Existential Psychoanalysis: A Contemporary Introduction

A fascinating introductory volume, Existential Psychoanalysis: A Contemporary Introduction integrates existential philosophy with psychoanalysis, drawing on key theorists from both areas and expertly guiding the reader on how to incorporate these two disciplines, which may appear disparate on the surface, into their clinical and theoretical work.

This unique and accessible book sees M. Guy Thompson explore key concepts, such as experience, authenticity, freedom, psychic change, agency, and the pervasive role of suffering in our lives. Throughout, he draws on a wide range of thinkers from both fields, including Sartre, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Freud, Winnicott, Bion, Laing, and Lacan. Exquisitely lucid and engaging, Thompson deftly brings the reader into thoughtful and enlightening territory typically inaccessible to the general reader. Although existential philosophy and psychoanalysis are often thought of as incompatible fields, Thompson shows how they share far more in common than is usually supposed. This volume will help clinicians, scholars, and students of all persuasions learn how integrating the two disciplines introduces a more personal and revolutionary understanding of what psychoanalysis can be in the twenty-first century.

This compelling assimilation of continental philosophy and psychoanalysis will be of interest to psychoanalytic practitioners and psychotherapists, as well as philosophers, social scientists and any student of the human condition.

M. Guy Thompson is the founder and Director of the New School for Existential Psychoanalysis, and a Personal and Supervising Analyst and Faculty Member at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, San Francisco, USA. He is the author of Essays in Existential Psychoanalysis: On the Primacy of Authenticity (2023) and The Death of Desire: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (second edition, 2016), and the editor of The Legacy of R. D. Laing: An Appraisal of His Contemporary Relevance (2015).