Generation

Generation is both an introduction to and a comparative study of contemporary psychoanalytic clinical theory. It provides the reader with a comprehensive overview of how new ways of thinking about the psychoanalytic process have evolved and are still in development today.Jean White presents a detailed study of contemporary Independent, Lacanian and post-Kleinian theory, set within the wider context of the international expansion of psychoanalysis. Contemporary clinical practice is discussed in relation to concepts of psychopathology, transference and countertransference and innovations in technique. Each school’s explicit and implicit models of psychic growth and their view of the aims of the psychoanalytic process are explored. Written in clear, accessible language and interwoven throughout with clinical vignettes, Generation provides an invaluable initiation into the work of notoriously difficult authors such as Lacan and Bion. This stimulating presentation of contemporary psychoanalytic theory will be of great interest to psychoanalytic psychotherapists, psychodynamic counsellors and psychoanalysts of all theoretical orientations.

"This is quite simply the most intelligent book on contemporary psychoanalysis to be found and the best integration of theory and practice I have read." - Christopher Bollas, author of The Infinite Question & The Evocative Object World"This is an exceptional work that should find itself in every psychoanalyst’s and psychotherapist’s library." - James S. Grotstein, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, Training and Supervising Analyst Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society/Institute and The Psychoanalytic Center of California, USA"This book will effectively constitute a milestone for the preservation of clinical psychoanalysis as a non-dogmatic, dynamic form of therapy, whose predicates are perennially open to revision." - Dany Nobus, Brunel University, UK"With this, her first book, Jean White has made a serious, highly intelligent and articulate contribution to psychoanalytic theory and practice... This book can serve both as an introduction to contemporary psychoanalytic theory, and also as a very thorough, searching comparative study of the contribution made by differing theoretical approaches to clinical practice... I consider this book to be a very impressive achievement." - Janet Richards, Psychodynamic Practice, Vol. 14, No. 4, November 2008"As an introduction to contemporary psychoanalysis and analytic psychotherapy, Generation could hardly be bettered…Her account is detailed, sophisticated, and grounded in an acute awareness of the mobility and plasticity of analytic thought, its developments and transformations…Most valuably of all, White punctuates the book with movingly candid vignettes from her own work, which enable her show how aspects of each of the paradigms can, from patient to patient, or session to session, be allowed into play to honour the complexity and diversity of the human subject… She gives the word which she has borrowed for her title its full range and weight; it speaks to how one generation builds on the work and insight of another, and how psychoanalysis itself is at its best a generative, fecund activity…The book should be essential reading on psychoanalytic trainings, if it is not already; it will also refresh and open up new horizons for experienced practitioners." - Robert Snell, London Centre For Psychotherapy, British Journal of Psychotherapy, Vol. 24 No. 3, 2009

Jean White is a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist in private practice in London. Since 1986, she has consulted to many public sector organisations and lectured for a range of psychoanalytic psychotherapy trainings. She is a member of the Guild of Psychotherapists and the Forum for Independent Psychotherapists.