Uncertain Facts and Certain Fictions
Psychic Reality in Literature and Psychoanalysis
Ronald Britton author Susan Lawrence editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Publishing:14th Dec '26
£34.99
This title is due to be published on 14th December, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Uncertain Facts and Certain Fictions: Psychic Reality in literature and Psychoanalysis is a collection of Ronald Britton’s papers, written over his distinguished career. Each paper demonstrates his insight and ability to articulate profound links between psychoanalysis and writings from literary, religious, philosophical or scientific spheres.
Human beings think in metaphors and analogies, so literary metaphors often come to mind to both psychoanalysts and their patients. Britton recognised that both analysis and literature share the same fundamental wish to explore our experience and feelings. He saw writers as expressing our "models of belief," which—along with phantasies, memories, dreams and the imagination—form the stuff of human psychic reality and its persistent distortions. In Uncertain Facts and Certain Fictions, he draws on a broad array of texts, from the Old Testament and Enlightenment philosophers to Romantic poets and novelists, each containing insights that prefigure psychoanalytic discoveries. Deftly weaving clinical material throughout, he demonstrates the timeless interconnection between these works and psychoanalytic ideas.
Whether you are a general reader looking to deepen your psychological insight, or a clinician wanting to broaden your professional frame of reference, this book will profoundly reinvigorate your understanding of these complementary disciplines.
"This collection of papers by one of Britain’s most respected psychoanalysts displays the originality of his ideas as he brings literature and clinical thinking to bear on important issues in contemporary thought. For example, the critical difference between great literature that brings us into contact with reality and escapist romance that evades it, is revealed in works as diverse as those of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Milton, Rilke, Epicurus, Trollope, St Augustine, and Mary Shelley, all of them making connections with the unconscious processes observed by psychoanalysts.
Topics such as forgiveness and emancipation mix with ideas from the Bible and quantum mechanics to reveal connections that turn out to raise fundamental issues of how the mind works and how its laws are subject to those of the brain. A highly entertaining work not to be missed by psychoanalysts, and yet comprehensible and stimulating to the general reader."
John Steiner, Training analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society, author of Psychic Retreats (1993) and Seeing and Being Seen (2011)
"Ronald Britton is one of the most original and creative psychoanalytic thinkers of his generation. With clarity and imaginative depth, he helps us navigate the shifting boundaries between inner and outer worlds, fact and fantasy, fiction and psychic reality. This volume captures his distinctive voice and the rare gift he has given many of us: to think. A timely tour de force that opens eyes and ears to the inside and outside—and teaches us how to tell the di[erence."
Professor Peter Fonagy, Professor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Developmental Science, Head of Division for Psychology and Language Sciences, UCL, Senior National Clinical Adviser for NHS England on Children and Young Peoples’ Mental Health
ISBN: 9781041040477
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
238 pages