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.

Freud's Legacy in the Global Era presents a radically new perspective on Freud's relevance today as a forerunner of the contemporary evolutionary neurosciences also steeped in the tradition of humanistic thought. Carlo Strenger shows how globalisation has produced new theoretical, practical and clinical issues for psychoanalysis, which can best be understood by drawing on influences from economics, sociology and philosophy. Strenger's lively case histories demonstrate a new psychoanalytic viewpoint engaged with surrounding scientific disciplines in an enriching interchange, and open to the fascinating cultural and social developments that shape patients' reality, lives and concerns in a global era. This book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic and psychodynamically oriented psychotherapists and to all mental health professionals interested in the interaction of psychoanalysis and other disciplines from a global viewpoint as well as to lay readers keen to understand the complexity of globalized life.