The Psychoanalytic Temptation: Explaining Psychosis

Abstract

Psychotic Temptationby Liliane Abensour, translated by David Alcorn (London: Routledge, 2013, 165 pp.)
Writing about psychoanalytically grounded treatment of patients suffering with psychotic conditions is a difficult thing to do, perhaps in some ways almost as difficult as actual treatment. No professional “genre” or set of conventions lends itself naturally to the task. There is a sense in which every clinician who undertakes the challenge becomes a sort of lone pioneer—yet even Bion needed a supportive community to enable his work, and Searles had the backing of a well-established institutional setting.