Essential Aloneness: Rome Lectures on DW Winnicott

Essential Aloneness is a collection of lectures by Christopher Bollas on DW Winnicott's concepts, addressing how to apply them in the clinical space. The book includes unique and distinct talks, demonstrating Bollas' flexibility in meeting the clinical interests of the audience. It raises questions of Winnicottian psychoanalytic theory and practice, highlighting the subtle and complex positions taken by Winnicott and his colleagues. Bollas, as one of Winnicott's literary editors, provides a fresh perspective on the challenges Winnicott's thinking posed to psychoanalytical, literary, and intellectual culture in the decade after his death.

Format: Unspecified
Length: 160 pages
Publication date: 22 November 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

Essential Aloneness is a collection of lectures delivered by Christopher Bollas in the 1980s to students and staff of the Institute of Child Neuropsychiatry at the University of Rome. The attendees of these lectures were familiar with DW Winnicott's works, as many were experts in the field. However, a lingering question remained: how can Winnicott's concepts be applied in the clinical setting? Bollas not only addresses this question but also shares his own clinical formulations at the time, such as the transformational object and the unthought known. Each chapter in the book features a unique and distinct talk, delivered with the aliveness that is characteristic of in-person lectures. Bollas demonstrates remarkable flexibility in scope and focus to meet the clinical interests of the attending group. The book is filled with questions about Winnicottian psychoanalytic theory and practice, which are as relevant today as when the lectures were first delivered. These questions shed light on the nuanced and complex positions taken by Winnicott, as understood by Bollas and other analysts in the United Kingdom and Italy who worked with him and utilized the Winnicott object.

One of Winnicott's literary editors, Bollas, brings a unique perspective in real-time to the challenges Winnicott's thinking posed to the psychoanalytical, literary, and intellectual culture in the United Kingdom and abroad in the decade following Winnicott's death.

Weight: 300g
Dimension: 149 x 218 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780197683880