Researching the Unconscious

'How can psychoanalysis be a research activity when its task is not a generalizing one, but a particularizing one, that is, to impart the nuance and convey complexity? Michael Rustin has some fascinating and learned answers to this question. He shows how psychoanalysis does generate knowledge and should respect its own methods of doing so. Read him and learn!'-Anne Alvarez, PhD, MACP, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist. 'Michael Rustin is an outstanding contributor to the development of psychoanalytic studies, and author of several works of seminal importance in British sociology. In this lucid and rational book, he distils his thinking from many years of teaching and scholarship to offer a persuasive defence of psychoanalysis as a rational and progressive social science of huge cultural significance. The book is crucial reading for everyone interested in the standing of psychoanalysis as a human science.'-Stephen Frosh, Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, UK 'This is an impressive work. Rustin is uniquely equipped to show how methods of research consistent with psychoanalytic approaches can produce an objective body of knowledge. His book continues the remarkable tradition of Jaspers and Ricoeur. It provides a great deal of what researchers and mental health therapists will need to meet the challenges of the future'-David Taylor, psychoanalyst and Visiting Professor, UCL Psychoanalysis Unit, UK