BOOKS
R.D. Hinshelwood (2022) Herbert Rosenfeld: A Contemporary Introduction. London: Routledge (New Library of Psychoanalysis).
Herbert Rosenfeld was one of Klein’s most important supporters and students. He was in analysis at the time of the Controversial Discussion (1943-1944) when Klein lost so much support in the British Psychoanalytic Society to Anna Freud. He collaborated on her interest in splitting mechanisms and the defence that later came to be called ’projective identification’. He has subsequently been less acknowledged than other supporters and deserved a tribute, however small this book is.
R.D. Hinshelwood (2004) Suffering Insanity: Three Psychoanalytic Essays on Psychosis. London: Routledge
Psychoanalysis from the earliest days has made many contributions to understanding madness but has failed to contribute a truly reliable form of treatment. That does not mean its understanding is of no value. This book comes from my twenty odd years working part-time in mental hospitals and psychiatric services, and it brings together in a systematic way some of the understanding of psychotic states and their impact on the staff of institutions and services aimed at caring for people in such states of mind.
JOURNAL ARTICLES
R.D. Hinshelwood (1985) The patient’s defensive analyst. British Journal of Psychotherapy 2: 30-41.
This is to some extent a historic paper in the early days of the British Jounal of Psychotherapy, and also when the importance of the therapist’s countertransference ws becoming much more important in the technical understanding of the material and enactments of a session.
R.D. Hinshelwood (1986) Eclecticism: the impossible project. Free Associations 5: 23-27.
This engages with a debate about whether eclecticism is a naïve pluralism that just puts alternative schools together. My argument is that certain assumption different schools make are incompatible with each other. a proper in-depth comparative study needs to be mounted to discern what is compatible in each school of psychoanalysis.
R.D. Hinshelwood (1989) Little Hans’ transference. Journal of Child Psychotherapy 15: 63-78
A close reading of Freud’s paper on Little Hans shows that the ‘conversations’ that Han had with his father reveal important unconscious dynamics in the here-and-now. Not least are the phobias Hans suffered and how they were relieved by the conversation.
R.D. Hinshelwood (1996) Psychiatry and psychotherapy. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy 10, Supplement: 5-10
A little before retirement from the NHS, I put together my experience of what psychoanalytic thinking can contribute to mental health institutions, services and their staff. Despite the lack of opportunity fro direct clinical practice there are various forms of intervention in organisations and services as well as with individual staff members.
R.D. Hinshelwood (1999) False memory, false therapy. Australian Journal of Psychotherapy 18: 41-58.
At the time there had been a considerable interest in the possibility of a discrete diagnosis of ‘false memory syndrome’. It seemd important not to leave it as a simply a diagnosis but to attempt to speculate on the unconscious dynamics of some who believe they had suffered abuse when young.
R.D. Hinshelwood (2002) Abusive help – helping abuse: The psychodynamic impact of severe personality disorder on caring institutions Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health 12 (2 Suppl): S20-30.
Severe personality disorder appears to be the long term outcome of early and prolonged abuse of physical, emotional or depriving kinds, such that a distinction between care and abuse is lost and one is consistently confused with the other. This has implications for carers later in the life of the abused person. Staff frequently have to bear the brunt of being seen as abuse as they perform their best efforts at care. Whole institutions may develop unconscious dynamics that maintain indifference rather then engage with the confusion of their cared-for clients.
R.D. Hinshelwood (2005) The individual and the influence of the social setting. British Journal of Psychotherapy 22: 155-166.
Undoubtedly social settings such as deprivation, abuse, authoritarianism and many others are experience by individuals in unconscious ways, as well as conscious ones. In this paper I begin to reflect on those internal dynamics and how the external social pressures impact in specitic ways on the internal world of experience
R.D. Hinshelwood (2010) Impressions of Isabel Menzies-Lyth. British Journal of Psychotherapy 26: 179-185.
Isabel Menzies was a long-standing member of staff of the Tavistock Institute that contributed psychoanalytic thinking to consultation with organisation. I was pleased that she agreed to supervise my first training case as I learned to become a psychoanalyst. I could not resist the request to contribute a few memories and impressions to thi Journal’s symposium after she died.
R.D. Hinshelwood (2012) Links and perspectives on the individual and the group. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 81: 589-600.
The notion of links between people was a central element in the strand of psychoanalysis that developed in South America in the 1950s and 1960s. It gave that strand a significant correspond to the object-relations strand of British psychoanalysis that had been developing since the 1920s. It was of interest to me that Bion’s significant paper, Attacks on Linking’, in which he formulated his view of containment (and its failures), took this term shortly after several Kleinian had visited South America for lecture tours. In this paper I tried to examine the comparison between linking and containing.
R.D. Hinshelwood (2014) Whose suffering? – Carers and curers. Psychosis 6: 278-287
Having worked in the public mental health services for some thirty years I had grown very interested in the impact that psychosis has on those who care for patients suffering from psychotic states of mind.
R.D. Hinshelwood (2021) Anxiety: Melanie Klein’s deeper layers. Metalepsis 1: 25-41.
After Melanie Klein had established her approach to the analysis of young children between 1922 and 1932 (though it was not universally accepted) she developed a further innovative concept which grew out of the work with children. Young children displayed for her a deeper layer of the unconscious than was mostly accepted. And this led her to consider if this deeper and earlier layer had a connection with psychotic experiencing of reality. This investigation over the next ten years or more led to her description of the parani-schizoid position.
CHAPTERS IN EDITED BOOKS
R.D. Hinshelwood (2001) Susan Isaacs. In Dorothy Parker 50 Modern Thinkers in Education. London: Routledge.
Susan Isaacs was an educationalist turned psychoanalyst who was a powerful supporter of Melanie Klein during the Controversial Discussions of the British Psychoanalytic Society in 1943-1944. This is a short entry in Dorothy Parker’s sweeping survey of significant contributors to the development of approaches to education.
R.D. Hinshelwood (1998) False memory syndrome – false therapy syndrome. In Valerie Sinason (ed) False Memory Syndrome. (London: Karnac).
Valerie Sinason’s work on ‘false memory syndrome, where adults believe they can blame someone in their childhood for acts of abuse. Valeiri’s invitation was an opportunity to re-explore my understanding of the unconscious dynamics influencing memories of childhood.
R.D. Hinshelwood (2001) The di-vidual. In Valerie Sinason (ed) Trauma. Attachment and Multiplicity: Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder. London: Routledge.
Valerie Sinason continued her interesting contributions with a speculation about multiple personalities. They were of wide cultural interest at the time, being persons who could, with conscious awareness, assume a different personality from time to time. I was interested in whether this was a truly unconscious dynamic
R.D. Hinshelwood (1998) Groups, paranoia, enquiry. In Joseph Berke, Stella Pierides, Andrea Sabbadini and Stanley Schneider (eds) Even Paranoids have enemies. (London: Routledge).
Valerie Sinason’s work on ‘false memory syndrome, where adults believe they can blame someone in their childhood for acts of abuse. Valeiri’s invitation was an opportunity to re-explore my understanding of the unconscious dynamics influencing memories of childhood.
R.D. Hinshelwood (2001) The di-vidual. In Valerie Sinason (ed) Trauma. Attachment and Multiplicity: Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder. London: Routledge.
Valerie Sinason continued her interesting contributions with a speculation about multiple personalities. They were of wide cultural interest at the time, being persons who could, with conscious awareness, assume a different personality from time to time. I was interested in whether this was a truly unconscious dynamic
R.D. Hinshelwood (1998) Groups, paranoia, enquiry. In Joseph Berke, Stella Pierides, Andrea Sabbadini and Stanley Schneider (eds) Even Paranoids have enemies. (London: Routledge).
I had been a teacher on the psychotherapy training course at the Arbours Association, led by Joe Beerke, and concentrating on psychotic states of mind in the model that R.D Laing had developed. I was invited to contributed to this from a Kleinian, paranoid-schizoid, point of view.
R.D. Hinshelwood (2022) The institutional dynamics of psychoanalysis: The effect of the “development threatening idea”. In Rui Argao Oliveira, Maria Jose Goncalves and Joao Diniz (Eds) Reflections on Contemporary Psychoanalytic Thought: The Lisbon Lectures. Bicester: Phoenix Publishing House.
Having been invited to give a lecture in a series organised by the Portuguse Psychoanalytic Society on psychodynamics and organisations, I chose to consider the increasingly fragmented workd of psychoanalytic dcholls and organisations. It seemed likely that the progressive dismissal of Ech other could arise from a need to deny psychotic anxiety (prompted by other schools of thought), and how painful might be the developments required to facie it.
R.D. Hinshelwood (2002) What we can learn from failures. In Reppen, and Schulman, (eds) Failures in Psychoanalytic Treatment. New York: International Universities Press
For a long time, I was impressed that Freud tended to examine the failures of his treatments – for instance, the Dora case. On the other hand many (is it most) papers by subsequent psychoanalysts tend to demonstrate the success of their interpretations and treatments. So this invitation from Joe Reppen was a good opportunity to reflect on this observation and what it might indicate about the confidence psychoanalysts have.
R.D. Hinshelwood (2004) Reflections on psychic ownership and psychoanalytic studies. In Ann Casement (ed) Who Owns Psychoanalysis? London: Karnac
Ann Casement’s notion of ‘owning’ psychoanalysis was intriguing and led me to accept her invitation. There is a kind or exclusiveness, even elitism, about having the authority to talk and write about the mental unconscious which we all try to hide because of its very nature.
R.D. Hinshelwood (2017) On not thinking straight: Comments on a conceptual marriage. In Noreen Giffney and Eve Watson (eds.) Clinical Encounters: Psychoanalytic Practice and Queer Theory. Santa Barbara: Punctum BOOKS.
This invitation prompted me to think about the alternative views on non-binary sexuality. The marriage that never happens is that between social science approaches and psychoanalytic ones. Both have some degree of rigidity, although I claim it is psychoanalysis from the early twentieth century that has loosened up the Victorian attitudes to sex. So, this I abut marrying concepts from different disciplines, rather than the sexual encounters o individuals.
R.D. Hinshelwood (2020) Love versus hate: The inspiration for living (Amor vesrus odio, La inspiracion para vivir). In Feniex, C.G., Rojas, R. (eds.) El odio y la clinnica psicoanalytica actual. Santiago de Chile: Polvora.
A Kleinian perspective sees life as conducted in the context of the struggle between positive and negative reactions, love and hate. How these two are balanced in the move from the conflicted paranoid-schizoid position to the depressive position is crucial for both longstanding personality characteristics and for reactions to immediate situations and events.
R.D. Hinshelwood (2013) Suffering the impact: Psychosis and the professional care-giver. In Gumley, A., Gillham, A., Taylor, K. & Schwannauer, M. Psychosis and Emotion: The Role of Emotions in Understanding Psychosis, Therapy and Recovery. London: Routledge
The impact of psychosis on the doctors, nurses and te professional and family caregivers is an important dynamic for everyone. And not least is the fact that the impact and how it is dealt with feeds back into the psychotic state of the person struggling to cope with the reality of their connections with others. Those who care suffer the impact of being misperceived in reality, and the cared-for suffer from their suffering. The distancing that ensues takes away the possible sunshine moments when the reality of two concerned and caring people can meet realistically.
R.D. Hinshelwood (2004) Melanie Klein. Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The DNB gives a synopsis of the lives of important contributors to British Culture. Icould not refuse to do this for the person I am most indebted to in my career.