The Freudian Moment

Bollas eloquently argues for a return to our understanding of how Freudian psychoanalysis works unconscious to unconscious. Failure to follow Freud’s basic assumptions about psychoanalytical listening has resulted in the abandonment of searching for the “the logic of sequence” which Freud regarded as the primary way we express unconscious thinking.

In two extensive interviews and follow-up essays, all occurring in 2006, we follow Christopher Bollas exploring his most recent and radical challenge to contemporary psychoanalysis. The Freudian Moment, Bollas argues, realizes a phylogenetic preconception that has existed for tens of thousands of years. The invention of psychoanalysis realizes this preconception and constitutes a profound step forward in human relations.

Bollas’ proposal that we use the image of the symphonic score to better imagine unconscious articulation opens up a new conceptual way for grasping the complexity of unconscious thought. His excoriating critique of the here-and-now transference interpretation will challenge a form of practice that is now widespread throughout the analytical world. It is rare to have literary access to such work in progress, but it provides exhilarating insight into the workings of one of the finest minds in the history of psychoanalysis.