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Reclaiming Unlived Life

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In Reclaiming Unlived Life, influential psychoanalyst Thomas Ogden uses rich clinical examples to illustrate how different types of thinking may promote or impede analytic work. With a unique style of "creative reading," the book builds upon the work of Winnicott and Bion, discussing the universality of unlived life and the ways unlived life may be reclaimed in the analytic experience. The book examines the role of intuition in analytic practice and the process of developing an analytic style that is uniquely one's own.

Ogden deals with many forms of interplay of truth and psychic change, the transformative effect of conscious and unconscious efforts to confront the truth of experience and how psychoanalysts can understand their own psychic evolution, as well as that of their patients. Reclaiming Unlived Life sets out a new way that analysts can understand and use notions of truth in their clinical work and in their reading of the work of Kafka and Borges. 

Reclaiming Unlived Life: Experiences in Psychoanalysis will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as postgraduate students and anybody interested in the literature of psychoanalysis.

206 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2016

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Thomas H. Ogden

29 books66 followers

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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Profile Image for Daniele.
473 reviews43 followers
February 17, 2020
Ogden è davvero un ottimo scrittore, oltre ad essere un ottimo psicoanalista. Questo libro raccoglie una serie di saggi molto interessanti, soprattutto quello di Kafka!
Profile Image for Mohsen.
65 reviews14 followers
January 27, 2022
i was really glad that i found out, there are two other books by this author that i haven't read yet. he is by far one of the most creative writers that I've seen. he is talking about one of Freuds ideas for example, but he doesn't just use it or explain it. he creates it again in a new way, in his own way. I've learned alot from him, not only the theories, but the way he reads literary books. as if he taught me to find my voice in reading/writing/ thinking. a way which is new.
16 reviews10 followers
July 17, 2022
Thomas Ogden moves you in a way no other psychoanalyst can, he makes his presence felt deeply, in addition to passing on a certain intelligence, depth and wisdom of his experience.
Now that is a difficult marriage to attain- presence and passing on great knowledge at the same time.
No wonder he is referred to as the poets analyst- he is a poet himself.
Loved this work. its moved me, added to me as a person and as a therapist.
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