Affect, Representation and Language

Reviews / Votes

"In this very important book about psychoanalytic process and the functioning of the analyst-patient dyad, Howard Levine offers an original synthesis of Freud's metapsychology with the theories of authors such as Bion, Winnicott, Green and the Psychosomaticians of the Paris School. The result is a clinical approach to non-neurotic phenomena and unrepresented mental states that emphasizes representation, not as a given but as 'a developmental achievement through which previously unbound or inchoate forces become bound and contained in the psyche." - Evelyne Sechaud, former president of the European Psychoanalytic Federation; former president, training and supervising analyst of the APF (French Psychoanalytic Association)

"Howard B. Levine's book rests on the idea that psychoanalysis is ultimately about the patient's (and the analyst's) thinking capacity and the psyche's limitations in responding to the demands for work made by the clash between external and psychic reality. As every analyst knows, the task is complex, sometimes close to impossible. Psychoanalysts, therefore, need to resort to as many luminaries in their field as they can, granted that no single author, no matter how great, can be credited with possessing the final truth. But then another problem arises: the multiple analytic idioms represent a challenge of their own. Levine brilliantly meets that challenge by displaying an exemplary capacity to navigate between many exponents of the British, French, North- and Latin-American analytic traditions and offering a personal synthesis rich with original ideas and clinical illustrations." - Dominique Scarfone, training and supervising analyst, Canadian Psychoanalytic Society Institute, Montreal French Branch

"What are the contents of the conscious and unconscious mind? The stuff that our inner worlds are made out of, the raw materials of our innermost selves? What happens when lacunae, lapses or failures occur, when we observe modalities of unstructured functioning, of unrepresented states of mind? Since Freud, psychoanalysis has acutely explored these issues offering a number of different accounts of the architecture, dynamics and texture of psychic life: the logic and logistics of the soul.

Howard Levine is at the forefront of thinkers who are currently examining these issues in a contemporary framework. He expertly sums up decades of thinking deeply about these issues and presents his reflections in crystal clear prose and with all the exciting commitment and enthusiasm of the best psychoanalytic thinkers at work today. This is a book to be read, re-read and closely studied." - Elias M. da Rocha Barros, Sao Paulo Society and fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society

"This is a refreshing and vitalizing way of considering the clinical work of psychoanalysis: as exploring the intermixing of the somatic, affective and representational components of the human experience in the context of relating to another in the analytic space. In this meditation on psychoanalytic theory and practice, Levine leaves the reader with much to digest." - Review by Endre Koritar, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, (2023). Int. J. Psychoanal., (104)(4):804-807