Primitive Edge of Experience - by Thomas H Ogden Paperback

About the Book

"This is an extraordinary and exciting book, the work of a truly original and creative psychoanalytic theoretician and most astute clinician. Ogden continues to expand and to deepen his reformulations of the British object-relations theorists, M. Klein, W. R. Bion, D. W. Winni...

Book Synopsis

"This is an extraordinary and exciting book, the work of a truly original and creative psychoanalytic theoretician and most astute clinician. Ogden continues to expand and to deepen his reformulations of the British object-relations theorists, M. Klein, W. R. Bion, D. W. Winnicott, W. R. D. Fairbairn, H. Guntrip, to illuminate further the world of internalized object relations. His concepts are evolutionary and at times revolutionary. As his generous case examples aptly demonstrate, Ogden's theories are solidly grounded in his discerning work with a broad variety of patients. His brilliant pathfinding will enlighten and enrich the reader with invaluable insights. He will listen with new ears and with a fresh conceptual framework with which to comprehend the most primitive elements of human development and the complex interplay among the different modes of experience. This is a bold, important, instructive, and stimulating book of equally great clinical and theoretical applicability." -The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association

Review Quotes

In this magnificent book, Ogden illuminates the darkest recesses of the human psyche with his brilliant formulation of the autistic-contiguous position. He also provides refreshing new perspectives on the Oedipus complex and female psychology. With this impressive contribution, Thomas Ogden has come into his own as one of the most creative and original psychoanalytic thinkers of our time.

Reading this book left me feeling that I had come across one of those rare works which induce us to rethink, in an unaccustomed way, our ideas about mental functioning and the analytic process. Its gentle and unpretentious style leads you by the hand through an array of English and French analytic works which are less familiar to the American reader, such as Klein, Bion, Bollas, Bick, Meltzer, Fairbairn, Tustin and Winnicott, on to Anzieu, Green, McDougall, Chasseguet-Smirgel and, finally, Lacan. This is added to many American writers who are much more familiar.

About the Author

Thomas H. Ogden, M.D., is a graduate of Amherst College, the Yale School of Medicine, and the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. He has served as an associate psychiatrist at the Tavistock Clinic, London, and is currently Co-director of the Center for the Advanced Study of the Psychoses, a member of the faculty of the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, and a supervising and personal analyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. He teaches, supervises, and maintains a private practice of psychoanalysis in San Francisco.