The Purloined Self

The Purloined Self: Interpersonal Perspectives in Psychoanalysis brings together nineteen essays in updated form, still as relevant, witty and informative today as when the book originally published.

Edgar Levenson is a key figure in the development of Interpersonal psychoanalysis and his ideas remain influential. This book covers his seminal writing on theoretical topics such as models of psychoanalysis, Harry Stack Sullivan’s theories, and the nature of change, as well as his more familiar focus on practical analytic topics such as transference, supervision, and the use of the self in psychoanalytic clinical work.

The content ranges from more technical articles on psychoanalysis and general systems theory, the holographic dimensions of psychoanalytic change; on to issues of metapsychology; and then to articles devoted to examining the nuances of the therapeutic praxis. The general thrust of the book is in the Interpersonal tradition and is a major contribution to a contemporary elaboration of post-Sullivanian Interpersonalism, and of the two-person model of psychoanalysis that has come to permeate the entire field.

With a new foreword by Donnel Stern, himself a major name in current Interpersonal analysis, this book gives a comprehensive overview of Levenson’s work, and its continued relevance in contemporary psychoanalytic thought. The Purloined Self is highly readable: the author’s witty essayist style and original perspective on its material has made it appealing across a wide range of readerships. It will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists as well as undergraduate and advanced postgraduate students in these fields.