Passions of the Mind: Unheard Melodies: a Third Principle of Mental Functioning

Marc Notes: Analysis of the link between personal and biosocial psychologies in society. Biographical Note: Harold N. Boris has worked as an analyst in many settings--in day and overnight schools for normal and disturbed children, in rural villages and urban centers, in governmental and industrial research facilities, in hospitals and training centers, and in offices and home consulting rooms. His research has been sponsored by NIMH and the Field and Ford Foundations. The author is on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and is in private practice in Lexington, Massachusetts. Publisher Marketing: As social animals, each of us can only be partly understood through insights into our individual psychodynamics. There is, within us, another principle at work: to preserve the group, even at the expense of the individual. In this innovative synthesis of classical psychoanalysis and recent interpersonal and object relations psychology, Harold N. Boris constructs a necessary bridge between individual psychodynamics and group dynamics. This bridge rests upon two, complementary foundations: the egoistically- defined pleasure principle of The Couple and the socially defined selection principle of The Pair. "Unheard Melodies" shows how these two states of mind often compete, each being a distinct mental state seeking its own objectives. When analyzed, both mental states reveal their own characteristic themes and feelings, presences and absences, all of which are intertwined in the unique, patterned music of psychoanalysis. To demonstrate the patterning of these mental states, Boris presents the transcription of a composite analysis, an astonishing documentation of his own clinical experience, showing The Couple and The Pair playing together in the analytic setting. These clinical transcripts, complete with commentary, provide rare glimpses into the psychoanalytic process that will interest psychoanalysts, sociologists, and casual students of the mind and society.

Contributor Bio:  Boris, Harold N Harold N. Boris has worked as an analyst in many settings--in day and overnight schools for normal and disturbed children, in rural villages and urban centers, in governmental and industrial research facilities, in hospitals and training centers, and in offices and home consulting rooms. His research has been sponsored by NIMH and the Field and Ford Foundations. The author is on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and is in private practice in Lexington, Massachusetts. Contributor Bio:  Eigen, Michael Michael Eigen is a psychologist and psychoanalyst as well as a senior member and training analyst with the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis. He is also Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology and supervisor for the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. His other books include "Damaged Bonds", "Rage", "The Electrified Tightrope" and "Feeling Matters".