'Occultism and the Origins of Psychoanalysis' and 'Sigmund Freud and The Forsyth Case' (2 Volume Set)
Maria Pierri author Adam Elgar translator
Format:Set / collection
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Published:30th Nov '22
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Sigmund Freud and The Forsyth Case uses newly discovered primary sources to investigate one of Sigmund Freud’s most mysterious clinical experiences, the Forsyth case. Maria Pierri begins with a preliminary illustration of the case, its historical context, and how it connects to Freud’s interests in ‘thought-transmission’, or telepathy. Sigmund Freud and The Forsyth Case details Pierri’s attempts to recover the lost original case notes, which are published here for the first time, to identify the patient involved and to set the case into the broader frame of Freud’s work. The book also explores Freud’s further investigations into thought-transmission, focusing around a meeting of the Secret Committee in October 1919 and his clinical work with his own daughter Anna.
Occultism and the Origins of Psychoanalysis traces the origins of key psychoanalytic ideas back to their roots in hypnosis and the occult. Maria Pierri follows Sigmund Freud’s early interest in ‘thought transmission’, now known as telepathy. Freud’s private investigations led to discussions with other leading figures, including Sandor Ferenczi, with whom he held a ‘dialogue of the unconsciouses’, and Carl Jung. Freud and Ferenczi’s work assessed how fortune tellers could read the past from a client, inspiring their investigations into countertransference, the analytic relationship, unconscious communication and mother-infant relationality. Pierri clearly links modern psychoanalytic practice with Freud’s interests in the occult using primary sources, some of which have never before been published in English.
These books will be essential reading for psychoanalysts in practice and in training, as well as academics and scholars of psychoanalytic studies, Freudian ideas, psychoanalytic theory, the occult, spirituality and the history of psychology.
Volume 1.
"This book gives back to contemporary psychoanalysis the pleasure of exploring really little-known territories, fascinatingly restoring the connection between the past, present and "elsewhere" of communications between human beings, using the Freudian experience as its starting point, in order to reconsider in a reflective way the less visible, sometimes disorienting and mysterious levels of psychoanalytic practice. offers us an especially valuable reflection on the mysterious communicating paths which put individual and group unconsciouses in contact with each other, often bypassing in an apparently disconcerting manner the border controls." - Stefano Bolognini, past President of the IPA and the Italian Psychoanalytic Society
"Following the thread of thought-transference, Maria Pierri goes through the events of the Freudian endeavour starting from its roots in hypnosis and occultism, through the dialogue with the masters, the pupils and the great female patients, the leading actresses of the cure. In his disquieting curiosity for telepathy, which he shared intimately with Ferenczi, Freud discovers that fortune-tellers, who do not know the future, can read the unconscious of their clients. But the "golden coin" of occultism, the generative mother-child communication, will be the great discovery of Ferenczi." - Luis J. Martin Cabré, Training analyst, past President Madrid Psychoanalytical Association.
"Today we know much about the polyphonic complex of contexts, experiences, relationships and ideas which made psychoanalysis possible and still nourish its current debates. We can be very grateful to Maria Pierri for bringing us up to date with the role and meaning of some little-known aspects of Freud’s life and work concerning occultism and the fascinating dialogue of the unconsciouses developed with Ferenczi: what the Author identifies as one of the matrices of the developments of contemporary psychoanalysis." - Marco Conci, MC, IPA Committee on the History of Psychoanalysis
Volume 2.
"The book by Maria Pierri, a passionate and recognized connoisseur of "coincidences", can be read as an engrossing detective novel of historical reconstruction as it unfolds towards its resolution, elegantly written and full of surprises, and opening up unexpected new fields of thought. Which is not to say that it actually is a novel: rather, it is real History with a capital H, thoroughly documented with a precise investigative method which revisits one of the most mysterious and controversial areas of Freudian research, that of telepathy." - Stefano Bolognini, past President of the IPA and the Italian Psychoanalytic Society.
"With rigorous documentation, including previously unpublished material, and elegant writing, Maria Pierri conducts a passionate investigation of hypnosis, occultism, suggestion, "coincidences and misunderstandings", studied by Freud, who applied his scientific mentality to them. The secrets and enigmas around the origins of psychoanalysis, the deep ties and conflicts between the pioneers "who made the venture" with Freud will emerge from the courageous search for that "elsewhere" of human thoughts we call unconscious, with which we are confronted daily in clinical practice and theory." - Paola Golinelli Training analyst, Italian Psychoanalytic Society. Author of Psychoanalytic Reflection on Writing, Cinema and the Arts. Routledge, 2021.
"Maria Pierri’s work is not only an excellent example of historical and archival research into the interest of emergent psychoanalysis in telepathic events, but a radical demonstration – thanks to the "work as a double" performed by thought-transmission – of how unsustainable it is to maintain that Freud was a monist. In this way, through the wealth of phenomena being observed, the author opens up a new direction for study and theoretical enquiry that will send us back to Freud, differently every time, and to his very early intuition of a psychic field that is created in the analytic relationship." - Maurizio Balsamo, Training analyst, Italian Psychoanalytic Society. Maître de Conférences et Directeur de Recherche, UFR Études Psychanalytiques, Université Paris–Diderot
ISBN: 9781032308920
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 1075g
558 pages