This collection of papers, spanning the last fifteen years, presents a spirited defence of Freud s clinical method, considering the crisis of psychoanalysis in the wider context of a crisis of reflective thought in society as a whole. Expressing the wish to clarify and polish the glass through which we see the psychoanalytic experience , Jorge Ahumada seeks to redefine the functions of psychoanalysis for the era of mass media, in which the classic Freudian neuroses have mostly been replaced by what he terms pathologies of peremptory gratification .

Jorge L. Ahumada trained in psychiatry both in Argentina and in the US before completing his psychoanalytic training in Buenos Aires, where he is now working as a psychoanalyst in private practice.

Foreword -- Preface -- Introduction -- What is a clinical fact? Clinical psychoanalysis as inductive method -- The analyst as "base" -- On the transposition of self and object -- The unconscious delusion of "goodness" -- Perverse and symbiotic organizations in narcissistic object relationships -- On narcissistic identification and the shadow of the object -- Trauma, identification, evolution -- On the limitations and the infiniteness of analysis -- Epilogue