The Emerging Tradition of Hans Loewald

by Rosemary H. Balsam (Editor), Elizabeth A. Brett (Editor), Lawrence Levenson (Editor)

Overview

Alongside its companion volume, The Legacy and Promise of Hans Loewald, this book addresses the current lack of familiarity with the ideas and life of the eminent psychoanalytic teacher and scholar, Hans Loewald (1906–1993). It provides an account of the evolution of his ideas across different disciplinary fields.

Contributors to this volume take a broad look at Loewald’s impact on the fields of sociology, anthropology, and feminism, language development, as well as delving into his work’s significance for the sublimatory potential of religion, music, the arts. This volume shows how Loewald’s thinking about internalization can adapt to our ever-changing social and cultural environment, even offering a Loewaldian lens to understand the contemporary use of psychedelics in mental health treatment. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that, after Loewald – as would have been his wish – for those who read him, psychoanalysis as an approach to mental health can never languish in stasis.

Animating this powerful, yet contained and complex man, there are contributions from his family, students, and analysands, and an introduction to the new virtual Loewald Center, making this volume essential reading for any psychoanalyst or psychotherapist working today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781040043189
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/15/2024
Series:	ISSN
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	212
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Rosemary H. Balsam, F.R.C. Psych., M.R.C.P is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale Medical School; Staff Psychiatrist, Yale Department of Student Mental Health and Counseling; and Training and Supervising Analyst, Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Elizabeth A. Brett, Ph.D., is in private practice in New Haven, Connecticut and a training and supervising analyst at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Lawrence Levenson, M.D., is Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst and Former Chair of the Education Committee at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Table of Contents

Preface by Lawrence Friedman Introduction Part I: Developing Loewald 1. On the Therapeutic Action of Reading Loewald, Then to Now 2. Loewald's Sublimation or Oneness Regained 3. Creative Innovators: Loewald and Laplanche 4. Theory of Language as Clinical Theory 5. A Missing Link: Hans Loewald and Marion Milner 6. Musical and Sacred Resonances in Loewald's Writing: Recapitualtive Journeys, Celebrations of Oneness Regained 7. Hans W. Loewald: Thoughts About Religion 8. Of Timelessness, Ineffability, and Unity: Hans Loewald, Psychoanalysis, and Our Psychedelic World 9. Origins Part II: Personal Loewald 10. Brief Thoughts on My Father, Language and Attachment, and Life's Generational Vicissitudes 11. Analyst and Teacher 12. Hans W. Loewald: Quiet Revolutionary, Creative Synthesizer, Inspiration for 21st-Century Psychoanalysis: An Introduction to The Hans W. Loewald Center 13. Meanings of These Books and the New Loewald Center to the Family

Editorial Reviews

"This book shows why so many people see Hans Loewald as the unmatched innovator in Freudian psychoanalysis and the most profound extender of its possibilities. Loewald brings out a whole new dimension of the Freudian mind. If you are disappointed that the Freudian discovery seems to miss the hopeful vibrance of human life, you will be amazed to see what Loewald draws from the tradition.

If you're a clinician whose old terms seem a little stiff and mechanical, your professional adventure will be refreshed when you see those terms spring to life. Loewald worked quietly without proselytizing, but his writing and teaching have kindled wide enthusiasm, and a Hans W. Loewald Center has formed, where scholars and practitioners will explore applications of Loewald's outlook to the nature of mind and mankind, the workings of treatment and the wider use of theory.

Experts here discuss the mental blending of past, present, and future. His application to interdisciplinary areas such as sociology, anthropology or feminism are profound. There are comparisons of his relationship to theorists such as Laplanche and the Italian Field Theorists. Other topics include Loewald's theory of language, his reflections on religion, on the arts and culture.

Despite his courageous independence, Loewald was the most self-effacing of pioneers, and the editors anticipate our personal curiosity by including something of what it was like to be treated or supervised by Loewald as a clinician. To get a fuller sense of Loewald as a person, we hear from his family as well.

This book, and its companion, The Legacy and Promise of Hans Loewald, are a treasure trove for Loewaldians, and a prospectus for those who have wondered what all the fuss is about. It announces a new era of innovation that might, indeed, go far to secure a future for psychoanalysis."

Lawrence Friedman, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Weill-Cornell University College of Medicine; Psychoanalytic Association of New York

"Loewald writes poetically: 'We would say that the patient instead of having a past, is his past. He does not distinguish himself as a rememberer from the content of his memory.'

This wonderful book conveys how the language of Loewald speaks to us profoundly, enlightens us, helps us clinically and theoretically, and conveys also that psychoanalysis may be approached in many different ways. Loewald has engaged Freud in such a complex fashion that we too become deeply involved with his investigation. I believe that everyone in the psychoanalytic field is looking towards the future, can benefit from this exciting, new encounter with Loewald."

Haydee Faimberg, MD, Training and Supervising Analyst, Paris Psychoanalytical Society (SPP); author of The Telescoping of Generations (2005); winner of the Sigourney Award for Oustanding Achievement (2013)

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