On Psychoanalysis, Disillusion, and Death (PDF)

For some years now, psychoanalysts have been trying to understand the implications of neuroscientific findings for psychoanalytic theory and practice. In On Psychoanalysis, Disillusion, and Death: Dead certainties Antonie Ladan looks at how findings from neuroscience and memory research can inform our understanding of some of the most important psychoanalytic concepts, such as transference and unconscious fantasy.

Central to the book are the 'dead certainties' that, to a great extent, determine how we lead our lives. Antonie Ladan argues that these certainties are too self-evident to be seen, as invisible as the air we breathe. He shows how in our associations with others, we are in large measure 'guided' by 'dead certain' relational patterns of which we are not conscious, but that remain implicit. Using clinical examples, Ladan illustrates how a specific form of observation, where the analysand and the analyst pay careful attention to their relationship over an extended period of time, makes it possible to gradually recognise these automatic expectations and behaviours in relational situations.

On Psychoanalysis, Disillusion, and Death explores how the psychoanalyst can bring the implicit patterns, within which analysands find themselves trapped, to their attention enabling them to look at the world from a 'disillusioning' perspective in order to accept life and the prospect of death for what they are. This book will be of interest to psychotherapists, analytical psychologists, psychoanalysts, therapists and students.