The Feeling Intellect: The Independent tradition in English psychoanalysis

In The Feeling Intellect, Steven Groarke explores the overlap between psychoanalysis and philosophy in order to provide the first critical evaluation of the Independent tradition in British and American psychoanalysis.

The book focuses on the formation of Independent object-relations theory as an original mid- to late-twentieth-century development in post-Freudian psychoanalysis, focusing on contributions by Fairbairn, Winnicott, Loewald, and others to add to our understanding of what the author terms the dependence relationship: the earliest relationship between mother and infant. The theory of acts and relations provides the basic framework for more detailed discussions of the psychoanalysis of time, including, Loewald’s idea of the inner future and the role of re-descriptive memory as a type of reclamation.

This book is aimed at a readership intent on exploring the philosophical aspects of contemporary psychoanalysis in more detail. It will be of great value to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and students studying psychology.

Steven Groarke is professor emeritus at Roehampton University, a member of the British Psychoanalytic Society, author of Managed Lives: Psychoanalysis, Inner Security and the Social Order (Routledge, 2014), and a practicing adult psychoanalyst.