The Matrix of the Mind

Object Relations and the Psychoanalytic Dialogue

By (author) Thomas H. Ogden

Publication date:

07 July 1977

Publisher

Jason Aronson, Inc.

ISBN-13: 9780876687420

This book is exciting, original, and above all accessibleDa rare combination for a text which deals in depth with psychoanalytical theory. Non-analysts are frequently both baffled and alienated by the jargon and the complexity of works which extend psychoanalytical thinking, but Ogden is revealed in this book as an outstanding communicator as well as a major theoretician. The book's subtitle is a guide to the main focus of the work, which reinterprets the work of Melanie Klein, with its focus on phantasy, in relation to the biological determinants of perception and the meaning and organization of experience in the interpersonal setting of human growth and development. Ogden re-interprets Klein to illuminate Freudian instinct theory, using the contributions of Bion, Fairbairn, and particularly WinnicottDBritish object relations theoristsDto clarify and extend aspects of their work and to move towards an impressive exposition of the way in which the human mind develops.' DPamela M. Ashurst, The British Journal of Psychiatry A Jason Aronson Book

Chapter 1 The Psychoanalytic Dialogue
Chapter 2 Instinct, Phantasy, and Psychological Deep Structure in the Work of Melanie Klein
Chapter 3 The Paranoid-Schizoid Position:Self as Object
Chapter 4 The Depressive Position and the Birth of the Historical Subject
Chapter 5 Between the Paranoid-Schizoid and the Depressive Position
Chapter 6 Internal Object Relations
Chapter 7 The Mother, the Infant, and the Matrix in the Work of Donald Winnicott
Chapter 8 Potential Space
Chapter 9 Dream Space and Analytic Space

All who are acquainted with Thomas Ogden's papers on psychoanalysis and with his authoritative book Projective Identification and Psychotherapeutic Technique have eagerly awaited the publication of The Matrix of the Mind. Ogden supplies an approachto Kleinian theory that is both eminently appreciative and incisively critical. He comprehensively and brilliantly surveys the development of the concept of internal objects and relationships. The chapters dealing with Winnicott's theoretical and clinicalcontribution to the history of psychoanalytic thought are particularly profound and original. This eminently readable and thought-provoking book will be read with interest not only by dedicated psychotherapeutic workers in varied fields, but also by allthose who take an intelligent interest in the way human beings function psychologically..