Christopher Bollas

Christopher Bollas is a British psychoanalyst and writer.

Early life and education

Bollas grew up in first In France and then in Laguna Beach, California and later graduated in history from UC Berkeley. As an undergraduate Bollas studied intellectual history with Carl Schorske, psychoanalytical anthropology with Alan Dundes, and psychoanalytic critical theory with Frederick Crews. At Buffao he studied with Norman Holland, Leslie Fiedler, Murray Schwartz, Michel Foucault, Rene Girard and with the Heideggerian psychoanalyts Heinz Lichtenstein. Eric Erikson became a mentor early on in his career and was to be of singular influence for the next twenty years. Those teachers and figures whom he knew and who helped diversify his thinking were Arnold Modell, John Bowlby, Andre Green, Herbert Rosenfeld, Joseph Sandler, J.-B. Pontalis, Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, Marion Milner, and Paula Heimann. Bollas earned a Ph.D in English literature from the [[University of Buffalo]. Bollas also studied Ego Psycholgy in Northampton Mass.

Career

Bollas was a Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts^[1] in the middle 1980’s. Concordant with his career in literary and cultural studies, Bollas has worked as a psychotherapist since 1967, launching his clinical career with autistic and schizophrenic children. He qualified in psychoanalysis from the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London in 1977 and in psychotherapy at the Tavistock Clinic in 1978. He was the first Honorary Non Medical Consultant at the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis, Visiting Professor in Psychoanalysis at the Istituto di Neuropsychiatria Infantile of the University of Rome from 1978 to 1998, Director of Education at the Austen Riggs Center from 1985-1988. He became a British citizen in 2010.^[2]

Contributions

Bollas is most widely known for his psychoanalytical writings and some of his ideas have had a wide dissemination; indeed, he is one of the most widely-read authors in the field of psychoanalysis.^[3] His theory of “the unthought known”^[4][5]—that as infants we are informed by many ideas conveyed through action rather than thinking that become part of our unconscious—has been of particular significance, although other concepts “the transformational object”, “violent innocence”, “extractive introjection”, “ psychic genera and the receptive unconscious” and “ human idiom” have been widely influential in the clinical field.

In the middle 1990s in Being A Character (1992) and Cracking UP (1995) Bollas turned back to Freud’s early writing—especially The Interpretation of Dreams—and argued that Freud’s writing implicitly assumed a theory of unconscious perception, organization, and creativity that Bollas integrated and used in his own radical return to Freud, arguing that psychoanalysis is primarily efficacious due to entirely unconscious processes of change. In the 21st century, in Free Association, The Evocative Object World, and The Infinite Question, Bollas revived Freud’s marginalized theory of free association providing evidence of how and in what ways all people think associatively, revealing—as Freud argued—through the “chain of ideas”, or simply the way people move from one topic to another reveal unconscious processes of thought. However, Bollas has distanced himself from the Freudian movement^[6]

Aside from his clinical writings Bollas is also a cultural critic and his writings have earned the interests of people outside the world of psychoanalysis,^[7] He has also written three comic novels—Dark at the End of the Tunnel, I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing, and Mayhem—and five plays.

An American television sitcom Cracking Up derived its title from his book with that title and included a main character, Dr. Bollas, played by Henry Gibson.Template:Fox Network Episode 1, "Pilot" 2004 Bollas is also the only psychoanalyst mentioned in the first series of HBO's In Treatment^{[citation needed]}.

Bibliography

Nonfiction

• The Shadow of the Object (1987 Free Association Books: 1989 Columbia University Press )
• Being a Character (1992, Routledge)
• Forces of Destiny (1996 Free Association Books)
• The New Informants (1996 with Jason Aronson)
• The Mystery of Things (1999 Routledge)
• Hysteria (1999 Routledge)
• Free Association (2002 Ikon Books)
• Cracking Up (2003 Routledge)
• The Freudian Moment (2007 Karnac Books)
• The Evocative Object World (2008 Routledge)
• The Infinite Question (2009, Routledge)
• The Christopher Bollas Reader (2011, Routledge)

Fiction and plays

• Dark at the End of the Tunnel (2004 Free Association Books)
• I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing (2005 Free Association Books)
• Theraplay and Other Plays (2005 Free Association Books)
• Mayhem (2005, Free Associations Books)

Works about Christopher Bollas

• The Vitality of Objects ed. Joseph Scalia (2002, Continuum)
• The Independent Mind in British Psychoanalysis Eric Rayner, (1991, Aronson)

References

1. ^ "Caversham profile of Bollas". Cavershambooksellers.com. http://www.cavershambooksellers.com/showcategory.php?query=Bollas,%20Christopher. Retrieved 2011-07-27. 
2. ^ "UK Public Record Archives (paysite)". Internationalarchives.org. http://internationalarchives.org/records-lookup2.php?first=Christopher&last=Bollas&archive=Naturalization. Retrieved 2011-07-27. 
3. ^ Lear, J, Sharing Secrets in London Review of Books Vol. 32 Is. 5
4. ^ Mogenson, G, The Dove in the Consulting Room: Hysteria and Anima in Bollas and Jung, Brunner-Routledge 2003, ISBN 9781583912584, p.19
5. ^ Campbell, J & Harbord, J, Psycho-politics and cultural desires, Taylor & Francis 1998, ISBN 9781857288070, p. 208
6. ^ "Brett Kahr interviews Christopher Bollas". Therip.com.ar. 2009-07-02. http://www.therip.com.ar/index.php?Itemid=14&catid=1:videos&id=7:brett-kahr-interviews-christopher-bollas&option=com_content&view=article. Retrieved 2011-07-27. 
7. ^ Hunt, Ian, The Unthought Known, Frieze Magazine, Issue 68

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Name	Bollas, Christopher
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Short description	British psychoanalyst and writer
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Place of birth
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