On the Couch

In this groundbreaking new book, psychotherapist Andrew Jamieson considers key principles of psychoanalysis and illuminates them through psychobiographies of twenty extraordinary people.

From Pablo Picasso’s chaotic life, which illustrates Freud‘s concept of the unconscious, to John Bowlby’s attachment theory, as seen through the lives of Virginia Woolf and Franz Kafka, Andrew Jamieson removes psychoanalysis from its theoretical framework and illustrates some of the most fascinating psychoanalytic ideas while exploring twenty great lives in new ways. 

Key concepts include: Sigmund Freud’s Theory of the Unconscious, Ero and Thanatos theories; Carl Jung’s theories of Individuation, the Shadow and Anima and Animus archetypes; Viktor Frankl’s Theory of Meaning; Melanie Klein’s Depressive Position; John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory; Michael Balint’s Basic Fault Theory; Donald Winnicott’s Theory of the Individual; Carl Rogers’ Theory of the Ideal Self; Donna Orange, Robert Stolorow and George Atwood’s Intersubjectivity Theory. Lives examined include Josephine Baker, Marilyn Monroe, Viktor Frankl, Emma Jung, Cary Grant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, W. B. Yeats, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Darwin, Nicolas Copernicus, Nelson Mandela, Burt Hellinger, Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel.