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The Vitality of Objects
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The Vitality of Objects
Exploring the Work of Christopher Bollas

First Edition
Edited by:


January 2002 | 256 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
`One of the most interesting theorists in contemporary psychoanalysis, Bollas emphasizes both the creativity of subjectivity itself and the key place of experience in the formation of psychical constructions and fantasy' - Anthony Elliott, Centre for Critical Theory, University of the West of England

This eclectic collection of essays reflects the far-reaching, multi-dimensional influence of Christopher Bollas. Bollas galvanises our understanding of what happens when people encounter the objects - the endlessly variegated content - of external reality. Each of us has our own unique idiom through which we endow objects - a painting, a football, a stranger - with special meaning. Bollas has added depth to our understanding of these relationships with vitality rarely found in psychoanalytic writing. The contributors to this volume offer definitions and illustrations that make Bollas' thought accessible for those approaching his work for the first time and illuminating for those more familiar with his canon. The Vitality of Objects reveals the possibilities for self-expression and growth that figure in the process of object relations and shows how and why thinkers and artists from so many different perspectives are attracted to Bollas' thought.

 
PART ONE - ESSAYS FROM PSYCHOANALYSIS
Joel Beck
Lost in Thought
The Receptive Unconscious

 
Arne Jemstedt
Idiom, Intuition and Unconcious Intelligence
Thoughts on Some Aspects of the Writings of Christopher Bollas

 
Adam Phillips
Futures
Gabriela Mann
Transformational, Conservative and Terminal Objects
The Application of Bollas's Concepts to Practice

 
James S. Grotstein
`Love Is Where It Finds You'
The Caprices of the `Aleatory Object'

 
 
PART TWO - ESSAYS FROM OTHER DISCIPLINES
Anthony Molino and Wesley Shumar
Returns of the Repressed
Some New Applications of Psychoanalysis to Ethnography

 
Jacqueline Rose
Of Knowledge and Mothers
On the work of Christopher Bollas

 
Joanne Feit Diehl
The Poetics of Analysis
Klein, Bollas and the Theory of the Text

 
Michael Szollosy
`If My Mouth Could Marry a Hurt Like That!'
Reading Auto-Mutilation, Auto-Biography in the Work of Christopher Bollas and Sylvia Plath

 
Greg Drasler
Painting Into a Corner
Representation as Shelter

 
Kate Browne
Cracking Up the Audience
 
PART THREE - A CONVERSATION WITH CHRISTOPHER BOLLAS
 
Christopher Bollas, Interviewed by Anthony Molino
 
Christopher Bollas, Selected Bibliography

Joseph Scalia

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