Translation/transformation

This collection treats translation as the thread running through psychoanalytic work. Its concerns include moving from the unconscious to the conscious, turning experience into words, shifting what is internal into action, and carrying the past into the present through transference. Translation is considered both literally and as a metaphor.

The opening section examines these questions. It traces how linguistic and cultural translation were shaped by key figures in the early development of psychoanalysis and of the IJP (the International Journal of Psychoanalysis). It also describes the journal's close ties to the Bloomsbury Group and to the visual arts, a connection visible in the journal's logo, which is drawn from a painting by Ingres.

The second section looks at how psychoanalysis and the arts pass into one another, carrying conscious, unconscious and unrepresented material into visual, poetic and musical forms. It also follows how psychoanalytic thinking about artistic expression has changed over time in the pages of the IJP. The book is aimed at psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, as well as readers interested in the history of psychoanalysis and the journal.