Self-Writing in Psychoanalysis

Self-Writing in Psychoanalysis explores the biographical and autobiographical narrative strategies employed by psychoanalysts and examines the diverse roles that biographies, memoirs, and autobiographies have played within psychoanalytic literature.

Drawing on both published and previously unpublished personal documents, including autobiographies, memoirs, biographies, self-analytical writings, and autobiographical notes, Agnes Sobolewska Alsberg develops the theory of the heteronyms of the psyche in the history of psychoanalysis. She offers the first systematic account of the biographical and autobiographical strategies adopted by Freud’s disciples, including Isidor Sadger, Marie Bonaparte, Helene Deutsch, and Wilfred Bion, with particular attention to the complex relationship between psychoanalytic theory and practices of self-writing.

This book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, historians of psychoanalysis, and scholars of intellectual history. It will also appeal to researchers in life writing, migration and the circulation of knowledge, and the history of psychology and psychoanalysis.