychological and the psychosomatic, of metapsychology and object-relations theory, of external observation and clinical practice, of body and mind, mental and physical, and so on; all used to give invaluably stimulating suggestions and new slants to these very problematic areas." - Anne Hayman, International Journal of Psychoanalysis