Introduction Part 1: 1. The Philosopher of Psychoanalysis (I) 2. The Philosopher of Psychoanalysis (II) Part 2: 3. Freud's Negative Particle 4. Contextualizing Spinoza 5. A First Reading Part 3: 6. Ethics, Part I 7. Ethics, Part II 8. A General Understanding of Clinical Method 9. Conclusion, Part III Part 4: 10. Clinical Spinoza 11. Tools of Inquiry Part 5: 12. The Multiple Polarities of Freud's Negative Particle
Ian S. Miller is a clinical psychologist/psychoanalyst and writer, based in Dublin. He is author of Defining Psychoanalysis: Achieving a Vernacular Expression (Karnac, 2016); On Minding and Being Minded: Experiencing Bion & Beckett (Karnac, 2015); and co-author of Beckett and Bion: The (Im)patient Voice in Psychotherapy and Literature (Karnac, 2013) as well as On the Daily Work of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (Routledge, 2018). He serves as Associate Editor on the American Journal of Psychoanalysis.
Discovering Spinoza's early modern psychology some 35 years into his own clinical practice, Ian Miller now gives shape to this connection through a close reading of Spinoza's key philosophical ideas.
With a rigorous and expansive analysis of Spinoza's Ethics in particular, Miller explores how Spinozan thought simultaneously empowered the original conceptual direction of psychoanalytic thinking, and anticipated the field's contemporary theoretical dimensions. Miller offers a detailed overview of the philosopher's psychoanalytic reception from the early work of German-langauge psychoanalytic thinkers, such as Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé, forward into its Anglophone reception, influencing both mid-century humanistic American psychoanalysis as well as anticipating thinkers such as Bion and Winnicott.
Covering key concepts in psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, this book demonstrates how knowledge of Spinoza's philosophical work can help to both illulminate and improve modern psychoanalytic therapies.