Books by Christopher Bollas

It is important to point out that these essays are about character types; it is not to suggest that all borderlines, narcissists or manic depressives are the same. Everyone is an individual and are who they are for many different reasons. What they have in common is a typical relation between their subjectivity and the world they inhabit. In other words, Christopher Bollas has identified the axioms that these individuals share. Following a discussion of the features of each type, the axioms are delivered in the character's own voice. By placing ourselves within their own logic, we can begin to identify and empathise with them. At the root of all character disorders there is mental pain and each disorder is an intelligent attempt to solve an existential problem. If the clinician can grasp their specific intelligence and help the analysand to understand this, then a natural process of healing can begin. Three Characters is a masterclass based on decades of lectures presented to psychoanalysts, analytical psychologists, and psychotherapists, and is a must-read for all psychoanalytic enthusiasts.

Christopher Bollas takes the reader right to the heart of psychotherapy, examining the mysterious aspects of the self that are revealed by the free associative process.

Bollas aboga elocuentemente por el retorno a nuestra comprensión de cómo funciona el psicoanálisis freudiano de inconsciente a inconsciente.

"First published by Free Association Books, 1989."

Many schizophrenics experience their condition as one of radical incarceration, mind-altering medications, isolation, and dehumanization. At a time when the treatment of choice is anti-psychotic medication, world-renowned psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas asserts that schizophrenics can be helped by much more humane treatments, and that they have a chance to survive and even reverse the process if they have someone to talk to them regularly and for a sustained period, soon after their first breakdown. In this sensitive and evocative narrative, he draws on his personal experiences working with schizophrenics since the 1960's. He offers his interpretation of how schizophrenia develops, typically in the teens, as an adaptation in the difficult transition to adulthood. With tenderness, Bollas depicts schizophrenia as an understandable way of responding to our precariousness in a highly unpredictable world. He celebrates the courage of the children he has worked with and reminds us that the wisdom inherent in human beings-to turn to conversation with others when in distress-is the fundamental foundation of any cure for human conflict.

Taking Freud's model of dreamwork as a model for all unconscious thinking, Bollas argues that we dreamwork ourselves into becoming who we are. He illustrates how patient and analyst can use such unconscious processes to alter self experience.

Argues for a return to our understanding of how Freudian psychoanalysis works unconscious to unconscious. In this book, the author also argues, realizes a phylogenetic preconception that has existed for tens of thousands of years.

In this original and thought-provoking book, Bollas examines how people educate one another in the idioms of their unconscious lives and considers the nature and consequences of the traumas that inhibit the freedom to do this.

Uses detailed studies of real clinical practice to illuminate a theory of psychoanalysis which privileges the human impulse to question. This title includes transcripts of real analytical sessions, accompanied by parallel commentaries which highlight key aspects of the free associative method in practice.