Life Drive & Death Drive, Libido & Lethe: A clear road through Freud’s metapsychology leading to helpful findings and new concepts By Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau

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“Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau navigates what has been for many of us the murky waters of metapsycholgy, and provides an exceptionally lucid, logically coherent account of the overall structure of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, the relationship of its various elements, and the significance for clinical practice and neurophysiological priniciples.
She convinces the reader that Freud’s metapsychology, critically and synthetically approached, contains more creative potential than anything else yet produced in psychoanalysis. Her own extraordinary capacities as a psychoanalytic scholar and passionately creative thinker have given us a Freud for the future.” —Alan Bass, The Psychoanalytic Quarterly

“This is an original, systematic, scholarly, challenging overview of Freud’s metapsychlogy and a fundamental reformulation of Freudian metapsychology in the light of the evolution of psychoanalytic thinking to the present day.”–Otto F. Kernberg, IPA Past President

“Interest in the ‘general theory’ of psychoanalysis seems to be reviewed periodically, despite the many criticisms and rejections to which it has been subjected. Perhaps it reappears, Phoenix-like, as each new generation of psychoanalysts takes the field and seeks to reassure itself of its affiliation with the spirit of science. This book is yet another attempt to reformulate Freud’s metapsychology, this time with great rigor and precision.” —William M. Greenstadt, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association

“Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau has transfigured Freud’s ‘witch metapsychology’ into our illuminating muse on how the mind works. By introducing new concepts into our psychoanalytic thinking, she challenges our established views and opens new perspectives on understanding psychic processes and functioning – thus establishing her place as an important contributor to our contemporary discourse.”

—Arnold Richards, Editor of  IPBooks

Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau, Ph.D., studied literature, philosophy and psychology in Heidelberg and Zürich, where she worked as a university professor for clinical psychology. She is a training and supervising analyst at the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society and at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Her areas of expertise are metapsychology, in particular drive theory, its clinical application, and applied psychoanalysis of creative processes. She is the author of three psychoanalytic books, three novels, and many articles, published in many languages, and edited a Freud Reader, an Essay book and three collections of Short Stories. Currently she is the Chair of the IPA in Culture Committee. She works in private practice in Chestnut Hill.