Deception and Trauma in Existential Psychoanalysis: Laing and Freud on Mystification Neutrality, as psychoanalysis uses the word, is not the absence of care, it is a way of refusing to take over someone else’s experience while still remaining fully present to it. The trouble begins with the word itself. In everyday speech, “neutral” suggests detachment,…
Free Association in Psychoanalytic Training: Beyond the Institute Model Reflection on Chapter 12 of Michael Guy Thompson’s Essays in Existential Psychoanalysis: On the Primacy of Authenticity There is a settled faith that shadows most professional training, even when no one says it outright: if you accumulate the right knowledge, and if the institution that guards…
Psychoanalysis as an Ethic of Experience: The Sceptic Dimension to Psychoanalysis Reflections on Michael Guy Thompson’s “The Sceptic Dimension to Psychoanalysis,” in Essays in Existential Psychoanalysis Many people enter therapy with a hope so quiet it can be mistaken for common sense: that somewhere behind the confusion there is a final account, a settled explanation,…
Authenticity in Psychoanalytic Therapy: The Vicissitudes of Being Real A reflection on Michael Guy Thompson’s “Vicissitudes of Authenticity in the Psychoanalytic Situation,” in Essays in Existential Psychoanalysis: On the Primacy of Authenticity (Thompson, 2024). Introduction, why authenticity matters in psychoanalytic therapy Authenticity in psychoanalytic therapy is rarely announced as the explicit aim of treatment, partly…
Heidegger’s View of Language in Psychoanalysis: Logos, Truth, and Creativity A Reflection on Michael Guy Thompson’s Essays in Existential Psychoanalysis Reflection: In a culture saturated with messaging, podcasts, headlines, and constant explanation, it is easy to assume that language is mainly a tool. We use it to report, to persuade, to clarify, to manage. Consider…
