M. Guy Thompson

In this brilliant and revolutionary collection of fourteen major essays that draw from more than twenty-five years of painstaking research, M. Guy Thompson regales us with a stunning revisioning of conventional psychoanalysis that deepens our understanding of the human condition. Integrating the most seminal existentialist philosophers, including Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre, with the most forward thinking psychoanalysts over the past century, including Freud, Laing, Bion, Winnicott, and Lacan, Thompson offers a profound yet deeply personal vision of what psychoanalysis can be in the twenty-first century.In this fascinating volume, Thompson explores such concepts as experience, authenticity, will, happiness, and agency by utilizing a wide range of thinkers, including the ancient Greeks, but always in his singular voice. Exquisitely lucid and engaging to read, Thompson deftly lures us into thoughtful and enlightening territory typically inaccessible to the general reader. This compelling integration of continental philosophy and psychoanalysis will be of interest not only to psychoanalytic practitioners of all persuasions, but to psychotherapists generally and their patients, as well as philosophers, social scientists, and any student of the human condition.

A stunning exploration of the relation between desire and psychopathology, The Death of Desireis a unique synthesis of the work of Laing, Freud, Nietzsche, and Heidegger that renders their often difficult concepts brilliantly accessible to and usable by psychotherapists of all persuasions. In bridging a critical gap between phenomenology and psychoanalysis, M. Guy Thompson, one of the leading existential psychoanalysts of our time, firmly re-situates the unconscious - what Freud called "the lost continent of repressed desires" - in phenomenology. In so doing, he provides us with the richest, most compelling phenomenological treatment of the unconscious to date and also makes Freud's theory of the unconscious newly comprehensible. In this revised and updated second edition to the original published in 1985, M. Guy Thompson takes us inside his soul-searching seven-year apprenticeship with radical psychiatrist R. D. Laing and his cohorts as it unfolded in counterculture London of the 1970s. This rite de passage culminates with a four-year sojourn inside one of Laing's post-Kingsley Hall asylums, where Laing's unorthodox conception of treatment dispenses with conventional boundaries between "doctor" and "patient." In this unprecedented exploration, Thompson reveals the secret to Laing's astonishing alternative to the conventional psychiatric and psychoanalytic treatment schemes. Movingly written and deeply personal, Thompson shows why the very concept of "mental illness" is a misnomer and why sanity and madness should be understood instead as inherently puzzling stratagems that we devise in order to protect ourselves from intolerable mental anguish. The Death of Desireoffers a provocative and challenging reappraisal of depth psychotherapy from an existential perspective that will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, philosophers, social scientists, and students of the human condition.

In this unusual and much-needed reappraisal of Freud's clinical technique, M. Guy Thompson challenges the conventional notion that psychoanalysis promotes relief from suffering and replaces it with a more radical assertion, that psychoanalysis seeks to mend our relationship with the real that has been fractured by our avoidance of the same. Thompson suggests that, while avoiding reality may help to relieve our experience of suffering, this short-term solution inevitably leads to a split in our existence. M. Guy Thompson forcefully disagrees with the recent trend that dismisses Freud as an historical figure who is out of step with the times. He argues, instead, for a return to the forgotten Freud, a man inherently philosophical and rooted in a Greek preoccupation with the nature of truth, ethics, the purpose of life and our relationship with reality. Thompson's argument is situated in a stunning re-reading of Freud's technical papers, including a new evaluation of his analyses of Dora and the Rat Man in the context of Heidegger's understanding of truth. In this remarkable examination of Freud's technical recommendations, M. Guy Thompson explains how psychoanalysis was originally designed to re-acquaint us with realities we had abandoned by encountering them in the contest of the analytic experience. This provocative examination of Freud's conception of psychoanalysis reveals a more personal Freud than we had previously supposed, one that is more humanistic and real.

Rarely do we come across a book that has the force and cogency to provoke us to reevaluate the most fundamental tenets of psychoanalysis. One of the most brilliant psychoanalytic scholars of our time, M. Guy Thompson revolutionizes our understanding of the axiomatic principles upon which psychoanalysis is based. Through a careful exegesis of Freud's texts, he persuasively shows how the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis is not merely a vehicle for free association but, more importantly, a pledge to honesty. Contextualized in the subjective lived experience each analyst faces, Thompson demonstrates how Freud's technical mandates are nothing less than ethical imperatives by which to live, authentically. This fascinating exploration into the philosophical dimensions of psychoanalysis offers a compelling contribution to the clinical application of psychoanalytic doctrine that will be of interest to psychoanalytic practitioners of all persuasions. (Jon Mills)

Hersch’s objective in his paper was to “illustrate how an existential ontology has a great deal to offer psychotherapists”. The first of three sections addresses existential themes such as guilt and anxiety and explores the notion of bad faith; the second focuses on why existential ontology provides a more suitable grounding for psychotherapy than traditional models; and the third offers the author’s invention of a mental status examination that is derived from existential ontology. To illustrate how existential ontology may be useful to psychotherapists, Hersch directs our attention to those existential themes that are crucial to understanding the role ontology plays, existential..