On the Edge of Human Imagination

In this fascinating book, Michel Thys explores the limitations of human imagination and symbolization, showing the potentially destructive result of a mind that cannot confront reality. His wide-ranging research takes us into the domain of the unimaginable, unthinkable and unspeakable.

Divided into four parts, On the Edge of Human Imagination sees Thys adopt a phenomenological perspective to move through experiences encountered in the analyst’s room, from depression and psychosis to PTSD. Through a dialogue with philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Blanchot and Emmanuel Levinas, Thys investigates the relationship between fascination, identification, socio-cultural phenomena and aesthetic pleasure. Throughout, he uses the paintings of Edward Hopper, Sophocles’ Antigone, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times to support his ideas. Integrating Freudian, Kleinian and Bionian theories, he shows the psychic impact of humanity’s attempt to balance fear and passion on the edge of the imaginable and the liminality of the search for meaning. The book brings together psychoanalytic theory and practice and philosophical anthropology, confronting, in the end, Freud’s ideas of the death drive with Sartre’s understanding of the desire for being as the main driving force in human existence.

This book offers an illuminating evaluation of what it means to be human, making it an important read for psychoanalysts, psychologists and psychotherapists, as well as philosophers interested in the intersection between psychoanalytic, philosophical and phenomenological thought.

Michel Thys is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, psychoanalyst and doctor of philosophy. He is a member of the Flemish Association of Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Belgian School of Psychoanalysis. He is former editor-in-chief of the Dutch-Flemish journal Tijdschrift voor Psychoanalyse. He works in private practice in Antwerp, Belgium.