A remarkable achievement. Ammaniti and Stern have brought together an outstanding group of thinkers who address the problem of representation and psychoanalysis with depth and originality. Individually, each chapter is a joy to read. Collectively, the book is an essential addition to our thinking about the parameters of subjectivity and their role in the therapeutic process."
—Alicia F. Lieberman, Professor of Psychology, Univeristy of California San Francisco at San Francisco General Hospital and author of The Emotional Life of the Toddler
Representations and Narratives provides an innovative approach to understanding the internal world of infants and children. The creativity tht is needed to develop such an understanding is contained in thi an understanding is contained in this new and exciting edited volume. The two editors, from different backgrounds and cultures, have brought together a similarly diverse group of contributors who draw on their differences to develop important new integrations of psychoanalytic and developmental approaches to understanding psychic reality in early development. This volume moves this field an important step forward in creative and innovative thinking in this area."
—Joy D. Orlofsky, President, The World Association for Infant Mental Health and Editor, Infant Mental Health Journal
The concepts of representation and narratives have played a key role in the development of psychoanalysis, clinical research and theoretical speculation. This work carefully analyze the growth of representation and narratives in the history and practice of psychoanalysis.
Found in the early writings of Freud, the term representation identifies the process of internalization; the building of an internal mental world, separate from external reality, which allows us to give meaning to our own experiences. Also found in Freud's early works, the concept of narration as the idea that personal experience might assume the character of a narrative construction provided the impetus for the war between Freudian metapsychology and American psychoanalysts in the 1970's.
This significant addition to the Psychoanalytic Crosscurrents series explores the close and necessary relationship between the two theories and illustrate how they have developed the language of therapy and affected the practice of both psychoanalysis and developmental psychology.
