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Unconscious Logic

An Introduction to Matte Blanco's Bi-Logic and Its Uses

  • Price: $42.50 $38.25
  • Paperback: 192 pages
  • Also available in Hardback and e-Book
  • Published: August 1995
  • ISBN: 978-0-415-12726-4
  • Publisher: Routledge

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Series: New Library of Psychoanalysis.

While the theories of Matte Blanco about the structure of the unconscious and the way in which it operates are generally recognised to be the most original since those of Freud, for many people the ways in which his ideas are expressed, including the use of terminology from mathematics and logic, make them difficult of access.

Eric Rayner has written the first clear introduction to Matte Blanco's key concepts for psychotherapists and psychoanalysts and all those concerned with moving psychoanalytic thinking forward. He sets out the central ideas in a way which is easy to understand and then shows, with examples, how they relate to clinical practice. He also describes how the ideas are related to those of people in other disciplines - mathematics, logic, psychology (specifically Piaget), and anthropology, among others.

Drawing on the work of a group of people who have been inspired by Matte Blanco's thinking to extend their own ideas and test them out in the consulting room, this book reveals the significance of Matte Blanco's thought for future research.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements. The Background. Feeling and Thinking. Logic Symmetry, Bi-logic and the Unconscious. Bi-logic and Freud's Characteristics of the Unconscious. Bi-logic, Affects and Infinite Sets. Psychic Structure, Space and Dimensionality. Bi-logic and Central Psychoanalytic Concepts. The Therapeutic Process. Bi-logic, a Crossroads Between Disciplines? Complex Systems, Mathematical Chaos and Bi-logic. Final Summary.

Reviews

"Now at last we have a good introduction to Matte Blanco's ideas written by Eric Rayner which makes this very different psychoanalytic perspective relatively easy to understand. He explains new concepts step by step but, more importantly, he gives many clinical illustrations of logical ideas. But firstly, who is Matte Blanco?" - British Journal of Psychotherapy

"… let me say that Unconscious Logic is a very good introduction to Matte Blanco's bi-logic. The psychotherapist nervous of logic may find that they understand much more logic than they thought. But more than this they will find in bi-logic a method of connecting diverse discilplines as well as a new approach to clinical material." - British Journal of Psychotherapy