Michael Parsons is a Training Analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society and a member of the French Psychoanalytic Association. With more than thirty years of experience in his field, he teaches and lectures all over the world. He is the author of The Dove that Returns, The Dove that Vanishes: Paradox and Creativity in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2000).

Here, Parsons brings to life clinical psychoanalysis and its theoretical foundations, with new developments in analytic theory and vivid examples.

Introduction. Part 1: Between Death and the Primal Scene.Keeping Death Alive. Why Did Orpheus Look Back? Après-Coup, Avant-Coup. Appendix: More About Memory. In Defence of the Uncanny. Part 2: Concepts on the Move. Sexuality and Perversion: Discovering What Freud Discovered. Oedipal Disidentification: Au Nom Du Fils, Au Nom De La Fille.Narcissism as Prison, Narcissism as Springboard: A Reading of Sophocles' Ajax. Part 3: The Activity of Listening. Listening Out, Listening In, Looking Out, Looking In. The Analyst's Countertransference to the Psychoanalytic Process .Raiding the Inarticulate: Internal Setting, Beyond Countertransference. Part 4: Clinical Practice Taking Shape. What Does Interpretation Put Into Words? An Independent Theory of Clinical Technique. Forming an Identity: Reflections on Psychoanalytic Training.