The theme of this book is that of a rescue operation. The victim is psychoanalysis, in danger of potential demise as a result of its flirtation with the neurosciences, the relationists, and the numerous other efforts to improve upon or recast the fundamental thesis of psychoanalysis, which is the effort of one person, the analyst, to understand another person, the patient. Not surprisingly, the threat to understanding is misunderstanding: this threat begins with all who have misunderstood Freud and includes those who insist that psychoanalysis is something other than this major effort of understanding. Goldberg's approach to the elaboration of this theme is to undo the dualisms that infect all of psychoanalysis: explanation vs. understanding, mind vs. brain, subject vs. object, form vs. content, etc. The author takes on each of these supposed points of opposition and demonstrates how they act as a conceptual straitjacket, forcing us to conform to what they propose. whatever works best on any given occasion. alongside philosophy in order to help psychoanalysis embark upon a newer and freer adventure, one that releases it from various efforts to either reduce psychoanalysis to a stepchild of the neurosciences or to a cousin of social psychology. Bringing together the contributions of Heinz Kohut and Martin Heidegger may seem like an impossible feat, but the author carefully points out how Kohut's concept of the selfobject is in fact the crucial theoretical underpinning to properly position today's psychoanalysis alongside of the philosophy of Heidegger. In his Appendix, Goldberg shows the interdigitation of the ideas of these two great thinkers.

Wilfred Bion once said, "I use the Kabbalah as a framework for psychoanalysis." Both are preoccupied with catastrophe and faith, infinity and intensity of experience, shatter and growth of being that supports dimensions which sensitivity opens. Both are preoccupied with ontological implications of the Unknown and the importance of emotional life. This work is a psychospiritual adventure touching the places Kabbalah and psychoanalysis give something to each other. Michael Eigen uses aspects of Bion, Winnicott, Akivah, Luria and Nachman (and many more) as colours on a palette to open realities for growth of experience. Bion called faith "the psychoanalytic attitude" and Eigen here explores creative, paradoxical, multidimensional aspects of faith. Eigen previously wrote of psychoanalysis as a form of prayer in The Psychoanalytic Mystic. In Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis he writes of creative faith. Sessions as crucibles in which diverse currents of personality mix in new ways, alchemy or soul chemistry perhaps, or simply homage to our embryonic nature which responds to the breath of feeling moment to moment. This book brings out ways that a sense of infinity interweaves with everyday life, at the same time it faces the destructiveness of life and human nature and attempts to work with it. Read these chapters and see where they take you. They are meant as personal support for your own inner work, touching nooks and crannies hungry for touch